Don't Forget College

What, me worry about college costs? - Yahoo! News: "'Even with nearly $122 billion in financial aid currently made available, paying for college is indeed a major challenge for most families.'"

Most of the retirement planning books that I've been reading talk about eliminating unnecessary spending. For example those bottled waters that you buy everyday, if you drank tap water and invested the water money, in 25 years you'd have 800 billion dollars. Obviously I'm exagerating but you get the idea.

There's usually two problems with this cutting back idea. First, you had to start putting away those few dollars a day when you were like 20 years old. Second, guess what? You have to pay for your kids to go college. When your kids are college age, usually about 20 years before you retire, you'll have to fork over up $40,000 a year for their tutition. What's that you say you have more than one child? Well then you'll be paying more. Large families are screwed.

Paying for college while still saving for retirement can be a problem for a lot of families. The answer that most of these retirement planning books give us is that college can be paid for with a loan such as a student loan or home equitity and you should never put off your retirement savings or that bottled water money that you're putting away won't ever earn any compounded interest and turn into those billions that you'll need.

I don't really have a solution for paying for college yet but I know I don't want my kids to take student loans. This is my burden, not theirs. Perhaps I'll have to give up something besides bottled water, like maybe food.