ThoughtsOnThis wrote:
A little background my wife and I are both educated we both have multiple master’s degrees. Income wise we make close to $200K however we did it on our own. My wife has heavy student loan debt close to $100K, I have minor loan debt $20K as I attended college on Track and XC Scholarship. My wife had a son prior to our marriage. The issue is the son’s biological does not make much money and recently married a woman with 3 kids already. The money need has somehow become the topic of conversation whenever he talks to us. Now our son I say our son as I have been in his life for over 14 years is applying to colleges and his biological is talking about how we need to help pay for college. We do well but have already been clear to both of our children that college is on you guys as in we will co-sign loans, but we are not going into additional debt when there are ways to get a degree without crazy debt. His biological was pissed when I said not happening, I am not going to pile on an additional mortgage payment
when he can join the military and pay for school or take out loans himself. His biological also did not push sports on him when he wanted him to come live with him which limited scholarship opportunity. Years ago his biological paid us like $200 a month far less then he was required to pay we never made a big fuss over it. It is getting exceptionally annoying dealing with his especially when he starts demanding money for stuff that nobody assisted with me or my wife for. I get college is important but I did it on my own and I expect my kids to go but to do it themselves I think it is part of the first step of being an adult. Also Student loans can be deferred if needed while they are establishing themselves post college graduation.
Well, you are a bit of an ass. You should help pay for that kid to go to college. If you are going to pay (and you need to), you get some say about where the kid goes, but you definitely need to pony up enough for the kid to go to a good state school in your state or one of similar cost. You can request that the kid pay $2,000 per year (or something like that) based on their own working (summers, work-study, etc.) and then maybe have them take out a small loan (we had both of our kids take a TOTAL of $15,000 for their education, and then gave them each $3,000 when they graduated, so really just $12,000 total if you think of it that way).
It doesn't matter what YOU did. College was less expensive then. You had a talent that enabled you to afford it. IF this kid is college material (not all are), then you need to pay for them to go to college less the things I mentioned above.
Do it.