California 529 Matching Grant- Free Money To Get Kids To College

California is offering parents an excellent incentive to start a college fund through its Scholarshare 529 Plan.  If you open an account now, the State of California will match your contributions in December 2018 up to $200.  As an additional bonus, if you set up automatic deductions you get a one time $25 deposit in your account.  That is $225 of free money for your kid to get to college.  If that is all you ever did for college savings, (which would be a big missed opportunity) you would still have over $1000* to spend for college when your kid turns 18. 

But if you were able to contribute $400 a year, every year into the California Scholarshare, the account could grow to nearly $13,000.  For more information check out the Scholarshare Matching Program and for a calculator that allows you to plug in some of your own numbers to see how investment and interest work over time go to my page here.

*Values assume 5% growth each year for 18 years.  Variations in growth rate, contributions, and time will impact results.

http://mgp.scholarshare.com/