Quote:
Originally Posted by christiangirl
Dee, I thought in your OP about the Barnard acceptance that it was only 3,000 in loans for that school? What did I miss?
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Yeah, that's the Stafford loan she qualifies for. She wasn't looking at the $18,800 expected parental contribution, most of which will need to be in loans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KSUViolet06
On the bright side, this is the best discussion to be having.
You'd rather be having the "I can't decide between 2 of my top choices and 2 great packages" discussion than the "I'm so depressed because I only got into a safety while Suzie and Jenny got into blah blah blah" discussion. THAT would drive you to drink. lol.
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She's not considering them to be great packages given the amount of student loans she will have when she graduates. Things she's reading say that students should go somewhere they can afford so that they don't have more than $15K in student loans TOTAL when they graduate and she's looking at $60-90K in loans when she graduates. However, she's exaggerating some things and isn't listening to me when I tell her that I should have her first year Parent PLUS loan paid off before she graduates or that when her brother starts school, her part of the EFC will be reduced and he will have some of that burden so it won't really be $90K.
I've pointed out that even if she had applied to my alma mater, one of the cheaper state colleges in Michigan, whose costs just about equal what they all seem to think *I* can afford, she'd have $16K a year in loans because she wouldn't get any aid at all. The only way to get it cheaper is to go to community college.
It boils down to the fact that they seem to think that I can contribute 30-36% of my take home pay to her college expenses and, frankly, I can't do that. Once I finish my master's, I will be able to contribute more. I'm hoping to land a part time teaching gig at one of my alma mater's or at a community college too, because I've always wanted to teach at that level, since before she was born.
There are a lot of details that I don't want to post on the Internet, but my income appears overinflated last year for several reasons and I believe that EFC will go down over the years, or I'll get a new job and it will remain similar but I'll actually be making more money than I am now. I also expect to be able to bear about half of the re-payment burden because I do want to help pay for college. I've tried pointing out all the little expenses that I will NOT have when she goes to college too ($40 in gas per pay period for her, $30 a pay period for school lunch, marching band fees, etc.) that will, instead, go toward paying these loans off. My grocery bills, utility bills, etc. will all go down when she's gone. As she takes a half hour shower right now, I'm thinking about how much the water bill will go down...lol. My boy takes 5 minute showers, mine are about 10 minutes.. that girl is in the shower FOREVER. I'll be doing half the laundry I do now because she changes clothes so many times a week and brings me her dirty laundry from her dad's house when she's been there. The girl doesn't realize how expensive she is to support right now! When the boy is away at school too, my living expenses will be almost nil. I might only have a TV for an hour a day, can tolerate much lower temperatures in the winter than they can, eat the least amount of food, etc.
I'm trying to explain all this to her. I do plan on taking out the max in loans but also plan to pay them off as quickly as I can while she's in school so the total amount will not be as bad as she thinks. However, I will have wiggle room in my budget for unexpected emergencies also if I do it this way. And, we will negotiate how much of it I will need her to pay back once she's grounded in a career.
Hybrid Mode
