<p>No easy answers in the “fairness” area…we are struggling in this, too.</p>
<p>Our gift to them is no debt after 4 years (anything else is on their nickel).
D attending a top private U and S attending OOS public. Full pay for both.
There is going to be approx. $60K difference at the end of 4 years between the two, which has led to ongoing disagreement with H.</p>
<p>H feels that we need to “even the score” a bit with S. I’m not so sure.</p>
<p>D has always been determined, focused, worked hard, studied hard, was very involved in EC’s, etc., …in other words, she earned her acceptance at her great school. She is also very frugal, shops for the best deals on textbooks, clothes, eating out, everything. </p>
<p>S enjoyed his HS years! Was involved in sports, not much else EC wise. Saw how hard his sister worked in HS–decided that wasn’t for him…sigh. VERY social and likes the Good Life. Believes that we have a money tree in the back yard…</p>
<p>I’m not all that inclined to “even the score” as H is. H (somewhat old school) feels S, as a guy, needs(?) more than D due to dates, etc. Huh? H and D have also not had the coziest of relationships. S is so much more effusive in his gratitude for anything we do (Eddie Haskell?), whereas it’s more challenging to get a “thanks” from D for our efforts.</p>
<p>D already has a job after graduation in May (yay!). I’ll be pleasantly surprised if S does in 2 years…so maybe we’ll be helping him then… I’m still wrestling with fairness in all of this…</p>
<p>I say forget about the fact that they’re siblings for the moment and evaluate each situation independently.</p>
<p>If the parents decide to pay nothing for the kids’ college then the kids get to decide where they want to attend, how much debt they’ll have, and what they’ll be saddled with (I’m not counting loan qualifying in this context).</p>
<p>If the parents decide to pay something for the kids’ college then because each kid is unique, I think each kid’s situation should be evaluated independently. This might mean that one kid’s college will cost more than the other kid and so be it as long as the parent agrees to it.</p>
<p>I don’t agree that there should be a fixed amount up front that’s the same for each kid regardless of the kid’s situation. Costs vary on a number of variables - base cost of the college/board, whether one decides to board vs commute from home, whether one decides to attend a CC for a couple of years then transfer, whether one decides not to go to college at all, one might decide to join the military and let them pay for it, one might get more scholarship money than the other, one might switch majors a few times whereas the other doesn’t resulting in a difference in cost, one might get sick which can impact the overall college costs, and the list goes on.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense to arbitrarily decide up front that exactly what will be spent on one is what will be spent on the other since they’re individuals. If the kid’s parents are willing to pay even a dime then the kid s/b grateful for it and not be concerned about the sibling’s situation.</p>
<p>I guess I think that it is not any business of one sibling what the parents do for another. I am rembering that I know nothing about the agreement two of my sisters had with my parents as far as paying college costs. The other sister had a full ride that included room, board, and books, so my parents paid very little for her. And, she was less than 3 hours from home so transportation costs were not much, either.</p>
<p>I think it is an individual agreement between parent and student and the other siblings don’t need to be included in the discussion.</p>
<p>One of ours was/is dyslexic, needed private school from a young age. The other is a nationally ranked athlete and needed all sorts of travel and team expenses, and now, private school.</p>
<p>We put a lot of money into their “education” and I don’t even know if the younger one will go to college or culinary school or take a year off or what she will choose to do. She hasn’t really decided yet. </p>
<p>One wanted a car (the younger). The older doesn’t even drive.</p>
<p>I don’t even know how you quantify this kind of thing. At all.</p>
<p>cbug - Depends on parent financial situation. Kid #1 earned and accepted (perhaps even compromised) for the full tuition scholarship. I think $25K loans for this student is high if parents are affluent (and paying down some of it as graduation gift would be nice.) It seems reasonable if money is tight for the parents.</p>
<p>Interesting question as it is something I have been thinking about. Slightly different situation to most of you. Older kid had no interest in academics, started out at CC, dropped out, went back after a couple of years living on very low wages to take a 2 year tech AS. Graduated with about $9k debt. This year, his first full year working, it looks like he is on track to earn $50-60k (depending on overtime which he seems to be raking in right now). </p>
<p>Younger kid was the more academic one. Got good scholarships and FA and went to a 4 year. We have helped as much as we can but Dad is retired and in poor health and our retirement savings have been hit hard the last few years between his high medical costs and the stock market). Will graduate with a little over $20k. But in her career track, she will probably never make what her brother makes. </p>
<p>I do hate that she will have so much more in debt and have wondered if we should somehow even it out. Probably mostly because she probably won’t make a very high income despite having a higher degree. Kind of a moot point right now as we probably can’t afford to do much. but it is something I have thought about.</p>
This is basically the plan we also are following, except we won’t allow them to take out more than a small amount of loans if needed, and we tried/will try hard to get them to take a zero-debt option.</p>
<p>We also have told them that if the school they go to is cheap enough after any merit aid, we will fund a new car account for them so that when they graduate they will have up to $20K to buy a car.</p>
<p>DS took us up on the car and went for a less expensive school (our state flagship). DD is in the application process now, we’ll see how that works out for her.</p>
<p>This was very painful process for me as I basically forced DS to turn down some very highly ranked schools because they would have required a lot of debt ($100K+) on either his part or ours or some combination, and I was unwilling. Fortunately he loves where he is.</p>
<p>This is reminding me of Christmas. My older daughter always got one more gift than her younger sister did through their teen years - life was easier that way, and it was younger sister’s idea.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’m having trouble understanding how “evening out financial support” translates to “evening out opportunities for happy and successful lives.”</p>
I don’t think they are necessarily related, but I also think that your kid having a happy and successful life is ultimately not in the control of the parents. Evening out financial support, we can control.</p>
<p>My older brother went to college on the 8 year plan, and worked a series of low paying crap jobs while in school. He was always broke, and would sometimes get money from my parents for tuition or a car repair or whatever. And whenever that happened, I would get a check in the mail for the same amount, even though I was out of school and working as an engineer. I didn’t need the money, but it was an issue of “fairness” for my father, and it was important to him.</p>
<p>Our S has a well-paying job and a car. We don’t send him care packages much any more as he has pretty much all he needs and can get whatever he wants. D has no car and is a frugal student. She gets & appreciates care packages–especially food. We have not sent S a check as we can see no reason why he needs our $$$ at this point, since he is living very comfortably and has even has a significant emergency fund AND nest egg in bank.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t beat myself too much if I were you. It’s called learning experience. For D2, we will be paying twice as much as what we paid D1 but I’m sure neither will complain. D1 went to the school that she’s very happy with and I can only hope the same for D2.
