Stocks for college planning?

HImom
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:44:51 +0000

It is good to do our best to have funds to supplement whatever possible merit our kids can get so they and we have more options. Wish my crystal ball worked well but unfortunately it hasn’t and we have not done too well with the “market” ourselves. Oh well, what works best for us is spending less than we earn as having increasingly conservative investments as it comes closer to when we will need the funds for particular purposes, like our kids education.

Fortunately for us, in 1989, our state issued zero coupon bonds with 9% compounding interest that would mature on whatever year you wanted. We plunked down as much as we could towards our kids college fund in that so we could sleep at night and know we were helping them toward college. It fared better for us than the funds we’ve had in the market, maturing nicely as we needed it. We did put some funds in the Coverdell Account. Some folks we know did some sort of pre-paid 529s in their state so their kids could have everything covered–that worked well for many of them as well, allowing them to dodge the much of the huge tuition & lodging expenses.