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

[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?

I agree it is totally absurd. I have 4 kids including a Senior in HS and can’t believe how much I will be spending over the next decade for college.
I truly wouldn’t have had more than 1 or 2 kids if I had realized.
The birth rate in the US is plummeting now due to the untenable costs of raising children

[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?

I agree it is totally absurd. I have 4 kids including a Senior in HS and can’t believe how much I will be spending over the next decade for college.
I truly wouldn’t have had more than 1 or 2 kids if I had realized.
The birth rate in the US is plummeting now due to the untenable costs of raising children

Well this is how it works in the developed world. The higher the education and income levels the lower the birth rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges and universities count on us to pay for the people who can't afford college. So they don't give any breaks and have an unrealistic idea of what people can afford -- we have two in college next year and we are not getting any breaks for this, they are still expecting us to pay full load even though we will have two in college. Yeah, no problem, even in-state that's going to come out to about $40-50K for one year.

It's back breaking.

Something’s got to give. It doesn’t seem sustainable. It’s crazy that the expectation is to save 100-200k per kid to go to school. Not even fancy schools. The middle class is getting royally screwed.

Real Middle Class aren't screwed as they are lower income and get financial aid. OP is not low income and had 18 years to save. Some of it is lifestyle choices. We choose not to live in a big or fancy house. We choose not to take vacations. We choose to keep our cars till they die. It was our priority to save and we did it on less income than OP.

Same. We still only have one bathroom lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a topic that really torques me off, OP. Colleges absolutely expect parents to bend over backwards to provide any and all EFC amounts through cash flow. Go through some net price calculators, zero out all savings and home equity, and you’ll still discover that an above average HHI has your EFC skyrocketing very quickly. In other words, colleges DON’T expect you to save for the majority of expenses. Rather, they expect you to reduce your standard of living while your kids are in school to that of the unofficial HHI cutoff values. These are typically around $75K - $150K.

For example, a family with an HHI of $150K or less might receive a very comfortable financial aid package. Whatever you make above this, universities will expect you to pay out. Make $350K HHI? That’s $200K more resources you have vs. the $150K family (maybe $120K after taxes). So University X will figure you can slash your living expenses by up to $120K per year, if necessary, which easily covers tuition/room/board…so therefore you receive NO financial aid.

NP. I mean, does anybody here really think you should qualify for financial aid if your HHI is $350K?

Education should be free for all. The better schools should be reserved for the students that worked harder to get there. Full stop.

Cute. College is not an entitlement. You don't have to go. What's next, free grad school?

You do realize that most graduate degree programs are tuition free, right? Duh. professional schools are not like medicine in law but PhD programs you go tuition free usually.