How much will you pay for college/have paid for you?

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Lemon
Posts: 261
Joined: Sat May 30, 2015 2:29 am

Re: How much will you pay for college/have paid for you?

Post by Lemon »

For 6 years 43k of debt all in, although I did manage to save about 13k throughout uni so about 30k of actual debt. But it is all government backed only at RPI/base rate +1 (whichever is lower) and taken out of pay with taxes. So feels rather less real than a 'proper' loan.

My first 'real job' was doctoring post graduation. So childhood extended to 24. I enjoyed it but could probably have done more to earn some money through uni beyond the parts I got just by doing things that interested me.

The UK isn't very good at scholarships for actual achievement because of the government system of funding which is parental income based. So my parents topped me up to what I would have got if they had earn below the threshold. This was more than enough to live on, hence being able to save a non zero portion of my loans.

BlueNote
Posts: 501
Joined: Sat Jun 08, 2013 6:26 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada

Re: How much will you pay for college/have paid for you?

Post by BlueNote »

For my kid(s) I will pay as long as they show the aptitude for some sort of education. I'll likely expect them to either live with us or pay for their own room and board though, the only thing I am paying for is tuition and related stuff like certifications, books etc. I live in Toronto so there are are tons of very good educational institutions a stones throw away but if we were to move to a more rural area than I would reconsider paying for rent, transportation and food. It'd be cool if they want to pick up a trade or something too, I could help buy tools and other things necessary for that type of career.

I paid somewhere in the realm of 25K CAD (~20K USD) for 6 years of school. At the time University tuition was about 2/3 subsidized by the government if you were a Canadian citizen. I also had a partial scholarship and was frugal.I had incredibly bad grades in high school, I would never have been let into a Danish University. My grades were so bad that my family would have been ecstatic if I just got a steady job as a school janitor or something like that. I had about an 80% average in college and did even better in University graduating on the presidents and deans lists. I found it more stimulating as I got older and burned off my raging teenager hormones. The thing about the Canadian system is that they are incredibly forgiving, there's always some backdoor or something you can use to get into the higher education system. There's really no in stone objective test or standards so you end up sort of self sorting when you get there. If you didn't pay attention in your high school math and science classes don't expect an easy ride in University STEM courses. However if you caught yourself up they'd be fine with that and there was always some school somewhere where you could go.

disparatum
Posts: 61
Joined: Sun Mar 30, 2014 3:07 pm

Re: How much will you pay for college/have paid for you?

Post by disparatum »

I went to a military academy, so undergrad was free. They even gave me a paycheck while I was there. Over my 4 years there they paid me about $13k (after various deductions they made to my paycheck) and when I graduated I had a guaranteed job.

I was in the military for 7 years afterward where 15 mo. of that was additional education and training for my job. Overall, I considered it a pretty important life experience and am glad that I did it, because until that point I had no previous job, even during high school, so I think it gave me a lot of perspective. You also run into people from all walks of life, and this is something I've grown to appreciate more and more as I become increasingly insulated in my current bubble (Phd program in southern california). Sometimes I try to correct for status quo bias and imagine that tomorrow I woke up from a dream and was 17 again and in boot camp, and I immediately enter a state of depression just thinking about doing it all over again. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that though.

But, I wonder how necessary all the pain was, and if I would encourage my kid to go through it all. Some people love it though, and are meant for it, so it's hard to draw any strong conclusions. My parents did not suggest this route, but when they saw some of the financial benefits, I think they were pretty excited that I was interested. I think they would have been able to pay for some but not all of a regular school. Perhaps in-state tuition as some have mentioned. As it was, I've been independent since I was 17. Financially, it was probably the best decision I could have made, but I certainly had no appreciation of that at the time. I was an INTJ in the 7wb5 sense above and my thought process at 16/17, as best as I can recall it, was more along the lines of--this looks hard and different, and it will be a challenge because I'm this introverted shy kid who doesn't like talking to people--and in that sense it was good and there were a lot of things I liked about it, but I'm glad I'm done with it.

Now I am in graduate school and it is paid for through the GI Bill, scholarships, and research. I saved about 93k last year (about 30k was investment returns, 20k was selling my car and going carless, and the rest was savings). My wife also saved a good amount.

We are expecting our first kid in April, so I have been thinking about this a little more too. At the moment, I don't think we are planning to set aside money for education specifically. I kind of expect the higher ed system to break at some point so I don't see the cost going stratospheric in 18 years. Depending on what type of person they are I might recommend the military. It's a pretty good deal for many people. Paying in-state tuition is another alternative. I am not opposed to trade school either. I don't think I would pay for graduate/professional school.

Where I am at now, many of my colleagues are saddled with a lot of debt. Tens of thousands, some up to a hundred from what I can gather. They are mostly in their early 30's and making it work but not making a ton of forward progress (in a lifecycle sense). Some of them are still in a weird arrested adolescence. But most had a professional job between undergrad and graduate school which seems beneficial and important and so they don't seem particularly clueless about the real world.

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unemployable
Posts: 1007
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: Homeless

Re: How much will you pay for college/have paid for you?

Post by unemployable »

$0. Took a full-tuition scholarship and Dad paid for room and board. Private school; you've definitely heard of it. It wasn't where I wanted to go at the time, which now seems a stupid thing to think.

OK, I never asked Dad for money for textbooks, so a grand or two.

I was brought up solidly upper-middle-class, and at this age I now see what distinguishes the UMC from the ordinary MC: UMC parents almost always pay their kids' higher-education expenses in full. They don't all belong to country clubs, they don't all have second homes, they don't all go to Vail or Snowbird or Tahoe over xmas, they don't all have acronyms or roman numerals after their names. But those ads from financial firms talking about "saving for college" have to be aimed at someone, and it's not high-school juniors, and the true rich don't need the help.

Both sisters went to private schools too; one was paid entirely by Dad, other got a partial scholarship but it still wasn't cheap (Ivy). I have zero misgivings about this, although I wonder whether they know Dad emptied his 401k out to send them there.

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