austinmshauri - in the sense that if one chose not to work in order to pay the tuition, the same product would have been provided to you for free. So why work? There is no financial incentive to do so, in the same way that one wouldn’t work if the tax rate was 100%.
austinmshauri - in the sense that if one chose not to work in order to pay the tuition, the same product would have been provided to you for free. So why work? There is no financial incentive to do so, in the same way that one wouldn’t work if the tax rate was 100%.
Who’s providing a free education to people who don’t work? I’m a homeschool parent. I haven’t had a paying job in a long time, but nobody is providing my son with a free education. Even if my husband was also unemployed/underemployed, the most we’d get would be the ~$5000 Pell grant, the $5500 federal student loan, and maybe a small state award to help with books. Yet our state colleges in NY run about $22k/year. The only way low income families have a shot at getting a truly free education is if their child has high enough stats to get one of the highly competitive free rides. The majority of low income kids don’t get one of those.
Families like mine who can roll one spouse’s entire income over to college costs are very fortunate. I don’t liken it to having a 100% tax rate at all.
0% saved. Not sure how we will pay for college but we will figure it out. We make just enough not to qualify for any financial aid, but no where near enough to afford college for 3 kids. Paying 5k per month out of the 8k we take home just isn’t feasible. Seriously? Our oldest is looking at a state school & even with a merit scholarship it is 25k per year. We are kicking in what we can & he works but it will still be about 15k of loans per year. We have another boy 2 years behind him…
It was my assumption we were talking about need based aid at the elite schools (Ivies, etc.). What I have gathered about the process is that if your household income is hovers near but below a certain threshold ($75k maybe?), then your EFC is $0. If nonworking spouse goes to work (or one spouse continues to work) to pay tuition, there is no financial benefit from the family (other than ancillary benefits others, keeping up skills, the what if scenarios, etc.), so therefore you chose to stay home rather than work for nothing, after taking into account increase in EFC plus taxes plus other cost of working (child care, commuting, etc.). Or if two earner household makes combined $100k, one spouse cuts back to part-time rather than full-time, since once again the foregone earnings after the above costs are net zero.
It is a good example of a perverse incentive, similar to the welfare trap and similar situations.
The reality I am sure is much more complicated, since this ignores asset considerations, which assets count and which don’t, some schools ignore the house, the retirement accounts, and the business assets, etc. I am not an expert. I doubt I ever will be, because I don’t expect we will be able to qualify for much in the way of need based aid. But this is what the discussion was about.
Predictability, the discussion evolved as it usually does. One side focuses on situations of real life hardships and struggles, while discounting or dismissing human nature, that anyone would ever find a reason to be slacker, and that such cases are much more rare than the real hardship scenarios. The other side argues exactly the opposite. No one changes anyone else’s mind on the subject.
Which leads me to say - sorry I ever brought it up!!! 
This board has little to do with the college experiences and expenses of most of the country.
Very, very few schools are need blind. Very, very few students will be accepted to those schools. If there is any kind of perverse incentive, it certainly impacts very few families and they probably couldn’t have counted on it in their long-term financial planning with any certainty.
The reality is that for many families, EFC does not bear any resemblance to reality, and at many schools, FA packages are loan-heavy (Staffords and Perkins for students, private or school-funded loans for parents). Even Harvard still expects a student contribution from its low-EFC families.
As I mentioned upthread, we were darned lucky and grateful. It helped that we have lived frugally for many years in anticipation of college costs, but even so, the reality of those tuition bills is stunning.
I don’t begrudge families who have one working spouse, even as college looms. We simply don’t know if that family is also supporting other family members, has children with special needs, dealing with serious illnesses, etc. I’m pretty open on CC, but there are some details I don’t disclose.
Parents and students need to educate themselves far before senior year about college costs and options. The schools my kids attended tended to gloss over financial aid issues, probably as a matter of policy. To me, the light touch and the reassurance that “money is out there” makes light of the way FA and merit awards really work, thereby kicking the can down the road to April of senior year when reality sets in.
OTOH, I have some extended family members who have rocks in their heads. Some have done the slacker route, and others are neglectful beyond belief. Their children are paying the price.
Ah, @Loukydad. If the conversation was about Ivies, I missed that.
The income for a $0 EFC for FAFSA is more like $40k, I think. I suppose it’s possible that a $75k income may get a full ride at an Ivy. But such a small percentage of students get accepted to those schools that, for most people, the salary that qualifies students for a $0 EFC there doesn’t matter.
I disagree that working has no benefits. Money goes into social security. The program has its troubles and pay out is very small, but every quarter a person works earns a little bit of benefits. So the net gain of working is never zero. I suppose I just don’t understand people who look at work that way. If all my income goes to child care or tuition now, it’s still a gain for me. Children who are in daycare now won’t always be so young that they can’t be left on their own and current college students won’t be in college forever. The years a parent works while his/her child is in day care or college are an opportunity to build skills, experience, and increase earnings.
If my kid qualified for a $60k/year need-based grant if I wasn’t working but wouldn’t qualify if I took a $60k/year job, I’d still take the $60k/year job and roll it over to college costs. There’s some kid out there who doesn’t have a mother who can go out and get a $60k/year job. I’d be perfectly content to let him or her have the grant instead because if I can earn it, I don’t really need it anyway.
