Money Matters
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Saving for College
How much do you guys save per month for your child's college education?
Re: Saving for College
You can go to college websites that you would consider her going to and then go HERE and it should give you a good idea of how much that college will cost when she's old enough to attend. Of course you'll only get an estimate, but it'll give you something to start from. We plan on our kids going to 2 years of community college then transferring to a local 4 university. For DS1 (5.5) the estimated expense for all 4 years was $67k. For our twins (3.5) to start just 2 years later it went up to $76k. We don't have a certain amount we save for their college per month/per year, we deposit around $5k/year and in a few years we'll be able to deposit a large lump sum that will help fund it tremendously.
We save $50 per month each for the 2 kids. One set of g-parents pay into the 529s also on a quarterly basis to lower their own tax burden...we didn't ask them to, they approached us about it.
Our third baby will get the same thing.
Our college cost philosophy is that it's icing on the cake. We want to cover our retirements before college costs.
Also, we see value in the children paying some of their own way too (when you pay for something on your own, rather than having it handed to you, you tend to appreciate it more).
Currently - $0 per month
We have 3 things to do before we start any college savings, finish paying off debt, play catch up on retirement savings, and buy a home. We should start saving something in about 3 years. It still wont be much at that point.
We plan to help a little, but that's it. I don't feel guilty. Not having to take care of your parents when they get old is better than having college paid for.
We are currently saving $225 every two weeks. That will be somewhere in the $100,000 range by the time he's ready to start college. That doesn't neccessarily mean that I'll be contributing that much towards his college education. In fact, I probably won't even tell him that the money is there until after college graduation. Let him figure out a way to pay for it himself and make the money a graduation gift. Likewise, if he decides to go into a trade instead, I might help out with his first house rather than a college education.
I've looked at all the online calculators, and I just don't believe that college prices can keep rising at 7%+ each year indefinitely. By those calculations, a college that costs $5,000 a semester tuition this year will be somewhere in the $15,000-$17,000 a semester range in 18 years. Add to that the cost of living and college will just be too expensive for many people. Colleges are going to price themselves out of the market and the student loan market will implode the way the housing market did except with no way to walk away from SL debt.