<p>For those of you FULL PAY parents like us, I was wondering how you pay for the $50000+ annual tuition/fees? </p>
<p>We make $200,000+/yr and did not receive any financial aid (we applied). We paid the bill in Jul for $25000+, I guess another bill for the same amount will be due in Dec. </p>
<p>Anyway, for those of you who like us:
a) Work for a living
b) Full pay parents with no aid
c) Neither poor nor wealthy</p>
<p>I am curious to find out how you cover the Harvard tuition/fees. Did you:
1) Saved $200,000K already
2) Mortgage your house
3) Sell stocks/bonds
4) Downsize you house
5) Take educational loans
6) Change life style and try to save $4000/mo
7) Have grandparents pay for part of the bill</p>
<p>Interesting question. I want to know the answer too. I’m on financial aid, but I’m interested to know how the upper middle class pay for their schools. It seems like a huge burden.</p>
<p>Began to save when kids were very small.
Did not live beyond our means.
Paid off our mortgage.
Did not apply for financial aid–
Did not apply for merit aid.
Took loans–still paying for them.
Still feel that we are wealthy in comparison to 95% of the American population.</p>
<p>Depending on the type of saving you have, it may make better sense to use the saving to pay for tuition and fees. This is particularly true if the saving is specifically designated as “educational.”</p>
<p>Having the mortgage paid off is a real help. Our daughter followed the money (not her first or second choice), so we are not full pay, but our financial guy suggested a home equity loan when we were unsure what the college decision would be.</p>
<p>If you are wealthy enough for harvard to make you pay full, you can probably afford it pretty easily with saved money and salary. </p>
<p>How do you make 200k a year combined and not have saved money?
Spend every cent you made and not think about the future?
Did you not plan on your extremely hard working kid getting into college?
Did you not even attempt to have a college fund or save money just in case you lost your jobs?</p>
<p>I doubt it is extremely tough on many families forced to pay full.</p>
<p>Purplesea, it is very challenging for people who have to foot the entire bill for a private school who are well paid but not rich. It makes you wonder if you’d actually be better off if you made less money. We make 400K, which I’d always thought would make me quite wealthy, but after paying 150K for taxes and charity, 25K for one kid, 55K for another, housing in a high cost area, professional dues and 401K-we’re left with 50K/year for food, medical, insurance, etc. I know that is still quite a bit of money, but my point is, as you know-having a high income doesn’t make you feel too wealthy when you’re paying most of it to the government and to the colleges!</p>
<p>I recommend that you consider spreading out the misery in a few of the ways that you were thinking about. Take out a HELOC (rates are unbelieveably low-our bank is charging only 3%), sell some stocks (if you won’t take a loss), try to cut down on your expenditures (easy in this economy when everyone else suffering) and if you can, work some extra hours. Perhaps ask your child to take a loan for part of it, though it is hard to ask them to take on much debt when you are still able to help. Good luck-cause it’s going get alot worse as tuition and tax rates skyrocket in the next couple of years!</p>
<p>Av8r, thank you so much for your kind responses with real solid numbers. I am with you. It took me a while to finally post my message. I’d like too see how many full pay parents are out there on CC and I’d like to have an honest discussion. </p>
<p>Our savings will run out after the first year. I do not know what we are going to do after that. I’d like to learn from other full pay parents.</p>
<p>I agree, I’d imagine there are many parents on cc out there that could give you some excellent advice. The last thing you need right now are lectures. People make judgements without knowing all the details, and all you need right now is some help. Because it is SO much money. I always thought that my kids would go to public schools, as I’ve been lower-middle class most of my life and nobody I knew ever went to a private school. Had I realized with my children, that from grade school to high school we’d pay $500K, and college, another $500K-we would have never sent them to private schools for one single day. But…your child got into Harvard, so what can you do but find a way to help them!</p>
<p>It’s lunacy. Those of us doing this are lunatics. </p>
<p>Fingers are crossed that it’s worth it. Like so many at Harvard, son had many generous merit offers at other very fine institutions. Lunacy. </p>
<p>Unless you’re truly rich (and current salary has really nothing to do with that - it’s about accumulated wealth, not income stream, which is prey to taxes) then the only way to accomplish this is through a lot of disciplined life style choices. We are so very glad we are still in our non-trophy house and did not trade-up. We could pay off mortgage but it is so low that we are instead keeping the funds for college. Likewise, cars are not a source of pride for us - they are transportation only. Vacations are also a big area where we just say no. It goes on and on. Not easy to have to budget like we did coming out of college when we’ve worked for decades and are now in our fifties. </p>
<p>Where this all gets really tough is when you begin to realize the impact on retirement plans and future security. </p>
<p>This is why I sometimes bristle at some of the posts on CC exulting in the fantastic FA package their kids are getting from Harvard. It seems as if for so many, it is the deal of the century while for other like us it is a huge and quite frightening sacrifice.</p>
<p>I read a letter on the NY Times op-ed page the other day from a Harvard alum claiming that the endowment, shrunken as it is at the moment, could easily cover the tuition for ALL undergraduates. I have no idea if this is true but it seems as if moving to such a model would make the economic fairness issue go away once and for all.</p>
<p>The truth is that kids whose parents fall into the high-income low-wealth bracket are completely at the mercy of their parent’s largesse to attend Harvard. Unless their parents are willing to be financial lunatics, they have no hope of attending. Where is the concern for those kids?</p>
<p>We began saving the day/year each of our kids were born. We were lucky that we got through paying for our son’s 4 years at Tufts before the market crash last year. The money we put aside for our daughter, who is at Harvard, got hit and we lost a years tuition (that does not included losses in our personal savings for retirement and such). Now we are trying to make up for that lost money but we are fortunate that we had been able to put together that initial base of savings. I am not sure how we would handle things if we were “full pay” and no savings.</p>
<p>“DocT: Good for you! You did not put the college savings in 529? We did.”</p>
<p>No I didn’t use a 529. Investing in anything has an element of luck involved contrary to what a lot of people claim. I lucked out on that one but was not as fortunate in some other areas.</p>
<p>While an income> 200k seems high, one’s ability to pay also depends on how long you have had high income. In our case, my wife didn’t work until both our kids were in school. As a teacher, once they started she was home when they arrived back from school because of the schedule. Now however she needs to work another 7 years to get a minimum pension unlike a lot of her fellow educators.</p>
<p>H and I attended college on full scholarships. Not a red cent of inherited money. But we began saving for our kids as soon as they were born. Our kids attended public schools, so that was money that could be set aside for their college education. Even so, we’ve borrowed for their college education, and we’ll continue paying the loan off for the next several years. Their college savings were hit several times, otherwise we would be able to pay off the loan earlier.
Our combined income is just a hair over $250k and has not always been in that bracket. My first salary was less than $20k per year, if I recall, and my husband’s not a lot more. But we have always lived fairly frugally even though we are in a high income area. Thankfully, our real estate taxes are relatively low. All along, we had only one car and paid off our mortgage. we don’t take expensive vacations, though our kids attended expensive summer camps. We have affordable health insurance through our employer.</p>
<p>If your savings are going to run out after the first year, I would hope that your FAFSA calculation would reflect that and that your child (ren) would then qualify for financial aid.Have you contacted the relevant financial aid offices?</p>