Can We Keep My Son’s Leftover 529 Money for His Kids?
Ramsey Everyday Millionaires
Ramsey Network
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by SmartVestor. |
| 0:07.0 | Connect with an investing pro near you at Ramsey Solutions.com slash SmartVester. |
| 0:13.0 | Alan is in Colorado up next. What's going on, Alan? |
| 0:17.0 | Thank you for taking my call. I have a question about a 529 account that my wife and I have for our son. |
| 0:25.2 | When he is finished with college, which is just a couple years down the road, there'll be |
| 0:29.4 | approximately 120,000 left in the 529 account. |
| 0:32.8 | Way to go. |
| 0:33.6 | I haven't. |
| 0:34.9 | Yeah, yeah, it's pretty strong. |
| 0:41.7 | I have an opinion of what to do with it, but I was just curious to get y'all's take. |
| 0:50.0 | How old is the 529? When did you open it? Oh, boy. Our son is 20, let's say, 20 years ago. |
| 1:44.8 | Oh, great. I was going to say there's the, with the new Secure 2.0 Act, you can roll over up to 35 grand if it's been open for 15 years. You know, you can use that periodically. You can't do all 35 at once, but up to the Roth IRA limit, you can start funding that. So that's one option. Yeah, do you have, do you have other kids, Alan? Oh, no, we don't. You don't? Okay. It's just this. Yeah. Well, if you do that, you know, that's 35 out. So you got about, what, 85 or so, 95 left? You said you had a plan already. I'm curious as to what you wanted to do. So my thought is, is keep it. Keep the 529. We're the guardian of it. Put it in his name. He's an adult now. But don't let him touch it. Just have it be there, so it's generational. When his kids are ready to go to college, that's going to be a pretty large sum. When his kids' kids get ready to go to college, |
| 2:02.4 | it'll be astronomical. It's something that you could really just leave. That's true. A lot of people don't think about that. It becomes like an endowment, basically, for your own family, generational wealth that no one ever goes into debt for education. And that's personally what I'm doing. A lot of people go, well, I don't want to overfund it, because what if they don't go to college? And I go, |
| 2:21.5 | if I overfund it, they're going to love old great-great-great-grandpa George for setting up this 529 many moons ago. And can I do some math for you? Your kid is 20, right? He's 20. So let's say he has a kid at what, 25? Is that fair? It's optimistic, but sure. Okay. Should we go 30? Is that more realistic? Yeah. Go 30. Plus 18 years. So that kid then grows up. Yeah. So your son will be 48 when your grandson, granddaughter goes to college theoretically. How much would be in the account? From 20 to 48, if you just left, let's say, 90 grand in there, right? |
| 2:38.6 | Didn't do anything. |
| 2:39.5 | You never contribute another dime. You'd have $1.4 million when he's 48. |
| 2:44.2 | I hope that's enough to cover college at that point. |
| 2:47.5 | And something, too, I was thinking, is even if his kids don't want to go or do go and there's |
| 2:53.0 | extra at 65, correct me if I'm wrong, he can start using that for his own retirement with no |
| 2:59.0 | penalties. Yeah, there's a lot of stipulations with the 529. And even if he used it in before then, |
| 3:05.8 | you know, he'd pay the 10% penalty. |
| 3:10.4 | But other than that, it's not like wasted money. |
... |
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