Originally Posted by intparent
You need to remember that:

1. Costs are still going up every year. Count on at least an average of 3% increase per year. I watched tuition over the past two increases at the 10 colleges my daughter was seriously considering (part of that spreadsheet smile ). They actually went up an average of 4% per year. If you assume (as I believe it was Dude?) does that costs won't rise as fast over the next 10-15 years, then use the 3%. But you have to remember that we are in a period of very low inflation in the rest of the economy now. If inflation takes off across the economy, costs rise for the colleges as well (although with their "normal" increases).

22B is invested in the "elite" schools, though, which I hypothesized will be largely insulated from the reality check the rest of the higher education industry has coming.

I endorse your comments about the inflation rate increasing. It's also worth considering how ordinary costs keep going up... groceries in particular are catching fire, and I don't see any reason for that to slow down over the next ten years. The medical system remains irretrievably broken. Fuel prices are still rising despite increasing US production. Among all these increasing cost pressures, salaries remain flat. A second-quartile income can be expected to have noticeably less buying power in the next 10 years.

Originally Posted by intparent
2. If you are saving 2/3 of your income, then your assets might be higher than the $100,000 that you plugged into the calculator. If you plugged in current assets vs what they will be in 10 years, obviously your results will look better.

3.
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extra curricular nonsense
This comment just makes me sad. My kid did mostly what she loved (I insisted on SOME kind of physical activity, so fencing isn't actually a beloved activity, but the best of a bad lot of athletic choices in her opinion... and like HK, sometimes the 4H projects she signed up for weren't something she was loving a week before the county fair). But all in all she would be a different (and less complete, less happy) person without them. Worry more about the whole kid and less about the cost of college, IMHO.

The idea of saving 2/3rds of a 2nd-quartile income sounds noble, until you start digging in and realize the other costs that come with it. The neighborhoods that can afford are crowded, unsanitary, and unsafe. And since most school budgets are tied to local property taxes, school quality suffers as well.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.