<p>Some municipal jobs have a residency requirement. My husband’s does. Unfortunately, since he is functionally illiterate, he doesn’t have much in the way of choice.</p>
<p>However, we are in a good place in terms of college for our kids so we have no complaints.</p>
<p>You are in same place we are Zoosermom, ( not literally)
But as I mentioned on another thread, my H’s job is very physical and he isn’t getting any younger, I imagine your H is in same position. It will be difficult for him to work till regular retirement age, let alone past that. </p>
<p>Some workers such as my H, don’t have education past highschool, and their best chance of a decent living was to work for a large company using their skilled labor. They are never going to be rich, and it is only through forced overtime that we have been able to make ends meet. Those with more education, have more choices and have more portable skills even if they need to move from one urban area to another.</p>
<p>The people I see really stuck when trying to procure an education for their kids, beyond what was needed to raise a family a generation ago, are those who are living in those rural area, without much education but getting by. However unless their kids are able to wrangle merit aid from a school, and some are, they are paying for a state education out of pocket and having a lot less left over afterwards than those in the higher socioeconomic bracket.</p>
<p>
Plus also the lack of commutable options makes it tougher.</p>
<p>I don’t feel sorry for me or families like ours, but I don’t demonize people who are scare, confused or frustrated. I don’t even know what would have happened to my kids without CC because we had no frame of reference.</p>
<p>I don’t know why on earth every thread about the ridiculous cost of a college eduation devloves into rich, vs. poor, vs. the middle class, etc…</p>
<p>stipulate to the fact that being impoverished in this country is no treat, but also stipulate to the fact that being impoverished has never been better anywhere in history than it is here, now.</p>
<p>that said, and with all the respect due to those who make it out of that trap, acting as if other people “should have” saved more is just arrogant and lacks understanding of the costs of raising children. It lacks common sense to believe that parents who make 95,000K a year now have earned that amount of money over the entire course of their children’s lives, AND it fails to take into account that the tax burden they bear, unlike the lack of tax burden borne by 48% of the population, decreases savable and spendable and otherwise disposable income.</p>
<p>The more money we shovel into college educations, the more money this generation borrows for this dubiously valuable commodity, the less there will be to spend on other necessities and luxuries, like food and homes and transportation. We are just taking huge masses of money out of our consumer driven economy and handing it over to these top-heavy administration burdened colleges, and anyone who believes this won’t effect the ability of absolutely anyone to find a job in this country, including those, maybe especially those, in the impoverished classes has fallen prey to the class warfare currently driving this country into a black hole.</p>
<p>It is in everyone’s best interest for everyone to have disposable income, particularly those who rely on consumer spending for their job. We are foolish to fight each other on all of this and would be much better off figuring out how to get these artificially inflated college costs into a reasonable range.</p>
<p>I suggest, first, we fire most of the university administrators and start over and pay only what they are really worth.</p>
<p>“Upper middle class” families have the resources available to give their kids a fantastic education. In addition, these families are usually more intelligent than average. Combine these two facts and their children should easily be able to rock the SAT and high school.</p>
<p>If they are still suffering massive amounts of debt despite this, then that means they are living beyond their means sending their children to schools that clearly cannot pay for. It’s not like they’re forced to send their children to an ivy. Really no sympathy here. </p>
<p>That’s assuming they don’t do the responsible thing and either save for their children or invest strategically. 90th percentile on the SAT can get your kid near full rides at lower tier state schools. Pretty simple. There’s also community college, etc</p>
<p>I decided not to subscribe to the WSJ, so I couldn’t read the balance of the article, but the middle-class (or whatever you want to call that group in the 95K/125K range) problem is even worse for the parents. $95K a year is way too much to get any need-based aid except maybe at the impossible-to-get-into Ivies, and frankly, at an income much higher than $125K a year, if that family manages their pennies with any success, there are plenty of affordable options for their kid.</p>
<p>But it seems that not-so-sweet range of yearly income, while relatively comfortable, falls into that no-man’s-land where tough decisions have to be made. Yes, you can send your kid to college. Yes, you can probably afford a non-flagship state school out-of-pocket. But not counting merit scholarships, you’ll be paying full fare to go anyplace, and unless there has been a nest egg saved, you’ll be taking out PLUS loans that eventually will tap into retirement funds if anything over, say, $25K per year COA is considered.</p>
