Pay for child's tuition?

[wageslave23]

I'm just curious what percentage of parents pay for their child's tuition.

[lutorm]

Maybe add an alternative for "went to a university that didn't charge tuition"? That's where I'm hoping we'll be.

[mizzourah2006]

Planning to pay for an instate undergrad education. We have about 2 years of tuition and room and board saved in a 529 for our 6 year old and about 1.25 years for our 4 year old.

[Dee18]

I had planned to pay my daughter's full tuition, but she got scholarships that covered it. She was a great student in high school and continued working hard in college.  Had she not taken it seriously, I would have reconsidered (and she would have lost her scholarships if her grades were low).

[PDXTabs]

I went to community college and finished up at a state university. I told my kids that they can expect enough tuition to do the same, and if they want they can live with me too.

[Captain FIRE]

It's anathema here, but we plan to pay for most/all of college (expect kids to pay for books/entertainment/travel/extras).  We're almost done superfunding the 529 for the 5 yo (75% of private college costs, will use the rest out of other savings so we don't overshoot), still working on the 2 yo's account. 

My spouse got a cheap ride due to his mom not earning much at the time, I took out loans and my parents paid for about 1/3 of it.  My spouse got paid for grad school; I took out loans and paid for all of grad school myself. 

[Fomerly known as something]

I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d pay for 90% of it.  I’d give them some responsibility such as paying for books and extras but would pay the bulk of it.

[hounton]

I was very anxious because my daughter was getting in to all these fancy schools. I was dreading that she would be sad when I refuse to pay 70k a year for a French degree.  Luckily (maybe not luck, she worked very very hard) she got a full ride that included room and board.  This opened up my finances to pay for her brother who has great grades but he's just not at the same level as his sister.  I told him I would pay cash for tuition to a state school and he needs to take out loans for room board and expenses.  I told him that if he got any scholarships they can be applied to his portion.  He has assured me that he would study something that would give him a good income such as engineering or pharmacy.  I am encouraging him to apply to be a RA that gives free room and board.  My third child is definitely community college bound if he makes it through high school. 

Fun fact.  My parents never made it through the 9th grade and did not see the value in my going to college and they certainly would not pay for it so I worked and took out loans.

[Hula Hoop]

Maybe add an alternative for "went to a university that didn't charge tuition"? That's where I'm hoping we'll be.

Yes great idea.  Here in Italy public university tuition is generally less than Euro 1000-2000 a year (on a sliding scale).  Our kids might go to university outside Italy to a country where tuition is similarly cheap (like the Netherlands, Ireland or Scandinavia) but we'd have to help out with rent, books and living expenses of course.  Anyway, this poll doesn't take into account that not everyone lives in the US/Canada where university tuition tends to be expensive.

[Cranky]

Yes. We paid our kids’ tuition - our family share after scholarships.

One went to a very expensive school but had extensive scholarships.
One went to a state university that cost us more out of pocket than the above mentioned Seven Sisters school. ;-)

One went to school part time and worked (which took freaking forever and I think it would have been cheaper for to go full time, but whatever.)

No student loans.

[Tempname23]

My daughter got tuition paid with good grades, a couple years later my son was only given 75% for the the same grades. We paid the difference and also housing. After a couple years at the state university my son floundered and dropped out. He worked for a year and then out of the blue got motivated and went back to school and got a chemistry degree. We paid for that and housing while he was in school.
   My daughter had a good job, good pay, good benefits, and good commissions, making more than either of her parents ever did. Then three years in the company merged with another and that all changed, she couldn't take the changes and decided to go back to school and become a dentist. We paid for 4 years of dental school tuition and housing, $300k. She graduated and is now a practicing dentist for about 2 months now, without student loans! 92% of her class had student loans and those are pretty big student loans.

[wageslave23]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

[Sanitary Stache]

We have a 529 account and are encouraging relatives to put money into it.  I anticipate trying to incentivize the kids to work my offering to match any of their earnings as contributions to the 529 or an IRA when they are a little older.  I expect to want to contribute some amount (currently projecting $1000/year per child) to whatever the kid wants to do when they are college age. 

I will not be pushing college.

If finances change for us and we reach FI sooner, or we reach FI and don't stop earning money, we would probably allocate more of it to launching the kids either in school, travel, work, or business.   

[FIRE@50]

We plan to pay for 100% of our 12yo's college expenses. Having to repay those student loans in our 20's and 30's was a huge drag on our life. We can afford to pay and are excited to have her go into the world without that burden.

[midweststache]

I put paid half, though we haven't 'paid' yet. We have 529s for our almost-6 and almost-3 year old, and have since birth. We anticipate with continued contributions and growth that these covering the costs of tuition for each child at an in-state school.

DH and I were both lucky enough to graduate college debt-free, due to a combination of significant scholarships, parental support, and work. Neither of us took that for granted - we didn't skip classes, and we both graduated with exceptional GPAs. We won't require our kids to go to college - if they have other professional goals, that's fine - but we want to be prepared to support them in the ways we were supported.

