college Archives - Elizabeth Drakes's Site

I work with numbers for my day job, so sometimes, it bleeds over into other things. Like when I think of my children.

I love my children, I truly do. But sometimes, I feel selfish for having them. I feel like children are really only for the very wealthy or those willing to make a lot of sacrifices for them.

Once, there wasn’t the same choice about having children. You either abstained entirely, or you had the number of children you did. And that was that.

Now, children are a choice. At least in my part of the world they are.

And children are expensive.

You either have to quit working (loss of an income) or pay for childcare. Children under two years old cost approximately $300 per week for care in my area. Over two and it slowly edges down each year to approximately $225 per week right before they start kindergarten.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have parent willing to watch your children, this is going to be a significant expense during their younger years.

Then comes after-school care, sports, trips to Washington DC, etc. Also, remember you are still going to be paying for summer care. Here in the US, that’s twelve weeks of care, not counting the four weeks of holidays sprinkled throughout the rest of the year.

Care is expensive.

This is by far our largest expense, and while it is brutal, I as a parent, I make it so that my kids get the care they deserve. These younger years are so important.

Still working on sacrificing my video game, though.

GamerParents — Super Smash Brothers is awesome!

Finally, they turn eighteen, and you have no more legal obligation or control over them. They are an adult and you hope and pray you have done your job and raised a good person.

Except, that’s when they hit you with one of the biggest bills yet.

College.

Can you tell I recently got my Edvest statement? I’ve been saving for each of my children since they had a social security number for me to open an account in their name, and I still don’t have enough for saved for either of them to pay for a single year at a state school.

And it baffles me why parents are expected to pay for their kids’ college at this point.

Not a little additional something. Not just lodging or food. The whole, entire thing.

How is it that a separate, legal adult’s financial aid is based on their parent’s income? A separate, legal adult whose parents can’t see their grades or medical history? Can’t even see their kids finances because their child is an adult?

Shouldn’t financial aid be based on the adult applying for admission’s income at the time? Or the future income that they expect to earn from whatever degree they’re seeking?

Besides, as many people will tell you, their parents income is no barometer for their parents willingness to spend that income on their children’s schooling. Particularly when that schooling costs more than a new car each year.

Especially as many parents are now being asked to pay that at the same time the parents are approaching retirement themselves.

I have several women in my department who are working solely to help put their kids through school. These kids are lucky. One of the people in my department has a mountain of debt because she couldn’t get any financial aid because of her parents’ income, but they wouldn’t pay anything for her school once she turned eighteen.

We’ve chosen to buy a much smaller house and own our cars much longer just to afford daycare. We also opened college savings accounts for our daughters as soon as they were born. This seems ludicrous to me. How is it that so much is being dedicated to these handful of years of schooling? Why are they so expensive? Is the payback really there at this price?

By the time my daughters get to be college age, would they be better off working for a couple of years and taking the $250,000 a four year degree would cost them and starting their own business?

Interesting thing is I learned more working (and getting paid) my first year in the Big 4 than I did all four years at a very reputable college.

But I couldn’t have gotten that job without the degree and mountain of debt that came with it.

My spouse and I had a long talk about it, and we will save what we can for our children. But in the end, it will have to be their choice and their cost.

They will get what is in their savings account. When that is gone, the rest will be on them.

If they choose to take advanced placement classes in high school, and take those classes seriously, we won’t ask them to work. Placing well on those exams will be worth far more to them than what they would make at a part time job.

It’s a really hard decision, but I see no other way. We can only give them so much, sacrifice so much. We love them dearly, but it does drive home the point that we have a very broken education system when parents have to spend a lifetime saving and it’s still not enough.

Well, not home. Not really.

It was my grandmother’s 90th birthday, and we drove almost seven hours to rural Ohio to celebrate with her.

It’s strange coming back to see her. And, if I’m totally honest, depressing.

Almost all of my mom’s family lives in this area, and when I was a kid, I desperately wished we lived there, too. All my aunts and uncles lived there. My cousins. My grandparents. They saw each other all the time, whereas I got to seem them a couple of times a year. I was sad and jealous.

