You Might Need Nearly Half a Million Dollars to Send Your Kid to College
Things you could do with $484,312: buy 5 versions of this South Carolina home, and still have change. Pay off your student loans, and a friend's (why not?). Bask in the fact that you have almost half a million dollars while laying in a bed of dollar bills (that's kinda wasteful though). Or! You can sock it all aside to send your kid to college, because spoiler alert: That's how expensive their higher education is going to be.
A study from investment firm Vanguard took a look at the rising cost of college, and the results shouldn't shock anyone who's at least remotely plugged into the news, but the numbers are still scary, as the average tuition has been rising 6% a year. For the 2014-2015 school year, public college cost $18,943 and private school cost $42,419 a year. But in 18 years, that number will increase dramatically: Public school will cost $54,070 and private school will cost $121,078 a year, making four years of private education cost a whopping and terrifying $484,312.
Don't discount the 18-year mark -that means if you have a baby right now, $484,312 is the projected cost of sending your child to private school. Given the already steep cost of raising a child through age 17, that means you basically need to be an almost-millionaire to give your kids the education you got while also feeding yourself.Even scarier: BuzzFeed notes that incomes aren't rising at that same rate, making this a massive issue for millennial parents who are still swimming in their own student debt.
If you're a person who is not in the upper echelon of the financial stratosphere, you probably don't have $484,312 - or the $233,610 it costs to raise a kid - just lying around. A college education is already insanely expensive and there's also already a very real student debt crisis, which sets up young people for one of two possible problems as they get older: 1) They will dig themselves into a hole of debt so deep, it will be impossible to get out. And that will make it extremely hard for them to save money, purchase homes, or even afford to have their own kids some day. 2) They won't get an education, which, in turn, will likely deprive them of high-paying jobs that look down upon those without bachelor degrees, thereby limiting their earning potential.
All of this is to say that education could become a privilege only for the very, very rich, which would be incredibly unfortunate. n the past, people who couldn't afford private school without taking out substantial loans had the much more affordable option to go to public colleges (that's what I did!). But now, with public college costs surpassing what private school prices once were, even that seems daunting thing.
Just another thing that makes the thought of having a kid today super terrifying!
(h/t BuzzFeed)
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