Help – with the search of safeties… and the top heavy list of a stubborn daughter and her increasing

Parents Forum
61

Your D is smart.

You can make a simple spreadsheet showing your annual fixed costs (mortgage, heat, taxes, insurance), then the “optionals” which she is used to. Back out the amount you have available every month for tuition, emergencies, etc. And then a simple table showing your savings/investments/retirement.

It won’t take her long to realize that at the high end of her college planning, she’s either leaving you guys with nothing to live on every month, tapping your retirement savings, or heaping both herself and you with a bunch of debt.

Show her real numbers. It is hard for a teenager to hear “we can’t afford that” when kids around her seem to be doing it effortlessly.

My own kids didn’t really understand this stuff until they got their first paychecks (fortunately, we made them work during HS). In their heads, you multiply your hourly wage by the number of hours you work.

Then the actual check comes. FICA- who is that? The mandatory “fee” taken out of every paycheck for laundering the mandatory uniform (gotta love fast food).

Where did my money go?

She’ll get there. She’ll have great options. But don’t blow her book money for Freshman year applying to so many schools… time to circle the wagons and get realistic about money, objectives, lifestyle, long range planning.

62

It’s not in Gambier, it’s in Granville. (Kenyon is in Gambier). No b-school.

Fairly generous with merit but most kids i know there with half or full tuition turned down Ivies to take that deal so I wouldn’t say it’s very easy to get a lot of it, maybe smaller amounts.

63

Also, I wonder what will happen to EU citizens attending college in Scotland when it’s no longer part of the EU in 2 or so years?

64

Good idea, Blossom. I have found, however, that while my kids could understand most of these things, what they couldn’t understand is why our retirement money was off-limits. For one thing, it was in 401k/403b plans and ultimately taxable when the money is taken out. For another thing, it’s a key life saver (reserve) for emergencies, but most of all so you have something to live on when you retire. Occasionally I read on this forum that parents are tapping their 401k to cover college costs. Just don’t do it!

65

The problem is that when kids have all their needs met, but see their parents buying used cars and rarely eating out… they simply come to the conclusion that their parents are careful with their money. They may assume (mistakenly) that it means that their parents are even better off financially - because in your daughter’s eyes, you and her mom must have been saving money while her friends parents were blowing it off on fancy meals.

I’d add that if her friends’ parents are all driving expensive cars-- then she hasn’t had much exposure among her peer group to families with more limited means. (I was fortunate in that respect - my kids went to public schools with plenty of classmates who had much less, so they were much more aware of parental limitations in general. They did see plenty of classmates going to community college because their parents could not even afford in-state tuition at the state U.)

I don’t think spreadsheets showing parental expenses help a lot — I honestly don’t think kids quite get the issues surrounding budgeting until they are out of school and on their own, and then reality hits. Because it’s not just about how much you have left over after monthly expenses – it’s about life planning,making sure you have enough in reserves to cover unforeseen emergencies, etc. Also, kids have an unrealistic view of loans and borrowing – in their eyes a loan is free money-- and that doesn’t change until they are seeing a monthly amount for debt service coming out of their bank account each month.

Do make sure your daughter knows that there are fairly low limits on what she could borrow in her own name. Otherwise kids tend to assume that they can just borrow the difference between whatever the school charges and the parents are willing to pay. That can be a rude awakening for the kid down the line --or cause more family tension down the line when the kid is expecting the parents to cosign.

66

Great post @calmom
I will just focus on a small portion of it (somewhat unfortunately):
“Do make sure your daughter knows that there are fairly low limits on what she could borrow in her own name. Otherwise kids tend to assume that they can just borrow the difference between whatever the school charges and the parents are willing to pay.
"
I do think she might wrongly believe it is possible for her to “borrow her self (by herself)” into collage, or something similar. Presenting her with the truth that is not so, might be a good starting point to “uncovering” the truth about college finances 'true facts” in general.

@OHMomof2 true, in 2 or so years when GB is not in EU, significant changes might/will most likely come. Most of them in the " not good " category for EU (non-GB) students.