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For disadvantaged children, possibly, @fretfulmother, but not all children. Home schooled students score better on standardized tests than their public school peers, they graduate from college at a higher rate, and they have higher GPAs while they’re there.
Well, before we veer off into the mommy wars, I wanted to comment a bit on in/out of workforce scenarios and impact on SAHPs.
As a homeschooling family, we kept a whole lot of life insurance so that kids and I would be okay financially if my husband died. And I kept enough life insurance he could afford a full-time housekeeper/nanny, if I died.
It is a leap of faith to depend on someone else for your long term financial support. It didn’t work out well for some female friends of mine, and nothing could have predicted the break up of their marriages. I used to think I just chose my spouse more wisely, but now I understand I am just pretty lucky. Additionally, I always had a financial safety net from my parents and siblings, but that isn’t available to everyone. This is something young parents need to consider when deciding to leave the workforce to raise children. It isn’t one-size-fits-all. My parents really wanted me to have a law degree, but I dropped out of law school to get married. For the next 20 years, they kept asking when I was going to finish that degree, because it would have made them so much more comfortable about my ability to support myself if the need arose.
ALH- I know a number of men now collecting alimony, so it’s hardly a mommy war.
But I think you’ve posted a rational and empathetic response. I also know a couple of marriages which have dissolved recently which have led to some terrible financial consequences for the kids. Who knows if finances were a part of the problem-- but they sure are leaving a long legacy for the kids who (probably) assumed that their middle class or upper middle class lifestyle was going to continue in college.
Every dollar spent arguing in court is a dollar not available for tuition, or the orthodontist, or for property taxes on the house.
@LOUKYDAD , your comments were in response to the example I had provided in post #185
which was basically a warning for people to get the best information they can to help make the best decisions for their family situation. Our friend, who went back to work, and effectively watched additional taxes and other expenses plus a significant reduction in need based aid combine to eat away everything additional she earned, made the mistake of not considering everything when she decided to return to work. Yes, her daughter attends an elite school, and although she is not getting a full ride, the difference in her need based aid dropped from $50K to $32K.
I like your analogy of this to welfare recipients, because in some situations, the disincentive to pursue additional income is far more than most people might think. Then again, most people don’t often think about anyone other than themselves anyway. As I said, there are a lot of variables to consider, and people would be wise to think carefully about those that apply to their situation before assuming the spouse simply needs to add hypothetical income.
@flyaround and @blossom, both of you make value judgments about the need to earn more to support your lifestyle, to be able to buy what you choose and to pay for it. This seems to discount the fact that some people may be content in a more frugal lifestyle, not needing to earn an additional 100K. The retirement issue is something to consider, but if two people live on one income for 40 years, they may be prepared to manage on one pension and/or one 401(k).
In our parents generation, the SAH mom was perhaps still the norm, but in a short period of time the norm rapidly became a need for a dual-income family. But for families who have been forced to, or who have chosen to, sacrifice the additional income, their children should not be made to feel any less deserving of need based financial aid.
Sorry to derail this thread - it is very interesting to see where families are.
I dislike the phrase, “mommy wars.” I think it’s insulting to women and encourages people to make value judgments about the choices other families make. Those choices are nobody else’s business.
I was commenting on another poster’s aside that universal pre-k has better outcomes than staying at home. It was made by a teacher. As a home educator, I interpreted that not as a comment about whether or not women should stay home when their children are young but whether parents can be as effective teachers as professionals. My point was that parents are more than capable of getting excellent results. It had nothing to do with whether or not women should work outside the home when their children are preschool age. Women should do whatever is best for them.
3Puppies, I know several families with one wage earner and they are very happy with a modest lifestyle and have made suitable trade-offs in their consumption/savings to make it work. More power to them.
I find it more typical however (and I live in a high cost of living area) that the one wage earner family hits a wall financially- for some it was 2008, where housing prices declined quickly, revealing an awful lot of HELOC/mortgaged to the walls situations; for some it was 2009 with lay-offs and the loss of that primary earner, and for some it’s the reality of college expenses-- and all of a sudden, “the government” or society, or who knows else, is supposed to come up with a solution to the personal choice they made to stay home with kids 15 or 17 years ago.
I don’t think it’s fair to ask the waitress down at the local Waffle House to subsidize (via higher state taxes) the State U so that a family making $100K with one income, doesn’t need to add a second income in order to pay for said State U. This is a policy choice- how much should a State be subsidizing higher Ed, and who among the taxpayers should be paying the biggest burden. This shouldn’t devolve into “it’s OK for a lower middle class mom to leave her middle school kids alone after school to earn a living but it’s not OK for an upper middle class mom to do the same”.
The SAHP’s that I know who complain the most don’t have much sensitivity to the needs of the mom’s and dad’s who don’t have the luxury of deciding “what kind of work will make it “worth my while” to go back into the workforce”. They don’t take responsibility for a choice they made (forgo a second income) which like every other life’s choice, bears unintended consequences.
