<p>Ok, what if you have one child who graduates from college with $25,000 in debt (random amount). And then your next kid comes along and finds a college he will be able to attend for next to nothing -- due to merit & need-based aid. </p>
<p>Would you feel bad that Kid #1 is saddled with debt and Kid#2 isn't? Would you then try and help Kid #1 out financially to compensate?</p>
<p>I probably would wait and see how life treats the two of them. In time (3-5 years) if the older is struggling and could use some help (but is doing everything s/he can to help him/her self) then I would consider it. Also, there is always grad school (for many) that could equalize the deal. If I did help the other, I would not characterize it to either sib as compensating for the cheaper school to which #2 went.</p>
<p>This is a very interesting question - thank you for bringing it up.</p>
<p>It extends in so many ways. For example, D1 in our family went full pay to an expensive private school. We were prepared to do the same for D2. It is hard, but we can just manage it. However, D2 got scholarships amounting basically to full-tuition. Her cost is literally 1/4 of D1’s.</p>
<p>We were open to any school at decision time, but did tell her that we could help her in other ways if she went to the scholarship school. It’s not like we’re going to hand her the $100K+ that she is saving us, but we told her we could help her down the road with grad school, perhaps some living expenses if she needed it, travel, etc. We also said that she didn’t have to be quite so worried about making maximum money in the summers, could do volunteer work to help her career instead, etc.</p>
<p>D1 completely understands her side of the deal, too, that we have helped her to our maximum limit. Grad school and other expenses are on her, and we didn’t give her any particular freebies through college, either.</p>
<p>In the case you describe, I think it has to do with the family culture and the individual kids. What kind of value did kid 1 get for all that debt? Was it a thoughtful or a frivolous choice? What are their attitudes?</p>
<p>We so often have different situations with kid 1 and kid 2 based on cost, as parents learn the intricacies of this whole process. I’m not saying we’ll ever regret D1’s school/cost choice - because she made the most of it, and it will help her throughout life, plus she is incredibly grateful and wouldn’t ask for more from us. And I don’t think D2 feels slighted per se, but we have wondered if she felt under an obligation to save us money, even though we told her directly that there was enough for her to get what she needed, too.</p>
<p>I agree with the above - you never know what else is going to happen down the line. I certainly wouldn’t nickel and dime kids, but if there are huge differences and real needs for help, kids can be supportive of each other and understand parents’ choices.</p>
<p>The only thing that has come up with these now older kids is that it sometimes seems like the ones who make lots of mistakes and bad choices get bailed out a lot, and the ones who are responsible and self-sacrificing just get a pat on the back. That gets very complicated, and I have no answers about those kinds of situations.</p>
<p>Wasn’t there a thread a while ago where a much sticker problem was discussed: paid a lot for the first sibling’s choice of school, then later realized that household finances (depleted by the first sibling’s expensive school) would severely limit the next sibling’s choice of school (“sorry, we paid for NYU for your older sibling, so we can’t even afford to send you to the state university for four years, so you have to go to community college…”).</p>
<p>^^ Let’s just say Kid#1s deal was absolute best we could find at the time. Full tuition scholarship but still has to pay room and board plus some other expenses. However we did not start search until late. Had we found Kid#2’s probable school at that time he probably would have loved it and we would have sent him there.</p>
<p>I agree, this is an excellent question! </p>
<p>We’re trying to avoid this situation by offering kids the same amount of money per year for college and telling them “it is up to you how much debt you would like to assume”. </p>
<p>Now, family circumstances can always change, a job could be lost, savings get used up, and younger sibling is left with less. Nobody wants that, of course, but in this economy who knows what’s coming?</p>
<p>School circumstances can also change. D1’s plan was to attend school at my employer in a 2+2 program. Well, she changed her major and will now attend school at my employer for all 4 years. Saves me a bucketload of money (and she doens’t have to move back home). Still, even though I’m spending less on D1 than I will on D2, I don’t think I’ll be giving the savings to d1 for grad school or a graduation present. She will be through school, without any debt, and I don’t feel like I need to give her more in the name of being equal. I may help her get some kind of a vehicle this summer, but I won’t be getting one nice enough to make up the difference. </p>
<p>Of course, spending different amounts on the kids is a different issue than one ending up with significantly more debt. I guess it depends on who is “at fault” for the debt. If one child, given a budget, chooses to take on more debt, whether for a dream school or a perceived great opportunity, I don’t think I’d feel obligated to step in and help out at all. She was offered enough to cover expenses and chose to go somewhere that cost more. If one child has debt because of circumstances beyond her control (like I lose my job and spend all her college money keeping a roof over our heads), I feel like I should help pay down that debt once I was back on my feet.</p>
<p>I’m concerned about this too. Overlapping kids isn’t helping matters any. Hopefully we can figure out a way to even things out over time. I must admit, growing up, the boys in our family never had summer jobs and were handed cars in college, etc. I started work at 14 and got the pat on the back for being independent. I secretly felt jealous and upset with the boys for being rewarded for their neediness. They also had substantial help with school while I worked and had academic scholarships that covered me. I think a lot of what happened in our family was due to being clueless about what college really would cost for 4 kids - so a lot of it was accomplished by winging it.</p>
<p>They got what they choose. One choose to have loans, other choose to have it free. I am not sure I understand the problem, there is none.</p>
