How will I pay for college?
"First, it's clear from your story that you very likely should be able to receive some financial aid.  That may be in the form of loans or, better, grants in which you just get free money to attend college.  For example, a Pell grant.  You won't get all you'd need for a free ride this way, but you can really make a dent in what you'd pay.  The college may likely also provide financial aid to you.  In order to get any of this, though, you have to fill out a FAFSA.  There are deadlines for this for each state and each college (there you would ask individually).  I'd get looking into that as soon as you can. Do student loans have to be paid monthly?  Any loan is a specific agreement between a lender and a borrower, so any payment terms could apply, such as bimonthly or quarterly.  But monthly seems like the most reasonable assumption.  Generally, you should assume the least favorable (reasonably likely) terms for you, so that you are prepared for a worst-case scenario.  Let's say monthly. Can I just, as I had hoped, borrow large sums of money and only start   paying them after college? Yes.  That is a fair summary of all a student loan is.  Importantly, though, some loans are federal government subsidized loans for which the interest on the loan is paid for you as long as you stay in college + 6 months (although do check that is the current situation).  Unsubsidized loans may accrue interest from the start of the loan period.  If you have the option, obviously try hard to get the subsidized loans as the interest can be significant.  I made a point to only take subsidized loans.   WARNING: Student loans currently enjoy a (nearly?) unique status in America as being one of the only loan types that are not forgivable in bankruptcy.  This means that if you leave college with $100,000 in debt that begins accruing interest, there is no way for you to get out of it short of fleeing the country or existence.  And at that point the creditors may come after your mother for the balance.  These loans can balloon into outrageous amounts due to compounding interest.  Please have a healthy fear of student loans.  For more on this, listen to this hour long radio program about this. Would a minimum wage job help,  Of course it will ""help"" but will it ""help enough""?  That depends on how much you work.  If you make $7.50/hr and work 20 hrs/week for all but 3 weeks of the year, after taxes you will be adding about $6,000 to offset your costs.  In 3 years of college (*see below), that's $18,000, which, depending on where you go, is not bad at helping defray costs.  If you are at full-time (40 hrs), then it is $12k/yr or $36k toward defraying costs.  These numbers are nothing to sniff at. Do you have any computer/web/graphics skills?  It's possible you could find ways to make more than minimum wage if you learn some niche IT industry skill.  (If I could go back and re-do those years I wouldn't have wasted much time delivering pizzas and would have learned HTML in the 90s and would have potentially made some significant money.) would college and full-time job be manageable together?  That's highly specific to each situation (which job?  how far a commute to it?  which major? how efficient are you?  how easily do you learn?) but I would say that, for the most part, it's not a good idea, not only for the academic-achievement side of it, but the personal-enrichment aspect of college.  Clubs, sports, relationships, activities, dorm bull sessions, all that good stuff, they deserve their space and time and it'd be a shame to miss out on that because you're on the 2nd shift at Wal-Mart 40hrs/week. How do I find out what scholarships, grants, and financial aid I can apply for?  Are you in a high school with a career or guidance counselor?  If so, go to that person about this as a start.  If not, there are tons of resources out there.  Public libraries should have huge directories of scholarships.  The Federal Student Loan program has a website.  There are also a lot of resources online found by just searching Google for scholarships--though do be careful about any online sources (including this advice!). Sermon: Lastly, please carefully consider the overall cost vs. benefit to you.  College in 2012 is anything but cheap.  A typical price for a textbook is $150 or more.  Tuition and board can range over $40k at private colleges.  There is a recent growing call for Americans to re-think the automatic nature of going to college considering the enormous financial burden it puts many families under.  Charles Murray, for one, has put out a book suggesting that far too many students go to college now, to society's and many individuals' detriment (he's a controversial thinker, but I think some of his points are valid and actually urgent).  With all that said, consider ways to go to college but keep costs down.  Public colleges in your state will almost always be significantly cheaper than private or out-of-state.  Once there, aim for As and Bs--don't cheat yourself out of what you pay for.  