67

Just back to add – the numbers are tough for most kids to absorb. My kid has a half tuition merit award at his college, and while that is an enormous benefit, he still struggles to understand that we still get a bill for something approaching $40,000. It feels like magic money at age 18.

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^^^Its struggling for me to understand and I’m a grown up @Midwestmomofboys . To think, I’ll be excited to get enough aid to pay 35-40K a year for my kids college. Crazy.

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@Percent99 just adding to the basic consensus. She has a school. She will get into at least one of the US schools on that list. She can only go to one school. So the much more difficult/interesting issues are:

  1. Can you afford the one school she gets into. (And, have you discussed the possibility of grad school?)
  2. What kind of college experience does she want to have.

That list was clearly culled from a general rankings list. Dartmouth and USC could not be more different than, well, rural/small town New Hampshire and downtown LA. And then there are a lot of schools in between. I guess the one common factor is they are mostly, aside from Dartmouth, fairly large, urban or small city, but there’s too many schools on that list if you ask me. Does she really want to be in Texas? AND Boston? What is it about Duke that made her go ED? What would be the “next level” Duke if she doesn’t get in?

I would guess, assuming the application matches the stats, she will have a number of good choices from the schools on that list. It’s a bit late, but it might be worth her spending some time really looking into the individual schools. I have know students who left Yale because it was too small/small city insular and known others who left USC because it was too big and urban.

Assuming you can afford the school(s) she gets into, she’ll have great options. But I would try to get her to focus on what she wants her college experience to be - there really is a wide range in the schools on her list.

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To be totally honest I do not quite get this crazy thing going around these days - people liking /loving one (or 5 schools). Maybe it is me growing up in a much smaller country, but honestly I really do not get it. Maybe it is because when I was about to go to college I had only 4 Universities I can study law at. I was equally happy to go to any one of them (big small/ rural /public whatever… well they were all public but anyways). Granted all 4 were offering equal quality of Law education. If it was say chemical engineering the top 2 were much better respected than all the remaining 4 or 5 choices . But perceived quality of education in “whatever environment” was/is what matters isn’t it? Apparently not…getting good education must also come were you can “take it / swallow it” the best… lol
I have a strong suspicion my D is somewhat the same way - I have not seen a school she has visited she does not like or love. Granted there are schools scratched off of her list [believe it or not… I do often think her list is just the top 30 schools just copied from the US News ranking plus some added and some randomly scratched] but none of them due to a visit. Schools removed by the so generated list - Columbia for being as she claims too “cut-throat”, Northwestern and U of Chicago - no reasons stated/explained sufficiently by her. But I believe the reasons are what I call “Mom can drop-by any day/night with a worm dinner and embarrass me in front of my friends” aka too close to home.

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Your daughter has ennough safeties on her list. Whats not clear is she has ennough financial safeties. Since Duke is ED, meaning you’ve committed to it, is your NPC really less than Edinburgh?

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As people have explained, as you and your wife both have advanced degrees, even if from another country, she does not qualify as “first generation”.

73

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I concur on the following: she is not first gen, she has no hook, there are tens of thousands of kids here born overseas to foreign parents (including my own), this list is WAY too long, this list is simply lifted straight from USNWR and seems to be solely focussed on prestige, AND the financial aspect is really the only aspect you should be thinking of because you are the parent and you should make it clear, in no uncertain terms, what amount of money you can afford. Why let her apply to NYU or USC, which are astronomically expesnive? Why pay about $2000 in app fees when she can only attend one college? Money is an issue for you. She should only apply to colleges that are affordable. Forget Harvard, Yale, etc… They are not likely to give the child of two well-educated professionals enough aid to make those schools affordable. She should apply to the schools on her list that are affordable, because they will give her merit aid. Rochester, Brandeis, and Syracuse will probably give her a lot of money. If she is accepted to Roch, I imagine she can expect about $20k in merit aid. Can you afford the balance, which will be $45k a year?

Has she considered some of the LACs, which would probably snap her up and often give very generous merit aid? If not, you should make her add some of those to her list and take off some of the crazy ones. Many LACs are free to apply to or have app fee waivers. It seems to me that you are reluctant to crush your daughter’s dreams, but your reality is more important than the stars in her eyes. Time to be a dream-crusher, sorry to say.