[AMandM]

Most of our kids went to the university where DH teaches, so they got free tuition. We paid fees and books and one year of on-campus room and board for them, and a bit more for some that they supplemented with their own funds to have a second year on campus. 
The two who didn't go there went to an expensive private school with a huge endowment and received grants that covered the entire cost except for the EFC, which we paid. The EFC was small, because we had 7 dependents and a single income.

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

Well, in our case we were already taking care of our retirement. Also, in both my and DH's families there is a pretty strong tradition of parents paying or helping to pay for children's college (immigrant families for whom education was an important part of the American Dream).

[getsorted]

It's unlikely I will be in a position to fund my son's (9) education completely, but I plan to help as much as possible and am funding a 529 now. Even if he plans to go into a trade (which seems unlikely, as he currently tells everyone he wants to be an astrophysicist), there will be education costs.

I think even if you don't or can't pay a child's college tuition, what is more significant is giving them the financial education they aren't going to get in high school, so that they have a clear understanding of what day-to-day expenses are like before they are out there incurring them (and being offered "financial education" from websites that exist to sell credit cards!). Walk them through loan amortization schedules. Walk them through a sample budget and help them develop their first budget. Help them understand what regular medical care and insurance will cost them. Teach them what the real costs of car and home ownership are. Help them visualize a life as concretely as possible, and what its expenses are likely to be.

I mean, there are people who send their kids off to college not even knowing how to do laundry, much less monitor their spending. At my state school, I frequently saw people drastically underestimate how much they would save by living off-campus, or finance cars (to drive to jobs that made a buck or two more than minimum wage) and then end up working many more hours than they could handle to make the payments on said cars. It's interesting to me how many people seem to expect their kids to just "figure that stuff out" without making any large mistakes along the way.

[Captain FIRE]

My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

I think student debt is now a substantial burden, and college is getting to be the new "high school".  You can go to a "good" school and still find it hard to get a well paying job for a bit.  (I graduated twice into a recession and had my $50k/yr job offer rescinded the first time, and was only able to get a $30k/yr job afterward a 6 month search.)  I feel that our assets will negatively impact the college aid that our children receive, so it seems wrong to not cover that if we can.  I also feel an obligation to pay forward at a minimum the help we received from our parents.  Again, controversial here, but I have Opinions about people who get a helping hand from their parents but don't offer anything to their children when they can do so.

Education is important to us, and having personally taken AP classes, community college courses (while in high school), state university classes/good private college (early admission program while I was in high school/course or two after college), and a top rated private college, I feel there is a substantial quality difference in each of these choices.  Where it only takes us a few years of working longer to help our kids get this educational start, we will.  They'll still have a bit of skin in the game by needing to cover in college expenses like books or a phone. Odds are reasonably high they may choose to go on to graduate school, where it's on them to pay unless there's anything left in the college kitty they didn't use up.  (We both have advanced degrees, as do all 4 of our siblings and 2 of the in-laws siblings.)

[Greystache]

Both of my kids went to community college after high school. My son quit after CC and went to work in a specialized technical trade. My daughter finished up her BA in an expensive private college. Both started their careers debt free.
I went to college from 1978-1982 at a state university. My parents could not afford to help me with the cost, but back them state university tuition was heavily subsidized by the taxpayers and Pell grants were plentiful, so I was able pay my way just working summers and holidays and graduated with only $2K debt.  That was never an option for my kids. Because of our family income, they would have qualified for little or no financial aid. State college was far more expensive, so working your way through college in four years would have been much more difficult.

[2sk22]

There are a very diverse group of people on this forum at varying stages in their lives. In our case, we had children relatively late in life. By the time they were born, we had already been working for several years in fairly well paying jobs and had saved up a fair bit. Furthermore, thankfully, we stayed employed throughout the 2008 financial crisis. As a result, we were able to offer our daughters a choice of going anywhere they wanted for college without any impact on our retirement plans. However, as things worked out, both daughters chose state schools and we ultimately wound up paid a lot less than expected.

[Abe Froman]

We have saved about 1/2 the cost for in-state college - and the Grand-parents had saved about 3/4 of the cost for in-state. To this degree it is covered, but I am planning on (and have told the kids) that they are on the hook for grants, scholarships, etc - and to have a lot of skin in the game on this. They do not know how much is saved for them.

The split of the college allocated funds is 1/2 in 529 and the rest is in both my and my wife's IRAs - since there is no penalty when pulling from an IRA if used for college costs.

Recently fired at the beginning of last year and this calendar year will be the first year that I file with the IRS for such a low income. This will be the plan for the next 4-8 years - while the oldest starts and goes through high school and plans to go to college. This should set us up hopefully for some good need based support.

[jeninco]

My folks paid for my (expensive, private, very valuable to me) education. MrInCO went to a state school at a time where he could still earn a meaningful fraction of his tuition during the summer, and his dad paid the rest.

