Hi,
So I'm getting ahead of myself a little, but that is my M.O. We plan to adopt in the next few years and because we both had college paid for, we would like to be able to do the same for our kids. I am thinking of setting aside a lump sum instead of putting money aside monthly so that it is more or less a non-issue when we FIRE. One less bill is the way I think of it. For some reason with all of the time value of money calculators, I keep coming back to $50,000. Input is appreciated on amount and concept.
For those of you that have exited the rat race and/or slowed down while paying for college, have you found any loopholes with FAFSA that I should keep in mind?
Should these be parental/grandparent assets or should we do 529 and have it be an asset in the child's name even though CA gives no tax break for these plans? Did you find that after FIRE your child qualified for more grants because AGI was lower?
We aren't setting this up today but we just closed escrow on what we hope to be our forever family home so it's like we now have goals with finite payoff amounts (the way my brain works). Before when we had our "starter" home and then rented in between selling and figuring out the next step we were just putting away money without a plan because we knew we weren't done settling down...so it's nice to have goals we can measure: to pay off our car, mortgage and save for college as the biggies aside from normal ER saving/investment methods.
Thanks in advance
So I'm getting ahead of myself a little, but that is my M.O. We plan to adopt in the next few years and because we both had college paid for, we would like to be able to do the same for our kids. I am thinking of setting aside a lump sum instead of putting money aside monthly so that it is more or less a non-issue when we FIRE. One less bill is the way I think of it. For some reason with all of the time value of money calculators, I keep coming back to $50,000. Input is appreciated on amount and concept.
For those of you that have exited the rat race and/or slowed down while paying for college, have you found any loopholes with FAFSA that I should keep in mind?
Should these be parental/grandparent assets or should we do 529 and have it be an asset in the child's name even though CA gives no tax break for these plans? Did you find that after FIRE your child qualified for more grants because AGI was lower?
We aren't setting this up today but we just closed escrow on what we hope to be our forever family home so it's like we now have goals with finite payoff amounts (the way my brain works). Before when we had our "starter" home and then rented in between selling and figuring out the next step we were just putting away money without a plan because we knew we weren't done settling down...so it's nice to have goals we can measure: to pay off our car, mortgage and save for college as the biggies aside from normal ER saving/investment methods.
Thanks in advance