And lastly, consider a plan in which you complete college in three years, by attending summer courses.  This website has a number of other options for helping to reduce the cost of college." Firstly, good on you for thinking about it before you commit to it. Next.  Chelonian provides lots of detail.  Read that answer. Consider the cost of going.  Use your local community college.  Use a state school.  Get a job as an intern or another entry level position, with an employer that will reimburse you for education.  Consider the military in the United State.  Consider not going. That last one sounds rough, but do you have a very clear idea in your mind what you want to do for a living?  I would suggest that at today's costs, figuring out what you want to do should be done before you commit to school. "You sound like you're well educated, well spoken, and resourceful, so I'm going to assume that you are somewhere in the neighborhood of top 5% material. That means you can pretty much do anything you want to if you put enough effort into it. There are two types of people in this world: those who run the world and those who live comfortably in it (and, of course, everyone else, but they are irrelevant to the discussion). Who do you want to be? I've been around a lot of wildly successful people, and they have two consistent traits:  connections and freedom. First, everyone always told me that ""it's not what you know, it's who you know"", but I never appreciated it until after college. The world runs on connections.  The more connections you have, and the more successful they are, the more successful you will be. Second, the more freedom you have, the more opportunity you will have to take chances, which is how you become wildly successful. Freedom comes from not being in debt (first) and having money (second). Why do you think Harvard grads are the guys that end up having so much money and power? It's probably because they grew up in a rich family which provided them money (freedom) and a wide social circle of rich people (connections). So you're not rich.  What to do? Well, the easiest way to get into that group is to go to college with them. And that means you need to get into Harvard or another Ivy League. Stanford if you want to be an engineer. College will be where you will make your most intense and long-lasting friendships.  That roommate at Harvard that you went on the crazy four-day road trip with may someday be CEO of a company... and when he needs a CIO, you can be damn sure you'll be at the top of the list if you're qualified. But Harvard costs a lot of money...which means you'll be in debt, a lot, when you get out of college. You'll have lots of rich, important friends(connections), but you'll be deeply in debt (no freedom). Most of these type of people end up becoming consultants at big firms because they pay well.   You'll live a comfortable life and pay off your student loans in five or 10 years.   Then you'll continue to live comfortably,  but at that point you'll be too old to take huge chances and too comfortable to change things (or perhaps you'll have a big mortgage =  no freedom). With a heavy debt load, it's almost impossible to, say, join an early stage startup and really be able to take huge chances.  You can do it, maybe.  Or, as an alternate option, you can do what I did. Go to a cheap state school and graduate with no debt. That puts you on the other side of the fence:  freedom, but no connections.  Then, in order to be successful, you have to figure out how to get connections. Goldman Sachs won't hire you, and everyone you meet is going to automatically assume you're mediocre because of where you went to college. At this point, your only option is to take big chances. Move to New York or San Francisco, offer to work for free as an intern somewhere or something.  It can be done, and it's really not too hard, you just have to have lots of spending restraint because the little money you have has to go a long way. So what are the other options? Well, some people are recommending that you think about not going to college at all. That will certainly save you money and give you a four year head start on whatever you decide to do (freedom), but you'll forever be branded as that guy without a college degree.  Think my second option above but just two or three times worse.   You won't even get that free internship, and you'll be that weird guy at dinner parties who can""t answer the first question ""So, where did you go to college?"".  It doesn't matter if you're self-taught;  life isn't a meritocracy.  If you're very good, you'll end up getting a nice cushy job pushing ones and zeros. A nice cushy golden handcuff job. Well, you could go to community college. They're certainly cheap. You can spend very little money so you'll end up with fairly good freedom.   I might add, though, that community colleges teach trades, and not high-level things like management and complex architecture.   