A tool to help you determine how much you need to save for your child’s education, Monthly Savings Needed to Accumulate $100,000, appears below. To use the tool, you’ll need a good estimate of the cost of your child’s education, based on the year in which you expect he or she will enter college. To come up with an estimate for specific years and/or specific colleges, you can use the college cost calculator at The College Board website, or another calculator available on the Internet.

Once you’ve approximated the total cost of your child’s education based on the year in which he or she will begin, you’ll be able to determine how much you need to save on a monthly basis to reach your goal. The table shows monthly savings for college based on number of years you have to save and projected savings growth.

If you project your savings and investments will earn six percent, and you have ten years to accumulate savings for college, the table shows that you will need to put away $610/month to accumulate $100,000. Returns mentioned are hypothetical, and are not intended to reflect any actual investments.

Assume that instead of $100,000 you want to save $160,000. That amount is 1.6 times as much as $100,000. Therefore, instead of saving $610/month, you would need to multiply $610 by 1.6 to determine how much to save monthly; in this case you need to save $976/month to accumulate $160,000 for college costs.

More examples for adjusting the savings—up or down from $100,000—appear below.

Going Forward

It’s true—college is expensive. But as you can see, there’s a lot of help available: loans, grants, and tax breaks that can significantly lower the bill. Bear in mind, though, nothing can replace a carefully planned savings and investment strategy, and the earlier you start the more likely it is you’ll reach your goal. Given how important a college education is to your child’s future, today is the best time to begin.