A 312.4% real climb in tuition since 1963 pushes advisors to fund retirement first

Compound 312.4% over the 62 years from 1963 to 2025 and it comes to about 2.3% a year above inflation ^[19]. Run that forward across the eighteen years between a birth and a first tuition bill and the target rises about 51% in real terms ^[20]. The Education Data Initiative's figure for the period since 2010 is 0.92%, reported without saying whether that is a yearly rate or the whole period ^[3][23]. Read as annual, it lifts the same eighteen-year target by about 18% ^[21].

The order of operations is where the advisors converge. "It's really an analysis of the details, the facts and circumstances of each case," said John Pantekidis, general counsel and a managing partner at the Boston registered investment advisor TwinFocus ^[18][8]. He starts with the parents. "To me, it's more important that mom and dad's retirement is fully funded, especially if they're older, especially if they're not as healthy, where they can't work as much," he said ^[7]. "How about if the kids now don't want to help mom and dad?" Pantekidis asked ^[9].

Mitchell Kraus, who co-founded the Santa Monica registered investment advisor Capital Intelligence Associates with his father, put the constraint in cash terms ^[6]. "A lot of Americans have enough money to do anything they want but not everything they want, and there have to be some tough choices," he said ^[5]. He tells clients to start the college conversation while the children are young ^[11]. He also thinks the purchase itself goes unexamined: "In general, all of us are on autopilot way more than we should be, and we should be questioning decisions, especially a decision that is, at minimum, three or four years of one life and ... easily tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars" ^[16].

Funding retirement first assumes the student's borrowing is repayable out of later earnings. Poodiack names the case where it is not: children who enroll without knowing their goals can finish saddled with debt and hoping family members will help support them ^[15]. For the money that does get saved, the standard vehicle advisors recommend is the 529 plan, whose allowable uses have been expanded over the years although limitations remain ^[17].

The evidence supports the retirement-first order for a family in this gray zone, because the tuition gap can be borrowed against ^[15] and the retirement gap can only be asked for ^[9]. The post-2010 number is what would undercut it. If 0.92% a year is the durable trend, the distance between what parents can save over a childhood and what schools charge is a smaller planning problem than the six-decade series implies ^[3]. At 2.3% a year in real terms, the bill doubles about every thirty years ^[25].