<p>Not complaining, but that’s pretty much a fair assessment of the situation. No, I wouldn’t rather be poor. But it would be great, just once, to get at least an acknowledgement from a school that tells me, hey, we understand that although you pull down $100K a year, it’s from two incomes each at 40+ hours a week, and we understand that the market has taken most of the equity out of your home. So here’s a couple grand a year because we feel that you NEED it.</p>
<p>Yeah, right… :)</p>
<p>We are in a little higher bracket than mentioned. However, we do save and save and save. When it came time for child one to go off to college, her choice one was $58k COA and we would have been full pay, lucky us. Choice two was even better, $60 k COA, and again full pay. We would have happily written the check for $40k, but $60k was a lot. We were grateful to our daughter when she accepted a scholarship at a top fifty university instead of the top ten or top 25 where she was accepted. Long-time readers have seen our story before.</p>
<p>We are among the people who could have made the high price school happen, but really encouraged our very bright kid to take the money. We have paid all of her other expenses the past three years and will hand over her 529 money when she graduates.</p>
<p>There is an enormous difference between paying near-sticker for a private ($150,000+) or an OOS flagship vs going to a community college and then commuting to a decent state school for the last two years (the 2+2 model). In some states, you can still accomplish the latter for ~$20,000.</p>
<p>The problem that is feeding the inflationary climate is that “going away” to your dream school has been romanticised to the point where kids (and their parents) feel that they have been cheated out of a part of their life that they are entitled too if they have to go to a community college.</p>
<p>The 2+2 model is perfectly normal for some walks of life, and is not seen as a letdown or anything to be ashamed of. Unfortunately, a stigma has been attached to community college over the years, that only “dumb” kids go there, which only makes things worse. The difference in cost between this and going away to a private school is so enormous that I have little sympathy for people who complain about the costs of doing so.</p>
<p>Following along with what SweetheartCroc said, kids also think that they are entitled to attend the very best school that admits them. That also causes problems.</p>
<p>We are comfortably full pay. Means not a thing to us to write the check, or not, as my daughter chose a school which paid most of her way. But, that’s just not my point.</p>
<p>My point is that a family with three kids who makes 95K in an urban area in the US could not have “saved” enough money to pay even in state in many states, except by living as if they were poverty stricken themselves. Let’s assume they’ve been in that income range for maybe the last ten years. What does it cost to raise a kid? I heard a quarter of a million. We should really do the math on this before we start feeling as if someone else “should have” done something, even when we didn’t have to…</p>
<p>Frankly, what is going undiscussed is the artificial inflation of college costs due to access to unsecured loans, much like the real estate bubble which burst in 08. The truth is that these kids face debt rung up by previous generations in order to float their extravagant lifestyles and face debt, now, just to get a college degree, which may or may not be worth much to them, in light of the current economy. And, the fact remains that many of those who are being paid bloated administrative salaries at these state universities get these jobs in corrupt and “insider” ways, and continue to be paid, even in light of the fact that we are foisting off the price of their lifestyle on 18 or 19 year old kids.</p>
<p>After taxes and social security and medicare and sales taxes and gas taxes and property taxes, how much “income” do you think a couple who makes 95K actually has left? </p>
<p>And, don’t give me some, “More than I did,” story. The problem is we pit ourselves against each other, for no good cause. If you aspire to a taxable income? Maybe you should consider this for yourself, or for the sake of your own future children?</p>
<p>poetgirl…right on target.</p>
<p>Too much debt and taxes too high</p>
<p>kids can’t afford the starter house </p>
<p>so they wont be buying a frige, dishwasher, washer, dryer</p>
<p>and oops …they just lost their job…selling appliances.</p>
<p>If we as parents taught our children the simple facts of finance, and what thinggs cost and how long it takes to buy something like an IPAD on their miimum wage job, they might get it…But most parents don’t…i would love a Mercedes SLK, but can’t afford it, so i buy a car i can afford…same should go for colleges…and an upthread comment about the ‘poor’ or lower middle class really living significantly better then anytime in history is a fact…</p>
<p>
Following along with this, kids and parents often think that schools can be ranked or that the “best schools” are identifiable. Or that each kid has some “dream school” or “perfect fit” out there. This causes big problems.</p>
<p>Good point. </p>
<p>The obsession with rankings and prestige is BIG part of the problem. A lot of decent “directional” or “commuter” schools offer essentially the same education that more prestigious schools do (OK this is a sweeping generalization, but there is some truth to it).</p>
