We compared 109 ways to pay, and this one costs least.
$9,900 saved against paying the usual way: the row marked “The usual way” in the table below.
We price every way of paying we can build for a family, and show the ones that really differ, against the usual way. For this family, every way worth considering costs the same, so there is one plan here, shown against the usual way.
The monthly payment assumes you repay over 10 years. The total is the college years plus 10 years of interest, less the education tax credits the plan claims.
| Way to pay | Debt at graduation | Monthly payment | Total cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✓Even-Spread 529 (529 first, AOTC) | $0 | $0/mo | $100,222 |
| The usual way | $0 | $0/mo | $110,122 |
10 sections, ~7,500 words tailored to Alex's situation. Below is the structure and a one-line description of what's in each — your version contains the actual semester-by-semester numbers and prose for your family.
Sanity-check the plan against your own beliefs. Disagree with our college-inflation rate, our 529 growth assumption, or our take on PLUS interest? You'll know exactly where to look — and what would change if you swap it.
Stop guessing which account to pay each semester's bill from. When the bursar email lands, you open the table and the answer is right there — no recalculation, no second-guessing.
The one-page summary you'll hand to your spouse, your CPA, or your school — total spend, total borrowing, total tax credits captured, reconciled to the dollar.
Put the plan on a calendar. Know what to do every October, what to ignore in March, when to call your 529 administrator. Nothing slips through the cracks.
See how much of your 529 the plan spends each year, the growth it counts on, and what to do with any balance left over — you make your own investment calls.
Take only the loans worth taking. Know which to accept, which to skip, and when a nonprofit state lender beats your default option.
Small in-school moves that compound into thousands saved by graduation — without meaningfully changing your monthly budget.
Know exactly what life looks like the day after graduation — total debt in each name, the monthly payment, and what alternative paths you considered.
Catch the easy wins most families miss — leftover 529 options, tax-credit timing, state-specific opportunities you don't know to look for.
Capture your state's 529 deduction every year without tripping the recapture rules that could claw it back.
These decisions cost real money to get wrong, and you cannot tell you got them wrong without doing the arithmetic.
The American Opportunity Credit has a rule that is easy to break. You have to pay $4,000 of tuition a year from money that did not come out of a 529, in the right tax year. Your income also has to be under the limit. Pay one dollar from the wrong account and you lose $500 to $2,500 that year. Nobody tells you. The Lifetime Learning Credit for the last spring falls in a tax year most families think of as after college, so they never claim it. Over four years that is thousands of dollars.
Spend the 529 first. Use up your savings before you borrow. Take whatever the school offers. Cover the rest with Parent PLUS. Each of those sounds sensible on its own. Together they cost most families thousands. The only way to know what your family is losing is to price every order of paying and compare them. By hand that is days of spreadsheet work, and it has to be redone each year as rates and balances change.
Every number above was worked out for an imagined NC family at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (in-state). Yours would come from your own income, savings, school and limits. The same calculations, in the same detail, on your numbers.
The estimate is free. You pay $99, once, only if you want the full plan.