<p>We survive 95k(gross income) a year and I live in a high COLA area. When my kids were younger I opened 529 accounts for each of them. Over the many years I was able to save 60k for them. If I had not planned in advance, there is no way I could afford to give my kids a college education. I have two in college and I have an efc of 11k for each of them. </p>
<p>A 95k salary means the majority of your money is spent on essential items. </p>
<p>CC posters always quote the median household income in the US as 50k. The median household income figure is skewed downward because there are many one person households included in the calculation. Since the expected family contribution is for a family and not an individual we should not use the the 50k figure. According to the government real median family income for 2012 was $64,053 with married-couple households having the highest median family income of $75,694 (See page 7).</p>
<p>The difference is that most people a generation ago just went with what they felt they could afford and didn’t agonize over things. A small percentage went to privates, then and now. Most kids then and now still don’t go across country to go to college. The newer diversity, athletic tips, income related initiatives are great but probably have added more anxiety to the process.</p>
<p>And yet those single parents who are raising kids on one income are still expected to force absent NCPs to do the NCP Profile form and pay for college for their kids whether they are part of their lives (or their own finances) or not…</p>
<p>The students don’t get to choose their circumstances, so it is not all about their choices.</p>
<p>They don’t choose parents income. They don’t choose parents savings. They don’t choose the number of siblings. They don’t choose whether their parents marry or divorce.</p>
<p>It is not all about choices when the student doesn’t get to make the choices.</p>
<p>True. And really, things do happen in life that are not choices at every income level. I don’t quite understand this choices thing. I didn’t choose twins but happily I got them.</p>
<p>Why do these threads always turn into whether it’s harder to be lower income than middle/upper? This thread is about how college costs are daunting, even for the "comfortable’. So how can anyone argue against that? It seems quite obvious that the cost of college has risen dramatically, and for those who have to pay the full cost (but aren’t quite wealthy), of course it is painful. I have no idea why anyone can possibly argue against that.</p>
<p>And I don’t understand this whole “you should have known, you should have planned better, you should have had fewer kids…” blame festival a few people are having.</p>
<p>Seriously? In 1989 I should have been basing my family planning on the possibility that future college costs would explode in the next couple of decades?</p>
<p>We have three kids, have been full pay (except for two years of a tiny amount of work study when two of our kids overlapped), and are not complaining.</p>
<p>I re-read this entire thread, and don’t see anyone complaining about financial aid for low income kids. I see people giving examples of how, despite their comfortable income, it is difficult to pay $50,000 a year for college. </p>
<p>And I also see some tuition shaming from the “You-Shoulda-Known-You-Shoulda-Planned-You-Shouldn’t-Feel-That-Way” posters.</p>
<p>I got married in 1986. We put away savings for the future from the very beginning, and yes, put away money for college from the moment our kids were born in 1992. We also never “lived up to our income” - we essentially lived (and still live) off one income and bank the other. Those were choices. No, we had no idea what college costs would be like, but it didn’t matter. We never would have chosen to have lived the lifestyle afforded by both incomes in order to keep up with the Joneses.</p>
<p>I think it would be difficult for many people to pay $50,000 for college or for a car or for a vacation…
I guess we’re lucky there are alternatives to those high prices!</p>
<p>PG, that’s exactly the point. You also (presumably) could have chosen to have more kids, but you didn’t–and if you had, you would have known you’d be facing greater financial pressure when college came around. It’s the whining about “you try living in NYC or SF with four kids and put them through private K-12 schools” that rings hollow. ALL the modest-income young people I know are worried about future educational costs even for their now-preschool-age kids. They are planning their families around only having one at a time in daycare, or in college. There is just a different reality on CC than in a lot of the rest of the world.</p>
<p>These statements from earlier in the thread speak to the resentment some people have about others “getting to” pay less for the same colleges.</p>
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<p>I have heard the same thing in real life, too. I have been at college-related meetings at our very diverse public high school in which “comfortable” parents complain about how divorced people have it better because only one of them has to fill out the FAFSA. I have seen eye-rolling from others as one of the handful of poor parents in the auditorium bravely asks what he and his wife should do if they have almost no income.</p>
