@katliamom without a doubt, the choice our kid made was the right one. We had the financial resources to pay for both schools. So…the finances were not an issue. She kept her part of the deal, and graduated with a very good GPA.
As I said in my post further upstream…our money talk was not about paying for college…but we would have had extra sufficient money to get the kid a car…and likely buy a condo (low COL area) for choice number two. Our kid did not factor our offer into her choosing of colleges.
We’ve had “the talk.” Between parents and grandparents, my two kids will be covered for state or state-related schools (we’re in PA). Which means we could cover private school if merit brings costs down to the in-state level.
S19’s reaction to “the talk” was “I don’t want to graduate with debt if that is at all possible.” So we are focusing his college search on in-state schools and privates known to give merit. He is also open to living at home and attending a nearby private college because it would be doable without scholarships.
S21 is hearing all of this and going on all the college visits with us. Not sure if he will feel the same as his brother. But he will be aware of what we can contribute financially.
The grandparents in our case have 529s set up for the kids. So Mr. InfiniteWaves and I are pretty sure the kids are good on that front.
I found it harder to have “the talk” with DH than with DD when she was applying for schools. DH’s mindset regarding college costs was stuck back in the early 90s and he absolutely could not fathom that 1) Colleges really do cost that much, 2) Our EFC really is that high and 3) Kiddos won’t be able to finance this on their own. He and I were in totally different places about what we thought we could and should pay for school. Getting to common ground was a slow and painful process but in the end we got there.
Younger siblings should definitely be kept in the loop regarding college costs and family budget. We didn’t start looking at finances until after DD started dreaming about expensive schools and so we had to have talks along the lines of “if you pick this school it means X, Y, and Z financially.” DS heard all of that and so finances are a very upfront, real part of the process for him. It helps that DD made the financially responsible decision (and is very happy with her choice) so following in her footsteps would be a good thing!
I found it harder to have “the talk” with DH than with DD when she was applying for schools. DH’s mindset regarding college costs was stuck back in the early 90s and he absolutely could not fathom that 1) Colleges really do cost that much, 2) Our EFC really is that high and 3) Kiddos won’t be able to finance this on their own. He and I were in totally different places about what we thought we could and should pay for school. Getting to common ground was a slow and painful process but in the end we got there.
Younger siblings should definitely be kept in the loop regarding college costs and family budget. We didn’t start looking at finances until after DD started dreaming about expensive schools and so we had to have talks along the lines of “if you pick this school it means X, Y, and Z financially.” DS heard all of that and so finances are a very upfront, real part of the process for him. It helps that DD made the financially responsible decision (and is very happy with her choice) so following in her footsteps would be a good thing!
Congrats for having he money talk so carefully thought out for the first kid. I’ll admit, I was much better prepared with #2. Just gave them a dollar amount. I didn’t come up with a list for either, but for the youngest I did find a financial safety I wanted her to look at.
We did offer the new car thing if they’d take the full tuition choices! Ok, it’s a “bottom of the line” no-frills model (think stickers under 20), but still, reliable for the first few years while the kids figure out the rest of their finances. Both took/are taking us up on it. We still came out ahead.
We started the talk in 10th grade (our youngest was in 8th at the time and picked up on it, too) and repeated the talk a lot.
One thing that helped was I put the college costs into a spreadsheet for a net cost per year. (And I put in a more realistic cost of day to day living than some of the college included!) But here is the great part…I then multiplied it out so the four year cost was there. Whereas a $15,000 one year difference didn’t necessarily catch his attention…the $60,000 difference over four years did.
@ucbalumnus Nope - that’s why it was unexpected. They heard me talk about D’s excitement after we got back from our campus visit. (We were still holding out for merit when we made that visit.) And the next day they called to say they had talked it over and had decided to pay the difference. So it wasn’t made in haste.
My point is simply to have “the talk” not only with the kids but also with the grandparents. And we didn’t have that second talk.
OH, heck ya! We had to have the talk and strategize about how we were going to be able to make college a reality for our 3 kids. It started in 8th grade. We don’t make a lot of money so were only able to save up a little more than 1 year of state tuition for each of the 3 kids. We are lucky that we have about 5 universities and college’s within driving distance to us, so room & board isn’t an option unless a scholarship is gotten.
Our plan was they take a year of College Credit Plus in high school(1), get a merit scholarship that would equal one years tuition(2), we pay for a year(3) and they pay for a year with work and loans(4). So far we seem to be on track. Have two in college and one a high school junior.
I’m very debt adverse so getting them educated with as little debt as possible was always the #1 goal. Kid 1 lives at home and commutes. Kid 2 goes away but her scholarships cover her room & board. We’ll see what happens with Kid 3, I have a feeling he’ll be at home commuting too.
Good for you. Its really important that kids know the boundaries of college choice, financial and otherwise. I was very clear with my D about what was acceptable for the list and what the top $$ was and how we would come to pay that COA, depending on how much it was. Unfortunately, other family members pushed for her to accept a school that was not in budget and I had to be the bad guy (over and over again). Some people, and I’m talking adults here, seem to think there’s a money tree somewhere or that money falls out of the sky just when you need it lol.
Like @My3Kiddos I need to get DH to come around. I plan on contributing some college expense. He paid for his college himself! Well, that was about 3/4 of a year at auto-diesel school in 1989. So a bit different scenario than what we’re looking at for our 16 year old daughter!
Fortunately DD is looking at small publics that will run under $15,000 a year total. $10-$12K if she can get a 29-30 ACT. She is a head-in-the-clouds type who has had moments of needing to go “somewhere good” and if it means lots of loans so be it. And she sees her friends going to expensive places so why can’t she? I think we’ve gotten past that and right now she is being reasonable. $15,000 a year still adds up though. Hoping we can get nearer to that $10K mark. She’s taking Financial Lit at school and seeing how interest and loans work. It’s been eye-opening for her.
My husband graduated (in the 1980s) from one of those really expensive small liberal arts school. And when our kids were still in diapers he said that he’d like his kids to have the same experience. Well aware that we were in the position where financial aid offices would laugh at us, I started saving like nuts.
We started having the money conversation with the kids when they were young. And probably I pushed it too much. Because my son decided he didn’t want to go to college and the best way not to go was to become a lousy student. He became a much better student when we told him he could do trade school - which he is now in his last semester of and was really cheap ($6k) - but by that time we’d save a lot of money for him to be able to pick the school that fit his needs best without TOO many money worries. And we’d been having the talk with my daughter already that $70k a year NYU was out of reach while saving for her (she’s a year behind him).
My daughter thinks she has been very fortunate - she understood back in middle school how college would be funded for her, she knew she had to figure out what sort of schools fit her, and she started researching them as a Freshman. She has friends who just started looking at the start of their Senior year - and don’t understand the grades/test scores/extracurriculars and just plain luck it takes to get into a high end school (and then, the atmosphere when you are there isn’t for everyone) - much less the money.
@My3Kiddos My ex is a bear about it too - he only has to pay 15% and I managed to get my kids ALL 3 to places where net cost to us (after GSLs and Merit Aid from GPAs/ACTs) was $14k or LESS per year including room and board – he somehow thinks that is expensive gah
@ucbalumnus no, unfortunately no one was handing over the cash, just insisting ad nauseam that D “deserved” to go to the highly regarded womens college regardless of the price. In the end, it was obviously about the prestige for them. Said school was nearly 4x COA of Skidmore, where she enrolled, would have required parent plus loans (which D already knew was off the table) and I don’t believe it was a great fit anyways. Believe it or not, as wonderful as D is doing, the subject occasionally comes back up about what if…