<p>I wonder who Purpleflurp was in his/her former CC life?</p>
<p>This is an online board, true. We don’t know how the other side lives. I wish I had a vacation (except for the 2 days I spent in San Francisco this year at a cheap hotel), or the chance to travel to some exotic lands. But I can’t. I have never sent my kids to private k-12 education. I have two jobs. My husband works an insane amount of hours. According to so many on the board, we have no reason to complain because we seem to have a lot of money. I wish we did. </p>
<p>We struggle to pay our EFC, but we have done it with loans. There are no “toys” in the garage, except you count the bikes we bought at Target. The kids have bought all their electronic toys with their hard earned part time job money. </p>
<p>The grass is always greener, isn’t it? I used to think, oh, if we get that raise, then we can afford to sock away X number of dollars, and life will be easier. It never gets easier. The costs just get more ridiculous, the older the kids got! We couldn’t afford Michelle Obama’s tennis shoes - indeed, the cost of her shoes would fund the clothing purchases for my teenaged kids for a full year. </p>
<p>But we have a good life, with a house that is falling apart and cars that aren’t new (except my little car that cost $16,000 last year). Paying my property taxes is always cause for alarm. A major home fix up would do us in. We don’t go to new movies and live a pretty frugal life. There will always be others who can do it better. Good for them. It is painful when I hear others criticizing those who struggle to pay their kid’s college tuition, when it seems like they can “afford it”. Or should have “thought about it” when they were little. Goodness knows, we did. We also struggled with lots of other expenses. And have always skimped and saved as much as we could. </p>
<p>But we look like we are “doing fine”, on paper. The reality is often far different. A job loss would be devastating for us, like it is for everyone else. And we aren’t leading anything close to extravagant lives. </p>
<p>The reality is that few people could write a check for tuition without it hurting, whether it is a $5,000 check, or a $50,000 check each year.</p>
<p>garland:</p>
<p>The opinions I posted were in no way intended as a personal attack. I think you are overreacting, but forgive me if it came across that way.</p>
<p>Regarding the question asked in post #102: I have been wondering the same and have a likely.</p>
<p>Kayf:</p>
<p>I still don’t see the relevance. I am sure that neither Garland nor her son could have predicted this outcome or wished for it. But, in the circumstances (and I have been told a little bit of those circumstances), it was the best thing to do. Perhaps, later on, he will return and obtain his degree. But I am sure that neither Garland nor her son feel that the time and money spent were wasted. He got a great education over 3 rather than 4 years.
Living within your means is a great motto to live by.</p>
<p>I think living within your means is a good idea too. But I’ld sooner have a small house and and old car and live in a good school district. I’ld sooner have my daughter get a good HS education and then go to public U. Of course no one predicted what would happen – but I’m inclined to go with the proven high schools.</p>
<p>The reason why Garland’s S dropped out of college was not lack of preparedness owing to have gone to a mediocre school. His sister, graduating from the same high school, attended a top LAC and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.</p>
<p>
Seriously? You think I’m trying to get brownie points or something? I believe I posted the same opinions as Garland did long before she got to this thread. That’s giving me a lot of credit for knowing she was going to jump in and agree with me.</p>
<p>I also can’t believe that you would take note of what her child (don’t know if it was a boy or a girl because I didn’t know the story until you posted) did and remember it so you could use it here. You must have an absolutely fantastic memory for details considering you’ve only have 7 posts. </p>
<p>My only objection to your post is digging up details of another person’s family to use to bolster your opinion. I still disagree with that.</p>
<p>Its not only preparedness that determines how a student does in college, its a number of other things, including intelligence (which I don’t think any school can change) and motivation. The motivation factor is an area that I think the more elite public and private have an edge. Call it the positive side of peer pressure. Little johnny or little suzi doesnt want to come home without a degree.</p>
<p>Kayf:</p>
<p>Again, you don’t know the reasons for Garland’s son’s decision and his family support of it. It would be better to drop this line of discussion altogether. It continues to be irrelevant to the fact that a family earning $140k feels the system failed it because it cannot send its child to USC on somebody else’s dime, whether it be the taxpayers or rich donors.</p>
<p>purpleflurp–just apologize. You were wrong.</p>
<p>There will be a lot less “rich donors” now that the “rich donors” will not be allowed to make the same deductions!</p>
<p>I do agree that many posters on this board tend to take “holier than thou” attitude with people who make money. Anyone making a good living must almost apologize for it. Maybe it was bad taste to bring up someone’s old posts which probably had no relevance to this thread, but it wouldn’t hurt to tone down such a disdain for people with different life style either. We all choose our own path and need to be happy with it.</p>
<p>I have always wondered and worried about the group of family that make between 120-250. They do not qualify for any FA, but if they live in a high cost area it’s hard to save money to send kids to school (don’t start about if you were to clip coupons, and drive a car with 200,000 miles then you could do it). I see it at my D1’s school - kids either come from very wealthy or are qualified to get FA. For diversity purpose, there is a whole segment of students missing at those first tier schools. I am happy to see some schools, like Stanford, are giving more generous aid to students of that group. For FA calculation, it would be good if they could factor in Cost of Living. It is a big country out there.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>So why is it relevant for Garland to tell People to live in lower cost areas? When people living on the coasts may feel that 140K isnt that much and hard to save? Garland stated her own solution – and then others arent allowed to question it? Boy arent we touchy.</p>
<p>Oldfort, I agree, the lack of a COLA adjustment is a big problem, especially when it is unfair that people in these same high COLA areas are paying a lot of taxes.</p>
<p>Because they need to have the funds necessary to pay for college instead of feeling “the whole system failed them?” Sheesh… What an alien concept…</p>
<p>People did not just offer a solution that was different from Garland’s. They brought up her son. Gratuitous, irrelevant, and offensive.
