We have employer health insurance through me, so if anything happens to my job that will leave us in a bad position. Fortunately neither my H or I have chronic health issues but we are at the age when health issues are more likely to come up. H is just a few years away from qualifying for Medicare but I’m years away. The 2008 downturn makes me cautious about burning too much savings. Many of my friends lost their houses. We are pretty safe since we have a MIL and rental prices are out of the roof in our area. We could easily rent our house and move into our MIL to cover our mortgage.
Also I’ve lived my entire adult life in areas where housing costs increase faster than wages. You have to get into the market to keep pace with it. Stay in the rental market too long and either you get priced out and have to move farther and farther out of the city OR you switch jobs every 2-3 years to try to have your wages go up fast enough. We saved for our kids college costs, but costs have gone up so fast that they’ll burn through all that if we pay full-pay at a 60-70K a year school. If they go in-state or use their stats to get merit aid, they can save money for “launching” after their undergrad.
The kids of a friend of ours had a nice trust fund from their grandmother. They could have gone anywhere that they got into. Neither wanted to blow their whole trust fund on their undergrad degree. Both went in-state to good schools. With our D, we kind of laid out what was saved and talked about the financial implications of spending $250-300K (when all is said and done) on an undergrad degree. D and parents choose not to choose that option.
@liska21, as you point out, the healthcare piece is a BIG one for people who don’t have that benefit from their employers. Our premiums (for a high deductible plan, no less!) were in excess of $2000/month. Something I hadn’t anticipated when I lost a job and took another with an employer who was too small to offer health insurance.
I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread, since this has been on our minds with one freshman in college (OOS public, ~$30k after merit) and one set to start in the fall. Our current income is high, but unfortunately this has been the case only for the past few years since I have returned to work (I stayed home/ homeschooled for 15 years). We live in an expensive area of SoCal, and my husband had a business loss about ten years ago that set us back significantly in our savings. We now have $800k in our retirement accounts (all 401k, no pensions), and $800k equity in our home, with no debt besides $200k left on our mortgage, and are in our late 40s. The younger son wants to major in CS and also play music and applied to Stanford, CMU, Vanderbilt, USC, Cal Poly and five UCs. We estimate that we can only afford about $35k out of current income while continuing to contribute to retirement and pay his brother’s tuition. This is what we told his brother as well. Didn’t expect him to get into Stanford, however. Is Stanford worth $75k in loans (he would pay us back out of summer internship pay/first job)? I don’t know; we’ll have to see what other options we have.
@carlsbadbruin As someone who struggled with similar decision last year regarding CS major accepted to MIT, I would say yes if you can pay out of your savings outside of your retirement funds, but I would say no to loans. It is very personal and difficult decision. As far as summer internships, even Stanford freshman will probably not get a well-paying one the summer after his first year. You are in Southern California. Most of good paying CS internships are in Northern California so most if not all of his summer earnings will cover his living expenses there for at least another summer. My MIT freshman is doing her virtual reality winter externship with a company that pays her $10.50 per hour. And she is one of the lucky freshmen who got paid externships and she gets to live at home so no expense here.
@Ballerina016 the loans would belong to DS (we would take out a home equity line, and he would be expected to pay us back), so it will be his decision. He also applied to a number of schools with merit, so he will need to evaluate his options. We will not touch our retirement savings. We budgeted/anticipated being full pay at UC, with the thought that any extra would need to come from merit or loans, which would be on the student (for better or worse, my husband definitely and stubbornly falls into the “good enough for us” camp, as a UCLA grad).
“I know around NYC area, it would be a struggle for a family of 4 to find a rental for under 3K at a good school district. I think we all can do the math to add up cost of food, insurance, utilities, transportation, etc.”
Eesh - I am a family of 4 living in a 5th-floor, 500sq ft tenement walkup and paying $1,300/month. I make less than $30K. Honestly, this thread is giving me a bit of pause about what it will be like for my daughter if she goes to her private college dream school with kids who think it’s “impossible” to live on incomes 5-7 times ours. It’s putting some flesh and bones on the stats that just came out about how few kids in the bottom 20% economically are going to college, let alone selective privates. I don’t want anyone to feel bad about their relatively privileged situation, but I would suggest that it would be nice to try to have some awareness of exactly how rare it is to even have these kinds of choices. We are a zero EFC and my daughter is likely to get nearly full need-based aid at most of her schools. But that “full aid” includes up to $5,000/year in parent/student contribution, a work study job for her and $33k in loans for her - 8K of which is unsubsidized. I desperately want to try to cut her loans at least in half by saving to pay them back before graduation and am cutting everything to the bone and looking for extra income just to be able to do that. And it’s because I know she will have no buffer to fall back on - no house to return to while she looks for a job, no inheritance. And it’s a hard economy she’s going into and I don’t want her saddled with $300/month in loan payments for 10 years right out of the gate. I want to try to do everything I possibly can to give her the best chances. Please try to keep some perspective - and even more, please try to share that with your children who will be going to school with children like mine.
I don’t think it’s really fair to refer to any of us as privileged not knowing our situations. I grew up with nothing, literally nothing. I was the daughter of a single mother, a Latin American immigrant with no education. I put myself through college working 30 hours a week, taking out student loans and any grants I could get. It took me 16 years after college to pay off those loans as well as my husband’s. I went to the cheapest state school I could find. I make an ample income now, my husband and I earned every bit of that success, there was no privilege involved. I’m now able to help my 4 kids with their college educations, and I’m happy to do it. No material possession is worth as much to me as the opportunity to provide for my kids. We live very modestly and don’t qualify for need based aide. I hope your daughter finds herself in the same situation after her education, an ample income and the ability to put her kids through college.
