Some random thoughts while reading (and not aimed at anyone in particular):
We live in a starter home that we never left. It’s a ranch on half an acre that we added an in-law apt and sunroom to. If we sold it tomorrow, we could easily get over $700,000 for it. That’s not because it’s a dazzling and super-desirable house, but rather because the real estate market in our area has gone absolutely crazy. The median price in our state just hit
$610,000. I follow real estate where we live and people are getting over $500,000 for 1BR/1BA crappy little outdated cottages. (Another reason for young people who wish to stay local to keep their college costs down.) Just looked up the house I grew up in in the city on Zillow and it’s worth $1,000,000 - and they’d probably get more since it’s not actually for sale and those estimates tend to be low. Believe me, it’s decent, but nothing special, with little land and built in 1910, so old and likely outdated.
I work with lots of doctors, but the ones I work the closest with are newly out of school and still eating ramen.
They love it if we invite them to our shift meals. One night years ago I brought in a banana bread I’d baked and had all wrapped up in tinfoil in the nurse’s station. I came out of a patient room to find a group of residents (new doctors) had opened it up and half eaten it! Learned to hide my goodies after that. I know many of them live with roommates.
Not every HS offers dual enrollment. Our did not. My kids were average students, not academic superstars. DD took one AP course that she got credit for, which was helpful. I remember wondering at the time whether to “push them harder”, but we decided against it. DD had a friend who was being pushed and was having serious mental health issues. DH and I decided it was better to let them stay well-adjusted rather than create a lot of extra academic stress. These are things that each family has to decide for themselves.
Our state also doesn’t offer in-state tuition scholarships like some states do (other than one that I know of that rewards those students who score highest on our MCAS exams). College students here are faced with figuring out how to pay for the bulk of tuition in most cases unless they are very academically talented, poor, or belong to a protected class. Some may be fortunate to find discounts on tuition, and more power to them. We didn’t get any help other than small loans senior year and a couple of small HS scholarships.
Our state schools aren’t as cheap as some of the schools I’ve read about:
https://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/massachusetts/?view=all
Massachusetts Colleges, Cost and Affordability for 2022
How much does it cost to attend college in Massachusetts? The average annual in-state college tuition in Massachusetts was $28,558 for the 2020-2021 academic year. This is $13,637 higher than the U.S. average and ranks Massachusetts amongst the costliest as the 4th most expensive and 49th most affordable state or district to attend college. This is a change of $556 from the 2019-2020 average of $28,002 and represents a 1.99% annual increase.
As I said, mine chose to commute to school which made sense for them, and saved an enormous amount of money. On many previous threads we’ve hashed it out about whether that’s getting “the college experience” or not. My response to that is, Who cares?
Of course they got the college experience! But more importantly, they got their degrees in a way they could afford. I’m not sure we always have the luxury today of getting the traditional “college experience” if it’s going to cost an arm and a leg to get it, especially in student loans.
All this to say that not all of the tips offered here apply to everyone, although I am glad to see that some have such great opportunities and can take advantage of them. I’m not sure why our state does not other than probably because colleges are a big thing here; you might say it’s part of our state’s livelihood, so I’m sure that’s got something to do with it somehow.
Why live here if things are so expensive then? DH and I were born and brought up here - our life, work, family and friends are all here; it’s what we know and love. Not interested in starting over somewhere new. So we just deal with it. A couple of posters here have mentioned that Boston is a really great city, and it is. It’s also a great place to go to school, as [I and] mine did, as well. We wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. But we did have to find ways to keep costs down as much as we could, given the circumstances, and we did. We could’ve even more so had community colleges been involved, but that didn’t work out for either of mine because of their individual circumstances. (Saying this here so future college parents and students reading here understand it can be done with some creativity.)
A few mentioned teaching kids in HS, and parents, about how college costs and financing work. Our kids’ HS had those seminars, but I’m not sure they were well attended. It’s something many people really don’t want to think about. There’s so much pressure and people who may not have prepared as well as others did may feel somewhat deflated when they have to face the prospects. I’ve talked to a lot of these people to offer support, and lent out my books, etc. (One parent who comes to mind whose husband was career military had no idea how the GI Bill worked because she’d never looked into it. Not sure how it all worked out but hope they figured it out and it benefitted their college student.)
I mentioned earlier that I was completely on my own for college and had no clue, either, and it was hard. I played the work-two-or-three-jobs while attending school FT, changing majors, withdrawing from classes, etc., game, too (and not because I wasn’t “smart”, but because I was so ill-prepared and underprivileged, leaving home for good at 18), so it took me a long time to finish. Meanwhile my friends who were mostly settled in the business world were driving new cars, wearing nice clothes, buying homes and taking vacations, while I was still working every day like a dog, never having a day off, driving a rust bucket and trying to figure out how in the world I was going to finish, in a panic every time the bills came due. I had little choice but to stick it out, and I did. Of course now some of my friends are retired and snowbirding in FL while I’m still working like a dog, lol, so I guess getting behind the 8 ball at the outset did impact a lot in my life, and that’s what I didn’t want to happen to my own kids.
The system does need a major overhaul if it’s allowing parents and students to sign their lives away with excessive student loans. $10,000 is a nice gesture, but unless it’s going to people who have just a small amount of loans, I’m not sure it’s going to help all that much. I’m sad that this crisis has caused our younger generations to put off things like marriage and owning their own homes so much.
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/9-inves...g-a-house-because-of-student-debt/1011002846/
To parents who still have time to think this through, do your research and help your young people make good financial decisions for their futures - they’ll thank you later.
