Reply to S/O What is our obligation as parents regarding college $$$?

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[quote=Anonymous]You don’t have an obligation to pay for college or grad school. If you’re asking if you will be judged for not doing so, I think this board has already spoken that yes, some will judge you and some will not. If you’re asking if your kids will feel like you should have helped them pay for these things, I can’t speak with certainty, but my guess would be yes. I don’t know how you’ve raised your kids or under what environment, but if it’s an environment where most of their peers are having these things paid for and you can’t give them a good reason why you can’t, then yes, they may resent you for it. I will say if you’re only going to pay so much, tell them so and tell them early and coach them so they can make an informed decision on colleges. It’s a lot easier to set the expectation low and then change your mind to exceed it than the other way around.

I paid a substantial amount for my private undergrad. I had a great experience, but if I’d known I would have to pay for it in the end, I would have made a different choice. With the full knowledge that my grad school was on me, I made very different choices. Nonetheless, the amount I had to pay for undergrad and grad school were both calculated based on the assumption my parents were contributing to my education—so it was a double whammy. I have a good relationship with my parents but there’s still some nagging resentment that they didn’t help me as a teenager make an informed decision and some resentment at my grad school forcing me to include my parents income when they had ceased to support me financially years before I started (they told me it was an under 26 thing). It’s been a while and we’re doing okay financially but I forever feel like I’m playing catch up in a race where I started behind my peers. [/quote]

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