@mackinaw
If you do not have any extended family members helping your kids for the high tuition, are you still willing to pay for the expensive top university in stead of in state tuition for the same major study and how?
Are you willing to pay or loan for the expensive ivy or top 20 schools instead of cheap state Univ.?
Yes, we would have been willing. Weâd have been able to cover that missing 25% of costs using loans. Or, in one case, our son could have accepted a much larger National Merit Scholarship ($10K) at one of the colleges he was admitted to, instead of the small one ($750!?) he was given at the college he actually attended.
I told my kids the same thing @blossom is saying - be open to cities beyond NYC, Boston, SF. Lots of smaller cities are great places to live and work and allow you to save.
D did summer internships in expensive cities and when it was time to get her first post grad job, she chose a small city with a great COL and a salary that will allow her to save significant parts of her income. She had offers in bigger cities, but didnât want to make the financial sacrifice to live there. I totally support that decision.
Some kids cannot be open to locations other than those local to their parentsâ home. Itâs a matter of finances. It costs money to relocate for a job. Not all jobs pay moving expenses. If your family is living on the edge already, where is that security deposit, moving expenses, etc etc coming from?
A lot of kids live with their parents after college, back in the old neighborhood Where their work Dollar can go further and they can save some money , buy a needed car maybe, get back into the swing of things with old acquaintances to get a line on an apartment or room share. You need a ride, your computer dies on you, need this or that, there are friends and family to tap. The next popular venue is in the old college âhoodâ if the kid went away to school. Maybe he already is living off campus so just has to continue the rent stream and he has some support, an infra structure there
My youngest has a friend who was on full financial aid. Kid is back home with parents. Couldnât accept any job offers. Had to pay for his parents â plane tickets so they could go to his graduation; they stayed in his apartment there, grazed on the schools many food events that weekend. He owes over $50k in loans, parents go turned down for PLUS so he got the extended amounts. Used some of it to pay family expected contribution. Jobs he got require a car, a place to liveâdeposits, the move, credit etc, all that he does not have. But parents can give him 3 Squares and a cot, use of family vehicles, help out here and there where they can and they know a lot of people here. So he took a job local to his parentsâ home and will take a little longer getting his own place.
Canât get much higher of a COL here but for him, personal COL is lower, s lot lower. And heâs s lucky one since the NYZ market is not exactly limiting in terms of jobs and opportunity. If his family were in some area that is economically depressed that way, it would really be a set back
I can relate to that too @cptofthehouse - I also came back to NYC to my parentsâ place for awhile. As it happened they moved and I got the place, so stayed. And at a much lower cost than I could have gotten on my own.
Fortunate that D got relocation and a signing bonus to cover those startup expenses. I was not offered any of that when I went out into the work world. Could never have afforded nyc without the family place.
Re: #203, #204
Yet another example of how parental circumstances and choices are an âinheritanceâ that can give a young adult a substantial advantage or disadvantage (this time in the case of how much choice one has in taking an entry-level job).
Re: #205 - The same parental circumstances determine the possibility of going to college at all, to a large degree, and also its cost. Kids canât choose their family income/assets either.
This may not apply directly but perhaps a portion of the debt crisis is due to this topic and the inability of parents to say ânoâ?
Parents are largely to blame for the student loan crisis
https://nypost.com/2019/07/01/parents-are-largely-to-blame-for-the-student-loan-crisis/
^I read the article and found it smug and superficial. It makes many assumptions about the families in question that probably donât apply in most cases where students are buried in debt. If the author is actually interested in the topic beyond patting himself on the back for his own wisdom, he should spend some time on CC and understand that he lives in a pretty small bubble.
Same kind of thoughtâŠperhaps these come off as smug to some and I get that. Having said that, parents donât tell their kids no where I live. They tell them to get into the âbestâ college they can and we will find a way to pay for it when perhaps an instate school would work just as well as a private or out of state (state) school for the intended course of study. Just reminds me of the real-estate crisis of a decade ago.
