One of the main questions that has come out of my 529 savings guide by age post is whether to contribute to a Roth IRA or a 529 plan. This is a great question I did not think about because contributing to a Roth IRA is not something I have ever done.

Fortunately or unfortunately, by the time I worked a full year in finance, I was no longer eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA due to the income limit requirement. Instead, I just focused on maxing out my 401(k) every year for the next 13 years until I left full-time work for good.

Partly due to my inability to contribute to a Roth IRA, I developed a negative bias towards the investment vehicle. It made no sense to me why the government would set arbitrary income limits for retirement savings when I believed everybody deserved to save efficiently for their future. Further, the article is a nice counterpoint to the 99% positive Roth IRA articles out there.

Now that I’m older, wiser, and have two children to consider, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of contributing to a 529 plan or a Roth IRA for college. I’ll also share some thoughts on which route is best for you.

From a financial perspective, one of the best things to come out of the coronavirus-induced market meltdown is being able to contribute to your children’s 529 plans at lower index prices. Let us dig deep into the recommended 529 plan amounts by age.

Given parents are investing for an expense that might not occur for another 10-18 years, it’s easier to invest in a 529 plan during times of turmoil. You want to have the right about in a 529 plan by age so you don’t overfund or underfund the college savings account.

Originally, I had only planned to invest $15,000 into my daughter’s 529 plan in 2020 because I was nervous about the stock market after a 10-year bull run. However, once the stock market started selling off in February and March 2020, I decided to contribute more to her plan.

The stock market kept on tanking until I ran out of bullets. By the end of March 2020, I had ended up superfunding $75,000 into my daughter’s 529 plan. After making a stock market bottom prediction in March 2020, I put my money where my mouth was and bought.

If I had contributed more, I would have violated the superfunding rule, which allows families to front-load five years worth of contributions ($75,000 per donor/$150,000 per couple) without having to file gift taxes, while protecting their lifetime gift and estate tax exemption.

Given the world felt like it was coming to an end in March 2020, my wife and I decided to have her dollar-cost-average into our daughter’s 529 plan by $15,000 a year for the next five years just in case the recovery takes years.

When the stock market began rebounding in April, so did both of our children’s 529 plans. Today, our son’s 529 plan account is only about twice as large, despite being 3X older.

This is when I began to wonder what is the appropriate 529 plan amounts by age. I was beginning to feel like we had over-contributed to our daughter’s 529 plan.

There is a never-ending debate between going to public or private school. Personally, I went to international private school while my parents were stationed abroad until I was 13.

Then I went to public school for high school, college, and graduate school from my MBA. I found each type of school to have its pluses and minuses.

In this post, let’s objectively analyze the decision to attend public or private school using real tuition dollars. We’ll also talk about the opportunity cost of paying so much to go to private grade school and private college.

The first day of preschool was tough. Not so much for our boy, but for my wife and me.

My immediate thought was, so this is where creativity comes to die. My wife and I spent three hours a day with him for the first week to help with the transitioning process.

During this time, I observed how other kids of varying developmental levels behaved. I saw kids having to wait their turn, listening to instruction, and trying to communicate with other 2.5-year-olds who weren’t good communicators.

As I thought about my negative reactions while soaking in the hot tub, I came to realize what I disliked about preschool was exactly what I disliked about work.

If you have a baby or toddler or are planning to have a baby, this post is for you. I’ve been running an interesting, real-life, real-time experiment on how hard it is to get ahead if you have below-average money and little status.

In 2017, we ended up applying to three preschools that accepted toddlers as early as two for the 2019/2020 school year. We then applied to five more preschools between SF and Honolulu that accepted toddlers after three for 2020/2021. We didn’t know what we were doing so we decided to play it safe.

Private schools are always stressing diversity and inclusion. Unfortunately, diversity and inclusion are theoretical goals made difficult to achieve because they are stymied by deep-rooted admission practices such as legacy admissions, bribery, and quid-pro-quo legal donations.

The best gift any parent can give a child besides unconditional love is a great education. A 529 college savings plan is a solution that is designed to help families tax-efficiently save for future college costs.

You contribute after tax money with the benefit of paying zero federal and state income taxes on the profits when it’s time to use the funds to pay for college.

If your child does not end up going to college, all’s not lost. You can either name a new beneficiary (different kid) or just pay the taxes on profits.

My goal is to max out my son’s 529 college savings plan before he turns 18. I want him to focus on his studies and graduate with zero student debt.

The various complaints I read today about young adults with student debt are disheartening. The struggles range from saving for a house, saving for retirement, accepting a low-paying job, to starting a family.

Below are the most important pieces of information you need to know about making the best 529 plan decision. Feel free to provide feedback at the end on anything that I may have missed. I’ve tried to cover all the questions I had before opening up an account.