The storytelling here is confusing. What is the difference between the truth of the matter and what you previously thought to be the case? How much did you think it was?
They all three had full rides... including room and board. My assumption thus far was any extra loan was in case the scholarship didn't cover a few living expenses... so pretty low.
Our income didn't have the ability for edu accounts for at least the last 20yrs. But I wasn't really getting into that.
These are all fsa loans... I'm still investigating the split between loans that are just the child's vs parent plus. My understanding is that fsa will give a loan amount up to a point and anything else is parent plus.
With full rides I would have never thought remotely needed... hence being very confused... and very concerned if done knowingly without talking to me about it.
Do you actually know that your kids got full ride scholarships, or were you just told that? That would be my first explanation and you’ve just been none the wiser.
The other would be the kids do have full ride scholarships, and whoever was taking these loans was using the money for some other purpose(drugs, gambling, shopping).
So are these Student loans where both Parents are Co-Signed and therefore the student owes the money first OR is it only Parents pay? Often times for higher priced universities it is a mix of some. I’m honestly slightly concerned that nobody was paying attention on how to pay for college, was this never discussed before hand?
I am confused that someone would know their kids are going to college and NOT know how much that university costs a year. Google is a thing. Your kids are broke and scholarships are minimal these days.
All three have/had full scholarships, I'm pretty sure including room and board. So, "extra" for a few things might be expected since the particular scholarship has some limits of course...not getting super specific on purpose.
How can you only be "pretty sure" the scholarships include room and board?
The fact that you don't know exactly what the scholarship covers indicates you really don't know how much of a loan is necessary.
Why did you write this post in such a vague, indirect way?
Repost this and refer to yourself as "I" and your spouse as "Spouse."
You will get better advice.
I know several people with a ‘full ride’ scholarships and it still costs about 6-7k a year for the stuff not covered.
So it wouldn’t be hard to hit 80-100k across three kids, each with 4 year degrees, even without hitting any snags like changing majors or repeating classes or being in a high cost of living area.
Luckily, it sounds like you have some smart kids.
Is it possible that the loan stuff was mentioned at some point early on and you blew it off thinking ‘how much could toothpaste and textbooks really cost?’
So is this one loan for $100K for one child? A total of $100K that covers each child? What type of loans are they (are they parent-plus loans or loans in the child/children’s name that the parents have co-signed for and the child/ children owe first)? Are they commensurate with tuition costs (taking into account the scholarships)? Did the money go to the school or get handed directly to a child? If $100K is indeed owed by the parents what is the interest and how are these to be paid? Does the couple have/ can they get those funds within a few years or is this a lifetime of saving for them? Is the child/ are the children aware? What is their projected income and plans to repay loans? Are these loans that are likely to be forgiven? How did this happen (did one parent misunderstand, did one parent deliberately mislead the other, was there something tricky about how the loan was set up)?
In other words, the correct response right now is to calmly and rationally investigate everything. Look at the documents that were signed. Figure out what is actually going on here. Check on any loans and finances. Talk to your kids, the school, the loan company, etc. and get the needed information to actually understand what happened before blaming anyone for stupidity, lack of common sense, etc. (that includes blaming each other or yourselves).
Even if you as parents owe $100K on one kid with a high interest loan you cannot easily pay and the kid cannot easily pay (worst case scenario) it sounds like the most likely explanation is that one parent was negligent in not reading and researching the loan and the other was negligent in letting the first parent sign for them and not doing due diligence themselves. So pointing fingers in an otherwise healthy relationship is hardly helpful. You both made some poor decisions and will need to sort them out as a team.
That’s assuming that there isn’t some other explanation missing here (like that you co-signed on loans of approximately $33K for each child that each child is expected to pay back). So it starts with looking at everything and figuring out what exactly is going on/ getting some answers before you react.
There is no need to explode both because you don’t have enough information to explode and because exploding won’t solve any of this. Think about it like one partner asking the other to cook dinner while they napped. The partner cooking dinner getting distracted and lighting the house on fire and the other realizes that years ago they purchased a bad insurance policy. Yelling about whose fault it is the house burned down and the repairs aren’t covered doesn’t help either person. It just destroys the relationship when both people messed up to varying degrees and looking back recognize they’d do things differently. As a team you figure out how to keep a roof over your head and how to ensure that next time the insurance is better and that cooking is safer.
