HOW I GOT TO BE "RICH"

The biggest thing on my mind lately is how we will pay for our kids to go to college. We are in that category of parents that are told that we are "rich" enough to pay the full freight but in reality we really can't. When filling out the FAFSA (free financial aid form), I learned that we would be expected to pay up to $50K per year for our kids college education. I have three kids and if they knuckle down and graduate in the "normal" four years, I will have one or two kids in college for a period of eight years. Using simple math I calculate that I will be expected to come up with $400K! Hah! So, since Thomas just headed off to college I can't help but think quite a bit about all of this.

I spend some time complaining and more time facing the reality and thinking of ways to pay for college. I've learned that one of my "friends" has no sympathy at all for me. She is of the belief that I am just lucky that I have the money and other assets that are keeping our family from getting the need based aid. I can't seem to get this off my mind. For me, the bottom line is that Tom and I have really sacrificed more than others to get into the position we are in. After our kids are off to college, not only will all our savings be gone but we will also have a substantial amount of debt. It is true that others who do get free aid will have debt and they won't have any savings either. This bothers me because after years of working hard and sacrificing we won't be any better off than people who sacrificed less than us.

The fact that bothers me is that my friend thinks that it is some sort of luck that put us in our position. She totally disregards what I had to do to get to this point. I grew up in a poor family where my mother sewed all my clothes and we drank powdered milk because we couldn't afford regular milk. My parents were not supportive of my decision to go to college and in fact told me that they would do everything they could to stop me. Regardless, I went anyway and often times woke up to temperatures in my apartment that were barely above 50 degrees because I couldn't afford to turn on the heat. While I was struggling to graduate to be able to get a job, Tom was living with his parents, working and saving as much as he could so we would be able to buy a house. We could not afford a house in NJ so we moved an hour away from his job to Pennsylvania. We bought the cheapest house we could find and put so much "sweat equity" into our house we sometimes would come home after working an eight hour day and be working outside on building a garage by spotlight until 9:00 pm. We dug a foundation hole for our garage by hand and I overcame my fear of heights when I had to be working all the way at the peak of the roof. I wonder if my friend has made any similar sacrifices. Since our kids have been born (18 years) we have only been on three "big" vacations. I only mention this because I had to listen to my friend tell me she is planning a trip to Switzerland for her 25th anniversary. We will also be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary the same year as her. We could not afford to go to a foreign country on vacation. For our anniversary I probably will be making a special meal to be eaten on our 29 year old dinner plates.