College Savings - We Do What We Can

Did you know College Saving really should begin the day your child is born?

Today I want to talk about how much you should save for college and why you should start saving now.

Expensive vs Really Expensive

We all know that Private Schools will cost more than Public Schools, and that attending an In-State College will be less pricey than attending an Out-of-State College. With this in mind, I want to walk through some numbers on what In-State Public College costs now, without worrying about inflation, political agendas, etc. Let's take an honest look at today's numbers, and talk about what we need to save now to prepare for the future.

Today's Numbers

Since we live in Georgia, for this Blog I took a look at the Georgia Tech Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid website, with numbers for the 2023 school year. The Annual, In-State breakdown is as follows:

Tuition: $10,258

Mandatory Student Fees: $1,506

Books and Supplies: $800

First-Year Housing Allowance: $6,918

First-Year Meal Plan Allowance: $5,424

Personal/ Miscellaneous Education Costs: $3,200

Average Loan Costs: $60

TOTAL: $28,166

I know there are some Georgia Bulldog fans who are going to read this and say "oh that's just GA Tech, they are more expensive". For your benefit, I went ahead and pulled the UGA numbers as well. The Annual In-State estimate is slightly cheaper at a total value of $27,946.

If we take the annual total value of $28,166 and assume four years of education, we are looking at a total of $112,664 for our child to attend college.

Monthly Breakdown

If we wanted to save enough money to pay for college in-full (ignoring inflation and interest for the sake of simple math), we would have to save around $522 per month, every month, for 18 years. These are just the numbers for one child, imagine if you were trying to pay for two or three children!

Every Dollar Matters

If you are blessed enough to easily afford saving over $500 per month for college, I applaud you! Congratulations and well done! My family simply cannot afford to set aside this much. Does it mean we've thrown in the towel and aren't saving for college at all? Absolutely not. We're still doing what we can, because every little bit matters.

Each month our family sets aside $100 for our son's college and $75 for our daughter's (they are different due to starting timelines and current interest rates). It's simply the most we can do in this season of life. Does it make us bad parents that we cannot afford to set enough money aside to fully pay for their college educations? Absolutely not. We are doing everything we can to help our kids, and that is what matters.

Please do not be discouraged by how much college will cost. Simply do what you can, when you can, and leave the rest up to God (and scholarships)!

More to Consider

Notice how we did not discuss inflation, political agendas, or even interest rates in this Blog. I also did not discuss the types of accounts you can use to save for college (and there are several). These are all very important topics that I will try and cover in additional posts. For now, I wanted to encourage you to start saving whatever you can and as often as you can, because I needed the encouragement too.

Stay tuned for more... sometime!