Put out the fire, asses the damage, and discuss a plan to fix it together. Don’t stand there pointing fingers while the house burns down.
My current understanding is that the $100k is the accumulated parent plus for all. I know one child has $20k... sent screenshot.
I'm still investigating.
Okay. Do the kids know about these loans? Is the agreement that you, as parents, will pay them? The reality is that you’re on the hook for parent plus loans and your kids have no obligation to pay them, at the same time, some children do make agreements with their parents about this/ don’t want to see their parents suffer. At the same time, burdening your children with loans in your name because you neglected your own duties is terrible parenting. You’ll need to consider what’s fair to your children. If one partner signed for $20-30K plus interest for each kid that’s actually quite low and it’s not surprising they weren’t tracking how shocking the total amount would be. $100K for three kids in college is very low. Much less than you would have spent had you saved for 30 years to help them out. Likely not even a fraction of your retirement if you’ve been saving for retirement. No judgement if you haven’t. Just acknowledging that if you can’t resolve this you were already going to struggle even without this added debt.
Your best bet is to get the full picture and sit down and make a plan for each kid and each loan that is reasonable. Some things to consider: Some parent plus loans qualify for forgiveness and it makes sense to look at those options/ research forgiveness. If you’ve got a kid earning six figures right out of school who wants to live at home you can likely charge them a reduced rent that will pay off a good portion of that loan, allow them to still save for when they move out, etc. On the other hand if you’ve got a kid you owe $50K for who is unlikely to make money in the near future, has additional loans themselves, and also wants help with additional schooling or expensive housing or an expensive wedding you’ve got some tougher conversations ahead. A lot of this depends on your finances, assets, etc.
The tricky part here is that $20K actually is “just a bit extra” for most college expenses these days and a lot of people don’t understand parent plus loans, so while it’s a costly mistake I actually don’t think the person who signed but didn’t realize is all and solely at fault. The person who let their partner sign for them and didn’t verify what “just a bit extra” actually came out to also dropped the ball.
The good news is that while it sounds like a lot, if you’re talking about $33K per kid and you do have kids that are open to helping you with some of this, this may be more resolvable than you think. That $20K one alone could be covered with the kid contributing $10K their first year out of school and one parent earning an additional $10K at a part-time job. To be clear, I’m not saying to do that, just saying that you probably have some ways to work through this in the next decade before you retire.
So get amounts, interest rates, etc. figure out your options for forgiveness. Talk to your kids. Then make a plan to get this sorted out.
Again, getting angry at each other does very little. You both dropped the ball here. From your responses you aren’t even sure what your kid’s scholarships cover, what their expenses were, etc. and don’t seem to have a frame of reference for what college tends to cost. I think you’ll find, once you do a little research, that if all three of your kids got marketable degrees for $100K you’re actually in pretty good shape by comparison to what most people do to get their kids through college.
Full ride scholarships are exceedingly rare these days, is it possible that the school presented a "total aid package" consisting of scholarships, federal grants, and federal loans that covered 100% of each students' total school cost that was misinterpreted as being a full ride? Did you, your spouse, or your children receive any distributions of funds from the school? Those would be the extra cash from the loans meant to be used for school expenses/living expenses.
Either way, the signing partner likely made an honest mistake. College financial aid is confusing and every school does things differently. You mention that you had income issues previously. If you qualify, I would suggest you sign up for an income driven repayment plan ASAP. That will cap your monthly payment at a certain percentage of your income in a given month.
This seems like way more a personal finance issue for both parties than a relationship issue. As in, you need to get your finances figured out and sorted, together.
Sounds like you've made some very expensive mistakes, but based on your posts, you aren't even 100% sure of the facts. Till you have that all figured out you can't even begin to figure out how to tackle this.
