In 2015, CollegeAdvantage celebrated its 25th anniversary. In honor of this milestone, many longtime account owners shared their Saving Stories and how using CollegeAdvantage helped them achieve their goals. We are fortunate to have these encouraging stories of how families prioritized their children’s higher education and are sharing them again.

We saved up for college for all three of our children through CollegeAdvantage. We value education and knew this was a priority for us to help with our kids’ education. Our biggest tip for others is to save each month and to ask grandparents to help contribute. Each year, instead of lots of Christmas gifts which the kids played with only briefly, grandparents would buy some special gift plus give into the account. Those gift contributions made a world of difference and also encouraged us as parents to continue to put away as much as we could each time.

All three kids chose to go to private colleges that matched them perfectly. We could have never afforded to give them that opportunity without the money we had in CollegeAdvantage. One daughter attended the University of Findlay, then OSU and is now a practicing veterinarian. Our other attended Malone University and is now a teacher. Our son attended Valparaiso University, the seminary and is now an ordained Lutheran pastor. We are proud of all of them.

We now have three grandkids, each with their college saving plans. Within the first year of their births, their parents started the fund knowing how much it made a difference for them. Of course, we continue the grandparent tradition of giving gift contributions to their accounts. We put money back monthly for each of their plans and at Christmas time we make a contribution for each of them. Like our families gift contributions inspired us to keep saving toward this worthy goal, we are now supporting our children doing the same for their little loved ones.

CollegeAdvantage made a major difference for the education in our family.

Bill and Jeanie Wise

Edon, Ohio