Essentials College Savings Calculator Spreadsheet Template for Google Sheets & Excel

Everything the projection reads, in one place: the child's age now and at college start, the tuition today with an inflation rate and a number of years, what is already saved with a monthly contribution and an expected return, and an estimate of annual scholarship aid. The results underneath run from the position to what to do about it. The total projected cost - an inflating series, so the later years cost more than the first. What the savings will have become by the first day. What scholarships take off. The gap between them, floored at zero rather than reporting a negative shortfall when the plan is ahead. Then the monthly contribution that would close that gap, and how much of the whole cost is funded already. That monthly figure is the one worth having. It is a contribution compounding at the return you set over the years remaining, rather than the gap divided by the number of months - which is why it comes out lower than the plain division, and why it moves so sharply with the child's age. The scholarship line is worth using even as a guess. Left at zero it makes the gap look larger than the likely outcome; set to something honest it makes the number a family can actually work with. What it should be is nobody else's call.

A row per year from the child's current age through the last year of college, each with the balance it started at, the contributions, the growth, the cost that year, and the balance it ended with. Running the table through college rather than stopping at eighteen is the part that changes the answer. A fund is not spent on the first day; it keeps earning while it is being drawn down, and four years of that is not a rounding error. A calculator that stops at the door overstates what is needed. Rows beyond the horizon blank themselves rather than filling with zeros, so a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old both get a table the right length.

Six figures read from the sheets beneath. The total cost for all college years, the balance today and what it becomes by college start on the top row; the gap left after savings and scholarships, the monthly contribution that would close it, and how much of the whole cost is funded on the second. The required monthly figure is the one to read last and act on first. Everything above it describes the position; that one says what closing it would take, worked out as a contribution compounding at the return you set rather than the gap divided by the months. Two charts: a line running the savings balance against the cost as it accumulates, and a pie splitting the funding into what the fund covers, what scholarships cover and what is left over.