I ER'd 5 years ago with two school age sons, both are now juniors (one in college and the other in HS.) I don't know any magic on how to make it happen.
It's "just" a matter of how much money you want to spend. If you want to sacrifice ER for a few years to put your kid through college then it's a personal choice and a budgeting/saving challenge. By "personal" I mean "the sense of internal satisfaction derived from behaving in accordance with your values", not "your kids will thank you for it".
That about sums up my thoughts on the matter as well. I've got a DB pension, a lump sum payout on top, access to health insurance at a still reasonable cost, and I did well in the stock market starting in the early 80's. Simple answer is I can afford to do it and I want to do it.
Up until 2007 I was letting the college money ride in the stock market, but when it started looking ugly I sold enough to raise cash for both kids' college expenses and put it aside. I've missed some upside in the last few months, but I slept well during the really bad times.
Actually having a bit of a problem with DS's expenses right now. He has somehow gone from being a very frugal fellow to being a big spender in a period of just a few months.
I'm knocking on wood while typing this, but I think I've lucked out so far. With the oldest one anyway.
There's not much deprivation going on around here, but there wasn't much in the way of luxurious spending either. Anything over what I provide for has always been at their expense. It's amazing how thrifty they become when it's their money going out the door.
The oldest one's miscellaneous school expenses have been very reasonable, in fact he came in under what I budgeted for his freshman year, and I was fairly parsiminous. When we dropped him off for freshman camp I handed him a few bucks in cash, put a hundred in his checking account, and threw a couple of hundred more on his school account and said "make it last but call if you're broke."
We were lucky in two broad areas, one literally being broads. He's dated a little there and at home and I think he got scared off by his selections. One liked to drink, like a fish. There was a story involving her and tequila that seemed to be the end of that budding relationship. After that he stuck with girls at school, but I think he ran into a string of them that were aggressively seeking a future husband and he's not even interested in going there yet. A few others were all crossed off his list with the comment: "I'm no great intellectual, but damn, they should at least be able to carry on an intelligent conversation about
something".
All of which brings up some questions about my wife and the milkman. If he were truly my offspring, at this point in his college journey he should be thinking about joining AA and dodging some girls' angry parents. It's probably too late for genetic testing.
The other lucky break was his choice of friends. All of them are tight as drums when it comes to money and he says that modifies his choices on expenditures. The first two years they all ate almost exclusively at the campus cafeteria just because they all had required meal plans and couldn't afford to eat anywhere else.
The only expense issue is a potential one involving staying focused on a degree plan and graduating in a reasonable time. He was a biology major but he switched to computer science. He got sideswiped by a class in that major last year and he'll be taking the same class again this semester. He's stubborn like his mom and doesn't want to give up, but he has expressed the concern: "what if you're not right for something you really love?"
Like most fathers, my goal is to be able to boot the little birds out of the nest and see them fly on their own. College is part of that, and my paying for the education is something that makes me feel good about kicking them out of the nest in the near future. Both kids have been thoroughly indoctrinated in LBYM and we've discussed hundreds of real life cases of people who've blown up their lives financially and otherwise. When they take off on their own it will be with a degree that will help them start their careers, with a good work ethic,
without a huge student loan tab, and with a better than basic understanding of how to manage their money without falling into one of those financial holes that so many people seem to find.
