I Won. I Quit.
This past weekend, my oldest child selected the college he will attend. Based on the school's scholarship offer to him compared with its cost of attendance, our total out-of-pocket costs over four years are expected to be around $126,000. I can project those costs with a reasonable degree of certainty because that school uses "cohort-based pricing," which will fix many of his costs over a standard college enrollment window.
My wife and I had established a 529 college savings plan for him shortly after his birth, and we have been regularly investing in that account for him since then. By an amazing coincidence, the same weekend he made his decision on which school to attend, that 529 account balance clocked in within rounding distance of that amount.
As a result, shortly after he committed to the school, I issued a request the 529 plan custodian to liquidate the stock-based funds it had been invested in. Rather than continuing to take on market risk, I transferred the entire account balance into certificates of deposit (CDs). My rationale was simple: I had won the game of investing for his college education, and so it became time to quit playing that game.
Source Fool.com
