<p>^^Yes, but families at this income level that value education and strive to provide quality k-12 education to their kids need to live in areas with housing costs much above the average. Otherwise they’d send their kids to private schools. While a kid goes off to college, they may still need to pay for the expensive housing, k-12 education and/or EC’s of the next child. I wouldn’t consider the costs I listed above luxuries but rather (almost) necessities. </p>
<p>So we lived in northern CA and with five kiddos I knew I would have a hard time swinging the costs of 4 yrs of schooling even with community college. </p>
<p>We moved. I know not everyone can do this but as a single mom of 5 kiddos we managed with a 24 foot Uhaul to pick up and move 3000+ miles. One was even starting his senior year and I pulled him with the idea that we could better afford college for all 5 even with a very low, low EFC in a state with lower in-state tuition options.</p>
<p>We ended up in NC. Many college in-state options for some of the lowest costs in the US. Even if we did not receive enough aid to meet our EFC we might be able to cover it with some aid and commuting. Our move saved us not just in tuition times 5 for undergrad but also with grad school costs as well. With medical school costing upwards of $75K per year in addition to undergrad moving somewhere where it was significantly less helped us afford undergrad and professional school with little to no debt.</p>
<p>We as a family worked as a team to keep expenses low (1 older car, no teen drivers, no cell phones, 1 laptop, cheap/free entertainment and ECs that could pay for themselves…tutoring, coaching, fixing cars and computers). Kiddos rode the bus to school and packed extra food for snacks later in the day from leftovers the night before for later practices and ECs. The were active as sellers on Ebay long before most even knew it existed!</p>
<p>Moving somewhere where COL was much lower compared to northern CA really gave us opportunities we did not even know existed. It was hard leaving somewhere that we considered home for a place we did not even visit and had never been farther east than NV, was a scary decision at first but the reward was very much worth the risk. It’s been 10 years since our trek across the country with 5 kiddos, 3 dogs and 2 kitties and with them all now almost finished with grad school it turned out incredibly well on much, much less than $200K.</p>
<p>Let’s just say I think the $200K per year is doable.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>6000 is a lot just for entertainment but what is included in that? Dinners out? Netflix? </p>
<p>More likely it’s all the walking around money that a family needs. Haircuts, school projects, kids’ school trips, lunch out with colleagues, the emergency snickers bar when you’re famished and won’t be home for awhile, etc. I suspect many families spend much more than that but just break it down differently. We try to keep entertainment/blow money expenses down to 500 each month but we often go over. We certainly will in September. I plan 1000 for September walking around money and with four kids even 1k is tight in September. I think on average five hundred each month is fine for a family with one or two kids. </p>
<p>“In other threads, there is lots of discussion about “doughnut hole” families who make too much money to get significant financial aid, but cannot afford the list price of college, in the context of elite colleges whose list prices are around $60,000 per year and whose financial aid tails off at around $200,000 per year incomes”
- Could be easily paid from the current income. These are just talks based on buying some diamonds for tens of thousands every so often. If you have normal expenses and forget those diamonds, having $200k is sufficient to pay for any tuition, it is just a matter of choice. I am not saying that it is right or woring not to pay, I am saying whatever one choose, they are able to pay out of $200k, if they choose so. Of course, again, if family choose not to pay, there is another question, why not to attend on full tuition Merit award? Everybody who is accepted to Ivy/Elite can find another public or private UG that will offer full tuition Merit, since the stats of such applicant are very high. You may not be offerred any at Harvard, but (as an example), JHU may offer you one. This is not the focus of this thread though, but why applicants with such high stats make their families to spend that much on UG, that is very confusing, uinless resources are unlimited, $200k is sufficient, but NOT unlimited, actully it is not that high, but enough for comfortable living and paying tuition.</p>
<p>Wow @katwkittens, I’m impressed. Strong will and motivation sometimes trumps income.</p>
<p>Oh absolutely $200,000 is doable for paying tuition at colleges for multiple kids. We’re doing it on significantly less than $200,000 a year in income. And anyone can do this, even in the most high cost area of the country. Life is all about the choices made along the way. If you needs 4000 square feet of living space instead of 2,000 square feet it will cost you more. If you like BMWs instead of Buicks it will cost you more. If you like ordering in a restaurant more than shopping in a grocery store it will cost you more. And with everyone of those decisions you are relinquishing money that you could have saved and any future earings - so it’s on the individual what decisions they make. </p>
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<p>Oldfort these are typos right? No one in the entire country needs to spend over $1000 a month on food. $500 - $600 a month at most if still feeding multiple kids and what is $6000 for entertainment? That could be wiped off the budget right away and again another $500 that doesn’t need to be spend. So that $1000 a month that could be trimmed from your budget example - or $12000 a year that could go toward college.$3600 feels really high for clothes also - that’s like $300 a month. My kids wear somewhat high-end clothes (and so do I) but I’ve never spent $3600 a year. I didn’t look closely at the other numbers.</p>
<p>Bottom line is most families that are upper middle to wealthy (and $200,000 is probably considered wealthy) can easily trim money form their day to day expenses and if they can’t then they have bigger problems than sending their kiddo to the community college while they figure out their cash flow situation with a financial planner. </p>
<p>I know some posters are against discussing “hardships” of those that are trying to pay 60K+ for college since it concerns so few, but the context of the discussion regarding 200K+ income families is about them being full pay at elite colleges that cost 60K+. I agree that if they are funding in-state public colleges for one or more kids, it would be a much easier task. As a matter of fact, that’s what many 200K-300K income families living in SF do, which makes sense especially considering they have excellent in-state public choices.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what, they want from me / It’s like the more money we come across / The more problems we see”
- Notorious B.I.G.</p>
<p>Lifestyle inflation at work.</p>
<p>Im wondering how many people the $250 weekly food bill covers, cause we sure don’t pay that and we only buy organic/free range/ artisanal goodies. ;)</p>
<p>I think it is like when you have a big purse or a big house or a minivan.
