Good point about state school being able to finish in 4….kid, you’re finishing in 4…..
Where I went to school on the east coast, tuition was high, but housing was cheap. And even now property value hasn’t gone anywhere. If my kid stays in CA, I think we have most of CA covered the second half of the college. The exception would be Davis or Obispo. The first half, for social reasons, probably is better to stay on campus. I don’t think the top rsnk colleges are my kid’s cup of tea too. But I included them for a budgetary purposes.
With 5 years left, contributing $2000/month the 529k that I started to do last year, and with about 5% average return (I rebalanced recently reduce the domestic stock concentration to something more conservative), I think we can just about make it to about $360k without tapping any custodian non-college accounts or my own assets/funds. That should put us somewhere in the category between a UC school and a private school, without needing to stretch that much. Anything less expensive will be just money left over that my kids kid can use or my cousins or both.
Good thing I started really early and let drip monthly drip investing, tax efficiency, compounding run its course over decade. I didn’t even notice the extra monthly contributions, but it paid its way forward. Didn’t realize how crazy educational costs have become. And it’s unlikely we would have been successful in hiding assets to qualify for financial aid, short of moving everything offshore…. Shit is expensive these days.
