When the differences are small then I’d ignore. since the differences in THIS case are not, I couldn’t just ignore it. I’d find some way to more equalize. It wouldn’t have to perfectly equal, but certainly not $120k in differences…lol. I would think that anything beyond about $20k needs some sort of normalizing.
However, if you do decide to “normalize” be sure that S2 is aware so that HE makes the decision as to whether he then wants “his money” spent on GT. If he’s told…"$120k more is being spent on you, so S1 is going to have/get $100k available to him for grad school or purchase of a home.
At that point, S2 may say, “super”…or he may say, “I don’t want you spending $120k more on me for undergrad.”
I agree that this convo should have occurred before S1 went to college, but now it should at least take place before S2 goes.
Cptofthehouse’s situation is different. #1 son went pricey because, at that time, the parents thought that EACH child was going to be able to go to a dream school. The realities of Plus Loans put a damper on that. That is different. She still had a very generous budget for her remaining four kids (I think around $35k per year for each), but she couldn’t say “NYU for everyone…anymore.” lol
Excellent points all around, thanks for keeping the feedback coming. To address a few points, S2 is no slacker, he was offered the same scholarship as S1. That school doesn’t offer his major, whereas the school he will likely choose (an OOS public) is the best in the world for it. S1 chose his school with no financial consideration. He turned down more expensive schools that we would have paid for. He will graduate with an engineering degree and, no doubt, an excellent job. He has no intention of grad school. S2 will almost certainly have similar success, if not even greater.
I’ve got some kids in their 30’s and I say wait until it all shakes out. The kid who says “no way no how I am going back to grad school” ends up going to grad school. Do you help subsidize some living expenses? Do you help pay for the bar exam review course for the kid who picked the merit law school and not the full freight law school? Do you help pay for a post-Bac program for your kid who decides at age 26 that she wants to go to Med school? Do you help pay off some loans for a daughter-in-law who takes a low paying job with the Innocence Project helping the unfairly incarcerated get out of prison instead of her high paying offer with an M&A firm? Do you pay for an online boot camp course (short but pricey certificate programs) so your kid can earn a living while staying home with an infant?
As Robert Frost said- you’ve got MILES to go before you sleep. Save your powder. Many, many years left of you being able to help your kids launch, and you will be so grateful that it didn’t end up in one kids pocket to be spent on a few vacations and a depreciated car, if you still have the resources to direct it towards education. You have no idea if there will be a disparity by the time everyone is fully and completely launched. Good problem to have- and you don’t need to solve it this year.
Yep. I learned the hard way. Just paid off the first one’s PLUS bills and it was so painful that I knew we could not continue that way. It was an expensive lesson to learn.
But things happen later in life too. We’ve had some discussion on this in the Cafe. What if you have one child who is wildly successful, rich, no kids, and another struggling with several kids, your grandkids that could use the money.
My dear friend lost her MIL (as I did recently AND my mother as well) and her husband just signed off on the inheritance to which he is entitled to 1/4 because his sibling so need it more and the mess that is going to come from the divvying up of the things including the home. It doesn’t end with college. You could end up with a tally sheet for a long time. You could have special needs grandchildren, a child who ends up with some very bad luck, some who do some things that you feel are folly and should be taken into account. It’s all a matter of when you start to draw the line.
In my case, no adjustments for college. But really, I sort of did already, in that we’ve slipped more money to our son who is in the arts as he tried to get into the business and live in NYC on his own than we have to the others. Some rationale for it is that he had a scholarship and went to a state school, so that his cost was less than half, close to a third of his older brother’s costs.
My guys all have pitched in so that their youngest bro has more choices for college, along with their uncles, so that we could up the college amount for him. So for now, all things will be split evenly. Not starting a talley sheet yet, though the costs are not equal among them, I’m sure. Maybe later, maybe never.
We told each of our three kids that we had X amount of money and anything over that amount would have to be paid for in loans by them. This amount was determined by the cost of our State U the year they would graduate HS. That is, we would pay the total amount for the State U but less for others. This made them very aware of merit aid offers. Two of the three got excellent merit aid and graduated with little debt. # Three will have more debt but will also have a much higher starting salary. My in-laws did that with their kids and it made sense to us.
Every family has to figure out what works for them.
And don’t get me started on a chronic disease… in a family where folks aren’t keeping score, siblings bend over backwards to help the sib who has a rotten hand in this card game we call life. In families where the accounting is down the last $20, good luck getting the kids to take care of each other as adults.
Don’t you want them looking out for each other once you are gone? I’ve posted before about my young neighbor with ALS. Watching his siblings (all in their 30’s with families of their own) go the extra mile for the nieces and nephews is amazing.
RE: #16, Not joking–our two oldest kids will not inherit anything from us (if there is anything to be inherited when the time comes). We still love them. The only issue is that they have essentially already taken their shares (or more than their shares) with their college expenses, so it wouldn’t be fair to our younger kids to give the older ones even more.
@blossom, personally, I think that there would be more bending over to help siblings when the allocation is fair than when it isn’t. Good luck trying to convince a sibling that he/she should help out when they feel like parents gave more to the other sibling.
