Also there is a thread about parent plus loans on CC.
And as one of the cc regulars likes to remind parents…every year at least one major financial thing comes up that you can’t ignore. Car transmission. Root canal. Water heater. Roof.
OP, you really need to read this before you decide.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1498510-read-this-before-you-take-out-a-parent-plus-loan-p1.html
The total for the whole year would be 10k under a parent plus loan if we get accepted. So at this point the total loan amount for freshmen yr would include $5500 student loan & 10k parent plus loan. Total $15,500.00. I understand that’s only one yr. When parents are denied the parent plus loan the student automatically gets 4k more in their student loan package. This would leave us with 6k to pay out of pocket in payments for the 1st school yr. I will get a job and if my whole mnths pay has to go to pay the school payment then so be it. At this point we are already living on one paycheck.
Just keep in mind that when you have an income, your EFC will go up…and your grant aid could go down. The Pell Grant is based on your FAFSA EFC. With $600 EFC, your Pell would be about $5100. If your EFC goes up to $1200, your Pell would be about $4500.
The cost of attendance will also likely increase 3-5% per year.
Just keep all of this on mind.
No, your post #29 earlier in this thread shows that the Parent PLUS loan would be $9,780 per semester, or $19,560 per year.
Double post deleted. Man, this website is really messed up today.
When you don’t make much there are no affordable options. It really comes down to what is more important when it comes to where we choose to spend the money we do make. I absolutely hear what everyone is saying and I would rather the truth than a lie. As an adult I take in what the facts given to me are and what the possible consequences of each decision may be. I’m rereading some of the advice so I can honestly go over all the key points people have made with his dad.
I don’t know how my voice is coming off to the the CC community but believe me I mean no disrespect to anyone and I asked for and appreciate every opinion and angle that is being presented to me. My main point of view is my kid comes 1st above everything and everyone else in my life to me and his dad. There are no other family members or responsibilities that we would have to account for in life except us 3 . Am I willing to be so far in debt I’m homeless ? Of course not. My love stops there lol!
My parental responsibility does cover making sure me and his father can help with the cost of his debt payments. If we prepared and saved for his college from the beginning we would have been paying the cost of college or attributing a huge chunk of it anyways. It’s not our sons fault that we didn’t prepare but I feel it’s still our job as parents to help put him through school that entails for us personally mnthly payments now and loan payments later.
Ok I see where I miscalculated the loan amounts that we would have to take out. I’m very sorry because I was only looking at the Parent Plus Loan at a total yrly coast of $9,780 only I didn’t realize it was in the amount of $19,560.00 for the whole year! No I reported all money that we make. I am not working but I am planning on going back to work to help pay with the costs of college for my son. My school is a grant program so unless I enrolled in more classes than the grant covered I won’t have to worry about a loan for me at this time at least.
Yes…your Plus is about $20,000 a year. Add to that your son’s $5500 Direct Loan. You are looking at $25,000 in loans just for his freshman year.
does your son have any other college acceptances that are more affordable? I do understand that you want to provide him with the college education of his choice, but right now…that is just not affordable. At least, I don’t think it is affordable.
I understand the you can’t plan for emergencies so we should at least be wary of them. We don’t own a car so we don’t have any car expenses. We don’t own a home so we are not responsible if anything breaks in our apt. We don’t have dental so there wont be any root canals lol. However all jokes aside I do understand what you are telling me. I have to prepare for now as well as the future. Thank You
This is my fear and I absolutely don’t want this to be the case! This is why I am asking questions because I am all for working and giving all my money to the loan payment or mnthly college cost payment because I will still have my boyfriends & the childs fathers income covering the reg living expenses. I did miscount what I was working with in loans! Thank You for your kind words.
Thank You!
If it seriously wasn’t for someone posting the award amount a 2nd time and you actually quoting the Parent Plus Loan I would have just gone on thinking till we sat down to talk about the cost that the total of Parent Plus was 10k for the whole yr! This is exactly why I spend so much time on CC reading and trying to learn what to expect and asking questions because if I had no one to bounce information off of I would have been in trouble!
The whole financial aid thing can be very confusing…between loans, and grants, and cost of attendance, and billable costs. It’s a lot.
I think all of us understand that you want to do this for your son. But he is a member of your family…and that matters too.
Good luck. I hope this all works out somehow…even if it is at a less costly school.
I am going to have to go thru all the award letters again and read them more carefully. At this point I’m afraid not. We didn’t apply to any colleges according to the money we were so busy trying to research and figure out what schools and how to decide what would be actual reaches and what not that we completely didn’t even think of the affordable tuition because all tuition is honestly unaffordable. We applied to our in state but even that was pricey! I will have to get the papers together and see which school is actually a feasible option. Thanks for your patience & help!
