Today is my son’s birthday. Although to me, it seems like just yesterday he was toddling around in his Barney slippers, he is now entering his third year of college. I simply could not be more proud of him.
The one piece of advice that I would offer anyone with children is to start saving for your child’s education NOW if having your son or daughter attend college is important to you. I’m thankful that I’m able to help my son out with his tuition. He does have student loans…however I’m at least able to help contribute. I set up an auto-payment into a 529 account years ago and before that, bought savings bonds. I didn’t miss what was taken from my checking account. Of course it did take a hit in recent years – but I’m still so glad I’ve been able to save some money for him.
It’s also important, as parents, to not lose sight of our retirement funds. Although I have saved for my son’s education, I continue to save for my retirement. As much as I love being a mortgage originator and helping people buy homes or reduce their mortgage payment or terms of their mortgage with a refinance, one day, I will retire. I hope I’m able to work as long as my father in law, Bob Porter, did. He retired from Mortgage Master Service Corporation in his early 70s! 🙂
The simple fact is that I have limited working years to save up for my retirement. I can always build my savings and then help my son pay off student loans, if needed. Hopefully my son will land a job with his Computer Science degree and I won’t have to worry about his finances.
If I tap my retirement or savings that I have not set aside for his education to avoid him from having student loans, I may not be able to fully re-stock or repay my retirement account and my son has many more “working years” ahead of him.
With all this said, I’m not a financial planner. However as a Licensed Loan Originator, I see a lot of loan applications of parents who appear to have under-funded retirement accounts… and I’m NOT counting on Social Security to be able to support me when I retire many years from now. With retirement being years away for me, it’s hard to say if a reverse mortgage would be an available options.
I hope you don’t mind me sharing my personal thoughts on retirement and college funds! And again, please seek financial advise from your financial planner.
Happy Birthday, Ty!!
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