Hacking the Retirement Planner for College 529 Savings Forecast

[jenandmase]

Hi friends,

I recently found the retirement planner sheet was a great proxy for modeling my kids 529 Savings forecast.

The sheet now shows where the 529 accounts will peak based on a certain savings expectation per month, and shows if I will deplete the accounts based on projected college costs.

Here is how I did it, would love to hear your thoughts and feedback:

1. I linked a new sheet to my Tiller account, then only included the 529 accounts linked to the sheet.
2. In the Cash Flow forecast sheet, I put rows in for the contribution I expect to make in the 529 accounts and when I want to stop making contributions.
3. In the Retirement Planner sheet, I put the kids birth years in the Settings area, so that I can see the age of the kids in the chart.
4. I kept the withdrawal rate at 0%
5. In the investment adjustments, I estimated the approx amount I would be pulling out for college expenses over the years that kids will be in college. (all negative amounts)
6. Then I linked the accounts in the assets section.

This gave me a growth curve based on projected savings, growth rates, and withdrawal amounts.

I wanted to reach $200,000 in the 529s, and the “outcome” at the top suggests I could hit that when the kids are 14 & 12 years old.

Here is a screenshot:

Let me know if you tried this, have an improvement idea, or found this useful!

[Brad.warren]

That’s powerfully creative…well done, @jenandmase!

[heather]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing this workflow. I love it when customers adapt existing tools for their needs to visualize the answers to complex questions

[matt]

That’s a great idea, @jenandmase! I’ll definitely be setting this up for myself. I was just thinking I don’t have great visibility on the 529 account for our kids.