Reply to I know why Millenials can't afford houses and pay off their student loans..

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^^agree with pp that the "starter home" you purchased pre kids (who are now teens) is where your assets are.

Secondly, if your teens aren't ok with Target clothes and frugal living, tell them to get a job. I've been paying for my own clothes and entertainment since 14.  Actually even earlier with my birthday money before I was old enough to work. [/quote]

My kids are fine with Target and frugal living.  And we did not purchase our "starter home" pre kids - we had a two year old and thought, after the tiny apt we had to move into after Sept 11, at the time we purchased it, that it was a mansion.  But the real time for us to have moved was during the recession (when we already had three and could see the writing on the wall) and like other lawyers I got laid off and ended up working for the feds. Our income now does not qualify us for a loan for a larger house.

I would not send my kids to the private schools in this area now because the population has completely changed and a lot of the kids are 1% and nasty, and the tuitions are insane. 90% of kids in this country go to public schools.  DC is crazy in some ways.

But college tuitions are now insane as well, and I think empirically the rate at which tuition increased for both private schools here and college everywhere is crazy and I don't understand how it happened.

I am only nostalgic in the sense that the city I grew up in no longer exists.  Everyone in our neighborhood went to private schools (not the Catholic ones) and no one was on financial aid.  The schools were not full of incredibly wealthy nasty kids with nasty parents (saw enough in preschool to realize private school was no longer an option socially and have been proved right over the years).  A lot of feds had their kids in our schools, lived in our neighborhoods.  That is all out of reach now even when you have both spouses working for the feds - the houses and the private schools.

I did not meet anyone on financial aid until I was in college.  And that Ivy is probably out of reach for my kids both acceptance wise and financially.  And as the Times just reported, those colleges are also full of kids from 1% families.  They were not at the time.  I saw friends crushed by college and law school loans back then because of interest rates or because they came from really poor families (1st in their families to ever go to college),and just don't want my kids in that position.

Always thought we could move to a state with good universities that, like UVA law school for me, would have very low tuition and a preference for in state students.  Again, when I was there the tuition was $6,200 for in state students - not even $20k to graduate.  I went there because I was risk averse financially in terms of what kind of job I would get/want but ended up on Wall Street just in time for the dot.com bubble to burst.

Sorry to be so obtuse, but if our small starter home is our biggest asset, are you suggesting we sell it to pay college tuitions?  I am hoping for merit scholarships because we fall right in that crack where need based aid will be limited but we cannot pay for college.

And I started babysitting at 11, worked summers all through high school and college, and worked during college as well.  The making money through babysitting or manual labor is not there either for my kids.  Over the summers in high school, at a time when our summer place was not full of 1% (it is now) I cleaned houses, worked in markets, was the janitor at a country club.  All of those jobs are now filled by adults.  In addition, why would someone want a Calculus tutor who is still in high school when there are college students ready to instruct their kids and they don't care what they have to pay for it?

If anyone has any recommendations for 11/12/15 year olds looking for paid summer employment opportunities please tell me.  My kids are developing work ethics in other ways but the magical feeling of being somewhat financially independent and getting a paycheck every week before college seems to be gone.   Maybe I am just looking in the wrong places.

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