How much is university projected to cost in Canada in 18 years?
For a Canadian university education, an October 2009 article at Canada.com says: [...] The study estimates the total price tag of an undergraduate degree at a whopping $137,013 for students living away from home and $101,426 for those staying at home. [...] The College Board offers a calculator.  (Targeted to US residents; not sure how the figures will differ for Canada and other countries.)  Keep in mind that college costs typically increase faster than inflation.  When I attended in 2001-2005, my college's tuition costs increases ranged from 4 to 6%. Here's a great Canadian college/university cost calculator I used; found at Canadian Business - they say: Our tool is divided into three easy   steps. First, calculate the tuition   cost for the university and faculty   you wish to attend. Then, calculate any additional fees   for residence (on campus student   housing), meal plans, athletics,   health and student services. This will   give you the total cost a student will   pay at a Canadian university in   2006/7. Once you know the total annual cost,   take the third step to calculate the   total cost for the duration of the   course of study. Of course, this only calculates what it will cost you NOW, not eighteen years from now, but it's a good start :) I personally do not buy any those so-call forecasts - look no further than the economic forecasts by those experts with PhDs over the last decade or so.  Truth is there are too many factors that affects the tuition fees that far down the road (think inflation, cost of living, the method for which the education is being delivered, anticipated salary for the teachers, the ratio of schools and students, your children's ability to obtain scholarship money, and etc). Put in what you can afford for RESP - I put in $2000 annually per child to take maximum advantage of the 20% government matching.  And be prepare to augment that with additional fund in 18 years.  I am prepared to take on significant loans if my children both decided and qualified for graduated studies in specialized fields in a prestige universities - I have had met people with graduate degrees from Harvard and Cambridge and the obscure sum they (or their parents) paid on tuition are about as good investment as I have ever seen.  Education is one of the best gifts any parent could give to their child.
"Now asking if college is worth it?  That's not the question that should be asked.  Higher education and extended training are always a benefit at any point in life when it's of high quality.  The question that should be asked is, ""why is the cost of college as high as it is?""  When I went to college to get my Bachelors, a semester at my state university cost $940 bucks US (this was in the early to mid 90s).  Twenty years later, that same education cost $6,500 per semester.  The main difference between these periods is that borrowing for school is now standard practice (much less so in the 90s).  Any time you need to borrow to pay for something, you're going to overpay just because you have access to credit and can keep borrowing when someone hands you a bill.  Today, kids borrow for college because they don't have much choice if their parents didn't save enough or stopped supporting them right out of high school.  And if you have this level of debt right out of college, your hands will be tied for decades - it affects things like first home buying and disposable income spending.  The only way to drive the cost of college down is to plan ahead and pay with cash - and to do that, you need to have enough luck to be born to parents who care enough to help with your future.  If schools know you can't or won't borrow to pay for an education, they adjust." There are some great answers on this site similar to what you asked, with either a non-jurisdictional or a US-centric focus. I would read those answers as well to give yourself more points of view on early investing. There are a few differences between Canada and the US from an investing perspective that you should also then consider, namely tax rules, healthcare, and education. I'll get Healthcare and Education out of the way quickly. Just note the difference in perspective in Canada of having government healthcare; putting money into health-savings plans or focusing on insurance as a workplace benefit is not a key motivating factor, but more a 'nice-to-have'. For education, it is more common in Canada for a student to either pay for school while working summer / part-time jobs, or at least taking on manageable levels of debt [because it is typically not quite as expensive as private colleges in the US]. There is still somewhat of a culture of saving for your child's education here, but it is not as much of a necessity as it may be in the US. From an investing perspective, I will quickly note some common [though not universal] general advice, before getting Canadian specific. I have blatantly stolen the meat of this section from Ben Miller's great answer here: Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing Once you have a solid financial footing, some peculiarities of Canadian investing are below. For all the tax-specific plans I'm about to mention, note that the banks do a very good job here of tricking you into believing they are complex, and that you need your hand to be held. I have gotten some criminally bad tax advice from banking reps, so at the risk of sounding prejudiced, I recommend that you learn everything you can beforehand, and only go into your bank when you already know the right answer. The 'account types' themselves just involve a few pages of paperwork to open, and the banks will often do that for free. They make up their fees in offering investment types that earn them management fees once the accounts are created. Be sure to