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Being the proud parent of two children, I am glad that one of them
has already completed their bachelor's degree, and the other will
be finishing up very shortly as well. I am proud
to say that putting two children through two pricey private universities will actually
not cause us to go into any debt at all.
I wrote this little program that
actually lets you compute for more than one child the growing costs of higher
education (most on-line calculators make you do it one at a time).
So here you put in the current astronomical annual tuition, room, board and other costs of your favorite institution and what you think your average tuition inflation and investment return will be. Then put in the years until your children go to school and how much you have already to invest and how much you will contribute each year. Note that you can put away a rather piddly $2,000 a year
in each childs name in an "Coverdell Education Savings Account (EAA)" where all the earnings are not taxed
when you withdraw the funds.
Similarly, many states now sponsor 529 plan savings programs. See
www.collegesavings.org for more
information. Hugh Chou |