So money is not a problem or issue. All lessons learned from applying to colleges from D1 will be applicable for D2.</p>
<p>This is a fascinating thread. In our family, we spent the least on the oldest child’s education because, 10 years ago, college was a lot less expensive. We didn’t think so at the time, of course. It’s costing us almost twice as much to send d3 to the same school d1 enrolled at 11 years ago. Fortunately, our income increased during that time. It would have been tough to tell one child we couldn’t afford to send her to the same school her sister attended.</p>
<p>My H and I are very sensitive to this. Both of us came out of college and law school with debt because neither of our parents would help us with a penny. Meanwhile, my parents paid for my sister to attend three different colleges (one out of the country), while she never even graduated, and my in-laws paid for my SIL to attend three different colleges over the course of 25 years and she also doesn’t have a degree. Our parents, who had never met at that point in time, each said that our sisters needed the help more!</p>
<p>Anyway, our oldest son went to 2 different CC’s and we paid for it. He dropped out and went to work. We bought a cheap used car. I was going to make him pay us back until I realized that the car cost what we were paying for one semester of his sister’s tuition. Our D has earned numerous scholarships and is an RA. We have been able to pay the difference without too much difficulty so she will get out with a masters’ in education without any debt because she chose to go in-state.</p>
<p>Our next son is a senior now. I have told him that we will pay in-state tuition for him (although he’s brighter than his sister and has better scores, he will not get any scholarships because her were primarily for volunteer work) and if he wants more, he will have to take out loans. I refuse to do parent loans but I will try to help him and my younger kids out if I can. If he gets into a private school, we will pay the equivalent of in-state tuition, room and board for him.</p>
<p>To the extent possible, I would like to help my kids come out debt free but not at the expense of my retirement money and plans.</p>
<p>Its so hard to be balanced and “equal” when we have several kids. Whose car(s) cost us more? Whose tuition cost more? Whose travel expenses, etc. Bottom line, we dont keep “score”, as it were, but try to address reasonable need. We set aside funds for their college. Older s burrned it up. Younger s got a nice scholarship and will be able to pocket the leftover, which is earmarked for “school”, but heck, he is 21 and its in his name. Right now he isnt planning grad school to it will be invested (not in a sportscar-- we do have some guidelines!).</p>
<p>I figure there will always be “opportunities” in the future to help them if they need it, so if you spend more to help one pay off school loans now, there will be opportunity to help the other later down the road. It will all even out.</p>
<p>Now for my question-- I have sons. I have my mother’s and grandmothers diamonds. Who gets which, when the time comes? Wait-- my mother’s diamond is bigger than mine. Do I keep it and give son my stone to reset when the time comes? Such decisions… they come in all shapes and sizes :)</p>
<p>This discussion has brought back memories of when I met and married my H. I honestly was shocked when I found out he had $30k in student loan debt while I had less than $5k. It really made me almost reconsider. I couldn’t imagine how we were going to ever pay those loans off, but eventually we did. We joked about how it was the opposite of the girl with the dowry - it was the guy bringing the debt.</p>
<p>This is a great thread. I find it very interesting to read about how each family decides what is fair with regards to more than one child. Everyone’s choices will be different because of different financial situations, family priorities, available options, different kids, etc.</p>
<p>One thing I believe is that it is not good to have ‘secrets’. I have seen too many families with feelings hurt when one sibling found out something about how mom and dad treated another sibling. For that reason, we have shared everything equally with both kids.</p>
<p>Our deal is that we will pay for undergrad and the kids will be responsible for grad school. I imagine both kids will want to go to grad school. When the time comes for grad school, we MAY choose to help them out, but we have made it clear that is not the expectation.</p>
<p>We told both kids that if they receive any scholarships for college, we will take half that money and set it aside for them to use for graduate school. All of DS1’s school choices had comparable costs. He got a generous 1/2 tuition scholarship at a great school, but eventually chose to attend a school that offered no merit aid.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how things pan out with DS2 in a couple of years…</p>
<p>I don’t think $25K is bad. We paid EFC for each kid after expecting each one to take out maximum Stafford loans. Oldest attended a school that met 100% of need and our EFC was about $10K lower than it is currently because we had two kids at home, one still young enough for the extra child deduction.
Younger childs college is less expensive, but also doesn’t meet need, so we are paying more now.</p>
We have not sent S a check as we can see no reason why he needs our $$$ at this point, since he is living very comfortably and has even has a significant emergency fund AND nest egg in bank.</p>