Reply to What is a "donut hole family"?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Could someone please explain, because it sounds like people with nice resources feeling entitled to more than they can afford.[/quote]

No. It is a family that won’t qualify for FA but that doesn’t have the resources to [b]reasonably [/b]handle tuition at the priciest/most elite colleges. I don’t know about families feeling entitled, but from the colleges’ standpoint it is a real problem that they are concerned about. They don’t want their student populations to come from two stratified socioeconomic groups.[/quote]

This most closely describes the issue in an unbiased way. While I don’t expect massive FA, we also [b]can’t comfortably pay for expensive private college.[/b] The colleges take into account all assets, which is great. No one should get to hide their wealth in a boat purchase. At the same time, we can’t liquidate our retirement savings. We would have to pay penalties. The government has penalties to discourage using your retirement money for non-retirement. So, we find ourselves in a spot where savings that we can’t use without expensive penalties is used to indicate we have “too much” money.

Meanwhile, our cash flow is not high, so it’s hard to swing the full cost.

Before people call me a whiner or tell me how lucky I am, I know I am lucky. I’m not complaining. We could empty our retirement accounts, but it would then lead us into poverty and that doesn’t help society or ourselves. [/quote]

[b]I don't know anyone who thinks paying for "expensive private college" is comfortable.[/b]  This is the problem with donut hole discussions - of course it's expensive!  It's expensive for everyone!  If you think you're hard done by because you can't just instruct your household manager to write a check and forget about it moments later, you have skewed expectations in life.  "Not outrageously wealthy" is not a protected class.

[/quote]

I'm 60 years old and graduated from a NESCAC school in 1983.  The year I started, it cost about $8K for tuition, room, and board.  I paid about $2000-$2500 of that from summer and part-time job (during the school year) earnings and my parents paid the rest.  They did the same for my three siblings.  It was not "comfortable" meaning "cushy," but it was completely doable.  Some of my friends at similar schools and at Ivy League schools needed loans, and they took them out (usually around $6K-$8K total) and paid them off fairly quickly.  My friends at public universities were able to work their way through college earning minimum wage.

Fast-forward, that private school now costs $80K all-in.  Very few families with four children could pay for it "comfortably" no matter how hard the kids worked during summers.

That is what people are angry about.[/quote]

Once upon a time, private college was not expensive.  Everyone knows that.  I'm not arguing that college costs are reasonable now, I'm saying that the posters complaining about being in a "donut hole" because they cannot [b]comfortably pay [/b]for [b]the most expensive option[/b] are not adding anything to the discussion.  [b]The nature of an option being the most expensive is that . . . it's expensive and everyone can't afford it! [/b] And unless you're very rich, it's going to sting to write that check.  If you can still afford it, just "uncomfortably"; if you can still handle tuition, just not "reasonably" - that's not sympathetic, and it's not a donut hole.  And there are literally thousands of other options at lower price points.  But they've convinced themselves they're uniquely challenged because the best of the best isn't a given for their kid.

If you want to talk about spiraling tuition costs, let's talk about the tax breaks that were funded by gutting state budgets for higher ed.  It's not a donut hole discussion it's a political discussion.  But the same people moaning that they're stuck in a donut hole are voting for the "drown it in a bathtub" people, and can't tell they did it to themselves.[/quote]

Right, but again:  Most everyone COULD afford the EXACT SAME THING a generation or two ago, with a little effort.

It hurts to tell a super high-performer that he can't even apply to elite schools because you can't pay for them.  Is it a tragedy?  No.  But when you have a MEMORY of those schools being in fact, affordable when you were his age, it hurts.

That's it.

P.S.  I agree re: gutting state budgets for higher ed.[/quote]

UMC could afford it a generation ago. No one I knew would even have dreamed of applying to an Ivy. Not even incredibly accomplished kids. [/quote]

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