I didn’t understand that my mother had joined the military to escape. She had a lot of very good reasons to leave, reasons that eventually included daughters of her own.

When I go back now, nothing seems like the world I wanted to join. Yes, my kids are drinking out of the same cups I used when I was a kid. My grandmother has the same rose-printed plates. Even the same wood paneling is in her house. But that’s where it ends.

When I was a kid, manufacturing was strong where she lives. Everyone had jobs, nice houses, and newer cars. We used to walk downtown for ice cream or to visit the Five and Ten.

Now, most of the store fronts are empty. Many of the beautiful old homes have been sub-divided into apartments. Others are in a sad state of repair. Piles of junk sit in yards further outside of the small town, especially old cars and boats. Paint is peeling. Front steps rotting. Out buildings collapsed.

Then there are the trailer parks. Unless you’ve seen rural poverty, you don’t know what I’m talking about. Think about a 1950s RV set-up on blocks. Old. Rusted. Windows boarded in places. Cinder blocks for steps. Now imagine twenty of them clustered together. A few miles away, another trailer “park”. Now imagine watching a little six-year-old boy with light blonde hair and a navy jacket struggling to open the rickety door as he balances on a part of the steps still intact.

Why are things so bad now?

It’s a story told all over the Midwest. Factories that once employed entire towns are gone, and there are no new manufacturing jobs to replace them. Whenever we visit, another of my cousins have been laid off and is trying to find a job. The next job they get always pay less than the one they had before.

The jobs still remaining that pay more than minimum wage all seem to be in the medical field or other services needed by the elderly and retired. Especially in-home nursing. Few out there can afford assisted living even if they are no longer completely self-sufficient.

But those jobs tend to require degrees, and the ones that don’t require degrees pay even less than the few remaining factory jobs.

Doctors in the area live in mansions situated on sprawling lands. Even nurses do well. But I learned from my cousin that being a pharmacy tech pays less than working for Whirlpool. I can understand the growing fear and resentment as they scrape together to get by while a newcomer to the area is building a heated outbuilding larger than their homes to store his three boats.

Even the skilled aren’t immune.

My uncle recently closed his business after it had been around for over fifty years. He used to sell and repair appliances like washers and dryers. He started as an apprentice when he was a teenager, and when the owner retired, he sold the business to my uncle.

My uncle did great at first. But then Lowes and Home Depot moved into the area, and he simply couldn’t compete with them on price. Eventually, he closed the Main Street shop and focused on repair.

But with how cheap appliances were becoming, more people just replaced broken ones rather than repairing them. So, he had to start letting the technicians that worked for him go. Then his secretary.

Finally, he closed his business and took a job as an electrical inspector for the county. It sucks. After more than thirty years of working for himself, he couldn’t make a living at it anymore. Thank goodness he’s a master electrician and was able to get other work.

Yeah, they’re my family and I’m biased, but these aren’t dumb people. Or lazy people. Most of them work damn hard. They simply have no way forward. They’re trying to eek out a living without giving up family, friends, and community. They’re trying to find a way forward after manufacturing was gutted from the Rust Belt.

And there is no safety net for them. No retraining for them. No real hope for things to ever improve.

College is a dream. Something rich kids do. Something they wish they could give their kids. But when most families of four earn less than $40k a year, even state school is out of reach.

Some young men and women join the military. It’s a way out, a job, and it promises to teach them real skills. Two of my cousins tried to join, but one failed the physical and the other hurt his knee to the point it required surgery two weeks before boot camp.

Still, I’m amazed how many of them have friends that joined the military, and how many of them know someone that gave their life. You see pro-veteran signs, slogans, and even graffiti everywhere. Makes me wonder if this is why.

It’s people like this that voted for our current president. They’re the ones that propelled him to victory. People who felt lost and left behind. People who want the family and community my grandfather had. Or, what they think he had. They want the jobs back. They want hope.

If you haven’t driven through rural Ohio, it’s hard to understand. If you have, you may still not agree with their choices, but you can understand them. I hope our president doesn’t disappoint them.

How about you? Does your family live near you? Or are they far away? Did you grow up with a large family and love it, or maybe you had a small family and loved that? Ever been through rural Ohio?

Financial Sacrifices For Kids

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