@carlsbadbruin -we had the same sort of dilemna last year and chose Stanford full pay and couldnt be happier with the decision. My D( pursuing CS ) landed her first paid internship within two months of starting freshman year, and feel like the support she is getting/opportunities is unmatched. Good luck on your decision, but for CS , I think Stanford is worth it!
@austinmshauri to answer your question about balancing budgets with multiple kids that may have different stats, goals and college lists, for us as best we can we have kept the financial investment relatively equal. There has been a budget and each child really has to find the right school that works at or under the budget. For some it could be a full pay scenario for others a higher sticker price but larger merit. There are slight variances between the kids and of course 2017 COA is higher than 2011 when the oldest started but we’ve tried to be fair. For those that wanted more they can contribute, to a point. And that simply means some great schools are off the table. Including Ivy’s. Not that most has stats for them mind you lol.
@hipmama many posting on this particular thread did put themselves through school, experience loans and debt and struggling to pay bills. I certainly did. Many of us were also hit hard in the recession. We are fortunate and I think recognize it but have also worked quite hard to get there and to hold on to it. I would like to believe that my children would see zero difference between themselves and your daughter. They are students and people. That’s all mine care about. And if I find out differently we’ve a different problem! I can promise you they are far more interested in what she likes to do or study than what her financial background is.
My current senior has several friends he worries about. A few that have he has directed to me for some advice on how to pay for college as they’ve no one to guide them.
I guess my point is, simply because a thread like this exists, doesn’t want mean we are insensitive or bragging. The OP’s intent was to understand why someone might choose to go full pay, if they could. So try to take it for what it’s worth and please know, know that at least for my kids, as best they can, do try to “get” it.
And that what a parent here might think it’s hard for them to live on now with current commitments doesn’t reflect a child having that same dollar threshold and awareness at all. I will admit, for us with 4 college tuitions to pay at full pay status and our current mortgage COL etc, no, it could not be done on 5k a month.
However I have zero doubt that if we had to, we would figure out a way to live off that much, or less, and survive. And so would our kids.
I couldn’t go to my first choice grad school and went to one which paid 100% tuition. If your family cannot afford it, go to a school, even lower ranked, which will pay full ride. Go to CC and transfer. There are options if a HYPSM doesn’t give a lot financial aid. Just because you are accepted at HYPSM does not mean you have to go there. Getting accepted there should give you confidence to succeed at any school and do well. My kid wanted to apply to Harvard and Yale RD just to see but I persuaded him that getting into Stanford REA should be enough of an ego booster, although I do believe Yale may have been a good fit for him.
I hope that this type of thread points out that there isn’t better or worse, just different. There are many ways to approach this process. The goal may actually be getting one more capable kid in our fine country through a college education that benefits that kid while minimizing debt load to that kid and their parents. That might be full pay at a top uber expensive top ranked college for one family if they can afford it, or full pay might be scraping together full pay for a relatively inexpensive college for another lower income, less well planned, or trauma/financially crisis impacted family. However a family slices it, they are going to have their justification based on their priorities.
@hipmama , even though D lives in nice suburbs, D has an understanding of the struggles that other kids might have gone through. When we applied U Chicago, I said "let’s apply financial aid, so that you don’t need to pay application fee. "She said “mom, that would be undermining the struggles that other unprivileged kids are going through”. Of course, we might be the only one who paid the application fee!!
No worries, kids like my D have tremendous respect for kids like your D who overcome and persevere. After all, she only needs to look at her parents who endured earlier struggles to afford her the opportunities, like @socal007 and @eandesmom said. Best of luck!!
In NYC public schools, elementary and middle school are zoned.
At the high school level there is no zoning in Manhattan (although there are priority cachement districts) and there is school choice at the high school level.
I grew up in a poor neighborhood in NYC and still went to a specialized high school and had great college options, and still attended an Ivy. My kid always attended school (k-12) in district 2, even though we did not always live in district 2. It all worked out well
Hipmama: no doubt it will be more difficult for your dd than for kids that can turn to parents for money. Having to watch every penny when other kids are spending freely is tough. Many of us here were that kid - the one who was on scholarship, the one who couldn’t go away for spring break, the one whose aid include a work-study job. Even though we live in one of those “good” school districts, my kids see this to some extent in that they weren’t able to attend their first choice colleges due to finances and do not have endless money to spend. But they are much more privileged than I was and while they may understand, they have not experienced being poor. They can understand and empathize with poor kids and have friends that come from much different backgrounds, but are still likely to have the money to go and grab dinner or, when old enough, go get drinks, when those friends can’t afford to. Hopefully, she will find supportive friends and have a great experience at her college.
Sybbie: these days in NYC middle schools are not all zoned and even elementary students can request a spot in a school outside of their zone. My friend’s kids applied to and attended middle schools outside of their zone.
DS reports that, at Yale, as “privileged” as schools get, the vast majority of kids are sensitive to the different financial resources of their classmates. The few who are oblivious or tone-deaf to the financial situation of their classmates are considered to be crass and thoughtless.
@sybbie719 Yes, I know the HS’s are not zoned, but living in District 2 and being zoned for a great elementary school is peace of mind for many parents. It also puts you at an advantage when you want good middle school options (if you are not applying to places like NEST, etc) There is a big difference in this city between the best and worst schools in terms of how much the PTA raises, how there’s money to pay for the extras that the DOE doesn’t pay for… Yes, you can end up at a specialized HS from anywhere and you can go to a great college from anywhere. It is a wonderful luxury though when your kids can go to safe schools in lovely buildings with lots of extras. I wish every kid in NYC had that.
