Reply to How does most of America pay for these elite schools?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How does most of America pay for these elite schools?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Most high stats kids from donuts hole families give up on elite schools and go to the in state flagship  [/quote]

This is us. Our HHI is $145K. We didn't qualify for much FA, despite the fact that $80K per year is more than half our HHI!! Crazy. 
State schools for our kids. 
Meaning, the best and the brightest are NOT going to the Ivies or the SLACs like Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, etc. 
My kids should be at these schools, but we can't afford to send them there. [/quote]

Do you have a kid in college? Have you actually applied for financial aid? Our HHi is a bit higher than yours (in the 180ish range), and we have definitely qualified for significant financial aid at "expensive" schools. I could see that you don't qualify if you have other significant non-retirement assets, but, if you are making less than $150,000 and don't own multiple properties or have 6 figures in stocks/brokerage accounts/or shares of a private corp., you will get financial aid at a lot of schools. It may not be enough, but, that is a different argument. [/quote]

Responding to pp and 8:48. We’re the ones with the millions in retirement but little in 529s. Our income is between yours (180ish and 145ish) for a family of four. We’re also the ones paying $30k a year in out of pocket medical expenses out of salary, and we live in this High Cost of Living DCUMLand. Please share at which institutions you received financial aid. I’ll have my second kid think about applying to those schools.

In my opinion, retirement accounts should be off the table for college purposes. Who else will fund your retirement? Our parents had no big estate to pass on to us; as I posted earlier, we helped them financially. We don't want to burden our kids, so we prioritized retirement savings. My husband came up in an era where you could fairly easily gain entrance to your state flagship (yes, even UVA if you were from NoVa), and he was against funding a 529. We really could not afford it anyway; we had a lot of medical debt on credit cards.

Our country will be in a heap of trouble if people empty 401ks to pay for college. Yet that is exactly what my A+ Forbes-financial health alma mater asked me to do. Ironically, they place a lot of grads into finance, presumably at places where they dream up college loan direct marketing campaigns to HS seniors. [/quote]

I am trying, but failing to understand your logic.  How is having millions in a retirement account (with little in taxable accounts or a 529) different from having millions in just your normal taxable accounts (but little retirement or 529 savings).  Why should someone that saved $250,000 in a 529 and $750,000 in their 401k be treated differently than someone that opted to just put $1,000,000 in their 401k?

[/quote]

dp - people should not be forced to choose between college tuition and retirement. or between having a working car, or eating out and having a vacation, for that matter. and as much as the problem are colleges and governments, even more so are these idiots who lived crappy lives for 20 years so that their child can have a brand name degree. it is losers like this who will never accept change in the system. we suffered, because we valued "education" [/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