@guiltymom
Sorry to hear about all the turmoil. I have no advice to add that hasn’t already been mentioned in the helpful posts above. I just wanted to offer my support. Being a good leader means having the courage to make the unpopular decisions. Stand firm.
@mom2collegekids Now I see the whole other thread. That clarifies situation only a little.
Why not borrow cost of first year and let him live on campus. If H loses job, tell S you can no longer afford to borrow money because H lost job. That’s only 20K of loan. H may not lose job and everything could be fine. S may or may not flunk out and everything will still be fine. That’s on him. Only 20K at risk. Revisit next installment next year. 20K at 6.8% over 20 years is $152/month.
There is a lot of anxiety here about issues that may not exist (job risk, academic risk). If bad things happen, they happen. Good things may happen too.
2006 Toyota is a good car if you take good care of it.
20k is an expensive test. And for the Plus, at 6.8, I get $230/mo for ten years.
And what if kiddo tantrums a year from now and insists they continue to borrow?
You’re making this “egbok” (everything’s gonna be OK.) But it’s someone else’s money, their risk, their debt. And their kid that Mom doubts is ready.
Kid doesn’t come across as emotionally mature enough for college. I personally wouldn’t incur any amount of debt until I was reasonably satisfied that the kid takes college seriously. There’s a big difference between taking a calculated financial risk and just flinging money at someone to get them to stop crying. Before paying for any college, loans or otherwise, I would at a minimum sit down with the kid and make sure he understands his responsibilities.
We’re just getting mother’s side.
In fairness, they didn’t tell him they couldn’t pay until after he got accepted. There was no discussion of what they can afford beforehand. Secondly, they are bringing his grades into it. Thirdly, husband hasn’t lost job yet. Fourth, they CAN pay.
Kid got into dream school, his current grades are irrelevant. Anybody would be angry if their parents treated them like this.
While this kid may or may not be a selfish brat, he also has legitimate grievances against his parents.
Checked website, PLUS loans can be extended for 25 years. Current interest rate is 7.21%. 7.21% 25 years= $145/mo
The family can’t afford the school. The family can’t afford the costs of a car and commuting.
Don’t keep extending the number of payment years just to get the price per month down. 25 years is outrageous for a one year test. Youre locking in the parents for what?! The kid can test himself at cc. His dream school is s CA public, likely a CSU, that his friends applied to. Now they aren’t even going.
True, we have only mom’s version. But it’s her tale to tell. You don’t know what they can afford.
And his current grades got him a directive for summer school. Not irrelevant. The combination of money, maturity and academic concerns would be a flag to most parents. Suppose he does ok enough at this school- you going to tell them to borrow the other 66k?
Here’s what I would say:
Son. Your father and I love you very much. You are now an adult. We’re going to have adult conversations from now on. No more whining.
We did the best that we could but we’ve made mistakes. We didn’t think through the cost of college beforehand and we realize that we set you up for disappointment and embarrassment. We are sorry.
After our analysis, we think that we are comfortable borrowing money for your 3rd and 4th year at the University and are confident that if you went to community college, we could afford for you to finish at the university. More than that is risky because your father’s job situation is unstable. After careful deliberation and recognition of our own shortcomings, we are proposing to bear some of that risk. But you will have to bear some too.
We are willing to borrow the money to send you to the University this year. You have to agree to understand that if your father loses his job, then your ability to finish may be in jeopardy because we definitely won’t be able to borrow more. We’ll do the best that we can because we love you, but this is real life. Your recent academic performance, which we hope that we can attribute to teenage senioritis, gives us reason for pause. However, making mistakes is part of life and people who are too afraid to make mistakes are seldom successful. We hope you’ve learned from this.
In order for us to be comfortable borrowing funds to fund your 2nd year, you are going to need to get a 3.0 average. That’s going to require more responsibility on your part than you’ve recently demonstrated, but we love you, believe in you and think you can do it. We are not going to micromange you. You will have to figure out how to be a good student on your own. You will have to provide us parental access so that we can log into the university portal and see your unofficial transcript at all times. Furthermore, you will have to borrow the maximum that you can, and work part-time during the school year and full-time during the summers to make ends meet.
To summarize, there is risk that the resources we use now, won’t be available for later years, and there is risk that your academic performance does not justify having us continue to take extraordinary risk.
If you can agree to these terms, we will borrow the money to send you to university this year.
You’re still walking down the sunny side of the street. Based on what? The kid wants to go to college X? Save his bragging rights? What says the parents can borrow for year 1, much less 2, 3, ,4? I sometimes (sorry) call this the Marie Antoinette approach. You’re telling s family, if you can’t afford bread (college X costs), eat cake (borrow.). They’re up against retirement, but oh, you can run the payments out 25 years.
The only reason that there are any options is because the parents can borrow. If they don’t live 25 years, the lender can take the money out of the estate or go pound sand.
This kid has been strung along until he finally achieves admission to his dream school and his parents sandbag him. The parents must bear some responsibility for this.
It isn’t raining on either side of the street. There are just some clouds.
If it was my kid, I would say “Spend a year at CC. If you can make straight A’s there, plus maintain a part-time job (full time in summers), I will support your transfer to this university (including dorming). If you make B’s or less, you stay another year at CC.”
IMO taking out loans for D-work (a kid who isn’t applying himself, no matter that he got into this university–some universities take every body) is nuts.
