Are you joking? 8k is a drop in the bucket compared to a half scholarship and room and board

This. See my post above. Simply saving what I was putting into 3-4 triathlons a year pre kid #1 should cover most if not his costs of undergraduate. Driving modest vehicles 10+ years should cover kid #2 costs for the most part. Its amazing how many people live above their means and want to place blame else ware. I had a conversation yesterday with someone complaining about upcoming college costs for a kid on "elite" travel soccer half the year. Elite means traveling out of state every other weekend.

Super cars, major investments in youth sports, kitchens, big ticket vacations, triathlons and saving for college are all choices you make. If you make $150-$200K or more a year, you should be able to find $6,000 to set aside annually per kid for school if it is a priority. If you do this from birth till college education, you both should be relatively debt free.

http://www.scholarshipstats.com/...age-per-athlete.html

It's not that far off- plus you are not considering the time practicing in the off season, club fees and the investment most parents make from age 8-18 to get them there.

I'm not convinced that even for the average scholarship recipient it is a good financial investment. It may be good for other reasons.

Then add in the probability of a kid becoming the average scholarship recipient. And I say this as a past D1 athlete and someone who worked for a D1 athletic department.

The D1 scholaships were 14 and 15K plus IIRC you get room and board. Plus with layering you can get close to full value at a lot of places. Also you forgot taxes in your 8K.

Of course, but demographically that isn't really how it works. Folks who make a lot are very commonly living well, but saving vastly more than folks with modest incomes. We've asked this here, and almost everyone in the LR is saving 20-30% of their income. This isn't some crazy frugality zone (we all bought tri gear, for god's sake), it is directly tied to higher incomes. My family saves more each year than the US median income, not even beginning to count investment appreciation.



Really, in most ways you are not doing as well? I would say that the two biggest shifts is that 2 job households and jobs that call for higher education have become the norm. Those represent massive paradigm shifts which people have problems coming to terms with. Otherwise, technology has led to an enormous number of improvements. Those improvements are unequally distributed in the extreme, but I question if you are doing as abysmally as you say. As a student of history, I guarantee that "America has been in decline" and "It is all downhill from here" have been sentiments for a couple of centuries now.

The raging stupidity of extracurricular blows my mind. I see kids being pushed into them and they watch their parents spend tons of money on them and I don't questions these kids making stupid decisions. We are a stupid nation.

I'm not doing "abysmally." I'm doing quite well. My dad bought a big house in the country that he paid off before turning 30. We had "toys" like mini bikes, go carts, motorcycles and snowmobiles growing up. I can't afford to do any of that. My mom worked part time as a substitute teacher but she didn't really need to; we could have done quite well on my dad's pay.

I think America has been in decline for decades but not centuries. For a long time every generation did better than the last. That ended around 1980. Before 1980 most households got by on one income but after 1980 most families needed two breadwinners to get by. Ever since 1980 wages for all demographics except the wealthiest percentile or two have been stagnant or declining. This coincided with when demand side economics was replaced with supply side economics. We were promised that if corporations and the wealthy had more money it would fuel an economic boon and everyone would prosper because a rising tide lifts all ships. 40 years on we are still waiting for all that money to trickle down to the rest of us.

Thoughts.....

I think the most important thing a person needs in life is a reason to live.
And I don't think a spouse, a child or a parent is a sufficient "reason."

A person's "reason" could be religion.
It could be triathlon, bird watching, film.

Once one has a "reason" to live, THEN one needs a "means to make a living."

A career, is at best, "a harmless, and tolerable way to make a living."

The "career" cannot be the center piece of life. Or one will become a mindless drone! Obviously, the career will occupy a large portion our waking hours. But it is what you do after work that matters.

So....
I am a big believer in extra curricular activities.
I just hope my kids develop their own passions. Not relive mine.

That's true for most student loans today. In addition, there's no need for a judgment to garnish wages at 15% of income. Once a borrower defaults on a government guaranteed loan, there's I believe a 30 or 90 day opportunity to appeal (on very narrow grounds) before the wages can be garnished. And unlike a lot of garnishments or withholding orders, which expire after one year unless renewed, a withholding order on a defaulted student loan remains in effect until the debt is paid off. Further, depending on income, 15% can be a larger payment than what would have been the monthly payment had the borrower never defaulted.

I agree. I was taking about the ridiculous levels kids are pushed during extracurricular activities. Families where three activity become the center of the kids life. I have seen what my sister spent for my nephew to be in high school marching band and am stunned. I know little girls who practice dance 20 plus hours a week for compitions that cost the families crazy money.

I am all for kids and adults doing things outside of school or a career but when so much money and time are put into a kids activity they are taught to make huge sarifices that aren't so smart

It is a complex problem.
Who knows what the "right" answer is.
There are obviously lots of wrong answers.

I have problems with both of my kids and extra curricular activities.

My oldest son has little that he likes, and nothing he is good at. He is pretty good at school. (And got a 98% ACT score) What should I do with him?
I spent a ton of time introducing him to stuff. But he would quickly want to quit everything. Finally, I just made him do stuff.
But now he is too old for that.
His principal activities are eating, pretending to workout at the gym and making up stuff about himself online.
I suppose teenagers find our exactly what their parents hate most.
And become that thing.

My youngest is probably the best soccer player in Tucson for his age. (His club and HS coach say so).
But Tucson does not have a development level soccer team.
The only development team in AZ is a private soccer academy is a 1.5 hrs drive away. The academy want $45,000 for him to attend (that includes a 25,000 scholarship) for him to attend.
So, needless to say that child also has unresolved issues related to his "dreams."

