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with her own kids
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Yikes…I was at least hoping this is an only child!
Is the other child(ren) younger? Will she take on similar debt for that/those one(s)?
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Acquaintances should of course let her crash and burn her life. A friend would say something in a nice, gentle way (as you did) and hope for the best.
“OP you did the right thing.”
“Friends should not remain silent when one party wants to do something that could ruin their lives.”
I agree strongly with both these posts. Somewhere between $120,000 and $150,000 in debt is ruinous. As a friend you should not push the point, but for someone to take on this much debt is going to be a disaster. I don’t think that a true friend lets a friend jump off a cliff without saying something. One problem is how long it will take to pay it off, but there are three other possibly more serious problems.
The worst outcome would be for your friend to take on most of this debt, and then find herself unable to borrow enough for her daughter to be able to finish university. I have met at least one person and heard about other who had to drop out of university part way through because they couldn’t find any way to borrow enough money to finish. I even heard of one person who ran into a problem that they couldn’t find the last little bit of money to give their former university to pay off their debt to the school, and the school therefore wouldn’t give them a transcript of what they had already studied. Because of this they couldn’t get credit to transfer to an inexpensive state school (and NOT the state flagship, which they could have afforded for 4 years if they had started there in the first place).
Also, if you graduate with $120,000 or more in debt, graduate school is pretty much out of the question. This is marginally OK for a computer science major because there are jobs that are available to graduates with a B.Sc on computer science. This can be a big problem for other majors.
Finally, if there are more kids then your friend might find herself in the situation that she has spent so much to send the first kid to an expensive university that the others don’t get to go at all. This will not make anyone happy.
“I definitely would not recommend she come to CC for ideas. I’ve seen way to many threads where people ask a similar question and many of the responses are rude, snarky and judgmental.”
But if someone wants to take on this much debt, probably having strangers be rude, snarky, and judgmental is appropriate. Friends don’t get to be rude, snarky, and judgmental, and in some cases someone has to do it! If not strangers, then who?
Pheebers, I would have done as you did.
I like the idea of sending her a note saying you spoke up because you care, and invite her to post on CC. It may take a while but if you were friends, not merely acquaintances, I think she will come around.
A little over a year ago I sat with a friend and listened to her talk about taking $30k/year loans for her daughter to attend a private school. The daughter wants to be a doctor, so there will be med school loans. The parents can’t really afford that kind of money for one child, and they have a couple more coming down the pike.
I told her that my eldest had similar choices but we chose one of the less expensive options and I explained why. I pointed her to where she and her husband could find more information and said I’d be available to answer any question they had. During the next few weeks we talked a lot. They ended up choosing a school they could afford. I don’t think they’re taking any loans at all and the daughter loves it. Maybe they were receptive because I framed the discussions around choices we had and explained why we made the ones we did. It’s much easier to hear someone else say they chose option B because they couldn’t afford option A. If OP’s friend does contact her, it might help to take a different approach.
@Pheebers, friends can sometimes really surprise you when it comes to the subject of money. I have (or, had?) a friend who is 43 years old and has 3 degrees (economics and accounting). Her student loan balance is about $100K. She works at a nonprofit org and it will take forever to pay off those loans in full. Meanwhile, her monthly discretionary spending is very limited – with $500 a month in loan payments, she can rarely take a vacation, and her car sat idle for several months in the driveway when she couldn’t afford new brakes. She seemed to delight in telling me that big loans were in our future, too, as my kid will be graduating HS this year. She emailed me a couple of weeks ago and asked about my kid’s college decision, and asked whether we received decent FA. I let her know about my kid’s chosen school… and that between scholarship money and FA, my kid will graduate debt-free… and how blessed and thankful we are for that. I have not heard one peep from her since. Not even “Congratulations”. People are funny sometimes. 8-|
OP, if you are close enough to be asked for $10k or more you are close enough to comment on the wisdom of such a move. You did your duty to your friend as you saw it (and probably responded as expected) and now she needs to honor that by accepting your answer. (If a No answer was not acceptable then it more or less amounted to a demand for money, which just isn’t something friends do.) It will eventually work out if for no other reason than she probably heard this or something similar from other people she asked as well.
OP, you were kind. If you have apologized, let it rest.
Your friend would love to be able to give her child what she wants. She probably wished she had saved. Or taken a different job, Or known more about FA before telling her daughter that if she worked hard in school, it’d be her ticket to wherever she wanted to go. Or any number of things. But right now, she’s where she is and it’s between a rock and a hard place.
It’s also possible that as a single mom, she’s felt her parenting was under a lot of scrutiny and that having her child attend this school is some kind of validation that she “did it right”. To not be able to do that for herself or her child probably really stings. She may have seen her child’s admission to this school as being a “way out” for her and may now be feeling terrible that her choices and their current situation have effectively blocked that exit.
If you have kids of around the same age and do not her financial limitations, she’s probably jealous. Especially if in the end, your children end up at schools that she feels are “better” than the one her daughter will attend.
While you said what you did out of care, it may have registered with her as something else. You were the voice that confirmed her worst fears. There are two parts of every conversation – the mouth and the ears ,each connected to a different brain – and what happens between them can be surprising.
I’d give her a little time and space and be careful when you re-connect to say nothing else about it unless she brings it up. Be supportive of whatever choice her daughter ends up making.
A friend would understand you well enough to know your heart and not get upset over something like that for long. Anyone who really gets that bent out of shape for a friend giving advice, was never really a friend to begin with.
50-60k is one thing 120-150k that is something altogether different.
Unless in med school.