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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Poor people do not have more options. Most truly poor people are not in the college pipeline.[/quote]

Additionally, if those "donut hole" families lived like the poor people, rented where they rent, shopped where they shop, etc., they'd have tons of options too. Just saying.  [/quote]

I get that some have special circumstances--medical debt or something unforeseen.  But most donut hole families that I know made choices to spend elsewhere.  New iPhone every year, 2 Starbucks trips per day, eating lunch out daily, eating half of dinners out, taking really nice vacations, new cars every 3-4 years, etc.  Yes those are all "small things" in the grand scheme of savings, but that is just what is visible to me---I'm sure there is much more I don't even see.  Someone with a mindset like that is choosing to spend on things when they could choose to save.  
We knew our kids would get no aid, so we started saving as soon as they were born.  We didn't start living a luxury lifestyle until we could afford it.  We paid only 50% of what we could easily afford for our first house and lived there for 7 years.  Sure we could afford a newer/nicer home, but we did not need it, this house had 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths so enough space for a young family---it was relatively speaking much nicer than the apartment we came from.  So we lived nicely but not luxuriously and saved the extras. We drove cars for 8-10 years and saved to pay cash for the next ones.  
We also choose to not have kids until 30, so that allowed us to consciously save the extra salary and live off of basically one.  We aggressively paid off all student loans, invested in our retirement.  Other than our honeymoon, I was 35 before I took a "fancy vacation", yet we could have easily afforded to do so at 25/26.  But that restraint allowed us to front load saving for college and then we could change our lifestyle as desired.

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Same here. Our children can go almost anywhere, but only because we got started saving early and let the savings compound. We never made more than $120K either, but we've always banked at least one income. The irony is that we can now afford to live on one modest income and maintain our lifestyle. Plus, since most of our money is tucked away in retirement accounts and our house is paid off, our EFC is pretty low.

I always think about our situation when people on this board talk about not getting married until you are much older. It's a choice, but you don't get to set your family up nearly as well as if you partnered up earlier in life. However, there is nothing wrong with state schools and lower ranked colleges either. [/quote]

Exactly. [b]It's all about choices. [/b] And of course, nothing wrong with any college.  Pick what works for your family, pick what's affordable.    But if you choose to have kids before you have paid off your own college debt, it will be harder to save for college and that choice will impact your kid's college choices, just a simple fact of life.  [b]Life is about choices, and you get to live with the consequences of your choices as a responsible adult[/b]
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Right, and if you don't have many or any choices, you are irresponsible.  The fact that college costs have far outpaced inflation for decades - increasing by almost 144% in two decades - isn't relevant.

Right?[/quote]

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