A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

On Facebook, Edita asks a simple question: “Among diffrent 529 plans.. which one to choose?”

First of all, let’s talk about what a 529 plan is. A 529 plan is “a tax-advantaged investment vehicle in the United States designed to encourage saving for the future higher education expenses of a designated beneficiary.” (source) In other words, it’s an account that you put after-tax money into (meaning ordinary money out of your checking account). That account has a stated beneficiary (often your child, but it might be you if you’re saving for your own future graduate education or something to that effect). When money is withdrawn from that account for educational purposes, you do not have to pay taxes on the returns that money earned while sitting in the account.

There are two distinct types of 529 plans: prepaid plans and savings plans. Prepaid plans are less common (only 11 states have them), but they usually mean that you’re directly “pre-paying” for tuition at public universities within that state by buying tuition credits at that school. These credits are based on current tuition rates and thus are a bargain if your child is going to go to that school. Savings plan 529s are much more common. They function much like a savings account, where you deposit money, it grows within that account, and then you can withdraw it to spend on educational purposes.

Finding the right 529 plan is tricky because so many different states offer them and individual states have differing tax rules when it comes to 529 plans. For example, some states have rules where you have to pay taxes if you withdraw money from another state’s 529 plan.

The first step I would take is identifying the “must-have” features. This depends a lot on your situation and each situation is different. For me, there are four “must-have” features.

It must be a “savings”-style 529. I do not want to lock my children into a specific university or small set of universities.

Other family members must be able to make contributions. I want grandparents to be able to easily contribute to their grandchildren’s 529 accounts.

I must be able to transfer account ownership at any time. This ensures that the account will be there for my children no matter what happens in my personal life between now and when they need the account.

I must be able to meet the minimum contribution level. This can certainly be a big concern for some families who have to really stretch to make payments into the 529 account.

There are actually quite a few plans that meet these criteria. So, the first step I would take is to look at my own state’s 529 plan. Using your own state’s 529 plan minimizes the chances that you’ll be docked by having to pay income taxes on the plans in other states (of course, this is a non-issue if you live in a state without state income tax).

For me, the search ended here. I’m a big fan of College Savings Iowa, as it met all of my needs quite well while also offering strong investment choices (they’re backed by Vanguard). Which brings me to my second factor…

If you’re not completely sure about your own state’s 529 plan, start comparing them. This is particularly true if you live in a state without income tax and plan to live there for a while.

The biggest issues you’ll need to look at are the quality of the investments offered in the plan. I would not base this comparison on past performance. Past performance is not an indication of future results – it’s one factor among many. Not only that, many 529 plans have a relatively short history, meaning the past performance data is limited and not particularly valid for comparison.

Other factors that are more important (from my perspective) include the diversity of investments offered within that state’s plan (the more the better), the availability of “targeted” funds that mature when your child graduates from high school, and low fees (such as investment fees, program fees, and other expenses).

Other key factors I would look for in a 529 include easy online access to accounts (most states have this, thankfully; it’s almost a make-or-break feature for me), a good customer service reputation (Google for reports from users), and the ease with which they make rollovers into other 529 plans possible (in case I move or some other change occurs).

There are a lot of tools online that will help you compare the features of 529 plans (like this one), but the big factors in choosing a plan aren’t strictly investment based. They have more to do with you and your child’s future than anything else.

In September 2004, I was about to leave my first post-college job. My boss at that time – who happens to be one of the people I respect the most in this world, even now after my radical career shift – observed that I had a pile of unused vacation time that was basically going to disappear when I left that job in mid-October. He sat down with me and, once he was sure that the things I was working on were in good shape and that I’d be easily available if anything else needed to be finished up, he suggested that I use that remaining use-it-or-lose-it vacation time in order to transition to my new job.

In other words, I had about two weeks of vacation coming to me. I wasn’t really sure what to do with that time, though. I didn’t have children. My wife didn’t have any vacation time coming. So I asked him what I should do with the time. He looked at me thoughtfully and simply said, “Why don’t you just take a sabbatical?”

