Hello everyone! I hope the application process has been going well for you and yours. I have triplets from a previous marriage and my husband has a daughter from his previous marriage, all going to college next year. We are attempting to come to a decision as to how we will be helping to pay for their education. Do we divide what we can give each year four equal ways? Some of the kids applied to more expensive schools than others, do we give them more to adjust for this cost difference? I don’t want any of them to not go to the school of their dreams, but we also don’t want to go in a crazy amount of debt doing this! Any experience anyone has about sending multiples/stepsiblings to college at the same time would be greatly appreciated.
Are the other parents of the 4 kids contributing at all to college expenses? Will you qualify for need based aid, especially given 4 attending at the same time?
I think a lot may depend on if all the children live with you (are in the household) and if the other parents are also contributing, if you had established any savings for your three or if he had for his daughter. What were the plans for college before you got married? Do you have the ability to pay for 4 ‘dream’ colleges? If your H has saved a lot for his daughter’s education, it would make sense for that plan to continue even if she has more for her education than your children do.
If you have no savings and all are to be treated the same, then set a budget for each and figure out a way to make the more expensive schools work. With 4 in school (if all are part of your household) some schools may give a lot of aid, some may have merit aid, one may get a talent scholarship (art, music, athletics).
I had two who started at the same time. One picked an expensive private (~$55k) and one a less expensive public (~$25k) but they both had the same budget of $15k. The one at the private actually had all of it paid from scholarships, but did take the loans to pay for her rent (her choice to live off campus). The other took the loans, worked, and needed the $15k from the budget. Each got the education she wanted and neither wished for the other’s deal.
Good luck! All I can think of is that your taxes, and theirs, will be a nightmare! I had a hard time coordinating 3 with the AOTC, taxes on scholarships, and all the new changes last year.
My ex husband will be contributing for the triplets (less because he has a lower income). My husbands ex wife unfortunately passed when my step daughter was young. We will qualify for some needs based aid, more just trying to figure out how to close the gaps.
Honestly, i think you need to be close to even in how much you are willing to spend, unless some of the kids choose to go to a less expensive school or if one has some kind of special needs. Not sure how you can tell Kid A they can go to full pay private but Kid B has to go to the local State U. One of mine chose the in-state public and so did not have to take out the federal loans but he could have gone to one of a couple of private colleges that were affordable with merit money. The other two cost us more but were 8 years apart so hard to compare tuition. None of them got to go to their first choice college because the cost was too high. Are they class of 2020? If so, really need to figure this out now!
You also never know. My son that went in-state did not finish and will need at least one extra semester so that will get him close to what we paid for the others.
The other thing is, make sure that they know the price limit now (when they may still have time to modify application lists), rather than surprise them with (to them) unexpectedly low limits in April that could result in a financial shutout (all admission offers are too expensive). Ideally, the price limits should have been given last summer or earlier…
Also, when running net price calculators, your kids may have to include your ex husband’s income and assets, depending on if the college requires that (usually CSS Non-custodial Profile, but sometimes their own additional forms).
In my opinion…you have four children. The step daughter has no other parents but you, right?
I guess I wonder how or why some of these kids are applying to more costly schools…and how much more costly. If it’s a couple thousand dollars, that would be different than if one kid applied to a $70,000 school while another applied to a $25,000 instate public.
If it were me, I would have set a budget that was an equal dollar amount for each of these kids. But it sounds like you didn’t do that before applications were sent.
Regardless, I would set a budget for the students, and I would make it equal unless there is some remarkably compelling reason why one kid should get more money.
You have four years of paying college costs for four kids…so please be realistic about what you can pay annually in total. Minimize any parent loans.
I’d take what you can contribute and divide it by 4. Add the ~$5500/year federal student loan and that’s their budget.
If any of the kids has the stats for merit aid then that could increase how much they can pay per year. If any of them work summers that will add to what they can pay too.
Do you know your EFC? How much can you spend per year without borrowing? You need to have a clear budget in mind before acceptances start rolling in.
Poor you! Yikes! That is a lot of kids going to college at once. I completely agree with @austinmshauri on this. Divide what you can spend 4 ways, plus the max they can each borrow and that’s it.
