typiCAmom,
"someone dear to you passes away and you now need to take care of this child who you love dearly, as much as your own. However, your income is just enough to cover your family needs, retirement, college for your kids, etc. So you “inherit” $100K on top of monthly stipend that covers the child’s food, clothes, toys, medical - i.e., essentials. How do you spend that 100K? "
I do not see that this example is comparable to the decisions you are making about your OWN money and your OWN kids. Would it be up to a kid when the kid is an adult, to decide about inherited $100k? You can spend freely your own money on somebody else, if it is your choice. But you cannot spend freely $100k that is not yours, and that is the way I see it, while others may have a different opinion.
@MiamiDAP, ok, let’s level the field. Let’s say you had a surprise baby and baby’s godparents give you that 100K. The bottom line is there are finite number of funds and different people prioritize differently, and I may actually learn something by hearing their reasoning for choosing some things over others.
Btw, if it was your own child, would you rather spend the money to enhance his/her childhood and young adulthood, or let it sit in a trust fund so that the child could use the money as an adult for house down payment, etc?
The in-state public options (including the start-at-CC options) can vary in both cost and quality. People living in California are more likely to find CSU, UC, CC->CSU, and CC->UC options affordable and desirable than people living in Pennsylvania will find their in-state public options, for example.
I was in your position, with good options but full pay. Your DD has obviously done very well in HS, so I know how hard it would be to turn down her choices. Good luck making a decision!
To the extent possible, I feel it is my duty and privilege to pay for my children’s education. My parents did so and I’m forever grateful to them for that. And for instilling in me their values.
@aps62797 I agree. What utterly amazes me is watching families drop a half million (or more) on a home, purchase $40-$50,000, take expensive vacations and then tell their child (who has worked so hard to get into their dream school) that “since we don’t want any loans, you can’t go to that school.” I understand “to each his own” but I can not fathom having my child work so hard, achieve a goal and then say “oh well.”
I actually don’t think it is my duty to pay for my children education. I think it is my gift to them and my moral obligation. My gift to them can take different forms from funding education to help with down payment. I would prefer to do the latest. But I can’t do both.
I see a lot of upset parents on this forum…any thoughts on the students’ side?
Here’s mine:
My mom (and her husband) always told me that they wouldn’t be able to pay for my school. They didn’t have the money or degrees themselves and they knew it would be a challenge to get me to college. My mom has been plotting and pushing me to excel since I was young because she understood how important it would be for me to get an education. She was homeless when she graduated HS, and didn’t have the resources then. She went to night school a few years ago.
I think it’s very reasonable for parents to set goals…if your kid is wasting money and blowing it on booze, tell him/her to get a freaking job. I’ve worked hard in HS, I’ve been saving every penny I earned since 5th grade (when I first started babysitting for my neighbors) and spending sparingly. I was #1 in my class, had good grades and test scores, EC’s. I pulled two all-nighters a week during Junior and Senior Year (Sundays and Thursdays) and got about 4-6 hrs. the other nights. I also attended summer school and volunteered 160+ hrs.
The point is, I did all that because I knew we didn’t have any money. Now, with a full-tuition scholarship and some other decent options, I will pretty much be able to pay on my own. My mom still plans to help, and she managed to save $10K over the past 18 yrs. She put it all aside for me because she believed in me. My half-brothers…meh. One has been arrested a couple times and he is planning on maybe trade school. The other is only 12, but I plan on helping him get to college too, someday. It’s a family effort. The youngest is like me, and I think he will get scholarships, too.
So, I think parents need to be straight with their kids early. Force them to work hard in school and save their money. It feels good knowing that I have some degree of financial independence. I’ve already talked to a faculty member on campus about working for her when I start school. Having financial independence can be good for kids’ self-esteem. Set goals early, tell your kids what they (and you) can and cannot afford.
I knew if I had a shot at going to college (with relatively little debt) that it would be on me.