A sabbatical means a period in which you choose not to work in order to achieve something else that will improve your life. If you take a week off of work in order to re-pave your driveway, that’s a sabbatical. If you take two weeks off in order to take a class, that’s a sabbatical.

So what did I do during that week? I drafted a novel. It was the second novel-length work of fiction that I’ve completed in my life (and, like the first one, I now think it’s pretty awful). It was also a great learning experience for me. It taught me how to organize the threads of a complex story. It showed me that I had the capacity to write such a lengthy thing. It gave me the experience that I can build on with better stories later on.

Since that first experience in 2004, I’ve tried to take a sabbatical once a year or so. I’ll take a week off of work in order to work on some project or increase some personal skill of mine. One year, I used the sabbatical to take a Photoshop course. Another year, I spent the sabbatical working on my finances and, eventually, laying the foundations for The Simple Dollar. I plan to use a sabbatical in the fall of this year to “woodshed” on the piano, focusing squarely on mastering a couple of piano pieces.

What can you do on your sabbatical? Complete a personal project that needs a lot of focused time. Teach yourself a new skill that you know will be valuable in the future. Take a compressed course to pick up a skill.

The specifics depend entirely on you and what things you wish to accomplish and learn in your own life. Building a skill that you can use professionally is almost always a strong idea, as is a class that leads directly to a professionally useful skill. Completing a large personal project is also quite valuable, as is setting up the infrastructure for a side business or a larger personal project.

I could write a very long list of such ideas. Learn how to use a particular computer program like Photoshop. Learn a computer programming language like Scheme. Start an online business. Write a novel. Clean out every closet and nook and cranny in your home. Re-shingle your roof. Give a number of speeches and presentations to improve your public speaking skills. Take a compressed course on a topic valuable to your career at the local college. The list goes on and on.

The key is to make sure that you’re either doing something to improve your skill set or doing something that improves the value of the things in your life, particularly something that you can’t quite accomplish while working.

Why not just take a vacation? For starters, sabbaticals are easier to propose to supervisors. My experience – and the shared experience of others – is that it’s much easier to sell a supervisor on using vacation time for a skill-building exercise than it is for an actual vacation. Why? When you take normal vacation time, you’re not really increasing your value to the company during that time spent. If you’re building skills during that time, then you typically do increase your value. Even if you don’t build a skill that’s of value to the workplace, knowing that you’re local in case of an emergency can again make vacation time easier to sell to a tough supervisor.

For another, after a sabbatical, you have a genuine accomplishment. You learned a new skill or you took care of something significant that needed finishing. That sense of accomplishment is incredibly valuable, as it fills you with confidence as well as the rewards of whatever it is that you’ve accomplished.

After a sabbatical, you’re in a better place. That in itself is a tremendous reward and a strong source of good feeling which you can use to fuel your return to work. Good luck.

When I was in high school, I took a consumer education proficiency test and passed it with flying colors, demonstrating that I had the knowledge needed to manage my own money and be a savvy shopper. Within ten years, I was buried in debt.

This isn’t an experience that’s unique to me. On The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page (feel free to become a fan), I recently asked “Did you take a personal finance or consumer ed class in school? Was it useful to you? Did it keep you from making financial mistakes later on?”

Quite a few people publicly stated the uselessness of their personal finance education, while still others emailed me or sent me direct messages about it. A sampling of the comments:

Ryan B.: “i had to take consumers ed with drivers ed and [...] no….i had to learn from mistakes…”
Kelly K.: “My consumer ed class in high school was a waste of time.”
Charlie R.: “Yes, I did, and no, it didn’t.”
Baley W.: “Senior year in high school we took FPU. I remembered the principles, but I still got into debt. I don’t think it helped one bit, even though I’d like to think so.”
Shiela F.: “In high school & college along with accounting classes and no, it did not help. ”
Annie J.: “We had a small personal finance chapter in Home Ec./Family Relations class and no, it wasn’t helpful.”