You'll be behind technically, but not as bad as if you didn't go at all. How about connections? Your fellow students will probably lack ambition, money, and connections. They'll be candidates for entry-level wage slave jobs at Fortune 500 companies after they graduate. If they get lucky, they'll work up to middle management. There's no alumni association, and there's certainly no ""DeVry Club"" in downtown Boston. At New York and Silicon Valley dinner parties, having a community college degree is almost as bad as having nothing at all.  Indeed, the entire value of the community college degree will be what you learn, and you'll be learning at the speed and level of your classmates. My advice? If you get into an Ivy League school, go and hope you get some grants to help you out. The debt will suck, but you'll be well positioned for the future. Otherwise, go to a cheap second-tier school where you can get a large scholarship. There are also lots of third-party scholarships that are out there on the Internet you can get. I got a couple from local organizations. Don't work during college. Focus on expanding your network instead; the future value of a minimum wage job while you're trying to go through school is practically zero." One potentially useful option to avoid the crippling tuition fees in the states is to instead get your degree abroad. Numerous European countries have very low tuition fees, even for international students. Tuition can be as low as a 1000 EUR and housing is generally also very affordable. There is of course the language barrier but many universities are oriented towards receiving international students, providing relocation assistance and offering courses in English. As a bonus, most Europeans speak excellent English and are generally quite happy to practice it so you shouldn't have any problems off-campus either. Going to the UK is an option but likely considerably more expensive than colleges in mainland Europe. This article, while written for a Nigerian audience, lists some of the most attractive options for the international student. The quality of the education is also generally very high for these colleges. As an example Belgium, one of the cheapest options in the list, has two universities ranked in the Top 100: Leuven and Ghent. Many other German, French, Dutch or Scandinavian universities figure in that list. There are some useful comments about the tradeoffs of the decisions in front of you.  Intertwined with the financial choices, hopefully you can see a map opening up.   Make a little chart if it helps.  Benefit and Cost.  If you're looking for financial options, you will have to also add more columns to that chart:  Option and Cost. An example is the comment on making connections with rich kids.  Trust fund babies are everywhere in this country.  Did you know any rich kids while growing up?  How were those rich kids you knew of back then... in your school... in your town?  How did they treat you?  Were you ever invited to their parties or gatherings?  Now there's an opportunity for the privilege to pay a lot of money to sit in a classroom next to them?  Even in the early days of American history with merit based millionaires... tycoons who made it rich by the seat of their pants.  At fancy dinner parties and soirees, a new term emerged to put each other again out of reach: old money (the deserving) and new money (uncultured climbers).   That's my bias.  You'll have some of your own.  What is important to YOU has to come through because these days, the price tag of any higher education implies a considerable piece of your life's timeline will be committed to... something.  Make sure you get what you feel is worth that commitment. Take stock of what has been said here by the others, but put a value on those choices and seriously consider what you're willing to pay for... and what you're not.  There is no formula for your success as there's been thousands of exceptions... ESID (Every Situation is Different).
So many answers here are missing the mark.  I have a $100k mortgage--because that isn't paid off, I can't buy a car?  That's really misguided logic. You have a reasonably large amount of college debt and didn't mention any other debt-- It's a really big deal what kind of debt this is.  Is it unsecured debt through a private lender? Is it a federal loan from the Department of Education? Let's assume the worst possible (reasonable) situation.  You lose your job and spend the next year plus looking for work.  This is the boat numerous people out of college are in (far far far FAR more than the unemployment rates indicate).  Federal loans have somewhat reasonable (indentured servitude, but I digress) repayment strategies; you can base the payment on your current income through income-based and income-continent repayment plans.  If you're through a private lender, they still expect payment.  In both cases--because the US hit students with ridiculous lending practices, your interest rates are likely 5-10% or even higher. Given your take-home income is quite large and I don't know exactly the cost of living where you live--you have to make some reasonable decisions.  You can afford a car note for basically any car you want.  What's the worst that happens if you can't afford the car?  