Before we started down the college road, I had thought about us setting a budget and giving D19 some portion of the money, but once she developed her college list and I actually saw what our budget was and saw that the NPCs all pretty much converged on the same number, I realized there really wouldn’t be much money left regardless of where she chose. (With the exception of the local public safety, and it’s not enough money for me, at least, to encourage her to pick the safety for financial reasons. If she wants to go for other reasons, perfectly fine with me.)
I like driving and by extension road trips, and since we live in Arizona, trips to California are almost always 6-hour road trips. But the rest of the family is less enthused, and we’ve basically come up with a formula that says travel time can only be roughly 20% of total awake time. (That’s not hard and fast, just a general rule.)
And in college, by senior year my roommates and I wouldn’t skip class, but would generally try to avoid scheduling classes during Guiding Light…
The difference between the cheapest and most expensive admitted schools (amongst those which were worthy of consideration at the end of the process) for us was $35K per kid per year. Both chose the cheapest option, but cost wasn’t the overwhelming driver in either decision (though it was certainly significant given the amount of money involved).
As my mom pointed out again last week, by the time I went to college, they had had kids at home for 31 years. They were so done with it And no one went very far away, so it wasn’t a big deal when someone left I guess.
We are going on our annual vacation with the 4 of us next week, but it’s hard to say how long that will continue. DD’17 will graduate cc and may have her “real” job by next summer or maybe not. Big transition year next year with one finishing college and one finishing HS. I can’t imagine going on a family vacation without the oldest.
I’m anxious to see DD’19 this Saturday and hear more about her working at camp experience. She hasn’t called in 10 days and I’m used to her following me around telling me everything.
My son worked on his common app this morning and we’ve come to the conclusion that filling out the activities section is painful. He’s involved in some things where he isn’t a leader and finding ways to describe and explain what he does is not fun.
Finally got the official word from head of guidence that dd’s GC is leaving and we get her replacement, a GC from the middle school moving over to hs. Just another wrench in the plan.
DD will definitely have skin in the game for college costs. We have no specific college savings and DH is of a mind that kids can still work their way through college. I have a plan (which DD doesn’t know about yet!) that would amount to her covering quite a bit of the cost without a horrible amount of debt.
If she likes the next school we plan to visit, the COA is about $15K after auto merit. She could go in with 24 credits, so if she can graduate in 3.5 years, total cost $52.5K. (I’ve looked and one likely major/minor combo has a lot of room for electives and flexibility so I’m thinking it could happen.) Take off $10K for the tax credit, $12K she’ll have in savings when she starts school, borrow a total of $12K, maybe $5K in outside or continuing student scholarships and we’re down to $13.5K which we could contribute. She will work during college and summers and I haven’t counted that yet so that money can help with books, personal expenses, and tuition increases. It would be fantastic if she also got some competitive merit. Her ACT is just high enough to be in the competitive pool. Fortunately this is a school she put on the table, not me, so hopefully she will like it and just maybe, this will work out.
@homerdog Your Ohio trip with S19 sounds cozy. I’m looking forward to some one-on-one time with D19 on our little trip. Hey btw did you stay in Grinnell or just pass through? I’m thinking of booking a place and I can’t decide if the Hotel Grinnell, the converted junior high building, is worth the extra money for the novelty. It looks like a later 20th century building and not a super cute historical building so I’m not sure if I want to spring for it or not.
And money and tuition?! DENIAL!! I do think I really do have a measure of denial about it all. We’ve mapped it out with a spreadsheet and we have the sources for it all to cobble together, but it’s like buying a house to put my oldest two through, and that’s a lot of money to be throwing around. Our mortgage will be paid off right as D25 graduates, so the breathing room that will create makes me less nervous about her tuition. For D19 in particular, who may prefer a full-pay situation, I anticipate contrasting opinions between me and DH and his mom, and since his mom could potentially throw in low five-figures per year, she gets to have her opinion I suppose. I just really wish it were possible to make a decision without sullying all the waters with the financial aspects, but of course that’s life and there’s no way around that.