Even some who got value from their classes saw that it didn’t impact their peers. Amanda H. stated: “I took a college personal finance course at the behest of my father. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave me a whole new awareness on things like investing and how interest works. And how important it is to get started young. Which I think was rare and put me miles ahead of my college-age peers.”

Many others didn’t recall any sort of education, which either means there literally wasn’t a class or the class had so little impact on them that they did not recall it at a later date.

Simply put, personal finance education as it currently exists is not reaching people when they need it. Quite often, they learn about it later on through their own difficult experiences.

In fact, I think “experience” is the key word here.

Consumer education and personal finance education is often lumped in with many other classes at the high school level. They’re taught in a classroom environment with minimal examples that actually impact the lives of students in any way. Sometimes it’s a class all its own, but other times it’s just a small piece of another class and at yet other times it’s not dealt with at all.

Just like any other ordinary class, one or two will “click,” a handful of others will approach it like any other academic subject and succeed on the surface without deeply understanding it, and many others will let the info go in one ear and out the other, retaining as little as possible.

Simply put, treating personal finance as just another thing that students need to be “educated” in doesn’t really work.

How can we possibly make personal finance education relevant (beyond the simple step of making sure that it’s at least presented)? Over the past few years, I’ve been collecting ideas from the mountains of personal finance books I’ve read, and I’ve got some suggestions for how to turn personal finance education into something much more valuable than the experiences described above.

First, homework (and classwork) should focus on discussion and actually doing things. Make homework (most of the time) very simple for this class. Go home and ask your parents a basic question about their finances and report on what you learned. Why do they buy a certain product type? What was their best experience at work? How do they do their taxes? The goal isn’t to get students to tell about their families, but to get them talking at home about personal finances.

At other times, focus on actually doing things. Make everyone in the class get a savings account or a checking account in their name. Have them go to the store and find the best bargains they can on enough laundry detergent and dryer sheets to do 100 loads of clothes. Hand out copies of credit card offers and have them figure out what happens if they charge $500 on the card and don’t pay it.

Second, put a big emphasis on personal stories. If you go around and ask people what the one thing that got them on the right financial track and helped keep them there was, it’s almost always someone else’s story and how they translated that into success. Dave Ramsey’s story. My own story. The stories in books like Your Money or Your Life. People see some element of themselves in that story and they want what that person has achieved, so it makes the steps to get there seem much more real and relevant.

If you’re teaching, use your own story, but don’t be afraid to get speakers in very regularly who are open to talking about their own stories.

Third, recognize that you’re trying to plant key concepts that may not “click” for years. Don’t spend a day talking about the difference between 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and Roth IRAs. It’s not relevant to them and it’s too much detail. Instead, make absolutely sure they understand the key things that they’re going to face.

One key technique for this is to cycle back regularly to old topics that you’ve already covered. Just like exercise, you can’t keep a muscle strong if you vigorously exercise it once and then never touch it again. Scatter specific topics and speakers throughout the year that call back to the key topics already learned.

Finally, focus on goals and how to approach them. One of the few examples of personal finance that I remember from school was when a teacher in elementary school kept a jar on her desk. She told us that if she just put a quarter in that jar every single school day, there’d be enough money in that jar for a pizza party for the class at the end of the year, and every little bit students tossed in would make that party better.

Every day, she’d add a coin to it at a time when she knew everyone was watching. Sure enough, that jar slowly filled up. Sure enough, at the end of the year, the money in that jar paid for a big pizza party.

It stuck with me for a lot of reasons. Repetition, of course, was one of them. The big pizza party at the end was the other one.

Even now, though, the idea that there was a goal set at the beginning of the year, that a plan was put in place for that goal, and that a little bit of effort each day brought the class to that goal has an impact on me.

