re: Best financial gift for a baby?

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What makes those states 529s better than the others?

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Preface: I am a TX resident and a relative newbie to this stuff. I gathered data on 92 different 529s and college savings plans, but I gave high preference to 529s specifically, and also to anything with direct enrollment (since I didn't want to fuss with an advisor on this).

90% of all plans are pretty much identical. What it really boiled down to for me were the following factors.

The best performing plans over the last 10 years tended to have Vanguard underlying funds. This includes OH, LA, and NY (and UT as someone else mentioned). Vanguard was the underlying funds on about half of all plans, and most states give you several choices of funds based on your risk tolerance that can be swapped as the beneficiary gets closer to college age.

Fees. Some plans nickel and dime you on enrollment, account maintenance, and program maintenance. UT, OH, NY, and AK have no enrollment or account fees, and low (relatively speaking) program fees (ranging from .05 to .14). I generally found that direct enrollment plans had lower fees than advisor plans (which is why I gave such high preference to direct plans).

LA's plan is the only one in the country that doesn't have *any* fees. It costs nothing but your time to set up and hold with them.

Very few programs do matching but some do offer enrollment incentives. They're usually very modest ($250 is the highest I remember), but I'm not gonna argue against free money. AK offers this for the first 1,000 or so enrollees each year.

If there's enough interest I'd be happy to dump the workbook I built into Google Sheets or something. All of the information is available online, but most websites only let me compare two plans at a time. A workbook let me see the whole picture.

EDIT: I should mention one big caveat that LA's plan does require state residency for at least one of the account holder or the beneficiary (not every state has residency requirements that are this strict). Given that this is an LSU message board though I expect it won't be a problem for many of us (including OP).

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I'm definitely interested in the information you put together! I'm weighing the pros and cons of different investment vehicles now.

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same

Sure thing fellas. When I have a moment I'll start a new topic and link the workbook in there. BOLO.

Topic's up here.

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First birthday is around the corner, just wanting to set $1000 aside in something relatively safe that will grow and can be accessed when baby turns 18. Not necessarily earmarked for college. Still setup 529? Buy savings bonds? Open HYSA? Open 2 year CD with plan to constantly re-open? Invest in mutual fund or etf? Any advice is welcome, and open to any other suggestions as well. If it matters, I’m in Texas and baby is in Louisiana.

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Lifetime hunting licenses for Texas and Louisiana