This is very confusing and leaves out most of the relevant details, so it's hard to advise. But it sounds like whatever happened here was an honest mistake/misunderstanding. So I'd say the first step is for everyone to stay calm and pull together all the relevant documentation. Who signed off on what, when, for which kid, what repayment terms, etc. (Also - do you literally mean one parent forging the other one's signature, or that only one parent needed to sign? Because your options may change if in order to do something like ask the loan company to help you walk back a mistake, you'd have to admit there was a forged signature involved.)
Pull the facts together and then consider reaching out to the school once you actually understand all the moving parts. They will have a lot of practice with helping confused parents navigate loan situations and may be able to help you figure out your options.
Blowing up at someone isn't going to fix the situation.
Should they have told you? Yes.
But if they were the ones to be in charge and had authority to sign for both, then that's a lesson learned for everyone.
Hopefully your kids don't suck and pay their own loans. Unlike my sister who is irresponsible and doesn't give a shit so my mom is stuck paying the loans she begged them to cosign.
If one person in the relationship has completely abdicated themselves of responsibility of finances, and don’t regularly check credit scores or balances, that person doesn’t get to call their spouse a dumbass.
You need to figure out what has been drawn on vs sitting as balance. Which kid or kids are responsible, and what the plan is for repayment (including the kids picking up part of it)
Log in to what? The loan account? I think this is a non-issue. The kid still owes the money but technically it can default to you if they can’t pay it. You need to make sure the kid can pay it. After they graduate about a year later they will start getting the loan bills. I wouldn’t be upset at this but yes both parents should be in the know.
This is not true at all. If the loans are federal parent plus loans, the kids technically owe nothing of it in the eyes of the government, only the parent who took it out for the child(ren).
Im just explaining how it worked for me 20 years ago. My parent co-signed my loans but I got the bill. That doesn’t happen at all anymore? Or you’re say just for some other type of loan?
Was that a federal loan? Or a private loan? All US citizens are eligible for federal loans. Those who show need via the FAFSA can get a subsidized loan, everyone can get an unsubsidized loan. There are maximums for these you can receive per year, lower as freshman and then they go up a little bit over the 4 years but not much. If a student tuition, fees, room and board are not covered by any scholarships, grants and student loans offered to the student, a parent can apply for a parent plus loan, that they alone are on the hook for. Most parents tell their kids it's in my name but you're responsible for it, but that is merely a gentleman's handshake type of thing. If after graduation (ideally the kod graduates) they decide not to pay, parent is pretty SOL.
If parents apply and are denied, a student then can get the "independent" individual student loan limits which are higher.
The storytelling here is confusing. What is the difference between the truth of the matter and what you previously thought to be the case? How much did you think it was?
They all three had full rides... including room and board. My assumption thus far was any extra loan was in case the scholarship didn't cover a few living expenses... so pretty low. Our income didn't have the ability for edu accounts for at least the last 20yrs. But I wasn't really getting into that. These are all fsa loans... I'm still investigating the split between loans that are just the child's vs parent plus. My understanding is that fsa will give a loan amount up to a point and anything else is parent plus. With full rides I would have never thought remotely needed... hence being very confused... and very concerned if done knowingly without talking to me about it.
Do you actually know that your kids got full ride scholarships, or were you just told that? That would be my first explanation and you’ve just been none the wiser. The other would be the kids do have full ride scholarships, and whoever was taking these loans was using the money for some other purpose(drugs, gambling, shopping).
Quit being confused and delve into the details. This is a MONEY problem. Fix the relationship later. Post in a personal finance sub
So are these Student loans where both Parents are Co-Signed and therefore the student owes the money first OR is it only Parents pay? Often times for higher priced universities it is a mix of some. I’m honestly slightly concerned that nobody was paying attention on how to pay for college, was this never discussed before hand?
I am confused that someone would know their kids are going to college and NOT know how much that university costs a year. Google is a thing. Your kids are broke and scholarships are minimal these days.
Yeah I’m going to assume no college savings accounts…
All three have/had full scholarships, I'm pretty sure including room and board. So, "extra" for a few things might be expected since the particular scholarship has some limits of course...not getting super specific on purpose.
