Reply to People with kids in college or professional/grad school: Which expenses do you pay for?

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[quote=Anonymous]My parents paid for college (with the help of my grandparents- I am very lucky!), but I was on my own for graduate school tuition and all living expenses (I had medical expenses come up in grad school that weren't covered under my school's health plan and my parents said that they would not help with those either; they weren't being jerks, they really needed to focus on saving for retirement and I respected their position). Ultimately, this made me take a lot of responsibility in grad school (prior to grad school I'd worked at nonprofits and barely made enough to survive). I went to grad school intending to work at a nonprofit or in government after I finished, but because I took out loans I ended up doing a U-turn my first year and got a very selective internship that really launched me into a career where I make more money than I ever could have imagined.

Although there were (and still are) times that I was really resentful of peers' whose parents paid for everything (I could have done a lot with the $120K that I spent on the cost of tuition, living expenses, and interest paying back the loans!), I actually feel that the responsibility that I felt to pay back the loans made me take that part of my education more seriously. I knew that I needed to hustle and I did. I went to an ivy in college and got good grades, but also kind of had my head in the clouds. Money really wasn't something that I stressed about or needed to think about (I wanted to "do good" and I honestly didn't care if that meant that I was going to make $40K my entire life). In that sense, the responsibility of needing to pay for grad school ended up really changing the trajectory of my career and probably my life. My husband's family was completely opposite everyone had college and grad school paid for and everyone got a car after completing grad school. I do think that people should spend their money however they want, but it seemed silly to me to give everyone a car at the end of grad school as a "prize" for finishing. Shouldn't the prize be getting your post-graduate education and expenses paid for when you're almost 30?[/quote]

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