How much will you need?  The answer to that question is different for each family.  Will you be saving to pay 100% of the cost, or will you expect your children to pay a portion?  Will you be paying for graduate school or just undergraduate?  Once you have decided how much to cover, calculating the cost is pretty much straight forward.

1st You need to find out how much a year of schooling cost today.  This is done by contacting the administration office of a school which represents the type of school you foresee your child attending.  Just ask them how much their tuition cost per credit hour, and how many credit hours a typical student takes per year.  If your child will be living at school, ask them the average annual cost of room and board. 

2nd Next you need to account for books.  This is often missed and it can add up.  If a textbook cost $100, and your child is taking 4 classes that is $400 per term, or $1,200 to $1,600 per year.  Simply go to amizon.com and search the prices on new textbooks people are selling.  You are just looking to be in the range; average a bunch of them to get a ballpark number.

3rd The next step is to calculate the total cost of the 1^st year of college for a student today.  Add up the tuition, room and board, textbooks and supplies, clothing costs, food and entertainment (and yes there are entertainment expenses in college.  As much as you would prefer they did nothing but study, that is just not reality).

4th Calculate how many years there are until your child begins college.

5th Calculate how many years they will be in college.  To simplify the calculation we will take the cost of college today and just increase the cost by inflation, or 6% (which ever is larger), per year.

If you do plan on paying for graduate school, you can simplify the approach by using our download calculator and first calculating the undergraduate cost and then re-running it to calculate the graduate cost.

6th Calculate the payments needed per year to generate the total amount to cover the cost of college.

Don't worry, while it sounds like a lot of work, we have made a simply calculator for you.  Just answer the questions and the calculator will crunch the numbers for you.  Then next step is determining if you can save that much per month?  If not, then adjust.  You can decide to pay a portion verse of the total cost, or you can look to see what is what type of financial aid or grants are available to help.

The Financial Swami has made it easy for you.  Simply download our calculator and answer a few questions.  The calculator will tell you how much you need to save per year, and per month, to reach you goals.