The stuff that is ** essential** expands, because it can.
We also made a conscious choice to have a small family. Kids are hella expensive!</p>
<p>When you aren’t seeing a $5,000 paycheck every two weeks, you make priorities and you adjust your perspective.
We are living in our starter house, have weathered years of unemployment & underemployment, as well as labor strikes and illness.
We had moved when our oldest was born, from a very nice house, in a very nice neighborhood, that was still affordable, but where conspicuous consumption was part of " fitting in".
We didn’t really want to swim against the tide at the time, so we moved to a lower key blue collar neighborhood
Also not living in Manhattan, but still one of the more expensive areas of the country.
Neither one of us had college loans, cause we didn’t go to college.</p>
<p>That’s still an option if higher ed is just out of the question for your kids.
I know many people whose kids didn’t go to college, or who went to a community college.</p>
<p>Also why would a family making say $200,000 a year spend $60,000 on college education per year per kiddo? They certainly don’t “need” to – so – again it’s needs and wants. If you want to spend $60,000 on a college education and you make $200,000 and haven’t managed to save a dime I suppose you’ll do whatever you need to do because that will align with your spending mentality. Life always has and always will be about making choices when it comes to income and spending. </p>
<p>I do not have a big spending “mentality”, but we did pay for our kids to attend expensive private universities. We conserved on most other spending to do so.</p>
<p>“I know some posters are against discussing “hardships” of those that are trying to pay 60K+ for college since it concerns so few”
-The reason is that this is a “chosen” hardships, not the “forced” hardship. There is nobody out there who were forced to attend UG(???) on thi skind of money. I understand something like Med. School. Some get accepted to only one place and if this place is $60k, they do not think twice, they take it. But most are actually taking loans. However, if family decides to foot it, then it is understood, the place was “forced”, there was no other choice. But for UG??? Who can force anybody or what circumstance can force a person to attend an UG and make family pay $60K. Nobody, it is a FREE CHOICE. There is no “hardships” under the FREE CHOICE. And besides, there is no hardship paying $60k out of $200k income, period, unless the family is into vary luxurious life style (which is again by free choice, so what hardship we are talking about?). </p>
<p>^^Fine if you put it that way. I take your point and rest my case. Cheers! :)</p>
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<p>I guess if everyone just would live in tents we could all send our kids to whatever schools they wanted. Bless theri hearts. </p>
<p>The question we should all be asking ourselves is more along the lines of: ‘is $40K-$60K per year a reasonable cost for college?’ As responsible spenders, we would never pay that much a year for anything. The ROI on the expense is negative. If you look at it as an investment, there is no way you pump that kind of money in for 4+ years for what you get back. You can get an outstanding education for less than half those amounts and turn a losing proposition into a modest return. </p>
<p>Or how about…why don’t my other kids count unless they are in college? I have expenses for them that are greater than someone who only has 1 kid. </p>
<p>If I was one of those who was going to pay for my kids school out of pocket, it would literally cost me more than we make as a family to pay tuition for the 1st 3 kids. But the system in its infinite wisdom has decide we can afford to pay in full (or near enough that it makes no difference). We did what we think was the wise thing in being up front with the kids that college money needed to come from them. They then set their sights on attainable colleges and take ROI into account rather than expecting mommy and daddy to finance a 4+ year excursion to discover themselves.</p>
<p>As long as y’all keep pumping money into the machine, it will keep taking it. Tuition at UMINN when I was a freshman was only 1380 a year…yes, a year. Not a credit hour, not a course. It was $46 a credit hour…as OOS.
Now it is $22280.70 per year. That is a 1514.5% increase in the 30 years or so it has been. My salary has only gone up 607% in that time. That is not just inflation, that accounts for job changes, education and merit increases as well. The cost of the car I drove went up 536%. (Used versus New + inflation)</p>
<p>I quickly did the NPC for Harvard–4 in the family, 2 in college. The net price for Harvard is 30, 600 (for one child). And of that 26K is the cost to the parents, with the rest coming from summer earnings and work during the school year.</p>
<p>Deleting because the post to which I responded was edited.</p>
<p>The expected parental contribution for one child (if there’s another one in college) for one year is 26K. I edited the mistake.</p>
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I think most families have 4 people, 250/week for grocery (food, shampoo, cleaning detergents, toilet papers) is really not that high. As far as $6000/year for entertainment, that’s 500/mon for 4 people, 125/person/mon. This includes birthday, xmas, easter, movies ($13/ticket in my neighborhood). I know my kids spent more than 30/week when they were in high school. $3600/year for clothes translates into 300/mon, 75/person/mon. I am sure people who make 200K a year need to wear more business like attire. They need leather shoes, bags, suits. With 2 growing kids, They would need to buy new underwear, coats, shoes every year for their kids. So no, my estimates were conservative and I lumped a lot of things together.</p>
<p>As a family with several kids, we spend that in groceries and sundries, …more than that actually. It is probably conservative given health and beauty stuff (shampoo, soaps, etc), cleaning supplies, paper goods. We never go to restaurants and we cook all meals. We try to be frugal, buy on sale and in bulk and at local farms, but there is just the cost of family of teens.</p>