They take it back. If you can afford to feed yourself, house yourself, pay your other monthly bills...you make so much more than the median income in the US that I really don't see any issues. What you should do is write out all your monthly costs and figure out how much unallocated money you have, but I'd imagine you have enough money coming in to finance any reasonable new or used car.  Keep in mind new will have much higher insurance and costs, but if you pick a good car your headaches besides that will be minimal. OK 40k vs 10k per year.   That's 120k in loans difference.  At 6% interest over 20 years that's roughly 200k (10k) a year to pay for school.  Do you really think most people will get 10k a year extra because they when to Berkeley instead of Iowa state? "First, excellent choice to say no to non-subsidized loans! But I'd say you are cutting things very close either way, and you need to face up to that now.  $35/mo extra at the end of the month is ""within the noise"" of financial life, meaning you should think of it as essentially $0 each month or even negative money, since one vet bill/school books/unforeseen problem could remove it for the entire year, easily.  You are leaving yourself no buffer. But by taking the loan, unless you are (as Joe said) socking away savings to pay for it upon graduation, you are guaranteeing you'll leave college with debt, which I think should be avoided if you can.  Could you do a hybrid plan in which you worked hard to do the following?: If you do these things or something along these lines, the loan is probably OK; if not, I'd be concerned about taking it. [Probably unnecessary, but: Keep in mind that student loans are not excusable by bankruptcy, so one is on the hook for them no matter what]. Also consider whether you can take a semester off now and then to catch up financially.  The key is to really stay far from the edge of any financial cliffs." Basically do some math on the 2 schools. Let's say you know it will take 4 years if you go the cheaper route, at $8k/yr, plus the $300/month, total cost: $46,400. If you (for these purposes) do not have to pay back new loans until school is completed, (and depending on the rate of those loans), you would need approx $6k/yr in loans, plus the same costs ($300/month + $8k/yr to cover the other part of tuition). Let's say the expensive school takes 3 years to complete, which means you're out of pocket $34,800 and in debt an additional $18,000, totaling $52,800. This means that to make the 2nd school worth it (assuming your rates don't kill you, etc) you should have an increased earning potential of at least $6,400/yr after you get your degree. If you can finish in 2 years, your costs are: $23,200 + $12k, and you don't even have to change your earning potential to come out ahead. Other factors to consider are: If you aren't following any of the math, or want to post more information, just comment back to me, and I'll try to explain further. Best of luck! "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." "This is a tricky question, because the financial aid system can create odd incentives. Good schools tend to price themselves above and beyond any reasonable middle-class ability to save and then offer financial aid, much of it in the form of internal ""grants"" or ""loans"".  If you think about it, the internal grant is more of a discount than a grant since no money need have ever existed to ""fund"" the grant.  The actual price to the parents is based on financial aid paperwork and related rules, perhaps forming a college price-setting cartel.  It is these rules that need to be considered when creating a savings plan. Suppose it is $50k/year to send your kids to the best school admitting them.  Thats $200k for the 4 years.  Suppose you had $50k now to save instead of $10K, and are wondering whether to put it in your son's college savings (whether or not you can do so in a tax advantaged way) or to pay down the mortgage.  If you put it in your kids savings, and the $50k becomes $75k over time, that $75k will be used up in a year and a half as the financial aid system will suck it dry first before offering you much help.  On the other hand, if you put the $50k on paying down the mortgage [provided the mortgage is ""healthy"" not upside down], your house payment will still be the same when your kids go to college.  The financial aid calculations will consider that the kid has no savings, and allocate a ""grant"" and some loans the first year and a parental portion that you might be able to tap with a home equity loan or work overtime.     Generally, you should also be encouraging your kids to excel and perhaps obtain academic scholarships or at least obtain some great opportunities.  A large college savings fund might be as counterproductive as a zero fund.  They shouldn't be expecting to breeze through some party school with a nice pad and car, homework assistance, and beer money.  Unless they are good at a sport, like maybe football -- in which case you won't need to be the provider. It is not obvious how much the optimal ESA amount is.  