Vanderbilt undergrad, graduating with 40k debt : worth it?

ClassicRockerDad
Fri, 10 Apr 2015 17:32:23 +0000

It’s healthy to get out of your comfort zone. You can always return.

Wichita to Nashville takes about 5.25 hours on Southwest changing in Midway Chicago for roughly $130 each way if you plan in advance. Not so bad.

so that means two round trips for one of them at every major holiday or break, unless you can get another kind of transportation for at least part of the way.

My D1 went to school far away.

Freshman year we flew with her to move in and rented an SUV. 3 round trips.

Holidays she flew solo (as a passenger, not the pilot, LOL). She flew Southwest and periodically earned free tickets.
She learned how to print out her own boarding pass, how to get a taxi to the airport, how to weigh her bags to insure compliance, check her own bags, how to file a claim when they were lost. She became an experienced traveler at only 18.

After that, much of the stuff went into storage for the summers. Eventually she learned how to rent a U-haul to move stuff, how to rent a storage bin. How to ship stuff UPS.
After graduation, D1 and I drove a cargo van back home with her apartment furnishings over a number of days.

In the scheme of things, flying is not that expensive if you plan well in advance. Neither is storage and shipping. Southwest still has 2 checked bags free.