I have not posted on here before, but your situation really moved me. I know exactly where you are coming from. Neither my ex-husband or I ever attended college and I really wanted this for my kids. My ex-husband is out of the picture, I don’t even know where he is, so it was all up to me. My son is severely dyslexic and I could never afford any kind of help for him, so his grades were mediocre at best, but just before eleventh grade he decided to explore an interest in art, and transferred to a magnet art high school for eleventh grade. He created an art portfolio that won him a full-tuition scholarship at three or four different art colleges. In addition, he received a full pell grant and won several other smaller art scholarships. He borrowed the remaining amount for room and board, maybe five or six thousand a year. I knew that his prospects of making a lot of money in art were slim, so I planned to pay back his student loans.
Well, I have been paying back his loans for a couple years, and it’s tough. My thirteen year old car has all sorts of problems and I can’t afford to fix it. If one thing goes wrong, I can’t pay my bills. I borrowed only one-quarter or less than the amount you are thinking of borrowing. PLEASE think carefully about this and look at your different options. Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. If you can’t make the payments, the interest will keep accruing on the balance. I know how much you want your son to have a live-away college experience, but those loans will be with you long after that experience is over. Many people in a better financial situation than you or me choose to have their kids commute to college while living at home. He would still be getting the same education. Another possibility is having him take a gap year and work to earn some money for college while you research less expensive options. Maybe with a gap year he could retake the SAT or ACT and earn some merit somewhere.
You just never know what life will throw at you, and being in a position of having huge student loan debt will make everything that much harder.
I completely understand where you are coming from. My husband and I didn’t go to college and I swear to God I would have sold a body part to make this happen for my kids because I didn’t want them to struggle like we do and I didn’t want them to be looked down on for being uneducated. My husband has been working a second job overnight for years to pay for education. The thing is that you can only do the best you can, and getting the degree is much more important than having an experience. Sometimes we have to tell our kids that we wish we could give them X but we can’t at this time. The amount of debt you are considering is crippling for you and will make your son feel guilty. Also, not being educated ourselves, we had no idea how much extras cost in college, things required for specific classes or activities that have to be paid with quick turn around. Then there are the lifestyle things that your son might not be able to have that most other kids have. Living on campus when you can’t afford it isn’t the idyllic experience that we all envision. It may not be a net positive thing if you push for this experience and then find out that you opened up a wholly unexpected can of problems. It might really make sense to compromise and have your son live at home for two years and get all your ducks in a row and then go away for the last two years fully prepared and accepting a manageable amount of debt. Whatever you do, you are an awesome mom and I am wishing you all good luck in working this out.
I completely understand where you are coming from. My husband and I didn’t go to college and I swear to God I would have sold a body part to make this happen for my kids because I didn’t want them to struggle like we do and I didn’t want them to be looked down on for being uneducated. My husband has been working a second job overnight for years to pay for education. The thing is that you can only do the best you can, and getting the degree is much more important than having an experience. Sometimes we have to tell our kids that we wish we could give them X but we can’t at this time. The amount of debt you are considering is crippling for you and will make your son feel guilty. Also, not being educated ourselves, we had no idea how much extras cost in college, things required for specific classes or activities that have to be paid with quick turn around. Then there are the lifestyle things that your son might not be able to have that most other kids have. Living on campus when you can’t afford it isn’t the idyllic experience that we all envision. It may not be a net positive thing if you push for this experience and then find out that you opened up a wholly unexpected can of problems. It might really make sense to compromise and have your son live at home for two years and get all your ducks in a row and then go away for the last two years fully prepared and accepting a manageable amount of debt. Whatever you do, you are an awesome mom and I am wishing you all good luck in working this out.
OP, do you mind disclosing the City and State where you live? There are many experienced posters here who might suggest some reasonable alternatives to the crippling debt that you are planning to take. There were millions of people who graduated college without sleep away experience who did very well in life. Your son probably realizes that his family is not rich, he will forgive you.
Right now, you’ll be borrowing $25k per year (20k for parents, 5k for child).
THEN…once YOU start working, that 5000 Pell Grant will likely disappear. So, then that will add a new wrinkle.
Right now, you’re likely paying NO FEDERAL taxes because your partner makes too little for a family of 3 to pay fed taxes. Once you’re earning money, it’s likely one of you will have to pay fed taxes since you both can’t claim the child, and one will be filing as a single person.
I think you’re underestimating the huge difficulty it will be for you, your partner, and your child to pay back ALL that debt.
Your child will be lucky to be able to afford his own debt, since youngish grads do not typically earn a lot.
This is way tooooooo much debt, even for a more affluent family.
There are less expensive options. Perhaps your child should take a gap year (do not take any classes ANYWHERE to preserve first time frosh status) and apply to some schools where little debt is needed.
What is your child’s career goal and how much do you think he’ll be earning upon graduation?