Why do donut hole families
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Anonymous
DP here. I would love to not live in the DC area, but unfortunately I married someone whose job is dependent on being near DC. If we move to a LCOL area, we have fewer employment options and probably lower salaries. Nothing is going to be perfect. |
Anonymous
NP. Sure but there are *more* jobs in higher cost of living places like NYC. I say this as someone trying to find a job somewhere lower cost of living so I can leave the DC area (where my current job is fixed). I'm filtering out big cities I can't afford like NYC, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver and suddenly the jobs available for my skillset go from thousands to tens. Most of the jobs are in places I can't afford to live. |
Anonymous
This. I’m sure the “all about choices” folks would claim that you made a choice to live in a country with stagnant wages and skyrocketing college costs and inflation. I’m not sure at what point I should have done this analysis AND been able to predict which country would weather this better and have all the steps in place to get a job and work visa to said country. Apparently buying lattes, being an extraordinary economist to accurately forecast all that information plus perhaps another career to get a work visa, and being willing to uproot to another country is all it takes to control your fate and not be a donut hole family. Who knew. |
Anonymous
They expected you to save some over the years, not cash flow 80K. However, if you have not done that, there are literally hundreds of more affordable choices, so you have your kid apply and attend one of those |
Anonymous
It is called living within your means. Identify "wants" vs "needs" and include savings in your "needs" before you start splurging on the "wants". |
Anonymous
And people should choose to live within their means. You know your income and cost of living and you budget and adjust. If you choose to live in an expensive area just to be near family, great. But then it's a choice and you need to adjust accordingly. If your job does not pay enough to live in a HCOL area then actively search and make a plan to move elsewhere. Fact is life is about choices. Majority of Americans live on much less than the DCUM. Some even in HCOL areas. If you choose to live in HCOL area you have to adjust your lifestyle to accommodate and that means getting less "wants" satisfied if you want to be a responsible adult. |
Anonymous
+1 Choose to have more kids than you can afford, and you might not send them to an $80K/year school. If that's your goal you must plan accordingly and save accordingly. But it's not like you can't send them to college you just need to plan |
Anonymous
Totally understand that. You don't have much "wants" to cut/adjust. The above is about the many many people I know/see who easily could cut and save for college but dont do so and then complain. So you budget and attempt to save what you can. And you plan/prep your kids for the fact that Harvard is not affordable for you, so lets search for merit and find an awesome list of schools that we can afford---plenty that give merit if you search privates and have a decent student. Your kid will grow up knowing they need to work to help get thru college and do well in MS/HS to earn the most merit possible. But there are plenty of places your kid can attend. As I mentioned above, my parents managed to find over 10% of their income to help pay for college yet didn't make much. They managed to save a little and cash flow with 2nd jobs for one of them and I worked 60+Hrs in the summer and as much as I could every break I was home (and my at school job when I was at school). |
Anonymous
No one is forcing you to. But it's up to you to figure out how to put your kid thru college. There are plenty of affordable ways. And if you want the 80K/year school, then you had to prepare. Otherwise you should send your kid to where you as a family can afford. There are plenty of choices that are only $30K/year. Btw, you don't need to save $50-80K/year. If you save since they are little, even $10K/year goes a really long way towards funding college. But if you don't plan and wait until they are teens, their affordable options are less. But there are still many ways to get an education. |
Anonymous
Only 10k a year? We made 100k HH for many years, which paid for a mortgage for a 1400 square foot house in Sterling, and two cars. Kids are in rec sports, no tutoring. We eat out once or twice a month. Our families are overseas, so we did spend around 2k a year on plane tickets. There were no 10k to save. We now make around 160k, but the house needs repairs and the cars will need to be replaced. Kids will attend community college and then hopefully transfer overseas. |
Anonymous
Again with the just move to a lower cost area. That is not possible for many people. And that reasoning makes no freaking sense bc then just well off people would live in HCOL areas. And who is going to do all the other jobs (which are the vast majority of jobs)? Are you saying nurses, teachers, cops, etc should only live in LCOL areas? How far would they have to commute just to come work at a HCOL area to support the rich folks? Teach their kids? DCUM is filed with supposedly smart people but damn, some of you can’t really see outside your bubble and are some of the most concrete thinkers I’ve ever come across. |
Anonymous
