My son attends a school that meets full need but costs over $70K per year so families with incomes up to 200K get some aid and substantial aid through $150K. For a wedding gift someone gave us a visit with a financial planner that we used when we had our first and were thinking about buying a little condo. They told us that if we wanted to save enough for in state college even starting as a baby we needed to save $750 per month for 18 years. We weren’t always able to do that but tried our best and at 18 years old we did have enough for instate COA. Our kids have had the choice of instate or meets full need private school which at our income is about the same amount. Any other private or OOS we told them they could only do if they got merit. They knew before even visiting or applying what we could afford. I’m glad we did the savings up front rather than getting loans and paying interest rather than earning interest. It took a lot of financial sacrifices–driving old cars, living in our starter level home for many years, few vacations, etc. Friends with similar incomes could never understand why we couldn’t go out to dinner with them or concerts, etc but now they do understand when our kids are college aged. I’m planning on giving our kids a visit to a financial planner for college graduation. It was definitely helpful to us. Even though we didn’t follow all the advice it was good to have an idea of how income should be allocated. Staying in the very low cost house was the biggest difference though.