yes dont tell them that defeats the purpose of ths.
I dont see this as tough love. It is a very valuable stepping stone for a kid to cross and understand how to budget and finance. My parents gave me 2k per year. i made up the rest getting scholarships and working in the summer and came out debt free. I may do a hybrid approach like this, if my kids arent intelligent enough to get scholarships to the level me and my brother did. offer 2k equivalent in support with the intention of paying off any debt they have to take out.
if you just flat out tell you're kids you're paying for their college what do they learn about money. mommy and daddy pay for things. thats it.
I learned about money LONG before I was in college. I think if they're only just learning about money in college, it's way too late for them.
My parents paid my way through college, but I still got campus jobs and internships for spending money and work experience (and VERY small Roth IRA contributions, but hey it's something, I guess). Graduated with no debt when almost all of my classmates had debt--made me appreciate my parents' planning and sacrifice even more.
Of everything my parents did for me, two stand out as contributing to my current success in life: reading to me every night as a child and paying for my education as an adult.
i'm not saying this is the first time the should learn about money but if when you go away to school you really start the first step towards managing your own finances outside of the watch of you parents.
just flat out paying for it IMO is bad, maybe its b/c of the kids i've seen that have had this were from a family that were bad at managing money so they still learned nothing. Just think its good for them to understand what they are getting for their money not my money. managing your own finances in college, paying your own bills, etc. is a very valuable life experience.
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it too. Even paying off their loans afterwards. I think early career financial discipline is valuable and better achieved by having to pay off loans. But I have a long time to decide and want to have much less time to save whatever I might contribute.
There's another way, which is what we will probably do with our daughter:
At the start, we will tell her that we can afford to contribute X per year or Y total, and that she will need to make up the rest with loans and a job. (This is basically what my parents did, and it guided my decision about which university to attend so that I could stay within their budget without having to take out loans and working just for spending money.)
Then, upon graduation, we will either pay off the loans, or we'll make sizable contributions to help her pay them off much faster than she'd be able to on her own.
I remember REALLY appreciating the frank talk about what they could afford right at the get-go, and I was very grateful for their support. There were never any tricks or surprises, and it was up to me to manage expenses. Their budget covered tuition and housing, but everything else was up to me: books, food, clothes, fun, etc.
They took the same approach and used the same dollar amount with my brother, but he decided to attend a very expensive private school, and he used all the money within 2 years, after which he took on huge loans. It was a calculated gamble, though, because the field in which he works cares about which school he attended, and he immediately started earning a huge salary that enabled him to pay off the loans pretty quickly.