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Nov. 28, 2018 / 9:27 PM GMT
By Jean Chatzky
Just how much is that diploma going to cost you, again? Brace yourself — for the 2018-19 school year, private schools tuition came in around $35,000 per year, and public schools charged between $10,000 and $21,000 depending on in-state or out-of-state classifications. That means that for four years of college, families will spend somewhere between $40,000 and $142,000 — not including room, board, books or basically anything else.
If you haven’t saved anywhere near that much, you aren’t alone. By the time their kids matriculate, most parents will have set aside just 28 percent of what they wanted to save, according to Fidelity Investments’ 2018 College Savings Indicator. But interestingly — and perhaps refreshingly — they don’t seem too worried about it. Instead of compromising their retirement savings or going to other great lengths to afford tuition, parents are now asking their children to take on a greater share of responsibility, and expect their kids to have set aside an average of $15,385 by high school graduation, up from $12,431 in 2016. Today, just 49 percent of parents feel tuition is solely their responsibility, down from 56 percent in 2016, according to the Fidelity study. In fact, many moms and dads seem pretty darn chilled out about paying for college, despite costs being higher than ever. According T. Rowe Price’s tenth annual Parents, Kids & Money Survey, just 27 percent of parents report losing sleep over college savings costs this year, compared with 41 percent in 2017. So, what’s changed?
A New Strategy
Today’s parents are less willing to take on their children’s college debt, according to the T. Rowe Price survey. A minority of parents — just 14 percent — said they were willing to take on more than $75,000 in debt for their kids’ college. In comparison, 26 percent of parents were willing in 2017. Interestingly, as the number of parents willing to take on student debt went down, the number of parents utilizing 529 college savings accounts went way up — today, 44 percent of parents are saving for college in a 529 account, compared to just 27 percent in 2017, making 529 plans the most popular college savings vehicle on the market.