Wealthy parents - any advice in how to cover $70,000 college costs?

I would second all the people saying to save your money if you have any thoughts of going to grad school. Not only will a decent state school be cheaper, you'll also stand out more, and maybe get better grades. But at a certain level there is a better bang for your buck -- it's worth a premium to attend the flagship state school over West Whatever Satellite campus.

Also, the Ivies are pretty mediocre if you want to be a practicing engineer.

Wealthy tuition wrote:

High level Universities don’t give merit based scholarships. We don’t qualify for financial aid. I can pay it, but if there are alternatives I’m open to them and I hate Wejo he sucks off small boys . Most private scholarships are very small (hundreds of dollars). Has anyone found good options for covering a decent amount of the cost?

among his many other deficits, rojo does not understand how a progressive income tax works. People in the 35% bracket do not pay 35% of their income in taxes. They pay 35% on their last dollar.

rojo wrote:

Maybe pay them not to go?

It looks like you live in Maryland like me. If you aren't getting aid at all, I'm assuming you make more than 200k. That's the 35% tax bracket. Let's assume your county and state taxes are 7%. So conservatively you are at 42%.

So you take home 58% of your pay. To pay for 70k, you basically need to make 120k a year.

So instead of college you could sit them down and ask them, hey do you want to go or do you want $480,000? Honestly, your taxes are probably higher so it's probably closer to 500k.

If they just put that $480k in the market and earned 5% they'd have $24k for the rest of their lives.

My wife and I were recently discussing how many of the folks we've known from the east coast,( relatives, lefties and those we met while living in Boston for school), seem to have very little knowledge about the communities in the rest of the country and some of the differences on this thread show that our observations may be broadly accurate.

It seems as if some of the Ivy League grads imagine that everyone dreams about one day working for an investment banking house or huge law firm in NYC or other coastal mecca.

Most patients, law clients and sales customers in the USA do not ask about your pedigree and they certainly don't want to worry that anything they say will 'trigger' you.

Can you make rain in the law firm? Are you a competent doc , sales or tech professional? Those are the questions that require a positive answer the day you take your first job unless, I suppose, you choose to stay coastal and pay triple the value for a house and continue to imagine that the rest of the US is filled with knuckle-dragging, ignorant racists.

We started saving for college the day our baby was born. Have a direct draw from your paycheck to the college savings account. After 18 years, you should have ample time to save enough to give your child his/her choice of the best college he or she gets in to without stressing about money. I believe this is my responsibility as a parent. Good luck!

Use the Bernie Gambit. Have the kid load up on as much student debt as he/she can. All will be forgiven.

If that fails, you have to fall back to the Obama Gambit which is complicated but does help if the college degree in gender studies only nets a minimum wage job. Be sure these are direct Federal loans, though.

For med school and some other highly competitive grad degrees you are better off applying with a 3.8 gpa from an elite school than a 3.8 gpa from an above average school - of which there are innumerable.

Having said that, you are also much better off applying with a 3.8 gpa from above average U versus a 3.4 from an elite school.

Many schools have a gpa Mendoza line 3.5-3.6. If you are below it - you are below it -regardless of school.

don't listen to these people wrote:

Don't listen to these people. Attending elite academic schools is absolutely worth the investment. I work at a hedge fund and my wife is a partner at a large law firm - both of our companies won't hire anyone that went to state school (grad or undergrad) no matter what your GPA is. Our peers also don't hire state school kids.

The name on your diploma matters in a huge way when applying for jobs and grad schools. You will get more job opportunities at higher salaries if you attend an elite private school. It pays off in the long run by a large margin.

What a bunch of crap the (IBIS) program at Arizona State feeds graduates right into the top investment firms. Nearly every firm out there has a graduate from this program.

I don't agree with the need for an Ivy League credential. School today is all about value.

Investment banks and the like hire Ivy and Duke and Stanford types because they are smart and would achieve anywhere, but also they have the social graces and skills these type of employers seek. But many find their way without Ivy degrees. (My brother is a well known fund manager with top 1% success with numerous Ivy types working for him at many levels beneath him and he went to two public schools).

I did send my kid to Princeton, and their is no aid for an upper middle class family. I do not think it was worth the cost (she could have gone to UVa for free), but I don't say no to her and sending her to Princeton was as much about my very protective relationship with my daughter over logic or finances. I will say i think Princeton is one of the special places in the US and there are intangibles she received - not worth all of the money, though. My other kid went on a full ride to Michigan - she turned down Ivy League - she is a practical kid though - and very very successful today.

One of the most ridiculous posts ever on here.

Everything he said was factual. I agree that it is ridiculous that the Ivies provide no aid, only income based discounts.

How did the Brojos pay for school? Can I just do that?

why are you trying to pay$70,000????

Like state tuition should be around $10k, dorm about $7k, and food about $6k. Lets round that up, now we are about $25k/year.

Unless your child is going to be a doctor/nurse/lawyer/CPA, they don't need a degree.

Even engineers don't need degrees. The point of engineering is to create better products for the marketplace (AKA TO SELL). If your kid wants to be an engineer, give them $10k a year, or not, and let them invest in education and experimentation to create a good product.

All other degrees like marketing, computer science, or business can be learned outside of college.

I'm just trying to stress that going to college is not necessary.

I go to a state school in Florida, and will graduate in May 2020, in which I will be 19 years old (I turn 20 the week after graduation)with my Bachelors in Health Science. I graduated high school in 2018. The rest of my degree is online, so I will not be going back to my university. I own my own company and I make in the low to mid six figure range. I'm not going to use my "degree", but I'm just using college as a tool. Last year, I made around $4,000 going to college. Because of more scholarships, and the fact that I will not be living in a dorm, I will make about $14,000 going to school this next school year.

I'm getting paid to go to college. Having a degree will open up doors if I ever need to, but it is not necessary. If college wasn't free for me, I would not go.

It sounds like you may have the wrong income and/or diversity attributes to get a scholarship based on your acedemic or athletic accomplishments.

If there is a viable ROI behind the 70k then your worries are less as your post grad job should pay off the student loan fairly quickly. If not, suggest alternative approaches such as different major, less expensive school, trade school alternatives, etc ... to avoid being upside down in their loans as many are today.

In fairness, the room for error is greater today than say 30 years ago, so more thought and homework (no pun intended) needs to be done before locking in on major, school and cost structures - there is also the element of “moving to where the puck will be” in future job market opportunities. Think hard about the upcoming shift of available jobs impacted by robotics as it will come, it is just a question of exactly when.

Best of luck in whatever you end up choosing.

Back to the OP question: just take out loans and get them forgiven at a future point in time. My wife did this.

you are not wrong, but reeling someone to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt is ludicrous

Don't go to a need based college. Go to a merit based college.

Ah, you're 19. I'd like to hire you while you still know everything.

Off-shore tax havens, LLCs, foreign bank accounts, Grandpa’s family trust.