I think an important part of your concern can be solved by working on having your kids be supportive of each other instead of competitive (easier said than done!). It’s inevitable that your situation will change between kid #1 and kid #7, and you’ll need them to understand that you did the best for each and every one of them.
I’m the oldest of 6. I earned a ton of scholarships to college (some of them were competitive but only open to those with financial need) and still came out in debt. By the time my youngest sibling graduated from college 13 years later, my parents financial situation had changed drastically for the better. My father had advanced in his career, my mother had gotten a college degree and started working, and there was no debt for my youngest two siblings after they graduated. I’m not bitter about it because I know my parents supported each of us the best they could at that point in time even if it wasn’t equal.
Wow. Well sorry about that. 40k a year for all of them graduating on a miracle 4 year plan is 1.5 million dollars. Wow. Our EFC must be much worse too. I don’t know your kids prospective majors but for some of them 5 years is required or common. We had our kids attend the instate options because in part of the risk of going out of state. If they can’t complete in four years, they just can’t easily switch to a less expensive option. Or if they lose the merit scholarship, not all classes will necessarily transfer.
We have 8 kids; 5 are now adults. Of those 5 one is a college sr and one is a college freshman. The 3 who are still school age are in 2nd, 6th, and 10th.
Fwiw, similarly to @My3Kiddos we don’t even try to parent financially equally. We were in our early 20s when our oldest was born. Our financial situation now in no way reflects what it was when my Dh first started his career. Our philosophy is that we do the best we can according to what our life is like at any particular time. Pretty much it has worked out fairly equally, but not by design. Our current college student is attending college on full scholarship, but we paid for a lot of university classes and expensive camps for him during high school, so what we paid then pretty much balances out what we paid for other kids’ college expenses.
A simple summation of what has happened is that they have to have enough scholarship to cover everything other than room and board (at the cheap end. Fordham with room and board was too high) or they can live at home and commute or fall somewhere in that range expense-wise.
We will have fewer outgoing expenses in terms of kids by the time our youngest is college age, but equally, we will be in our 60s and our personal expenses for health care and retirement are going to be a major focus. So, no, she won’t all of a sudden have full access to huge amts of support that the other kids didn’t.
The exception to our “has worked out pretty equally” is our adult Aspie. We have spent a small fortune assisting him and will most likely support him financially the rest of his life. Do his siblings resent our financially supporting him? No way. They have all agreed to help him if and when something happens to us.
Fwiw, our kids know we do the best we can. There is no resentment or comparing. It is what it is. Hey, I spent 14 yrs on the soccer field with my older kids, sometimes having 5 kids on different teams at the same time. No way I am going back there. My younger kids don’t have “that” opportunity bc I am not that young soccer mom any more. Such is life. No regret on my part about that either. They get to do things, but they are different from what I did yrs ago when their 28 yr old brother was 7 or 12. $$ is similar to energy, a limited resource. You do what you can do.
We have three kids and an EFC much greater than our college budget. We told our kids we could pay tuition at our local university or room and board just about anywhere if they could get a tuition scholarship. Schools that didn’t even offer full tuition merit scholarships were not considered. The older two both had multiple choices that were within budget in the end, and some that weren’t.
Our older two had high grades and test scores and are at OOS privates on competitive merit scholarships. For kid two we are paying more than kid one. Prices rise. It’s fine. They understand. All kids aren’t the same and you don’t have to be precisely equal, just reasonably fair. As things played out there was a bit of fudging on that budget to give each kid what they needed. You end up with a cost of attendance for each acceptance and can compare, but we stuck close to the given budget and our kids knew the budget up front before applications went out. Neither will have loans. Neither had to choose the absolute cheapest option. Kid two will likely graduate a year early and study abroad twice. Kid one will graduate in four plus one summer with two degrees. Kid three is still in high school. His grades are a bit lower and his test scores haven’t come in yet. These things will affect his options but we’ve told him the budget is the same—tuition locally or room and board almost anywhere. We will be as supportive of him as we can when the time comes.
Practically speaking, we have cash flowed the first two years of college out of current income for each, and then switched to the college fund for the second two years. We felt this gave each more of a safety net to have costs covered all four years in case something unexpected affected us financially at some point. It’s working well, as there is a 2-3 year age gap between the kids and it works out that we are only paying out of current income for one at a time. We’ve also increased savings into 529 for the younger one as we have seen cost rise.
Also, for us, in state tuition alone, had our kids not been eligible for scholarships, is around $11k. We pay more like $15-20k for their OOS costs, which is the same as what it would have cost for them to live on campus in state after merit scholarships were applied. They could have lived at home and attended our local state U for under $5k total costs after merit scholarships but we wanted them to live on campus (both DH and I commuted to college) if possible and it was possible for us. Commuting works too if you can’t swing room and board.
We also did tell our kids that if they lost the merit scholarships they could come live at home and finish their degrees at local state U. Staying at the OOS privates without the scholarship would not be an option. We considered that both motivation to get good grades and a safety net for them that there was a plan B in place for getting through college if they struggled academically.
Since you’re in Texas and also homeschool, be very sure you understand the admissions procedures for your various state schools, as others have mentioned, especially whichever ones are within commuting distance.
Our homeschool family takes advantage of free dual enrollment classes in our state. Great way to gain college credits, but also give your high schooler a taste of the college environment.
Even if you don’t graduate early, having those college credits gives upper class standing benefits, and gives student cushion. More time for a job, sports, social activities, and lighter load as student adjusts to college life.
Kudos to the OP for planning this so far in advance for all their kids.
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Start prepping those younger kids for PSAT/ACT/SAT. It will pay off down the line.