This is not a D student. It’s a kid who got behind in math and spiraled a little. It happens a lot. It’s not criminal. University suggested summer school to beef up math.
The issue is…the mother says they cannot afford the cost of the dream school. The kiddo got accepted…no issue there. But the mom says the cost makes it unaffordable (either option…with dorm, or with paying for the car and all the associated costs of commuting).
Sure, in a perfect world, the family should have been on the same page before applications were sent…in terms of what was or wasn’t affordable. But this family was not…and still isn’t. And the world isn’t perfect.
To the OP…you need to get to some agreement with the other parent about the costs. In my opinion, if you can afford the commuting costs (car, gas, insurance, parking fees, maintenance), you might be better off looking at a dorm with the least cost, and the cheapest meal plan.
If you can’t afford the costs…then you can’t afford the costs. But the two parents have to resent this in a united way…and from what you are posting here and on the other thread…you still are not in agreement.
If they CAN’T borrow the money, then there are no options. I’m sorry.
If the CAN borrow the money, then either they should do so, or live with the justified resentment of their son whose life they have just upended without warning and from his point of view unreasonably. I don’t disagree with S frustration.
All of this talk about 1 C and 1 D, or about stubbornness, or about other stuff is just tiger parenting. That has to end too. This young man needs to live his life without parental micromanaging.
We shouldn’t be blaming the S for any of this.
I don’t think this is tiger parenting. Just for reference, if this is a CSU, then needing remedial summer school in math and English means an SAT CR in the 400s and an SAT Math below 550 and some equivalent scores on state testing.
“My son does not give his best to get better grades(C’s and sometimes D’s in English & Math) He also failed the SAT which requires his to take summer school 3. My son does not get a financial aid only parents pell (she means PLUS) loans. 4. We don’t want to be in debts when my son graduate from college and also my husband is retiring soon. We went to the university tour yesterday and found out that it is going to cost around $80K loan or more for 4 to 5 years of college.”
Cs and Ds in English, Math, and Econ. What’s left? Taking on 80k+ of loans is nuts for this family given the kid’s track record. It was mentioned elsewhere that the kid’s real motivation for going to college is the desire to party.
No one is blaming the S, but Community College makes the most sense. If the kid can save up 20K by working to pay for one of the years after he transfers, all the better.
Didn’t the OP mention a daughter as well? If there is a younger daughter, digging the family into a debt hole for the son would likely mean even greater financial restrictions on the daughter’s choice of college. That may result in a lot of resentment by the daughter.
Also, if parents have to borrow to afford their kid’s college, doesn’t that mean that they really do not have the money, except for unusual circumstances like having a large asset that they do not want to sell now but will sell later (which does not appear to be the case here)?
Unfortunately, it looks like the parents have painted themselves into a corner, either breaking a promise to the son, or taking on debt that they cannot afford and also causing any younger daughter to be even more limited.
However, if the D grade causes the son’s dream school to rescind admission, then that may let the parents off the hook here.
The D is older.
Something else to consider: Is the stated $20,000 cost the estimated total cost for a year at the school, living in the dorm? If so, then there may be a way to make it work with much less parental contribution than assumed:
- Student takes a federal direct loan of $5,500.
- Student works during the summer and/or 1/4 time in the school year to earn another $4,500.
- Student being away from home probably saves about $5,000 in food (assuming teenage boy appetite), utilities, and other costs (though these are "hidden" in various other parts of the household budget, so they are not very obvious).
- That leaves $5,000 more that the parents have to come up with -- which is more likely to be doable than the $20,000 that they cannot afford.
Of course, this leaves little room for error, and assumes that the student is committed to earning enough from work, and living frugally to avoid overrunning the budget, to make it work.
IMHO, paying for this kid to go to live at home and go to CC full time with the idea that eventually he can transfer to a CSU is a leap of faith in itself. If the scores suggested by Ynotgo are accurate, coupled with a generous sprinkling of Cs and Ds in HS courses, he would probably be better suited to choosing a vocational path and acquiring an AA in that area, rather than continuing to engage in a struggle with academics in which he apparently has little interest and for which he may have insufficient talent.
The idea that everyone must “go to college” and get a 4-yr degree in something, anything, irks me. He might be much happier getting training and certification in a field in which he is interested and gaining employment there. He could always continue his education later if he is motivated to do so.
The idea that these parents should borrow $20K for a single year as they near retirement so that they can send their S to a school from which he will almost certainly flunk out is insane. This is not an academically-capable kid who merely suffers from some senioritis.
If I recall this story correctly, the H of the OP has been the one who is unwilling to be honest with S about the family finances. I sympathize, because when S was applying to colleges H was similarly unwilling to entertain conversations in which I mentioned how difficult it was to get into schools on S’s list, which had acceptance rates in the 13% and under range. Simply saying that it was hard to get into Williams was nasty and hurtful, according to him. Similarly, when we discussed the finances ourselves, he would say things like we would just borrow the money and “not pay it back.” I think this was frustration speaking, but I was the one who helped S put together his list based on the fact that he HAD to get into a real full need school or we would have to do something drastic. (I also knew that this was a realistic plan in his case.) I don’t think H ever said anything to S about any of this: from having a safety to how to pay for it.
I have friends who made the mistake of borrowing $30K so that their S1 who had under-performed and lost his scholarship could stay in school. He flunked out. They were saddled with debt they couldn’t afford and thus couldn’t help their S2 with the vocational program he wanted. Sucked all round.