Mom buys expensive car 1 year before I go to university

She's had to read your appallingly bad English so often, she's correctly concluded that paying for your college would be a waste of money.

Oh, -10/10

Get A Job wrote:

Colleges are cesspools of leftist indoctrination these days anyway... Frankly, i think we should implement a mandatory two years national service for all young people.

You can't make this stuff up.

Worried wrote:

I graduated my juco with a 3.1 gpa.

You need to go back and take remedial English.

i see this 2 ways

1: grow up

my parent's made about 150k back in the 90's when i went to school and gave me $0 for college.

I was a little resentful at the time but looking back on it I wouldn't have really valued the money they gave me (easy come, easy go)

The price of college right now is ridiculous and so is the entitled thinking that parents are obligated to foot the bill. I don't have kids but no way in h*ll I would be putting down tens of thousands of dollars a year for what usually amounts to a bad investment for an 18 year old. I'd offer maybe up to 5,000 a year to help feed and house them. More than that and you are just funding the keggers.

2:

In your defense you did get a 2 year degree with your own money. That's the point at which I would consider funding more of my kids education. You've made a sensible and frugal choice so I can see being frustrated about the lack of support. While fully funding 4 years of college is going to seriously affect most parents, helping their kid finish up two years is more akin to getting a car loan, not life altering in most cases considering their income. So i think you have a right to at least ask for some support.

But the short story is the support is going to end soon anyway, might as well start making those decisions for yourself now. Your parents aren't going to change.

Avoid serious debt unless it's a degree for high demand field. These are the decisions that make you an adult.

John Utah wrote:

Juco is a great rout.

They often rout potatoes with their snouts.

thinking more about it I'd be more inclined NOT to tie my support to college. I'd determine an amount (say $20,000) that I could contribute over the next 4 years and they could use it as a down payment on a starter condo or a small business.

20k isn't going to do much in a coastal city, but learning to make compromises and find a place they liked that was also affordable and offered decent employment would be worth almost as much as college in some cases. I'd probably feel better about putting 20k toward a cheap house for a kid going to a trade school on his own dime or trying out a career than i would shelling out 20k for a liberal arts degree to an 18 year old.

HRE wrote:

You're still ignoring the business of the aid package which is an essential part of how most people today expect to pay for college. If the OP's parents can afford a new BMW or something similar there's a good chance they have a fairly high income and as aid packages always expect that parents will pick up some of the cost, the higher the income, the lower the grant. I'm not saying that his parents are obligated to pay for college for him, but there is an expectation from people who award aid packages that they will, so if the parents are making good money and not doing so they're making the whole business much more difficult for him.

Yes this is my exact situation. My father makes too much money so i don't get any federal grants or scholarships, just federal loans. I will be taking the federal loan and my dad is willing take private loans in his name to pay the rest. I wish he wouldn't though, he makes a 100k per year he just has no idea how to budget. And he refuses to downsize in home after the divorce. Literally half of our house is empty.

switch to a trade school, make more money than your parents, and have 0 debt.

read the writing on the wall

Just to reiterate i already went to a JUCO and got my associates degree for cheap. I'm very glad i did, it only cost a few thousand and coming out of high school i had no idea what i wanted to do and I'm glad I didn't go straight to a university that may have been a bad choice. My last 2 years of college will cost about 30k total after my academic scholarship and federal subsidized loan. My problem is that even though my father makes 100k a year he's in debt so he has no money to pay for university out of pocket. And my mother hasn't expressed that she will help pay at all.

Basically my problem is that my mother has always been nagging me about getting good grades and going to college my entire life but now that it's time for me to go she doesn't want to pay. She makes 75k and just bought a new BMW last year for around 30k. Which is also the same price my last 2 years of college will cost. So I felt like she chose her BMW over my college education.

i was in navy boot camp 1 week after hs graduation

i put myself through college - paid cash, no debt

i expect no one to care about that

good luck buttercup

Worried wrote:

Basically my problem is that my mother has always been nagging me about getting good grades and going to college my entire life but now that it's time for me to go she doesn't want to pay. She makes 75k and just bought a new BMW last year for around 30k. Which is also the same price my last 2 years of college will cost. So I felt like she chose her BMW over my college education.

Did you buy her car for her? No, you did not.

Why should she pay for your college? Answer, she should not.

Whatever you want, you need to earn the money and pay the price or else leave it alone.

Welcome to real life bud, everyone has challenges some earlier or tougher than others. But I've seen worse off than you do fine and those who dined off the silver plate end up in the dumps.

Be smart about where you go to college to control costs. Not a super pricey private school unless the school will cover the costs.

Live cheap, work, get scholarships, whatever it takes to avoid or minimize loans.

Get a degree that is valuable and adds earning potential. Get a STEM degree not some liberal arts degree that adds no career value.

Banana Bread wrote:

One of my biggest philosophies in life is that a parent supporting there kids now is an investment in there future. I would like to think I would bring them a proper education if they were mine.

'Their' kids... 'their' future.

So much for investing in a proper education.

My parents were quite poor yet sent me to private school.

They never saved for college. Never spoke to me about college, but I was of the understanding I'd have to work and go to school.

3 out of 4 of us got full ride Division I scholarship for XC/Track; the other almost full academic.

I now have three kids, we make close to $300k/year and I am not saving for their college.

They have all the opportunities in the world, both athletically and academically, to earn a full scholarship.

And if they don't, they'll figure it out.

Maybe you could take a gap year. Get a job, work your ass off, rent an apartment with a buddy. Then apply to college. You will have little savings, not be living at home, have some great experiences to put on your college app, and will likely get some serious financial aid since you are not living with your parents and their $175k income isn't supporting you.

Welp, I guess at least half of interested letsrunners really don’t care that much about their kids (or anyone else, seemingly). What a strange way to live.

The obvious question is - what's your 5K time?

Run fast and get a scholarship.

This is Letsrun

And $30k is not an expensive car.

That's the price of a nicely equipped Chevy Malibu

seaman recruit wrote:

i put myself through college - paid cash, no debt

Dealing drugs in 1966? No federal assistance at all?

Maybe you could sell your tale of rugged individualism to someone else.

Ehso wrote:

6/10

Managed to flush out the cranky old curmudgeons who think that nothing has changed since 1980.

/thread