Don’t be afraid to do this exact thing. Even more so, don’t be afraid to share your own goals right in front of the students. “I’m saving $20 per school day for a car,” you might say, then actually buy a car with that cash at the end of the year. Save $10 a day during the first semester, then buy a laptop (or some other item they might care about) before Christmas.

The simple truth is that a typical classroom experience isn’t going to reach most students – and even trying new things won’t reach every student. Instead, focus on doing everything you can to hammer home a few key ideas – debt is bad, saving money is good, planning ahead is great – and try to relate that to their life.

I think Sarah D. put it best: “Honestly, I don’t think you really learn anything that you are not invested and interested in. The very best lessons I learned about money were from actual experience.” Experience, not classroom learning, gives people the personal finance lessons they need. This goes not just for teachers, but for parents, too.

In fact, I’ll leave this article with a note to parents. Personal finance is a life skill, just like changing your underwear. Be involved in teaching your kids how to manage money, just like you were in teaching them to change their underwear.

So often, when I see advice regarding a college education, people speak of a college degree as some sort of magic ticket that will raise your income level. “A college degree is worth $500,000 more income over a person’s lifetime” or something to that effect is constantly touted.

This idea often pops up in the questions I get from readers. A reader will ask me if they should go back to school, not because they want to learn, but because they believe this piece of paper will directly increase their earnings.

I’ll state it right now: the piece of paper you receive at the end of your college career will do nothing to directly increase your earnings. Nothing. A college degree will simply help you to get your foot in a few more doors. It will not get you a job simply because you have that degree.

What will get you that job is what you bring to the table after you get your foot in the door. Yes, you have that B. A. or B. S. on your resume, but what else do you have that will impress? What other skills do you have that will make money for your employer or for the business you hope to start?

In the end, it’s about the skills and attributes you bring to the table, not about the piece of paper you hold.

So, what does that mean for a college education? Does that mean I hold it as being valueless?

On the contrary, I think a college education is incredibly valuable.

However, it’s not valuable for the piece of paper you get at the end; it’s valuable for the experiences you have, the skills and knowledge you actually learn, and the accomplishments you achieve while there.

If you want to come out of college and get a great job, don’t spend your time doing nothing but hitting the books, working a generic service job, and partying. That’s the recipe that a lot of college students take – and it’s a recipe that ensures that it will be more difficult than it needs to be to find a job when you graduate.

Instead, try these approaches.

Build relationships with your professors. Stay after class to ask questions. Participate in class. Hit office hours. Attend on-campus events, like lectures, that professors might attend. Ask them for more general advice, like what they did as a student to put themselves in a good position. Later, don’t be afraid to ask for employment help and reference letters.

Get a job that relates to your major in some way. The best way to start with this is to do the above – start talking to your professors. Ask them for suggestions for employment that will match your major and help you learn some basic skills. Work study jobs are often perfect for this. Yes, you’ll often find yourself doing repetitive tasks that are boring, but if you keep in mind that mastering these skills will not only impress your boss but give you a great springboard for later on in life and earn you some money and create some very impressive resume fodder and stories to tell during interviews, it’s a lot easier to focus.

Use electives to build transferable skills. When you have slots for classes that you’re unsure how to fill, look for courses that help you build transferable skills – the things you will be able to use at any job. Public speaking. Leadership. Technical writing. Time management. Communication. Information management. Basic IT skills. Take these classes and focus on the skills you’ll build.

Participate in student activities. Seek out an activity or two that’s connected to what you’re studying. Get involved, build relationships with others who are involved, and seek out leadership positions within those groups. This will not only accentuate your knowledge, but it will build relationships with future professional peers and give you some great resume fodder.

Participate in activities that build transferable skills. Beyond activities related to your studies, seek out activities that will help you build skills that you can use after school. Public speaking is always good, as are organizations that focus on leadership and debate. As always, leadership positions are always a positive.

