[gnicholas]

This surely helps. Until your kids are 5 or so, you don't know if you'll have huge birth-related medical bills, unexpected disabilities/chronic illnesses, or special needs that require moving to an expensive school district.

And even assuming everything is good on that front, you're still looking at $300-400k in college tuition (in 2024 dollars) if you let your kids pick any school. You can tell them that you can only afford a community college or inexpensive public school, but how many parents would feel comfortable doing that after retiring at a very young age?

I guess you can bundle the message with a reminder that the reason you were around a ton when they were growing up was because you FIRE'd, but given how oppositional teens can be, I'd expect that this would cause resentment in a lot of cases.

[dmichulke]

> at $300-400k in college tuition

I always wonder why it doesn't make sense to just have them learn German or French and then have them study in continental Europe. Living standard is the same, tuition cost is mostly non-existent and living abroad, if just for a year, will make you a better person.

Total cost for a bachelor + master is maybe 5 years with a cost of 1.5k per month maximum (this is considered rich for students), so you're at 18k per year or 90k total.

Educational arbitrage.

[HDThoreaun]

I had a few friends in high school go to French and English schools. Seemed to work out pretty well generally, although one had a hard time finding a job. Ended up getting a PhD from an ivy though

[swarnie]

By that justification you can skip the French/German stick with English and study at better universities in the UK.

Its not free but $25k a year for four years sure beats that 300-400k estimate.

[dmichulke]

In principal, yes.

As to my book,

- I'm not sure whether 1500$ is good enough in London

- you'll skip the foreign language learning (a time-wise plus AND a minus in terms of culture and, possibly, open-mindedness)

- we're still talking 100k$ of difference for a few ranks higher (top 10 instead of top 30 among maybe 500 good ones)

[nunez]

Isn't it harder to get a job in the US with an international degree?

[JumpCrisscross]

> learn German or French and then have them study in continental Europe. Living standard is the same

If you’re in a position to do this, the median European living standard is a huge step down. (You’ll also need to do extra work to make up for the network degradation.)

[r0ckarong]

> the median European living standard

Care to elaborate? What is so significantly better in the US?

[JumpCrisscross]

How many thirtysomethings in Europe are considering retirement? (Whose parents couldn’t do the same.)

I’m a bit of a mutt, but I hold Swiss and American citizenship. The European economic model is set up for stability, not massive accrual of wealth. One of the things that wealth lets you do is travel frequently to Europe, to see and experience its beautiful cities and culture. But in terms of living space, amenities, access to services, et cetera, an upper-middle class American commands resources on par with Europe’s rich. Rich Americans, on par with Europe’s remaining aristocracy.

[ornornor]

Switzerland is a bit weird in that respect and loves working even more than the US does. You’re not a good Swiss if you’re not working 0800–1800 and loving it.

The rest of Europe is much more chill with work. There is also much better healthcare/insurance and retirement safety nets so maybe people done feel as much of an urge to quit early?

[r0ckarong]

> The European economic model is set up for stability, not massive accrual of wealth.

The American system is set up for transfer of wealth not accrual. You can FIRE with a couple millions dollars and it takes just one or two events to take all of that from you without you having a choice. How many thirtysomethings in Europe are buried under hundreds of thousands of Euros in medical and student loan debt?

I think I'd rather pay of my half million mortgage while being protected in many many ways than facing complete wipeout just because "muh freedom".

[JumpCrisscross]

> American system is set up for transfer of wealth not accrual

Simply untrue when you look at the money made in stock options.

The transfer happens from the lower and middle to the elite; the same occurs in Europe, where the ultra rich pay almost no taxes after accounting for tailor-made subsidies. (To say nothing of Europe’s own mass of FIRE millionaires.)

> I'd rather pay of my half million mortgage while being protected in many many ways than facing complete wipeout

You’re not at risk of wipe-out from those risks in and above the upper-middle class, i.e the group who could reasonably support sending a child overseas for schooling. (Total emigration is a separate question.)

[devbent]

> And even assuming everything is good on that front, you're still looking at $300-400k in college tuition (in 2024 dollars) if you let your kids pick any school.

When people ask if I want a second kid I reply that my current child costs me around 64k a year and I cannot afford a second!