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I know its easier said than done, but if you could coach your kids into a top PSAT score, or a combination of high GPA and high SAT/ACT scores, there are many full merit or full ride opportunities at good schools. In Texas alone, Baylor, UT-D, A&M, and Texas Tech all have generous programs if your kid earns NMF standing.
Verify all scholarships on college web sites, since they may have changed since the lists were made.
In terms of in-state publics, it looks like Texas public universities are about $10k to $14k per year in tuition and books. If any are in commuting range (are any?), and you are willing to continue supporting them at home (i.e. food and utilities costs, similar to when they are in high school) and add transportation costs (can vary), they may be within your budget (barely, may require student part time work and/or federal direct loan).
If their degree programs are ones that are suitable for starting at a community college for the first two years, that may save much of the tuition costs, possibly allowing them more options of other Texas public universities (i.e. those outside of commuting range where they would have increased living expenses compared to food, utilities, and commuting costs living at home) for the last two years.
What you may want to do in your financial planning is to estimate the food and utilities cost of your kid living at home, and the commuting costs to the local state universities and community colleges, so that you have a good basis of comparison to living expenses if the kid attends a school outside of commuting range.
Just like parents are advised to start early with expectations about what you can afford (equal to cost of in-state if commuting or whatever is good start), also start building the expectation that you will give each child what they NEED to the best of your ability. As much as you plan now, the little ones are way down road. One might have some special needs when it comes to the kind of school they attend. One might be a genius and get a full ride. One might have anxiety and need a certain type of environment. One might decide tech school gets them where they want to be. In other words, along with money expectations is the expectation that you will do the best you can for each child for their unique situation so the need to be prepared that it may not seem equal treatment to them.
You also commented about possible relocation. If you plan a move to another state, check the residency rules to make sure the timing doesn’t adversely affect a child getting ready to graduate. Do they have to graduate from a HS in that state to get things like lottery funded scholarships? How many years do you have to be there? Obviously sometimes you don’t have control, but if you do…
Yes, a move to another state during a kid’s senior year may leave him/her with no in-state residency for tuition purposes, at least for the first year, as well as disrupting his/her high school continuity and college application process.
OP–your family sounds almost exactly like mine when I first joined CC 12 +years ago! (7 kids, at that time a rising hs senior down to an infant). Our goal was to get them all through college debt free–and we were not willing to take/have them take any loans. We had no savings due to late career start, and lost our home equity due to a move/job change during the real estate crash. It was just “pay as you go.” But we had increasing (100-200) income, lived frugally, and are more than halfway there . Our oldest 3 have graduated, and we even paid for kid #2’s grad school. Kid#4 will finish in May and #5 started college this fall with full tution/merit/sophomore standing due from dual enrollment/ AP. My best advice is to prep obsessively for PSAT/SAT/ACT. (The National Merit program has been very good to us…) Take advantage of dual enrollment /AP. We did not worry about making everything equal (we have cut kid #2 out of our will…) and made some mistakes with our first two (H and I disagreed on budget). Hoping to get our mortgage paid off, and kid #7 through college the same year H retires. Are any of your kids interested in military academies or ROTC? I know several kids from big families that went that route. Good luck to you–sounds like you got this! PM me if you like.
The responses in this thread have been extremely helpful. Thank you all so much! I’m going to discuss it all with dh tonight.
I also want to thank those of you who have btdt for sharing your experiences. It seems like such a daunting task. It’s nice to hear that people are doing it successfully.
@jazzymomof7 Good luck to you. It will all work out. Both my parents had large families (8 and 7). Even now everyone works together to help out with siblings without children helping those with get to college. Love big families.
Just as a reminder, the EFC you will get through the College Board considers home equity from what I remember. If you have a lot of home equity, as you might since you mentioned paying off your mortgage, your EFC might be higher than it would be if you ran your EFC for a school that only uses the FAFSA and does not include equity on a primary home.
Generally, schools that include home equity raise our EFC about $10,000 per year. That amount might be limited because our income is lower middle class.
Since you have a higher income, you might have an even bigger impact from home equity, depending on an individual college’s policy.
You can limit your search to FAFSA only schools and avoid schools that use the CSS Profile as I think @gearmom mentioned. That is what we are doing mostly…
@MACmiracle We do have a lot of home equity so maybe that’s affecting the numbers. We’re also single income, and since I was only in the workforce for a couple of years over 17 years ago, we like to keep an emergency fund in case something ever happens with dh’s job.
@jazzymomof7 We are in a similar boat. I am also a homeschooling mom, too, but we are down to homeschooling one now since my next two go to a private high school for free with H and my oldest just graduated from college.
As I think about financing my high school senior’s education, I always have to think about the younger two. And they have some special needs so they may not get the kind of scholarships my senior will.
Our income is too low to pay anything from cash flow so it will all have to come from savings, so I completely understand how calculating all the possible scenarios is unavoidable.
My husband is an immigrant so he had to reinvent himself and start a new career in early middle age when we moved here. Since he was new here and my serious income was only earned overseas, we have diddly-squat in official retirement accounts and no real way to protect our assets from taking a hit at this point. So I will have to be pretty rigid to safeguard our retirement.
It is a stress-inducing situation to be in, but it has really helped me to remind myself how very fortunate we are. We might have lower income and and multiple kids and have had medical issues to deal with over the years, but we do have enough to get our kids through college one way or another and they are healthy enough to be able to go.
We never set up 529s but a great-grandfather did right after the early death of his son (my uncle) to have something to look forward to with the next generation. I never thought it would amount to much but when I recently heard what it had grown to, I realized it will be a very helpful supplement. It is an unexpected blessing like so many others we’ve received.
So, yes, we have many, many things to be thankful for. We just need to be good stewards and it will all work out fine.
You do what you can do.