Take any projects you have to heart. When you have a class project, don’t just look at it as a path to a good grade. Look at it as a way to build the skills you’re going to use when you’re in the workplace. Look at the product of that project as something you might be able to hold onto for a portfolio, or to build into something big. Look at it as something you’ll want to show to people in a professional environment. Not only will the grade be easy to achieve, you’ll build some skills and potentially have some great material for a portfolio.

Do something awesome. Spend a semester or two abroad. Take a year off to do a major volunteer project. Anything you can do that will help you stand out from the pack in a positive way and contribute a deep personal value to your life is something you really should consider doing.

These steps not only will build your character, your knowledge, and your relationships, but it will build a resume that will stand out from the pack when you start seeking work.

It isn’t the paper that’s valuable in college. It’s the actual skills gained and experiences enjoyed.

Tomorrow, several people that matter a lot to me are starting their college experience. Here are fifteen things I’d like to suggest to them that they’re probably not hearing from anyone else who has been giving them advice on college over the past three months.

You don’t have to know what you want to do right now. You’ve probably heard countless people asking what you’re majoring in and so on and you’ve likely built the decision up into something monumental in your head. It isn’t. For starters, most of the time when a person asks a college student what their major is, they’re mostly just looking for some sort of information about who you are. They’re not trying to judge you, they’re trying to understand you.

As for the vitality of that major, I majored in life sciences and computer science in college and today I’m a writer on personal finance topics.

In short, you end up finding your own path in life and it’s not a path dictated by your college major. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a major that actually lines up with what you’re passionate about. If you’re not lucky, your college degree will mostly wind up being proof that you went to college for some number of years and were able to complete a degree.

Instead, the biggest value you’ll earn in college is the relationships with other people. The friendships I built over the course of my college career form many of my friendships now. I have friends sprinkled throughout tons of businesses and organizations and walks of life now. A relationship I built with my academic advisor got me my first real college job. A relationship I built with an awesome staff member got me a research job related to my area of study. A relationship built with a professor helped me to get my first post-college job – and, indirectly, my second one. I fell in love with my wife-to-be in college. At my wedding, my best man and one of my groomspeople were my two closest college friends.

The people made the impact. Focus on building friendships with good people – students, staff members, professors, deans, everyone. Look for people who are focused at what they’re doing, have some interest overlap with you, and are also seeming like they’re having fun doing it, because those are the people that are going to be great to spend time with and are also going to be doing something great with their life. They’re the kind of people that will make your path better.

The biggest value you can get from your classes is transferable skills. Knowing the ins and outs of organic chemistry might help you if you happen to wind up in one of those rare jobs that utilizes it. The skills you’ve built in the process of actually getting through organic chemistry – those are ones you’ll utilize time and time again.

The value isn’t so much in the actual subject you learn in your classes. The value comes from the ability to absorb lots of information, to process that information, and to think about that information. The value of college is in the ability to manage your time effectively enough so you can do all of that, get strong grades, hold down a job, build relationships, and grow as a person. The value of college is learning how to communicate with people from vastly different backgrounds than you – in other words, try making a friend that lived on another continent.

Time management skills. Information management skills. Communication skills (speaking, writing, presenting). Critical thinking. Those are the things that college gives you a great opportunity to really, really learn, and those are the things that will help you no matter what your path is.

Almost everyone will get as much or more value out of learning how to learn a particular challenging topic or class than they will get out of that specific topic.

Try things you would have never tried before. The social constructs of a typical high school make it very hard for people to dive into and discover what they’re passionate about. Those constructs are largely gone in college. This is the time in your life to try stuff you would have never tried before.

As Robert Heinlein put it, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

College is the best opportunity in your life for trying all of these things, learning how to do them, and stumbling upon that thing or two that really, really lights up your passion.

The only way to fail at college is to sit around your dorm room a lot of evenings watching reruns of Bones or taunting someone on Xbox Live. Do something new, preferably something you would have never done before (and preferably not anything that has a likelihood of killing or seriously harming you).