<p>^ Not at all MiamiDAP. Kid#1 “chose” the best financial option at the time. But since we started the search late in the game for Kid#1, we learned and started searching and found Kid#2’s school much earlier. This is not really anyone’s “fault” – more just an issue of first timers ignorance.</p>
<p>You could put in your Will that when you die, that the kid who cost you less in college expenses should get a correpondingly larger part of the estate.</p>
<p>Here’s another way of looking at it. What if you were employed by a company that offered you really poor benefits but then they learn about a new plan and change their company policy. Now all the new employees hired after you get to take advantage of a this great new plan but all of the old employees must stay with the old plan.</p>
<p>That’s the type of scenario I feel like I’m putting Kid#1 in.</p>
<p>If this is bothering you that much you can help pay it off afterward. This has the added benefit of building up kid#1’s credit.</p>
<p>cbug,
You said “we”, I thought that kid was supposed to research. Then do however you feel. I do not like loans, I made my kids be aware of this fact, more or less I would not sign student loan, not my way. But everybody is different. If you signed it, that means that you were ready to pay anyway. So, why are you in any kind of indecision now. We here all have completely different approaches and situations, how you can rely on our advice being applicable to yours?</p>
<p>MiamiDAP – First of all, I’ll bet 90% of the parents on this board helped their kids do research on colleges. What’s wrong with that anyway? Especially when you consider the schedules of high schoolers at the junior and senior level.</p>
<p>Second, most kids have little choice when it comes to taking out loans. And that was that case with Kid#1. I have no “indecision” about that part. My indecision is whether or not to even things out with them later.</p>
<p>Third, yes everyone is different and we might have to agree to disagree.</p>
<p>Beyond debt, there are differences in initial cost. If one kid goes to a school that costs $40K a year, and another gets a full ride at the state U for a tiny fraction of that, do you try to equalize the money factor somehow?</p>
<p>What an excellent question and one I was thinking about. We have 3 sons and we told them we can give each of them $10,000 p/year for school. S1 was lucky enough to just make the PSAT cut off and ended up with almost full tuition. paid each year at his university. We are paying about $9,000 for room/board/books/transportation. S2 should be a NMF finalist and we are steering him toward schools that will reward him for his academics etc., hoping he chooses a school that will let him be debt-free when graduating. (Of course it is his choice if he chooses a school that has him taking out loans.) S3 is a very smart boy, but doesn’t test as well so he probably won’t make NMF which means he will probably be taking on debt for sure. Do we help out #3 more because of this? He is going to school 4 years after S1 so should we raise what we can help him to $12,000 per year? We are trying to be fair, but is being fair treating them all the same? I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Our thinking was that our role was to help kids get a college education and graduate with low debt. Kid 1 got an excellent financial aid package from private school which had all loan aid replaced with grant aid. Kid 2 also was accepted to same private school with very good financial aid package and graduated with minimal (less than $8000) in loans. We ended up paying more for Kid 2 than Kid 1, due to our income, etc, and we are not paying his loans. Fair, but not equal. 
Our agreement was to the education, not to the price of the education.</p>
<p>This is why my kids aren’t forced to take out loans themselves. I give them a college education, if the costs are different for each kid that’s just the way it works out.</p>
<p>To expand on Floridadad55, I know a man who did exactly that same thing. He had kept track of every college expense, every college trip expense, and every car he had helped purchase for all of his kids. He subtracted each kid’s total expenses from their inheritance. Their only quibble was that they didn’t know that was his plan until they read the will after his death. Some of them might have made different college choices had they been aware that that was his plan. One sibling went to a very expensive, full pay LAC which his father paid for, while another took out student loans which he paid back himself, worked during the school year, and didn’t ask his father for any money at all for college. The amounts that each child inherited varied by a huge amount.</p>
<p>I think whatever way a family handles sibling debt, it ought to be discussed upfront and early.</p>
<p>It will never be equal. One kid needs braces, the other had perfect teeth. One kid has been wearing eyeglasses since age 7, decides in HS they want contacts- do you say no because the other kids have great vision? One child has private lessons on the flute, which he adores, and practices every chance he gets, the others are happy to play kickball outside until dark.</p>
<p>I think parents do the best they can given the limited resources at hand so that each kid can maximize his or her best opportunities. For some kids that means a hefty parental infusion of cash, plus parent loans for college. For others, it means the kid takes a large merit scholarship. For others, it may mean living at home and commuting for a year until the kid is ready to take advantage of a far away campus. I think parents do the best they can for each of these scenarios, recognizing that not all parental help is monetary.</p>
<p>What I think is terribly unfair- and I have seen numerous examples of this in my own life where the consequences last for decades- is for parents to decide that one kid is the “gifted one” who gets the private lessons, the coaching, the summer opportunities, and the others “will bloom wherever they are planted” and thus end up self-financing college and missing out on other opportunities which may not have even cost a lot of money (but the parents were distracted with the ballerina or the artist or the violinist or the chess champ).</p>
<p>Help each kid achieve his or her own goals- do the best you can to pay for what you can without crippling yourself financially or raiding your retirement or going without life insurance-- and let the kids know that you will do whatever you can to help them reach for the stars.</p>