<p>Look, we all get that parents at EVERY income range have sticker shock when they see what college costs now. It IS out of control. And it doesn’t seem right that there is a whole range of great colleges that are unaffordable for all but the poor, the rich, and the very meritorious. But let’s be honest–the reason a lot of people are complaining is that they do not think their state universities are good enough for their kids. College gets a lot more affordable when the top price one is willing to pay is the cost of the in-state flagship (or, in tougher circumstances, CC first and then the flagship). I make a lot less than most of my friends but because our threshold has always been “state school or cheaper,” we have been able to strategically choose from a range that works for us, even with only modest college savings. A whole lot of great colleges are off the list because they are too expensive, but a whole lot are also viable options due to merit or relative affordability.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, we, too, have lived below our means, saved, established retirement funds back in the 80’s (long before we had children), waited 7 years after we married to start having kids (because we couldn’t afford them before then), and have had 529 accounts for all three for years.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that I can’t also feel that college costs are ridiculously high. Not complaining, just discussing feelings.</p>
Some flagships are not particularly inexpensive and some kids can do better financially at other schools, and in some states (like mine), the flagship prefers out-of-state students so heavily that even tippy-top in-state kids aren’t a sure bet to be admitted and can sometimes do better financially elsewhere. Doing research, asking questions and sometimes whining is a good way of finding out what is best for a particular family and it is often not the same thing for family X as for family Y. As I always say, I teach literacy as a volunteer and I can say that among the truly low income minority boys who meet certain benchmarks that aren’t particularly high, they can do very well in unexpected places. When they have someone to help them dig around, there is sometimes more help available than one might think.</p>
My husband didn’t choose to not learn how to read and our kids certainly didn’t choose to have a dad who couldn’t, but thanks to his mother and the educational system he can’t so for much of our marriage he made almost nothing. HIs mother had a 4th grade education and cleaned houses until she died of cancer. But my husband, like a lot of parents, understood about working as hard as you can to do better.</p>
<p>“It’s the whining about “you try living in NYC or SF with four kids and put them through private K-12 schools” that rings hollow. ALL the modest-income young people I know are worried about future educational costs even for their now-preschool-age kids. They are planning their families around only having one at a time in daycare, or in college. There is just a different reality on CC than in a lot of the rest of the world.”</p>
<p>I agree. My roots are in a working class background and I get exactly what you mean. </p>
<p>"These statements from earlier in the thread speak to the resentment some people have about others “getting to” pay less for the same colleges.</p>
<p>Quote:
It would be nice if we lived in a world where if your kid worked hard enough to be admitted to a college, she could go there for the same price as everybody else."</p>
<p>Right. And, that, to me, is like complaining that you wish you had the same parking place as the disabled person. If it’s so great to be poor, nothing prevents you from giving your money away just so you can get the benefit of financial aid. </p>
<p>Anyway, elite colleges are a luxury good. There is no “right” for anyone to go to them and not have some financial pain.</p>
<p>Pizza, we did the same thing also. Lived off one income, banked the other. I have to say I never felt deprived in any way. We knew we lived a more frugal lifestyle than some of our close couple friends, but it was rare that we felt the urge to splurge. </p>
<p>While we all betch about the cost of college, I’ve never been in a conversation where our social group has complained about being full pay. More often we’re complaining about how darn hard it is to get into UofM and our kids spread out all over the country (including some staying in-state at UofM) and those that have graduated seem to be thriving. </p>
<p>I also whole-heartedly agree that a private school college education is a luxury and not a right or even a priviledge in the sense that it needs to be available to everyone.</p>
<p>I think costs are absolutely out of control and it’s not surprising that families are gobsmacked when they find out just what it costs. Even families, like mine, that projected college costs back in the 80s for kids that weren’t even born yet missed the mark and back then those projections were mind-blowing. Reality surpassed that number by tens of thousands of dollars. I think it is utterly unacceptable that as a society we have “allowed” this to occur and I believe the concept of “merit” needs to be re-worked and be need-based not a discount to attract high stat kids even though I’ve benefited from that concept. The concept has only contributed to a myriad of issues.</p>
<p>Well you know what? I think people can whine about whatever they want. Most of us do it from time to time. I frequently whine about all sorts of things. It takes a very special person to be so above all that. Heck, money aside, I found the college application process daunting (not as daunting as the high school process which almost put me in the nuthouse three times) and I fully intend to whine about the next college application process, although not for financial reasons.</p>
<p>Legislators need to be lobbied because one of the reasons costs have gone up is because the state barely subsidizes tuition now days.
I wonder if they didn’t give some companies such huge tax write offs if they wouldn’t be able to bring costs down a bit.</p>