529 Plan Calculator

College costs climb faster than almost any other household expense, so the real question for any savings plan is whether today's contributions will keep pace with tomorrow's tuition. For scale, published tuition and fees averaged $11,950 a year at in-state public four-year universities and $45,000 at private nonprofit four-year colleges in 2025-26 (College Board). Seeing those numbers against your projected balance shows whether you are on track or falling behind before enrollment arrives.

Two moving parts drive the projection here. The first is a compound annual growth rate applied to your 529 investments, generally assumed to be an average return of 5-7% after fees. The second is a fixed 4% annual inflation rate that the calculator applies to the yearly college cost you enter, pushing it forward to each year your student will be enrolled. Subtracting the inflation-adjusted cost of attendance from your projected 529 balance produces the savings gap, the figure that tells you how much further your plan needs to stretch.

Treat the output as a planning estimate rather than a promise. Investment returns are never guaranteed, and tuition inflation swings from year to year and from school to school, with out-of-state and private institutions especially easy to underestimate. Revisiting the projection as your child grows and your finances shift keeps the plan anchored to reality instead of to assumptions you made years earlier.