<p>We gave our D the newest of our 3 used cars and sent it to LA for her use. We also did NOT feel it was safe for her to have an older car that might break down in dangerous neighborhoods. We are less likely to drive in dangerous neighborhoods and at the odd hours students and young adults drive. We are also much less likely to drive from LA to SF or from LA across the country than D. We have no regrets that the cars that she and S drive have only 25K miles on them instead of mine with over 100K and H’s with nearly 130K. We can sleep at night, not fearing that their cars will break down and endanger them.</p>
<p>We are able to take our car in for servicing fairly often, to keep the cars running pretty well.</p>
<p>^ HI, my son also has the newest car. Being up in Maine we felt it was very important he had reliable transportation. But he will have to drive that car until it drops or he can afford to buy one on his own.</p>
When a bank lends, it looks at someone’s ability to pay monthly P&I. It also looks at the event if someone is not able to pay - like death or foreclosure. If the 90 year old has enough cashflow to make payments then it covers the first point. In the event if the 90 year old should die and his estate is not able to pay back the bank, then the bank would look to sell the property to recoup the mortgage. As long as there is enough equity then the bank would never lose money and that’s all they worry about. Most people prepay their mortgage because of refinancing, moving, trading up…so banks do not expect mortgagee to keep their mortgages to full term.</p>
<p>Seems overly rigid to say “no loans at all” but different families make different decisions, and you and H have to work that out. Hopefully you will be able to communicate clearly to your kid what you can afford to pay before the acceptances roll in.</p>
<p>For years we deliberately paid down our mortgage to free up home equity capacity specifically for college and are using that plus some current income. Our kid is taking out federal loans but the agreement is that we’ll pay them off for her.</p>
<p>That way she gets the same gift that we received: a college education paid for without debt. Even though the college financing and cost system is different these days we still want to give our kid the same kind of help that we both got when we were kids.</p>
<p>The kid kicks in from her earnings, too, and she got significant merit aid fomr the LAC she attends.</p>
<p>Before it came to choosing the schools we’d agreed and told the kid what we could afford: the net annual cost had to start with a “2”. That ended up excluding some schools, including her dream school.</p>
<p>Every family makes its own decisions about what it can afford and whether to take out loans. </p>
<p>What we did was follow the advice from our state’s student loan organization: they told us that there were 3 sources of money from parents for a child’s education:
1- past earnings (what one has saved)
2- current earnings (what we can send the schools from our paychecks)
3- future earnings (loans that we pay off in the future)</p>
<p>The way I figured it, that totaled all our money :-)</p>
<p>We took out a loan for our kids’ education, and don’t regret it at all. It made more financial sense than liquidating some of our assets. I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution to funding college. Each family decides how much to spend and where the money is to come from based on their personal needs and priorities. People who think others are wrong to do things differently from the way they do things have always puzzled me.</p>
<p>We gve S our oldest car, a 1992 BMW, which as he said was nearly as old as he was. He drove it across the country and did fairly well with it until about Jan/Feb, when he rear-ended another car (after he had been rear-ended in a separate incident). He then decided it was not worth repairing and was planning on getting a new vehicle and had it all picked out. To his surprise, his aunt gifted him with a 2002 2-door sedan with only 25K miles on it, so that is now what he is driving.</p>
<p>We would be very uncomfortable if we felt our D had an unreliable vehicle in LA. Her field (cinema) has late & early hours, sometimes to sketchy parts of town. We are happy that her vehicle has been well-maintained and should be safe. It only has 25K miles on it as well and is a 2006.</p>
<p>I drive a 2000 van and H drives a 1998 sedan. Both are well-maintained but require more time and attenton than the two vehicles the kids drive.</p>
<p>MommaJ–I’ve put up hard numbers but the school DD is attending is a LAC and has a COA of $35,000. She got $18,000 off the top, automatic merit aid. She got $4000 for her sport. She got $1000 for a church scholarship from the school. She gets $2500 if her brother also attends, which is very likely. That leaves her at $9500. She is up for a full tuition scholarship which means her sport, church and sibling discount will pay for her room/board/books, etc. The one outside scholarship is for $4000/year for 4 years, the other is also for $4000/year for 4 years. She is the only person in our school that is qualified for the first scholarship based on her sport/activities so I’m pretty sure she will get that one. The second one someone from our high school has won for the past 5 years, pretty confident she has a good shot at that one as well but that one isn’t as much of a given because it is for more schools then just our school. She would be the only one at our school that would qualify for that scholarship too. She won’t need any loans no matter what happens with these. If she doesn’t get the other competitive scholarships at the $9500 that is left, she will have about $3000 of her own money, we will cover the rest.</p>
<p>DS, unless he gets into his lottery school and they give him a lot of money, doubtful, he will attend the same school as DD. He got the same merit award, swap out the $4000 for music instead of a sports scholarship, same church and sibling award. He is also up for the full tuition scholarship, which is awarded across several disciplines. Since his major is a small major at pretty much every school, he has a very good chance of getting that award. He is up for full tuition scholarships at 5 of the schools he applied to and a full ride at one school. Again, given the size of his major, odds are good that he will get one of these. If so, the number crunch out to be about the same. </p>
