If You Started College Savings Late, Some Ideas

If you have teens and you haven't saved much for college, there are some options. None of them is pretty.

First, don't attempt any financial heroics without professional help. This will involve taking a long, hard look at your retirement situation. If you are young(ish) parents, intend to work to 65 or beyond and have already built up a solid nest egg, you may be able to do some shifting into 529s. You'll need to pay attention to gifting rules (there is a thing called "super funding" for college accounts, which means there can be a one-time gift of $65,000 per parent per child) but that gift precludes anything else being given to that child's account for five years.

Contact a financial planner or accountant, think through your own well-being and don't do anything rash. Here's an article about a family with a senior and sophomore and no college savings yet. See what a professional recommends.

Good luck, to us all.

Money, Money, Money

Next to what I am going to do about dinner, how we'll pay for college is right up there among my biggest worries.

We've been conscientious, at least when we could be. We started saving for our teen even before there were 529s. A bequest, a bonus or so, a never spent cash wedding gift, and then later, some grandmother estate money, formed the foundation for the college fund. But in recent years there has been no inflow. And what was there wasn't doing so hot, either.

You can easily find costs of colleges on the individual school's websites. But for a quick, dirty and sickening glance, look at US News & World Report.

But remember. That's just tuition. The College Board does a simple breakout of all the categories of college costs.

A bit of wisdom from our financial planner helps keep me going -- you don't need all of the money at once, just a year at a time. Miracles can happen, right?