How much should you have saved for your child's college education by now?

For many parents, a child’s college education is one of the biggest long-term savings goals. Achieving that objective is a multistep process, including setting a reasonable goal, developing a college savings strategy, investing the necessary funds, tracking progress, and adjusting the plan as necessary. Understanding how much college may cost in the future and using age-based savings benchmarks can make it easier for parents to gauge their progress and stay on track.

The published cost of college typically includes tuition and fees, but other costs—such as room and board, books, activities, and sometimes insurance and other miscellaneous fees issued by the institution—can add to the total. These costs vary based on many factors, particularly the type of school. (See “The average one-year cost of college, 2024–2025.”) While college cost inflation has slowed over the past several years, the parents’ long-term savings target should anticipate college becoming more expensive than it is now. Fortunately, T. Rowe Price’s college savings benchmarks factor in the effects of potential inflation.

Most students do not end up paying the full cost of college. Grants and scholarships can offset a portion of the cost of attendance. What’s more, most families end up paying their share through a combination of savings, current income, and federal student loans. As a starting point, T. Rowe Price recommends aiming to save 50% of the final estimated price. If parents feel they can save more, they should do so.

Age-based milestones are not a replacement for comprehensive planning, but they provide a quick way to gauge whether a plan is on track. They can also act as a catalyst for parents to take action and start saving more. Having intermediate targets is a useful way to keep the final savings target from feeling too overwhelming.

How much parents need to have saved at key milestones depends on the type of college their child might ultimately attend and whether they’ve been able to save a fixed amount each month starting from the child’s birth through their final year of college. (See “College savings benchmarks by age.”)

To use the age-based benchmarks, parents should estimate the current cost of one year of college at their target type of school (tuition, room and board, and fees for public or private and in-state or out-of-state) and multiply that amount by the benchmark associated with their child’s current age. The resulting dollar amount represents how much they should ideally have saved by now.

Parents can compare their current savings to the target amount to learn whether they are ahead or behind where they need to be. If they are behind, there are steps they can take, depending on the age of their child. (See “Catching up when you have fallen behind.”)

What follows are hypothetical examples that illustrate how parents with children of different ages can use these savings benchmarks at key moments of transition in their child’s education. However, these benchmarks can be used at any point in the savings journey—parents just need to look at the specific benchmark (Fig. 2) tied to their child’s age at a given time. In the calculations that follow, the savings targets are rounded to the nearest $100, and they should be considered estimates to help parents better gauge their progress.

At five years old, your child is likely at the end of their child-care years and about to start their first year of elementary school. While a clear idea of their desired career path is unusual at this age, it is a good time to evaluate your college savings progress. Let’s say you believe your child may attend a four-year, in-state public college and you have decided to cover 50% of those costs. The current cost of that type of institution is $24,920 per year.

Parents who are aiming to set aside a steady amount each month should have saved around $15,000 for their child’s college once their child reaches age five. This target balance is calculated by multiplying the current cost of one year of college ($24,920 in this hypothetical example) by the age-five benchmark (0.6x). This calculation is only a rough estimate, but it still provides a useful gauge of progress, as it incorporates the likelihood that college costs will be higher in the future than they are now.

At age 10, your child is likely about to start middle school. At this point, parents should aim to have saved around 1.1 times the target cost of college, or about $27,400 ($24,920 x 1.1), if you are still targeting an in-state public college.

But what if your career has progressed better than you expected, and your salary has risen accordingly? Perhaps you could cover 75% of college costs. In that case, you can personalize the benchmark by multiplying it by the relative difference between the two target percentages. For example, if you want to aim to cover 75% instead of 50%, divide 75% by 50% to get 1.5, then multiply the age-based benchmark (1.1x) by 1.5 to get a revised benchmark of 1.65x. To cover 75% of college, you therefore want to have set aside around $41,100 ($24,920 x 1.65) now that your child is 10 years old.

Keep in mind that each of these examples starts with the same sticker cost of $24,920, regardless of age. That implies these hypotheticals are for different families with children of different ages, all using the published costs of college as of 2025. As parents apply these benchmarks over the years, they should be sure to update the estimated costs, rather than using the numbers from when their child was younger.

Your child is about to graduate from middle school and, believe it or not, college is just a few years away. At this age, they may be starting to have a sense of what they might want to do for a career, which means you might be able to refine your projections based on an updated target, such as the specific cost of a target college.

At this point, parents should aim to have saved about $33,600 to target an in-state public college ($24,920 x 1.35 = $33,600), again with the 50% goal. But perhaps your child has developed an interest in an out-of-state public college. To find out how much you need to have saved for this new target college, simply update the equation with the new college cost ($44,090 for an out-of-state public college in our hypothetical example). Your savings target with a 13-year-old is now $44,090 x 1.35 = $59,500.

With college just around the corner, this is likely the highest total your savings balance will reach. In the final year before college starts for their child, parents would ideally want to have saved about $43,600 to be on track ($24,920 x 1.75). You may notice that this amount is not enough to cover 50% of four years of the estimated college costs (or two times the annual cost). To achieve your goal, you will need to continue to direct the same monthly amount toward college even as your child attends college. Depending on the school’s payment policies, parents can send that amount directly to the college each month or deposit it into their savings account until a payment is due. (See “College savings balance through the years.”) Parents can still make the types of adjustments described in earlier examples, based on different savings targets and/or different types of colleges.

This College Financing Planner can help parents determine their college savings target(s) based on their goals and their children’s goals. As their child gets older and develops more clarity on where they want to attend college, parents can adjust the inputs to keep their plan up to date. By tracking their progress against the savings benchmarks, parents can adjust their plan as needed to make up for any shortfalls. Utilizing these benchmarks can help ensure that when a child is ready to go to college, parents have done their best to provide the financial support necessary for them to achieve their dreams.

Please note that a 529 plan’s disclosure document includes investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses, and other information that you should read and consider carefully before investing. You should compare these plans with any 529 college savings plans offered by your home state or your beneficiary’s home state. Before investing, consider any tax or other state benefits, such as financial aid, scholarship funds, and protection from creditors that are only available for investments in the home state’s plan. Tax benefits may be conditioned on meeting certain requirements, such as residency, purpose for or timing of distributions, or other factors, as applicable.