Transcript:
Easan Arulanantham:
How do I balance my child’s education with my own retirement?
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah, that’s a question that’s come up before too. I really think that’s a kind of a core question. Because you know, both are expensive, right? In today’s world,
you know, the college costs can be quite high. And the, you know, retirement takes a lot of money. And so if you spend a lot of your money on your child, will you have enough money for your retirement? Right? And I think if you did the actual numbers, and I’ve seen several articles on this, if you did the hardcore numbers and looked at it, here, you know, look at the return on investment for an expensive school versus a moderate or lower cost school, a betcha the return on investment isn’t that great? In comparison, so college isn’t just college, but a lot of people that I went to San Jose State, you know, do quite well, right. So it’s more of there’s a lot more to it than the college and San Jose State was a lot cheaper than Stanford, which, you know, there’s a lot of people did really well at Stanford, but I’d love to see the correlations of how that works out versus cost. So, you know, do you spend less on your child’s education to make sure that you’ve got, you know, a situation where you can have money for retirement. And then if you look at kind of the long term aspects of him and a carve out money for this high cost college, and take it away from the savings I’m doing for my retirement savings are long term. So it could be quite expensive, where you might spend $100,000, that you could have saved, that could be millions, you know, over the over your lifetime, right, in a tax deferred or tax free vehicle, like a, like a 401k, or a Roth 401k or IRA, Roth IRA.
So I think the numbers say that you should focus on your retirement more than the college savings. But there is another aspect to it, in my opinion. And that’s more of the emotional aspect. So for me, for example, I’d work til 100 If I had to, if my kids could get into a school that I thought might give them even a small edge. You know, my kids are bright. And if they can, if they can take advantage of that and get something better out of it, I’d work until I didn’t, couldn’t work any longer, personally. So there’s just that’s a different thing. I, I look at it from the standpoint of what I want to do for my children. And again, everybody looks at this differently. And there’s nothing wrong with focusing on yourself before your kids, I don’t know if I’m doing is actually even worth it. To be honest, we’ll find out my kids are, you know, 20 and 23. So thery’re still, you know, a long ways to go as far as that goes to figure out whether this, you know, investment that I’m making pays off, but I do know, it feels good to me. Feels great. I love it. I love being able to do what I’m doing and get my kids through college, I have two kids in college now. I’m really proud of that, as far as that goes and didn’t have any compromises, no conversations about cost, you know, but I worked really, really, hard to try to make sure that that happens, you know? So, again, it’s just a that’s, that’s there’s an emotional aspect to that question. That’s different. And then there’s an actual numbers factual answer, and they can be contrary to each other. Personally, I’d follow the emotional one first, if that wasn’t there, then I’d follow the factual one. So you know that that again, it just depends. There’s there’s not a great single answer that I see articles that are definitive, definitely save for your retirement over college. You know, okay. But if I felt terrible doing that, and felt like I was not supporting my kids at the level that I wanted, support my kids, that doesn’t do me any good. Life is too short for that kind of stuff. So again, there’s an emotional aspect that needs to be paid attention to, in my opinion.
Easan Arulanantham:
Yeah, it’s like the concept of an airplane –Do you put the mask on yourself first, and then your child– but it’s it’s hard. I think there’s a middle ground though. Maybe you say all fund your education, but maybe among our fund undergrad? Yeah. And you can go anywhere you want, but grad school that’s on you. Yeah. Or, or you set the expectation, you know, I’ll pay for any kind of NCAA college, or I’ll pay that money to a private college, but you got to cover the rest some sort of middle ground.
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah. Well, that I think there’s some great studies out there that actually show that that type of thing works really well. We have some vested interest from the from the child something that they have to pay for. So for example, if I said I’m going to pay for undergrad and you’re going to pay for grad school, maybe that helps in the sense that they start getting better grades in that undergrad knowing that you know, that would help them to get into grad school, and maybe even get some grades Answer scholarships to help pay for that, right if they got good enough grades and and they maybe start to save some of the money that they’ve got from their little jobs and they get ready for that. And so, you know, there’s there’s I agree with that wholeheartedly, actually there is a there’s a there’s a, you know, responsibility and ownership aspect that you could instill in finding some kind of a middle ground instead of just rolling out the red carpet completely. Yeah, no, I agree with that.