Keep your eyes wide open for free stuff. The average college campus is teeming with free things to do and food to eat. Look at your school’s event calendar and start hitting as much of that stuff as possible – anything and everything that looks vaguely interesting. It usually is interesting (or at least exposure to something new), it’s almost always free, and there’s almost always free food there.

If the people around you won’t engage in the tons of things going on every evening, it’s a great time to expand your horizons a bit more. Look for the faces you see repeating at these events. It’s a great way to meet interesting people who are actively involved in the world around them.

Plus, most of this stuff is free, which enables you to keep your cash right in your pocket, take out fewer student loans, and get out of college with a smaller debt burden than you otherwise would have.

These are the elements of a life-changing college experience. It’s not about chasing a perfect 4.0 or partying hard all the time. It’s about finding who you are, building the actual skills you’ll need over and over again in life, and finding the people and things that actually matter to you. Good luck.

Recently, I was browsing through some data from the U.S. Census when I stumbled upon a great table in the 2007 census data. On page 9 of this report, entitled Educational Attainment in the United States, one can find a very interesting table that describes the median earnings for workers aged 25 and over, sorted out by education.

For full time, year-round workers, here are the findings:

Workers without a high school diploma earn $24,964 a year on average.
Workers with just a high school diploma earn $32,862 a year on average.
Workers with some college and/or an associate’s degree earn $40,769 a year on average.
Workers with a bachelor’s degree earn $56,118 a year on average.
Workers with a higher degree earn $75,140 a year on average.

Note that these numbers include all types of degrees and also include all workers aged 25 and over, which means that the number includes a huge range of career paths and stages on those career paths.

But the numbers themselves are impressive.

Simply completing a high school diploma earns you $8,000 more a year (on average) for the rest of your life.
Getting an associate’s degree or completing trade school gets you $8,000 more a year (on average) for life beyond a high school diploma.
Getting a bachelor’s degree gets you $23,000 a year more (on average) for life beyond a high school diploma.
Getting a higher degree gets you $19,000 a year more (on average) beyond a bachelor’s degree and $42,000 a year more (on average) beyond a high school diploma.

Simply put, education is one of the best investments you can make for yourself. It drastically increases your earnings.

Hand in hand with that, however, is finding the right area of study for you.

Every job field is competitive and the people who have the most skills end up earning the best salary in their fields. The best way to build skills is to work with great passion doing something over and over again because you simply enjoy doing it.

Let’s take a look at a few specific careers for examples of this, using data from Payscale.com.

The average computer programmer earns between $38,764 and $62,916 – a $24,000 spread.
The average accountant earns between $35,574 and $51,518 – a $16,000 spread.
The average physical therapist earns between $57,983 and $76,298 – an $18,000 spread.

Those are just a few examples, but the pattern is clear – there’s a huge gap between the low end and the high end. Some of this is location based, but a great deal of the spread is competition-based – the best candidates get the best jobs. Even more important, it doesn’t include people who prepared for a career and didn’t make it, winding up in another field, often with lower pay.

Education is vital in terms of lifetime earnings. Knowing what to study – a field that matches your interests and talents – is just as vital. You’re far better off getting a degree and excelling in an area you’re passionate about than struggling to get a degree in an area that seems to earn more on paper but doesn’t fill you with passion at all.

This post goes out to all of the readers who are about to graduate from college (and from high school, for that matter) and are wondering what comes next (hopefully, you already know and have a plan for it, but if you do, you’re in the minority).

A few days ago, a college student I know was talking about his upcoming graduation. His plans mostly revolved around getting a good paying job, but he also talked about how he might go back to school some day and study a particular branch of philosophy that he truly loved studying and reading about.

I asked him why he was choosing to put a good paying job over a path that he was deeply personally passioante about that might not necessarily earn a great deal in the near future. He pretty much exploded, offering up a rant about how the world revolves around money and the only way he would ever be able to chase the dreams he has is if he has lots of income.

I couldn’t disagree more. Let me explain why.