When thinking about what you can afford, do not neglect your own retirement savings. Don’t mortgage your future so that a kid can go to expensive U!
Sit all the kids down together and tell them their budget today! They can apply for scholarships if they want more than their share.
The sooner the better. Ideal would have been before any application lists were made, but now you need to get the budget set and communicated while there still may be time for the kids to change application lists to reflect the budget (rather than wasting time and fees on applications to schools that will not be affordable).
Agree that you should set equal budgets unless there is an ex who will contribute something to one set of kids but not the other, in that case I would potentially equalize the overall totals across all four kids.
The primary area of disagreement on CC is what happens if one kid underspends their allocated budget. The choices are:
- that kid gets to keep the difference for use in later life
- the parents keep the left over money, or
- the left over money gets redistributed to the other kids if they go to more expensive schools.
I favor the first option (which is what we did with our twins, so the one with the big merit scholarship has money left over for grad school or a house downpayment), but most CC commentators tend to pick either option 2 or 3. It really depends on whether the kids (and parents) feel they are each getting equal amounts of money or each getting the best degree for themselves out of this.
Have you done any sort of estate planning? Is it is based on some sort of equal split among all four children?
If one or more children are going to need significantly more parental financial support for college, you might want to decide, discuss, state that this would all get evened out for the ones getting less down the road, with money going towards grad/professional school if needed, or eventually in estate distribution.
Making things clear is as important as making things “fair” when it comes to avoiding resentments down the road.
The problem is that the 3 kids do have another parent contributing and the OP hasn’t said if there are any savings (529 or other accounts) for any of the kids.
I’d probably set a budget for each of the 4 from the current budget and what you can pay equally for all of them, and then if the ex will pay more for his kids, they can add that to their budgets. The stepdaughter may also have her own funds that can be added to her budget (SS money from her mother, grandparents’ money).
I doubt that with 4 kids going to college that there will be a lot of money left over from the budgets if they choose cheaper schools.
I think this is a fascinating dilemma. Depending on some details, I’d probably be inclined to set an equal budget for the 4 kids, and if some go over, that means more loans for them, or under means they can use it for grad school (with the contribution from the birth dad being subtracted out for the triplets, so they don’t get “more”). So let’s say you can afford $30,000 per child, but the triplets are getting $8,000 from birth dad. Then I’d say the triplets really get $22,000 from you two, so they all get $30,000 total to work with (if you then want to re-distribute the extra $8k x 3=$24k among the 4 kids, go for it, or just save it for retirement). But I’d think it makes sense for them to all have the same total budget to work with.
But really there are fascinating questions…How long have you been remarried? If it is recent, that may color things for me. For example, if you remarried when these kids were 16 or 17, the kids may not consider each other siblings. I can imagine a scenario where the dad of the single child had plenty of money and a great income. This child had been raised and told they could go to any private school, $70,000+ no problem. Let’s say the mom of triplets has much smaller income, and is bringing 3 children recently to the party. If the 4 kids are treated equally now, the original single child can no longer go to schools they had been told they could. This seems a recipe for major resentment. Or it could be considered fair that the two parents’ children split the educational pot—say the parents can afford $100,000 per year. Maybe his kid gets $50k and the triplets split $50k, so they each only get $17k each. It’s not clear to me that the single kid should get shortchanged out of what her father had raised her to expect just because he married a woman with triplets right before college!
Of course this could all be opposite. The mom with triplets could have an income five times greater than the husband with the single child. Or perhaps they have been remarried together since these children were 2 years old, and they really all consider each other true siblings and want everything to be equal. Hopefully some discussion about these types of expenses occurred before the marriage, so there is a common understanding about what’s fair.
Another consideration that is not related to the step/remarriage issue but just about having multiple children relates to the level of expensive-ness for their college choices. If one kid worked their tail off and gets into an expensive school, say Dartmouth, and another one was not very motivated and applies to an expensive private school like Bennington, are you equally willing to pay $70,000 for each of those schools? Does their effort play into this at all, or your sense of the “value” of the school? Tough questions!!
Good luck, no matter what 4 in college is a lot to handle! And there are probably so many different solutions to how to deal with this that all have pros/cons and could be viewed as more or less fair. Not easy!!!
