I don’t think it’s weird, I think it’s just a different approach from yours. For families, unlike yours, where there is a finite amount of money, it is not unusual to earmark X dollars for each child and assist them in making the appropriate use of those funds for themselves in whatever configuration works best. My older daughter is at a CUNY because she wants to be a teacher and that’s the best path to student teaching here. She won’t use the money we earmarked for her education and so we will give her the rest (not a huge amount by any means, but always “hers”) toward a downpayment on a condo when she gets a permanent job. We won’t do the same with D2 (probably) because she plans to get a PhD and her education will be a lot more expensive and so no leftovers.</p>
<p>If I paid for 1 of my kids to go to grad school, I think I would feel guilty if I didn’t gift the same amount to the other eventually…isn’t that only fair? I know the rebuttal will probably be that the other child could have gotten the same deal but chose NOT to go to grad school…and I do see that side of it. The fact still remains that 1 child received $200k of my money that his sibling didn’t. I don’t think weird is that right word here.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl, I see exactly what you are saying and it makes sense. However, I know quite a few people who take the position that “I saved x amount of money for your college. If you choose to go somewhere more expensive, you will need to take out loans and if you go somewhere cheaper, you can keep the difference.” In a sense, they are giving their kid their first real lesson in making choices about economic value. I’m not saying I agree with this 100% but that is how many families handle it.</p>
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<p>My husband’s parents have always done this. They believe that it’s not fair to give one child something and not give the other something of equal value. I only have one child so it’s not an issue but I do want to be able to help our son with other things in life - like his first house. Our financial obligation stops after college but I would get a great deal of pleasure out of being able to do things for him even after he has his own family.</p>
<p>One family I know is sending one child to med school and gave the other child money to buy their first home. I don’t know if the dollar amounts are equal but I can see where they are coming from. Why should the child who chooses to go to med school receive so much more of the families resources than the child who decided to be a CPA?</p>
<p>Similar to a family I know where one sib inherited most of the family business (after working in it for years), and the other sib inherited grandma’s house after she passed away, plus a small share of the family’s business (she was not involved working there at all).</p>
<p>So does the kid with braces whose sibling doesn’t need braces – so does the kid with glasses whose sibling doesn’t need vision correction – so does the kid with asthma or ADHD or diabetes who requires medical treatment or medication a sibling doesn’t need. Do you lay out equal amounts of money in those conditions to the sibling to keep it all “fair”? Where does that end? </p>
<p>My D takes private tennis lessons, and is in need of a new racquet. S is perfectly welcome to take up a sport; he prefers running and weightlifting on his own, which costs a lot less. Do I need to set aside the same $ I spend on D’s tennis for S, to keep it equal?</p>
<p>In my mind, I fund extracurricular interests – which may happen to cost $X for one kid and $Y for the other. As long as I’m funding what they want to do, I consider it fair. X doesn’t have to equal Y.</p>
<p>Why are you getting so hostile about this, PG? It’s just a different way, not a criticism of your way. There may be enough money in your family for each kid to have anything you deem appropriate without limits, but that’s not the case for a lot of us, so we have to be a little more scrupulous with fairness or may have totally different circumstances.</p>
<p>I think what PG is trying to say is that this is a “grey” area… we also have VERY different kids; one had the ability to get significant merit aid (at her first choice school), the other will be lucky to be accepted even at full pay…we have no intention of gifting the difference to our older child…the same way we don’t given her the difference in the cost of raising either of them; different children/ different needs…</p>
<p>If either child needed anything, we assess what it is and whether we can/want to afford it…period</p>
<p>it just so happens we have one child who costs us significantly more than the other one for everything…</p>
<p>For us, medical conditions are mostly covered by insurance and the amounts are fairly small. Private tennis lessons can be cheap or expensive. Tennis racquets are cheap. If you think of things as a business, the cheap stuff can be paid out of petty cash because the amounts are small enough that you don’t want to spend a lot of time, effort and thinking on these expenses. These are the things that you do to keep the household running.</p>
<p>With college, there’s more of a clear choice and level of expense involved and here it makes sense to budget and then follow through on your budget.</p>
<p>Arggh- just lost a long post I was about to send!! </p>
<p>To summarize it, like PG, we told our kids we would fund undergraduate education, not corvettes. Older s chose a school that was more expensive, with plans that if he went on to grad school, it was likely to be paid for by an employer or research funding/teaching assistantships. He chose to go to work for a small research and development company that unfortunately is becoming a victim of the economy, so his plans, after a yr and a half, are changing. We shall see where things take him.</p>
