The higher their own debt, the more likely they are to start saving early for their children's college educations.

That's according to data from social investing platform Collegebacker.com, which helps parents set up 529 plans for their kids and recruit friends and family for contributions. In the survey of parents, millennials were 43 percent more likely than boomers to start saving before their kids hit 5, and 24 percent more likely than Gen Xers.

It's not just the challenges presented by college debt, though; it's the sheer immensity of it. The survey revealed that millennials are driven by additional factors including the rising cost of an education, which a recent Vanguard report said is expected to grow to $200,000 for a 4-year public college and could total more than $500,000 for private schools by 2035—another good reason to start early.

Just going by Collegebacker's own 529 signups, 60 percent of families who enrolled in a college savings plan did so when their kids were age 2 or under, and nearly 1 in 5 before their child was even born. Millennials were also more apt to go after family and friends to help them save, hitting them up through the tools provided on the website to contribute to the college account. In fact, that money, termed “circle funding,” adds up to $3 out of every $10 in Collegebacker accounts.

And the tougher millennials have had it with their own college debt, those are the very people likely to jump on the savings bandwagon early. According to the report, among millennial parents who reported “very” to “extreme” college debt challenges: 67 percent said they were saving or planned to start saving before their child reached the age of 5; out of those, 31 percent said they would save, or were saving, before their child was even born.

Among those who said their college debt challenges were moderate or did not exist, only 56 percent said they'd save or had started saving when their child hit age 5 or earlier; just 8 percent did so before the child was born.

Millennials, by the way, were 45 percent more likely than boomers to characterize their college debt burden as “very” or “extremely” challenging.

“Millennials understand better than GenX or … boomer parents the crippling effect of college debt and are making sacrifices early to spare their own children that kind of misery,” said CollegeBacker founder and CEO Jordan Lee.

Boomers, for their part, were 2.5 times more likely to say there was “no need” to save for college, at 25 percent compared with just 10 percent of millennials.

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Millennial parents already saving for kids' college

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