Feeling thrilled for D24 today. We just left her college where we visited for the weekend after a business trip of my husband’s in a nearby city. We weren’t able to make it to family weekend in February since I was helping my parents after my mom’s knee replacement surgery so we planned this April weekend instead. D24 is living her best life, so confident and mature, healthy, thrilled with classes, professors, friends and…..has a serious boyfriend we’ve heard a lot about and we were able to host for dinner at our Airbnb. So fun. I helped her map out her classes for sophomore year so she has an idea of what to present to her advisor in a meeting this week before registering for fall classes. Amidst the complete chaos going on with everything in the country, I’m so proud of my kid and it was wonderful spending time with her. I can’t believe she’ll be home for the summer in about 5 weeks. She says she and her friends are sad the year is ending and avoid talking about it. But she and boyfriend are making plans to travel and visit each other this summer. 12 hour drive or 2 hour flight.
I love hearing about kids who are thriving in their freshman year! What a great report for your daughter! Sounds like a really great weekend
I love hearing reports too!
I am feeling similarly anxious about 529s! I try to remind myself that this too shall pass, but it is pretty stressful. In addition to D24, we have a D30, and I can’t even imagine how much college will cost by then.
Remember you have 5 years until D30 needs the money, you have some time.
We have D23 and S24 in college right now and we are looking to see if we can help D20 with some living expenses when she starts grad school this fall. Multiples in college at the same time isn’t for the faint of heart.
Yes. I have twins who both are Freshman. Fortunately, S24 chose a school where he has really good merit aid/low costs. D24 . . . not so much. We could move funds from his 529 to cover her tuition if the market doesn’t bounce back, but that doesn’t seem fair. Plus, he is considering law school, so he may need his “leftover” funds for that.
Unfortunately the markets are unpredictable and we cant expect it to rise all the time. Hopefully calmer heads will prevail and they’ll start to negotiate in good faith.
Historically, when faced with a big downturn, the markets have recovered in a very fast and strong upward movement. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the S&P 500 doubled in 5 years. Of course no one knows what will happen and everybody has to do their own due diligence.
Just remember - especially if you have time, your future contributions, if the market stays depressed, will buy more for the same amount of $$.
If you ever hit the right amount of $$, you could move your $$ to a cash account.
Historically markets recover but you never know.
So if you can’t stomach the volatility and you are way up, take some off the table if it helps you sleep at night.
But yes less money can impact choice.
So - you have to look at many factors.
OK, when I posted earlier, I did not have a college kid update, but D24 just texted me to let me know she has been offered a paid internship in DC working for Emily’s List this summer! (Emily’s List is a PAC that works to elect pro-choice women to local, state, and nationwide offices.) I am so happy for her! She sent out so many applications trying to land a DC internship and she is over the moon excited! She and two other friends have found an apartment to sublet in the Georgetown area, so her dream summer plan is becoming reality!
Your financial concerns are over!
Hahaha!!! If only a $17.50 per hour internship would cover tuition!! (But, she is paying all of her DC rent and living expenses herself, which is a pretty big win for a Freshman!)
The good news is since she now has earned income, she can start a Roth IRA.
I totally forgot about that when D24 had a summer internship in her junior year in HS and we couldve helped her set one up at the time.
We’re going to do it this year for her after her internship is over.
One S24’s plans to move to NYC for a dream industry-related job are now fully in place. He’s got his hours, salary, and has sublet a room. It’s happening. He moves to the city for three months right after he gets home. The other S24 is still looking–he’s an engineering student and so that’s harder to get a related job after just 1 year of school. I have plenty for him to do here, but I don’t think that’s quite what he has in mind… Both have had terrific years and do not want to discuss the first year already winding down. One S24 is living in a singles style suite with 4 guys next year in what I believe is sophomore housing, but it’s hard to get him to share those specifics. The other will be living in his fraternity house and I am trying not to have a 5-alarm freak out. Overall, the Greek experience has been excellent for him. But I just can’t help thinking that the living conditions will not be what I consider sanitary. Who is vacuuming, for example? Anybody? I tried asking innocently if he had any interior photos of the house to show me because “I’m interested!” but that got me nowhere.
All those germs and bacteria will probably make him stronger.
Yes! Both of my kids actually have Roth IRAs. She has about $2K in hers from summer work last year, but should be able to contribute more now. S24 has been working since he was 15 and at one point had about $10K in his Roth. Of course, it’s currently down 20%, but at least there is a very long horizon for that investment. Historically, I have funded their Roth contributions, and hope to be able to help again this year . . . but we will see how my job and the market fare 
D24 met w/pre-health advising and her faculty advisor in advance of fall semester class registration that happens next week. She’s going to take Intro to Psychology, O Chem, Microbiology, and French.
The French class will finish up the foreign language GE requirement. At her college, taking 3 classes is considered full time and you can’t take any more than 5 classes in a single semester. The equivalent at another college would probably mean that each course is 4 units. But at her school, they list each class as being 1 unit each. 
If she gets all the class times she wants, her earliest class will be at 9:00 am. She & Roommate will be in the French class together, so that’s a plus.
One thing that’s been a nice perk to this school is there aren’t any labs or classes after 5:00 pm. So no night time labs or stuff like that. When I was in college, all of the freshmen & sophomores who had lab classes often ended up in labs that were some insane time slot like 6-10 pm.
I have no particularly profound thoughts, but I will note we get very conservative with our 529s as college is approaching, which means consolidating everything in Pennsylvania’s Guaranteed Savings Plan, a sort of quasi prepaid tuition plan only available to PA residents, which more or less just keeps up with college cost inflation. On the plus side, that means it isn’t reacting to the current market events. On the negative side, that means it din’t react to prior more cheerful market events.
And I truly don’t know where we would be in comparison with a less conservative plan (I am pretty good about just not worrying about such things), but my guess is . . . not much difference? Maybe even still behind someone who stayed more aggressive while we got more conservative? Again, don’t know, don’t actually want to know.
But my point is basically that my experience with these things is that as long as you do not do anything crazy with your investments, meaning stay somewhere within the reasonable range of choices, what really dominates in the long run is things like how much you actually save, making good spending choices, and so on. At any given time, some strategies will be looking better recently, some worse, but over a full life of this stuff that truly big picture stuff is what will matter.
Historically, the best answer for market volaitility is usually time.
However, if your job is not recession-proof, dont have enough liquid savings and have to take out investments in case of layoffs, that’s obviously the worst case scenario.
We were not in a position to save any money toward our kids’ education until is was too late for this very risk-averse gal to feel comfortable doing so in an investment vehicle (about 5 years out from our oldest starting college). So, it’s been money market, cds and I-bonds for us. It’s been a big regret for me, knowing how much more we could have in the pot if we’d let time work for us…but I have to say, of the many things I am worried about with this crazy financial roller coaster we seem to all be passengers on, that one doesn’t keep me up at night, at least. As long as my job holds, we can handle D24’s tuition. She’s our last, so I can put that worry to bed.
'Course, I’m not going to even talk about our retirement accounts and the wonder that I may have to work quite a few years longer than I had been planning on… 
Love Emily’s List. Huge congrats to your daughter!