Reply to Middle class families - Are you willing to take on a ton of debt for a top college?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Middle class families - Are you willing to take on a ton of debt for a top college?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Think with yours. The OP said the PARENTS would be taking on the loans, not the student.[/quote]

Well then the parents need to repay them.  Will that hurt their ability to save for retirement?  Will it mean retirement has to be delayed for a long time?  My DH will be ready to retire when our youngest finishes college.  Repaying loans does not work with that plan.  Also, can they do the same for other kids in the family?  Taking out exorbitant loans for one child's education and then not doing that for the rest of the kids is setting up for a lot of family problems.

We've told our kids we can cover the cost of in-state public universities.  In reality, I'd probably be willing to stretch another $10K over that IF (big IF) a more expensive big brand name school would provide a real advantage for them pursuing a particular goal.  But not $40K extra per year.   This assume they have a particular passion that this one school can help them achieve. Otherwise, based on the many people I have worked with and been friends with over my life, I just don't see that the brand name schools offer some amazing advantage over state universities for undergrad.  I do think it matters in a lot of fields for grad school so the calculus changes there, but, again, at that point the student should have a particular goal and know how that school will help them achieve it.  [b]I'm not going to delay our retirement for years just so my child can go to Columbia to explore and figure out her interests[/b].[/quote]

:shock: selfish[/quote]

:shock:  balanced

Many people (including me) believe we owe our kids a college education.  Many such people (including me) also believe that "college education" does not mean, "the most expensive school DC can get into."

[/quote]

Agreed. How is it selfish to plan to pay $160K (!) for a child's education (perhaps x 2+ kids) but also want to stop working before your 70s.  Even if you are a parent who thinks only the most expensive college your kid can get into will do, and you are willing to work until you die to make it happen, that is a big risk.  My father wasn't eager to retire but got laid off in his mid-50s and never again worked at that professional level/income (senior management at a large manufacturing company).  Age discrimination is real.  They ended up living mainly on my mom's secretarial job. Thankfully, they'd paid in full for our state university educations so there were no loans to pay off, had a paid-off house, and good retirement fund.  It gives me great comfort to see that they are doing well in retirement and will likely not need financial support from us kids.  I'd hate to think that a selfish college choice by one (or more) of us kids had crippled them financially.

DH and I make a good income and will be able to pay for public colleges but we are also saving very aggressively for retirement because he's a 56 yr old IT worker who we know could be laid off at any time and could have a hard time finding a job that pays as well.  I expect him to retire as soon as our youngest graduates from college.  At that point we can both live fine on my income.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics