<p>Hey OP, have you ever flown on a commercial airline flight? I’m thinking you haven’t, or at least you haven’t listened to the safety announcement at the beginning. That’s the one where you’re given instructions on how to put on your oxygen mask if needed. If you’re an adult flying with a child, you’re told to first put on your own mask, and then put on the child’s. And that’s because you have to first take care of your own needs in order to be able to help your child. </p>
<p>Very young children don’t understand this concept. Teenagers–at least some–start to have a clue. An increasing number of young adults understand that their parents have needs. Here’s to hoping you get there someday.</p>
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<p>Excellent, a young adult without any children of his/her own lecturing parents and grandparents on how to raise their children. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>True, Hunt. But what inflamed was the idea parents who won’t borrow to fund Junior’s (and their) dreams are somehow willingly disabling him. OP’s version of love, imo, lacks warmth and suggests love is validated by a willingness to go into debt. </p>
<p>We love our kids by giving them the grounding, confidence and resilience they need to move forward over the decades and, in turn, share that with their own kids and others. Not by teaching them they are entitled and that our willingness to make extraordinary sacrifices proves it. Eeek.</p>
<p>This reminds me of the thread that says there is some insurmountable loss in not going to U-know-where, that it sets back kids’ confidence.</p>
<p>A show house you can’t afford, fancy car, haute vacations and name brand insistence, seem equally suspect to me, if they require burdensome debt and/or the terms rob the family of ordinary closeness and that sense of security.</p>
<p>What you miss is that if the parents need to take such large loans for their kids’ college costs, they probably cannot afford to do so in the first place*. If they could afford to do so in the first place, they would already have been saving up that amount, making compound interest work for them instead of against them. And they would have the needed amount to contribute to the kids’ college costs without needing to borrow.</p>
<p>*Yes, there are some unusual situations involving assets that cannot easily be sold in pieces, so a loan may be used for liquidity purposes, but these are not the normal cases.</p>
<p>I think I would have been fine if OP just asked, “is it ok to take on some debt to afford a school that, with intelligent consideration, is a better match for a child?”</p>
<p>If he had said, “my relative will be better matched by the program at X than a lesser U that doesn’t offer his major or handles it half-heartedly.” Instead, this feels very name/tier/status focused.</p>
<p>And, despite my belief some schools are extraordinary experiences, I am on the side that finds that singular focus feels cold, empty and calculating.</p>
<p>Actually, if it were OP’s money and loan, then yes, it would be fine for him to get recommendations on whether to borrow to help his or her child and education, not spend or second guess a relative. </p>
<p>Spending money belonging to someone else and then trying to justify your position by guilt and entitlement grates on most of us parents.</p>
<p>Being a parent, in my opinion, isn’t about “sacrificing flesh and blood” for the child at all others’ expense, including your own. It is critically important for parents to take time for themselves in addition to the time they spend with children, as this increases quality of life/satisfaction for all parties involved. That time may involve pampering oneself now and then, vacations with just the parents while the kids stay at grandmas, etc. No kid will enjoy having a stressed out parent, and no parent will enjoy their family time if they are burnt out physically, emotionally, and financially.</p>
<p>If the child loves the parent, should they want their parent to sacrifice just so they can have a better name on a diploma? …and as someone else stated, a top student at a top 50 school can find more success than a mediocre student at a top 10 school. </p>
<p>Putting a price tag on love is not the way to go. It would never end…spend $50,000 on a wedding for the one you love? Spend $25,000/year on the best private elementary school to give the “best” head start? Where would the limit be drawn?</p>
<p>Swimcatsmom is my new hero! (See post # 146)</p>
<p>OP (collegehelp?) - dude, I will be dead in 30 years. Do you understand how that gets folded into the calculus? Can you grasp that my awareness of my mortality is not evidence that I don’t love my kids?</p>
<p>Love is ideally a two-way street and no young person I know wants to support their folks who don’t save enough for retirement by sacrificing all for their children. A good balance is important.</p>
<p>DH and I borrowed a decent chunk of change for him to attend a T-7 law school back in the dark ages. We had been married several years at the point he chose to give up a well-paying job to return to school. He received zero assistance from his parents for UG or grad school. We considered it a mortgage on his brain. It took us ten years, but we repaid the loans while also paying big $$ for child care for two kiddos and going without my income for a couple of years. It worked out well for us; given the state of the legal profession these days, I am not sure the cost-benefit analysis holds as well now</p>
