It’s on me by choice. (I have the money, so it would be unkind to give them nothing AND they get no FA bc of me!)
You do what you can. If you have it and it won’t hurt you, I think you should pay. If you don’t, then that is why we have endowments and as someone called it in another thread “spoiled rich full pay kids”. This fall I will be full pay for two of them. (Whoever said it: You are welcome.
Yes, it is a choice to teach, but I’m happy someone chooses to do it. Happy to chip in for her kid too. Choices are what they are. Some people have more choices than others. Some have no bad luck. Some have bad luck but have good choices to bounce back, and so on.
I doubt the $300k income parents get any FA despite the lack of cash. So don’t waste time worrying about that:). People who have a ton and fail to save or make more when college comes are in dire straits (of their own making) with loans, esp if their kid can’t get merit.
I don’t think the original Q was who should pay: parents or FA. I think it was parents or kids.
Midwest- yes, There are millions of people in this country for whom setting aside $100 or $50 a month for a kids college education is ludicrous. They don’t have the $50, and if they did, it would cover the copay for their kids well-baby visit or it would go towards new eyeglasses which they’ve needed for two years but haven’t been able to afford to buy.
Those people don’t have choices- either to earn more, save more, etc.
But there are also substantial numbers of people in America who have chosen low wage professions AND choose to live in high cost locales. There are substantial numbers of people who limit their income potential by refusing overtime, transferring to another location, any business travel, or an increase in responsibility (one of my other relatives- a state employee- has regularly refused a promotion because “who needs the headache and I like my union rep”). Which I understand- except that hitting your earning peak at age 35 or so when your private sector friends and counterparts are just getting moving financially has been a source of frustration for this person.
But agree with you for that millions of people who are living paycheck to paycheck and using their tax refund to pay the last of the winter heating bills… not many “choices” to be made here.
My original thought was "we pay for undergrad and you pay for grad’. I also steered my DDs toward good value schools. But DD1 graduated in 2.5 years (with IB credits + some summer classes) and then we did pay for grad school as it was all 4 years total.
The whole premise of this thread is that all children are planned, born to parents who have jobs and can not only afford their rent and car payments but add the cost of children to those budgets. That may have been the life of some on CC when they had their children, but in the real world most people with small children are barely able to afford diapers. In the real world people have to divert savings to pay for medical costs and braces and tutoring for a first grader who still can’t read. And to pay for more children.
When my first child was born, she spent 3 months in the NICU and I saw a lot of real life in that time. That was not where most of those people expected to spend the first days of their children’s lives. No one was worried about paying for college, but more worried about how to pay for therapies and special child care that would be needed. There were a lot who did not speak English, who did not understand the forms for SSI payments, or how to get insurance to pay for hearing aids or home health care. If there was extra money it was paying for medical care, for extra child care for other children so the parents could be in the NICU, for travel for grandparents to come, for housing to be near their children if they were from out of town.
It’s not that we didn’t want our children to go to college, but that there wasn’t any extra money to save. The extra costs didn’t end the day we left the hospital, and in fact for me just started that day. While my daughter was in the hospital with excellent insurance that I paid through the teeth for (insurance premium went up $400/mo the day she was born because I switched to ‘family’ coverage, and that was 22 years ago when $400 was real money), everything was covered while she was in the hospital. The day she came home, I had to pay for diapers, formula (special formula that cost more), all the doctor’s co-pays, prescriptions, special preemie diapers. I couldn’t work for 10 months because she couldn’t go to daycare (and when she did, she got sick all the time).
Life isn’t always planned, and extra money doesn’t always pay for trips to Disney.
That said, I pay as much as I can for my kids to go to college. I do a lot of paperwork for them to get scholarships, grants, aid, tax refunds. I helped them select colleges we could afford but they are very happy with their schools. Everyone doesn’t need to have the choice of Stanford or UMiami or U of San Diego. Many students are happy at local schools that they can afford.
We wanted our kids to go to college, so helped as we could with the cost and finding affordable options. They each have basic student loans. No regrets.
We also spent their growing up years traveling with them (quite a bit of it tent camping) and giving them what we consider terrific experiences along the way (National Parks and similar, but a couple of Disney trips in there too - 49 states, most of Eastern Canada, a few other foreign countries). No regrets there either.
Where we really scrimped is on our own house, furnishings, and personal wardrobe, etc, but we figured out long ago that we didn’t need “Better Homes and Gardens.” We’re perfectly fine with “OK Homes and Gardens.” Those who watch Househunters would pull their hair out if they saw our place. Anyone into fashion would too. We’re ok with that. We love travel and want our lads to have a college education and need to do both with under 100K in income most years.