<p>For the 19 schools they applied to, 3 of the schools have a Net Price out of our reach. The rest come in between this $9000 award and $12,000, without any competitive scholarships taken into consideration. Two of those schools came down to that level assuming that the kids would be a part of the honors program and offered extra funds for those. DS would take part in the honors program for sure, DD was a maybe because of her sport so we didn’t factor those dollars into her final numbers, we did for DS.</p>
<p>Because DD will be able to attend school so cheaply, she will take a car with her–she needs one for her sport practice anyway but was going to have to wait to see if she couldn’t get the costs in line.</p>
<p>Steve- while I think you’ve done a great job finding ways to finance your kids’ college educations, to say that that it’s “not hard at all” to come up with $35,000 + room and board may come off to the many families struggling to find a way to pay for college as a bit insulting. Most families don’t get sibling discounts or sports awards and the church and community scholarships (at least where I live) go to those with high need first, meaning that if you’re a middle-class family your chance of getting them is nil.</p>
<p>Sue22–well, in our area it is not hard. Most of the kids’ friends are coming out at about the same as our kids. Some kids got more merit money then our kids, offsetting the athletic award, which, if you noticed, is pretty small. The music award is simply for participation, no audition required. Other funds are available for auditions, not sure if DS is going to audition or not so I didn’t include those. DD is not eligible for the music ones because she got an athletic one. They have other awards for kids participating in certain majors as well. It’s not just sports. </p>
<p>Yes, the community is very generous, we are lucky. The church award is from the college, not our church. The kids needed to supply a letter from our priest saying they were involved in our parish, which they are. It wasn’t hard. The community scholarships DD is up for are not need based, which is nice. Like I said, after 4 kids doing this and about 40 schools, they have all pretty much come out the same with the exception of a few. Why we can find these schools and you cannot, I can’t say but we did, as did most people we know.</p>
<p>I may be very wrong, but the kind of merit awards your kids received/will receive suggest that they are attending schools where they are in the tippy top of the class credential-wise. Not every parent wants to send their kid to a school where most of the students have lesser qualifications. In addition, the COA you cite is quite low compared to most LAC’s, which suggests that a great number of schools had to simply be taken off your kids’ radar. Not every parent is willing to limit their kid’s choices that much. I’m sure both my kids could have brought their college costs down considerably–by attending the local crappy cc and then transferring to one of the mediocre state directionals or the gargantuan state flagship, but they would have been poor choices for them for a number of reasons. There are many considerations that go into college selection. I’m glad an easy peasy, low-cost, never-borrow experience worked for you and your kids, but it can’t be generalized.</p>
<p>Well, the schools they applied to ranged in cost from $18,000-$59,000 so no, none were taken of the list simply because of list price. The more expensive ones just gave higher awards. The net cost was about the same no matter the starting costs–with the exception of most of the state schools, the were most of the ones that came off the list because they were outside of the target price…</p>
<p>Yes, our kids are at the higher end of the applicant pool by design. It’s a strategic move for both of them-however, DD will study under one of the world’s leading experts in several of her major classes and DS it doesn’t matter where he goes to school as much. His lottery school is actually his worst choice for his intended career? We choose not to get caught up in the false assumption that USNWR actually matters when picking schools. This school is on that list and is actually fairly highly ranked…why would we pay more just for a name on a sweatshirt?</p>
<p>Who said anything about USNWR or names on sweatshirts? If you don’t believe that the quality of education varies among schools, if you don’t believe it’s worthwhile to be challenged by studying alongside equally qualified students, that’s fine. We don’t all share those beliefs. Yes, you found a way to pay very little for your kids’ educations, yes, you are quite smug and self-satisfied about the whole thing, but that doesn’t mean your approach is the only sensible one, and it doesn’t mean those who follow different paths are prestige chasers or fools.</p>
<p>It’s wonderful that your kids had the skills and your community has the resources, making those scholarships available. Our high school had a handful of scholarships, primarily for football players, but none of them were more than $500. Our school’s band scholarship is $500 and they split it among all the seniors who apply for it. This year, three applied. Our local Rotary Club has scholarships that go to seniors from our school, but they have to live in one city. Three cities feed our high school and we don’t live in the one that had the scholarships available. Even so, that scholarship was $500 (one time only). We did have a kid who earned a Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship - but he got a full ride for four years. Two kids won scholarships from the Marines for $1000 each total. That’s the extent of the community scholarships around here. Other than the kid who received the caddy scholarship, only one other student received a full ride. She chose a directional public because they offered a full ride. It’s a great teaching school and she’s going into education, so that was great for her. None of the kids in the top 10 got full rides because they went to Michigan or schools without merit aid. </p>
<p>I’d love to help my son find a school where he could get a free ride but still be academically challenged. Finding that balance can be pretty tough. He knows he wants to be in a larger school so most of the privates in Michigan are out. They are all pretty small. He could get a full ride to any of the directionals, but wouldn’t be challenged there. I went to a directional on a full tuition scholarship and it was very, very good in my field, but my basic studies classes were a joke. They were less challenging than high school. He could probably get a full ride at 'Bama but he’s shying away from the south. He has said he assumes he’ll just end up at Michigan. It isn’t necessarily that he wants to end up at Michigan, he just thinks he will. He won’t get a full ride there!</p>
