We Make $300,000 a Year and Struggling To Afford My Kid's College

Added: 2026-05-24

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[00:00:09]>> Yeah. So, the issue that I'm trying to sort through right now is my daughter is heading off to college this year. Um, I do have two other kids to follow behind her about four years apart, which is a a good thing. um have a lot of debt about $200,000 worth of credit card debt and uh loans with personal loans in HELOC.

[00:00:30]That does not include the mortgage of about um you know, I pay about $4,400 a month there. So, you know, the issue that I'm having is that I make too much money that we don't get um any financial aid. We were fortunate enough that we got some merit aid. Uh my daughter's going to be going to an SEC school and um they're giving us like instate tuition. So that helps a lot, but we're still going to be left with about $30ome,000 after the fact. So I'm stuck with the question, do I try to pay that in cash because I I can work extra that I could probably do that. Do I take uh the $20,000 person parent plus loan out and make that put that extra money towards the debt that I have? I just I just don't know which way I go. Um my wife and I are, you know, we we not that we fight about it, but we argue about, you know, what the heck we're going to do because we totally miscalculated and we were just um just didn't know we didn't know anything about paying for college.

[00:01:36]I I was still living in the 80s and 90s and um things have changed since then.

[00:01:42]>> Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the affordability of college um is is tough. So, we you know, we find that you know we we are not a um proponent of any kind of debt, Joseph. So, no, we will say no to the parent plus loan and we're about going to a school that um that everyone can afford and it sounds like you guys can't afford this college, right?

[00:02:07]So, that puts a awkward conversation in the air uh with the 18-year-old because it's May and I'm sure the acceptance has already happened and the plans have already started rolling. But the truth is, if you guys don't have the money to pay for this, you don't have the money to pay for it. So either your son or daughter who's going off to college works and finds a job and has a different looking college life than just sority houses and frat parties and football games. Um and you know he or she will be working andor they can't go to that school >> at least not right now. Have they already like have they have it in their heads they're going to this school?

[00:02:48]>> Yeah.

[00:02:48]>> How far are we?

[00:02:50]Yeah, we we we already uh we already committed >> got the t-shirt and everything for sure.

[00:02:56]Okay, so let's talk through this. How much money do you guys make a year?

[00:03:00]>> Uh combined income about $340,000.

[00:03:04]>> Okay, so help me understand how a family making $340,000 is $200,000 in consumer debt. What happened?

[00:03:14]So, we have um a lot of credit cards. Um you know, we have I took a heliloc loan out uh probably about five or six years ago. There's about $50,000 on that. Um we had a roof leak. There was about $20,000 on that.

[00:03:33]>> But what was what was happening to the actual income you had coming in? Because this is all outside of your, you know, 15 or 20 grand take-home every month.

[00:03:40]>> Sure.

[00:03:41]>> Where was that going? Um just a lot of credit card misspending. Bad bad bad decisions. Bad decisions >> over a long period of time.

[00:03:52]>> Yeah. That when we bought our first home uh we were which again I I'm financially illiterate and I will take the full blame on that. when we uh when we bought our first um when we bought our first home, um our agent set us up with this financial person and then we were making the minimum payment at the time, but I didn't realize that despite me making the minimum payment, which I thought was satisfying everything, it was borrowing against the principal of the mortgage and my principal was actually going up.

[00:04:26]So, that put us in a hole there or we have since sold that house and have moved on. Um, I knew we couldn't afford the house that we lived in. We had a couple friends, uh, family, actually family to to front us money so we could get the house. Right now, our mortgage is about 4,400.

[00:04:43]>> And what's your take-home pay every month? What's coming into the bank between the two of you?

[00:04:49]>> So, my wife is about 6,000. This is takehome after taxes. My wife is about 6,000. I'm about eight, nine, roughly about 10,000. That's before overtime and extra shifts.

[00:05:04]>> Okay.

[00:05:04]>> I can work pretty much as many extra shifts as I can. And after taxes, I get about $1,000 per shift. That's after taxes.

[00:05:13]>> Cool. Well, the math should be pretty clear here on how we're going to cash flow this. And if that means it slows down your debt payoff a little bit to get her through this first year and buy you guys some time, that's what I would do. Cuz I do think it's a great goal for her to go to school debtree. But I think she needs to have some skin in the game versus dad just working his tail off so she can go enjoy the the frat parties and sorority parties. So that would be the game plan. And then the long term, we need to clean up the $200,000 of debt using the debt snowball. So attacking the smallest one first. We need to rent, you know, really dial down our lifestyle because my guess is your total expenses are close to 16K a month, if not more.

[00:05:52]>> Yes, definitely.

[00:05:53]>> What's coming out of the bank account every month?

[00:05:57]>> Uh mortgage.

[00:05:59]>> I mean, is it more than 16K or is there any money left over?

[00:06:04]>> No, no, there's um I I would say, you know, I was doing rough estimates over the last week or two. I would say it's roughly about the like 14 15,000 that's coming out.

[00:06:14]>> Okay.

[00:06:15]>> In besides the more because you said 4,000 is the mortgage, >> right?

[00:06:21]>> Right. So you got 12,000 left. How much are all the payments on all the debt, the credit cards and everything?

[00:06:27]>> Um let me see. We have I just paid a car off. We have two cars that are about $700 total uh between the two. The HELOC is about um five $500 a month. Um the credit cards are >> um it's several thousand. It's a couple thousand a month. Um >> you know, it's like 30% interest, which is killing me. Um >> uh I'm trying to think of what else.

[00:07:06]>> Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm at 7,000 right now. I mean, it's just to the point, yes, that these are and these things I don't we don't want you to get behind on. Um, so yeah, so Joseph and me, I would sit down tonight and we'll give you uh every dollar, our budgeting app, we'll give you a year subscription to it because >> I would want I I would want if I were you, you and your wife, to sit down and list out everything that we spend money on in the month. And my and my >> my hope is and my sense is that you guys are going to look up and be like, "Oh crap, three to $4,000 is just getting blown on subscriptions and out to eat and just >> whatever we whatever the flip we want to do." And all of that has to be tightened up to not only pay off this debt, but if you guys are serious about this college of of starting to save to cash flow and have to make payments for this college um forward payments, not back payments of debt. And so getting on a really strict budget, Joseph, I mean, even looking at selling some of these cars if you want. Like whatever you can do to get out of this as fast as possible is what you need to do.

[00:08:07]>> Yeah. I would not turn to any more debt.

[00:08:09]That's what's got us here. It's not going to get us out. So no more parent plus loans. No more just kind of phoning it in. You guys make too much to be this.

[00:08:16]>> Up the credit cards. Be done with them.

[00:08:19]>> Why refi refinances defaulted private student loans for struggling borrowers.

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