Young Mustachians that want/have kids - What's your plan?

[arebelspy]

We can try to find statistics all we want, but at the end of the day, you're only going to be sending at most a handful of kids to college. The statistics are really hard to rely on in practice when you can't realize the law of large numbers. At the end of the day you know your kid better than somebody who studied a bunch of kids.

For what it's worth (basically nothing), my parents paid for everything out of pocket and I graduated in 3 years with a 3.99 GPA with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering (that's not a double major). Spent a ton of time studying and very little time partying/enjoying myself. Each kid is different.

If only they hadn't paid, you might have earned that extra 0.01.  My god, what did they do?

[johnny847]

We can try to find statistics all we want, but at the end of the day, you're only going to be sending at most a handful of kids to college. The statistics are really hard to rely on in practice when you can't realize the law of large numbers. At the end of the day you know your kid better than somebody who studied a bunch of kids.

For what it's worth (basically nothing), my parents paid for everything out of pocket and I graduated in 3 years with a 3.99 GPA with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering (that's not a double major). Spent a ton of time studying and very little time partying/enjoying myself. Each kid is different.

If only they hadn't paid, you might have earned that extra 0.01.  My god, what did they do?

Extra .013. I rounded up. It was actually 3.987 ;)

They even gave me $25 a day, 5 days a week for food. TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. I ate out basically all the time. Current me wants to go slap some sense into younger me.

Honestly I'm not quite sure why I turned out the way I did. They even gave me a substantial gift of money when I started grad school. I'm fairly certain that it came from a UTMA that they never told me about (they informed me it was in my name when I said they might owe gift taxes), and was supposed to cover a large chunk of my last year's of tuition (and they would've paid from other sources for the rest). But my early graduation was unexpected (I didn't realize I could actually use my AP Biology credits for something until junior year) so they hadn't used the money yet. I could've just gone crazy with the money, but I didn't. I wanted to invest it - and eventually found my way to Bogleheads and MMM.

Because of all of this, I'm incredibly grateful for my parents, and I plan on paying for my kids' college tuition, if I have kids. Of course, I'm not even married, so I don't know what my hypothetical wife will say. And I may change my mind based on how my hypothetical kid(s) turn)s( out.

[arebelspy]

Honestly I'm not quite sure why I turned out the way I did.
...
Because of all of this, I'm incredibly grateful for my parents, and I plan on paying for my kids' college tuition, if I have kids.

You turned out well.  You should be grateful.  But I don't follow how that becomes "I plan on paying for my kids'..."

You say you don't know why you turned out the way you did, but do you think their paying made you more, or less likely to turn out how you did?  That's the more relevant question, IMO, than a "I was paid for, so I'm paying it forward." 

I'd say one should pay, or not, as they think it will help their child, and it's irrelevant if they themselves had help, or not.

[johnny847]

Honestly I'm not quite sure why I turned out the way I did.
...
Because of all of this, I'm incredibly grateful for my parents, and I plan on paying for my kids' college tuition, if I have kids.

You turned out well.  You should be grateful.  But I don't follow how that becomes "I plan on paying for my kids'..."

You say you don't know why you turned out the way you did, but do you think their paying made you more, or less likely to turn out how you did?  That's the more relevant question, IMO, than a "I was paid for, so I'm paying it forward." 

I'd say one should pay, or not, as they think it will help their child, and it's irrelevant if they themselves had help, or not.

Uh yeah I shouldn't really have made that something that logically follows.

Still though, it's how I feel.

I'm still years away from parenthood, and many more from sending kids to college if I have kids, so still many years to absorb different views and change my mind :).

[arebelspy]

Gotcha.  Makes sense.  :)

[catccc]

Little_Brown_Dog, thanks for that link.  Looks like privilege plays a large role in the future success of these full-ride kids who's parents had the resources to provide it, too.  A lot of factors all around, actually.  I'm sure I could work something out with my kids if it is needed to set expectations-  I'm covering x% of semester one, you've got to maintain certain GPA to get funding for the future semesters.  It's not going to be a full ride, time to party, kind of situation.  Also, I'll have to read more about the study.  If kids of parents that paid in full get a 2.8 instead of a 3.2, but are more likely to graduate, I frankly don't care about the GPA.  Nobody ever asked me what my GPA was after I graduated.  (It was just so-so, btw.)

johnny847 - Agreed, I definitely think it depends on the kid, hence my conclusion that my oldest would very likely not feel she had skin in the game if she had a full ride, either from me or via a scholarship.  She loves learning and once yelled at a party "save it for college, save it for college!" when the birthday girl got a cash gift.  (Said birthday girl didn't hear her, so later at the party, she found the girl's dad and asked him to make sure she saved it for college.)  But I am still interested in other studies.  I'm already decided that I'm going to fund at least some of it- 529s are already on the books.  I just want to be able to converse knowledgeably on the topic as I know others that are deciding what to do about college savings at this time.


Also, I realize that I could make a decision about how much I'm willing to help, and my kids might have other ideas.  So I'm willing to play it by ear.  More anecdotes:  After losing a scholarship due to bad grades, I told my mom I was going to quit school and work for a while to pay for it.  In her mind, me taking a break from school was a no-go.  I think she paid for one semester, during which I did a lot better, and subsequent semesters I paid my own tuition, snagging another scholarship along the way to help.  My parents supported me with a car, car insurance, and a place to stay (home, when I wasn't paying rent on my own.)  On the other hand, my older sister had everything paid for.  But she handed every single paycheck from any job she ever had over to my parents until graduation, and just asked for money when she needed it.  I think her method was highly unusual, but my parents didn't have a problem with it.

[Easye418]

26-27 here.  Currently TTC #1.  Plan to keep high income until #2.  Slowly convert Wife over to SAHM.  I will probably start college funds for my children and whatever that may be is what they get. 

[Stachetastic]

We are low(ish) income earners in a LCOL area. We have put away $25/week in savings for each of our two children since they were born, presumably to be used for college. They are now 4 and 8. However, we have a couple of wild cards: 8 year old has another parent who may or may not plan to contribute. We have no way of knowing at this point in time. Our 4 year old is in preschool and has some developmental/social delays. Signs are pointing to autism, but the jury's still out. He is very high functioning, so he may very well excel academically as he matures. Who knows.

One thing we are taking into consideration is that we are within walking distance of our local branch of a major state university. Our oldest lives with his other parent within 30 minutes of another branch of the same university. We are also within an hour's drive of the main campus of said university. If our children choose to go elsewhere, we will sit down with them and help them run the numbers to see how far the money we've saved will go for them. If they cannot fathom living at home (free!), we may discuss the possibility of renting one of our properties to them at below market rates. We will also speak with them about the community college/tech school that is within walking distance of our home and see if they would like to pursue that approach. Bottom line for us: our children will have a lot of different options, none of which involve us footing the entire bill. But they should be able to make it through without crippling debt, if they so choose.