[MonkeyMama]

I am mostly with Lucky Robin as that is how my family is.

My parents raised me with the value of money from a young age, yes, that is why putting myself through college was not a huge burden. Working through college? I didn't find it took away from the experience at all. I was in the clubs and worked, and even took 1 month off every year just to veg. It can be done. But since it has worked for our family that is how it will be for our kids (as their parents and grandparents before them who worked their way and paid for their own college).

I am a lot with FrugalFish as well. We are saving money, but I am not going to save a ton up in the kids' name. We expect them to do it on their own but we'll be there to help. We are open to the fact that they may not be able to work as much as we did through college, or that they might "need" a pricier degree than those before them (my dad is an engineer and I am an accountant and we went to community college/state and hardly spent anything on our degrees, but these are well-paying careers.). But since we have saved so much money on college the past 2 generations I am not too worried about them. They will have opportunities and resources tenfold what we had. It's not in their name specifically because they aren't entitled to squat. But if they "earn" it we will have plenty of means to help them. The idea of expensive college doesn't scare me too much because we didn't have to pay much to get well paying jobs and certainly have the money to help them (much more than our parents did, etc.)

For now we save $25/month for each kid and imagine it to be plenty. It's in their names to avoid taxes and grandma has a 529 with way too much money in it (more than my whole college cost pretty much - books and all). So regardless how we feel they will get oodles of money for college it seems. But if the money is there, so be it. My parents told me they would help me for college but not if I lived in the dorms, went to private school, didn't work and contribute, etc. So it will pretty much be the same for our kids. We just have some of the same expectations. We don't want them to run up a ton of debt and we aren't going to shell out six figures for their education. But there are a lot of other ways to approach it. (In my case my parents would have helped much more but I didn't ask for it/need it. It is a great feeling to be able to take care of yourself. Sure college was HARD but it also made me very strong. I wouldn't want to take that away from my kids).

Oh it probably doesn't help that I know way too many peers who squandered their fancy degrees and partied all through school (that is an expensive party!!!!). Most of the problem I see was parents eager to mortgage their home so their kids could go to the BEST Schools though they had no idea what they wanted to do. IT was really more of a parental pressure thing than a lazy kid thing (somewhat the culture in the area - a lot of successful parents who push their kids way too hard). So if I am going to help my kids become a doctor or something I want to sit back and make sure that's REALLY what they want. If they don't know what they want to do they can work and go to community college while they think about it. Anything more would really be a waste if you ask me. I know SO many people who went to fancy schools for degrees they will never use and then had no money when they figured out what they wanted. They were snobby to me that I went to State and that is where they ALL ended up for Masters and "real" degrees. Ironic. I rather the kids take their time at State and C.C. and then go to that fancy college when they are sure what they want out of life.