I took fifteen minutes tonight to open investment accounts for each kid at Vanguard. These are UTMA accounts with myself as custodian. The plan is to fund them with any gifts from relatives that are meant for college, as well as contributions from us so that $500 per year is added for each kid.
I had hoped to open them with $2500 for three-year-old DS1 and $1000 for zero-year-old DS2, but the minimum to open a Vanguard account is $3000, not $1000. So I put in $3000 for DS2 and $4500 for DS1. Since these will be in their names, I want to keep the contributions as fair as possible.
So that's another item off the goals list. I had planned to add $500 to each account on their birthdays (gifts from relatives plus additional from us), but since the opening amounts were higher than I intended, I'll call the goal done for the year.
We plan to put most of our "college savings" in regular investment accounts under our names, since we don't know what the plan will be to pay for college down the line. These will be the only accounts that are in the kids names.
Opened accounts for the kids
April 3rd, 2015 at 03:31 am
April 3rd, 2015 at 04:30 am 1428031833
April 3rd, 2015 at 02:14 pm 1428066874
April 3rd, 2015 at 05:06 pm 1428077207
Right now their money is in a savings account making 0.75%, so I'd like to put it somewhere better!