We paid (and are finished! We just sent in the last tuition check!) for our older kid to attend my alma mater. For a variety of reasons, that school felt to us (and to a number of other people who knew him well) like a good fit and the right place for him to go. He's held up his end by keeping up his grades, and will be finishing a double major a semester early. It was freaking expensive, and we are glad we started his 529 about when he was born. Various family members have contributed (helpful, but not substantial) amounts to it over the last 20 years. He also worked summer jobs every summer, covering his own costs and paying his incidental expenses (including books) for the years.

The younger kid wanted to do a fairly uncommon double major, and the place that best suits his needs is our local state school (which, too bad for him, is 3 miles from our house. We've agreed to pretend it's 200 -- no unexpected visits!). Furthermore, the school of one of his two majors has offered him full tuition, so we'll only be paying (the in-state rate!) for the difference between the tuitions of the two schools, room and board, and probably for a fifth year that he'll need to finish both majors. Since we'd also saved for him to attend private college, there should be a fair amount left for him to attend summer programs and/or graduate school in either of his majors.

For more detail: we had our kids fairly late. We've both worked reasonably (though not insanely) well-paid jobs that we mostly enjoy, although I dropped to 20-50% time when the kids were small and never went back to full time (except maybe a month/year: I'm a consultant, so my hours vary widely.). Our retirement savings are topped off, and we could stop work any time -- except that we're kind of enjoying what we do right now: I usually answer the "when are you going to retire" question with "just as soon as someone tells either of us we HAVE to do something we don't want to."

Also, we've made it clear to the kids all along that we're paying for their college. Sometimes it was the answer to "why aren't we going skiing in Switzerland like our classmates?"

[LightStache]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

This plan sounds unrealistic to me. Can you imagine being an elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses and watches all of your peers go to four year universities, while you're headed to community college, living at home, working at Dominoes? They intern at NASA or study abroad in France and you're picking up extra shifts at Old Navy. How depressing.

[roomtempmayo]

I think student debt is now a substantial burden, and college is getting to be the new "high school".  You can go to a "good" school and still find it hard to get a well paying job for a bit.  (I graduated twice into a recession and had my $50k/yr job offer rescinded the first time, and was only able to get a $30k/yr job afterward a 6 month search.)  I feel that our assets will negatively impact the college aid that our children receive, so it seems wrong to not cover that if we can.  I also feel an obligation to pay forward at a minimum the help we received from our parents.  Again, controversial here, but I have Opinions about people who get a helping hand from their parents but don't offer anything to their children when they can do so.

Agreed, strongly enough that we're probably having fewer children than we would if we thought our parental financial responsibilities ended the day they graduated from high school.

The other day I had an interesting conversation with a professor of 20+ years who has spent a tremendous about of time with 18-22 year olds and has a pretty good sense of them.  She also recently sent her youngest daughter off to college.  I mentioned something in casual conversation about her being an "empty nester" and she interjected to the effect of, I'm not an empty nester until my daughter is done with college and either has a good job or is in grad school.  Until then, she's my child who doesn't sleep at home. 

We've invented various stages of young adulthood in the past (largely to keep kids in school and avoid sending them to the factories, mines, to be domestic help, or marrying them off), and perhaps it's time we openly acknowledge the common practice of some parental obligation to age 21 or 22.  It's an extremely rare kid who's really ready to be independent before then.

[Cranky]

I did not send my kids to college so that they could get “fancy” degrees or “fancy” jobs, but so they could learn some stuff.

[getsorted]

We've invented various stages of young adulthood in the past (largely to keep kids in school and avoid sending them to the factories, mines, to be domestic help, or marrying them off), and perhaps it's time we openly acknowledge the common practice of some parental obligation to age 21 or 22.  It's an extremely rare kid who's really ready to be independent before then.

I mean, if you go further back in time, familial obligations didn't ever end. From an anthropological history perspective, most humans have tended to live in mutually supportive family groups their entire lives. The idea that there is supposed to be a time in your life past which you will have no mutual reliance on anyone from your family of origin is a fairly modern idea.

[roomtempmayo]

We've invented various stages of young adulthood in the past (largely to keep kids in school and avoid sending them to the factories, mines, to be domestic help, or marrying them off), and perhaps it's time we openly acknowledge the common practice of some parental obligation to age 21 or 22.  It's an extremely rare kid who's really ready to be independent before then.

I mean, if you go further back in time, familial obligations didn't ever end. From an anthropological history perspective, most humans have tended to live in mutually supportive family groups their entire lives. The idea that there is supposed to be a time in your life past which you will have no mutual reliance on anyone from your family of origin is a fairly modern idea.

That's a really good point.

