Is there a calculator or benchmark for how much college we can afford?

[Anonymous]

^ sorry, I just saw this is your first child. OK, I hope you can live off $140K. College costs increase every year, of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is at a big SEC school with in-state tuition thanks to the Academic Common Market. We don’t qualify for any financial aid and he didn’t get any scholarships or merit assistance. We pay around $30k per year for tuition, room and board. We pay out of pocket, and make less than the OP does.

I would never send my daughter to any of those states. Maybe its different with boys, but I still don't think I would.

I personally think there are very few situations where private college is worth it. Top private grad school in a high earning field I understand (but not random private grad school.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ sorry, I just saw this is your first child. OK, I hope you can live off $140K. College costs increase every year, of course.

Me again. About loans. Currently federal loans are nearly 5%. It only makes sense if you can invest in something else that makes more money for you on the side, and in the current climate of impending recession and fluctuating stocks that might (or might not) have reached bottom, I would NOT risk it. You can hope loans might be forgiven in the future, but with a Republican congress, and perhaps a Republican President in '24, I wouldn't count on it.

[Anonymous]

Our EFC came out at some ridiculous amount. It's basically most of my take home pay -- dual earners. We may earn $350K on paper, but we are self employed and pay the employer portion of the taxes which is about 12% of gross business income. We have to fund our own retirement and health insurance, and then of course, regular income tax; and we have multiple kids. We would basically have to give up paying some into our retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our EFC came out at some ridiculous amount. It's basically most of my take home pay -- dual earners. We may earn $350K on paper, but we are self employed and pay the employer portion of the taxes which is about 12% of gross business income. We have to fund our own retirement and health insurance, and then of course, regular income tax; and we have multiple kids. We would basically have to give up paying some into our retirement.

Which is why people save for college and don't expect to pay it out of current cash flow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My rule of thumb is that colleges expect you to pay roughly 25% of your income each year. At $175k that would be at least 40k. The poster above had good rough numbers on that split.

Another way to look at this is opportunity cost. Plug in the cost of four years of college into a compound interest calculator at 7% for 10 and 20 years. This gives you a sense of how much worth the education costs would be compared to future investment growth. It really reinforces the goal of trying to keep college as cheap as possible.

Trying to understand the college expectations. Are you saying that colleges expect you to pay 25% of your gross income? If that's the case, no wonder higher education is broken. That's absurd.

+1 seriously? especially with inflation the way it is?

Private college is a luxury good. Community college for a year or two and then transfer to an in state school. That's 75k total.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our EFC came out at some ridiculous amount. It's basically most of my take home pay -- dual earners. We may earn $350K on paper, but we are self employed and pay the employer portion of the taxes which is about 12% of gross business income. We have to fund our own retirement and health insurance, and then of course, regular income tax; and we have multiple kids. We would basically have to give up paying some into our retirement.

Yes, a lot of people stop contributing to retirement for the years the kid is in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My rule of thumb is that colleges expect you to pay roughly 25% of your income each year. At $175k that would be at least 40k. The poster above had good rough numbers on that split.

Another way to look at this is opportunity cost. Plug in the cost of four years of college into a compound interest calculator at 7% for 10 and 20 years. This gives you a sense of how much worth the education costs would be compared to future investment growth. It really reinforces the goal of trying to keep college as cheap as possible.

Trying to understand the college expectations. Are you saying that colleges expect you to pay 25% of your gross income? If that's the case, no wonder higher education is broken. That's absurd.

+1 seriously? especially with inflation the way it is?

Private college is a luxury good. Community college for a year or two and then transfer to an in state school. That's 75k total.

Exactly. Just like private school for k-12

In my county community college is free and the kid can live at home and commute to umbc or UMD for two years. Tuition plus fees of about $12,000/year for two years = $24,000 for a four year degree.

[Anonymous]

Why haven't you saved more? We make less than you and saved for four years of state school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My first is a senior and going through the college search and application process. We have saved about $70,000 in a 529 for her and make about $175,000.

We have filled out the FAFSA (EFC of $46,000) and gone through the net price calculators that show us how much we can expect to pay, but I don't have an idea of how much we can afford.

When we bought houses and got a mortgages there will all sorts of calculators and rules-of-thumb that gave us an idea of how much house we could afford. I can't find anything similar for college.

Any guidance that worked for you all?

As others have said, that 70K will get you at most one year at a slac or private university, most of which are now at $80K a year. You need to get on top of this with your husband and a financial advisor ASAP so you don't dangle in front of your kid options that you cannot afford. As a good (but not always accurate) rule of thumb, the average DCUM reader makes too much money to get any financial aid (determined by the FAFSA, which you must file with the fed government) so beyond the $5500 that all filers get in loans, you may, as we, did, with an HHI of $210 an EFC of 100 percent, meaning we would get no financial aid. So we pushed forward assuming (correctly) that our kids would get no substantial merit aid and no financial aid, all of which turned out to be true. We were thrilled when DS picked UVA over the more expensive privates that he was accepted to. We banked the difference and can now suppose him overseas for graduate school and then perhaps law school.


so meet with an advisor. Start looking closely at fees. run the net price calculator on all college's websites (and take a screenshot if they project you might get a scholarship or merit of some sort - you may need that later when financial aid says "no no!". Truly you must look exclusively to your instate network of offerings. Also, community college with a transfer to a four-year institution is a viable course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our EFC came out at some ridiculous amount. It's basically most of my take home pay -- dual earners. We may earn $350K on paper, but we are self employed and pay the employer portion of the taxes which is about 12% of gross business income. We have to fund our own retirement and health insurance, and then of course, regular income tax; and we have multiple kids. We would basically have to give up paying some into our retirement.

Which is why people save for college and don't expect to pay it out of current cash flow.

we do have 529, but it's like $120K which is fine for in state, but when we filled out FAFSA, it gave us the EFC, and it was ridiculously high.

[Anonymous]

you have a senior. you have 70k saved. you can afford in state public or less. if kid can qualify for guaranteed merit money at some schools, you could get anything from in-state tuition to full tuition, but it is kind of late in the game if you haven't already researched this type of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why haven't you saved more? We make less than you and saved for four years of state school.

Kudos to you!

Why should the OP justify how much they have saved? Why is that any of your business?

[Anonymous]

OP, please don't offer your child a private or out-of-state school. My parents were naive and did this even though we had very little money (but too much to be truly poor for substantial aide) and I ended up going to a school I couldn't afford (with their encouragement) for a semester before I realized the insanity of it and transferred in-state. Don't do that to your child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why haven't you saved more? We make less than you and saved for four years of state school.

Kudos to you!

Why should the OP justify how much they have saved? Why is that any of your business?

+1, the point of that comment only seemed to be to make the PP feel superior while simultaneously coming off as judgy.