People spend money on all sorts of things. I drive the worst car out of any of my colleagues. The one who is always complaining about money just traded up to a new BMW when her lease was up. People take cruises, buy their kids cars for their 17th birthday, wear sneakers which cost crazy amounts of money, upgrade their phones the second a new one comes out and brag that they are now spending more money on cellphone/data plans than their parents pay for a mortgage.
What does it mean for something to be “worth it”? My neighbor who told her kids “you can join the army and pay your way through the GI bill, or commute to the local branch of the state college system” because she wouldn’t sell the ski condo or the beach house? To her, it wasn’t worth it. To me it was worth every penny but with a few caveats- my kids took full advantage of their college experiences (and not just academic- going to political debates when heads of state showed up on campus; gallery openings, music premiers of a friends concerto) so I never felt I was subsidizing a four year beer pong; I stayed in the work force full time once I had kids so having two incomes gave us financial choices that a one income or limited income family just doesn’t have; I had kids young so that once we were done paying for college we still had lots of years to save for retirement. And my health- thank god. No divorce- more gratitude.
Everyone’s circumstances are different, but boy, even the posters who say “no college education is worth X” whatever X is- I bet you spend money on something that your friends or parents or siblings think “wow, who would pay for that?”