It’s not a long article — more of a USA Today-style nugget — but it confirms what most of us already know, which is that college tuition rates are rising much faster than our rate of savings (or the interest anyone plans to earn on those savings in the very near future). Long story short: if you didn’t start socking college money away for your kids when they were still in the womb, you’re probably not gonna have enough money to pay for college. (WHICH IS FINE AND YOU SHOULD NOT FEEL BAD ABOUT…but that’s another story).
Anyhow, this story and others like it that seem to appear every other day really reinforce the message of this site and my book, and that’s this: you absolutely MUST get out there and bust your hump for scholarship money, and you have to do it RIGHT. The costs for financing college are just spiraling upward, and although you don’t know it yet, you definitely don’t want to be getting out of college with a $40,000 job and $85,000 of student-loan debt. That will cripple you — trust me. And if you don’t take my word for it, fine — just look around. Incurring massive amounts of debt that you can’t afford to service over the long term is EXACTLY why the US entire world economy is paralyzed right now.
The scholarship money is there, I promise you. Go out and get it!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/your-money/22count.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=tuition&st=cse
I need your help in paying for my college please