First, the need for money in the bank comes down to what you’re responsible for. If you’re fresh out of college with nothing to your name but a car, you really don’t have that much that you’re responsible for. You don’t have a house. You don’t have a partner. You don’t have children. You don’t have an established career to protect.

You just have you, your dreams, your skills, and your potential. Nothing else.

Second, you don’t actually have a lot of day-to-day financial need, either. It’s perfectly normal and acceptable for a new graduate to live in a small apartment or a room in a house. Why? The rent is cheap. You can eat really cheap, too – just stock up on whatever fresh produce is on sale at the grocery store.

The big money that many people often believe they need is for stuff that they actually merely want, and it’s those wants that stand in the way of taking a leap towards a dream.

Thus, your income requirements are very low. You’re responsible for yourself. Just you. All you really need is a place to lay your head at night and food in your belly.

If you can’t find a job doing what you want to do, take on an internship. If you can’t find an internship, ask for one directly from the place you dream of working. If that doesn’t work, just start doing and sharing. Whatever it is you dream of doing, there’s an avenue out there to explore it and throw yourself in with your whole heart.

Since you don’t need much income, get a job sitting behind a counter at a gas station at night. Earn minimum wage and sit there with your notebook open, collecting your ideas and thoughts about whatever it is you want to do. Spend your mental and physical energy building the life you want.

There is no better time in your life to just throw caution to the wind and see where your passion will carry you than when you’re young and free of many responsiblities. If it doesn’t work, you’re not out anything much – maybe a few years, at worst. If it does work, you’ve opened the door to a lifetime of doing what you want to do.

What do you really have to lose? Not much. What do you have to gain? The life you dream of.

As I discussed yesterday in a pair of articles (this one and this one), I dream of a future where my children and I are completely financially independent from one another. I’m not dependent on them, nor are they dependent on me.

The real question that both articles strive to answer, though, is where should I put my money to ensure the best possible outcome for both me and my children? Retirement savings? College savings? Splitting it up?

In my eyes, the issue really comes down to the job every parent is charged with: raising a functional, critically thinking, independent child. If you are truly able to succeed in this regard throughout their childhood, you’re going to raise a child that doesn’t really need your help at all to succeed in the world.

In other words, if you take the time to really focus on parenting your kids in a way that makes them functionally independent and critically thinking adults, you don’t need to save for their education. They’ll be able to make their own way in the world without your financial support. Thus, you can channel almost all of your long-term savings into retirement savings so that you’re not a burden to them in whatever they wind up doing in life.

How do you do that?

Over the last five years, I’ve read a pile of books on the psychological needs of children and young adults, everything from Mindset and Born to Buy to The Read-Aloud Handbook and Raising Financially Fit Kids. I’ve come up with three basic conclusions.

First of all, praise children on their hard work, not their natural gifts. Focus on when they improve their results, not on when they simply succeed because of their talents.

Second, give them room to explore independently. Don’t hover. Don’t be paranoid about kidnapping. Send them out in the yard to explore things on their own, then when they’re done, ask them about it. The more independent exploration they do, the more resourceful they’ll become.

Finally, put them into challenging situations. Don’t protect them from failure. One of the most valuable childhood lessons is learning how to fail. What do you do next? You pick yourself back up and try again. If you go through childhood without knowing how to do this, adulthood becomes much, much harder.

If you are constantly conscious of these three things, you’re going to naturally mold your children to be self-reliant and independent. Those traits will serve them very well in whatever they choose to do in life, and because of that, you don’t need to hand them their education.

They’ll be able to make it themselves.

A final reason to save for retirement: if you do choose to help, retirement savings are usually flexible enough to allow you to help. You can often take out loans to help with education purposes from a 401(k), and you can take back your Roth contributions whenever you’d like to spend as you wish. If you decide that financial help is really needed, you can provide it with retirement savings.

So fund the 401(k) and the Roth IRA and don’t worry as much about the 529. Instead, focus your parental energies on being a parent that raises an independent and curious child.

Good luck.