I also worry about graduate degrees, anticipating that at least two of my three kids will want/need graduate degrees. We have not budgeted for that at all so they’re on their own for those. My friends’ son is doing a fifth-year terminal masters this coming year and got it paid for by being a teaching assistant, so my hope is my kids could attend cheaper schools for masters degrees and build in gigs to help pay for those bills.
Meanwhile we have a friend who is saving…$1,000,000 for each of his two kids for their educations. Yep, a cool million per. He’s thinking of the likelihood of law degrees or MDs and figures as tuition rises (his oldest is only a rising freshman in high school), it’ll be close to a million. SIGH. But that’s just fantasyland for most of us…
@InfiniteWaves It’s very hard to think of old traditions ending. My D19 has spent her high school years having extended summer visits at her grandma’s house and those are such sweet, carefree times for her. She keeps nervously guarding her planned two week stay in August and I know she’s worried the rug is going to get pulled out from under her, but I’m content to let her have her time there. My kids only have one healthy and involved grandparent. My parents both passed and my father in law is very unhealthy and not involved. So I’m grateful for this one healthy and lively grandparent influence for my kids.
A cool million per…Yikes, that concept is so far from my reality, I can’t even imagine. Would be nice though!
We’ve taken a number of road trips but the vacations have been few and far between the last couple of years due to sports, theater, and kids’ work schedules plus time taken up for D17’s college visits (S19 won’t have any of that).
D and I had some fun college trips and two summers ago, we dragged S along with us. We only made him walk on Duke’s campus and do the info. session and tour at U. Richmond. Then we dropped him off in Md. with my dad while D and I did our whirlwind tour of several PA schools.
My favorite memories from that trip include the three of us singing show tunes in the car. While I had listened to the Hamilton soundtrack a number time prior to that trip, my kids already knew all the words and D had just finished APUSH so she played all 46 songs and paused between each one to give me a history lesson and talk about what was happening in the story. So fun! What a treat to see Hamilton all together the day my D got back from college this May after finishing freshman year!
We also got my son hooked on the Spring Awakening soundtrack during that trip. Such great music!
@eandsmom My thoughts are with your family as well. These are reminders that time is a precious commodity.
We had a relative as babysitter in the summers when I was young. That TV sat on Ryan’s Hope, Loving, AMC, OLTL, and ended on General Hospital. During college, we had group viewings of All My Children, GH and Another World. I had an all in one TV with a VCR recorder attached (whoo hoo). Still record GH today.
I do believe that it is best to have skin in the game. The plan is that she will take out her subsidized loans and work during the summers. We would leave working during the school year up to her. Unless she chose one of the pricier schools, we’d pay back her loans on completion, but she doesn’t need to know that in advance. If she is blessed with a full or close to full ride, what happens to the money? Not sure. I don’t consider it her money, but I think she does deserve to benefit in some way from achieving that goal or making that choice (car, grad school, house down payment).
Hmmn. The last is subject to change. There are practices that evolved with “generational” financial improvements and “only childhood” that I look back on and would do differently. I don’t consider her spoiled, but there’s a lot taken for granted. Being too retrospective.
@SDCounty3Mom we stayed at the Spaulding Inn in Grinnell. It’s a little bed and breakfast in town and a four block walk to the college. I hadn’t heard of the Hotel Grinnell and I don’t think it was open when we went last fall. I took a peek and it looks great! I will say, though, that we spent very little time in the hotel so keep that in mind when you decide. For us, it’s a four hour drive from home so we left one morning, checked in, went on a tour and ate at the cafeteria. On our particular visit day, they had events at night for the kids until 10:00 and I just hung out on campus until S19 was done at the trivia night. Then, we were up early for breakfast and seminars and class visits for S19. He really liked it. Now that he’s seen schools just like it (in his mind) with a little bit better towns or warmer locations, it has dropped a bit on his list. But he really, really liked it when we were there and, if merit comes through, he will revisit for sure.
