ForSale, I think you’re right about the withdrawals being exempt from taxation no matter where, but I’ll check. I don’t exactly follow the numbers from your post. Are they comparing the two plans you have listed? Are both of those plans in Nevada?
Ray, all of my family is here, so I don’t know that there’s any advantage to having my mother open the account in her name (except that my son can have two accounts???). I guess I’m one of the rare breed of people who was born and raised in California.
I think I’m still leaning towards Utah, but I’ll have to check on the creditor protection piece.
One of my big overall concerns is this — what if I save too much in the account? Is the penalty worth it?
The benefit of having your parents save in a 529 account is that when you apply for financial aid the savings are not accounted for in the federal and often times school school calculation for financial aid. There are way too many people who think that they do not qualify for finacial aid when in fact they can. Additionally if they are strategic about the school process they can greatly improve there chances of maximizing there financial aid. IE get all money out of the kids accoutns 2 years before they start college. Financial aid will use roughly 35 % of chiold saving in calculation vs roughly 6 percent for parents. 2 pay off all credit card bill and prepayy the mortgage as the financial aid process begins. Why? They are not going to calculate real estate as an assett. By clearing out saving you give the illusion that you are in greater need. These are a couple of planning strategies that can be used to help mazimise financial aid.
Utah and Ohio have low expenses for funds but charge the 20$ annual fee. You may also want to look at the Virginia plan managed by the American funds. Excellent management.
Vanguard has a plan comparison tool. Those numbers compared the nevada plan (vanguard/upromise) with the scholarshare plan. It’s available on vanguard’s website.
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