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Probably won't plan for my kids college fund unless things change as far as the economy or jobs. Probably stir them to a trade or vocation unless they want to be a doctor or something. But hey with this economy I may not ever have kids
If you wait till you think they have an actually chance academically to be a doctor it probably will be too late. Not to mention it's ridiculous to suggest only someone who might be a doctor should be going to college.
Started planning financially at birth. Kids are still in preschool so nothing academically yet except for normal preschool and following their interests. There are people around here that start tutoring or Saturday school in early elementary. Seems a bit much to me. My kids already know about college and I don't think they will question going.
Fairly idiotic for parents to choose to have kids if don't have time/money to prep 'em in terms of job skills...outsourcing this stuff to schools reflects idiocy/laziness of parents
College, even Stanford CS or Wharton Finance, is largely a union card for some elite careers, like software engineering, hedge funds, etc...but as SV of past 30+yrs reveals, many/most of top, highest-paid engineers are largely self-taught and/or are college/PhD dropouts...and often from lame, cheap state colleges like IL or MI or MD, etc (and often kids bored by mediocre Luddite public suburban schools, let alone costly Luddite private schools)
Arguably most kids would be better served w/robust math/business English/finance/CS (all easily self-taught by age 10 or so) and some other relevant skills to be a >$100K/yr Merc mechanic or o&g worker or high-end restaurant waiter, etc etc....lots of Harvard/Stanford English/lib arts majors are utterly useless in modern workforce despite $250K diplomas...but Net/Kindle, etc make self-teaching for anyone incredibly cheap at any age from anywhere....people need to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and how to obtain those skills as efficiently as possible....tech has made these skills easily achievable for little money/time and has disintermediated "formal" education
Location: where people are either too stupid to leave or too stuck to move
3,982 posts, read 6,701,542 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatornation
If you wait till you think they have an actually chance academically to be a doctor it probably will be too late. Not to mention it's ridiculous to suggest only someone who might be a doctor should be going to college.
at the rate that the economy/college is going, going to college in anything other then medicine guarantees you nothing but debt and disappointment.. but like i said i don't think i'm even bothering to have kids anymore so doesn't matter what i think
at the rate that the economy/college is going, going to college in anything other then medicine guarantees you nothing but debt and disappointment.. but like i said i don't think i'm even bothering to have kids anymore so doesn't matter what i think
Well, since my parents instilled a very strong educational motivation in all their children, I started saving when I got out of college. Didn't get married until I was 34, but accumulated enough (but as I said in other posts), generated enough to send a child to any university in the US for 8 years (ouch, which looks like that it will be, $0.5M), and also get a lamborghini and ferrari (just kidding, won't do the latter two). The wonders of compound interest. $100 a week for 20 years, properly invested, will make it a cake walk.
It all boils down to planning ahead. Not to be blunt, but before you spread your legs, do the math, do the calculations, save your pennies, and it will work. That isn't even counting grants and scholarships.
Just my opinion.
Probably won't plan for my kids college fund unless things change as far as the economy or jobs. Probably stir them to a trade or vocation unless they want to be a doctor or something. But hey with this economy I may not ever have kids
If you had a child today, he or she wouldn't be going to college for about 18 years. I guarantee things will change in 18 years. I just don't know in what way.
at the rate that the economy/college is going, going to college in anything other then medicine guarantees you nothing but debt and disappointment.. but like i said i don't think i'm even bothering to have kids anymore so doesn't matter what i think
Engineering major here, and I can guarantee you I'm setting myself up for success by doing so.
Anyway, my parents academically prepped me by encouraging me to take honors classes starting in middle school. By my last year of high school I was in a couple of AP courses and got college credit for calculus 1 and 2 by taking the AP exam for calculus.
Other than that, it was just try hard, do your best, and by doing that I scored very well on the ACT and got guaranteed admission into CU Boulder.
at the rate that the economy/college is going, going to college in anything other then medicine guarantees you nothing but debt and disappointment.. but like i said i don't think i'm even bothering to have kids anymore so doesn't matter what i think
Well, engineering did it for me, and about 1,500 of my engineers, in addition to the ones I know. Made everyone really rich in our early 40's. You are correct, though, about medicine, and the daughter (well not legally mine), I believe will hit Johns Hopkins next fall, to become either a plastic surgeon or pediatrician, which will cost a zillion (technical term), but IMHO is worth every penny. Payback is huge.
(To totally digress, as I do in essentially every post, it has been nice to get an 'instant daughter', which started when she was 15).
"The only thing more expensive than an education, is ignorance".
Location: where people are either too stupid to leave or too stuck to move
3,982 posts, read 6,701,542 times
Reputation: 3689
Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyVaz1009
Engineering major here, and I can guarantee you I'm setting myself up for success by doing so.
Anyway, my parents academically prepped me by encouraging me to take honors classes starting in middle school. By my last year of high school I was in a couple of AP courses and got college credit for calculus 1 and 2 by taking the AP exam for calculus.
Other than that, it was just try hard, do your best, and by doing that I scored very well on the ACT and got guaranteed admission into CU Boulder.
Yea I went to college for free because of multiple scholarships , all I paid for was board, I'm still unemployed but I imagine if I was in debt like the rest of all my unemployed classmates it would be a disaster !
Quote:
Originally Posted by EdJS
If you had a child today, he or she wouldn't be going to college for about 18 years. I guarantee things will change in 18 years. I just don't know in what way.
Maybe they will replace us all with robots
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