I bought a house. I have great credit. After buying the house, my card, from high school, which was unused for a long period, was cancelled by the issuer. It was THE CORNERSTONE of my credit report. If I did not have that card, I can’t imagine what the ripple effect would have been.

I now make sure that I have some autobilling item on each card, such as one having EZPass, one having Netflix, and the 3rd card is the actual realtime card.

Yes, to the naysayers, you may get cancelled/pulled at any point by those wacky companies, but being cancelled for zero use is directly in your hands.

Source: Work experience
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor of any type. You can get this same information by visiting with a financial professional in your area.

Discuss the mechanics of financial aid and the merits and costs of private education all you want. This post can be distilled down to the phrase “desperate need”.

It is not possible for financial assistance to attend college, especially a high priced one such as this, to be a “desperate need”. Post secondary education is not a necessity nor an entitlement. Far too many people believe they “desperately need” to attend college when it is actually only a “desperate want”.

As far as the value of the expensive education? It varies wildly based on profession. If you want to be a professor at a top tier school someday, then it is best to study at a top tier school- there is a strong bias in hiring. If you want to be a bio-engineer- then you can just as easily go to Univ of Pittsburg as MIT. My daughter got an all-inclusive free ride to Pitt, but chose MIT, because she felt the brand name was worth the room and board. She will graduate with 24K total gov. loans, no private loans. Me? I would have gone to UPitt. But her fast-growing field has an average starting salary of 65K, and she is frugal, so she should be fine.

Why? Because in the past, savvy people would last minute “hide” money by buying expensive items they would then sell-off after the child graduated. It deflated the bank account, but kept the wealth. PROFILE includes information on what you have contributed for retirement for the last several years. This is to discover if he parents have grossly inflated recent retirement funds to avoid having their savings tapped for college.

to be continued…

Q7- Gamefly doesn’t meet my needs anymore. It was great for trying out a game and decided whether I wanted to buy it, but when I started up again this year in hopes of playing games for less than they cost, I felt more like I had a time limit to play the game. I also like to go back to a game weeks or months later. With gamefly, I can’t pick up where I left off. Sure, I could rent it again, but what are the odds it will be the same DS cartridge with my old save file? Not so good.

In general private school kids certainly do get federal aid. Other than perkins grants the students at private non profit schools actually get a higher % of federal aid dollars per student than public schools.

While ‘most’ of the aid private school students get may come from the school that doesnt’ mean they aren’t getting a $5000 pell grant just like a kid at State U. But the pell grants and other federal aid will cover a higher % of the costs at the public school vs the expensive private schools.

The very richest elite private schools have fat endowments and can basically give free rides to their students and may not need much if any government money.

I said that Liz shouldn’t feel entitled to such a handout. I don’t know if she really thought the government should be writing her a check or not. But I think people may perceive “government handout” when they hear financial aid. Thats not often entirely accurate since often times financial aid comes in the form of a tuition waver from a private college or unsubsidized student loans which are hardly free money.

Whether or not she might have actually gotten any free government money if she had financial need is anyones guess. We don’t know if students at her school get much government aid since I don’t know what school she goes to.

Yes you’re correct that Ivy League is the proper name for 8 schools and not an official list of the best universities. I certainly think MIT & Stanford etc are great schools and didn’t mean to exclude them. I wish there was a handy way to say “best schools in the country likt the Ivy League schools,, but also including the other great schools like MIT & Stanford, etc. that aren’t officially in the Ivy League sports league” which eveyrone would know would mean the schools at the top. Maybe I should say “top 20 ranking universiites”?

I didn’t know if “elite liberal arts school” is a commonly used term supposed to mean a certain group of schools.

The parents worked additional jobs during that time and their son worked his fanny off at school. The end result was he now works on Wall Street cleaning up the mess created in 2008.

He’s getting his MBA at Harvard.

NOT ONCE did they fuss about financial aid. They did their jobs (twice) and he did his.

Just sayin’

Also, because this is a pet peeve of mine: “Ivy League” is not synonymous with “top-tier school.” The Ivy League is a group (a sports league, in fact) of eight specific schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Penn. They’re all very good schools, but there are plenty of other schools (Stanford, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, MIT, Caltech…) that are at least as good as at least some of the Ivies but are not Ivies themselves.

