Tuition Savings Calculator

Being the proud parent of two crazed children, I am always curious how much it is going to cost me to send the two of them to college when the time will arrive to ship them to the dorms. And so I wrote this little program that actually lets you compute for more than one child the growing costs of higher education (most on-line calculators make you do it one at a time).

So here you put in the current astronomical annual tuition of your favorite institution and what you think your average tuition inflation and investment return will be. Then put in the years until your children go to school and how much you have already to invest and how much you will contribute each year.

Note that starting in 1998 you can put away a whole whopping $500 a year in each childs name in an "Education IRA" where all the earnings are not taxed when you withdraw the funds. Great idea if it didn't have that tiny $500 limit on it! Put in the $500 per child per year numbers. It doesn't even come close. Much better are the state sponsored savings programs. See www.collegesavings.org for more information.