I’m looking at pretty big schools including Penn State, UGA, LSU, etc. I understand that a lot of schools offer payment plans and things like that, but I can’t find an estimate as to how much my parents will have to pay on each payment. Total expenses for the colleges I’m applying to are all around 40-50K without considering any aid at all.Anyone who has paid for colleges of the similar tuition that I will have; did you have to pay thousands of dollars at a time?
https://bursar.psu.edu/payment-options#Installment%20Payment%20Plan
Penn State’s is 3 installments per semester. If a full year is $45k, then a semester is $22.5k, and each monthly installment would be $7.5k.
Some schools have the 2-3 payment plan as bodangles said, others have a 10 month plan that starts in July before you even start school and you pay July to April. How much you pay is based on what you owe after all financial aid and scholarships are applied.
We have been paying the entire semester at a time, when the bill comes from the school. Yes, this is into at least thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars, per payment for many students.
Colleges have different plans. My kids college have a 10 month payment plan (June through March.) there is a sign up fee of like 60 bucks but you aren’t charged any interest. It’s just the total we owe minus the housing deposit divided by 10. We can pay for the school year out of pocket this way BUT we also don’t owe close to 40-50k after scholarships and financial aid.
Some families do a mixture of student loan, plus loan and payment plan.
Do the math.
If your parents were permitted to pay monthly, then obviously they’d have to pay thousands of dollars each month.
Schools that have a monthly payment plan use a 10 month plan…so obviously, a monthly plan would have your parents paying $4k-$5k per month for four years…except for two months each summer.
As others mentioned, some don’t have a monthly plan…
How much can your parents pay each year towards college?
We were members of a monthly tuition payment plan for seven years. The monthly payment you have will depend on the plan you choose. Most offer a couple of options.
We chose the 10 month plan every year…so our monthly payments to the plan were 1/10 of our net costs.
So…using very simple math…if your total cost to attend is $45500…and you subtract the $5500 Direct Loan, you would have a $40,000 balance or $4000 a month for ten months.
So yes, we paid several thousand dollars PER MONTH for seven years.