It might not be $0.  Saving like crazy in there probably isn't the best thing to do, either." I agree that college doesn't or shouldn't have to be all about job prep.   However, the caveat I will add is that if you go into DEBT for your education, you should certainly be thinking about the economic value your education can provide you.   The last point about subsidized college being cheaper than the current system.. I don't know.. I'd have to see these reports you speak of, and who made them, and for what incentive.  At the end of the day though, these findings are all moot unless we can have a conversation about the hyperinflation in college costs directly related to 'free' aka subsidized education. Or, are there specific types of investments we can make that won't count against college financial aid? Yes - Start saving for college.  You seem to be very willing to save for your own retirement and other investments but are willing to let your kids suffer through college loans and subsidies for college.   Invest in your children's education. FYI: David Knopf is a graduate of Princeton with a BA in Econ. His parents are rich. Like totally fucking rich. You might do better. If your parents make less than $140k, tuition at Princeton is zero. Of course your chance of getting into Princeton, unless you are a legacy admission, or ace the SAT, is about zero. Better bone up on Algebra if you want to ace the SAT. And yes, you ARE a math person. Everyone is. It's just that nobody ever taught you right.  Forget about the CCNA or CCNP, that stuff will be obsolete before you would finish learning it. And even if you did, some H-1 visa immigrant will do the job for a quarter of what it would cost you to make a living.  I completely sympathize with your situation. I'm not going to pour out my life story, but I always thought I'd be a multimillionaire by the time I was 30. Instead, I have made choices that took a troublesome path, including depression and poverty. Even today I am suffering from choices I made (or avoided making) decades ago. BUT I am suffering only by OTHER people's standards. I don't regret the choices I made. I turned down fast money I could have made by exploiting people, it would have only cost me my soul. I have been exploited by other people, and it taught me the value of dealing with people who have ethics like my own. So ultimately, you have to admit to yourself, you are exactly where you need to be. You are struggling because what you want to do is hard. I am an artist too, and that is just about the hardest thing to do on this earth. If it was easy, anyone could do it. So don't despair, get busy. I remember when I lived in a slum, barely subsisting, but I had a sunny window and a table, I spent $2 on a cheap brush and a tube of black watercolor, and a $2 tablet of cheap watercolor paper. And I sat at that sunny table and made art that made me happy. Nobody but me has ever seen it. And for all the changes I have gone through in decades since, I would give almost anything to be living in abject poverty, sitting at that sunny window with that cheap paintbrush in hand again. [So I'll just leave you with this odd comic by Carol Lay, it's one of my all time favorites.](http://i.imgur.com/4XsDbnE.gif) "There is no simple answer to your question.  It depends on many things, perhaps most notably what college your daughter ends up going to and what kind of aid you hope to receive. Your daughter will probably fill out the FAFSA as part of her financial aid application.  Here is one discussion of what parental assets ""count"" towards the Expected Family Contribution on the FAFSA.  You can find many similar pages by googling.  Retirement accounts and primary residence are notable categories that do not count.  So, if you were looking to reduce your ""apparent"" assets for aid purposes, dumping money into your mortgage or retirement account is a possibility. However, you should be cautious when doing this type of gaming, because it's not always clear exactly how it will affect financial aid.  For one thing, ""financial aid"" includes both grants and loans.  Everyone wants grants, but sometimes increasing your ""eligibility"" may just make you (or your daughter) eligible for larger loans, which may not be so great. Also, each college has its own system for allocating financial aid.  Individual schools may ask for more detailed information (such as the CSS Profile).  So strategies for minimizing your apparent assets that work for one school may not work for others.  Some elite schools with large endowments have generous aid policies that allow even families with sizable incomes to pay little or nothing (e.g., Stanford waives tuition for most families with incomes under $125,000). You should probably research the financial aid policies of schools your daughter is interested in.  It can be helpful to talk to financial aid advisors at colleges, as well as high school counselors, not to mention general financial advisors if you really want to start getting technical about what assets to move around.  