That’s all. I think it’s wonderful that parents get to figure out how they want to raise their kids. But no crying foul when you discover that the working world hasn’t stood still for 15 years, and that your professional status and standing have eroded somewhat.
I recently suggested to a neighbor looking for a job that she learn Excel. She told me that I had no clue about what an important person she was X years ago in her field and that only a “personal secretary” would know Excel. Since she had asked me for help with her resume… I decided to keep my mouth shut.
A- nobody has personal secretaries anymore. A team of 8 or 10 professionals will have an Admin to support them (as a team) but nobody besides the C-suite execs have someone picking out birthday presents for their kids.
B- everyone knows Excel.
C- she is seriously out of touch.
@Blossom
That was a nice stereotype rant full of your personal biases.
My simple response is the world of SAHP is not limited to your small world. I have been a stay at home mom for over 26 yrs. (ETA: since our youngest just recently turned 5, I still have a long way to go since we homeschool and she hasn’t even started K.) My family lives very modestly. My kids have gone to college w/o any loans, federal or otherwise. We pay out of pocket at schools would could afford. My kids have also earned significant merit $$.
Mom- I was responding to Puppies, not to you.
Very happy for you that your choices have worked out, and I have also given the disclaimer that I realize that “my small world” is NOT typical- urban neighborhood, high cost of living area, high taxes.
I started my married life in a small city in the Midwest where a nice house in a good school district cost $80K. Most of my neighbors were SAHP and my guess is that they are all pretty happy with their choices. Different story when you live in a region where a small condo costs $450K and you are paying high property taxes, getting a penalty for earning money in one state but living in another, etc.
Namaste. But I was not addressing your posts- responding to Puppies. Appreciate your perspective.
I wish aid had something to do with where you live…we too live in a high cost area. We pay high property taxes where we live & because we work in another state we pay full income tax there.
I was a SAHM until the market crashed. We are no where near being well to do for where we live, but clearly we are considered as such according to the government. That’s fine. We’ll make do. However, it is really aggravating that those who live in cheaper areas pay less to live, eat, drive, etc & still get free/reduced college for their kids.
I love living in New England…but the cost to live here is crazy. I think since we pay full Mass taxes, then our kids should get to go to Mass schools for instate cost. 
@blossom It sounds like we agree on an awful lot - I am advocating that people get the information they need to make informed decisions, while you are essentially suggesting that there are consequences to the choices people have made. I agree with you that there are a lot of risks that single-income families endure, and while not all of them are by choice, they can add a significant stress if they haven’t been considered in advance.
But I wanted to comment on
I have been talking about Ivies and elite privates, which are much more likely to provide need based aid. But my perspective comes from our high achieving kids who have been accepted at Ivies, which for us, are generally much more affordable than state-based schools even after the state based merit aid. We understand there were full-ride options at out-of-state schools for NMS, but our kids were fortunate to have affordable Ivy options. If my husband’s income were to suddenly triple, I am not sure we would still justify paying $65K per year for these options, when the state options with merit aid less than half that. This is @LOUKYDAD 's point - the Ivies are losing students from higher-end income families with relatively little assets, where the merit aid at a state school makes the net cost difference compared to the Ivies too much to justify.
I strongly feel that state based aid should be merit based at public universities, but I don’t have a problem with some need based aid for community colleges. I understand this may vary a lot by state.
But of course, my perspective on who among the taxpayers should be paying the biggest burden is skewed to reflect the fact that as a one-income family, we are below the average family earnings, so I am quick to say that those who earn more than we do should pay a lot more.
And @Rebecca1212 , as a Mass. resident, I too love New England even though the cost of living here is nuts. I am grateful that we tax Mass workers who don’t reside here, as neighboring states often tax our income too. I wouldn’t have a problem with Mass offering in-state tuition to families like yours if other states had similar retribution.
the problem with “those who earn more, pay more” is that at some point, earning more won’t matter as the results even out, thus incentives are destroyed. People who “earn more” in general, worked a lot harder than those who earn less, or have abilities above the average that provide more value to society (think doctors, scientists,entrepreneurs and inventors, etc) , thus they are paid for it. Yes, some people earn a lot dishonestly, some earn very little and provide high value and are not paid accordingly (farmers, mothers, etc). Not here to debate the nature of subjective value in society, it’s just that some of us resent subsidizing other students, both through sky high taxes and higher tuition. I am OK with subsidizing the very top of students who cannot pay to promote a meritocracy, but there has to be a cutoff (to reign in costs) as the vast majority (I’ll say 75%) of college students are doing nothing more than extending childhood 4 more years, learning little and wasting resources. If we are honest…I mean, come on. And if a test cold be given to measure before and after learning results, I’ll bet I am not far off with the 75%. And this is at the very core of this thread and why “where you go” does matter, as we all know that a degree from an Ivy is NOT viewed the same as podunk state. It’s just not. And that does mean podunk state grad is doomed either, he/she may very well go on to succeed beyond the Ivy grad. An easy litmus is to go to the Wiki pages of each Ivy school and look at notable graduates, and then do the same for a flagship state and then a directional. You will see the difference all too clear.
Sorry, thought I was responding to a diff thread! 