NEW YORK

There’s $30,000 sitting in Ellen Anthony’s 529 college savings plan. But she's not touching any of it to pay for her daughter's freshman year this fall.

“I’m not interested in taking a loss,” said Anthony, a 42-year-old registered nurse who’s working overtime instead to pay tuition.

Even though her daughter’s 529 plan is age-based — meaning its mix of investments is designed to grow more conservative as enrollment nears — the plan’s value is 6 percent less than her total contributions. So Anthony, a single mother in South Weber, Utah, decided to postpone taking distributions, in hopes the portfolio will recover for her daughter’s final years in school.

Her daughter, Jillian, also picked Stonehill College in Massachusetts, which offered generous financial aid, and enrolled in a work-study program.

As the volatile market chips away at 529 portfolios, some families are learning age-based plans vary in asset mix, with some more heavily invested in stocks than others.

A 529 plan lets families set aside money for college, including tuition, fees, books and room and board. Distributions are tax-free. Each state offers its own menu of portfolios. You can buy into any state's plan, but there are usually tax benefits to picking one from home.

Age-based plans typically spread assets over a mix of stocks, bonds and short-term investments or money market accounts. As the child grows older, the plan automatically shifts a larger percentage of the funds out of stocks into more stable investments that bear less risk.

Anthony’s Utah plan, for example, moved from a 20 percent to a 15 percent exposure to stocks in the final years before her daughter enrolled in college. One reason her plan’s value is worth less than her contributions is that she only opened the account a few years ago.

There are a range of options for a student four years away from college. Plans offered by T. Rowe Price keep 40 percent of assets in equities, while one plan at Vanguard for a child the same age has 25 percent in stocks.