FWIW, our lads (youngest is a senior in college now) have thanked us more than once for both the travel experiences and assisting with college.
Will we have enough in retirement? Time will tell. We think so mainly because we plan to keep our mostly frugal ways and guessed well so far with some of our investments. If we’ve guessed wrong, our lads have assured us they’ll help as they can knowing many of our peers scrimped on things we didn’t.
I certainly don’t criticize those who want to “live” and still give their kids a college education however they work out the finances. I fully understand those who can’t afford extra for college. I see these at work every day - well - I see their students. Those earning minimum wage or even double that certainly have other finances to consider. Those I don’t understand are those who CAN afford it (not by raiding retirement funds) who CHOOSE not to contribute (assuming their students are college level material and want to go, of course). In this day and age that seems incredibly selfish.
I’m glad there are scholarship opportunities out there, both merit and need based.
I’m answering a slightly different question. My wife and I were both fortunate to be able to attend Penn as undergrads with our parents footing the bill. We always envisioned that we would do the same and started saving when each boy was born. Our financial planner said a private school would most likely be about $35K per year all in but we decided to fund at the $40K level to be safe. Life got in the way a bit (specifically the crash in 2008) but were were doing decently. But college costs rose faster than inflation and the whole financial game changed. Our financial planner said “you need to keep funding what you can but can’t ignore retirement”. The whole game really changed.
Each child started receiving the “money matters” speech when they were sophomores in HS. Fortunately, our oldest chose an affordable option. We are now going through the process with our youngest. That said, we live relatively frugally so that we can make things work for the kids without destroying our retirement. It is a tricky balance with no “right” answer.
We are a one income family with lots of medical issues and no option for a second income. It makes us poor compared to the vast majority of folks who post at CC, but we are in the middle class, living in rural/suburbia where housing was almost affordable when we moved in.
When DH and I got married, we planned on both working and saving to fund our children’s education. We never expected to be on single income for long, and for medical issues to get worse.
We made choices and sacrifices for our family - our plan was for me to stay home for a few years in part due to child care issues, but in my last pregnancy my medical issues got worse, and prevented me from returning to the workforce. We have a high deductible plan with a large OOP that we have hit out every year. When it hasn’t been me or DH, it was one of the pups who had medical issues costing thousands of dollars we did not have.
Our college savings were laughable compared to the costs, and our retirement plan is a disaster. We have lived very frugally - old cars, most years taking no vacations, thrift shop and hand-me-down clothes, etc.
Our pups bailed us out by working hard and getting into elite schools that meet full need - we have plenty of need.
The real world is us. We are better off than a lot of families but we have done without a lot along the way, and will always live frugally because we know how precarious it can be.
We considered it our responsibility to pay for college. We both really started saving even before we had kids both for retirement and what we hoped was a fund for our kids education. This came before any other expense other than retirement. We lived very frugally and were lucky to have a good income. We saved and saved and there was ennough for full pay private undergrad. Around the time we might have given a “you have X dollars for colleges /grad school and need to decide how to budget” speech we got an unexpected windfall inheritance. And thus were were thrilled to tell the kids that we’d pay for any college AND grad school. There is nothing that I’d rather spend my money on and my kids know how lucky they are that we are in this position.
Those who weren’t as fortunate as us I have no judgment about. You can only do what you can given your circumstances. Help your kid figure out a plan if possible is all. But people where I live who earn 500k a year and have nothing saved for college ( nothing saved at all…they took 30K vacation and drive 60 K cars and live in multimillion dollar houses) and think that’s ok…yeah I have judgment. And theres several like this I know.
The answer to this question has changed for our family over the years. When the kids were very little, our financial circumstances were very different than they are today. Some things that didn’t occur to us were 1) that the cost of a college education would rise so dramatically, and 2) that we would end up having three kids when the plan was for two.
When our son was born, a 4 year college education at our state flagship including tuition, room, board and expenses was expected to be about $68K. Fast forward to 2018 - we had two more kids, and we saved. However, that $68K all in for 4 years has now jumped up to a whopping $148K. The price has more than doubled over the years. Our state, local and property taxes have skyrocketed since the year 2001. Our health insurance costs have risen by an enormous amount. The only thing that didn’t rise as fast as everything else was our income. Granted, we both got promotions and got raises over the years, and we are in a much better financial position now than we were when the kids were little.
All that said - despite our best efforts, it is a struggle to pay for education. I believe some of it us on us as parents. I think there is an equal responsibility on my children to do their part to help themselves. They need to supplement our savings with merit scholarships and Stafford loans if they want to go away to school.
