<p>I was wonder what the average family did or will have saved for a child by the time he started college. I'll have about $55k by then and was wondering how good or bad shape I'm in relatively speaking. Anyone willing to share?</p>
<p>Nothing…zero</p>
<p>We’ll have $50-60,000. Not enough. </p>
<p>We had no college savings. Our financial advisor suggested we max out all retirement contributions, so that is what we did. He said that, if needed, we could suspend our retirement contributions while the kids were in college…and there would be a sufficient nest egg in them to continue to earn interest.</p>
<p>As it happened, we continued the retirement contributions, and used my remaining income to fund college costs. My husband’s remaining income funded our other living expenses. </p>
<p>We started saving before DS was born and put those savings into a 529 when he entered first grade. Since then, all of my income, less maxing out on my 401K, has been put into that fund. It will now cover the full cost of any college DS attends.</p>
<p>We didn’t save anything explicitly for college. Fortunately, our kids got large scholarships and took out subsidized Stafford loans. The rest, we were able to pay out of our current income. It worked out fine for us (2 more years on kid #2) but not a strategy that works for everyone. </p>
<p>Nice, @ChoatieMom, that’s the way to do it. Also, all, it would be nice to know what college your child was able to go to with the amount of savings you had. Thanks for sharing, although i don’t know if it makes me feel better. :-S </p>
<p>So much depends on your familyl situation. When our elder kid was applying for Us, we had $60K saved. Fortunately, H’s salary received a surprise, timely raise and I started earning more as well. These factors really helped us be able to pay for both kids to go to colleges they were happy at. Fortunately, these conditions persisted through their college years. S’s award was for 50% tuition, plus a bit more, so that really helped A LOT! It was still a challenging time financially, but we made things work.</p>
<p>Since then, H has retired and my salary (if it can be called that) is now miniscule. We had saved enough so that both of our kids COULD afford to attend flagship U and live in the dorm for 4 years. Neither chose that option. </p>
<p>Happily, S got significant merit aid, which helped lower his total costs to a level we were abl to stretch to afford. We also managed to get D to graduate while paying full freight–a generous relative helped when she could as well.</p>
<p>My kids went to two pricey private universities…Boston University and Santa Clara University. One got a $10,000 a year scholarship (which was $40,000 for four years…and at the time was like getting one year for free). The other got a $6450 a year scholarship…which didn’t cover nearly as much as costs were much higher.</p>
<p>Still, my current income minus retirement contributions paid those bills for all the years they were in college.</p>
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<p>Are there “average” families on CC’s Lake Wobegone?</p>
<p>We started saving as soon as I got pregnant! And started 529 plans at birth. Like Choatiemom my salary minus 491k went to college savings. This meant we lived in a smaller house than we could otherwise afford…took few vacations, drove older less expensive cars. And when it came time for college we could tell the kids that they could choose any college. Price was simply not a consideration. We had all 4 years covered plus money for grad school if they want. </p>
<p>@Jara123, same here. The amount in the 529 will cover the cost of any university, public or private, in the US. DS has already been accepted to our state flagship with a full-tuition scholarship, but that is not his first choice. We’ll have to see where he ends up to know how much will be left over for grad school if he chooses that route.</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>We have 3 kids. There is no way it’s what we saved is going to pay for all three…maybe not even 2…ugh.</p>
<p>$30k for one $40k for the other. And until just a few years ago, I had an AGI in the mid 5 figures.</p>
<p>We did the Thumper Family Plan. Everything went into retirement accounts. We also paid for 8 years of sleep away camp, followed by 4 years of private high school. We also knew we could pay the COA for state school out of present income since we were doing that already for high school. S got large merit awards at several colleges and large FA package from the school he chose to attend. What we are paying for 4 years at that school equals what 4 years at state U would have cost. </p>
<p>We also never moved up to bigger house, drive used cars and live pretty frugally. </p>
<p>I have 4 more months of tuition payments and then we are done. I cannot wait! </p>
<p>We’ll have enough to buy books for her first year. </p>
<p>I feel I need to edit! When I was married, I was pretty much the sole financial support for our family almost all the time, so my income went to the bank for the mortgage, the utilities for lights, phone, gas, we had one car which we always paid for in full, used, so a good chunk went to the garage, and since my ex was a habitual reckless driver, to tickets and driver retraining. Then some went to the grocery store for food! </p>
<p>I also put as much as I could into my 401K, and a little bit into savings for college, but when you’re living closer to the bone, you end up having to hit up your savings a little more frequently, for when daughter one breaks her leg and you have a big co-pay, to when your then husband falls asleep behind the wheel (not drunk, just tired) and wrecks the car that is worth about $2000 when you have not much in the bank. </p>
<p>On the plus side, my finances improved a bit after the divorce, since my kind of expensive ex-husband is no longer my responsibility. And we did put money in a 529 for them, just not a lot, although I am being a bit hyperbolic when saying we can pay for books. We could pay for a semester at the community college. </p>
<p>For each kid, we saved enough for
2 years of away in-state public schools (without scholarships) or
2 years of commuting private schools (with transfer scholarships)</p>
<p>All my kids attended community college for first two years.</p>
<p>We didn’t save anything, there was no money to save. I have usually been a stay at home mom, working part time off and on when the right job came along. </p>
<p>My D earned an approximately half tuition merit scholarship to Tulane University. She also qualifies for the pell grant and other need based institutional grants and scholarships. She has taken out some of the subsidized loans but has turned down all of the unsub. loans. We have not cosigned for any loans and we have not taken out any of the parent loans.</p>
<p>D was an RA for her sophomore year, earning free room and board. She has since moved off campus into a 2 bedroom apartment with 2 other young women. It is a church owned apartment, so all utilities are paid by the church and it is cheaper rent then if it was owned by a for profit place. She shares a bedroom with one of them to make their share of the rent cheaper. </p>
<p>She also works 15-20 hours a week during the school year and full time during the summer to pay for books, travel costs home (sort of substantial, she is 1600 miles away) and other incidentals. We do pay for her cell phone plan and her car insurance.</p>
<p>For my oldest, my grandfather gifted enough for almost two years of private college (for which we are super grateful) and we saved enough to get through three years easily (we are full pay). We have enough saved for three years of private college for my second child who hasn’t started college yet. The remainder we should be able to fund out of salary or by liquidating some investments that are earmarked for retirement, but are not in 401ks or IRAs.</p>