Blame it on Gen Y still digging out of from mounds of college debt or perhaps having other financial priorities at their young age, but a recent survey of financial advisors found that millennials are the least-receptive client cohort when it comes to pursuing college savings strategies.
In the small-sample-size survey conducted last month by Private College 529 Plan during the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors’s spring conference in Phoenix, 44 financial advisors split their vote on which was the most receptive audience to college planning—22 went for baby boomers and 22 for Gen X. Just one advisor voted for millennials as the most receptive.
The number of survey respondents represented roughly 10 percent of advisors at the conference, according to St. Louis-based Private College 529 Plan, which is owned by nearly 300 private colleges and universities nationwide that are collectively known as the Tuition Plan Consortium LLC. The plan offers prepaid tuition that can be used at any current—or future—consortium member. OFI Private Investments Inc., a subsidiary of OppenheimerFunds Inc. is the program manager.
Elsewhere in the survey, 61 percent of the advisors said the overall $1.4 trillion student loan debt has dampened clients’ interest in opening a 529 account. That’s up slightly from 57 percent when the same question was asked at the Napfa conference in 2012.
Bob Cole, president of Private College 529 Plan, notes that millennial parents are still paying down their own student loan debt, which accounts for their seeming lack of interest in developing a college savings plan.
Nonetheless, all of the survey participants said they recommend 529s to their clients who’ve expressed an interest in saving for their children's postsecondary education.