In my own family of origin, we each graduated debt free from a college we were reasonably excited about (not always the first choice). I have never stopped to calculate who got what when- one sibling needed more help “launching”, one ended up taking a more circuitous route professionally (which ended well but required some parental help for post grad work). I think we all feel like we “got” what we needed, even if one ended up getting twice as much as the other.
That’s what I mean by fair. Our parents weren’t perfect but did their best to get us out of the nest to the best of our and their ability. It felt “fair” even though it wasn’t an even/steven kind of division.
My parents supported my sibling her whole life. They agreed to not apply for SSI, for which she was clearly eligible. I hope they left her enough money, but if not, I will be her support. It makes me scared to use my earnings for travel or other big luxuries. No one listened to me, though I brought legal advice, offered to hire her as employee so she would be eligible for Medicare. She is an amazing person. I don’t care how much parents spent on her. She is not a slacker, she has MFA, but is physically unable to hold a regular job.
I just don’t understand why some people apparently really resent spending available money in the present on their own children to the point where they “reward” one child for costing them less. This applies not only to education to to everything else. If you want your child to choose the cheaper educational option, just say so and refuse to pay more at the outset. Whatever you do, don’t use promises of future money as a reward for present frugality to manipulate adult children’s behavior toward a result you want for yourself. It’s a surefire way to 1) sow bitterness among the siblings and 2) teach your adult children that they’re entitled to a share of your future money.
It cost us $10,000 a year more for DD to go to college than her brother simply because she was three years younger…and costs went up. Should we have paid DS some extra money because DD’s costs were higher?
DS played an instrument that cost about $2000. He had two that we purchased before he graduated from high school…about $4000 total. DD, OTOH, had two instruments with a total value of about $20,000, or so.
We paid for both college educations, and we paid for both instruments. We didn’t really care that the costs were different. The kids had no bills in the end.
This OP is giving the kids the same thing…a free college education. Both have that.
If there is money leftover at the end of it all, I would hope that he does something generous for both kids…not just the one whose college happened to cost less.
My sister attends a very expensive LAC and I’m probably going to be going to a state school. These schools were both our top choices and we were very fortunate enough to have parents who are able to afford them. I would never expect to be compensated the difference between the price of my school and my sisters school (probably double) because I chose to go there. If your daughter chose to go the the school where she got money to because of finances it may be a different story and maybe you should get her a nice gift like a car or a downpayment on a house as others suggested. But if she just loved that school and wanted to go there anyway I really don’t think you owe her anything. My parents have always said they would pay me the money I got in scholarships but I feel like it’s very unnecessary and will insist they keep the money if I go to a school where I get a scholarship.
I would use full disclosure with your second son. Let him know that if this is where he really wants to go to college he will have to dip into his trust fund to pay for it.
I paid my own way by working and taking out loans. My parent’s paid part of my brothers and he worked,and my sister didn’t work at all and they paid her whole way and for her graduate school. I’m still bitter about it. 30 years later.
That said.The trust’s should be separate thing. That’s money that was given to them from their grandfather. You say you have enough money ear marked for their college. So if you take part of the money from the trust for S2 then basically aren’t you just saving your money? If you don’t have enough money saved for S2 to go to the full pay school then you could give him the choice to use the trust money or go to school that doesn’t cost as much money.
We have 3 kids. S1 has a tuition scholarship. S2 is most likely going to be full pay. S3 will probably end up with some sort of scholarship. Are we going to try and make everything equal? No because they aren’t the same.
This just made me think of something…My dad paid for my college tuition/room and board. My brothers didn’t go to college or went for a bit and dropped out. But when my Dad passed away, my brother’s got a modest amount of money from my stepmom from his estate, but I didn’t. But then I didn’t need the money (whereas they did) and I did kind of “get my due” with college costs.
My parents said there is this much money total and split it evenly between my brother and I, down to the dollar. It went directly into accounts that we control. Brother chose Vandy, I chose Texas ultimately I believe my brother will have significantly less money after college or for grad school than I will have simply due to the cost of school. We have discussed it and he readily admits he could have attended a less expensive university or one that awarded more merit aid but he seems content with the education he is receiving and job prospects he is seeing.
I definitely don’t think parents should spend more on one kid over another no matter what the circumstances. I have a few friends that are fairly resentful of siblings that had their college paid for while they are taking loans out.
To the OP,
What do other parents do in this situation? They treat the kids evenly for financial purposes.
Is it fair to spend so much more for one kid than the other, without balancing things out in some way? No
One idea is to give S1 his trust fund after graduation, but use some of S2’s fund to pay his tuition. Is this fair to S2? Any other ideas? Yes its fair. S1 earned and or chose a full scholarship, he could have chosen a full pay school and you would not be having this issue. S2 did not earn or choose a scholarship and chose an expensive school. Life is about choices and most choice cost different amounts.
What may be making the decision difficult is that it is being decided after the first kid has made a financially significant and relevant decision (choosing a college) before. Given the lack of consensus here about what is “fair”, it looks like any possible decision made now could lead to being perceived as “unfair”.