Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, sacrifice college fund, obviously. Why do you feel this is a requirement? Your kids can get a loan for college in their due time, and 20 years from now, you will be in a much better position to help them financially anyway.

Saving your wealth to give it to your kids when they older is good and noble, but not having kids just because you cannot furnish them with enough wealth for when they are adult, is really silly and counterproductive.

Similarly, you might reconsider maxing HSA, depending on how much you spend. HSA has two benefits, a direct one which is tax savings, and the indirect one being actually forcing you to save money, which is useful for many people who are bad at planning and looking ahead. The latter doesn’t apply to you, obviously, if anything you’re overthinking it. On the other hand, with your earnings, and assuming two kids, using HSA gives you around 20% discount on actual healthcare spend. Take account as to how much you actually spend on healthcare, and consider whether saving 20% on that is worth not having extra kid.

It may have been silly and counterproductive before the cost of tuition went through the roof, and a 4 year degree became a de-facto requirement for almost all well-paying careers. My dad paid his own way through his PhD working part-time at Friendly's (fast food chain) while my mom was a public school teacher. Good luck doing that these days.

It is my responsibility as a parent to ensure my children are as equipped to prosper as possible. They should not have to endure decades or potentially a lifetime of un-forgivable debt for what has become an almost fundamental requirement to be middle class. Expecting 18 year olds to get a job and pay their own way is no longer realistic unless you are fine with your kids being shut out of most economic opportunities. I hope it'll be more realistic in 18 years, but I can't count on that.

Call me silly if you want, I'm just adapting to the way things are. I'd rather have two kids with full opportunities than four kids with 20% opportunities.

As for the HSA, having seen my mom fight cancer for over a decade I'm well aware of how much healthcare can cost. Even with out-of-pocket max limits, it'll be a while before I feel comfortable not maxing it out.

Again, you can also help your kids pay off the college loans, which will be much easier for you 25 years from now, than it is to save money up front.

Second thing is that you need to understand how cost of college works: basically, schools offer a lot of financial aid, but only to those who cannot afford it otherwise. This means that the more you save for your kids college, the higher the bill will be. The schools will ask your kids how much money they have saved, and will adjust the price to extract all of it. The system favors the people who don’t save, and people like you pay the cost. You are literally hamstringing yourself, thinking that it’s for benefit of your kids, but you’re actually benefiting people who don’t plan and live day by day.

> a 4 year degree became a de-facto requirement for almost all well-paying careers.

Which is the real problem. The U.S. sent a man to the moon with a work force that was just 8% college graduates. Do most people really need a college degree today, or is it just useless and very expensive gatekeeping? Why does a receptionist need a college degree? Even many white-collar jobs that involve working with computers could probably be done on an apprenticeship model. Does doing online marketing really require a 4-year degree when being a nurse or an HVAC technician doesn't?

No, it doesn't.

> My dad paid his own way through his PhD working part-time at Friendly's

Woah, in what field? There's no way a PI in STEM will have that happening today, or for the last 40 years really. Also, where was you dad having to pay for a PhD? In the US at least they are free and almost always have been.

As a non-American, the “pay for the kids’ college” (in cash) meme stumps me. How do people expect children to value their education, or the importance of that investment in terms of time, effort and money, if they’re handed such a gift on a silver platter at an early age? Frankly it smells of status signalling on the part of the parents

That's really strange.

Most developed countries have free education including university. I went to college for free.

Don't all those millions of young people value their education?

It is only strange because you don't understand the situation. In most developed countries, university education is "free" for a select group that test highly or get good grades. It is not true that 100% of the population is offered free college education, usually 10%-30% of students are given this opportunity, based on their academic performance.

That is also the case in the US, when a comparable share of the student body is offered scholarships (~1/3 of students)-- that's what happened to me, I never paid a penny.

What we are talking about here is those who would never be eligible for a university education in "most developed countries" being able to buy their way into the classroom in the U.S. Others are able to get scholarships to a local university but prefer to buy their way into a more prestigious or desirable university. For example, many are offered tuition wavers to a local community college but prefer to pay to enter a different institution. Or they are offered a tuition waiver for a local university but prefer to go to a more expensive private university, etc. There is a whole chain of selectivity.

Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen. More and more, people are coming to the conclusion that the cost isn't worth it.

There is a second issue about whether American universities are actually good (from the point of view of the student) compared to the rest of the world, or whether they are good (from the point of view of select faculty) because they have such huge budgets. Here, too, the situation is mixed (and deteriorating).

I think “most” is a bit of a stretch. Even in countries where education is free, or close to free, students still need some means to support their daily living costs. So that means loans or part time work. Having all of that handed to you doesn’t feel like it promotes the idea that university is an investment you’re making in your future. And otherwise I’m not that supportive of “free” higher education. I certainly agree it shouldn’t be cripplingly expensive, but the last few decades have demonstrated that shifting more and more young people onto the higher ed track just devalues a degree for everyone, stigmatises those who choose a different path, and raises costs for everyone. I also strongly disagree with the idea that having some/many diplomas automatically makes one “smarter”. That’s just a normalisation of credentialism, in my opinion

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