College Planning Upper Middle Class

[Anonymous]

We have the same income as you and similar retirement. We will cover up to 5 years of DS's undergraduate schooling. Any funds left over will be given to him for an approved use such as graduate school, home down payment, etc. For anything outside of that, he's expected to get a loan for grad school, car, house, even of the loan come from the family bank, there will be interest.

[Anonymous]

If you have $3 million in retirement, you can basically retire any time. If you work one additional year, that would pay for (very roughly) 4 years of college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have 3 million in assets but can’t divert any of that to the kids? That makes no sense. The less debt your kids have to take on, the better.

We make more than you but have 3 kids and are planning to pay for all of it. My 12 yo has about 220k just for himself. I’m not sure what the younger ones have but they each get 1250 a month.

No. Don’t compromise retirement for kids.

It would hardly be compromising their retirement by taking 100k and giving it to their kids

[Anonymous]

You already have very generous retirement savings and I'm assuming you're in your late 40s, maybe early 50s based on your kids' ages? So another 15-20, of working at peak earnings. Many people with your income will pay for the expensive 70K a year college out of both savings and current income. You say you have $220k per child. You can easily pay for expensive private colleges out of that $220k and your current income. Right now that's $55k from savings, 20k from current year income. Easily doable.

I find your post a bit of a humble brag - if it is genuine. Racking up $3M in retirement savings, plus $440k in college savings, plus presumably your house/mortgage/equity and any other assets while only making $275k HHI. I'm sure it can be explained to some degree but it's a bit unusual without inheritances. By the way, most med students take out loans for all their education as it's expected they will earn the high salaries in the future to pay off their loans with some ease and discipline. There is no requirement for you to pay for your child's graduate schooling. Helping out is great, but it's not the same obligation as college itself. Your "DD" is also years away from medical school. She may change her mind. She may get weeded out by premed courses in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have 3 million in assets but can’t divert any of that to the kids? That makes no sense. The less debt your kids have to take on, the better.

We make more than you but have 3 kids and are planning to pay for all of it. My 12 yo has about 220k just for himself. I’m not sure what the younger ones have but they each get 1250 a month.

I have $220k for each for college not for one and all $3M assets are in retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought you guys just bought your way into schools.

My daughter actually joked about that. She said mom 11 days in jail isn't THAT bad so that I could go to the school I wanted.

I like her sense of humor!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We basically show the kids the money that is available, and they need to make their choices accordingly. If they choose an expensive private college, they need loans to make up the difference and are on their own after that. If they go to a state school with merit aid, they have much more flexibility for grad school.

+1 This is also what we do. In our case, each kid has about $300k for education. The kid that wants to go into finance attends an expensive but highly rated school with good recruitment in his industry. The kid that wants to go into a health field/medicine goes to a SLAC where tuition, room and board are $40k a year after merit aid, leaving that kid with money left over for graduate school. We also have family members that provide unlimited education but that has led to some less weird outcomes, delays in adulthood.

[Anonymous]

Your children pay for grad school. Without that financial incentive, they will make poor decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You already have very generous retirement savings and I'm assuming you're in your late 40s, maybe early 50s based on your kids' ages? So another 15-20, of working at peak earnings. Many people with your income will pay for the expensive 70K a year college out of both savings and current income. You say you have $220k per child. You can easily pay for expensive private colleges out of that $220k and your current income. Right now that's $55k from savings, 20k from current year income. Easily doable.

I find your post a bit of a humble brag - if it is genuine. Racking up $3M in retirement savings, plus $440k in college savings, plus presumably your house/mortgage/equity and any other assets while only making $275k HHI. I'm sure it can be explained to some degree but it's a bit unusual without inheritances. By the way, most med students take out loans for all their education as it's expected they will earn the high salaries in the future to pay off their loans with some ease and discipline. There is no requirement for you to pay for your child's graduate schooling. Helping out is great, but it's not the same obligation as college itself. Your "DD" is also years away from medical school. She may change her mind. She may get weeded out by premed courses in college.

Are we really that unique? You've guessed our ages. I don't think $3M is a highly unusual retirement amount for folks our age in our income as that only produces $120K per year income (in today's dollars)- in 10 years yes we will be fine assuming the stock market doesn't crash. We work at jobs that don't provide retirement health care or pensions. I only shared the retirement savings as I think it goes into financial aid calculations and I would guess based on that alone we wouldn't qualify.

No inheritance money but both my husband and I had college paid for and we both paid for our own graduate school through tuition reimbursements etc. I also lived with family rent free after college which helped.

I totally agree that she might get weeded out by premed courses in college and that's what makes this hard. If we put another $100K in a 529 plan and she decides not to go to medical school then we've probably just locked the money in for another generation. I don't want to pay the taxes to get the money out. We are planners and it feels easier psychologically to put let's say $25K away for the next 4-6 years than to come up with $100K at once. We will also have a younger one in college when the older one would theoretically be in med school. I realize I'm lucky but I'm just trying to get ideas.

[Anonymous]

You don't have to pay the full cost of grad school. Your kid can do some borrowing safely.

You also need to remember that paying for private undergaduate is a choice. You don't have to pay for that.

We earn more than you but with less retirement savings - probably because we were still in school when the kid was born. We will be spending less than you saved for undergrad. My kid chose a tough field, so we made sure he chose a school where we can afford an extra semester or other support (that wasn't going to be true at a full-freight private).

[Anonymous]

may all your problems be like this one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You already have very generous retirement savings and I'm assuming you're in your late 40s, maybe early 50s based on your kids' ages? So another 15-20, of working at peak earnings. Many people with your income will pay for the expensive 70K a year college out of both savings and current income. You say you have $220k per child. You can easily pay for expensive private colleges out of that $220k and your current income. Right now that's $55k from savings, 20k from current year income. Easily doable.

I find your post a bit of a humble brag - if it is genuine. Racking up $3M in retirement savings, plus $440k in college savings, plus presumably your house/mortgage/equity and any other assets while only making $275k HHI. I'm sure it can be explained to some degree but it's a bit unusual without inheritances. By the way, most med students take out loans for all their education as it's expected they will earn the high salaries in the future to pay off their loans with some ease and discipline. There is no requirement for you to pay for your child's graduate schooling. Helping out is great, but it's not the same obligation as college itself. Your "DD" is also years away from medical school. She may change her mind. She may get weeded out by premed courses in college.

Are we really that unique? You've guessed our ages. I don't think $3M is a highly unusual retirement amount for folks our age in our income as that only produces $120K per year income (in today's dollars)- in 10 years yes we will be fine assuming the stock market doesn't crash. We work at jobs that don't provide retirement health care or pensions. I only shared the retirement savings as I think it goes into financial aid calculations and I would guess based on that alone we wouldn't qualify.

No inheritance money but both my husband and I had college paid for and we both paid for our own graduate school through tuition reimbursements etc. I also lived with family rent free after college which helped.

I totally agree that she might get weeded out by premed courses in college and that's what makes this hard. If we put another $100K in a 529 plan and she decides not to go to medical school then we've probably just locked the money in for another generation. I don't want to pay the taxes to get the money out. We are planners and it feels easier psychologically to put let's say $25K away for the next 4-6 years than to come up with $100K at once. We will also have a younger one in college when the older one would theoretically be in med school. I realize I'm lucky but I'm just trying to get ideas.

I would think $3.44M in savings - retirement and college, out of $275k HHI is a bit unusual. Put it this way, assuming you and your DH have 25 years of working experience to date, that's $137k each year for the last 25 years. That's impossible out of a $275k HHI, obviously, as you have taxes to pay and a life to live, and that's also assuming your incomes have never been higher and you made this amount from the get go 25 years ago. And we still haven't even talked about your house/equity or other non-retirement savings. Yes, I'm aware of stock market appreciation and being frugal. But the only way it possibly makes sense is if you/DH went into IB or big law and racked up big salaries and bonuses for a decade without missing anything or suffering from the 2008 crash, and then scaled back into lower paying jobs. Or had a spectacularly lucky investment in a start up. So that's why the numbers don't crunch logically for me unless there's something you're not telling us.

