Just a 48-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). MM(22) Oct 2025 'Gifted College Fund': $13,759 (+$5K ROTH)
MM(22) Nov 2025 'Gifted College Fund': $9,115 (+$5K ROTH)
Rent is paid through 12/31.
$3,450 deducted for winter tuition.
Note: Paying full price tuition. No financial aid; middle class grants have been exhausted. (Technically $3,900 full price, but I am covering the 'tax credit' portion.)
I am itching to cross off his tuition as paid and done (Year 5) but I just paid for the winter quarter. I will probably pay for the spring quarter in February.
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DL(20) Sep 2025 'Gifted College Fund': $23,682 (+$5K ROTH)
DL(20) Nov 2025 'Gifted College Fund': $20,587 (+$5K ROTH)
$3,250 deducted for spring tuition. (Technically, $4,500 full price, but I am covering the 'tax credit' portion.)
Will received a $2,000 financial aid refund in the spring.
Recap:
*We paid Years 1 & 2 Tuition with our own money
*Year 3 (net $2,700) was paid from DL(20)'s gifted college fund
*This will leave him $22,500+, going into Year 4. The difference is interest earned on the account.
*I expect Year 4 to be more of the same.
I was just prepping for the FASFA and updating DL(20)'s current assets. He had a big income year, and so I was poking around to see if that would change his senior year financial aid. As far as I can tell, they don't count the kids' income and assets for middle class state grants. We shall see...
When double checking if DL(20)'s income or assets would lower his middle class grant next school year... I just happened to stumble upon that his 5th college year (teaching credential) would be eligible for a middle class state grant. What!? All I had heard was those expired after 4 years. So I was not expecting that!
As to the '5th year state grant' and 'the school district wants to pay for DL's teaching credential and his housing costs', these are all things I just happened to stumble across. Imagine what DL(20) might find with a little time and effort.
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Side note: I am unable to fix blog formatting or comment on blogs. I tried to say Happy Birthday to Terri77.
December 5th, 2025 at 12:02 am 1764892946
December 5th, 2025 at 02:02 am 1764900155
I think technically half of DL(20)'s money is in his name. It's not a minor account because he is 20. But it's all in taxable funds. My MIL was overly concerned about N/A financial aid concerns and asked me maybe 12 years ago to not put money in the kids' names. So that's why it got split into different accounts. I just kept new money in our own name, after she clarified.
While this was N/A for financial aid, this probably worked out well for college tax credits. I didn't personally put any effort into planning around tax credits that didn't exist 25 years ago. I gave zero thought to tax credits, when planning for my kids' college years. (Tax credits come and go). So I guess I can thank my MIL.
December 5th, 2025 at 02:25 am 1764901542
Rhetorical question: I wonder if he could even contribute to a ROTH IRA. But it's moot and so I won't worry about it. (He doesn't have any excess money to save for retirement.) Just waiting to see what all his tax forms say.