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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The moral obligation here is that if you and your DH can afford it, you should be willing to pay up to the full price of an in-state public. Some privates offer merit that could reduce costs significantly, others will require loans.

Personally DH and I have told our 2 kids we’ll pay for the best school they are admitted to that they want to attend, public or private, but we are a family that highly values education, and clearly you and your DH are not.[/quote]

Being realistic matters. I paid for Duke (BA) and Georgetown (JD) entirely on my own. I left home at 18 with no family and no family support.  Just the way it was.

Here's the catch. I went to Duke on athletic scholarship. Yes, I had the academic qualifications, and yes, I was a good athlete who worked harder than my talent, but I was at a performance level better than the top 1/10th of one percent in the country. I thought the notion of an athletic scholarships absurd, but heck what was I to do? I made it work rather than it work me. I traipsed home and got a job trading futures at the CME and did it for three years, living on nothing and saving every penny (livestock and meat futures). Paid cash for law school and never any student loans.

Two daughters.  National Merit Finalists.  Much better students than I ever was.  Really, I was going to tell them to go it alone? Do what I did? I don't think so. I came from nothing with a goal to create a different generational trajectory, working hard to avoid a sports career that many of my athletic peers chose. Of course I invested and saved for my kids and paid for them.  You don't make for generational change (my parents were dysfunctional and not educated) without a sense of higher purpose. Pay for a beach house, or Princeton?. I don't judge those who opt for the beach house but having been in poverty and in the bottom ten percent it just changed the way I looked at life. They don't have an ounce of debt - as planned. 
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