“Force them to work hard in school and save their money” - not possible. What possible is to tell a 5 y o kid (when they still listen and admire their parents, because it is pretty much lost by the age of 10) to do her very first homework assignment and all after and not allow the kid to do anything before this 5 min. assignment is done with the best effort. This will turn into the habit and may not need to be reinforced later. Saving pennies for college may be a futile attempt to make a significant dent in tuition. Earning a full tuition Merit award needs to start at 5, not in HS, HS is way too late for this task as certain habits are formed and these habits may be very hard to overcome not only in HS but also at college. k - 12 does not require much more as diligent work to achieve the high caliber academic stand, no genius is required, I agree with that!
@ucbalumnus, yes, sorry, I haven’t thought that outside of CA public college-level education is pretty expensive. This doesn’t negate the basic question - how do you prioritize
ok, what about attaching strings beyond the GPA, i.e. is it ok for parents to say “we are willing to pay/borrow extra 20K a year for a private college if you choose a marketable degree that will help you find a better job after college. So we won’t pay extra for a major in art/music/medieval literature/social work - if you want, you can study those at a public in-state college”? Is it fair for a parent to do that? I assume most will say it is not. But don’t we as parents justify to ourselves paying for summer camps for example - i.e., willing to pay more for a sports camp that will keep the child active and maybe improve in sports vs. local recreation center camps where kids spend most of the day doing stuff they could be doing at home? Again, just trying to get everyone’s perspectives/opinions
@typiCAmom , I think there’s a huge range of what works for families in terms of details. I think the devil lies in the expectations.
As long as the parents are clear with their expectations, and the kids understand what the expectations are and then can choose whether or not to agree to the expectations, I think that’s what’s really important.
We don’t believe in “fairness”. From our perspective as a family, life is inherently unfair, and wailing over stuff being fair or not is a waste of time. I shoot for equitable and reasonable as a parent.
@MotherOfDragons, love your point about “fairness”. Still working on instilling that for our daughter. We are at a point when she stopped comparing herself to other kids at school, etc (when she complained it’s not fair that others got to do stuff we wren’t doing as a family - i.e. going skiing, I pointed out “it’s not fair” that some people are born without arms and can’t ski at all). But she still won’t accept being treated differently than her 4-year old brother, and every time he gets a pass for something that is truly beyond his age, she cries “it’s not fair”. Speaking of colleges, we ended up putting exactly the same amount of money into his 529 at the same age of 3. Maybe I was just lazy and didn’t want to hear “it’s not fair” down the line from either one of them when it came for paying for colleges.
There is no such thing as fair and unfair…but this realization is the sign of maturity.
My answer for “not fair” statement has always been “be thankful for being born and being born healthy”. My kids tend to agree with this. It has been a great stopper for the “unfairness” discussion. Strongly recommend! And I do not believe in any kind of “moral obligation”, I believe that I have zero of it. I only follow my desires and my obligation to live my own life to fully enjoy it. Otherwise, why I am given a life when many others did not have the same chance?
I worked in La Jolla on the Torrey Pines Mesa for six years, about a mile from UCSD. It is very overcast there most mornings, with the sun breaking out midday. And it’s not super-warm either. It’s one of the most sterile campuses I’ve ever visited, albeit in a beautiful location.
It does seem that you have long known that you had to do well in school to get the best scholarships to be able to go to college.
That is a lot different from the stories we sometimes see on these forums where the parents have been building up the kid’s expectations throughout high school with sayings like “do well in school and you can go to HYPSM” or some such, only to tear it all down in April of 12th grade with “nice that you got into HYPSM, but it is too expensive, so you need go to [low cost school]”.
I agree, it’s not fair to tell a kid to get into (or that they should aim for) HYP+ and then say “well, we’re not going to pay for it” - that’s why I think parents have to be up-front as soon as possible
And it’s weird to me that there are actually ppl who might have been told “do well in school and you can go to HYP+”
Everyone I’ve ever talked to was like: “do well in school and you might get to go to college someday, but if you don’t work hard enough to earn scholarships, just join the military instead”
And for us regular students, just having parents willing to pay for any school at all is a blessing.
