How much are you socking away for retirement each month?

Have a hard time believing this, unless you inherited money, which is fine. Did your employer give you a very robust match? How old are you? Anyway, very healthy position to be in and that’s fine if you want to pay full go at an Ivy.

We told our daughter find another good private school that gives you a ton of merit money, because no school is worth the $63,000 tuition it costs now, which many people pay. Would much rather help her out with medical school.

Flagpole just knew how to work the system, so he did.

Flagpole utilized every technique that we did by paying off his house, maxing 401ks, and doing every upgrade necessary. We did those things but also saved a lot of money that he didn't do.

We have two kids in college who we will give $250K to because they chose to bypass their Ivy offers in favor of a no cost option. Our daughter is getting $22K off. The school told us that if we buy a painting or crypto or precious metals, they won't count that against us next year so we may be able to get her cost down to $30K in the future if we choose to do something like that.

This is our third time though it with the Ivies. No, there is no additional discount. We have been in contact with the financial aid people. They don't care if she ran 4:30 or 5:30. They only care about our income and assets and that the coach pushed her through.

We are 54 and started with nothing. Both of us were almost poor growing up. I worked my way through college and my wife got a lot of merit and need based aid. We get 5% marching on our 401ks. We had children about 8 years after getting married and we had a huge amount saved by then. We live very frugally, almost to a point of being ridiculous. For example, we have never had cable or any type of paid television.

You can be OK if you WANT to be and you ACT like you want to be.

I don't have an issue with people who ONLY want to rent. The thing there is though that you need to invest/save even MORE if you do that, because ultimately you WILL need a place to live, and as rents go up and up, you will need to be able to cover that.

Unless you are a nomad, I suggest that you find a dwelling of some sort to buy...a small townhouse, whatever. If you find you need to move, you COULD always rent it out.

Besides the housing situation though, you need to start maxing those retirement accounts made up of diversified STOCK mutual funds today. Get used to that, and if over time you either get raises you don't need for normal expenses or you just find that you CAN do more, then do more...the DO MORE would be saving in a non-retirement mutual fund.

You PROBABLY will be planning to work until 65, though some things could change that:

1) You get raises that are so good you can invest/save more than you thought.

2) You get or have a spouse who also makes an income and you have no children. If this happens, there is almost no limit as far as when you could retire...a spousal income would also increase your household SS income too.

Good luck!

Um...NOPE!

1) I was and am a SMART saver, investor. Too bad for you that you saved too much outside of retirement accounts that you had to pay a lot for college. Your failure.

2) I didn't pay "nothing"...we paid what amounted to Room and Board for my daughter to go to an elite university.

a gift of $250k is nice. I went to a military academy and didn't even get a car out of it from my parents

There is no "we know how it really works." IVY Leagues do NOT give either athletic OR academic scholarships. Scholarships there are need-based ONLY...although some of the universities (maybe all of them) have some scholarship money you can earn after being in school...usually in conjunction with another group/agency.

sorry Flagpole, while there is plenty to be proud of in attending your local state school, it is not an "elite university."

Well we maxed our retirement accounts out and paid off our house and cars and did several home improvements over the past few years. Interesting for you to say too bad to that. I have read your posts for years. Those are all of the things that you did and that everyone should do. But we are super savers so we accumulated another $1M or so which the Ivies don't like.

thanks, BROTHER

you have saved more than Flagpole and he doesn't like that

I just put some numbers together and was shocked at how much the total came up to. Assuming somebody put money into a 401k with some matching and some outside investomens plus a mortgage, I used $20k as the number 32 years ago and slowly increased the deposits and payments to $70k today which seemes reasonable for somebody earning $180k. who get nice matching on their 401k accounts. I used 10% as the interest rate. The total would be $7M today today.

Everytime this topic comes up, Flagpole insults psoters who did what he did but saved much more. He should be complmenting them and asking what they did instead.

he's unsatisfied in life so has to make himself feel better any way he knows how

I would walk 500 miles and i would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door

Fix your crappy website and stop posting my replies in the wrong threads🙄

Yep, I get it. You and I are in a similar situation (early 50s), though you are a bit better off (we don’t have the mortgage retired yet). You are being punished for saving the extra money, and you really had no other option other than to “hide” it in rare collectibles or buy a much nicer house, utilizing all your cash, which is complete BS.

All else equal, & it never is, why should you have to pay “sticker” anywhere? But a lot of people do. And that is the problem, so schools are never under pressure to stop inflating costs, because there is always demand. There is also always student loan demand, artificially bolstered by our government.

To each his own. I think my daughter will be much better off in life attending a solid private school for $25,000 per year, all in, because of merit, over a top-tier school at $80-85k per year. Not going to make an iota of a difference going to medical school, other than now we can help her pay for it. Boggles my mind that people pay full go for “brand.” Especially if it adversely impacts their finances and plan.

Good job anyway. Oh, I also think we are in a much different investing environment than the last 25 years that most on here have only ever known. We will still get some nice double-fight return years, but we could easily be flat, especially in real terms, for the next 10 years. Maybe 20. It’s certainly happened historically.

So, if you are in a position to retire now or soon, be thankful for the Fed put from Greenspan on.

We try to do $61k via mega backdoor. Few people know about this but if you have employees sponsored 401k and 401k Roth it's pretty easy to setup.

finance.yahoo.com

Mega Backdoor Roth: What It Is and How It Works

There is a legal method to contribute more than the 401(k) annual limit to your retirement savings and it's called mega backdoor Roth. Here is how it works.

Open link