<p>You forget that it doesn’t have to all be in dollars or in the United States. 5K-guy can’t go overseas, and is totally exposed if the economy starts to collapse. 5M-guy can hedge in a variety of ways.</p>
<p>I have CDs in other countries. You can get CDs in other countries. You can go overseas with $5K too. Look at the EW* series of ETFs.</p>
<p>Hedging is a bet made in the opposite direction of your primary bet. If you’re not sure of your bet in the first place and need to hedge it, should you have made your primary bet? Or should you just reduce it? One can hedge this way and that way until you totally confuse yourself. And a lot of hedge funds have gone belly-up in the last two years.</p>
<p>When you hedge, you also make a counterparty bet. If your counterparty goes under, you have no hedges. Except for maybe the US government. If it feels generous to your counterparty.</p>
<p>Yep I’m with you, my parents AGI is around 925k. Get loans, they are helpful especially with the boarding school and 100k college.</p>
<p>The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html]washingtonpost.com[/url”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html]washingtonpost.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>I suppose BCEagle91 would call this rubbish, too.</p>
<p>I read the first 5 odd pages of this thread before skipping, obviously its gone off topic a bit but I just wanted to put my two cents in… </p>
<p>I came to this thread trying to find out FAFSA information as I’m currently filling it out for aid and I dunno, but making nearly a half mil a year is doing pretty damn good. I really don’t see the struggle considering that as of right now I’m freaking out wondering if I’m good for grants because my dad make less than 35k a year and my mother is on disability and is unable to work. </p>
<p>So reading the responses from the “privileged” really ****ed me off considering what has set be back from finally going to college was the costs involved.</p>
<p>Maybe people need to actually look at life from those in lower middle class instead of pointing fingers at the unfortunate and blaming them for “not doing well in life”</p>
<p>Anyway, first post – Hi everyone, Now I’m gonna find my FAFSA answers XD</p>
<p>Merkypie, you will very likely be eligible for financial aid. If your parents fill out the FAFSA or give you the info to complete it, that is a big step in that direction. If you can gain acceptance to colleges that will fund 100% of need, you will likely get enough that will make it possible to pay for college.</p>
<p>If your parents refuse to release their financial info, refuse to pay for your college, then regardless of their income, you are going to have a very tough time getting any money for college.</p>
<p>I think this thread is the most entertaining thread I’ve read here on CC. So I’ve decided to add my 2 cents.</p>
<p>1) People’s lifestyle expands to fit their income - it’s human nature. And this is a good thing.</p>
<p>If my income goes from $40K to $60K, I’m moving out of the craphole apartment I live in to someplace nice, and dumping the beater for something reliable. When I get to $80K, maybe I’m buying a small house. When I hit $120K, I’m moving to a town with the best schools that I can afford, getting my kids braces and signing them up for music lessons and club soccer.</p>
<p>Then, when my kids hit college, I’m told I need to reduce my standard of living by 50% or take on a huge amount of debt, so I can send my kid to college. This is not really very practical or likely - what am I going to do, move my family back into a craphole apartment, taking my other kids out of their schools? Right.</p>
<p>The anxiety this causes is unbelievable.</p>
<p>2) It doesn’t matter how much money you make, nobody wants to pay full retail (if you have half a brain anyway). </p>
<p>I’d take it a step further - paying full retail is for suckers. College is a consumable product, like anything else. If I can find a way to get a discount, I’m not turning it down because someone thinks I’m “rich” and should pay more than I have to.</p>
<p>And I’m not going to trash my family financially to pay for some school whose PR machine has somehow convinced everyone that they are “special” and “one of a kind”. Sorry, all you $55K/year schools. </p>
<p>3) The financial aid system is broken.</p>
<p>A federal system that “taxes” me at a 47% rate at a very modest income level (around $80K-90K or so) is ludicrous - after taxes, it is very nearly confiscatory, and if you are self-employed it is even worse. </p>