When Liz says she’s going to an “elite liberal arts school,” to my mind that suggests something like Haverford or Wesleyan or Williams or Swarthmore, a primarily undergraduate-oriented college (as opposed to the Ivies, which are more research-oriented universities). Not that it matters much.

Of course I don’t think that inheriting a million bucks and having a median level income is any kind of tragedy. I had originally written a sarcastic comment about how life IS fair. I mean “child of millionaire denied government handout” is not a headline that will warrant sympathy.

But honestly if that $1m was in a retirement account like a 401k then it would NOT be counted to determine financial aid. And nobody plans on having their income cut in half due to a job loss. If they had a $120k income and planned on paying the extra $30k cost when Liz enrolled in that pricey school then thats not too unreasonable really.

Liz shoudln’t feel entitled to a government handout to go to a fancy private school debt free. But as it is her parents assets do negate any kind of aid she might qualify for. She can’t even get student loans except the awful private loans. She has a honors scholarship so she is a good student. Liz worked hard and got into a good school and got a scholarship. I wouldn’t begrudge her getting a government stafford loan or two so a good student can continue at a good school. And if we could wave a magic wand and make that $1m a 401k account balance it wouldn’t seem like a crime to giver her some non-predatory style student loans.

If her parents money was in 401k, IRA or life insurance or any similar qualified investment then the financial aid wouldn’t consider it and she’d likely qualify for aid. The reason she is not qualifying for aid is due to how the money is currently invested. If this is really retirement money then the parents should have it in a retirement vehicle. But you can’t just stash $1m into a 401k immediately.

I hope that when Liz says ‘elite’ private school that she really does mean an Ivy league school and not some fancy snobby over priced school that isn’t actually that good. I also hope that Liz is majoring in something useful to warrant that giant cost.

I don’t see any way out of this. Her parents have $1m. Theres no reasonable or good way to quickly ‘hide’ that just to get access to better aid which would mostly be student loans anyway.

I think Trents answer is best that Liz should borrow the money from her parents. It is for their retirement after all. If her school is really ‘elite’ then its worth taking some debt out for. If its not worth the debt… then don’t go there. I would expect the parents could pay in some money. Even with $60k income I think the parents expected contribution would come out around $10k.

If I were Liz I would also work hard to get myself a useful internship during the summers. That will help her career wise and should hopefully also give her a decent income so she can help pay her own college costs. Working part time during the school year could also be a good idea if she isn’t already.

OK I’ll stop rambling.

Q3 : Get the card if you will use it responsibly. Check your score before hand then check it a month or two afterwards. If your score drops then maybe get rid of one of your lesser used cards. You can get free score checks at sites like Quizzle or Credit Karma.
I don’t know if getting another credit card will hurt your credit score or not. I got a new credit card sometime last year and it didn’t impact my credit score at all. I think it depends on if you have ‘too many’ credit cards to begin with but I don’t know how many is too many. I’ve got 5 cards in my name so it seemed going from 4 to 5 didn’t hurt me. A new card might help you since it will increase your total credit limit.

Q4 Nathan: Don’t start throwing away your wifes stuff. Don’t pressure her to get rid of her stuff. Its sitting harmless in a basement. I don’t see a real reason to get rid of your wifes stuff to begin with. It doesn’t seem to be costing you any money or anything.

IF/when you DO move then you and your wife might want to get rid of some stuff so you don’t have to spend money to transport or store it. But only if it actually costs you more money to move /store it. If her extra boxes just fill the empty space left in your rented moving ban then thats not extra cost. If her extra boxes just fill the basement or closet in your new rental then thats not costly. But if all the extra stuff requires extra moving costs or storage costs that don’t warrant keeping the stuff then it could make sense to get rid of some of it. But don’t throw away $5000 worth of crafts to save $100 in moving costs. Don’t pressure her to get rid of her keepsakes because the sight of boxes in your basement makes you ‘cringe’ for some reason. Frankly thats your problem not hers. Stuff is not bad inherently. What if she demanded you get rid of most of your stuff cause it annoyed her for no good reason? Thats not reasonable is it? Well thats basically all you’re doing to her.