[Much Fishing to Do]

I had a more successful run than expected for my business over than last decade, so one of my (never before expected) to dos before allowing myself to consider FIRE was to create 529s for each of my 3 kids that would be enough for 4 years tuition, room, and board at the flagship state universities.  Thats not cheap in PA ($135k x 3 = $400k).   As a college graduation gift I'll buy them new car (so they'll start working with no car loan to go along with no student loan) as long as they give me their word to never go into debt beyond a mortgage, and whatever remains in their account they can have to start investment accounts and/or a house downpayment (my oldest is on track to have about $55k left over due to cheaper school and a scholarship/work study he found). 

I chose this path because it was a simple way to set them up for success but yet not actively support them financially once they started working, they'll have to balance their budgets based on their income going forward but its obviously been made easier without the debt anchor.

[Sanitary Stache]

Appreciate the discussion on familial obligations never really ending. It fits in with my understanding of being a child and having children.

It certainly doesn’t mean I am going to all of a sudden take on large amounts of debt for my child unless their life is in jeopardy. I’ll help them pursue their dreams as I am able and I’ll bail them out of trouble if possible. And I’ll keep a home for them as long as I can. It’s part of why I pursue financial independence. I think it is silly of me because I have family that wouldn’t let it happen, but I am constantly trying to avoid decisions that have the potential to lead to homelessness. If paying for their college has that potential, then it isn’t going to happen. In the case of college jeopardizing my financial independence is the metric for potential to lead to homelessness.

[Much Fishing to Do]

Appreciate the discussion on familial obligations never really ending. It fits in with my understanding of being a child and having children.

It certainly doesn’t mean I am going to all of a sudden take on large amounts of debt for my child unless their life is in jeopardy. I’ll help them pursue their dreams as I am able and I’ll bail them out of trouble if possible. And I’ll keep a home for them as long as I can. It’s part of why I pursue financial independence. I think it is silly of me because I have family that wouldn’t let it happen, but I am constantly trying to avoid decisions that have the potential to lead to homelessness. If paying for their college has that potential, then it isn’t going to happen. In the case of college jeopardizing my financial independence is the metric for potential to lead to homelessness.

The substantial support I'm giving my children is totally only b/c It turned out I can afford it.....really it comes down to me thinking that I am making a lot more money than they can and perhaps more than they ever will, and that I really only had to add a couple years to working to give them a lot, so it seemed greedy for me to retire at 48 as opposed to 50 when I could accomplish that much for them.

Its interesting you bring up homelessness as thats a conversation I had with my kids recently.  I stated that no one never need to fear that (or anything similar) in this life, because we are a family and there's always gonna be someone doing ok enough to offer a couch and food from the fridge in this family that no one never need ever let fear like that creep in...its the shear love and size of our family that prevents that from being a possibility, and that taking care of each other in that way is the only thing my kids owe me when I'm gone (I think that goes beyond family to friends as well)  They of course all laughed and said they were all planning to at my youngest's mansion (my 12 year old is unusually intelligent and interested in money.......)

[Laura33]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

It's not a matter of being a "good" or "bad" parent.  Just do your homework so you understand what your kids will face with your preferred option.  What does your local state school run, and how easy/hard is it to get into?  Some are cheap, some cost a lot more, and some are getting much harder to get into even for state residents (my state school is maybe $10K/yr, but even though it's a mid-rate school, it's a LOT harder to get into than Back In My Day^tm -- and it's not close enough to be an easy commute if my kids were to live at home).  Pull up some of those college cost calculators and figure out what your expected family contribution would be at your anticipated income level when college comes around (also remember that some schools will consider assets, not just income).  And then look into the kinds of jobs that kids can do part-time during college and how much they can reasonably make without affecting their grades -- and note that a lot of the typical jobs you think of, like Starbucks, may have variable schedules, but those schedules vary based on the company's needs, not the kid's. 

The decisions you make now are going to determine the opportunities your kids have down the road.  Maybe the kid can get by with only $10K in loans, which they can afford to pay back.  But that's $10K they won't have available to invest toward their own future FIRE -- and at the time in their lives when being able to invest that money has the largest financial impact.  Saddest story I knew was a friend who went to Harvard Law, graduated with $100K in debt, and then discovered he hated BigLaw and wanted to go into law enforcement.  He had to work a job he hated for another 5+ years just to be able afford to take the job he really wanted.  To my mind, that's something you do if you have to -- if that's the only way you can do it.  But if I can afford to cover the costs myself without a huge sacrifice on my part, then why would I want to force my kid to go it alone? 

I will freely admit to being very different from many on this board; I was the very-smart-but-poor kid, and my college choice was driven in large part by who gave me the most money, and so it has been a very big deal to me to be in a position to give my own kids the choice of school.  We have accordingly prioritized saving for college, and we make a lot of money so it wasn't a hardship to do so.  But I will also admit to having changed my position completely between the time my kids were born and my DD went off to college.  I have always, always thought my kids needed skin in the game to avoid becoming entitled twits; even if we were to pay for most of the tuition, I wanted her to take out the basic federal loans and cover her expenses above the basic room and board.  And then my DD went off to this great school where she had all these options to volunteer at a maker space and do research with a professor even as a freshman -- and I did the math and told her to do the research for credit instead of pay, because the credits cost us more than she would have made at an hourly wage.  At that point, we were paying a shit-ton for the education.  And that education wasn't just about the classes she took, but the opportunities the school provided outside of the classroom, which would help her gain experience and make connections that can give her a leg up in her future career.  So it seemed penny-wise and pound-foolish to say, "hey, we're paying out the wazoo for this, but we want you to skip out on those opportunities we're paying for so you can work a minimum wage job to recoup a teeny fraction of what we're paying out."

