Ultimate College Savings Calculator Spreadsheet Template for Google Sheets & Excel

A name per child, for up to three, with any unused ones left blank. Everything downstream reads what is entered here. Planning for more than one at once is the reason this build exists rather than running the file separately for each. Several children are not independent problems: they share a household contribution, and their college years may overlap or may not. Seeing every set of numbers on one dashboard is what makes that visible.

The years of college you set on Setup - four by default, up to eight per child - each with how far away it is, the tuition at today's prices, the inflation factor that applies to it, and what it is projected to cost - with a cumulative column beside. Splitting the cost onto its own sheet with the inflation factor shown is what makes the total arguable rather than magic. The factor is visible, so anyone reading it can see exactly what assumption produced the number and change it.

Up to 22 years per child - however many stand between today and college - with the balance at the start, the annual contribution, the growth and the balance at the end. It is the fund's side of the same story the cost sheet tells.

Three account types side by side at college start: a 529, a taxable brokerage account and an UTMA or UGMA. For each: the gross balance, what was contributed, the taxable gains, the rate applied, the tax owed at withdrawal and what is left after it. Every figure reads Child 1's inputs on the Setup sheet and runs the same future-value chain the projection sheet uses, so changing a contribution or a return moves this sheet with the rest of the workbook. The two tax rates are Setup cells as well. The notes beneath state how each account is treated rather than which to use - tax-free qualified withdrawals, long-term capital gains bands, the kiddie-tax window, and the penalty on non-qualified earnings. Which account suits a family depends on things a spreadsheet does not know.

What the monthly figure has to be, worked back from the gap rather than forward from what you happen to be saving. It is the sheet to open when the dashboard shows a gap and the question becomes what to do about it.

Six figures across the top - the projected cost for every child, the savings they will have at eighteen, the gap between them, the extra monthly contribution that would close it, how much of the whole cost is already covered, and the years until the earliest of them starts - then a row per child (up to three): age, years to college, projected cost, savings at eighteen, the gap and the monthly figure needed. That strip is the whole plan, which is the point - everything else in the workbook exists to produce those numbers.