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First Person: How to Earn $100,000 and Still Feel Poor - Yahoo! Finance
Wish I could make 100k a year. I would be better off then I am now. Geeze, some people have no idea. Try making it on 20k or 30k a year, with a house payment/rent, utilities, groceries, car payment and insurance. People around here do that shit day and day out. Sorry but shit like this pisses me off.
Lawdy lawdy I'd LOVE to be that poor :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoe
She kept saying "our" and talking about their kids being in college. So I assumed that she was talking about her and her husbands combined incomes.
Ah man it's hard to say. But $50,000 would still be good for one person. I can understand the paying for the kids college education but they can get finical aid or whatever to help. How many people out there work two jobs just to put their kids through college? I guess I find it crazy to have a $100,000 income combined or not and still feel poor. Just amazes me lol.
Not really. You have to wonder where they live. It's not easy around here on that with a mortgage, vehicle payment, medical bills, day to day living expenses. In a large metro area it'd be like living on minimum wage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoe
that is what i was going to say. a buddy of mine told me my house and land would go for $150,000 up where lives. here it got valued at $48,000Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironlung
Very little, if any, financial aid available for that level of family income.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoe
No grants or financial aid at all at that level. My mother is a nurse and stepfather is a coal miner, I never qualified for financial aid or really close to it...it's either out of pocket or student loans after that - without scholarships.Quote:
Originally Posted by NotSoSilentBob
What's wrong with getting student loans to pay for your education? You are there so that you can get a better job and make more money afterwards than you can out of high school so how about takin some personal responsibility. If your ignorant enough to want to get a degree in women's studies or art history knowing there is almost zero job opportunities then you get what you ask for. No I'm not saying that you are studying either Jr. but for the one's who do I have no remorse.
When you learn about what tuition costs are and how much debt you're straddled with for a degree in anything, maybe you'll know why student loans aren't so great. Maybe 20 years ago when tuition was somewhat reasonable, now it's rising faster than heathcare costs and healthcare is rising faster than inflation by several times over. We're talking 25-50k in debt coming right out of college in your early 20's, you have to get a job just to pay the mountain debt you took on to get a decent job. And we wonder why countries pass us up in innovation and are growing faster when our new work force CAN'T be innovative or take any chances because they have to settle for anything half-way decent to take on all of that debt plus trying to live. I also don't know where anyone gets that all of these people major in these wild studies, I've never, ever met anyone that majors in something like that....I'm sure they exist, but not on any serious level and more than likely they come from families that can afford that risk and in colleges that specialize in that area. Again, maybe decades ago when someone could afford to do something they want to do, but it's few and far between.
I know well about tuition and student loans from having had them and paying them off.
And how recent was that? Just 10 years ago, it was considerably cheaper - don't know when you went, I'm just saying. It's over 20k for out of state students at UVAw and around 8k for in-state students, that's 80-30k for a 4-year degree for a college right in our own county. It's considerably higher in other places in the state and of course in others(though UVAW isn't the cheapest either, there are some more local places that are slightly cheaper). That's just tuition too, add another 4-5k for housing for those staying on campus, not even counting meals on campus, materials and one of the biggest money-rackets...books, can easily spend several grand there. A degree is turning into what it used to be 60-70 years ago, something reserved for the privileged.
Doesn't the last tax changes make college expenses a dollar for dollar deduction?
Absolutely not.
There is no reason all those out of state students can't go to a school in there own state and pay considerably less tuition so they can't complain about the cost when it was by their choice to pay more. I also learned very quickly after my first semester that books are too easy to come by free or very cheap from people that had taken the class so I spent very very little on books, except for the new ones that hadn't been used before. I also didn't buy any workbooks, I would make a copy from a friends or from the professors. On campus meals were the best deal anywhere when I was UVAw, could eat in the cafeteria for $3-4 bucks.
Anyway I'm not even trying to argue that tuition rates are high. I am saying that once you graduate high school you are an adult and if you make the decision to go to college then you do so knowing what the costs are and it's welcome to life and the real world where you have to pay to play.
It wasn't their "choice to pay more", it was their choice to attend this college maybe because of what it offers or whatever. There's no reason out-of-state tuition fee's should be more than double what instate students pay. It's like that at every college. What you're saying is they should be limited to whatever school that's in their state, even though a nearby state/school may offer more or have excellent programs for their particular career field. And yeah, not that easy now. For starters, there's buy-book programs that most students sell theirs backl if they can and get quick cash and then those are resold. The internet is the cheapest place if you can find it and they're not that cheap. Books are probably a lot more expensive than they are now and changed more than before - hard to find any book used more than 3 years and that's mainly english. History/Math/Science books(this isn't everywhere I'm sure) are changed frequently with new editions they want to use...one book changed between first and second semester that I had to get. It's a completely different animal than when you went and like I said, it's a different animal just 10-12 years ago.
Rates have skyrocketed, so it's easy to say welcome to the real world when the real world was a lot less expensive when you headed in.
Yes it was their choice, you have the same first hand knowledge of this that I do. UVAw doesn't offer anything any better or more that KY kids can't get at Berea, Union, Georgetown, Pikeville, Allice Lloyd, Morehead, EKU etc. for TN kids they have ETSU, LMU, Carson-Newman, King, Cumberland, Milligan, Tusculum, Walters State etc. The last I knew they also offered the kids that are very close to the line like Jenkins/Whitesburg areas in state tuition just to get them to come.
CollegeData - Pay Your Way - Tax Breaks for CollegeQuote:
Originally Posted by R13
"The Lifetime Learning credit is advantageous for individuals and families who don't qualify for the American Opportunity credit. While the maximum credit is not as large, and the income limits not as high, the rules for qualified expenses are more lenient. For example, family members need only take one college or job-related course to incur qualified expenses.
Amount of credit: The maximum amount of the credit is $2,000 per tax return (20 percent of the first $10,000 of qualified education expenses paid for eligible students).
College years covered: The credit applies to all college years, including postgraduate education. There is no limit on the number of years that family members can claim the credit"
Sounds like 10000 over 4 years to me. Community college wil have some things that will transfer and some grants are available for almost any income level.