Different kids need different lessons.  It turns out my DD is an incredibly focused and driven engineering major/math minor who maxes out her credits every semester and frets over spending even $5.  She doesn't need skin in the game to learn how not to be an entitled twit, nor does she need to take a part-time job at the 7-11 to learn not to blow her money.  So I would be doing her a disservice if I forced her to give up the opportunities we're paying for just to satisfy some general principle. 

[ATtiny85]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

This plan sounds unrealistic to me. Can you imagine being an elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses and watches all of your peers go to four year universities, while you're headed to community college, living at home, working at Dominoes? They intern at NASA or study abroad in France and you're picking up extra shifts at Old Navy. How depressing.

Two of the top students at my HS were brothers, one year apart in school. They did exactly this, and both have done extremely well. One is a senior VP at some security firm after quickly rising through the ranks at IBM. The other went on to get a PhD at UC Berkeley and is in the LA area doing some great things.

The community college time fully prepared them for continuing their education. Nothing special about calculus at a fancy college versus a community college, at least not for a star student. Them doing what they did shows just how on top of things they and their family were/are.

[CrustyBadger]

We are not a high income family, and my husband is out of the work force due to a severe disability. We don't have a ton saved up for our kids' college tuition, but we do want to pay for as much as we can.

I told both our kids it was my intention to pay for them to get a 4 year degree, at a minimum (if that is what they wanted.). They might need to take some loans to help get us all the way through, and if I could, I will pay those loans off for them later if they need help and I am in a financial position to be able to help them.

I did work study myself at my private university all four years, and don't feel it added anything good to the experience.  I was already a hard worker and I took my studies seriously, but it was an additional 10 hours weekly washing dishes or serving food at the cafeteria.  Few of my friends had to work in college and they still took their studies very seriously. They all went on to graduate with great grades and got into good graduate schools and careers.  I'm not saying that working through college is necessarily a bad thing, but I only did it because I needed the money.  I am trying to allow my son (now a college Junior) to not have to work during the school year because I think he should be focusing on school and activities. 

I have had to tell both kids, though, that we could not just afford to send them absolutely anywhere they got in.  The financial aid package has to be affordable, even with college loans for the kids in the picture.

[patchyfacialhair]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

It's not a matter of being a "good" or "bad" parent.  Just do your homework so you understand what your kids will face with your preferred option.  What does your local state school run, and how easy/hard is it to get into?  Some are cheap, some cost a lot more, and some are getting much harder to get into even for state residents (my state school is maybe $10K/yr, but even though it's a mid-rate school, it's a LOT harder to get into than Back In My Day^tm -- and it's not close enough to be an easy commute if my kids were to live at home).  Pull up some of those college cost calculators and figure out what your expected family contribution would be at your anticipated income level when college comes around (also remember that some schools will consider assets, not just income).  And then look into the kinds of jobs that kids can do part-time during college and how much they can reasonably make without affecting their grades -- and note that a lot of the typical jobs you think of, like Starbucks, may have variable schedules, but those schedules vary based on the company's needs, not the kid's. 

The decisions you make now are going to determine the opportunities your kids have down the road.  Maybe the kid can get by with only $10K in loans, which they can afford to pay back.  But that's $10K they won't have available to invest toward their own future FIRE -- and at the time in their lives when being able to invest that money has the largest financial impact.  Saddest story I knew was a friend who went to Harvard Law, graduated with $100K in debt, and then discovered he hated BigLaw and wanted to go into law enforcement.  He had to work a job he hated for another 5+ years just to be able afford to take the job he really wanted.  To my mind, that's something you do if you have to -- if that's the only way you can do it.  But if I can afford to cover the costs myself without a huge sacrifice on my part, then why would I want to force my kid to go it alone? 

I will freely admit to being very different from many on this board; I was the very-smart-but-poor kid, and my college choice was driven in large part by who gave me the most money, and so it has been a very big deal to me to be in a position to give my own kids the choice of school.  We have accordingly prioritized saving for college, and we make a lot of money so it wasn't a hardship to do so.  But I will also admit to having changed my position completely between the time my kids were born and my DD went off to college.  I have always, always thought my kids needed skin in the game to avoid becoming entitled twits; even if we were to pay for most of the tuition, I wanted her to take out the basic federal loans and cover her expenses above the basic room and board.  And then my DD went off to this great school where she had all these options to volunteer at a maker space and do research with a professor even as a freshman -- and I did the math and told her to do the research for credit instead of pay, because the credits cost us more than she would have made at an hourly wage.  At that point, we were paying a shit-ton for the education.  And that education wasn't just about the classes she took, but the opportunities the school provided outside of the classroom, which would help her gain experience and make connections that can give her a leg up in her future career.  So it seemed penny-wise and pound-foolish to say, "hey, we're paying out the wazoo for this, but we want you to skip out on those opportunities we're paying for so you can work a minimum wage job to recoup a teeny fraction of what we're paying out."