<p>Younger s chose a less expensive school, thanks to merit scholarships, with plans to “bank” the rest of the $$ allocated for undergrad (we told him we would spend approximately the equivalent of what we spent on older s’s undergrad, with some wiggle room for inflation, cost increases, etc) for professional school. It might pay for a year or two, but thats a start. We shall see what he plans down the road. We still have a year or 2. The bottom line is, things and circumstances change. Our kids know that we will help them within reason when we can, and they know we are fair. Fortunately they dont have any sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>My experience is being the only sib in a large family to attend a private college. The others attended some of the best public colleges in the Country–top UCs.</p>
<p>To me and my sibs, spending the extra $120K (if you have it) on a great private college is a bargain. We’ve all done well by general standards, but my opportunities and the ease with which I was able to gain the contacts to take advantage of that education, are priceless. Doing well where I went to school and doing well where they went are very different things. Having had a bird’s eye view, they are sending all of their kids who can get in to good private colleges, even though it’s a stretch.</p>
<p>I had never heard of the field I ended up in prior to college. My sibs still hadn’t heard of it after college. they fought for decent internships. I chose from multiple offers from the best of companies in every sector. My job offers and accompanying salary were worlds apart from theirs.</p>
<p>My school has regular reunions which draw a huge number of my classmates. The business deals begun at such reunions have made people’s careers. People without jobs in the last few years have especially benefited by this.</p>
<p>If their huge publics have reunions, they don’t know about them. They also wouldn’t know too many people from their huge classes.</p>
<p>When I decided to semi retire and change careers at 52, I looked no further than my school network for opportunities.</p>
<p>$120K? An absolute drop in the bucket for what you will get in many careers. The poster Mini has written that the tipy top schools could double their price and still fill up with qualified, full pay students. I agree. It would be with the children of people who went to these school who know the value and have the money because their careers have been so successful.</p>
<p>And for those who you will say this is just about investment banking, big law and consulting, trust me, it’s not.</p>
<p>What is your question about engineering, BCEagle? Can you clarify?</p>
<p>I love hmom5’s post. Networking is a huge part of all of this. Just this week alone several contacts with old college friends have occurred, and networkingis a big part of opportunities opening up.</p>
<p>“^ money paid for medical conditions is totally different because those would be necessities …grad school is not”</p>
<p>It’s quickly becoming a necessity. With so many people unemployed with college degrees and even masters and doctorates, most fields are requiring more advanced degrees to have a chance of being competitive in the job market. Its something you might have to take into consideration. I knew from the day I started college that it would not be my final schooling expense and its always been part of my plan money-wise.</p>
<p>"$120K could get you 2 decent cars and they are worthless in 3-5 years. "</p>
<p>Off topic I guess, but really? Worthless? That has not been our families experience, and if my kids can relate to nothing else, they can relate to the idea of driving ( but not necessarily owning) a 60k car, vs a year of private college tuition. My kids go to private schools, but share a '96 ( but very safe) car, with 200k miles on it. Driving MY car, for them, is a tantalizing treat.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, my head REELS from the differences between what H and I’s options where, compared to my kids. Neither of our parents helped us with school, and we couldn’t even imagine it. I would NEVER have guessed “we” would be expected to pay for my kids to go to school, but my H assumed it should be so. I would NEVER have guessed “we” would pay for an expensive car, but my H felt it should be so. He worked/works hard, and is in the position to weigh in on the decision, and I greatly respect that.</p>
<p>FWIW, a 60k car seems FAR from worthless after 3-5 years. Jury is still out on the private college tuition.</p>
<p>When we purchased our first more expensive vehicle about 5 yrs ago (s’s car died so I offloaded my minivan onto him), I referred to (and still do) my car as “a years college tuition under my butt”.</p>
<p>I have a DS who attended CMU and is a grad student at MIT. Most of his classmates will not end up in jobs with the title engineer although this is what they’re studying. In the past decade plus, a third of MIT’s class was heading to Wall Street and many others to consulting and elite development groups at places like Google. Few were starting at the typical $55-60K my nephews at Santa Clara and UCD will be looking at if outsourcing doesn’t kill that market in the next few years.</p>
<p>So I would, and have, made the investment for a would be engineer too.</p>
<p>“if outsourcing doesn’t kill that market in the next few years”</p>
<p>My employer has stated that additional headcount will be added at our offshore subsidiary, not in our local offices (because of getting three for the relative price of one). I’ll be lucky if I can keep my engineering job until I retire.</p>