Since you are able to save a significant mount of money, and it is all there to continue to earn interest and grow, perhaps you can divert some of that money to pay college costs now.
Another way families can wind up with higher assets than one might expect to see given income and home costs is via an inheritance. My husband’s grandparents left around $450,000 to my husband’s dad. They certainly wouldn’t have appeared to have had that level of assets by their home and how they lived. They were just big-time savers and frugal.
“We always intended on chasing merit”
I’ve never understood how parents can make this claim when their kids are born? In reality, none of us know if are kids are going to be great at academics and very good test takers to get big merit scholarships, especially when they are young.
The honest answer is saving for college wasn’t something that was a priority for these families and once their kids were in high school their best option was trying to chase merit since they had not saved much, if anything for college.
It’s a very reactive, not proactive approach to paying for your kids college education that has several pitfalls such as limiting the type of colleges your kid can attend and places a tremendous amount of stress on the child to excel in the classroom and on the PSAT/SAT/ACT and if they do get into the college with big merit, must maintain a certain GPA (some as high as 3.5) or are sent packing.
@socaldad2002 It wasn’t a reactive approach. My D was an excellent test taker from the age of 4, very talented in multiple ways, and always near the top of her class. It wasn’t a stretch to believe she would be a very desireable candidate. She is at an excellent flagship on a premier scholarship. I promise you her options were not limited and her opportunities at her college are unlimited. No external stress was ever placed on her. The GPA requirement is a 3.5, but isn’t a problem for her. Just know your own kid and stop judging others you know nothing about.
My wife was clueless thought college still cost 15k/yr.
Lucky for me my daughter finally realized prestige matters nil and has picked all schools that cost under 25k/yr.
She has a 32 ACT, 3.91UW gpa, truly doesnt matter where you go for undergrad especially if the end goal is healthcare med school, pa school, pharm d etc (hers is).
Best of luck 
on finding a happy place.
Most families MOST…have no college savings. That is just a fact.
We didn’t. But plan was to have both parents working…and pay out of current earnings…using ONE parents income to pay for college. That worked for the Thumper family. But like i said…both of us had full time jobs.
In addition, if the costs would have been too high at $70,000 a year colleges, our kids would have had to look at less costly colleges.
@socaldad2002 My URM family is very similar to @itsgettingreal17 in that I, 2 of my siblings,and my wife and her sibling all got full merit based scholarships to go to college, so we knew pretty early (at the birth of our children) to shoot for Merit aid or Athletic aid for our children. We have always known that we could foot the bill for an in-state school through cash flow and could dip into our savings if needed, so I personally understand how a family could say that. We are also not worried about GPA requirements (kids would be transferring back in-state if they could not meet requirements).
“My D was an excellent test taker from the age of 4”
smh…you really think that all these families that didn’t save anything for college knew that when their kids were two years out of diapers were going to get big time merit scholarships 14 years later?
In some states, absolutely nothing wrong with counting on the flagship. As we faced college costs, we were well aware some flagships are very top universities. At the time, DH said, “If we lived in Michigan…”
It’s difficult enough to face the exhorbitant costs without needing to make anyone else feel bad. There are plenty of posts in CC history where high earning parents or those with a full college fund set a limit on how much they’ll contribute, calling it the cost of the state flagship. They don’t assume some terrible unfairness to their kids.
Maybe now we get back to the OP.
“In some states, absolutely nothing wrong with counting on the flagship”
Let’s use a real example. CA resident, 4.25 UC GPA and 31 ACT.
Cost to go to state flagship, UCB/UCLA, is around 140K. If you didn’t save a dime for college but instead we’re expecting big time merit, this student could not afford to go to the UCs. Correct?
@socaldad2002 While many parents are not good at judging their kids’ abilities accurately, I am not one of them. And as I said, I was not wrong. Our flagship is excellent, and my D would have been thrilled to attend. I don’t think any school is worth $70k/ per year. To each their own. My D and I are loving how our plan worked out, and that’s all that matters.
CA residents have a ton of fine public universities to apply to. UCB and UCLA aren’t the only act in CA.
We’re here to help parents with financial challenges find options. Not shame them.
Some states have an excellent Guaranteed Transfer program. Some have auto merit or programs like Bright Futures, in FL.
Don’t just pick UCLA/UCB, two of the top U’s in the country. And wth ridiculous competition for an admit. Maybe you would have preferred I use “solid in-state public” instead of flagship.
Lol, though it sometimes seems so, not everyone on CC is from CA.
@socaldad2002 Not really reactive and not the dire image you project. If kids aren’t strong enough students for merit, local CCs or commuting colleges are probably good academic fits. We didn’t save for college simply bc it just wasn’t possible. We can afford for our kids to live at home and commute. Any other goal is on them or not feasible. It is far from any sort of horrible life outcome. Many people do not live their lives around providing away 4 yr college experiences. The 18 yrs before college and everyone’s life afterward do not need to be controlled by those 4 yrs.
That sort of hyper focus on college is really far from most people’s frame of reference. That includes our family. We offer what we can offer and those are their options. We have a great relationship with our children, including our 5 adult children. Not one of them has the perception that somehow we owed them more than we provided for them.
Welcome to the club. Working hard and being moderately successful means that all of your savings would have to go to higher education if you don’t fall into a niche that will garner some sort of scholarship funds.
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The real difference is where you live. In my state, Georgia Tech and UGA are about 15K per year for students with the stats you listed above (Students would those stats would get Zell Miller Scholarship through lottery funds which is full tuition at any in-state institution). In California, a parent would have to make different plans from the plans we make in Georgia.
Another thing is that it is smart to save for retirement before college savings. Look at the meager amount most Americans have set aside. Albeit not totally desirable, it is possible to borrow for college but not really possible to borrow for retirement (without collateral).
This is also a large part of the problem. Our kids were born in 2001. Is it reasonable to think that most parents could have forseen and planned for this kind of inflation? Is it any wonder that parents are now shell shocked and upset?
There may be many different scenarios how a family may end up like this. We are also in a somewhat similar situation. We arrived in the U.S. when my husband was almost 40. We have assets that are not protected that are absolutely our retirement nest. With hindsight, we should have sold our tiny overseas first home and invested that money into a bigger home in the U.S. Instead, we kept it, and bought a more modest home in the U.S. As you can imagine, we don’t have as much in our 401 as we would like, since we started late in the game. Our flagship is the University of California, not cheap, and we are considered full price. There is no significant difference in cost between UCLA or Berkeley and a lower ranked UC campus.
When we arrived to the U.S. almost 20 years ago, our oldest was 2 years old. I checked how much university cost in that particular state. I concluded we could totally afford it paying out of our income. On top of the rising costs, we also moved to a state with higher costs. So far, we have put one child through college with no debt, but we still have a second child to put through in 4 years.
That’s our reality, and we have to work around it.
OP, if you mentioned your state and your daughter’s major, I missed it. What’s your budget? I’d start by finding a financial safety or two for her then look for options where merit aid is available. Are you running the schools’ net price calculators?