My husband and I have five children, ages 5 to 16, and we have no intention of paying for our children’s college education, mainly because we simply cannot afford it.
I have mixed feelings about our inability to fund our children’s college education because, on the one hand, I would like to be able to relieve them of the burden of student debt and give them a fresh start in life, but on the other hand, I know firsthand that there are also benefits to learning to pay for college yourself.
We don’t have the money
I am self-employed and my husband is a public school teacher. Despite the fact that my husband has a master’s degree and has taught for 16 years, his income remains below the poverty line for our family size.
We live a comfortable life, but funding five children’s college education is simply not possible with the income we currently have.
We both paid for our education
Neither my husband nor I come from a family that could have funded our college education, and it never even occurred to us that it might be an option. My husband comes from a small-town farming family, and my parents were first-generation college graduates with no money saved up.
We both had to get scholarships and loans to pay for college: we worked through our teens, my husband was eligible for a PELL grant, and I chose a school that offered full-ride scholarships to high school valedictorians (and I managed to become valedictorian to guarantee free tuition).
We recognize that times are very, very different today, but we both believe there are creative ways for teens to at least partially fund their college education outside of family money, and we plan to encourage our children to find ways to pay for their future education.
Our eldest benefits from early college programs
I recently attended an orientation session with my 16-year-old daughter for her college entrance program. I was not familiar with college entrance programs, but they have become popular in our area, both for the support they can offer teens transitioning to college and for the cost savings they can offer.
Early college programs vary by state, but most operate through a partnership with a local college and offer high school students the opportunity to take modified college courses for free alongside their high school curriculum.
Students in the program take an extra year of high school, a full course load of college courses, and then graduate with up to 60 college credits, sometimes enough for a full associate degree. The program then works with the student to move them to the next level, including transferring those credits to a four-year school if they wish. My daughter is excited about the program and has taken steps to enroll on her own, and I know that’s largely because she knows we can’t afford her education.
We have small savings for each child
We chose to have a large family, and despite having children young (our first was born while we were still students) and having limited financial resources from the start, I did my best to have some form of savings for my children. I opened savings accounts for each of them after they were born and set up automatic transfers.
Over the years, we have sometimes only been able to give $25 a quarter, but in my opinion, that would be better than nothing. I hope that even a small amount will help them when they are ready to take the next step after high school, even if it only covers books.
I just opened a 529
Last year when my daughter turned 15, I really realized how close college was, so I panicked a little about how we could help her.
In addition to the early education program, I used what little savings we had for her and opened a 529 education account. These plans are state-specific, but they are interest-bearing savings accounts specifically for education expenses. While it would have been better if I had opened the account much earlier, once again, I figured something was better than nothing.
I moved our automatic savings transfers to the 529 account, which makes them tax deductible for us, and the account is already earning interest for her. I can also have the grandparents make a gift to the account. The catch is that all the money has to be used for educational purposes, but things like trade school and school expenses qualify.
Finances continue to be a challenge for us, but I know that even a small amount can make a difference, and I hope that my children will also learn life lessons and positive benefits from not graduating, even though I wish we could afford it.
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