You aren’t kidding!!
I joined several parent groups for the schools DS is trying to choose between, and it is downright painful reading some of those posts now that the financial aid letters are coming out. Some people have obviously never spent 5 minutes with a Net Price Calculator or even looked up the cost of attendance it seems. Lots of shocked parents trying to figure out how to make the “dream” work and one wondering how they can get their kid 30K/year in student loans (for an out of state, state school). There is a lot of suggestions of “this is what we did/do”, which include some doozies like cashing in the retirement account…not just a 401K loan or a Roth contribution withdrawal, this is the whole pay the taxes and penalty be broke in old age deal. HELOCs, private loans, selling the house…one person mentioned local community college for 2 years and then transfer and got shot down immediately. I just don’t comment on those threads. They’re so “all-in” with that particular school that nothing matters but figuring out some way to finance it.