<prompt> Human: Hey there PF. Longtime lurker first-time poster. Want to get some perspective on saving for my future kids college. Im 24 and make 100K year with salary bonus. Not trying to brag. I work in banking so I earn every bit of it with my hours, plus I live in an expensive NE city. One of my goals is to send my future kids to a good college even if I have to pay sticker price for it. Im willing to make sacrifices to do so. I like to think I have my finances in order: max Roth IRA, standard IRA, health and life insurance, emergency fund. Any excess cash of which there is little I want to save for 1 a home down payment and 2 kids college. My goal is to keep the funds in a low-risk fund and then transfer the money to a 529 plan when the kids are born.Im not planning on having kids for at least 5 years. I ran a calculation on a generic financial planning site and, assuming a 6.0 rate or so, Id need to save about 1500 a month for 18 years to pay sticker price for the estimated cost of a 4 year private college. My question: how the fck do people do this? It seems like such an absurd amount that is just really unfeasible if you assume modest salary increases. Does anyone have a story of success in this regard? The way I think about it now is that I should just focus on my career and increasing my income so that I will be in a more comfortable position to afford it. I think its just frustrating to know that making a comfortable salary and taking all the right steps doesnt make college that much more attainable. Its very daunting. Some perspective would help.  <response>: Best thing you can do now for your kids financial future is for you to be financially sound and taken care of well into retirement. Best thing you can do when they grow up is to teach them responsibility early on.My parents did neither - I graduated with minimal student loans, despite them not helping out which I did not expect nor need, yet now I have an additional stress of wondering how they will be taken care of in the last years of their life. I have no clue how Im going to approach it and it scares the shit out of me.Anyways, I think youre being ridiculous with your desire to save to pay sticker price for future kids at a private college. Certainly save up what you can to help them out, but not at the cost of your own financial future. Who knows what the cost of college will be in the future, and having a nest egg set aside for them to go wherever and get whatever degree they want encourages bad behaviors at best and sets them up for a lifetime unrealistic expectations at worst. 