Chloe and Adam live in Park Slope with their three-year-old daughter, Annie. Adam works as a researcher for a television network, and Chloe is a writer; their income fluctuates between about $120,000 and $150,000 a year. That’s enough to cover monthly mortgage and maintenance payments ($2,150), school loans ($300), preschool ($1,000) and miscellaneous expenses ($1,000), with some left over for savings. Currently, Chloe and Adam have about $35,000 in retirement accounts and another $30,000 in a high-interest savings account. “We’re generally good at saving, but right now we’re spending a lot on preschool and about $20,000 is going toward adopting a child,” says Chloe. She figures that next year, with Annie in a public pre-K, they hope, and a lot of the adoption expenses reimbursed (through a tax credit and an adoption benefit at Adam’s work), they’ll be able to sock away more money. But it still won’t go to college funds. “Our plan is to save up for a two-family house—we’d live on two floors and rent out a floor—and also hang on to our current apartment as a rental. I feel like you can’t go wrong with real estate in this city over the long term, and two rental properties would provide retirement income and equity we could borrow against to pay for college,” Chloe says. Grandparents occasionally contribute to Annie’s 529, “but it’s a low priority for us. College is so ludicrously expensive that putting away $500 here or there seems like spitting in the wind.”

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