Why Iâm puzzled by Americaâs student debt crisis
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2019/7/16/20696416/student-loan-debt-cancellation-economic-policy-kadner
Hincker: The student loan crisis debt starts with an individual decision
https://www.roanoke.com/opinion/commentary/hincker-the-student-loan-crisis-debt-starts-with-an-individual/article_df18f1dd-baaf-556e-bdda-d7e6a9910b76.html
@Joblue I think parentâs inability to say âNOâ is just one of many causes of the college debt crises. Yes, I do think itâs a reason many kids and families take on too much debt, but there are a lot of other reasons as well.
We were upfront with our kids about what we could and could not afford. And for our kids it wasnât Harvard vs Michigan or Yale vs Virginia or UCLA vs MITâŠ
@ucbalumnus I like what you said in post #205. I like to call it the birth lottery. And there are levels to it. On Sunday I was shopping with D19 for dorm stuff. Mom was sick so I got stuck with the job. We dropped about $300 that day for stuff. It got me thinking about what I brought with me to college 29 years ago. It wasnât much. A friend gave me a old old TV. I had a boom box as well. I had most of my stuff in milk crates that were stolen from the grocery store. And I had a Bud Light sign from my brother. Heck I think I used the sheets that the school provided. No mattress pad.
I would think some kids just show up with stuff they have at home and not new stuff. Dad drove 13 hours dropped me off at school and basically turned around and came home the next day. And just like that I was on my own.
I read on FB on the parent group for D19 that people who are 3-4 hours away are staying over during move-in time. I know because they are looking for hotels. Not us we are 4.5 hours away and it will be a one day round trip.
Son received a full tuition scholarship to a state university and was full pay at an Ivy. A top business school Ivy. We elected the Ivy business school and have not regretted it one iota. He has received opportunities, internships, and job offers in the banking/ private equity industry that would be closed to him coming from a state university. It is not even a question in certain business fields. We havenât regretted the full pay Ivy whatsoever.
Did you take $50,000 a year in loans for your kid to attend that Ivy? That is what this OP is asking about.
Your kid had fabulous opportunities at his Ivy, but you donât know what opportunities he would have had at his state university because he never went there.
We also sent our kids to expensive private universities, but we did NOT take out any loans beyond the student Direct Loans to do so. In other words, we didnât take out $50,000 a year in loans.
@thumper1
Yes, we did take loans out. Also, I do actually have an idea about what opportunities he would have had at his state university bc my first son attended that state university. Both are top students. Son at the state university has not had the opportunities remotely that said ivy student has had. Not even close. Its probably more of a factor in certain career fields.
@runswimyoga, you cosigned $200k of loans for one of your kids? Did you have to borrow for the other one too?
Probably a bit off topic but re the âbirth lotteryâ, itâs up to both parties. Parents who have means and want to be involved by making so many opportunities available certainly give their kids an advantage. However, the kid has to want to take advantage of all those opportunities. Just because M&D are willing to pay (SAT prep, college coach, summer immersive programs, expensive college, room and board in expensive city for internship, etc.) doesnât mean the kid is going to max out on the value of the opportunities.
When the kid is willing and able, itâs definitely a big advantage. As we speak, D is at a college audition camp for musical theater. Itâs expensive. Itâs providing her valuable info on both the overall audition process and showing her what she really needs to work on to prepare for this uber competitive journey. In workshops with some of the top MT schools in the country, practice auditions, etc. We would have done the equivalent for S (sports related) but he wasnât overly motivated to pursue a future in that.
It may not be fair, but having means CAN certainly affect outcomes. I like to think that ultimately the cream rises, but the extra boost early on certainly helps.
In the case of Wharton at Penn or some other top school with a kid that wants to go to Wall Street it may be worth the risk of taking substantial loans. As is the case described in #215 it afforded the student with great opportunities. The student hopefully will be paying back the parentâs loans with a fat Wall Street pay check. The cost/benefit for that specific situation may be worth it. Some of those firms only recruit from tippy top schools. For most other majors or occupations, taking out big loans is much more risky. Even for a tippy top school, there is no guarantee the student will end up with the big job and find it difficult to help pay back the loan. As in most questions on these boards, individual situations will vary.
In fact the thread is called âAre you willing to pay or loan for the expensive ivy or top 20 schools instead of cheap state Univ.?â
I assume that means one or the other, or a combination of the two.