Does anybody plan to persuade their S/D to pay off their Parent Plus loans? Personally, I would not take on debt like this, and I certainly would not expect my kid to pay it off if I did:
whaaaat? Of course we are in the camp that paid for our kids college education, fully. As our parents did for us. Pay it forward. I guess these parents thought that it was really the kid’s responsibility. All of this should, of course, been part of a transparent discussion beforehand.
I don’t have Parent Plus loans. But if I did, I wouldn’t want my daughters to pay them off. H and I paid off most of D1’s loans, and I assumed the remaining debt (now part of the HELOC) as part of the divorce agreement. I made the same offer to D2 but she wanted to pay off her own (and has already done so), so she has a raincheck from me for the loan amount. I feel sorry for the parents and children who are in the situation described in the article.
My best friend is paying off his parents’. They told him they would pay for an engineering degree and only an engineering degree. After two years he hated every minute of engineering and switched to something else so they took out plus loans PLUS he has to pay them back for the first two years.
…and this is why he’s living in my spare room.
Oh and his parents paid his brother’s college in full. No, he didn’t do engineering.
Why the difference in parental restrictions of college major choice between the two brothers?
Because they’re terrible people.
“One 22-year-old in New York, who requested anonymity to protect his relationship with his family, doesn’t think his parents ever had the means to pay back these loans. They have trouble making ends meet from month to month as it is. “It’s not that my parents refuse to pay, it’s just that they can’t,” he says. However, he’s caught himself passing judgment on their spending habits, like his mother’s trips to Disney World.”
Wait a minute, if they can afford a trip to Disney World that seems to suggest they can in fact pay, they are just choosing to spend their money on other things like vacations. I can understand why he’d be passing judgment in this case.
However, it also sounds like there was an agreement up front that he would pay them. So it’s really hard to know what those conversations looked like. “Hey kiddo if you really want to go to expensive school A, you will have to help us pay back the loans OR you could go to cheaper school B OR go to school C where you get some merit aid” and kid decided that School A was the only school for them.
Should a 17 year old be allowed to make that decision?
We need reform of college funding. It shouldn’t be based on the luck of being born to a family that values education more than trips to Disney World, IMO.
Not every parent believes that he owes their children a 250K undergraduate education. For example, I do not. I would only cover 4 years of our state flagship. Were my kids to chose something more expensive - it would be on them.
I know a family where a student declined full rides to be a full pay at NYU Sterns. Agreement with the family was that the student will pay Parent Plus loans himself as the family had another kid and a grandparent to take care of. After 4 years (4 Wall St. bonuses) he paid everything in full. He lived pretty modestly during these years.
I have heard a few parents who expect if they must resort to Parent Plus loans to afford a shool that their college student child will be the one paying it back. They don’t seem to understand the risks to themselves or the burden.
Over the years we’ve seen many posts from (usually low/modest income) students whose parents are taking out huge PLUS loans with the “family understanding” that the CHILD will pay the loans back after graduation.
Since PLUS loans are super easy to get, no income req’ts, low income people who don’t have “credit issues” easily qualify for HUGE loans.