Like i said upstream…make sure your financial planner has some knowledge about college finances.
And don’t let him sell you an annuity…
Lol. I promise. No annuity. 
You were planning to buy a second house…without selling the first one.
So…this implies that you had a good down payment for that new house purchase…right? Perhaps this money could now be used as college money.
I would strongly suggest you read this thread from last year…where you got some of the same advice (e.g. Starting a 529 for each twin).
Good suggestions in the thread :
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1879596-some-advice-for-young-parents-p3.html
Can the OP set up 529’s with him as owner and children as beneficiaries without any gift tax consequences?
Yep thumper1. We changed the game plan based on the advice we got. Decided to test the market for our house. Sell it and use the money for a down payment on a new house plus an investment house. To be more specific, we wanted buy a condo as a rental property in one of the high rises in Jersey City that overlooks Manhattan. A one bedroom or a two bedroom condo. That plan is still in place. We will wait another year to see the market.
Regarding my first ever thread on college confidential. Nice find. At the time, we weren’t really focused on the finances. We knew nothing. We didn’t even know what the heck was a Weighted GPA. We didn’t know tracks for math and English. We didn’t know public schools aren’t what they are in Europe and in our town our public high school wasn’t that bad at all. We didn’t know what Kumon was, we didn’t know what AMC-8 was or PSAT was. Learned a lot in the past 18 months that I am here. Still have a lot to learn and that’s what makes me come back to College Confidential so often even though my kids are still little.
It depends on how much money is deposited into a 529 account, by whom and when. Money deposited into a 529 is considered a completed gift from the person who provides the funds, with all the same tax rules as any other gift, with the caveat that a 529 can be “superfunded” with a large amount that would otherwise exceed the annual gift tax exclusion for one year being prorated over a five year period to be within the annual exclusion amount for each of those five years.
Example:
The current annual gift tax exclusion is $14k. If a parent opens a 529 for a child with a deposit of $15k, $1k of that deposit must be reported on IRS form 709 and it will reduce the parent’s lifetime estate and gift tax exemption (which for 2017 is $5.49 million) by $1k. Until the lifetime exemption is all used up, there will be no tax owed, although as in this example any gift that exceeds the annual exclusion must be reported so that the remaining lifetime exemption can be appropriately adjusted down. With a 529, the parent here could make the choice to treat this opening deposit as if it were made in equal installments over five years, so even though in reality it was a one-time opening deposit of $15k, in the eyes of the IRS it would look like $3k contributions each year for five consecutive years, which means that there would be no reduction of the lifetime exemption. A key thing to understand here is the word “estate” in the lifetime estate and gift tax exemption, because the value of an estate is subject to tax for any part of the estate that exceeds whatever lifetime exemption that remains as of the date of death.
Couldn’t EACH parent put $14,000 in the accounts?
Yes, they could, and if both parents stopped at $14k, they wouldn’t have to worry about filing form 709 (assuming there were no other gifts that year from a parent to the account beneficiary). Likewise, the parents together could superfund a 529 account to the tune of $140k. They would have to file a form 709 to document the five year prorating, but no tax would be owed and it would not reduce the lifetime exemption for either parent (again, assuming there are no other gifts that year, or for the next four years, from a parent to the account beneficiary).
If the child is just named the beneficiary, but the parent is the owner of the 529, is that still a gift? The beneficiary can be changed at any time, so is it a gift if the child never benefits from the 529?
It’s a gift for the beneficiary from whoever contributed the money for the 529.
This is one of those areas that the IRS hasn’t provided guidance for. It’s a gift to someone, but whether or how a gift can be unwound if a new beneficiary is named is not clear.
While there might be some ideal financially efficient scenario, I think your plan with funding 529s is a good one. Having savings aside in the 529 is nice because you are less tempted to raid it for another purpose. We have had fewer years of high income but saved a lot in 529 plans and it has worked out. We have almost enough now to send our high school students to a state school. We have run NPCs with less income than you have and do not foresee any aid so the savings for the past 13 years has been key.