Fortunately, though these things are their problems not mine.
I guess I can just advise, assist and watch.

I didn't buy a single book for my last semester of law school. Every single class I had was using a new book, so I couldn't take advantage of the typical discount for used books, one class had 2 different books and another had 3. I went to the bookstore, sorted, through all that, and said "eff it". My GPA was worse that semester than any of the other 5, but not that much worse.

You say you are in the top 1% of your field for pay and you can't afford a mini-bike or a go-cart? What are you spending your money on? Also, how does the home you live in compare to the one you grew up in? I'm old, but my house is a freaking mansion compared to what I grew up in, which was a typical house for the time.

Books for college are a hack. I had several professors never reference or use the book. The book had nothing to do with the tests. I even had one professor who make sure everyone had the book and purchased it brand new....because he wrote it!

There were times where I bought a book online (early years of amazon) and I sold it back to the book store for more than what I paid for it for a small profit!

The one guy I had directed all his profits to a trust that donates to the school. I've had friends who had asshole profs that profited off their sales

I can afford to buy some of the things but I can't afford to buy everything my dad did. I have to choose. My house is much larger than the one I grew up in. I only have as large a house as I do because my in-laws live with us but they also own 20% of the house and pay half of most of the bills.

Certain luxuries we enjoy now weren't available in the 1960's like flat big screen TVs, Internet connected computers and smartphones. Hard to factor that in to the equation.

I don't know exactly how much my dad made (he was always secretive about this sort of thing even to us) but I know he made less than $36,000 because that is the pay he demanded if he was going to move and manage a department in an out of state plant. If he made $20,000 in the mid 60's that would be as much as my my wife and I make combined (I work full time my wife works part time) in today's dollars. He had a high school diploma and both my wife and I are college graduated professionals.

There have been other periods where previous generations were better off, and other eras where economic disparities seemed to systemic.


Generally true, but you are overstating it a bit. The upper quintile has been doing okay, with at least some measure of mobility. Here is a graph back to 1967. Over a 50 year span, wages have only gone up ~20% for the bottom 60% of households. As I said, you don't really have much chance to move up unless your earnings change (and then you still have to save).

One of my kids has a summer only job and the other one is working year round (since December). What they make is almost irrelevant to the cost of college. It might pay for their books and supplies. This seems to kinda like the guy saying people can't afford health insurance because they're buying iPhones.

Plus they have to take a full load of AP classes and participate in extracurriculars to pad their application for college. In may ways it's a much shittier life than I had as a teen. I didn't have to be 'perfect' to get into a UC school.

This fear has been "growing" for the better part of a decade. I remember way back in the chainpin days in the midst of the Great Recession that student debt was going to be the next shoe to drop.

It could still happen. Maybe it's just really hard to predict when.

Whenever I interview new people for jobs, I judge them almost entirely on extracurricular activities. E.g .what they did with their lives outside of the institutionalized learning machine. I interview engineers, and the engineers who like to build shit on their own time for fun almost uniformly kick the shit out of 4.0 GPA cum laude types who only walk the line.

Maybe this isn't what you meant by "extracurricular" - haven't read this whole thread. I just think it's really good to do stuff outside of school.

Summary:
1) The rich can afford to go anywhere they can get in.
2) Excellent students and football players can go wherever they can get in.
3) Good students from low income homes can go anywhere they want and graduate with modest debt.
4) Good and Average students from moderately high income comes can ONLY go to public college without destroying someone's finances.
5) Average students from low income homes CANNOT go anywhere WITHOUT destroying someoned finances.

This is pretty much how our entire society is structured. If you're making 400K+ a year you really aren't all that worried about tax rates, paying for health care or college tuition. However if you have a household income in the 50-100K range you don't "Qualify" for assistance on much of anything. You pay taxes at a significant rate, you pay for your health care and college tuition. However if you make 20K or less, you get health care covered to the point of not even needing to cover co-pays or deductibles, you get college tuition paid for and pay significant less in taxes.

It's been this way for decades. The middle class is the easy target because they get a weekly paycheck and they make a good portion of the total income. The rich pay more, but their level of disposable income is much higher so they aren't as highly impacted if costs go up. The poor are "Taken care" to a large degree.

Point being that it's a general mentality that is threaded throughout our society, why should college tuition be any different?

~Matt

This fear has been "growing" for the better part of a decade. I remember way back in the chainpin days in the midst of the Great Recession that student debt was going to be the next shoe to drop.

It could still happen. Maybe it's just really hard to predict when.

Over 90% of student loans are held by the federal government. I believe that number owed is ~1.3T. Let's say we simply have one massive "Student loan debt forgiveness" law passed and every taxpayer now owns a chunk of the debt. We'd be looking at ~11K per household. The more disconcerting thing is that student loans now account for almost half of the federal governments assets.

My point here is that there are two possible outcomes to a complete student loan collapse. Tax payers pick up the bill and we move on...or the government folds. While I think this would be another nail in the coffin I seriously doubt it would be the straw that breaks the camels back.

~Matt

LOL. Dude complaining about irresponsible youth who have been given everything and are too entitled to work a summer job then follows up by revealing his grandpa picked up his school costs.

Bit of a head-scratcher. Contrast the enormous generosity of his grandpa, and his response to the possibility of the same type of need....

As long as I made the grades I was going to get financial help from my grandpa. It was not an expectation but a gift. I worked throughout high school and college and had a partial football scholarship to a reasonably priced private school.

In the end I had the pleasure of paying off my wife's student loans.