Many years ago, when we were just embarking on the boarding school journey for our son, I posted my misgivings about the sanity and morality of spending almost a quarter of a million dollars on high school. Then, with college looming, we faced the possibility that, after draining the 529, we would have spent almost half a million dollars to educate one kid. Morally bankrupt is what came to mind. At the time, of course, we couldn’t know that his choice of a service academy would spare us the cost of college, but we still spent more on his HS education than anyone we knew spent on a university.
And that “investment” came at the cost of not saving a penny for retirement during those four years. When I lamented on the prep forum that BS would poke a four-year hole in our retirement savings, another poster kindly pointed out the tone-deaf privilege of that comment. I have never forgotten it.
So, @NJSue, I hear you. Luck played a role in where we ended up as our employment was not cut short, and the Military Family Tax Relief Act returned the 529 funds to us penalty-free to repair that savings hole, but it could have gone another way, and I would probably be thinking if not posting words very similar to yours.
Amen. (Thanks for that @kelsmom.)