I wish it were so but you are limited for off campus expenses. It makes sense if you think about it- we don’t want to subsidize exorbitant living arrangements. But schools are incentivized to understate costs for two reasons that I could see. 1) to look good in the comparison to other schools and 2) to show a greater percentage of “need” being met by scholarships and grants. During the six years my kids attended, the cost estimates got more accurate because they went through when many more students had 529s. Before 529s, I am not sure they had to worry about the misstatement.I am almost sure the bolded text is incorrect. You should be able to withdraw from the 529 plan to the extent of ACTUAL expenses incurred for room and board. It just requires keeping good bookkeeping, and hanging on to the receipts.We funded the amount to pay for instate at the flagship plus that schools’s R&B estimate. A dirty little secret of our school was that they wildly understated the estimates for off campus room and board costs. And there was not enough housing for upperclassmen. So we were underfunded overall but you can’t withdraw more from a 529 than the school’s estimate so that money was coming from other funds no matter what.
Bottom of page 50 and top of page 51.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf
Statistics: Posted by lazynovice — Wed Dec 13, 2023 11:15 pm — Replies 18 — Views 1207