How to choose a 529 savings plan

[yankees60]

Tangentially related...

VInny

The College Quandary Today

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-college ... 57554.html

"First came Covid. Then came online college. Then came the lawsuits.

There’s a firm in South Carolina, the Anastopoulo Law Firm, that says it’s suing some 30 higher learning institutions for tuition and board payback (including Columbia, Cornell, Purdue, UMass and UPenn) arguing breach of contract—saying in effect that these institutions charged students for a certain type of college campus experience this year and instead gave them virtual college lite. The lawsuits challenge the notion that Zoom learning lives up to the value of an actual classroom—learning in a community, with your peers, enjoying personal development.


Still, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to test the United States’ anxiety for reopening society, the question of reopening colleges arises, too, and asks—at what cost in people’s health and safety?

For many clients of financial advisors, college education is the single biggest funding need they face after saving for retirement. The questions advisors are asking include: Is your child’s college fully reopening or doing hybrid classes? If the college is reopening, do you really want it to? In one survey of more than 1,800 freshmen and returning students performed by research firm Simpson Scarborough, 43% of students didn’t feel safe returning to a socially distanced classroom.

Professors don’t like the idea either. One CFP licensee and lecturer at Texas A&M with professor clients says many of them flatly refuse to go back. Older people are more at risk, after all.

The confusing messages universities have sent to families about what’s happening have not helped, says Beth V. Walker, creator of the Center for College Solutions, which guides families through college planning."

[Xan]

* Forget the 529, just have my PP growing in taxable. This has the advantage of having less money in the child's name, which is good for FAFSA. But will we be eligible for financial aid at all? Perhaps not.

Check your income against the estimated EFC. Depending on your income and the school your child plans to attend, rearranging things for FAFSA may be a pointless exercise.

For example, say your kid wants to go to a "reasonably" priced state school. If your EFC based on income alone is higher than the cost, nothing that you do on the asset side will matter.

Those are great things to figure out, but they're pretty hard to do a decade or two in advance.

That’s true, but there are a variety of tools for estimating EFC out there. Here’s a link to the official one: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/estimate/

The only issue with that tool is that (unless I missed it) it doesn’t make you enter your tax-deferred retirement contributions, which the real FAFSA does. So you can just add it to your AGI.

Of course there is no way of knowing what changes will be made by the time your child goes to college. Not to mention what college they will choose, but at least there are ways to influence that.

Very cool, thanks!

[yankees60]

Rating the Top 529 College Savings Plans

These best-in-class plans offer a combination of attractive features.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/95 ... ings-plans

[yankees60]

Is College Still a Good Investment?

Rising college costs and heavy debt have raised doubts about the payoff from a college degree.

https://www.kiplinger.com/article/colle ... tment.html

"How does the major a student selects affect the outcome? The choice of a major may be the single biggest financial decision people will ever make. If you list majors from top to bottom based on earnings, it's roughly a $2 million differential. But lifetime earnings shouldn't be in the top three things that you base your decision on, in part because job satisfaction matters. There's an economic reason, too. If you compare average earnings for an English major to, say, an accounting major's earnings, accounting looks a lot better. But frankly, if that person is not very good at accounting, they'll earn less than the average accounting major. In that case, you may maximize your earnings potential by choosing English."


"What should students and families consider when choosing a school? Finding a school that's right for you is a very personal decision. But it's important to look up a school's graduation rate, average earnings of graduates and other statistics on CollegeScorecard.gov to see if the school does a good job of getting students through to graduation and helping them find good jobs.

Students generally have a good sense of the value of different majors. They know that economics, engineering and finance are the high-earning majors and that music, humanities and the liberal arts are low-earning majors. But they have a really poor sense of the magnitude of the difference. Students should make a list of the majors they're considering and then look at the projected earnings for each. Understanding that won't change a lot of decisions, but they should be aware of the labor market they'll be going into."


25 Best College Majors for a Lucrative Career
https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/bus ... index.html

[yankees60]

Just happened to see an incoming email which contained this:

The Top 529 College Savings Plans of 2020

A look at how 529 investments stack up under our enhanced methodology.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/10 ... ns-of-2020


Vinny

[Xan]

Since Expected Family Contributions were being discussed here, seems like this article should be interesting:

FAFSA’s Expected Family Contribution Is Going Away. Good Riddance.