I feel that this is a disingenuous approach to the situation that the parents have put their children in. They put a very positive spin on having spent the mon

I feel that this is a disingenuous approach to the situation that the parents have put their children in. They put a very positive spin on having spent the money that should have gone to their child’s college tuition. Braces are a cliche, and cost an absolute max of 10k, a drop in the bucket compared to 300k worth of tuition. These people did not budget for children at all and probably (like everyone else) spent the money on stuff they don’t actually need. You encourage your child to do well in school and excel at something, but suddenly when the bill comes due it is their responsibility to pay for whatever you’ve encouraged them in, for the rest of their adult lives. I’m trying to say there’s a big financial literacy issue coming from the parents, not the children (although maybe also the children), and the culture around it is to blame everyone but the parents and saddle the child with indentured servant levels of debt... to pay for stuff the parents wanted at the time. (The 529 is basically free money! How did you not use it?) These parents do make enough money for them to have saved for this, they just didn’t. If they didn’t make enough, financial aid probably would have been there. (You can apply somewhere, get in and see what type of financial aid package they give you, then reject because the cost is too high). Schools with better endowments tend to have better aid packages. To me, this is someone justifying 20 years of their own bad financial decisions. Everyone is obsessed with the cost of college being “worth it” or send their kids into the life of backbreaking work trade school entails.