<p>They may not have an exciting football team, and people may not have heard of the school a thousand miles away, but it’s still worth consideration if you are struggling to save for college.</p>
<p>In order to have saved enough for college, we would have had to anticipate future costs 18 years down the road. Did anyone know college was going to cost this much? We certainly didn’t.</p>
<p>But let’s say we had had the foresight to realize that instate tuition, room and board would hit $20,000 per year, and that Vanderbilt ( for example) would cost $60,000.</p>
<p>To save enough to fully fund our three kids we would have had to put aside somewhere between $1111 and $3333 per month. (Well, $370 to $1111 per kid), every month, for 18 years. (Not including compounding interest here, because I don’t want to do the math, so round down to, say, $300 to $1000 per kid per month.)</p>
<p>We have 529’s, but not with THAT much in them. We are lucky in that we are able to use other savings and current income, to cover the rest, but we would never be willing to pay Vanderbilt costs for all three kids. </p>
<p>What advice would we give new parents today? What should they estimate tuition, room and board might be 18 years from now? How much should they save every month for each kid?</p>
<p>Want to pay less for college? Simple: Be the big fish in your pond. Instead of going to a super-selective school and paying sticker, go to a less prestigious school where your stats are relatively competitive, and you will likely receive significant financial incentives There are lots of lesser-known, but decent schools out there that are probably below your radar. Your ego may be bruised, but your wallet will thank you. </p>
<p>If you insist on going to the most prestigious school that you can get into, the unavoidable fact is that it is going to cost you a LOT of money. The top students at most selective schools are effectively being subsidized by the less competitive kids who still got in, but are paying sticker. The George W. Bushes of the world, who undoubtedly paid full stick for Yale, effectively pay the tuition for the 1600 SAT, 4.5 GPA uber-geniuses that colleges crave.</p>
<p>Try and set aside what a flagship state school currently costs…this will likely only cover 50% when a child born this yearis ready to enter college, but it is a solid start</p>
<p>“What advice would we give new parents today? What should they estimate tuition, room and board might be 18 years from now? How much should they save every month for each kid?”</p>
<p>This is the advice I give:</p>
<p>Save what you can, and save it where you can. Even $5 each month in a shoebox under your bed will accumulate to $600 in ten years, and that $600 will make a difference - one book the kid doesn’t have to worry about buying, one semester worth of pencils, one month of lattes at whatever has replaced Starbucks.</p>
<p>Do not fret if you can’t put away a bazillion dollars in a special education-savings vehicle like a 529. A shoebox, or everyday savings account, or everyday CD will do. A 529 may not be best if you have an only child and don’t feel like giving your hard-earned money away to a random family member if your child doesn’t end up using it.</p>
<p>If you want a figure to shoot for, look at the difference in cost of attendance between your local community college and your in-state public U. Do what you can so that when your kid hits college age, his/her fund can cover the difference between those two at that point in time. Then if you really can only scrape together CC costs out of your current income, kid’s income, and whatever passes for student loans, your child will be able to choose between the CC and State U instead of being forced to attend the CC just because it is all your family can do.</p>
<p>Lastly, if you can’t save, or if what you are able to save really does turn out to be $5 each month in a shoebox under your bed, don’t feel guilty. You did what you could. Your kid will do what he/she can. It will work out in the end - maybe not the way someone has fantasized, but it will work out.</p>
<p>We fit this income range, and there is no way we could have saved enough to pay for the Ivies for 2 children. No. Way. The next tier down is no cheaper either. The cost of these schools just boggles the mind, especially considering ROI. My husband and I went to Wash U, and this wasn’t even financially possible for our kids – they offered paltry aid in comparison to the tuition – and we just can’t pay out this sort of green right now. Our advice to them was to just rethink the college “arms race” (keeping up with the Jones’s when it comes to acceptance letters is a game of inevitable disappointment) skip the loan nightmare altogether and go to a college where there are abundant opportunities, less stress and more reliable ROI.
Bottom line: our kids are going to state institutions, with great merit aid.</p>
<p>Here’s my plan of attack, my son starts high school in a week, he gets top grades and could most likely get accepted to a top college if he played his cards right. The area we live in has a scholarship where they will send kids who grew up in the area to the local community college for free which includes books. Hopefully two years after that he will go to his top school (it’s a plan, so I am hoping this is the way it works out).</p>