Sun, Jun 1, 2025, 9:09 AM3 min read

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The cost of college has more than doubled in the past 20 years, and as a result, families are struggling to plan appropriately for their children's higher education goals.

According to research by the Society of Actuaries, 6 in 10 Americans have said they delayed their retirement to plan for a family member's education.

Though a lot of important factors determine the most realistic and cost-effective plan to pay for college, Tricia Scarlata, head of education planning at JPMorgan Asset Management, spoke on Yahoo Finance's Decoding Retirement podcast about how essential a 529 account can be in ensuring capital goals are met.

"My goal is to always talk about how if you're not investing and you're not potentially leveraging a 529 account, you're missing out on that tax-free growth and compounding over time," Scarlata said (see video above or listen below). "Cash is just not going to get you there. And so investing and leveraging that tax-free benefit is really what we try to encourage people to do."

A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged savings account dedicated specifically to saving for future education expenses.

It's not just for college — these accounts can also be used to pay for trade schools or tuition for K-12 education, offering tax-free withdrawals for qualifying expenses. The money in the account is then invested, compounding with tax-deferred earnings to be used by the designated beneficiary.

"If you just look at the two accounts side by side, a taxable and a nontaxable account, all things being equal, you make a $10,000 contribution upfront, and then you subsequently put in $500 a month — at the end of 18 years, you have almost $42,000 more in the tax-free account," Scarlata explained, breaking down the difference a 529 account can make when saving for education. "That's a big amount."

Read more: How much should I save before going to college​?

By adding education plans to your long-term savings goals, you can also avoid the temptation of borrowing against your own 401(k) to pay for a child's tuition.

"What we do find is a lot of [parents] are borrowing against their retirement to pay those tuition bills," Scarlata said. "And that's where I always get concerned, because when you start to borrow against your retirement or your 401(k), what we see is that most people then don't contribute. A lot of times they're missing out on that company's match, and that's free money."