<p>We are big believers in the power of education and had a pretty good sense that our kids would some outstanding options for college. We were lucky that we did not have to limit their options. That said, we have lived frugally for decades in anticipation that we would be paying big $$ for college, and we have wound up borrowing some funds against our home equity. It is the only time we’ve tapped into that in the 15 years we have owned our older, unrenovated starter house, and it was for significantly less than $80k and will be repaid within five years. Had I not had to leave my job for medical reasons, we could have gotten away without borrowing. But so it goes…</p>
<p>I had to turn down Duke for UG because there was no $$. I was pretty miserable at my
flagship U, but part of that was my fault for not embracing the opportunities that were there. My parents dropped me off at school, handed me $50 and said I was on my own – and they weren’t kidding. I found out that day that I was going to have to pay for it all on my own. Survival mode kicked in instead of success mode. Got a job within 24 hours. Had to get a scholarship reallocated because I didn’t have enough $$ to pay the bursar’s bill.</p>
<p>Had I been told the truth I could have prepared better, but I was always assured that my parents would at least help with college. I knew that the realities of five kids, six years apart and a family income in the mid-20s meant funds were limited, but even $50/mo. would have made a huge difference. I spent a lot of energy being angry and bitter and there are pieces I am still dealing with, 30 years later.</p>
<p>So I get the anger, but also know that sometimes one must make lemonade in these situations. </p>
<p>I was bound and determined that my kids were not going to have to go through what DH and I did in paying our own freight. They took out Staffords and worked, but we were going to do our share as well. They have appreciated the sacrifices we’ve made.</p>
Well, maybe, but my experience tells me that we’d still have seen plenty of people saying that nobody should go into debt for college, that kids aren’t “entitled” to have their parents go into debt, and so on and so forth. As I said before, what’s the big issue? You want to buy something expensive that you don’t have the cash for? Either you do without, buy something cheaper, save up until you have the cash, or borrow the money if you can pay it back without undue hardship. I don’t see why a college education is different from any other expenditure in this respect.</p>
<p>Agreed. The difference being that you generally aren’t accused of being a horrible parent who doesn’t really love your children if you decide to take a camping vacation with cash on hand rather than flying to England using money from a HELOC. Or you get a used Corolla as another family car instead of a brand new Tesla. Or you buy the less-than-marvelous house rather than the spectacular one that’s only “affordable” because of a lurking balloon payment.</p>
<p>It is one thing for a parent to be unable to contribute much, or anything, to the kid’s college education. In that case, an informed-beforehand kid can tailor his/her college list appropriately based on the parents’ inability to contribute much, or anything.</p>
<p>It is quite another to promise to contribute but then back out of the promise too late for the kid to plan for that. Overpromising and underdelivering leads to a bad result all around.</p>
I guess we’ve now connected the dots between this thread and the one in which somebody was told that it was “stupid” to spend huge amounts of money on a selective college. For some reason, these decisions are emotionally fraught–perhaps because we wonder if we’re doing the right thing, no matter what we do.</p>
Sure you are. I got the accusation all the time when we didn’t vacation in Europe - I was “stunting her growth and her world-view.” We have the smallest house in the area. We drive cars until they rust around us. </p>
<p>People who will accuse you of not spending your money appropriately will take any opportunity to do so.</p>
<p>I think people always feel the need to comment when others do unexpected things or take an alternative path. We’ve gotten stunned comments because we’ve never vacationed at Disney World or any other World. Then the person almost always say “You HAVE to go”. Um, no. I know it’s great fun; I know lots of people like it. That’s great. It’s just someplace DH and I never wanted to spend the money and time to visit and the kids never mentioned it (yeah, we may have caved if they begged and cajoled).</p>
<p>I wish there were a study that compared outcomes for several hundred students who were accepted at, say, a first-choice, top 30 school, half of whom went to that school and half of whom opted for an “average” school for financial reasons. The data would help answer the question about costs versus benefits of attending a top school and “are they worth the debt”. Such a study would only have credibility, I think, if it looked at intangibles as well as income variables. </p>
<p>Very interesting posts, some quite insightful and articulate, some unexpected reactions and characterizations. It is enlightening and, yes, I am learning from these comments.</p>
:D</p>