They each get about $20K from us per year for school. That’s it. Everything above and beyond that is on them. We will not co-sign loans, take out Parent Plus loans, nor raid our 401Ks to give them additional funds. After all, it’s also our responsibility to make sure that we have enough money to live on once we are too old to work. Neither of us have pensions, and who knows if Social Security will be around.
Is my way the right way? Who knows? Who cares? People should do what they think is right for their own families and not worry what anybody else is doing. I don’t really care if people think we’re selfish because we’re not willing to give each kid a quarter million dollars to go to private colleges for four years. If that’s what they want to do, more power to them. We don’t have it to give, and even if we did, I’d scratch my head at the wisdom of it anyway.
@elodyCOH the worst thing to do is saddle your kids with taking care of you in retirement. Not that my opinion matters, but I think your plan is very sound. We did take out PPL’s for the first child and 2 for the second (they overlapped by 2 years). But the debts for the first two have been retired and now our last is set to go in the fall. We never stopped funding retirement, but we had to delay other things, like a new roof and driveway. They’ll get done in the next year. You can only do what you can do and there is zero shame in that. I’m not really concerned with what my neighbors think when they see my neglected driveway
@lastone03 - We have decided no loans and no co-signing, because the older parent will be 65 when the last one graduates from college. If we were 20 years younger we might have considered PPLs, but it would be a very risky thing to do this late in life. I hear you about the driveway! We both drive cars that are over a decade old, and our house could use some TLC with decor, but it’s just not a priority these days.
Same here…we’ve continued to fund our retirement accounts, but other things have been put on hold. We have only 1 more year…this time next year, we will be able to start going through a long wish list of major purchases we’ve put off! LOL!
My wife’s parents gave her partial help for undergrad while mine did not. I also attended professional school and graduated with about 100k in debt. I just paid mine off 7 years ago (it took 13 years). We made the decision to be a single income family so that my wife could stay home with our three kids. When they got older, we decided to do infant foster care, so again no second income. That then led us into adopting two children with special needs (one foreign, one domestic). Obviously this was all a pretty big financial sacrifice, but our kids knew that all along. We also live pretty frugally compared to many in our friend group.
We have one in her second year of college and another starting in the fall. They each know that there is a set amount of help per year that we will give and they are responsible after that. This helped shape their college choices, their motivation for merit aid, and majors/career choice (so that they could afford any loans incurred).
It seems to be working pretty well for us as everyone is onboard. Our kids will each have less than about 35k in total debt upon graduation. One of the wisest words of wisdom I have heard about this is, “You can take out a loan for college, but you can’t for retirement.”
Here is the problem. Lets say a parent can offer $10,000 per year per child. Thats not a small amount. The kid can take $5,500 in loans, at least during the first year and maybe count on making another $3000 with part time work. Our state flagship costs about $25,000 per year. If the parents don’t want to take on debt, also a reasonable request, how does a kid fill that gap? If there are no 4 year state schools within commuting distance, what do you do? It seems wrong to leave kids in this situation.
@elodyCOH we were in our late 40’s when we started with the PPL’s. We are now in our early 50’s and I am glad that PPL’s are a thing of the past for the 3rd one. I did co-sign a car loan for my daughter but she is uber responsible and gainfully employed so I made an exception for her so she could get an incredibly low rate. She set the payments up on auto debit because I am also on the car title as a co-owner
@gallentjill, the University of London does offer rigorous degrees for less than $10K total. Granted, they are distance degrees (vast majority of students are from the Commonwealth, many from the third world) and pretty much entirely self-study (though that’s also typical for most British undergraduate education anyway). There are also other total/partial distance degrees (like Harvard Extension School).
Wouldn’t work so well for majors that require labs, granted. Another option, if you can save up $40K total per child, is 2Ys CC and transfer.
A third option is tuition-free uni in Europe (Germany, etc.). A decent number of degrees are now offered in English.
@PurpleTitan Those are really interesting options. Although this is not our situation at all, I tend to keep looking at everything through the lens of a pre-med. I wonder what would my daughter do in that case. It would be great if some schools offered distance degrees with local lab opportunities. Or, allow a student to be in residence for a couple of weeks and do all the labs at once. I have no idea how well that would work.
How well accepted are those online degrees? I’ve heard horror stories of worthless online degrees. I imagine University of London or Harvard extension have some more credibility. But can people get into graduate programs using them?
" I tend to keep looking at everything through the lens of a pre-med. I wonder what would my daughter do in that case. "
I know several doctors who got their MD through the military. Cost them $0 but they did pay through years of service and collected pay. Still an available option.
