College Savings Plan

College Savings Plan

Saving for your children's education requires a long-term plan. And, like saving for retirement, the earlier you start your plan the better. Use this calculator to help develop or fine tune your education savings plan.

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Definitions
Age of children	Current age of your children. This calculator is based on each child beginning their college education at age 18. The difference between their current age and 18 is the number of years you have to save.
Annual tuition	Current estimated cost of one year of tuition and fees. This amount should be per child and be specific to the school they are interested in attending. The default value shown is the average cost for Wichita State University, University of Kansas and Kansas State University according to Peterson's 2008 school year survey. For more information on this survey or to compare costs for other schools, click here. For the purposes of this calculator, all expenses are assumed to be due at the end of the year.
Room and board	Current estimated cost of one year of room and board. Like tuition and books, this amount should be per child and be specific to the school they are interested in attending. The default value shown is the average cost for Wichita State University, University of Kansas and Kansas State University according to Peterson's 2008 school year survey. For more information on this survey or to compare costs for other schools, click here. For the purposes of this calculator, all expenses are assumed to be due at the end of the year.
Education cost inflation	This is the percentage that you expect educational costs to increase per year.
Current amount	The total amount you currently have saved for your child's (or children's) education.
Monthly contributions	The amount you plan to save per month toward your child's (or children's) education. All amounts are assumed to be added to your account at the beginning of the month.
Rate of return	The annual percentage rate you expect to earn on your educational savings. The average annual rate of return for the U.S. stock market has been 11% for the last 75 years. You may wish to use a more conservative rate of return if your child is within 10 years of enrolling in school. This calculator compounds all growth annually. For the purposes of this calculator taxation is not factored into the results. If you pay taxes on the interest, dividends or capital gains from these investments you may wish to enter your after tax rate of return.

Information and interactive calculators are made available to you as self-help tools for your independent use. We can not and do not guarantee their accuracy or their applicability to your circumstances. We encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding all personal finance issues.