Reply to Why do donut hole families

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Why do donut hole families"

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][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.

[/quote]

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]
[/quote]

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]

Obviously that is an issue.  And we should work to address that, but given that majority of colleges are private not much can/will be done. However, there ARE affordable options to get an education and that’s the goal.  So if you can’t afford on choice search for what you can afford.  Not everything in life is fair, but majority of people can afford to get a college degree—just not at a top U for some [/quote]

The only real affordable options out there for the AVERAGE American (not the "feel poor" DCUMers making $300k per year) is community college or commuting to a state university.  Look up average HHIs around the country and tell me how these people are supposed to sock away hundreds of dollars per month for their kid to live on campus at even a state university?  And then do that for multiple kids.  It's just not reality for most.  I'm not saying these are bad options but lets not pretend they're not limited.

I will never cease to be shocked by the clueless posters on here who think people could fully fund college if only they never got Starbucks, got rid of cable, or stop driving BMWs.  [/quote]

The affordable options are the schools that meet full need through only grants. There is a reason there there is so much pressure and competition to get into those schools [/quote]

There are 21 schools, out of more than 3K that do this for middle income families.

And, to be clear, they are offering a package that allows a family who feels they can afford their EFC to send their kid with no loans.  Almost no one's EFC feels affordable.  If someone is claiming to be a "donut hole" family, it's because their EFC does not feel affordable to them, and they feel that it requires loans to pay.  I don't know why someone who believes their EFC gave them a number that is too hard to pay, believes that all the people with lower incomes than them have EFC's they can pay.

Anyway, here's the list.  Other than Berea and Ozarks, all of those schools are highly rejective.  Any student who gets into one of those will also have other strong options that give merit. The idea that someone who gets into a school on that list, and decides they can't afford it, won't get merit without going to Frostburg, is absurd.  Those kids will have options.

Amherst College
Berea College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Colby College
College of the Ozarks
Columbia University
Davidson College
Grinnell College
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Vanderbilt University
Washington and Lee University
Yale University[/quote]

On paper.  Good luck getting any $ if you make $150k. Ain’t happening no matter what they advertise.[/quote]

I actually did get some from one of those schools.  We were making about $200K and had 2 kids in college.[/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