<p>If I remember right, the OP’s son is planning to major in computer science. That is likely to land him a job that will certainly position him to pay back Stafford loans. Why not have him take out at least that amount in loans if he is that set on this college?</p>
<p>Int … he is planning to take out student loans as well as , hopefully, work study. However, due to his refusal to get a job or apply for outside scholarships still make him unable to make up the difference. The difference is not a huge amount. It was reasonable for him to earn. But, he has refused to get a job. I will not pay anything at all toward his schooling if he takes out loans above and beyond regular student loans. You may disagree with that, but I consider that perfectly reasonable. Even a computer science major cannot expect to come out of college and pay off $50,000 in student loans. And what if he does not graduate? A child who is already 18 yrs old and has refused to get a job, and has no EC, and skates by in his classes as it is, probably will not graduate. It would be poor decision making for him to load on $10,000+ in student loans his first year, when he clearly has other options. </p>
<p>And my husband has a degree in computer science and I have one in economics. And we are in our 40’s and still paying off our student loans. So it is not as easy as you might think to just land a lucrative job and pay off tons of loans when you graduate.</p>
<p>So…you have not responded to the earlier suggestion that you tell him NOW that he must have a job by May 1 for the summer, and work during the school year next year in order for you to allow him to send his acceptance to Cornell on May 1. That should help him make up at least some of the difference you are talking about, and give him some skin in the game. He can “refuse” to get a job, and you can “refuse” to let him send in his acceptance. But it is only fair to make the options clear to him and allow him a couple of months here to look for a job, as the job market is tight for teens right now (especially ones on the autism spectrum).</p>
<p>SteveMA, most of the kids we know got very little in merit money toward their college. SOME did get quite a bit, but the COA was higher than you cite, even AFTER The significant merit awards. For example, USC COA is now about $60K/year. A good merit award is a presidential 50% tuition for 4 years, which brings the tuition down from $44K to 22K/year. That still leaves the remaining expenses, including $12.5K/year room & board and another $3.5K for transportation, books, and other expenses. Many do not get this merit award and there are few other merit awards that are awarded (including a very few for full tuition, some for 1/4 tuition, and others for varying amounts). It is amazing that your kids and their/your friends kids have been able to find such wonderful merit awards so that they can attend college so inexpensively. From talking extensively with many, many parents, I believe the experiences you describe at getting so many offers to choose among that nearly totally fund your children’s college educations is quite unusual. I only know three kids who got a full tuition scholarship out of the dozens and dozens of kids I know who attended college over the past few years and none for LACs.</p>
<p>OP- I can’t help but notice that you use the word “refuse” a lot. It’s in the title of this thread (which has gotten a lot of attention; your son refuses to get a job, etc.)</p>
<p>Just a tip I have learned from many years of facilitating and being taught by experts in conflict/negotiation and other related corporate topics-- you get much better results when you stop “refusing” and stop using inflammatory language like that. You will likely get much better results with your husband when you don’t draw the lines quite so sharply; more often than not, you can reduce or eliminate the conflict with your son as well.</p>
<p>There are many ways to build consensus, get the three of you on the same page re: college funding and scholarships, self sufficiency, etc. But “refusing” is not one of them. It is a quick and abrupt way of having everyone carve out their own territory on an issue and then refuse to budge or even listen to an alternative point of view.</p>
<p>Lots of the conflicts I had with my teenage children evaporated when I started using the techniques I was being taught at work with them (harder to do it at home than in the office, I grant you that!) I never refused anything-- that doesn’t mean I agree to everything, and it certainly doesn’t mean I didn’t reserve the parental right to say no which I did very often. But I learned to create an environment where everyone got to bring their views and positions to the table, and then craft a solution where everyone felt like a winner on at least one point that was important to them. Many times the kids won on a purely symbolic basis (which cost me nothing) but was REALLY meaningful to them.</p>
<p>So just a thought- before you all end up locked in the bathroom refusing to communicate and having your son decide that no college is worth the constant bickering… dial it down a notch or two. Stop refusing. Stop allowing him to refuse. Nothing is off the table; you are his parents; you want what is best for him without bankrupting the family or preventing his sibs from also attaining their dreams, and the dialogue going forward is going to focus on how to make that happen.</p>
<p>You may be shocked that he stops refusing once you stop.</p>
My experience has been similar but I believe that is because of the schools these families are considering … they are willing to “drop down” some for a less expensive outcome but not a lot … and therefor are not getting to the financial sweet spot. There are schools to which my kids and our friends kids could have received big awards but for the most part we did not consider these schools … which is our financial loss. In addition, for the right focused motivated student being a big fish in a small pond can be an excellent experience … different then being with tons of peers … but with different pros and cons.</p>