You'll get a link where family can donate. I had to yell at my mom recently because she was going to start a separate account which would make absolutely no sense.
529 Child Savings plans
- Thread starter cyfan964
- Start date
Its a great gift for Grandchildren when they are born. We have our oldest grandaughter, a high school senior next year, she is my avatar to the left. She will be thankful, I am sure.
This sounds like the trump account and not 529. Every donor should open their own 529.
Why not consolidate it into one? Iowa's lets you give a link out for others to contribute to it.
I believe you need your own account to write down your taxes. That is why my wife and i have separate one’s for each child.
opened it for the kid the day he was born. super easy. just set up automatic contributions and I essentially "set it and forget it"
When my son was ready to go to college and start using the 529 money.... I told him there is one school you absolutely cannot use the money on. He figured it out real quick which school that was.
I didn't do this so can't confirm, but my understanding is you can transfer 529s between family members. I think in theory you could actually open one for yourself years before your kid was born, and then transfer it to them once they are.
That is a different account but yes, that is the trump account. They might also get some money from other people like the Dells too.
Trump Accounts | Internal Revenue Service
Trump Accounts are a historic new savings tool created under the One Big Beautiful Bill to give children in America a real financial head start.
Heed all this advice and start sooner rather than later! I made the mistake of not starting before or immediately when my sons were born. I do have a solid foundation but not enough to stave off loans. Sigh.
Avoid the advisor sold option. Do it yourself. Plus, the tax benefits on the annual contributions are great.
Obviously, saving for college was awesome but the great perk was being able to apply to my state taxes where I always owed. Now I get back something although uncle Sam just says, not so fast my friend......
Having gone pretty deep on this stuff in the last year or two thanks to my kids approaching college age, I'll pass along a few nuggets.
529s are a lot more flexible than they used to be. You can use them for certain K-12 expenses now, private school tuition, etc. You can change the beneficiary so if you oversave for one kid and undersave for the other, or you end up with extra and want to save it for a future grandchild, you can. You can also covert to a Roth, but there are lots of stipulations attached - including that the account has to be 15 years old. Do your homework.
You get no federal tax break for 529 contributions themselves, but you do get tax-free growth. In Iowa you get the state tax deduction, up to $6,100 per kid per year (or $12,200 if both parents have a 529 for that kid). You can still contribute to the 529 beyond $6,100/year, but $6,100 is the limit per account you can deduct.
When my kids were young I created a spreadsheet to figure out how the hell I would pay for college. The benchmark I used in my planning was "4 years at an in-state school" so I just took the cost of tuition, room and board, books, etc. at ISU and then increased it by the HEPI (Higher Education Price Index) each year until they were college age. The good news is, the actual cost of ISU now is significantly less than my projections were back then. Hopefully that holds true for all you with younger kids.
For anyone benchmarking against a Regents institution in Iowa, make sure you account for differential tuition. Students in certain majors (business, engineering, a few others) pay significantly higher tuition rates than the "base" rate starting in their sophomore years. If your student transfers in a lot of credits via AP or concurrent enrollment and starts their first year at ISU as a sophomore, that higher tuition rate won't start until their second year.
529s are a lot more flexible than they used to be. You can use them for certain K-12 expenses now, private school tuition, etc. You can change the beneficiary so if you oversave for one kid and undersave for the other, or you end up with extra and want to save it for a future grandchild, you can. You can also covert to a Roth, but there are lots of stipulations attached - including that the account has to be 15 years old. Do your homework.
You get no federal tax break for 529 contributions themselves, but you do get tax-free growth. In Iowa you get the state tax deduction, up to $6,100 per kid per year (or $12,200 if both parents have a 529 for that kid). You can still contribute to the 529 beyond $6,100/year, but $6,100 is the limit per account you can deduct.
When my kids were young I created a spreadsheet to figure out how the hell I would pay for college. The benchmark I used in my planning was "4 years at an in-state school" so I just took the cost of tuition, room and board, books, etc. at ISU and then increased it by the HEPI (Higher Education Price Index) each year until they were college age. The good news is, the actual cost of ISU now is significantly less than my projections were back then. Hopefully that holds true for all you with younger kids.
For anyone benchmarking against a Regents institution in Iowa, make sure you account for differential tuition. Students in certain majors (business, engineering, a few others) pay significantly higher tuition rates than the "base" rate starting in their sophomore years. If your student transfers in a lot of credits via AP or concurrent enrollment and starts their first year at ISU as a sophomore, that higher tuition rate won't start until their second year.
You can open a 529 whenever you want. You are the owner and you choose the beneficiary. You can open one up years before you have children, name yourself as beneficiary, then when they are born you change the beneficiary to them. Just be careful if you select the age based track for investing. It may default to your birth year and put you in very conservative investments instead of stocks because it assumes you need the money for college now.