Different kids need different lessons.  It turns out my DD is an incredibly focused and driven engineering major/math minor who maxes out her credits every semester and frets over spending even $5.  She doesn't need skin in the game to learn how not to be an entitled twit, nor does she need to take a part-time job at the 7-11 to learn not to blow her money.  So I would be doing her a disservice if I forced her to give up the opportunities we're paying for just to satisfy some general principle.

Well said. Looking back at my many college-age mistakes, the top of the list is not doing internships in my major. Basically what happened is I got decent grades, but went to work full time at my day job in order to make ends meet (parents didn't pay for college after I partied too much freshman year). I had to, otherwise I would have taken out a ton of loans, and I was committed to not doing that.

My classmates who did internships in industry walked into those jobs after graduation, and I was basically relegated to "whatever else was open" as far as options. For me that was an insurance company. Nothing against insurance companies, but I'm not even using the degree I spent a ton of money on and part of me wonders if that was a mistake. Things are working out fine now, at least, and I'm still at the company 10 years later, but it's not really the ideal place in my opinion. I would have rather worked in something else.

For my two kiddos, we want to give them the flexibility to take those internships, and that means we'll pay for their college, which we'll cap at in-state state school plus room and board at $30k/yr 2022 dollars. But, we'll still encourage them to get a part time couple hour a week job for their beer money.

[lifeisshort123]

Our goal is to pay for it all.  But any grad school they are on their own.  Adulthood has to begin at some point.

[mistymoney]

I paid about 75% of it, so neither 100% nor 50% seem reasonable alternatives.

[roomtempmayo]

It certainly doesn’t mean I am going to all of a sudden take on large amounts of debt for my child unless their life is in jeopardy. I’ll help them pursue their dreams as I am able and I’ll bail them out of trouble if possible.

Absolutely.  I think context for this discussion is pretty important here.  We're a bunch of folks with such an excess of money that we have the profound luxury of thinking about just no longer working.  This would be a very different discussion if it weren't among a group of folks with ample resources weighing the appropriate distribution of that largess.

Its interesting you bring up homelessness as thats a conversation I had with my kids recently.  I stated that no one never need to fear that (or anything similar) in this life, because we are a family and there's always gonna be someone doing ok enough to offer a couch and food from the fridge in this family that no one never need ever let fear like that creep in...its the shear love and size of our family that prevents that from being a possibility, and that taking care of each other in that way is the only thing my kids owe me when I'm gone

Interesting dovetail, but connected.  I have two brothers.  The older one is financially very well off, and the younger one is so mentally ill he's never held a job for more than two weeks.  Part of having money is being in a place to help your family, which I anticipate falling to me with my younger brother in the future.  Living modestly can have many applications beyond retirement.

[PDXTabs]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

This plan sounds unrealistic to me. Can you imagine being an elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses and watches all of your peers go to four year universities, while you're headed to community college, living at home, working at Dominoes? They intern at NASA or study abroad in France and you're picking up extra shifts at Old Navy. How depressing.

Two of the top students at my HS were brothers, one year apart in school. They did exactly this, and both have done extremely well. One is a senior VP at some security firm after quickly rising through the ranks at IBM. The other went on to get a PhD at UC Berkeley and is in the LA area doing some great things.

The community college time fully prepared them for continuing their education. Nothing special about calculus at a fancy college versus a community college, at least not for a star student. Them doing what they did shows just how on top of things they and their family were/are.

Instructors at community college actually focus on teaching. I'd go as far as to say that they are better than whoever teaches at the big state schools, but perhaps not as good as some private institutions. I went from community college to state university and right into a Dow component where I beat out multiple applicants from "better" schools.

Also if you are an "elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses" you can probably get a scholarship, at least my daughter did for a private university. Her total cost of attendance while living on campus after working as an RA for all but one year will be less than tuition at community college plus state university.

[patchyfacialhair]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

This plan sounds unrealistic to me. Can you imagine being an elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses and watches all of your peers go to four year universities, while you're headed to community college, living at home, working at Dominoes? They intern at NASA or study abroad in France and you're picking up extra shifts at Old Navy. How depressing.

Two of the top students at my HS were brothers, one year apart in school. They did exactly this, and both have done extremely well. One is a senior VP at some security firm after quickly rising through the ranks at IBM. The other went on to get a PhD at UC Berkeley and is in the LA area doing some great things.

The community college time fully prepared them for continuing their education. Nothing special about calculus at a fancy college versus a community college, at least not for a star student. Them doing what they did shows just how on top of things they and their family were/are.

