My wife and I plan to do roughly the same (also many years into the future for us). Anything more complicated than this seems too complicated. I like the points that others on this thread have made about it being impossible to be perfectly equitable, e.g. one kid might need more expensive dental care than the others.This is VERY much a hypothetical for me, but I've given it a little bit of thought and I find myself in a similar place. My plan is to fund different accounts for them equally as they grow (X number of dollar contributions for Y years, equally, the market may make that uneven after some time but... c'est la vie?)...
When they hit college, I spend down the 529... When it's exhausted my assistance is over. If there's money left it's more or less theirs, for a house downpayment or to rollover to their kids, or whatever, and if there's 10% penalty for withdrawing from the 529 so be it. If they don't go to college I set a date in the future (not sure about this... maybe age 26? 30?) and at that date I more or less consider the money is theirs (give up on college), and then similarly they can direct me to disburse, reserve, or save it as they like with whatever 529 penalties or whatever that involves.
What we mostly want to avoid is the glaring inconsistency that my wife and her siblings experienced: first being told that they'd all get an amount of money for college, and later being told that it excluded studying certain things at certain schools, and then a very haphazard execution that left them actually getting very different amounts (like most of undergrad + grad school for one, and nothing for another one).
The bigger unknowns for me are what happens after they finish school. I don't think we'd turn anyone away from continuing to live with us, but I don't know how open-ended that should be.
Statistics: Posted by warner25 — Mon Mar 04, 2024 5:49 pm — Replies 27 — Views 1376