529 College Savings Calculator
↻ Updated 2026See how your 529 plan could grow with monthly contributions and investment returns, and whether you're on track for your college-cost target.
Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to us.How this works
How to read your 529 projection
On the defaults — $5,000 today, $300 a month, fifteen years, 6% — the projection lands at $99,516.08 against a $150,000 target: 66% covered, $50,483.92 short. You contributed $59,000 of that and the market contributed $40,516.08. The shortfall is the useful output here, not the balance.
How your 529 balance and shortfall are projected
Standard monthly compounding, run 180 times on the defaults. Each month the balance grows by one-twelfth of the annual return, then your contribution is added. That ordering means a contribution earns nothing in the month you make it — mildly conservative, and it's why the projection sits slightly below an annuity-due formula.
No tax appears anywhere in the arithmetic, and that's the modelling decision, not an oversight. A 529's earnings are exempt from federal income tax when spent on qualified education expenses, so a zero-drag projection is the correct model of the qualified case — and an overstatement of every other case.
r = annual return ÷ 12 repeat for each of (years × 12) months: balance = balance × (1 + r) + monthly contributed = starting balance + monthly × months growth = balance − contributed gap = target − balance coverage = balance ÷ target
- starting balance
- What's in the 529 today — compounds for the full period, which is why an early lump sum outperforms its size
- monthly
- Your monthly contribution — assumed constant in nominal dollars for the whole period — see the limitations
- r
- The monthly return — annual return divided by twelve — simple division, not a compounding-equivalent conversion, so the effective annual rate is fractionally above what you set
- years
- Years until the first tuition bill — 1 to 18 — the horizon that decides how much of the balance is growth rather than contribution
- annual return
- Expected annual investment return, before inflation — nominal, not real — the college-cost target is a future-dollar figure, so the two are consistent
- balance
- The projected 529 value at enrollment — assumes no withdrawals and no change in contribution
- contributed
- Total of your own money in the account — $59,000 on the defaults
- growth
- Everything the balance earned — federal-income-tax-free on qualified withdrawals; taxable plus a 10% penalty otherwise
- target
- Your college-cost goal — set it to 0 to hide the goal comparison entirely
- gap
- Target minus projected balance — negative if you're projected to overshoot
- coverage
- The share of the target your projection reaches — 66% on the defaults
The return is a constant, applied identically every month. Real 529s don't behave that way and aren't supposed to: most plans default to an age-based portfolio that shifts from equities into bonds and cash as enrollment approaches, deliberately lowering the expected return in the final years to protect the balance from a badly timed drawdown. A flat 6% for fifteen years isn't a description of any age-based 529 — it's an average standing in for a declining sequence.
That sequence matters more here than in a retirement projection, because the deadline is fixed and short: a drawdown at year fourteen has no recovery time before the first tuition bill. It's the whole reason glide paths exist, and this model can't express it.
Worked examples
Example: $5,000 saved, $300 a month, fifteen years to go
The calculator's defaults, at a 6% return against a $150,000 target. A parent starting when the child is three.
| Projected balanceafter 180 months of compounding | $99,516.08 |
| You contributed$5,000 start + $300 × 180 | $59,000.00 |
| Investment growth41% of the final balance | $40,516.08 |
| Coverage of targetof $150,000 | 66% |
| Shortfallthe gap to close | $50,483.92 |
| Same plan at 0% returnwhat the account holds with no growth at all | $59,000.00 |
Fifteen years of $300 a month reaches two-thirds of a $150,000 target — and $40,516.08 of the $99,516.08 was never yours to begin with. Compare the last line: without growth the same discipline produces $59,000. The tax-free compounding is doing about as much work as five years of your contributions.
Example: closing the $50,483.92 gap
Same start, same fifteen years, same 6% target. The only change is the monthly-contribution slider, which steps in $25 increments.
| At $300/mo (the default)66% of target | $99,516.08 |
| At $400/mo86% — still short | $128,597.95 |
| At $475/moclears $150,000 | $150,409.36 |
| Extra needednot the $280.47 the page's own hint suggests | $175/mo |
| Extra contributed over 15 yr$175 × 180 | $31,500.00 |
| Gap it closed$31,500 of contributions did $50,893 of work | $50,893.28 |
An extra $175 a month — not $280 — closes a $50,483.92 gap, because the contributions compound on the way in. $31,500 of your money closes nearly $51,000 of shortfall over fifteen years. The panel on this page suggests $280.47/mo, dividing the gap by the number of months and flagging the figure as "before growth"; contributing that much would land at $181,080.90, overshooting the $150,000 target by $31,080.90.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to a 529 if my child doesn't go to college?
The money isn't stranded and never expires. The cheapest fix is usually to change the beneficiary: an account owner can name another qualifying family member — a sibling, a cousin, a grandchild, or yourself — with no tax consequence.
"College" is also narrower than the account requires. Qualified expenses cover any institution eligible for federal student aid, including community colleges, trade and vocational schools, and registered apprenticeships. Since the 2025 reconciliation law, qualified postsecondary credentialing expenses count too. Up to $10,000 lifetime can repay the beneficiary's qualified student loans, and another $10,000 for each sibling.
Failing all that, a non-qualified withdrawal returns your contributions tax-free — they were after-tax going in — while earnings are taxed as ordinary income plus a 10% additional tax. If the beneficiary receives a scholarship you can withdraw up to that amount penalty-free, though earnings remain taxable. See IRS Publication 970 for the full treatment.