Needless to say, it all begins with talking with your daughter about her thoughts on where to go." I know what you are talking about and this is what students at UC I know usually do in such cases: Talk with the cashier's/registar's office and see if you have been reported to collections. If you had plans to pay via financial aid, this can be a non-issue, but be sure. It's critical to remove your record from collections, if any. Take a loan and find out how the loan will be paid. Most lenders pay the school directly based on what the school bills for the quarter. If you signed up for X units in Fall '10 and plan to take Y units in Winter '12, add X+Y units in your list of courses. Those X units could be anything in your course catalog. Once the school sends out the bill and the lender pays it, drop the X units. This will give you a check and use that to pay out the outstanding amounts. Most schools will include all outstanding amounts in the bill for your current quarter, but I am not sure if your lenders has agreements otherwise. Also, some lenders have agreements in place to send refunds directly to them, but remember, the cashier is king and she can make refunds happen the way she likes, and she is likely to help a student unless you have a bad payment history (collections, bounced checks..) Get a job, get a car, get a better job, save more money, invest that money in a high yield savings account, keep adding to that account until you turn 18. Start buying in bulk from China and reselling on eBay or Amazon for a 200-500% mark up, put that money in savings, ????,  Profit.  You can easily make 7-10 grand a year while still going to school, just save it all. Don't spend a dime unless you absolutely have to. The context actually was higher education and student debt load (which extends to cost). You can try to broaden it but the title of the thread, the linked article, the comment I replied to and my comments all reference higher education and costs. Once again, your comment is correct in a broader context, just not in the one we were in, at least not to all readers clearly.   You want to be right but what you need to accept is that you just flubbed your post (tbh I agree with you on most points here) and should likely add some more detail to your statements. "Is a student loan a type of loan or just a generic name used to refer to a loan for someone who is going back to school? A student loan from the federal government is a specific type of loan used for education purposes (i.e. attending college). They have guidelines associated with them that are very flexible as compared to a student loan from a private bank.  If a student loan is a different type of loan, does it only cover the costs of going to the school? Every student at a university has a ""budget"" or the ""cost of attendance"". That includes direct and indirect costs. Direct costs are ones billed directly to you (i.e. tuition, room and board - should you choose to live on campus, and associated fees). Indirect costs are such things like books, travel expenses (if you live out of state), and personal things. Direct costs are controlled by the school. Indirect costs are estimated. The school will usually conduct market research to determine the costs for indirect items. Some students go above that, and some go below. For example, transportation is an indirect cost. A school could set that at $500. There are students who will be above that, and some below that. If you choose not to live on campus, then rent and food will become an indirect cost. Student loans can cover up to 100% of your budget (direct and indirect added together). If your total budget is $60,000 (tuition, room and board, transportation, books, supplies, etc.) Then you are able to borrow up to that amount ($60,000). However, because your budget is both direct and indirect costs, you will only be billed for your direct costs (tuition, etc.). So if your direct costs equal $50,000 and your student loan was certified for $60,000, then you will get that $10,000 back in the form of a refund from the school. That does not mean you don't have to pay it back - you still do. But that money is meant for indirect costs (i.e. books, rent - if you're not staying on campus, etc.). If your school is on semesters vs quarters, then that amount is divided between the terms. Summer term is not factored in, that's another process. Also with student loans, there are origination costs - the money associated with processing a loan.  A good rule of thumb is to never borrow more than you need.  Source: I used to work in financial aid at my college." You say: Every time it seems the share price dips. Does it?  Have you collected the data?   It may just be that you are remembering the events that seem most painful at the time. To move the market with your trade you need to be dealing in a large amount of shares.    Unless the stock is illiquid (e.g most VCT in the UK), I don’t think you are dealing in that large a number; if you were then you would likely have access to a real time feed of the order book and could see what was going on.