separate the investments (stocks vs bonds etc.) vs the investment vehicles. Canada has 'Tax Free Savings Accounts', where you can contribute a certain amount of money every year, and invest in just about anything you want, from bonds to stocks to mutual funds. Any Income you earn in this account is completely tax free. You can withdraw these investments any time you want, but you can't re-contribute until January 1st of next year. ie: you invest $5k today in stocks held in a TFSA, and they grow to $6k. You withdraw $6k in July. No tax is involved. On January 1st next year, you can re-contribute a new $6K, and also any additional amounts added to your total limit annually. TFSA's are good for short-term liquid investments. If you don't know for sure when you'll need the money, putting it in a TFSA saves you some tax, but doesn't commit you to any specific plan of action. Registered Retirement Savings Plans allow you to contribute money based on your employment income accrued over your lifetime in Canada. The contributions are deducted from your taxable income in the year you make them. When you withdraw money from your RRSP, the amount you withdraw gets added as additional income in that year. ie: you invest $5k today in stocks held in an RRSP, and get a $5k deduction from your taxable income this year. The investments grow to $6k. You withdraw $6k next year. Your taxable income increases by $6k [note that if the investments were held 'normally' {outside of an RRSP}, you would have a taxable gain of only 50% of the total gain; but withdrawing the amount from your RRSP makes the gain 100% taxable]. On January 1st next year, you CANNOT recontribute this amount. Once withdrawn, it cannot be recontributed [except for below items]. RRSP's are good for long-term investing for retirement. There are a few factors at play here: (1) you get an immediate tax deduction, thus increasing the original size of investment by deferring tax to the withdrawal date; (2) your investments compound tax-free [you only pay tax at the end when you withdraw, not annually on earnings]; and (3) many people expect that they will have a lower tax-rate when they retire, than they do today. Some warnings about RRSP's: (1) They are less liquid than TFSA's; you can't put money in, take it out, and put it in again. In general, when you take it out, it's out, and therefore useless unless you leave it in for a long time; (2) Income gets re-characterized to be fully taxable [no dividend tax credits, no reduced capital gains tax rate]; and (3) There is no guarantee that your tax rate on retirement will be less than today. If you contribute only when your tax rate is in the top bracket, then this is a good bet, but even still, in 30 years, tax rates might rise by 20% [who knows?], meaning you could end up paying more tax on the back-end, than you saved in the short term. Home Buyer Plan RRSP withdrawals My single favourite piece of advice for young Canadians is this: if you contribute to an RRSP at least 3 months before you make a down payment on your first house, you can withdraw up to $25k from your RRSP without paying tax! to use for the down payment. Then over the next ~10 years, you need to recontribute money back to your RRSP, and you will ultimately be taxed when you finally take the money out at retirement. This means that contributing up to 25k to an RRSP can multiply your savings available for a down payment, by the amount of your tax rate. So if you make ~60k, you'll save ~35% on your 25k deposited, turning your down payment into $33,750. Getting immediate access to the tax savings while also having access to the cash for a downpayment, makes the Home Buyer Plan a solid way to make the most out of your RRSP, as long as one of your near-term goals is to own your own home. Registered Pension Plans are even less liquid than RRSPs. Tax-wise, they basically work the same: you get a deduction in the year you contribute, and are taxed when you withdraw. The big difference is that there are rules on when you are allowed to withdraw: only in retirement [barring specific circumstances]. Typically your employer's matching program (if you have one) will be inside of an RPP. Note that RPP's and RRSP's reduce your taxes on your employment paycheques immediately, if you contribute through a work program. That means you get the tax savings during the year, instead of all at once a year later on April 30th. *Note that I have attempted at all times to keep my advice current with applicable tax legislation, but I do not guarantee accuracy. Research these things yourself because I may have missed something relevant to your situation, I may be just plain wrong, and tax law may have changed since I wrote this to when you read it. &gt;At 15K per year for the 40+ years of work from 22 or so to 65, it will be 600K.   Hah. You can't take nominal terms like that. Even if you take just inflation at say, 2% a year, and a modest required rate of return of 8%, the present value of 15K a year for 40 years is 146,685. So basically if you expect to get only 15K a year more for the next 40 years, you can only afford to pay 146,685 dollars for tuition + forgone income today. That's just to break you even. And many people invest much more than that. Yeah having the government guarantee basically the entire housing finance industry has done the same thing as university eduction. In a larger sense those in their 20s did get screwed because the Baby Boomers mortgaged their future to keep prices artificially high for their assets. College costs are increasing 8% per year.  In 18 years that's 4 times the current costs of college.  The [current costs](http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/26/pf/college/college_tuition_cost/index.htm) of college are $21,000 annually for a public 4 year degree, and $42,000 annually for a private 4 year degree.  