When my kids attended college, the costs (tuition, room and board, and travel) were about $130K for each one at private colleges. Tuition was in the low $20K’s. Now things are really out of whack. Spreading those costs over 7 years (one year overlapped), using both savings and current income, just worked out. That’s because we had decent savings, a good professional [academic] income, and help from the grandparents that covered about 25% of the costs.