A somewhat different perspective:
I retired in 2009 at 51. My son at the time was 7, and I had a lot of "How can you retire when your child is so young? How will you pay for college?" kinds of questions. The answer was (and is) that I had prepared for it (unlike most people in our society).
One of my reasons for exiting mega-corp was that I was doing tons of work travel, and felt like I was missing out on my child's youth. Making things worse was that I was separated and my ex and I had a week on/ week off kind of arrangement (i.e. we each had our child for a week at a time). The net result of that was I worked from home on the weeks I had my son, and the weeks I didn't have my son I was almost never home (travelling for work). So I decided enough was enough and retired.
Here's the twist: After a year off, I did a bit of consulting for my old client, and then started teaching as an adjunct (one class). After six months, I gave up on the consulting - mostly because I didn't want to travel, but the college instructor adjunct morphed into a full time gig over time. I didn't (and still don't) do it for the money. [Note, that doesn't mean I don't take the salary
, but I've pretty much just used it to max out 403B/457 contributions after medical deductions.] My primary reason for doing it is:
1) It is (mostly) fun and keeps my mind active - I've used it to learn a bunch of new things, including game programming.
2) It eliminated the health care uncertainty - while I had accounted for that in 2009 there certainty had been (and still has) a lot of fluidity in this area in terms of budgeting.
3) (Perhaps the most important reason): I didn't think it was healthy for my child to see dad sitting around/not working while he was in grade/middle/high school. I wanted to instill some sort of work ethic. [I know that this is almost as bad as talking politics on ER
]
Looking back, I am so happy I went this route. I've had awesome times with my child and we at this point have a great relationship. Although grading is a drag, teaching has been great fun, especially knowing that I've been able to help some of them with their pursuits. Having summers off is also a big plus.
Good luck with your decision. In terms of finances, you are likely good to go. You should take a look at FASFA to understand how your assets should be kept to minimize the family contribution. On the other hand, be very wary of colleges that require the CSS form - it is very bad for those of us with savings/assets. The quick summary of this is at retirement assets (e.g. 401k, etc) are protected under FAFSA (except for contributions for the source year in FASFA calcs) while just about any assets (retirement, house value, ...) is game under CSS.
