S/O: If you have college savings for your kids

We have 529 plans for our children's education. They can't withdraw money from that plan, not that it matters right now though, they're too young to be mobile haha

Yes, they all have accounts in their names.

The girls both have savings accounts in their names and 529 plans. 

Both of my kids had investment accounts in their names that also had my name on them. But we couldn't withdraw the money and use it unless we could prove it was used on them, since it was in the name as a custodial account. (or something like that LOL)

I know what you mean about withdrawing money from kids accounts though. My mother had set up a savings account for my youngest nephew when he was alive and would routinely deposit money in there for him (small amounts) for him to use later for college. One time when she deposited some, she checked the balance and it was $0. After that she didn't do it anymore because she knew the parents were just taking it out and spending it.

My girls have savings accounts that I'm on, and when we did have a PACT plan, the account was designated for that child (it still had to be under my name).  One of our older DDs was taking a dual-enrollment course (where she was both a high school & college student) this year, and I did have to use her savings to pay her college tuition. 

We never really had an account specifically for college. When the girls saved their money, it went into an account in their name for their use.  They used it to buy their cars.  We did have a savings put away for college, but it was in our names.  We decided against the 529 plans in case they didn't go to college.  We wanted control over the money we saved.

529 plan and investments.

 

Depending on the amount of money, the student shouldn't have straight savings in their name. You don't want to push the adult child into having to pay taxes if they aren't otherwise working, just because they have interest income. Or you might want the account in the adult child's name because if they file taxes, it could be at a lower tax rate.

 

However, I'm not inclined to gift young adults any unrestricted money. They just aren't ready. I've seen parents turn over the college fund to their responsible adult child only to find that the child doesn't go to college and blows through the money instead.

the inlaws set up accounts for both kids when they were born and put money into them for their educations( they are DH parents only two grandchildren).

every year they show us and the kids how much is in them so we know.

when the time comes they will take the kid to the bank( kid has to bring I.D. to show it is them) and they will get the money transferred or paid cash out to put on tuition.

We have a savings acct attached to ours that is labeled as zach's money. We don't touch it except to put more into it. It's not specifically for college since we can't put that much into it but if he wanted a car, was going on a school trip to europe (just in case lol, both me and dh did) or anything else special he needs  it for. We don't plan on just giving him the money when he is a certain age.