Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? I have a suggestion that may allow you to take care of the kids on your list with the click of a button. One financial expert I recently interviewed had a suggestion so ingenious, I’ve already done it for my kids. You can give your grandchildren, nieces and nephews the gift of investing in their future. And parents, now is the time to set it up. I’m talking about your kids’ 529 College Savings Plan.

As parents, we all remember the moment we held that little one in our arms. At that point in parenting, moms and dads are worried about the basics like if your little one is getting enough to eat. Is she sleeping through the night, and just how do you master swaddling without one of those fancy, schmancy Velcro, zipper-fastened, $30 doohickies? But beyond the basics, this is the time to set up your kids’ 529 savings plan because in the blink of an eye, that kid is going from the cradle to college.

Even if you didn’t start early, starting today is better than not doing it at all. The informational site Saving for College gives New York’s 529 plan five out of five stars because it’s free to set up, requires no minimum contribution and makes it easy to contribute.

I spoke with the leaders of a site called backer.com. That site allows friends and family to easily contribute to your kids’ plan with the click of a button.

Jordan Lee, CEO of Backer.com: “We make it even more powerful to make it easy not just for you to contribute, but you can also get the grandparents involved contributing, the uncles, the aunties, everyone that cares about your kid can show that they care by becoming their backer.”

Deanna Dewberry:  “There are a lot of parents who would say, ‘Gosh, rather than giving them a toy, I’d love for you to contribute to the 529.’ Explain how that works.”

Lee: “What we’ve tried to do at backer is make it really, really easy. So, just like you’re used to doing an e-commerce transaction on Aamazon.com or you want to use your credit card, or you want to use apple pay, or google pay. So, what Backer has done is we’ve kind of innovated the contribution methods so that you can give a gift using whatever payment methods you want.”

The big advantage of a 529 account is that it’s invested tax-free. And here in New York, we get tax deductions on our state taxes for our 529 contributions. Also here in New York, friends and family can contribute directly to your child’s account using a Ugift link.  Click here for instructions for how to do that.

All you, as a parent, have to do is send out the link. The hope, of course, is that we can all pay for college with just a little help from friends and family.