<p>A private system that considers my retirement contributions to be fair game, medical and child care expenses to be fair game (child care is usually so a spouse can work) and treats the equity in my house as their very own personal piggy bank (regardless of whether I can even access that cash, or afford to pay it back) is ludicrous.</p>
<p>Everyone should have the opportunity to go to college if they want; the benefits to everyone are enormous. And these formulas might have made sense when schools cost $30K a year, because the amount of income in the 47% bracket was small. But they no longer make sense when it applies to 1/3 of my income or more.</p>
<p>And we are in this situation because</p>
<p>4) Colleges are out of control, have been for at least the last 20 years, and are showing no signs of slowing down.</p>
<p>At my alma mater, tuition has increased 9x from when I was there; inflation would have put this at more like 3x. They are charging more than 10x what I paid <em>for the exact same crappy dorm room</em>. How in any reasonable scenario is a one 12x16 room worth $12,000/year in rent (6K per student)? How is an average price of $11-12/meal reasonable? It’s unreal.</p>
<p>How is it reasonable for any college president to be making 7 figures? (The president at my old school now has 2 full time bodyguards. Huh?!?!) Corporate greed has apparently made the jump to the college world.</p>
<p>Why are so many schools building new buildings like there is no tomorrow?</p>
<p>I thought it was ridiculous that colleges were bragging this year that they limited their price increases to only 4% or so - in the middle of the worst recession in 50 years!</p>
<p>I can only hope this recession forces schools to get their spending under control, because demographics are against them - the peak of the boomer echo is just about here or is already past. There’s going to be a lot fewer students competing for the same number of spots, and a lot of schools are going to be looking at a lot of empty seats if they don’t lower their prices. The tuition bubble is going to burst, and it isn’t going to be pretty.</p>
<p>There ought to be a CC hall of fame for the whole “My family makes more than 99% of all American families (and OP, you do according to US Census statistics, whether you realize it or not). What financial aid can we get?” thread. In fact, at that AGI, you’re at the top of the <em>gobal</em> food chain, pretty much. I don’t care where you live in the US: I live on one of the most expensive and affluent areas of the country, and even here, people with half-mil AGI’s understand that they’re wealthy.</p>
<p>on the nose</p>
<p>notrichenough - I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. It’s hard to try to explain it without sounding whiny or unfeeling towards others with less than you, but you did a good job.</p>
<p>The flaw in notrichenough’s argument is in the first point.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Many people expand their lifestyle to a point beyond their income. Even if someone stays within his income, when kids come along, those kids have current and future needs which most people must scale back their lifestyles to manage financially. Alas, many people don’t. They feel entitled to the bigger house, late-model car, and other consumer goods.</p>
<p>I see a lot of posts from kids and parents who have little or no college savings on which to draw; some parents may not have brought their kids up with the idea of going to college, but many others fully expected Bright Shiny New Baby to be a college student someday but didn’t save accordingly – they expanded their lifestyle instead.</p>
<p>(That’s not to say that if you DO save, you’ll have enough for private school tuition; the point about the increase in college costs stands.)</p>
<p>IMHO, if you’re not living at least 10-15% below your income, you’re spending too much.</p>
<p>“Alas, many people don’t. They feel entitled to the bigger house, late-model car, and other consumer goods.”</p>
<p>This is in the aftermath of an 18 year secular bull market with generally robust inflation followed by 7 years of fairly strong consumer spending. Secular bear markets arise from secular bull markets and reset what is considered normal for a generation and a half.</p>
<p>
We do live 15% below our income - and that money goes into our retirement account, because neither of us is covered by a pension, and I don’t trust, and won’t assume, that SS is going to pay me a nickel when I retire.</p>
<p>I know many many people like this.</p>
<p>So what’s more important - paying PrivateU, or making sure I don’t have to live in my kids’ basement when I get old? I know how I voted. 