28k for a neighborhood daycare, 36k for college savings, and that is baseline before anything else.

College tuition is obscene.

[citizen_friend]

> $300-400k in college tuition

This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

[nunez]

I went to Stevens. When I went in 2005, tuition was $30678, or $49061 in 2024 dollars: https://web.archive.org/web/20050308135701/http://www.steven.... This is with all semester/yearly fees included.

2024 tuition? $63,462: https://www.stevens.edu/tuition-fees-and-costs. This _does not_ include the additional fees on the page.

Neither include room and board.

Stevens is a great school, but NYU across the street has a more prestigious brand. They are even more expensive than this.

$300-400k in tuition alone is very realistic...unless you go to an in-state school. Penn State is $20k if you're in state, and that includes studying Comp. Eng. at University Park.

[devbent]

> This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

No it is not.

Given the current tuition rates of state colleges, and factoring the average increases in tuition over the past 10-15 years, it is expected that public universities will have an average 4 year tuition of over 300k in 18 years.

Note that some private universities are already at this price!

[secabeen]

Yes, it is. See pg 18 here: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/Trends%20Report%...

Actual tuition and fees paid have dropped in real dollars over the last 20 years. Nameplate tuition is meaningless as the average student pays less than $5,000 in tuition at 4-year public schools. The average student gets more than $8k in grants. Room and board remains high, but still nothing near 300k.

If you have citations supporting your 300k claim, I'd like to see it. Note that I'm looking for actual tuition net of grant-based financial aid for middle class families, not what out-of-state multi-millionaire families pay.

[devbent]

> Nameplate tuition is meaningless as the average student pays less than $5,000 in tuition at 4-year public schools.

The problem here is any parents capable of saving 30k a year for college are in an income bracket that instantly disqualifies their kids from getting any tuition assistance.

Heck back in 2002 I had a mom who drove a school bus and a dad retired on disability and they made enough money between them that I qualified for 0 assistance. We were very much "working class".

I just checked my local public university (University of Washington) and they list out of state costs as around 64k a year. 22k of that is non-tuition related expenses.

The university of Austin is 66k for 2 semesters. That will easily be 400k+ total for a bachelors in a other 18 years.

> Note that I'm looking for actual tuition net of grant-based financial aid for middle class families,

Not relevant to my situation. My wife and I make enough money that we cannot count on our son getting any assistance.

Also your entire premise is easily falsified by the number of students taking out large student loans. If the average tuition is only 5k, we wouldn't have a student loan problem in this country.

The same college board organization says students graduate with an average debt of 29,400.

Other sources (https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt) say students average over 33k of loans to graduate.

If college really only cost 5k a semester, that doesn't seem right. Baristas could literally pay their way through college with zero debt. Heck one good summer internship at a large company would pay for all of college.

[secabeen]

Tuition is not the only cost; room and board are significant, and go to those loans too. If you take the average loan balance, divide by 4, you get about $8k/yr, which is pretty close to rent for a single student in many college towns.

75% of students attend state schools. If astudent chooses to go to an out-of-state school for $64k a year when there is a state college in your state that runs 1/3 of that, is that on them? Why should the taxpayers of Washington state subsidize the educational costs of students from Indiana?

[devbent]

The University of Washington is an absurdly competitive school to get into for certain majors, so it is very reasonable to expect that even highly performing students might have to go to an out of state school if they want to go to a tier 1 public university.

It also depends on the major, as students may want to go to a university that is well regarded for what they want to learn.

None of which changes the fact that college tuition prices go up at an obscene rate, while at the same time colleges are getting rid of tenured professors and instead hiring adjunct professors who get paid barely livable wages.

[gnicholas]

The thing is, if you have a nest egg big enough to FIRE, colleges won’t consider you “middle class”. They’ll consider you loaded and expect you to pay full freight.

[HDThoreaun]

If you’re fired you probably have at least a million. These schools look at your assets, not just income. They’re not giving significant aid to kids whose parents are millionaires

[gnicholas]

Vanderbilt hit $100k recently, and most competitive schools cost over $75k. You don’t know when you’re 40 if your 5 year old is going to want to go to one of them.

[citizen_friend]

Why is your kid the only agent in that sentence, and you're his bank.

[supportengineer]

Over four years this is accurate