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@Percent99 please be honest with yourself - and your daughter - about what you can afford before she gets any further into the search. My husband lost his job my son’s senior year of high school, early in the application process. As older parents, we really didn’t know how long the job search would take and how big a pay cut would result. Sure we had college savings (not in a 529) but frankly didn’t now if at some point we’d need some of it for ourselves. So we pulled him back from his expensive 1st and 2nd choices and focused him on in state options, which were very good. In the end he’s quite happy in a top 10 school for his program in state and we bought financial breathing room just in case we needed it. This can happen to ANYONE - I know several who have a similar story - and I"m so thankful it happened before he had actually started in a school that could have caused us financial hardship or worse. If your daughter is who you think she is, she’ll do fine in life with any of the good but not outrageously expensive schools she’s admitted to - honest.

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I have said for years, that despite what hollywood tells you, the day you become an adult is not your first kiss (or more), or your first heartbreak, or your sweet 16 or bar mitzvah or confirmation or when you graduate HS or college, or any other event.

It is when you look at your first check stub and ask that question: “What the #$%!& is FICA!”

That day, you become an adult. :wink:

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Cuz that is relevant to this thread. Not.

77

intparent- if a HS kid has never held a job, then the probability that they understand that a parent’s gross earnings is in no way representative of how much cash they have to spend every month is pretty small.

That’s why FICA is relevant.

A HS kid hears that mom and dad are making 130K combined and thinks, “hey, what’s the big deal with paying 30K of that per year for college?”

As if 130K means a take home of anything close to that.

78

Does your daughter know what she might want to study? If it’s medicine or law, for example, she will want to be economical in her undergraduate years.

She has already applied to 8 schools, 3 in the UK and the balance are ED/EA schools.

You say that you’d be comfortable paying the EFC (or EFC + 30%) at Duke, UMich, Rice, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt or any ivy. 35K at Edinburgh would be doable but a hardship. In-state at Illinois would be doable.

So the question is what about the following schools and should you consider any matches/safeties as substitutes or add-ons?

Has she taken SAT subject tests? Did she qualify for National Merit Semifinalist?

Of the following list of reaches, I agree that application fees and essay burnout will be excessive. Other than prestige, why this list? Most of them are large schools in urban/suburban areas, but other than that, what??? If she’s liked most places that she has visited then it shouldn’t be too difficult to cut some of them.

I would have her pick no more than 2 of these. Harvard and Yale are very generous with need-based aid with minimal to no loan obligations but also are the toughest to gain admittance.

Harvard
Yale
UPenn
Dartmouth
Brown
Cornell

I would have her pick 2 of these. Maybe eliminate USC if she’s not NMSF.

Rice
Notre Dame
Vanderbilt
Georgetown U
University of Southern California
Tufts

These are safest from admissions standard but I’m not personally familiar with how the money will play out:

Boston College
Rochester (NY)
Brandeis

Eliminate NYU, unlikely to be affordable:

Finally, as you’re going to be paying, I think it’ perfectly reasonable for you to require her to apply to a couple of “parents choice” schools. Everybody who visits Bama seems to love it and to be pleasantly surprised. She already is considering some southern schools and other state flagships, so I don’t see why Bama can’t be part of the mix. Also, if the deadline hasn’t passed, her stats would probably get her good merit money at Temple.

I would give your D some choice, but not unlimited choice. Have her apply to two admissions and financial safeties (as in savings and income, not second mortgage safeties) like Bama or Temple. In exchange, you will pay for X applications. If she wants to apply to more, the costs are on her.

Also, I would run some numbers - if she were to take the direct loan from the government (about 27K over 4 years), show her how long it would take to pay back over how many years. That might get her attention.

Good luck. Hopefully she will get into Duke ED at a cost you can afford and this will all be moot.

79

http://www.tax-rates.org/income-tax-calculator/ can give you a rough estimate of US federal and state income taxes and payroll taxes for a given income and deductions.

80

This made me laugh because that was exactly D’s reason for crossing NU off her list. :wink: