Middle class families - Are you willing to take on a ton of debt for a top college?
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Anonymous
 balanced
Many people (including me) believe we owe our kids a college education. Many such people (including me) also believe that "college education" does not mean, "the most expensive school DC can get into." |
Anonymous
+a million and this thread proves that. Columbia opens doors into the rich northeast culture that UVA doesn't??? yeah no shit |
Anonymous
If you're so obsessed with New York culture might as well pay your kid $280k to go live in new york and make friends with all the people with $$. People saying they are not on par are not talking about the education and the professors and the classes and the programs. Which btw is supposed to be what you are paying for. |
Anonymous
Agreed. How is it selfish to plan to pay $160K (!) for a child's education (perhaps x 2+ kids) but also want to stop working before your 70s. Even if you are a parent who thinks only the most expensive college your kid can get into will do, and you are willing to work until you die to make it happen, that is a big risk. My father wasn't eager to retire but got laid off in his mid-50s and never again worked at that professional level/income (senior management at a large manufacturing company). Age discrimination is real. They ended up living mainly on my mom's secretarial job. Thankfully, they'd paid in full for our state university educations so there were no loans to pay off, had a paid-off house, and good retirement fund. It gives me great comfort to see that they are doing well in retirement and will likely not need financial support from us kids. I'd hate to think that a selfish college choice by one (or more) of us kids had crippled them financially. DH and I make a good income and will be able to pay for public colleges but we are also saving very aggressively for retirement because he's a 56 yr old IT worker who we know could be laid off at any time and could have a hard time finding a job that pays as well. I expect him to retire as soon as our youngest graduates from college. At that point we can both live fine on my income. |
Anonymous
after all, DC is just a crappy mid-atlantic city for all the losers who don't have enough wealth for New York or LA. And they think they actually have culture? I mean, at least live in a Chicago if you have any decency at all. |
Anonymous
List proves nothing. The low tier colleges are probably all boomers and/or equal opportunity hires. |
Anonymous
huh? 80% of the list is "lower tier colleges" |
Anonymous
Which means they are both great and you wouldn't go into significant debt for the difference. |
Anonymous
| If parents go into debt for college, they are not doing their kids a favor, they are just delaying the cost that will eventually fall back on the kids when the parents don't have enough to care for themselves when elderly. You may end up being a financial burden on your kids when they are parents themselves, with medical and senior care costs that go on for years. |
Anonymous
Wrong. |
Anonymous
| If you don't spend at least $50K/year on each child's education, you are a horrible, selfish, failure of a person and should publicly shamed and privately beaten with a wooden spoon by a pitiless nun. |
Anonymous
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For further evidence you can look at the entering class at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
I can't find a list of undergraduate schools but last year for 120 spaces they took kids from 61 different colleges. My husband went there and went to an out-of-area state school. He had classmates from everywhere--from University of Central who-knows-where to no-name christian colleges. |
Anonymous
| How about let the kid go to UVA and help with the down payment? 100k+ in down payment can set them up nicely for life even in expensive areas. I do know 2 families who sent their kids to UMD (this was for engineering though) and later helped them with 150k in down payment, both kids have starter homes in McLean and work in Dulles tech corridor, these kids will be ready to move onto a "nicer" home in McLean in about 5yrs, it's not a bad life. |
Anonymous
That's why you shoudl be saving ahead of time! The rule of thumb for middle class families is 1/3 savings, 1/3 cash flow, and 1/3 loans. Come on, anyone can do 1/3 savings for a 70k a year school. You have 18 years. You can't save up ~ 100k in that time? |
Anonymous
Exactly. |