Why pay all of kids' college?
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Anonymous
Plus, have you been to Buffalo NY? It's miserable6 months of the year and never stops snowing---Lake effect snow is a nightmare. My kid is nearby for college (1 hour) and none of their friends plan to stay in Rochester---it's an amazing school but realistically they all want to head elsewhere for their careers. |
Anonymous
No. Places like Richmond and Wake Forest were 20-25k tuition 30 years ago. |
Anonymous
It's not a DMV or PA or any state thing. It's a class thing. Bethesda is no different from the Main Line or Squirrel Hill or Sewickly or any comfortably off family in Pennsylvania. IF you have the money, you pay for the kids' colleges. It's that simple. |
Anonymous
Depends on a lot. Are you UMC because you got there quickly with generational wealth, your parents helped you pay for college and/or cars previously, a down payment on a house, etc. Or are you UMC after spending 1-2 decades paying off prior loans, saving for a down payment (in our case, $3k was all we could afford on a fixer upper in an "undesirable" area), and climbing the ladder? Are you UMC technically by national income standards but MC in an urban area because you are beholden to a job in a HCOL area? FAFSA doesn't care if you live in DC or rural flyover country. My income is $120k but would be $40k less outside of the DMV area. DH would also earn considerably less. But yes, we're UMC technically speaking. No, we won't be able to afford to send our kids full ride. |
Anonymous
I have - it's where some family moved to have a LCOL area while they paid off loans. They love it and are raising their kids there in a suburb of Buffalo w/ cheap houses and excellent schools. To each their own, I guess. |
Anonymous
+1, my small private liberal arts college was $20-25k in the late 90s/early 00s, currently over $70k all in now. |
Anonymous
This -- in 2021, they revised the rules which allowed me to count payments that weren't in the "right" payment plan even though all of my loans were federal (undergrad and grad). We had opted for the graduated payment plan, in which your payments increased over time, presumably as your income increased. I started working for an eligible employer months before the PSLF program started. I was able to get my $65000 debt cancelled (more than I started with thanks to interest even with 15 years of payments) and a refund of my overpayments. The refund money went straight into my daughters 529 account, with a little taken out for a nice spring break trip. She starts college in the fall, and we really don't want her to take loans. We may have her take some and we'll pay them off, but I don't want to saddle her with the burden that I had. |
Anonymous
This. Georgetown was under $25K in 1993. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/05/24/area-colleges-expect-smaller-cost-increases/3a949c57-b4c9-4dd5-8620-0b15f6c5051f/ |
Anonymous
College was absolutely cheaper back then...in 1950 Harvard was $625/year and around $1,000/year including room and board and the median HHI was $3,100. In 1990, Harvard total cost of attendance was $19,395 and median HHI was $50,000. Today, Harvard total cost of attendance is $83,538 and median HHI is $75,000/ So, Harvard went from 32% to 39% to 111% of HHI over those time periods. |
Anonymous
It’s fine to judge the utter selfishness that is having 12 kids. |
Anonymous
And this is where it's even more absurd to expect to cover 100% of student tuition. Removing Harvard from the conversation, even back when college tuition was more reasonable, the average MC family wasn't paying for all of it; perhaps the UMC could. But now that college tuition is dramatically more expensive relative to HHI, there seems to be a HIGHER expectation is to pay for all of it (??). |
Anonymous
Exactly and this is another example of why rich/Umc families stay that way for generations while other people have generational struggle. |
Anonymous
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Human brains aren’t fully developed until around 25. And people expect 18 year olds to make good life decisions. They need guidance.
My parents paid for my college and graduate school. I worked very hard. When I got out, I picked my work opportunities without being forced because of a crushing debt. Education is so important. |
Anonymous
University of MD total COA in 1990 for in-state was $6,500, so, 13% of HHI. Current in-state total COA is $29,637, so 40% of HHI. Perhaps the bigger issue is just how little median HHI has increased since 1990. |
Anonymous
Sure. But your parents had the means to pay for it - and grad school!! So you don't come from a typical family or situation. My mom was a widow who lived on SS and a tiny plumbers pension. My father died when I was in kindergarten. DH's parents had very middle class jobs - school admin office and car factory labor worker; his dad took on a side business, but still he and his sibling took on significant loans for undergrad. For those of us coming from families who couldn't swing it, played catch up, AND now college tuition is considerably more relative to household income, we might have gotten more prestigious jobs so to speak, but still not necessarily able to swing paying full tuition for our kids. This is where UMC stay UMC and MC still struggle to climb any further. It's the donut hole. |