Enter today's annual cost, how many years until enrollment, years of school, and an assumed college cost inflation rate to project the total bill.
Most people inflate the sticker price up to the year their child starts, and stop there. That understates the bill badly, because costs keep rising during the degree as well.
Take the values this page opens with: $25,000 a year today, enrolment in ten years, a four-year course, 5% annual college inflation.
Stopping at the enrolment-year figure and multiplying by four would give $162,889 — roughly $12,600 short. The final year alone costs $6,400 more than the first.
The single most consequential number on this page is the one that feels like a detail. Run the same scenario at 3% — general inflation rather than college inflation — and the four-year total falls to $140,561.12. A two-percentage-point change in an assumption moves the answer by nearly $35,000.
That is more than any realistic difference between the schools you are choosing between, which is why the honest way to use this tool is to run it three times — at 3%, 5% and 7% — and plan against the range rather than the middle. A projection quoted to the cent from a single guessed rate is false precision.
To have the whole $175,518.49 in hand by enrolment day, saving monthly for ten years at a 6% return, you would need to put aside about $1,071 a month.
For most families that number is the point at which the plan changes rather than the savings rate does — and that is a useful thing for a calculator to tell you early. The realistic responses are to cover a share rather than all of it, to start earlier so compounding does more of the work, to include the student's own contribution from work or loans, or to widen the list of schools. Knowing the figure ten years out leaves all four options open; discovering it in the final year of school leaves only the last two.
This projects the published cost of attendance. It does not net off financial aid, scholarships, grants or tuition discounting — and at many institutions the published price is not what most families pay, with the difference between sticker and net price frequently large. Treat the result as the gross bill you are planning against, then subtract whatever aid you can realistically evidence.
It also models saving in a plain account. It does not apply the tax treatment of a 529 or equivalent, where investment growth compounds untaxed and qualified withdrawals are tax-free — which meaningfully reduces the monthly figure above. Use the investment calculator to model the growth side, and the inflation calculator to sanity-check the cost assumption against general price rises.
College tuition and fees have historically risen faster than the general Consumer Price Index for extended stretches, driven by factors like rising administrative costs, facilities investment, and reduced state funding at public institutions. That's exactly why this calculator uses its own adjustable college cost inflation rate rather than borrowing a general inflation assumption from elsewhere.
Once you have a projected total cost from this calculator, take that number to the Savings Goal Calculator to work backward into a required monthly savings amount that gets you there by your enrollment year, factoring in any expected investment growth along the way.
No — this projects the gross sticker price only, before any financial aid, scholarships, grants, or tuition discounts are applied. Actual out-of-pocket cost for many families ends up meaningfully lower than the sticker price, so treat this figure as a worst-case planning number rather than the expected final bill.
No — this tool only projects future college cost; it doesn't model 529 plan contributions, tax advantages, or investment growth on savings. Pair the total cost figure produced here with a dedicated savings or investment calculator to plan out actual 529 contribution amounts.
Worked example: a college costing $25,000 a year today, 10 years before enrollment, at an assumed 5% annual cost inflation rate, will cost $40,722.37 in the first year of enrollment. Across 4 years of school with the same inflation rate compounding each year, the total cost comes to $175,518.49, or an average of $43,879.62 per year.
Ready to plan the savings to get there? See the Savings Goal Calculator. If borrowing will cover part of the cost, the Student Loan Calculator shows the monthly payment that debt turns into, and the Income-Driven Repayment Calculator compares RAP against IBR if that payment looks unaffordable on a graduate salary. For a longer view of how the 2026 rules changed, read what replaced SAVE, PAYE and ICR.