My wife and I started saving for our kids early but we didn’t anticipate university overseas was going to get so expensive.
By the time our kids were going to university we had 106k saved. My son was going to university first but we told both our kids that they would get 53k each and they could go to university with that money or they could withdraw it after 21 but that was all the money they had and we weren’t contributing more.
It would cover almost all the tuition at the university but if they wanted to go to a more expensive school that was on them and they had to cover it. My daughter went to a private university and lived at home. She finished with a degree in business with almost no debt.
Our son decided to go to a more expensive school overseas and paid the rent with the tuition there being over $27k a year. We tried to talk him out of it but he wouldn’t listen and we gave up and told him he would have to pay his own path.
So after 2 years, he had used up his money and even worse he wanted to switch majors which meant another year in school. He asked us for money but we told him he had gotten all his money out of his education fund and he was angry and didn’t want to take out loans so he started working.
We told him he could move back during the pandemic to save money but he lost his job and picked up another one relatively quickly but it didn’t pay as much and he started buying so much stuff off Amazon I’m sure he wasn’t saving anything. He recently got a better job but it still doesn’t pay what he needs to go back to university and he started spending it on video games and clothing. 4 years later he still hadn’t saved any money and his sister is now making six figures and it’s making him feel bad.
He started smoking and not working, playing video games all day and I think the company caught on and laid him off. Whatever he is doing is not enough to save for university and asked us again for money for university.
We told him again all the money we were contributing was in the education fund and he chose to go to an expensive school. He complained he didn’t understand what that meant at 18 and it was our fault for letting him. We didn’t let him we tried to talk him down but he wouldn’t listen and I couldn’t force him to go to the cheaper school. I told him he should just take out loans to study at the cheaper school but he says I should be paying for his school and isn’t budging.
We had a lot of fights with him and us over this tuition thing and he thinks we have treated him unfairly by not giving him more money. He also stays up late partying and comes home at midnight and refuses to do chores.
We didn’t have any choice but he give him 3 months notice to move back to SG and he moved out last week to be with friends.
He yelled at me when we weren’t ever going to his wedding or seeing his kids and my wife wants to just pay for his schooling so he doesn’t end up a loser.