Virginia529’s latest promotion is a free unit contribution (roughly $140) to a new or existing Tuition Track Portfolio when you add five units (roughly $700) by June 30, 2022. Unlike the April promotion, either the beneficiary or the account owner must be a Virginia resident to buy Tuition Track units, . Is The Offer Worth It? A few… Continue reading Virginia529’s Tuition Track Giveaway (June 2022)
I’m done! My book, The 529 Handbook: Maximize Your College Savings is now available at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats. Huge thanks to my alpha and beta readers, my copy editor, and the cover designer. It was a bit of a rush at the end to get it out by 5/29 and I… Continue reading The 529 Handbook: Maximize Your College Savings
A couple of weeks ago, Virginia529 started giving away $25 to anyone opening a new account. The offer expires this Friday, April 30th, or whenever enough people have signed up for it. My wife and I created new accounts for each of our six children, as well as for each other, netting $350 in free… Continue reading Jumpstart 529 Savings with a Free $25 Giveaway
Last week, during my research on Virginia’s Tuition Track Portfolio option, I discovered that Virginia’s advisor-sold 529 plan is twelve times the size of Virginia’s direct-sold 529 plan! Not only that, it’s the biggest 529 plan in the nation. And it’s not even close! It’s 2.4 times the size of the runner up, New York’s… Continue reading Taking a peek at CollegeAmerica, Virginia’s advisor-sold 529
Like pension plans, prepaid tuition 529 plans are disappearing. Virginia closed its Prepaid529 plan to new enrollments on May 1, 2019, after facing pressure to lower the costs of prepaid tuition contracts, a move that allegedly would have threatened the health of the program. Frankly, the prepaid program was significantly smaller than the other two… Continue reading How does Virginia’s new Tuition Track Portfolio work?
We live in Northern Virginia and there are many government employees who frequently move their families to other areas of the country or world on two or three year stints, often cycling back into the area. This can make taxes and finances more complicated. In this post, I’ll walk through a hypothetical example of a… Continue reading Scenario: Partial Year Resident and 529s
This post is a followup to my Couch to 529, last month. The answer I’m searching for here is how to divide the $100k fairly between the education of many grandchildren. I explored something similar in Dividing a 529 Six Ways, but this time I’m throwing the hypothetical 24 grandchildren at it with a new… Continue reading Fairly Funding Multiple 529s
One of the “drawbacks” with my personal finance hobby is discovering new ways that I’ve financially messed up in the past. This week I discovered an HSA trick that I wish I had known when I paid off the remainder of my student loans in December 2019. My ignorance cost me $401. Terminating My Student… Continue reading Paying off Student Loans with a 529
I wish I’d started earlier taking advantage of 529 accounts. I’m running out of precious years of compounding. But what about the so-far untapped compounding for any future grandchildren? Using current assumptions, what would a plan to fund college-bound grandchildren look like? Comfortably on the Couch I can’t open 529s for grandkids that don’t yet… Continue reading Couch to 529
In my last post, I laid out my plan for contributing to my children’s college education and creating incentives for keeping the cost down without sacrificing the quality of their education. My final contribution goal (including a 3% inflation) came to $299,901. That’s significantly smaller than the original number of $413,264, but still pretty high.… Continue reading Playing 529 Catchup (Part 3)