Can I roll unused 529 money into a Roth IRA?
Yes, within tight limits. SECURE 2.0 created a direct trustee-to-trustee rollover from a 529 to a Roth IRA owned by the plan's beneficiary — not by you, the account owner. The lifetime cap is $35,000 per beneficiary.
Four conditions bind at once. The 529 must have been open for the beneficiary at least 15 years. Contributions from the last five years, and their earnings, are ineligible. Each year's rollover counts against the beneficiary's annual Roth IRA contribution limit, so $35,000 takes roughly five years to move. And the beneficiary needs earned income at least equal to the amount rolled that year.
The 15-year clock is the one that reshapes decisions, because it rewards opening an account early and funding it small. It's also the least settled part of the rule: whether changing the beneficiary restarts the clock hasn't been definitively resolved in guidance, so providers have taken conservative positions.
How much can you contribute to a 529 plan in 2026?
There's no annual contribution limit in the statute. What there is instead is a gift tax boundary and a per-state aggregate cap, and people conflate the two.
Contributions are treated as completed gifts to the beneficiary. For 2026 the annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per donor per recipient — unchanged from 2025 — under IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, so two parents can put $38,000 into one child's 529 with no gift tax return. Above that, §529(c)(2)(B) allows a five-year election: front-load up to five years of exclusions at once, $95,000 from one donor or $190,000 from a couple, treated as spread evenly across five years.
Separately, each state caps the total that can ever be in an account for one beneficiary — commonly $235,000 to $600,000. It's a ceiling on contributions, not on growth: once you hit it, contributions stop but the balance keeps compounding past it.
Does a 529 plan affect financial aid?
Yes, but far less than families fear, and it depends on who owns the account. A 529 owned by the parent of a dependent student is reported as a parental asset, assessed at a maximum of 5.64% — so $100,000 reduces aid eligibility by at most about $5,640 a year. A student-owned account is assessed far harder.
Grandparent-owned accounts used to be the trap: not reported as an asset, but withdrawals counted as untaxed student income assessed at up to 50%. The FAFSA Simplification Act removed that — since the 2024-25 form, cash support from a grandparent-owned 529 is no longer reported.
Set against that, the projection above earns $40,516.08 tax-free, and none of it touches merit aid, which isn't means-tested. Many private colleges also use the CSS Profile alongside the FAFSA and can treat assets on their own terms.
Is a 529 plan worth it?
The case rests on the tax exemption and on time. Earnings escape federal income tax on qualified withdrawals — $40,516.08 of growth in the default projection that no tax touches. Most states go further with a deduction or credit for contributions, and several (Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania) allow it for any state's plan rather than only their own. California offers no state deduction at all.
The costs are real. Investment choice is limited to your plan's menu, and you can change how existing assets are invested only twice per calendar year. Non-qualified use costs income tax on earnings plus 10%. And the market risk is yours — a 529 is not a savings account, which the 6% default quietly assumes you've accepted.
The 2025 reconciliation law widened the account considerably: the annual K-12 withdrawal limit rises from $10,000 to $20,000 per beneficiary for tax year 2026, K-12 qualified expenses now extend beyond tuition to curriculum materials, tutoring and standardized testing fees, and credentialing programs qualify. States don't automatically conform — California still doesn't treat K-12 withdrawals as qualified for state purposes — so the federal rule and your state's rule are separate questions.
What this 529 calculator assumes about your plan
The compounding is straightforward. The assumptions wrapped around it are where the projection and a real 529 part company.
- It assumes every dollar is spent on qualified expenses — Zero tax drag is correct only for qualified withdrawals. The page labels the growth "Tax-free growth" without qualification, in the slider hint and the chart legend; the accurate statement is that it's free of federal income tax when spent on qualified education expenses, and otherwise taxed as ordinary income plus 10% on the earnings. The projection can't represent the second case.
- No state tax treatment at all — State deductions and credits are among the largest real benefits of a 529 and are entirely absent — as is the reverse, since some states recapture deductions on non-qualified withdrawals or outbound rollovers. State rules also don't automatically follow federal ones. No 529 or state tax data exists in our data modules.
- A flat return, when your plan almost certainly glides — Age-based portfolios shift toward bonds and cash as enrollment nears, deliberately lowering returns in the final years. Holding 6% flat for fifteen years overstates the late years and understates the early ones. It also can't show sequence risk — and with a fixed deadline, a bad year at year fourteen has no time to recover.
- The "close the gap" figure ignores compounding — The goal panel divides the shortfall by the number of months, suggesting $280.47/mo on the defaults. The actual extra needed is about $174/mo, because the additional contributions compound too. The panel flags the figure as "before growth," but it overstates the requirement by 62% over fifteen years — following it would overshoot the target by $31,080.90 — and the error grows with the horizon.
- Contributions never change, and fees never appear — $300 a month for fifteen years is $300 in year fifteen — worth far less than $300 today, against a target that inflated the whole way. Real savers raise contributions with income. Nor is there any fee input: plan administration fees and fund expense ratios vary widely between states, and half a percentage point compounds to real money over eighteen years.
- ·Standard loan amortization / compound-growth formulas
Rates, brackets and limits here are checked against primary sources. If a number still looks off, email support@realmoneyiq.com and we'll review and fix it.
RealMoneyIQ provides free educational calculators, not financial, tax, investment or legal advice. Results are estimates based on the assumptions you enter and publicly published rates; your actual outcome will differ. Always confirm decisions with a licensed professional who knows your full situation.