(This sketch is by Joe Mercadante)

Around this time last year, I wrote an article highlighting ideas for paying for your child’s college education. One of the best strategies to pay for college is to actually investing in rental real estate. This will be an update including the steps we’ve used ourselves.
1. When our daughters were very young, we decided to buy rental properties in order to fund their monthly college savings plans. We bought these homes with mortgages and our goal was to create $250 a month of positive cashflow for each of them after paying taxes, insurance, and the mortgage payment. This $250 a month would be invested into a brokerage account for their future college expenses. We followed this plan for years and over time their college savings compounded slowly. During this time the savings account for my oldest daughter grew to a little under $60,000. This included the $250 monthly contributions and the increase in market value of the various investments.

$250 invested per month turned into $60,000 in 16 years.

2. Last year, when my oldest daughter was a sophomore in high school, we used $40,000 of her college savings to buy a single-family rental home for cash. This home is within 2 miles from our home. It was a foreclosure and we needed to invest another $5,000 to make repairs, paint, and install new flooring. After completing the renovations, she was left with around $15,000 in her college savings account… read more

Source: Compounding in Action | Innovative Investing & Business Building Ideas