Didn’t you just agree with me that living within one’s means is a good idea? What is there to argue about? Granted, CA is an expensive area to live in. But please, can’t people who earn $140k save a couple hundred dollars per month for their child’s education?</p>
<p>Kayf–feel free to question my choices. Attacking my S isn’t doing that. If you were to ask, I could tell you, as Marite did, that his choosing to leave his school had nothing to do with his high school. But since you think you need to know, his GPA at his college was exactly the college average.</p>
<p>IMO the parent’s failed their daughter! </p>
<p>This “entitlement” mentality is everywhere! I don’t want this thread to turn into a political mess, however I think our President will force more entitlement programs down our throat before he is gone.</p>
<p>Please remember that we really know nothing about the family’s finances. We don’t know how long they’ve had a household income of $140k. We don’t know what other nondiscretionary financial commitments they’ve had, or have. We don’t even know where exactly they live, or what the cost of living is in their immediate area. We have no idea how much money they’ve saved towards college, if any. </p>
<p>When students with high family EFCs post in the FA forum about how it’s not fair that their parents won’t pay the $50k + a year, because they’re sure that their parents can afford it, posters respond that no, you can’t know what your parents can and cannot afford. Same thing here, because we have no idea what this family really can afford.</p>
<p>A couple hundred dollars a month for each of my kids - $600 a month. No big deal.</p>
<p>What does that get me? I can put that in a savings account, make a minimal amount of interest, and still… at the end of one year, I have $2400 per kid. </p>
<p>If I started when they are babies, I would end up with $43,200. That is a good chunk of change. </p>
<p>And right now, that would get my kid 1.5 years at UC Berkeley, with room & Board and fees, with books and some personal expenses.</p>
<p>It would get my kid 2.5 years at CSU Long Beach, with room & board and fees, with books and some personal expenses.</p>
<p>And it would get my kid less than 1.0 year at USC, with room & board and fees, with books and some personal expenses. </p>
<p>Still not enough money. Unfortunately.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole article yet, and while my income is less than the family quoted, I think they are clueless. Absolutely clueless. Most of us can’t save ENOUGH money, because the prices keep going up about 5%. College tuition has outpaced inflation at ridiculous levels! Even if we were all smart enough to set aside huge money, so many lost a bundle last year that there may be so much less to give our kids. Very sad. </p>
<p>It was dumb of those quoted in the article to assume because their kid was a superstar, that it would be a full rides. There are few “full rides” out there. Not even all that many “partial rides”. Many of them have strings attached, grade requirements, most importantly. </p>
<p>One of the sad jokes in the college admissions industry is that the mid-range LAC’s that do offer “merit” scholarships know that many kids will lose them due to struggling with grades. They can offer a lot more, knowing that kids will not be entitled to that money next year…and then the family is on the hook for a whole lot more money. </p>
<p>There are some amazing superstars in high schools all over the country. I am sure their kid is amazing, too. But they didn’t understand how this game is played. Too bad for them. Hopefully, the readers of that article with younger kids will learn something about how this process works, so their kids have better outcomes!</p>
<p>We put in the same amount of money for each of our kids (2) and were able to accumulate significantly more than $43k for each of them. It was still not enough to cover full fares ($40k+ per year), and so we have borrowed. If we had felt we could not afford it, they would have gone to our state school. Neither of them felt entitled to go to his “dream school.”</p>
<p>If you have ever gone to financial aid presentations at college visits, you know that many of them are marketing presentations. THey do not present the reality that very few kids at the college are getting substantial scholarships. I remember one school making a big deal about their merit grants. When I researched the offerings closely, I found out that most kids don’t have much chance at all of getting any of the substantial ones, and the small token amounts don’t put much of a dent on the $55K COA.</p>
<p>Heck, I was so danged happy when my son got a $25K grant. Then it hit me that we would still have to pay $30K, no small amount. </p>
<p>THis is an awakenings of sorts to families who have bright, talented children who have been told that their kids are sure to get money for college. These articles about financial aid and all the PR should be focused on Momoftexas’s methods to get a full ride scholarship, for those who don’t want to pay for their kids’ college. It is a rude awakening.</p>
<p>Friends of ours have a D at a small, private LAC. They are extremely resentful that they are paying what they are for this school, which is not well known, for a daughter who was a match for most of the ivies in terms of her academic profile. THat most of the families with kids at this school are not paying sticker price fuels their resentment, and I can understand that. Basically, they are going to a school where most of the families make less than they do, so those folks are getting aid. Those who are up with them in financial are not many in number, and some of them are getting merit money, which their D did not get. It’s a local school, and they are not about to pay for another body from 20 miles of their radius. They want diversity.</p>