It would be nice to have been able to set aside that much for my kids. I can’t imagine but it’s like those donors who give X million to a charity, like it was just gathering dust or something. Oh well - in my next life I will be rich and have good financial planners. In this life though, the 529s are in their name as an illusion not as if they are the kid’s asset so I have just rolled whatever is left if anything, into the next kid’s 529 out of necessity.
I have a hard time believing that “skin in the game” really affects the behavior of your average college kid on a day to day basis. If the notion is that you want your college student to take it seriously, go to classes, try to do well, etc, I think that’s governed a whole lot more by your kid’s personality and a whole lot less by some pretty abstract (to the teenage mind) notion that they’re making a bad investment of their own if they don’t do well in college. I had skin in the game myself in college (some student loans in my name, not my parents, and some work study requirements). That had no effect, however, on my willingness to skip classes with relative abandon – I just wasn’t convinced that (short of failing out) that it really mattered that much what my GPA was. By contrast, my son would strive to do as well as he possibly could in college, no matter if the whole thing was completely free and every class was pass/fail.
Now, if you want your kids to pay for part of their college tuition or expenses because you think it’s only right that they shoulder part of the financial burden, I totally get that and support it. But to me, it’s more about the moral and philosophical issue (or just plain old needing help to make it work financially) than it is about hoping that skin in the game will change the behaviors that some teenagers might otherwise exhibit.
For us (or at least me), I agree that I’m not sure helping to pay for college encourages better outcomes than not having to pay (a portion) for college from an incentive standpoint. (After all, I didn’t contribute anything to the cost of my college education other than earning merit scholarships and doing some minor library jobs on campus junior and senior year, but just talked in a post above about rushing back to the apartment to watch Guiding Light.)
But the published research is pretty clear that students who work during college – at least less than 15-20 hours a week, do do better in school than those students who don’t work at all. That could simply be correlation not causation – students that are willing to work could be more motivated, or better at time mangement, etc. – but it’s at least something to consider. And maybe while the day-to-day motivations are left unchanged, even if a kid does the math (“I’m paying about $13 for each MWF class, so I’m OK skipping this one because I’ve got a bit of a hangover…”), it’s possible that on a year-to-year basis, it might nudge some kids. [To be clear, if a parent is full-pay at a nice LAC, that $13 cost for a 50-minute class on 8 AM Friday – what were they thinking!?! – is $100 or more.]
I (and my wife) want D19 to contribute, as you suggest, @soxmom, because it’s the right thing to do, could help her learn to do a broader range of time management, and, potentially, because it’s the small amount we need to make the finances work.
My d19 is introverted and not even a little interested in partying. I’d like her to have a job for the social aspect of working with other kids and being a useful part of the college community.
I totally agree with you @soxmom . My DS16 is attending his first choice school on basically a full ride . We pay only for his books and occasional lab fee. He also works approx 6 hrs a week at the writing lab and volunteers at the literacy program. He takes college very seriously. We provide occasional funds for social things throughout the semester , but it is not often. He knows how fortunate he is to have gotten his scholarships, takes his academics seriously and views his ability to maintain his scholarships as contributing to the family and his brother’s funds for college . He’s responsible and skin in the game doesn’t affect that.
I appreciated the merit scholarship gpa requirement for my son to have his “skin” in the game - he nearly lost it soph yr because…well engineering…lol! He knew that losing that scholarship would mean he needed to transfer to home state U - but ugh soph yr was a nail biter.
skin: I know for me, signing those loan papers every year had an impact. Knowing that my grades had a direct impact on getting next summer’s job and saving the $$ required to return. I think it’s wonderful that some kids have other sources of that fire. Years later, a close friend regretted her level of commitment due to both being in an 8 yr BS/MD program and taking for granted the net cost since it was so similar to the HS tuition that her folks already paid. I’m open to the idea that different things help different people.
And no one went very far away, so it wasn’t a big deal when someone left I guess.