529 Plans

bridetobe920

DH and I want to set up a 529 plan for DD.  I have been meaning to do it for over a year, but never got around to it.  Currently, we are putting money into a savings account for her, but nothing college specific.

For those of you that have them, did you do the Maryland one?  Also, did you speak with a financial advisor first? 

TIA!

SarahKate31

We were just talking about this the other day. I think we are leaning towards the MD Prepaid College Trust plan, but we haven't set it up yet. I don't think we'll speak to a financial advisor about it since DH just did a paper for grad school about these plans and did a lot of research.

Megcheer2

We opened a 529 for DD when she was 3 months old and have money deducted from our account monthly that goes into it. My dad is a whiz about financial stuff like this, so I just talked to him about it, but not an actual financial advisor. 

 

We did use maryland's - collegesavingsmd.org I think - but they say you can use any state's even though you live here, and the money can be used for almost any college in any state, no matter which state you have the 529 with.  

We set it all up online after having some info sent to us in the mail. We can also go online and make contributions or change the amount we have deducted monthly to go into it.

When we signed up, they had different plans for where exactly your money can go, and we just chose the plan that was designed for the year she would be entering college. But I'm sure we could change it if we wanted to.  

Id say your best bet is to check out the website and get some info sent to you, then take it from there. 

JamesMom10

We just set James' Maryland College Investment Plan up this week, so we can still get the tax write off for this year.  We did the investment plan, not the prepaid plan (which was more than we can contribute right now).  It was really easy, we just set up the account online and mailed in our first contribution.  For next year it is getting deducted once a month from our checking account.  I think the year after that we will set one up in my name too, that way we both can write off the tax deduction (each parent can write off $2500 per year).  We didn't talk to a financial advisor, but my husband is an economist, so he's handy with these kind of things.

BillysGrl27

We have had Jackson's plan set up for sometime. We have money deducted every month plus send in other contributions when he gets cash presents (such as Xmas). The prepaid college trust was outside of our price range. A good friend of mine is a financial advisor so we spoke informally with her. My Dad also helped us select the investment option that was best for us. 

salc21

We ended up going with the 529 though VA, although we live in MD. We had met with our financial planner and he had recommended that one to us, so I took his word on it. There is a good website that will compare all the plans you are looking, but I just can't think of it at the moment.

had720

salc21:

We ended up going with the 529 though VA, although we live in MD. We had met with our financial planner and he had recommended that one to us, so I took his word on it. There is a good website that will compare all the plans you are looking, but I just can't think of it at the moment.

We went through Valic Financial to set up the 529 plan for Sophee. We are doing the investment one not the prepaid college one. Like pp stated, ours is deducted from out account monthly and we can add money to it at any time.

madladybride

We set up the MD 529 College Investment plan a few months ago. We chose MD so that we could get the tax write off. We chose the investment plan because we did not want to limit DD to only Maryland Colleges. I think we have the one that matures the year after she is supposed to graduate.I looked at the information myself and compared plans. We started the plan with a deposit and we have a set amount deducted from our bank account. We also have it set up to do deposits online.