I can’t afford to sacrifice 7+ years of retirement savings.</p>
<p>So fine, I’ll squeeze another 15% out somehow. Guess what? This only covers 40% or less of the cost of PrivateU. Maybe I should have been saving $1000/month from the day my kids were born, but I have enough trouble paying one mortgage, adding the equivalent of another one - impossible. And 15 years ago, we were making way less than half of what we do now.</p>
<p>Here’s how warped the whole system is - my wife and I had a serious conversation about her not working while the kids are in college. She is self-employed, and after paying 48% in taxes and 47% allocated for college, less than 10% of what she makes would wind up in our pocket. So what is the point of working?</p>
<p>We had to take all the $50k+ schools that didn’t offer any aid off the table - no way was I letting either my kid or us borrow $80K+ to go to school, or making radical lifestyle changes like moving to a smaller house or selling a car or whatever. And this was really painful, because one of those schools was his first choice.</p>
<p>I see you on the UMass threads so you’re clearly analyzing your budget and it sounds like your household has had the hard financial discussions. MA’s going to have a 25% sales tax hike as it passed both houses with a veto-proof majority. I have a suspicion that there will be an income tax hike bill for 2009-2010 as the state has to fund the waste, fraud and corruption before they fund services.</p>
<p>notrichenough - I’m with you on most of what you said . The total irony of the situation is for those of us parents who did go to privates when we were young and our parents paid the full boat. My husband and I aren’t that different exponentially than our parents and we saved for our kids college but our tolerance ends at about $30 - $32,000 per year. Granted we are funding our retirement and our parents had pensions…but the privates think your retirement income is fair game if you’ve diversified beyond your company 401K or an IRA. I’m holding my breath waiting for some school to ask if your parents are alive and how much you expect to inherit from them. I agree about the housing costs. When S1 went away I really had a hard time coming to grips with the costs of room and board…it just didn’t make any sense to what I know are the costs of maintaining facilities and the food service (since I have knowledge of the facility costs and the cafeteria food service costs for our company with 3500 employees and a multiple building campus.) Don’t get me started on building We are in the middle of the largest downtown in residential and commercial construction because businesses and families are deferring that activity until the economy is more stable and every college I’ve visited this year with S2 is building new facilities…every single one of them. Really. There is just something fundamentally wrong with the increasing costs, $50,000 tuition, etc. but I’m certainly not qualified to understand what that is. That said, it’s a free country and I don’t begrudge anyone who desires to send their kids to a $50,000 a year school and I don’t begrudge parents who send their kids to a $50,000 a year school and get a discounted tuition through grants and merit money. And it’s certainly people’s rights to take what amounts to another mortgage if they choose to do so with loans. I know where our families tolerance is and fortunately our kids understand that. The ED issue just makes me crazier because it’s just so silly…but there’s another thread about that. What’s really unfortunate is that many of our friends are not sending their kids to their alma mater preps, are not sending their kids to their alma mater colleges and choosing magnets and day schools plus state flagships and midwest privates which just makes it more difficult competitively for slots for the really needy kids who could financially benefit from the publics. I can’t understand how this serves the greater good of all students. Maybe that is an elitist attitude, but I really think the driver is that the expensive schools crossed a tolerance border, and least for us and our friends, when they escalated into the $40-50,000 range. The value proposition just isn’t there which is within our rights to decide.</p>
<p>Momofthreeboys, our tolerance level is just about where yours is.</p>
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</p>
<p>That’s not always the case. There are people who truly can’t afford colllege and want their kids to go to college.</p>
<p>I am not sure if it is stated somewhere on the 31 pages of this thread, but one of the ridiculous flaws in the system has to do with the timing of your children. If you saved money for college, but didn’t plan to space them for optimal efc preference you get slammed. If I just had to pay the EFC that comes up when both are in school I saved enough…unfortunately there are 2 years on each end where the efc is so ridiculous that it wipes out all savings on number 1… Makes you wish you had twins!</p>
<p>merkypie, I agree. </p>
<p>I also see a lot of people who have no understanding as to why families earning 90-150k need financial aid. Well, many families may not get retirement contributions made for them. Home values may have plummeted. Many are earning less than they were earning a few years ago, they have job insecurity, and/or their teen cannot find summer employment. They have seen their retirement fund plummet and anything that they contribute for retirement during college years is considered available to pay tuition. I won’t even touch health insurance which differs so much from family to family. Also, college savings may have been greatly depleted. The person with family income earnings of 35k needs financial aid, but so does the family earning 2.5-5 times that amount. People are voting with their feet by sending their children to more doable options.</p>
<p>PAmom, compeletely agree with that point as well.</p>
<p>For those that haven’t noticed, there are huge rumblings into massive cuts in CA in both services for the poor and higher education. Talk about the spark of a class war in real time.</p>