Comments on: Planning ahead for our baby’s education

By: Kacie

Kacie — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:15:39 +0000

We haven’t started college savings yet. We are focusing on our house down payment and once we get that squared away we will set up a savings account for the kids. My thinking is that our family as a whole will benefit from us being in a house sooner. Ideally we will be starting the college fund before johnnys 3rd birthday.

By: Jonathan Thomas

Jonathan Thomas — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:43:22 +0000

We have the opposite approach and I’m afraid it sounds rather mercenary – but we don’t intend to start saving for Jr’s education anytime soon. If Jr wants an education, he’ll have to work for it just like his Mom and Dad did (we got material support from our parents, but they didn’t contribute a dime). We also recognize that college may not be for everyone and while we hope that they would want to go to college, everyone has a different path. Besides, in 20 years, we don’t intend to be still living in this country and higher education won’t be a problem to pay for where we intend to go. That being said, we’ll do our best to support Jr through college with living expenses and whatever we can help with, but she/he better start applying for scholarships now. :-)

I have a rather prosaic view of higher education and that may just be a result of the 3rd rate satellite school I got my degree at (PNC) but I’d rather have my kid go to university for the love of learning rather than getting trained to do a job. Someone like me – and I’m making the assumption that my kid will turn out somewhat like me – really could have better spent the 4 years in college doing something else (if I could go back in time, I would have learned web design and web development not taken an degree in English).

Good for you though planning ahead like this. You got a lucky kid that won’t have to keep filing for a forbearance because the prospect of paying of his student loans is not possible.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:27:05 +0000

In reply to KMK. Good for you! What a great attitude. We considered doing the same thing, but our budget has just been too tight to allow it. But once the baby arrives, we want to try to save as much as we can, even if it's not that much in the beginning. You really can't start too soon, though!

By: KMK

KMK — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:08:45 +0000

I have started saving for our child’s education before we get pregnant! We aren’t in a position to have a baby right now (career-wise and financially-speaking), but putting $100 a month into my brokerage account and buying mutual funds makes me feel like we are getting closer every day! We probably won’t have a baby for another two years and rather than feeling upset about that fact I feel proud that we have so much time to save — turning a negative into a positive!