With recent investment performance, we are seeing more grandparents and parents reviewing secondary financial goals, such as college planning.
Often when the first child is born, parents and grandparents alike are excited and motivated to get college planning started. Then as life gets more complicated, or while the markets drop, it’s easy to put it off for another day. I think it’s the same phenomenon where the first kids have the most photos, then eventually the chaos decreases motivation, and mere survival becomes the priority!
Now, more flush with cash, many are wondering how do they fix this?
How do we make it equal so that the money given to the first grandchild many years ago, is also given to the others? It seems complicated not knowing what exactly we gave when, and how much its grown then vs. now, etc.
Well, it's not that difficult for us to help you with.
We are happy to help you equalize the contributions for grandchildren or children that haven't had the same level of support for their college funding needs.
We do this by anticipating what the most funded child's college savings account will be at age 18. Then adjust for the ages of all the other children, and what would need to be contributed today to do that. It is still an estimate since we have to use assumed rates of return, but it’s a lot closer than the alternative.
The math is a little hard to explain, but if you're interested in “equalizing the love” we can help give you an estimate!
Thanks for taking a look!
Tom Gartner, MSAPM, CFP®