Reply to If you have an HHI under 200k and no family money, where do you go for financial advice

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Reply to "If you have an HHI under 200k and no family money, where do you go for financial advice"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Me. I give myself the advice. We invested decades ago in high tech stocks, and despite being lower income with no family money, now have a significant stock market portfolio. There's not much to do - we're buy-and-hold people. We saw that our brokerage account was doing so much better than our kids' 529s (in which you cannot handpick stocks, which explains the difference in outcome), and stopped contributing to the 529s. We sell stocks to pay for college and try to live within our incomes for daily life.

If your funds are more limited, you need to do your own research and be very thoughtful about your kids' college strategy. Kids in MD and VA need >4.5 weighted GPAs, advanced courses like APs and IBs, high test scores, to get into UMD or UVA, UVA being more selective than UMD at this time.  They cost 30-40K a year, total cost of attendance, for state residents. Other state colleges can be cheaper and may be  less selective. If your child has the necessary academic background, some out-of-state colleges may give merit aid that reduces their costs to in-state levels.

Or you can do what many families do, which is start at community college for 2 years, get good grades, and transfer to the state flagship for the last 2 years. This is the least expensive option for average-to-good students, and you still get the state university's diploma in the end. Financially it's the best deal.

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And for college, your choice of major can really have a massive return on investment if you go to a lower ranked or no name school.

[b]Who here heard of Wichita State University? That's the school unattended and majored in Aerospace Engineering. The school is cheap and the AE major at Wichita is Top notch with huge industry connections. In my opinion, this is the route people should take for college[/b]. Sure I wish I went to Stanford, but my parents could not afford Stanford and I wasn't going to into debt for a degree that I can I can get elsewhere for much cheaper. [/quote]

This. This country is blessed with many universities. The choice of major is indeed really important. If you are a parent with a child who wants to be an engineer and you don't have a lot of money for college consider yourself lucky. There a lot of engineering schools that are very affordable and if your child starts doing internship after their freshman year and do so until their junior year, they will be very competitive on the job market.

Now if your child wants to be a lawyer or a doctor, oh boy good luck. The elitism in this country is very real when it comes to med school and law school. Your undergrad matters a lot.

I am an electrical engineer precisely in DSP and I have had interns from a wide range of schools. The Interns from the lower ranked schools were not unqualified at all. [/quote]

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