Instructors at community college actually focus on teaching. I'd go as far as to say that they are better than whoever teaches at the big state schools, but perhaps not as good as some private institutions. I went from community college to state university and right into a Dow component where I beat out multiple applicants from "better" schools.

Also if you are an "elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses" you can probably get a scholarship, at least my daughter did for a private university. Her total cost of attendance while living on campus after working as an RA for all but one year will be less than tuition at community college plus state university.

Anecdotally, I found this true as well.

My first year of school: a top 25 private university, all the classes were taught by so called brilliant professors, but you spent 2x that time in study and labs with foreign nationals who could barely speak English. A lot of money spent to not understand the people there to support. My mistake was going into engineering, other friends of mine not in that program didn't have this issue.

My second and third year of school: community college, all my instructors were retired industry experts in whatever class was being taught, and picked up teaching to get away from their spouse or not be bored in retirement or both. I still use some of the things I learned from these folks. Loved it.

My fourth and fifth years of school: state school, a mix of academics and career folks who adjunct on the side. was overall a good experience. everyone's experience will vary though

[wageslave23]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

This plan sounds unrealistic to me. Can you imagine being an elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses and watches all of your peers go to four year universities, while you're headed to community college, living at home, working at Dominoes? They intern at NASA or study abroad in France and you're picking up extra shifts at Old Navy. How depressing.

Two of the top students at my HS were brothers, one year apart in school. They did exactly this, and both have done extremely well. One is a senior VP at some security firm after quickly rising through the ranks at IBM. The other went on to get a PhD at UC Berkeley and is in the LA area doing some great things.

The community college time fully prepared them for continuing their education. Nothing special about calculus at a fancy college versus a community college, at least not for a star student. Them doing what they did shows just how on top of things they and their family were/are.

Instructors at community college actually focus on teaching. I'd go as far as to say that they are better than whoever teaches at the big state schools, but perhaps not as good as some private institutions. I went from community college to state university and right into a Dow component where I beat out multiple applicants from "better" schools.

Also if you are an "elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses" you can probably get a scholarship, at least my daughter did for a private university. Her total cost of attendance while living on campus after working as an RA for all but one year will be less than tuition at community college plus state university.

Anecdotally, I found this true as well.

My first year of school: a top 25 private university, all the classes were taught by so called brilliant professors, but you spent 2x that time in study and labs with foreign nationals who could barely speak English. A lot of money spent to not understand the people there to support. My mistake was going into engineering, other friends of mine not in that program didn't have this issue.

My second and third year of school: community college, all my instructors were retired industry experts in whatever class was being taught, and picked up teaching to get away from their spouse or not be bored in retirement or both. I still use some of the things I learned from these folks. Loved it.

My fourth and fifth years of school: state school, a mix of academics and career folks who adjunct on the side. was overall a good experience. everyone's experience will vary though

Yeah I was top of my class in hs, 30 AP credits, went into one of the nation's top engineering programs at a state school first two years, transfered to a private school for the last two years to complete my degree. Ended up going to a community college to get my CPA (completely unrelated to my degree).  If I could have gotten a degree or license strictly going to cc, I would have. If I could have gotten a degree just by reading the textbooks and passing the exams, I would have. I can think of a lot better ways to spend $30-50k a year than the study group that is college classes.  If my kid turns out to be on astrophysicist track, then sure going to a top school might be worth it.

[DeniseNJ]

I never really had any examples of how middle income ppl act, since I grew up really poor.  My mom would give me whatever she had, but she didn't have anything so I didn't ask.  Asking for money for college would have been like asking her to fly me there on her private jet, just ludicrous.  Having the means to pay for my kids' college educations, I can't imagine not doing it.  I want them to go to college and I can afford it so I don't see why I wouldn't pay for it.

But my kids have issues.  My son didn't even want to go to college in the first place. He didn't have any better ideas though. Between depression, anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, and many other issues, I'm lucky if I could get either kid out of bed in the morning.  I know I'm doing this parenting thing all wrong, but I swear I would get a second job if either one of them wanted to move out.  They would both prefer to just live with me forever, do nothing, and have me wait on them for the rest of their lives.  So if I can at least get them a college degree, that gives me a better shot of launching them.

I've warned them both that I am leaving town in 6 years when I retire and my or may not leave a forwarding address.

[wageslave23]

I never really had any examples of how middle income ppl act, since I grew up really poor.  My mom would give me whatever she had, but she didn't have anything so I didn't ask.  Asking for money for college would have been like asking her to fly me there on her private jet, just ludicrous.  Having the means to pay for my kids' college educations, I can't imagine not doing it.  I want them to go to college and I can afford it so I don't see why I wouldn't pay for it.

