<p>Every family has a different financial picture, which changes the options for everyone. My parents paid for my first quarter at community college, then nothing. They didn’t pay anything for my sister to go to school. Then again, it was alot cheaper way back when.</p>
<p>We are paying full pay for our older son (54K/yr including room and board). We’ll probably pay for his master’s degree too. We have been paying for private school since he was in third grade, and his brother was in first…costing us about 500K before the first day in college. Two private colleges will probably cost us another 500K. It hasn’t been easy, but we haven’t taken on any debt, and our lifestyle is way lower than most people in our salary range. I sometimes think if we’d realized what the entire bill was going to be, we would have never let him go for one day to private school. But the kids are so happy and challenged, that it is really hard to regret it. We would not have encouraged our kids to take on huge debts if we couldn’t pay for it. Certainly, if the parents don’t have money to spare, they should not be expected to pay for college.</p>
Plan c-- for our kids-- as we have rather hefty life insurance policies- is that if we died they would probably be easily able to pay full fee for college./professional school and a sportscar to boot. Shhhh- don’t tell them. Otherwise I’ll have to watch my back.</p>
<p>Agree that priority is the key.Our priority is educating our kids-- at the school that is the best fit. Older s’s school was expensive. Had only modest merit $$. Younger 's merit $ is quite generous-- so he has more left for grad/professional school. Hopefully if he chooses grad/professional school, hopefully he wont have huge debt. And hopefully he wont read this and realize how generous our life insurance policies are (DS- if you are reading this-- dad’s policy is 2x or more as big as mine )</p>
<p>I’m lucky enough to have parents who are willing and able to fund my college. I’m the third sibling, and my parents paid full price for my older siblings at two top private universities and are now paying for my own education. While I’m working to make some spending money over the summer, it will be basically incidental in comparison to the 50k+ per year they are paying.
I don’t think my parents consider college a privilege or a right- more like a necessity. Thus, they are willing to save money to give their kids the advantage of being debt-free when they get out of college.</p>
<p>With some difficulty we will pay four years at D’s school of choice. For grad school she’s on her own unless she chooses for undergraduate a less expensive school or gets merit aid. Then maybe we can help a little with grad school. So she’s strongly considering merit aid schools, though not only those schools. For her, attending our state school would be disappointing since she’s been counting on getting out of Dodge. She’ll need to make her spending money with summer jobs.</p>
<p>If she takes 5 years to finish at a full price private or high-tuition OOS, she’ll have to finance the 5th year herself. She she is looking carefully at the 4 year graduation rates in her college selection because after 4 years it’s her money. We want her to not have debt but we want her to be responsible.</p>
<p>We decided all this because it is our biggest hope that she have no debt and therefore have greater freedom of choice about her next step. Also since it’s healthiest if you have your 1st baby by the time you’re 29 we don’t want high debt load to preclude that. (Other things might preclude it anyway of course- you never know).</p>
<p>With S, now in 7th grade, we may do something different because he is disorganized and not as dedicated a student. This may change in high school. If not, for his own good it might be better to have him “invested” in his education so he doesn’t squander his opportunity.</p>
<p>I think kids should be supported and encouraged up to some point, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket. </p>
<p>NO SCHOOL is worth $100,000 to $250,000 for a 4 year BA out-of-pocket cash/loans.