https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/27/finding-affordable-college-merit-scholarship-need-based-aid-fafsa-full-tuition-ron-lieber/ |
Anonymous
I love how not being to afford 80K for college per year (heading towards 100K per child per year) is a personal choice and when I was making decisions to have children I should have known colleges would have tripled in cost and far outpaced inflation. If I had all these powers to predict the future honestly I would have used it on a lotto pick and won the mega millions. I’m not even sure what these lectures about being a responsible adult is about. The bottom line is with the information I had at the time making the life decisions I made, there was never this one moment of time that I had all the pieces in front of me and had certainly and could weigh all the implications in totality to make a decision that would have been this “choice” to afford an 80k/year college. If my kids decide to have children they are working from the information that private colleges cost more than most homes and possibly public college tuition might be out of reach, that jobs aren’t secure and can be outsourced. After having their college choices limited to public colleges and private colleges with merit they might structure their lives around that by having 1 or no children or selecting a field that makes it easy to find a job in a lower cost of living area so that their kid can pick any college they get into. However, even if they structure their lives with that goal there is still a level of unpredictability with best laid plans - what if there is another pandemic, what if technology advances to make their field obsolete etc. So it’s also possible to be responsible and make good financial choices and still not being to afford something. I’m not saying they entitled to this or need this, I’m just saying this isn’t a Choose Your Own Adventure book where an obvious choice leads you to everything- its more like the Game of Life where it’s luck, timing, and small decisions and it doesn’t always turn out as planned despite “choices” |
Anonymous
This is almost exactly where we are. We save what we can, but it's more like 5k/year per kid (we still have one in day care so there goes another 15k). I promise you we're not overspending. That said we are fine with our kids going to state schools or less selective colleges and dont complain about donut holes. We obviously are doing OK but haven't won the rat race ourselves despite Ivy League degrees, and we know plenty of people within our own families who have to start with community college and wind up successful adults. I also just don't see this as an "every man for himself" thing, if 20 years from now things have gotten so bad that kids with college degrees literally can't pay for food and housing that will be an issue of massive inequality that we need to change on a collective political level. There I said my piece. |
Anonymous
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For most people I know in real life, the anger and frustration comes from two main places.
First - colleges have gotten so much more expensive so quickly. And the cost is one of the very few things in life where what you are charged depends on some opaque calculation that the school makes based on limited information. And you really have no idea what they are going to charge. You can research and learn that x% of students get x% of aid but that doesn't tell you what your student will get (merit or need). The NPCs are not great if you don't fit into the usual categories, and they don't always show merit aid. So you have to apply in order to learn what they are going to charge you. And by then your student has invested time and energy in order to show interest and write a "why this school" essay and is invested in it. Then you have to say no because whatever magic calculation the school did comes out different that your guess. That is wrong and frustrating. All these luxury goods analogies only make sense if the dealership is making up significantly different prices for every person who walks in the door based on vague criteria. and second - I don't think most people are bothered by the truly low income students getting a different price. For most people I know it's when you see the neighbor or classmate who you've known for years getting a different price. You've seen the house remodel or the new cars or the boats or the vacation photos. But now suddenly this family is getting significant aid. Maybe it's legitimate, maybe they are lying, but that is when the people I know get annoyed. When they seem someone who appears to be in the same bucket as they are getting charged a significantly different amount. I do agree that not everyone is "owed" an expensive private school education. Most middle income families can make something work at a lower ranked school, and that is fine. It is just frustrating when the colleges play the games with pricing and then you watch your neighbor get a different cost. As far as saving and making choices - these arguments get ridiculous. I had spontaneous twins. It was not my choice to have two kids in school at the same time, but there it is. I didn't choose to have 3 out 4 grandparents get sick/need support/pass away (no inheritance). I didn't choose for one child to have significant medical needs not covered by insurance. I didn't choose for our income to increase just as our kids are becoming college aged. It is what it is and we will do what we need to do, but for many many people, it isn't about cutting out Starbucks. |