Reply to Did you folks not do ANY saving?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Did you folks not do ANY saving?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My Ivy alma mater is now $74,000 a year. As a reference when I graduated in 2002 it was just about $34,000. Today, four years at my alma mater, assuming no increases, would be just shy of $300,000. But I'm still years away from paying college bills so who knows what it will be in six years' time (it almost makes me sick to think about it as college costs still increase well beyond the rate of inflation and most people's pay increases). There's a certain arrogance in your assumption that people can easily save $300,000 x # of kids over 18 years, when they still have to live a life, raise a family, pay for a place to live, feed themselves, pay their taxes, pay for emergencies, and put aside money into retirement savings. I'm guessing you're one of those people who started his first job in investment banking and has always been making six figures since he was 22, or something similar, and you have no clue that for most people the trajectory to a higher HHI is one that requires patience and time and progression through the career ladder, with even setbacks along the way.

We manage to save quite a lot by being frugal but it does seem like no matter how hard you try the costs of life outpaces what you can manage to save so your hypothetical savings you calculate at the onset of the year rarely come to fruition. We are fortunate that we can save what we can, and we will, barring any unforeseen emergencies or changes in life, be able to swing the college costs. But I am already starting to ask if it's worth it. If it's a choice between my alma mater and in state at a good flagship or another college with a big merit, I'm tempted to encourage the kids to go that route and use the differential to help buy them a house or even to pay for graduate school, which is increasingly more important than your BA these days. Or even just put the differential into a fund and tell them they can't touch it until they turn 70. To be honest, I'm increasingly bitter at the high college costs because there's absolutely no way they're justified nor does it make any sense whatsoever. [/quote]
Great post which captures the trajectory of many UMC families in the DMV. Our family joke is that we have saved enough to send DS to any school of his choice in 2002!  We can afford a $50-55k college but there aren’t too many top rated colleges at this price point (and ds’s stats do place him in the 99+ percentile). We have a modest home (typical older house in DMV that needs a lot of TLC) , cars that are 18 and 8 years old and most of our furniture is from Ikea.   So while I feel grateful for what we have I do feel frustrated that we cannot give ds the same opportunity our parents gave us - to go to the best school we were admitted to.   We have been talking to ds about this for years now so he is prepared to make some tough choices. He has also seen older friends who are in a similar situation turn down dream schools for UMD. He is a good kid and would try to be sensible but as his parent I feel sad that we couldn’t save more. [/quote]

You could make up the difference between your savings and your DS' dream school cost by cosigning a student loan (may be unsubsidized in your case) or by taking a line of credit from a bank on the equity in your house. [/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