Prepaid Tuition Program

And you get a 529, and you get a 529, and you get a 529!

Well, if you want one. Oprah’s not paying for it.

A 529 plan is a government tax-break-type savings plan for education savings. You could make one for yourself, a spouse, a kid—up to you. Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, 529 plans have been extended from higher education to include K-12, too.
There are two types of 529 plans, and one is the prepaid tuition program (the other is a "savings plan"). The prepaid tuition program allows a donor to fund the recipient’s education beforehand (ergo the "prepaid" part).

The cool thing about it? The amount that goes into the prepaid tuition program is guaranteed to grow in tandem with college tuition. College costs doubled? So does the amount that was prepaid for you in your prepaid tuition program.

This is a BFD, no joke. Real college costs (i.e. adjusted for inflation) have been rising faster than inflation, food costs, housing costs, etc. With the prepaid tuition program, donors can lock in today’s real price of college, even as it continues to rise steeply into the future. That’s more than most liquid investments can say, which generally have trouble keeping up with inflation.