But my kids have issues.  My son didn't even want to go to college in the first place. He didn't have any better ideas though. Between depression, anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, and many other issues, I'm lucky if I could get either kid out of bed in the morning.  I know I'm doing this parenting thing all wrong, but I swear I would get a second job if either one of them wanted to move out.  They would both prefer to just live with me forever, do nothing, and have me wait on them for the rest of their lives.  So if I can at least get them a college degree, that gives me a better shot of launching them.

I've warned them both that I am leaving town in 6 years when I retire and my or may not leave a forwarding address.

Oh man, that's a tough situation.  Fine line between supporting and enabling.  My dad always said "hunger is a great motivator."

[Dave1442397]

My daughter is horrified at the debt load some of her friends plan on taking on for college.

She's planning to go to Europe, where fees are around $2k per year. We'll pay most of her living expenses, and she'll get a job for extra money. The degree course is three years, plus an additional two years for a masters. The three years will probably cost us $45k or so. We'll see what happens after that.

[Laura33]

Looking back at my many college-age mistakes, the top of the list is not doing internships in my major. Basically what happened is I got decent grades, but went to work full time at my day job in order to make ends meet (parents didn't pay for college after I partied too much freshman year). I had to, otherwise I would have taken out a ton of loans, and I was committed to not doing that.

My classmates who did internships in industry walked into those jobs after graduation, and I was basically relegated to "whatever else was open" as far as options.

Precisely.  An unpaid internship was one of those things I couldn't even conceive of, because I was busy as a Kelly Girl all summer earning the money to pay for school -- as in, I heard of someone doing that, and I could not wrap my mind around it (how rich do you have to be to work for free?).  Luckily, internships weren't as key back in the Stone Age.  But by the time DD was headed off to school, it was eminently clear that you needed an internship to have the best job options.  So again, seemed penny-wise, pound foolish to tell her to go work at the 7-11 instead.

Of course, she likes money, and she likes having money in the bank, and she chose a marketable field, so she went and got herself paid internships and on-campus jobs at $20-25/hr.  ;-) 

[FIRE@50]

I know someone who recently graduated that was getting paid $35/hr at their internship. Times have changed.

[jeninco]

<edited because I appended this to the wrong message!>

Yes, my understanding is that laws around internships have changed: they either have to be paid or have to be a genuinely educational experience for the interns. Most places are moving toward trying to do both (partly because they've become aware that requiring unpaid internships excludes students who can't afford to work for free).

[secondcor521]

In the process of paying for college for my three.  Eldest is graduated and has a good job; other two are approximately college juniors.

The deal is I pay for everything that is required:  tuition, room, board, books, fees, transport to/from, etc.  If they can make a reasonable argument that they need X for the degree, I pay for it.  They get to pay for extras:  dates, cell phones, cars, pizza nights, movies, alcohol, etc.

We're doing it through a combination of UTMAs, 529s, ESAs, scholarships, and financial aid, as well as AP and IB credits.  We basically saved since they were born, and my parents also contributed because they wanted to.  We don't do loans; if we got to that point I would rather go back to work.

At this point it looks like I'll have some extra.  The plan is ever changing, but if the situation holds, then it'll be a combination of going to a master's degree for one of them who is interested in that, or being distributed at graduation for them to put towards whatever - relocation expenses, house down payment, wedding, whatever.

[Tempname23]

Wow, I can't believe how many parents are paying for their child's tuition. I was expecting maybe 50%. I always planned on letting my kids make their own decisions and pay their own way for college, house, retirement, etc. But now I'm rethinking that. Maybe I'm a bad parent. My thinking was - if you're getting a fancy degree, then you'll have a fancy job to pay for it.  I was going to encourage my kids to sit down and decide which school or even if going to school was the best cost effective option. Hopefully they would choose community College for two years followed by two years at an in state university.  And hopefully have a years worth of AP credits going in, and then get a part time job to help with cost of living. That's what I would do if I was doing it all over again. I'd tell my parents to worry about their own retirement, I got this.

Another way to look at it, this will make absolutely no difference in our retirement spending. And in the end, the kids will get our money anyway. This will make it easy for them to start their own accumulation.

[TomTX]

This plan sounds unrealistic to me. Can you imagine being an elite HS student who racks up 8+ AP courses and watches all of your peers go to four year universities, while you're headed to community college, living at home, working at Dominoes? They intern at NASA or study abroad in France and you're picking up extra shifts at Old Navy. How depressing.

An elite HS student who racks up 8+AP courses successfully gaining credit in all of them.... should not have trouble getting rather significant scholarships to a 4 year university.

[Abe]

My wife and I have one kid, so it's a bit easier for us compared to the average US family of 2.3 kids. I realized that if we think of the family as an inter-generational unit (which is the custom in our ethnicities), student loans are a big vacuum sucking the family's money out to some garbage company. That changed my perspective to some extent. I used to be quite utilitarian and think that if he did ____ degree, we wouldn't pay for college. Now I have enough experience to know that type of degree doesn't mean much, and it's much better to keep that money in the family than squander it out of spite. Honestly I don't really care what he does for a living, other than he helps people.