There’s not a damn degree on the planet worth that much in loans (neurosurgeon potentially excluded, up to $200k). That kind of money for a bachelor’s degree is INSANE. It could buy a house. I would support my potential offspring within reason, but no way in HELL would going over $100,000 in debt for a BA be an option. Hell, I’ll still be paying off my OWN student loans by then. Yes, I went to a “sort of dream school” and I’ll “sort of” being paying it off the rest of my life. Or, at least until 2060, depending on what calculator you use. </p>
<p>Was this, or any, undergraduate degree worth $200,000-250,000 (and counting) degree worth it? Absolutely NOT. That’s a ridiculous amount of money, and I regret 90% of that debt (and cash thrown in).</p>
<p>^^Depends upon how much money you make/have. Of course not worth going in massive debt for. Of course not worth a parent taking on three jobs for. Alot of difference for someone making 50K opposed to 500K, it takes on a completely different meaning.</p>
<p>This thread is starting to sound more and more like this thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/946376-college-right-privilege-assuming-you-have-money-pay.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/946376-college-right-privilege-assuming-you-have-money-pay.html</a> As I said there, I consider educating our kids our responsibility, and I pay for it. We paid for private school before college, and we paid (are paying) for college. Fortunately we are not taking out loans to do this, but we have scrimped and saved since before they were born to be able to do this. I have always put their education as top priority- ahead of personal purchases and especially ahead of frivolous purchases. I agree, taking on huge debt is not a great idea, and I don’t recommend that. We have tried to teach our s’s the value of saving rather than spending, of using coupons where possible, and of comparison shopping for the best bargain… and the flexibility it ultimately affords them. One for sure gets it-- the other is still a little bit of a work in progress.</p>
<p>Everyone should be able to attend the best college that they can AFFORD. It is just a fact of life that not everyone can afford the same things. My D could never afford Coach purses or designer clothes - too bad. She learned to lived with it. We can’t afford full-freight at most private colleges. She learned to live with that as well. My younger child will be going into the college selection process with eyes wide open. “Here’s what we can afford. Pick your college accordingly.” IMO, a child does not have an inalienable right to attend the college of their choice.</p>
<p>I am a bit offended by post number 47. The amount of money a family spends on college is their business. Some feel it is worth the money to send their kids to a high priced school AND pay for it. Others don’t. There are many reasons why a family may choose to spend this money. I don’t think it’s a waste of money at all…and did it for two kids (who did get merit money to a greater or lesser degree). It was MY decision and MY money and I felt is was well spent.</p>
<p>I feel that it is worth it, if the family can afford it without getting itself in trouble in other areas such as health, quality of life, retirement, emergency funds for the rest of the family. I don’t think anyone is doing a kid any favors working to the bone to pay for a kid’s choice in college. I would not have wanted my parents or anyone I love to do that. I have seen families take on multiple jobs, borrow to the hilt, gamble everything on their kid going to a specific college, for a specific degree. And, oh, what pain, if the kid changes his mind! They are young yet, and they often will do that.</p>
<p>I would love to see one of my kids in one of the big name highly selective school. I fully admit it. And if one were accepted to such a school and really want to go there, I would try to swing it. I’ve been fortunate that my kids who have been very immature about many things have been practical and concerned about family welfare when it comes to college costs. We’ve shared our financial info with them, and they have taken it upon themselves to figure out what is affordable without pushing us at all. I’ve been more the culprit in this picture.</p>
<p>back when, the metal has certain value. Each family, not matter how poor, has at least one metal wok for cooking. One way to say the family will give 100% to support you is that family will “break the wok and sell the metal”.</p>
<p>We did pretty much that so our kids could attend the school of their choice. We could not be happier that both of them got in excellent schools and both of them got exceptional FA.</p>
<p>If someone has the money, and it’s not going to force the parents to live on cat food, what’s it to you if that’s how they choose to spend their money? What else could they do with that money that’s more productive – buy furs and diamonds?</p>
<p>DadII, here are some of the things we did NOT do while our kids attended college: no vacations, no new hobby items (e.g. camera equipment, bicycles, etc), no fancy dinners out, no expensive bottles of wine (for ANY reason), no new cars, no thoughts of remodeling any room in the house, NONE of that. Can you say you are tightening your belt financially in the same way?</p>
<p>Please give REAL examples of ways your family conserves money so your kids can attend college…and you can pay the bills (such as they are).</p>
<p>Doesn’t sound like to many woks are being melted/broken/sold by this formula. Sounds like the way of being supportive is to make darned sure the cost for college comes from anywhere but item #5 on your list. No one is faulting you for doing a darned fine job of getting school expenses paid by others, but to continuously cry poor and simultaneously start a thread about purchasing a new unnecessary toy for yourself is insulting to the posters here who are less self-focused. We have a saying too-- it has to do with walking the walk and talking the talk.</p>
<p>Some people’s ways of getting others to pay for college AND then posting about their own indulgences is insulting to folks who REALLY have financial need.</p>
<p>T1, one needs to be in my shoes for a couple of days to know how many woks we have broken to support our kids. I don’t know if you are delibrately misleading or you did not read some of the discussions. All those wine consuming meals, I have disclosed, were on sale’s department’s budget. </p>
<p>Let’s not turn this very informative discussion into one of those threads about our FA packages.</p>
<p>Dad II…why can’t you give us ways that families CAN tighten their belts. You haven’t done that. Some folks have not gotten the generous need based aid your kids got…so why can’t you give suggestions to help them tighten their belts so they CAN help their kids more with college costs?</p>
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