College savings for LO

[baconlettucetomato]

Did you start a college fund? How did you do it? Who is it through? Do you add the same amount every month or just what you can?

[Deleted]

I'm in Canada, so the details are kind of irrelevant, but we put $100 in every month. Not a ton, but every little bit helps. Once we're done with daycare, we'll re-evaluate.

[Deleted]

We have a 529 through USAA ( I'm not sure which state it is, but we love USAA, so that's what we went with.)

We had a chunk saved before he was born and I split it in half and have half in CD ladders and half in the 529. Now that CD rates are such crap, I'm just going to dump it all in the 529.

[baconlettucetomato]

Dec 13, 2012 13:44:05 GMT -5 dbsk8dance said:

We have a 529 through USAA ( I'm not sure which state it is, but we love USAA, so that's what we went with.)

We had a chunk saved before he was born and I split it in half and have half in CD ladders and half in the 529. Now that CD rates are such crap, I'm just going to dump it all in the 529.

This is so good to know. We do all of our banking through USAA(my roth, checking accounts, car loan, etc) so hopefully this is one more thing they can help with. Thank you!

[zacksbride]

we have one with fidelity. there are no tax advantages for us in our state. we move $200 per month into it- our goal is to get $500/month eventually.

[hopeful2012]

No tax advantages in our state. We haven't started yet (DS is almost 3, now #2 on the way). We having 6 figure student loans ourselves that we are paying down aggressively (+$2k a month). We want to get those paid off (and we are also saving for retirement) before aggressively saving for our kid's college. We plan to get our student loans paid off while DS + new baby are still in elementary school and then we plan on evaluating our options. We hope that by starting when they are maybe 6 and 9 (hopefully earlier) that we will still be able to save up a good amount. I don't think our expectation is paying for 4 years of college for both of them (neither of our parents did that), but we to do what we can.

[Cheerio]

I just opened a 529 for DS today. It was very easy. I opened one for my state since there are tax advantages. Check out www.savingforcollege.com/ -- I learned a lot about 529s from that site.

[ssmjlm]

We'll go with Virginia's 529 for the tax benefits, but only put the amount up to the benefit. Otherwise we'll save in other vehicles.

[af1212]

We have our 529 through our state for the tax benefits. As of right now we only put money in that is gifted to her, but she's been lucky enough to have very generous great grandparents so far. When I go back to work (I plan to do this when the kids are school-age) then we will hopefully make regular contributions ourselves.

[w2w]

We have a 529 in Utah. We chose it because of the low fees and we wanted Vanguard investment options. We contribute a set amount every month and throw additional amounts in from bonuses and other windfalls, plus all of the monetary gifts our child receives.