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<p>Excellent! I do appreciate creativity. It’s rather like Scheherezade: keep a good story going and hopefully the moderators will keep the thread alive. :)</p>
<p>Your story is believable until you get to the part about stiffing your daughter. Sorry…but that is how I see it.</p>
<p>Sure, some folks look for the least expensive net college cost possible. But putting this onto a 13 or 14 year old…sorry…that’s when you lost me. And so you could retire early and travel around Asia? All this coming from a 33 year old.</p>
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<p>Oh yes, keep it coming! Don’t hold out on us! </p>
<p>Don’t forget about the time you left your daughter in a distant city with no money or phone, and she had nothing to use but her good looks to get herself back home. Or maybe your father did that to you. I can’t remember the story.</p>
<p>Colfever - if you are not a ■■■■■, then I think this thread has run its course and is no longer useful to you. Forget about it for a few days and reread the first few pages where there is some potentially good information that you will be able to sift through when your mind is clear.</p>
<p>If you are a ■■■■■, then I think the game is up… </p>
<p>Best of luck either way.</p>
<p>And for the sake of argument - let’s imagine a scenario where CF’s story could be plausible…</p>
<p>Teen mom - so let’s say 19. +13 (age of kid in 8th grade) makes her 32.
Undergrad and grad top five schools - let’s say 6 years (4 & 2). Maybe business school?
Followed by highpowered career in finance or some other career (ie not med school) where grads are immediately making megabucks.
Not clear when she starts school but let’s say she graduates at 24 (she never did say she had her kid in high school as far as I recall). So that’s 8 years of earning high salary. She could have started paying for her kid’s EC by age 5 which probably makes some degree of sense. $150K over 8 years is close to $20K per year. Now that is well more than what my peers spend (I think? I haven’t asked.) but maybe upper middle class means something different to CF and myself. AACK I just calculated my EC costs and it’s about $10K per year. Had no idea.) However, I don’t think that’s totally out of the realm of possibility for certain EC - such as figure skating. She may be including travel and lodging to multiple events a year… each trip could easily cost $2000 and even if you just go to five of these events, that could be $10K. If there are costumes and coaching and equipment fees, I could see how you could get to $20K per year. I also imagine that the costs are probably escalating as she gets older… for a kid who is truly national level in a sport like skating, I bet they go to more than five events per year even at age 13. </p>
<p>FWIW, anyway.</p>
<p>(sorry, I forgot she says she is a writer. So scrap the finance idea but I think it’s the same reasoning. She must write for some type of daily or other periodical if it is such a high-pressure job- I don’t think novelist quite fits her description)</p>
<p>I have a nephew who is on a full athletic scholarship – with a 31 ACT and 6 APs – in a rural southern school district where most kids don’t even go to college. He had to take a big step back from the schools where he was accepted based on academics in order to get the athletic scholarship. He is one of those kids who was being scouted as an 8th grader, and has had multiple pro teams contact him about getting drafted.</p>
<p>State schools have been cutting back athletic programs in recent years due to budget cuts. There are a whole lot of scholarship athletes at our flagship whose sports (and therefore scholarships) have been eliminated.</p>
<p>Getting an athletic scholarship is not an every day occurrence. Lots of parents think it will happen. They are flat-out wrong.</p>
<p>I agree this is a provacative story.</p>
<p>Bookmark.</p>
<p>My daughter was ranked nationally in her sport and was being recruited by the time she was a sophomore. They contacted her club coach, etc…</p>
<p>Last year, she had a career ending injury.</p>
<p>Fortunately she was just doing it because she loved it. If she’d have needed that money for college? That would have been very sad. and it happens all the time. At that level, athletes get injured all the time.</p>
<p>Poetgrl -that is wise and sobering advice. Just curious - do you think $150K by age 13 is in the ballpark for a national level athlete (I expect it might be different sport to sport but maybe it’s comparable)</p>
<p>No! I do not think it is in the ballpark for anything but equestrian. My daughter played a common ball sport.</p>
<p>Good to get that perspective. thanks. I could see for skating, gymnastics perhaps - an individual coached sport. Plus she did allow for paying for other EC… I added up weekly music lessons plus a very mediocre travel team for my kids and got up to $10K yearly. I was surprised it added up so fast.</p>
<p>(looked it up. equestrian can get up to $200K per year!!!)</p>
<p>(and edit - LasMa went back for the quote - OP said $150K by end of high school. I think that is definitely within the ballpark for a national EC).</p>
<p>Yeah, I never added it up. why bother?</p>
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<p>I suppose there are some ECs that could cost that much, but I’m curious about your priorities. Would you explain to us why ECs are worth investing that kind of money, but college is worth zero?</p>
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<p>Gymnastics can easily approach this amount, if you add up all the training and associated costs necessary to get a kid to the collegiate level. </p>
<p>I’ve watched soooo many gymnasts forced to continue the sport long after their interest (or bodies) held out… often removed from school and homeschooled to make more time for training… specifically for the sake of that all-important goal of a college scholarship. For the same cost, the parents could’ve just paid full freight at the same school, with some to spare, and let the kid have a normal high school experience. I don’t know if these parents just don’t run the numbers, or if they’re just really caught up in the whole competition thing. </p>
<p>Of course, for the kids who LOVE the sport and truly want to keep doing it, I think the time and money is worth it whether they get a scholarship or not. There’s a lot more to be gained from sports than just a return on your money. On the other hand, I don’t think even a full ride is worth torturing your kid if they are miserable and ready to quit.</p>
<p>And btw, I also believe this must be a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>IIRC, competitive figure skating can cost that much, too.</p>
<p>LOL, this has been very entertaining! The father “chose” a low paying job!</p>
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Selfish mother said what!?</p>
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<p>But what sort of daily or periodical pays the Really Big Bucks? No, seriously… be specific. I find myself suddenly considering a mid-life career change!</p>
<p>I would like to know as well. My daughter is a wonderful writer but I have been steering her away from this field only because I did not think she would be able to get a job and support herself. Now that I know you can make big bucks as a writer perhaps I should tell her to go for it.</p>
<p>ColFever
I was very much hoping that you were a ■■■■■, but I’ve googled around and found someone whose story matches yours, so I now think you’re for real. </p>
<p>This being the case, I believe that you should encourage your daughter to pursue her dreams, interests, and talents, as other people did for you. But if she is not as fortunate as you were in securing scholarships (and she won’t be, because you received scholarships that were based on your need and your impressive ability to overcome adversity), then you should support her by footing the bill for her college education, at least partially. </p>
<p>There have been many kids who spend their teen years working hard in school and in their extra-curricular pursuits, racking up accomplishments and accolades, and getting themselves admitted to selective universities, only to discover that their parents cannot or will not support them. Only then do they learn that there truly is no way to “put yourself through” college at Stanford or MIT any longer, even if it was possible in the past. One cannot take out sufficient loans to do so. And one shouldn’t. It’s sad when the kids are discovering their parents CANNOT pay. In your case, you clearly can pay. Can you really not put up with working at you job even four more years? Your parents worked in a factory for years to feed you, right? </p>
<p>Do the right thing.</p>
<p>Yep. Anyone remember Christian the penniless writer from Moulin Rouge? The penniless, crestfallen stage is a stage of life that I think all writers go through. </p>
<p>But since the OP had a great paying job right after she graduated from some elite school, I doubt that’s the case. Even the best of writers go through setbacks, and by the grammar and syntax examples I’ve seen, the OP is by no means a prodigy.</p>