The college finance difference between the kids with a living non-custodial parent (NCP) and the kid whose other parent is deceased could go either way.
Those with a living NCP could get an extra parental contribution – but some colleges will consider the living NCP’s income and assets to reduce the amount of financial aid they give (and the living NCP must be willing to fill out the financial aid forms – if unwilling, no financial aid).
Have you or the kids run net price calculators on the colleges on the application list to get an idea of what the net prices may be? (Be sure to include the NCP income and assets at colleges that use that.) If not, there is a very real risk that one or more of them, applying blindly with respect to cost, could get financially shut out (admitted to colleges which are all too expensive).
I think that what’s “fair” depends in part upon how long you and your current H have been married and whether your kids grew up thinking of each other as siblings.
i take it there is no adoption involved.
Another consideration is whether you and your new H have totally combined your finances or keep separate accounts and share expenses.
A third consideration is how much you and your current H each make.
I do NOT think it’s fair to reduce the contribution you give to your own children by including the amount their dad will contribute in their share. If I were your ex-H I would consider this incredibly unfair and might threaten not to give anything if you did this. He has no obligation to help pay for your current H’s child to go to college or to make things “fair” for her.
Oh my goodness, this is mind-bendingly complicated! I hear you, JonRI, in that the ex-husband may see no reason to contribute if the only effect is to reduce the amount that the new husband is contributing to the triplets. What is the point of him contributing then? In essence, the effect of the ex-husband’s contribution in that scenario could be construed to either subsidize the new husband’s child to a small degree, or to subsidize the original wife/new husband’s retirement. Probably nothing that he cares about.
At the same time, if you are looking at fairness to the 4 children, if three of them are getting this big outside donation from original dad, it seems unfair that the 4th child doesn’t have access to this. ESPECIALLY if this 4th child turns out to be the child of the parent with the biggest income, and that dad with the big income is chipping in very generously to the triplets at the expense of his own daughter (or son), so he’s giving up money for his own child to give to the triplets, and then the triplets get bonus money. I also think THAT is weird and not right.
I am fascinated to hear what others think of the fairness here. This could give you a headache!!
Of course i think it is all simpler if:
*. The “new” couple has been married for 15 years or so, such that the financial decisions they made, they made together
*. The mom of triplets makes the bigger income, so she’s fairly chipping in for the burden of her 3 kids vs. his 1 kid.
*. All 4 kids worked fairly comparably hard and are looking at colleges that are comparable in cost.
*. Etc.
So glad i don’t have to figure this out!!
Did you talk about this before you got married? What’s important is for you and your husband be in agreement. I don’t think there is a right answer here.
Thank you everyone for your insightful replies!
Just a little backstory, we have been married since the kids were 8 (so they more or less view each other as siblings). We have agreed that anything that was saved for them for college before this point will be given to the child (ie what was saved with me and my ex goes to the triplets and whatever he saved with his ex goes to his daughter). Anything saved after our marriage will be split four ways equally. All the children were aware of this before applying to colleges (to give them a ballpark of what we could provide out of savings). My husband is the main financial provider of the family, and we will for sure talk over what multiple of you have mentioned about this fairness wise.
We were recently able to liquidize some assets to pay more for the kids colleges (which is why we are in this pickle now). Also my ex H just let me know of the dollar amount he is willing to provide. So now it’s just to figure out if we use a greater amount of the liquidized assets (that technically belonged to my current H) to close the gap between my step kid and my kids. Two of them are very academically gifted and involved in extra curriculars (so expecting some merit aid). Two of them are not, so we anticipate a greater out of pocket cost for them.
Another thing adding to the difficulty is the wants of the children. Step daughter would like to go to an out of state school (when we got married her and H moved across the country to where my kids and I lived). She wants to go back to where her moms/dads family is who she is very close to. My two Ds have stary eyes for private colleges. Obviously both these things come with extra costs. In your opinion, can we justify supporting more financially to support one dream and not the other?
Ahhh so many choices. But you are all so much help.
The families I know with multiple kids gave them equal budgets to work with. Those that wanted out of state or privates had to chase merit to bring it into budget.