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I read the article and thought, wait a minute, no, student debt didn't nearly destroy the family -- their choices, and their kids' choices, were simply not particularly good from a financial perspective. For example:
- The parents had apparently saved nothing for college, even though they had 4 kids that they wanted to PUT through college.
- Three out of the four kids decided to go to private colleges. Sometimes private colleges are actually less expensive than public ones -- IF the family gets financial aid, but this family didn't.
- The parents refinanced their house (after almost losing it when the dad lost his job) to pay for a daughter's wedding.
- The parents say they have no retirement savings. SERIOUSLY???
- And on a more basic level, they chose to have FOUR kids. Sorry, but kids are expensive. If you choose to have 4 kids, please don't complain later about how expensive it is to support them. (I know that may sound harsh, but come on!!)
Am I nuts, or are those just not very smart financial decisions?
After reading the article, I have to agree. These parents took an extremely naive and cavalier approach to both family planning and family finances. By the year 2000, I thought it would have been obvious that the increasing cost of tertiary education would necessitate some saving. Amongst white collar families, I thought it was practically instinctual knowledge that federal assistance doesn't exist for married professionals pulling in salaries commensurate with that demographic designation.
It sounds like the kids didn't earn scholarships or at least didn't choose to attend a school that may have included some scholarship money in the offer package.
Financial decisions...choosing a spouse.....people, -- hello -- choices and behaviors have consequences.
The headline alone reflects a mindset and a society where more and more people don't understand the concept of making responsible decisions..
I can't say it any better than Karen already did. Agreed 100%
All I would add is that even if the kids wanted big names on their degrees, they could have cut their expenses in half or more by just going to a local public university for the first 2 years to get most of their general education classes out of the way, especially if they studied hard and got some assistance for the last 2 years at a big name private school. It doesn't take that much effort to find out the requirements for this from your end goal school and make sure you take the right classes to meet their requirements.
“At the time, [the financial aid office] made it seem like the loans were free money, like it was the solution and there was no conversation about what it would actually mean when I graduated," she says. "I don't think anyone explained it to my parents either.
Both parents hold graduate degrees but don't know the meaning of the word LOAN.
Because a headline reading "Lack of financial planning and poor financial choices nearly destroyed this family's finances" just doesn't get the same click through as blaming it all on student loans. I think Yahoo does these stories on purpose, they must just be link bait, I wouldn't be surprised if they made up the couple. But it's too irresistible not to comment.
I'll be the first to discuss how out of control college expense have gotten, it really is different these days. But this couple really did make every poor decision available to put them in their current situation, and it's clear from the article student loans were not a one-off situation. They had many other choices along the way, junior colleges, state schools, more lucrative degrees, cheaper wedding because of the already high debt load, it just seems that they never learned to say no.
Something about college makes people do crazy things with money. It must be because of how hard it is to put a value on the education, or even if you do everyone will start throwing out how they are bettering themselves, learning invaluable life skills, etc. I mean how dare we put a price on these kids dreams. But this reluctance to properly evaluate the cost benefit of colleges is really damaging to the average middle class family. Music Therapy for the elderly sounds like a wonderfully rewarding career, but at $150,000 and a $34,000 earning potential it just doesn't make sense.
My dad died weeks after I entered a four year university as a junior (I did my first few years at a community college where I knew all my credits would transfer)... so my free ride was over. I got loans and worked. Didn't kill me to do that.
My niece and nephew also got a lot of grants and scholarships from all over -- a little here and a little there, and they both worked through college. And through their masters degrees (although some inheritance money helped pay for that). They got out with no debt at all.
I think far too many kids think it's a given they are going to college, and then parents sacrifice themselves to get them there. If kids want to go to college, they will find a way to go college. And these horrid predatory loans are NOT the way....
Didn't read the article, Karen's response summed it up nicely. College is a different animal now... The main goal is not to educate, it is PROFIT. That's why you see all these commercials now for these colleges that no one has ever heard of... like New Hampshire Tech online, etc.. Those schools are costly and people are taking out loans to get a degree at these pseudo schools. I think there is a fair amount of planning that should go into a college education, but I also think the system itself is very flawed. This coming from someone with student debt.... learned my lesson the hard way, now I'm enjoying life
I said the same thing when I read this article earlier. These are educated people with good jobs, why didn't they have any money saved by the time they have 4 kids attending college?
Also why are they paying for any of their childrens college if they are not financially comfortable enough to do so? Plenty of people, including myself, took out student loans to go to college. There are financially responsible ways to get a good degree. ie go to a state college or get scholarships.
I really hate these types of "woe is me" financial stories because most of the people being written about make consistently horrible decisions and the writers tend to gloss over that fact.
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