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About 20% of my gross income but she chose the most affordable school that accepted her. Her choices ranged from 20-50%.
Just tuition and fees? We paid about 1-2% for kid #1 and pay 0% for kid #2.
I’m guessing that some people here have enough stashed away in a 529 or UTMA to cover most if not all tuition and fees for 4 years. So would you calculate that as 0%?
I was also including room and board…if we are talking tuition only then zero (full academic scholarship, we pay r&b only).
About 15% but paid from 529 savings
Tuition plus room and board each year will equal about a third of our total annual pre-tax income (between 33% and 34%).
We have a 529.
We are full pay, but have saved enough that nothing comes out of current salaries. Now if you are instead asking about EFC that is a different question. I think most people find it in the 25 -30% range or so.
My entire salary…all of it except what went into my 403b account…went to cover college costs for 7 years. We paid the rest of our bills with my husband’s salary. About 1/3 of our AGI went to college costs for 7 years. Our kids went to private universities with some merit aid…one kid a good amount, and one kid a small amount.
We had $0 in college savings and it was always our intention to pay for college out of currents earnings…which is what we did.
right now we pay 20% of our net income. It’ll be that way or more for 12 years straight with 4 kiddos.
To make it less complex, should we use percent of household income from both salaries. It doesn’t matter how we pay, savings or loan or debt. As long as its going out of our pockets. What would give us a better picture? EFC?
@CupCakeMuffins I think the %age of AGI is a good way to state this. But if you need a clarification on my response…we used about a third of our AGI…current earnings only to pay for college. We took no loans, and we didn’t take a nickel out of savings.
But I’m curious…why do you want to know this information?
Every family has their own way of dealing with college costs.
For one of my kids, I paid nothing; her COA was about $55k/yr. For my other child, COA is about $22k, she takes out the loans and I paid about $8k per year (room and board). If my salary was $100k, that would be 8%, plus the 7% or so she’s borrowing. Since my income last year was $10k, it is about 80%, or 100%+ with the loans. Does that change anything? I still pay $8000, she still borrows the rest.
You worry a lot about what people pay for college, who gets more financial aid, why some are full pay and others are full ride. We pay what we agreed to pay.
This is a hot topic now a days as most of my friends have high school and college age kids. With immigrant parents, these kids are practically first generation college students with our limited knowledge and misconceptions about local system.
But there is no right answer to what percentage of income you pay toward college, or should pay at a ‘meets full need’ school, or choose to pay by going to a much cheaper school. Two full pay kids can pay entirely different percentages for college if the family income is $200k and $500k. Different percentage if the COA is $72k or $20k. Even if the income is 100k and the COA is $25k, that family might be fine if there is savings to pay that $25k.
My kids went to two very different school. One chased the merit and found it. The other picked an inexpensive school. Both had the same EFC, but just attacked it in different way. In the same family, the percentage of income going toward college is different, so how could the number of what one family pays have any benefit to another family?
Our most expensive year was my older daughter’s senior year and my younger daughter’s sophomore year. We paid approximately 43% (not including loan payments) of AGI to their schools that year. Overall, I’m guessing that our payments for college (tuition, fees, room and board) added up to approximately 30-35% of our AGI for the six years both daughters were in college. Some of that got spread out even more; I paid off D1’s loans soon after she graduated using our home equity line of credit but didn’t pay off the HELOC until 1 or 2 years ago.
I agree with @twoinanddone. Why would the %age of MY income paid for college have any bearing on what others might pay. That is only one factor. You will note that I didn’t mention any others debt, or expenses. I also didn’t mention the AGI from which I was paying 1/3 of my income.
I think it would be very different paying 1/3 of your AGI if your AGI Is $60,000…than it would be if your AGI is $300,000.
Righ?
about 10-12% at a full pay lottery school.
This prob depends on your own situation. Divorced parents split the bill. One income is around 80k another is over 300k. You can see the % is quite different for both parents. Small 529. 3 kids two going to in state public schools.
This is sort of meaningless. Let’s say my AGI is $50k and my kids’ COA is $60k. And let’s also say that I inherited money that I put into a 529 to cover all college costs, so I am full pay. In this scenario, the answer to your question would be 120%.
You are correct that the “system” is really a non-system. Another way of looking at it is that there are many different options.