Customer Reviews

The Best Way to Save for College: A Complete Guide to 529 Plans

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This book is fine for people who have never heard of a 529 plan. However, for people who would like to compare 529 plans in order to choose the best investment vehicle for college savings will be sadly disappointed. The book offers a checklist of questions to ask about state 529 plans, yet, in the description of each plan, none of these questions are answered. This requires that you look up or contact each plan individually in order to get these questions answered such as whether the plan allows rollovers, if the plan is IRS qualified and if the plan accepts contributions from non-owners, etc. Also, most people comparing 529 plans would like some general idea of how popular each fund is and how well it has been perfomring recently. The author could have easily summarized this information generally for each plan but chose not to, again, leaving it to the reader to research each plan individually. I would not recommend this book. The information given about each 529 state plan is almost identical across states and, again, information that would distinguish each plan from another is omitted.

This book clarified several doubts, myths and misconceptions about 529 plans. I was concerned that the book only discussed 529 plans (because of the subtitle), but even though 529 plans are the main topic covered, it also talks about other options (UGMA/UTMA accounts, Coverdell ESAs, etc.) compares and contrasts them.

The book is clearly written and explains financial and tax details of 529 plans at a level most readers will easily understand. You should buy the latest edition (2007) as it contains the most updated information. For instance it mentions about the pension bill that extended the tax-free account withdrawals for 529s beyond 2010.

I was also very happy about the detailed chapter on tax benefits. It mentions several unique features of some plans, for instance the fact that if you are a resident of the state of Pennsylvania, you can now deduct contributions (up to $12,000) to any 529 plan from your state income tax.

About a third of the book has an overview of 529 plans offered by each state, while useful, this information is also available in the companion [...], which also happens to be an excellent resource. In my wish list for this book I would include access to the premium content on the companion website.

Has some great ideas for 529 plans. Take home message: it's not hard to get started, and get started NOW if you've not already! I wanted to get a better idea of 529s, as we've had Upromise for quite a while now. Good State-by-State analysis.