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If you asked a grandparent for help with tuition?
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Anonymous
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Wow, what fights. Funny how our culture is. Parents pay for everything and the end result is whining adult children who still need to be financially supported.
I know some foreigners. They send money to their parents, even though they are paying off student loans and a young struggling family. And the family back home is not struggling. Their culture is just built that way. You live off your children when they are grown, up until then you keep paying for your own parents |
Anonymous
Maybe in wealthy Chinese families. There are a lot of poor Chinese families out there, too, that can't afford tuition--either for their own children or their grandchildren. Let's not stereotype based upon ethnicity. |
Anonymous
You're stating the obvious, which goes without saying. What I stated is not based on a stereotype. |
Anonymous
| I grew up in CA with a lot of Chinese friends, and none of the grandparents paid for private school tuition. They thought it was a waste of money. They did give huge sums of money to help pay for college, for weddings, and for down payments on homes. |
Anonymous
| Maybe in those parts of CA, the public schools were a better options than what many parents are finding in the DC area. |
Anonymous
When I wrote about grandparents' paying in traditional, Chinese families, I mentioned only tuition because I was addressing just the topic of this thread. Obviously in different families, people deem different things wroth of spending money on. And obviously grandparnets would not be paying tuition or mortgages or cars or whatever if they don't have the money. As a Chinese-American I am the last person to say that all Chinese_american families are the same. I was speaking only about the view in the *traditional* Chinese culture that the family extends across several generations and financial obligations are shared. Of course some families are less traditional than others. |
Anonymous
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9:23 here. I wouldn't say the public schools were better than those in NoVA or Montgomery Co. Certainly some the elementary schools in NW DC are better than those in CA.
While I do think that in traditional Asian families (I'm Korean) there is a strong tendency for families to share their wealth across inter-generational lines, the assumption that Chinese grandparents will pay specifically for private school tuition is not as common as hearing about grandparents giving lots of money for other things (like weddings). |
Anonymous
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Depends on where in CA -- the school district I grew up in was much better than the best schools in DCPS. I'd have chosen TJ over my HS in a heartbeat, but I can't say that for any other NoVA or MoCo school. A few are comparable but none is clearly superior and I had cheap/easy access to the state college system and made use of it.
By contrast, back then the SoCal privates almost all sucked. |
Anonymous
| Wow, some people writing these posts are really mean. If the grandparents are generous/able enough to pay -- it is their business. I just hope I can oneday pay for mine. I'd rather buy tuition for a grandkid than leave them a house after I die. |
Anonymous
| Hi, OP. Do you really want to ask? That is a 13 year commitment (and I'm assuming you're not including college and beyond). |
Anonymous
| Agree with poster 16:52, let us remember to love, cherish and give back to our parents as they age. |
Anonymous
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Grandparents in our family offered to pay for private school tuition. This was just prior to stock crash. Thank goodness I didn't accept private school tuition offer (nor send child to private school), because I know that the grandparents ability to pay dropped drastically during the crash (although it has rebounded to some extent) and they never would have spoken up if money for tuition had suddenly become tight.
Just something to think about -- what would happen if grandparents suddenly needed access to that money due to illness or financial misfortune or divorce? Would you pull child from school? Get scholarship money? |
Anonymous
I am lucky that grandparents' money isn't actually needed for tuition but lets us have a bigger financial cushion in savings. If they couldn't provide the money anymore, we'd still be able to pay the tuition, but we'd have a lower rate of saving. If I needed to, I'd apply for FA, but ultimately as a SAHM with a Harvard law degree and several years of legal practice under my belt, I have earning potential I can tap into if needed. By the way, I agree with the PP who points out that we should remember give back to our parents as they age. My parents put me through Harvard College and Harvard Law School (not inexpensive!) with their own money and never had any FA so that I graduated debt-free, and when they are old I am going to be taking care of them physically and financially. |
Anonymous
| PP, are you saying that you accept grandparents' money intended for tuition, but then put it into savings--as a "cushion?" |
Anonymous
No, my parents know that I don't need the money for tuition, but they want to pay the tuition, so they make me a gift of money every year. You could say they pay tuition, or you could say DH and I pay it. My parents just want to pay the tuition. Their doing so just lets DH and I save more for college, retirement, etc., and my parents know that. |