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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes, what is middle class in this case? 170K, 500K, 75K per year? Let's say it is around 150K.  How can you justify taking a loan that is possibly half the cost of your house if your house is 400K, which is a modest house in DC metro? How can you possibly hope that you can repay that if you are mid 40s and have mortgage payments and income will not increase, but decrease with retirement. Are you going to sell your house and pay off that Parent Plus Loan and be without any savings?  What am I missing?  Even a cheaper in state college, with dorm, is at least 26K, and to me even 100K is a ton of money, having two kids, we are talking about 200K anyway with a regular in state school, unless you are lucky and live close to the college. Tell me how do you plan on paying that off?  I certainly wouldn't consider 500K middle class, even if it might be here in DC. And I know from our own FAFSA that with an income of 150K DC got only 5K in Direct student loan for school that was over 50K per year.[/quote]
According to this thread middle class are those who are paying 50% taxes on their income. [/quote]

Well this is cray since we make over 600k and we don't pay 50% taxes. More like 30%. And we're definitely not middle class and can easily afford to save for our children's educations.[/quote]

Throw in state income tax and imagine two self-employed workers who earn about $125k each and that could add another 20%.  It's not impossible. [/quote]

Yes it is. It's a graduated income tax for a reason. Two people earning 250k together do not pay more than one person making > 600k.[/quote]

It's not all linear.  Social security taxes are capped (first $127,200 of incomes per worker).  Self-employed workers pay both worker and employer contribution (so 12.4%).  Tax brackets are large ($60K to 350K is in the same 8.5% bracket in DC) and rates don't go up that much from one high bracket to another.  The scenario I gave nets out at about 44.5% income tax rate.  And if someone in that situation also looks at property taxes as part of the tax burden that lowers their disposable income, then talking about [b]50% of their income going to taxes isn't crazy.  [/quote][/b]

+1  That would be us.  State + Federal + Property taxes + ACA  med insurance policy ($30,000 in after tax dollars) = more than 50% goes right out the door before we even start paying regular bills like full-freight college because FAFSA says we can afford college for two.  Yeah, right.[/quote]

Ok fine but you realize the person making over 600k still pays more right? There is not possible way he or she doesn't unless they make all their income through cap gains and the OP already nixed that possibility by mentioning the ~ 30% effective federal income rate.[/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