[Anonymous]

I have written about this before, but here goes. I (DH and I) paid for 2 kids to go to college of their choice. Kid #1 decides to go to med school and gets in. Surprise! He assumes 4 years of tuition loans (hefty amount), but we paid ALL living expenses which kept him humble (lived with roommates, no vacation etc). He is now a lowly resident and sending the majority of his income to repayment. Living the dream.

From my perspective, I couldn't hand over med school $ without supplementing kid #2 and I didn't have that kind of money to play with. Being fair with kids is important to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You already have very generous retirement savings and I'm assuming you're in your late 40s, maybe early 50s based on your kids' ages? So another 15-20, of working at peak earnings. Many people with your income will pay for the expensive 70K a year college out of both savings and current income. You say you have $220k per child. You can easily pay for expensive private colleges out of that $220k and your current income. Right now that's $55k from savings, 20k from current year income. Easily doable.

I find your post a bit of a humble brag - if it is genuine. Racking up $3M in retirement savings, plus $440k in college savings, plus presumably your house/mortgage/equity and any other assets while only making $275k HHI. I'm sure it can be explained to some degree but it's a bit unusual without inheritances. By the way, most med students take out loans for all their education as it's expected they will earn the high salaries in the future to pay off their loans with some ease and discipline. There is no requirement for you to pay for your child's graduate schooling. Helping out is great, but it's not the same obligation as college itself. Your "DD" is also years away from medical school. She may change her mind. She may get weeded out by premed courses in college.

Are we really that unique? You've guessed our ages. I don't think $3M is a highly unusual retirement amount for folks our age in our income as that only produces $120K per year income (in today's dollars)- in 10 years yes we will be fine assuming the stock market doesn't crash. We work at jobs that don't provide retirement health care or pensions. I only shared the retirement savings as I think it goes into financial aid calculations and I would guess based on that alone we wouldn't qualify.

No inheritance money but both my husband and I had college paid for and we both paid for our own graduate school through tuition reimbursements etc. I also lived with family rent free after college which helped.

I totally agree that she might get weeded out by premed courses in college and that's what makes this hard. If we put another $100K in a 529 plan and she decides not to go to medical school then we've probably just locked the money in for another generation. I don't want to pay the taxes to get the money out. We are planners and it feels easier psychologically to put let's say $25K away for the next 4-6 years than to come up with $100K at once. We will also have a younger one in college when the older one would theoretically be in med school. I realize I'm lucky but I'm just trying to get ideas.

I would think $3.44M in savings - retirement and college, out of $275k HHI is a bit unusual. Put it this way, assuming you and your DH have 25 years of working experience to date, that's $137k each year for the last 25 years. That's impossible out of a $275k HHI, obviously, as you have taxes to pay and a life to live, and that's also assuming your incomes have never been higher and you made this amount from the get go 25 years ago. And we still haven't even talked about your house/equity or other non-retirement savings. Yes, I'm aware of stock market appreciation and being frugal. But the only way it possibly makes sense is if you/DH went into IB or big law and racked up big salaries and bonuses for a decade without missing anything or suffering from the 2008 crash, and then scaled back into lower paying jobs. Or had a spectacularly lucky investment in a start up. So that's why the numbers don't crunch logically for me unless there's something you're not telling us.

You are forgetting the power of compounding. Once you hit $2M in your accounts at a 10% savings rate you are making $200K per year- I realize that's a little high but the math was easy. I'd have to go through my numbers to figure out exactly how we got there but we are currently saving about $70K of our gross income. I remember reading once that your first million is the most difficult to earn and that's the truth. Theoretically in 4 years we'll have another $1M-$1.2 in retirement savings.

[Anonymous]

And that’s just the compounding piece. Once we hit 5M- I’d feel comfortable retiring.