In 18 years that's $336,000 for a public college bachelor's degree, and $672,000 for a private college bachelor's degree.  Per kid.  Suddenly $900,000 doesn't seem so big. I agree.  My point was that obtaining a degree for the benefit of having a degree will no longer be the accepted next step after high school.  Degrees won't disappeared outright .  Still the loss of money to higher education will still cause problems. Not bad. Do you do similar bullets for the future of the world economy?  To add to your Academic Bubble points:   * the black market will increase, with students simply defaulting on the debt, and getting jobs that pay cash.  * people will go back to apprenticeships to train young people more efficiently, like it's been done for centuries.  * online learning and standardized tests will replace expensive college system. Why not?  Couldn't one assume that if a person does not go to college then they'd go straight into the work force?  Given that college usually takes 4 years to complete, that worker would only have to save $6,250 per year for the down payment and would be debt-free. How is that the wrong use of marginal? Its marginal in that it is small. Not marginal in the economic sense, which is what I think you think I meant.   You operating on the premise that loans for advanced education is the right model. I disagree wholeheartedly. Make public university free and crank up the standards. Not that hard. From Kiplinger: Can the money be used at a foreign   college? You can use the money at   hundreds of foreign colleges,   including the University of Toronto,   McGill in Montreal and many other   Canadian schools. If U.S. students at   the school qualify for federal   financial aid, you can use 529-plan or   ESA money to pay the bills without   worrying that you'll lose any of the   tax benefits. "Thank God you have your child back, it is so awesome that you finally found a medical treatment that worked.  It must have been a truly trying time in your lives.   That situation is an important template in personal finance.  Through no fault of your own, a series of events occurred that caused you to spend far more money then you anticipated.  Per your post this was complicated by lost income due to economic situations.   What is to say that this does not happen again in the future?  While we can all hope that our child does not get sick, there are other events that could also fit into this template. Because of this I hate all options you present.  Per your post, you are pretty thin with free cash flow and have high income, and yet you are looking to borrow more.  That is a recipe for disaster with it being made worse as you are considering putting your home at risk. The 20K per year per kid sounds like a live at the university state school; or, a close by private school.  Your finances do not support either option.  There are times when the word ""No"" is in order when answering questions.   Doing a live at home community college to university will cost you a total of about 30K per kid rather than the 80K you are proposing.  Doing this alone will greatly reduce the risk you are attempting to assume.  Doing that and having your child work some, you could cash flow college.  That is what I would recommend. Given that you are so thin, you will also have to put constraints on college attendance.  No changing major three times, only majors with an employable skills, and studying before partying.  It may be worth it to wait a year of two before attending if a decision cannot be made. I was in a similar situation when my son started college.  High income, but broke.  He worked and went to a community college and was able to pay for the bulk of it himself.  From there he obtained a job with a healthy salary and completed his degree at the University.  It took him a little longer, but he is debt free and has a fantastic work ethic." At that rate, European schools will soon be overrun by American students. Here in Germany, foreign students pay the same fees as anyone else, which amount to anything between 100 € and 1500 € ($125 - $2000) annually at public universities, and there are already quite a few US students. Combine this low cost with a high availability of English-language courses and a fairly good employment situation (unemployment is currently at about 7% as measured by German measuring standards, which amounts to about 5% as measured in the US, and native English speakers are still rare enough that just about anyone can earn good money as a private English tutor), and coming here looks more attractive by the minute. Title is incorrect. $1000 every ten years, or $100 per year.   The author puts the calculations in the article, and while I think the methodology is dubious it is at least transparent. The $1000 was the cost over the next decade applied to the number of workers, which means the annual cost is one tenth of that, or $100.  Edit: I said number of households and I should’ve said number of workers. There's the fear that one might forget the debit is coming and still bounce the payment.  Personally, I agree with Dheer's list, I don't want to give someone unlimited access to my account. I make good use of electronic payments where I initiate the payment.  For the credit card I use regularly, I have a $250 monthly payment set to go automatically. If I forget to make a payment or lose the bill, at least the minimum is covered. The monthly charges are enough that when I actually pay the bill in full upon receipt, it just goes in toward current charges.  Bills like gas/electric/phone are different every month, so an auto-debit is actually more trouble than how I handle. When I put it on the credit card, I haven't paid for the product or service yet.  If there is a dispute, then I have the upper hand because the cash is still in my pocket.