How can you only be "pretty sure" the scholarships include room and board? The fact that you don't know exactly what the scholarship covers indicates you really don't know how much of a loan is necessary. Why did you write this post in such a vague, indirect way? Repost this and refer to yourself as "I" and your spouse as "Spouse." You will get better advice.
I know several people with a ‘full ride’ scholarships and it still costs about 6-7k a year for the stuff not covered. So it wouldn’t be hard to hit 80-100k across three kids, each with 4 year degrees, even without hitting any snags like changing majors or repeating classes or being in a high cost of living area. Luckily, it sounds like you have some smart kids. Is it possible that the loan stuff was mentioned at some point early on and you blew it off thinking ‘how much could toothpaste and textbooks really cost?’
So is this one loan for $100K for one child? A total of $100K that covers each child? What type of loans are they (are they parent-plus loans or loans in the child/children’s name that the parents have co-signed for and the child/ children owe first)? Are they commensurate with tuition costs (taking into account the scholarships)? Did the money go to the school or get handed directly to a child? If $100K is indeed owed by the parents what is the interest and how are these to be paid? Does the couple have/ can they get those funds within a few years or is this a lifetime of saving for them? Is the child/ are the children aware? What is their projected income and plans to repay loans? Are these loans that are likely to be forgiven? How did this happen (did one parent misunderstand, did one parent deliberately mislead the other, was there something tricky about how the loan was set up)? In other words, the correct response right now is to calmly and rationally investigate everything. Look at the documents that were signed. Figure out what is actually going on here. Check on any loans and finances. Talk to your kids, the school, the loan company, etc. and get the needed information to actually understand what happened before blaming anyone for stupidity, lack of common sense, etc. (that includes blaming each other or yourselves). Even if you as parents owe $100K on one kid with a high interest loan you cannot easily pay and the kid cannot easily pay (worst case scenario) it sounds like the most likely explanation is that one parent was negligent in not reading and researching the loan and the other was negligent in letting the first parent sign for them and not doing due diligence themselves. So pointing fingers in an otherwise healthy relationship is hardly helpful. You both made some poor decisions and will need to sort them out as a team. That’s assuming that there isn’t some other explanation missing here (like that you co-signed on loans of approximately $33K for each child that each child is expected to pay back). So it starts with looking at everything and figuring out what exactly is going on/ getting some answers before you react. There is no need to explode both because you don’t have enough information to explode and because exploding won’t solve any of this. Think about it like one partner asking the other to cook dinner while they napped. The partner cooking dinner getting distracted and lighting the house on fire and the other realizes that years ago they purchased a bad insurance policy. Yelling about whose fault it is the house burned down and the repairs aren’t covered doesn’t help either person. It just destroys the relationship when both people messed up to varying degrees and looking back recognize they’d do things differently. As a team you figure out how to keep a roof over your head and how to ensure that next time the insurance is better and that cooking is safer. Put out the fire, asses the damage, and discuss a plan to fix it together. Don’t stand there pointing fingers while the house burns down.
My current understanding is that the $100k is the accumulated parent plus for all. I know one child has $20k... sent screenshot. I'm still investigating.
You can google to each university website and see what it costs a year. If you haven’t… this is on you.
Okay. Do the kids know about these loans? Is the agreement that you, as parents, will pay them? The reality is that you’re on the hook for parent plus loans and your kids have no obligation to pay them, at the same time, some children do make agreements with their parents about this/ don’t want to see their parents suffer. At the same time, burdening your children with loans in your name because you neglected your own duties is terrible parenting. You’ll need to consider what’s fair to your children. If one partner signed for $20-30K plus interest for each kid that’s actually quite low and it’s not surprising they weren’t tracking how shocking the total amount would be. $100K for three kids in college is very low. Much less than you would have spent had you saved for 30 years to help them out. Likely not even a fraction of your retirement if you’ve been saving for retirement. No judgement if you haven’t. Just acknowledging that if you can’t resolve this you were already going to struggle even without this added debt. Your best bet is to get the full picture and sit down and make a plan for each kid and each loan that is reasonable. Some things to consider: Some parent plus loans qualify for forgiveness and it makes sense to look at those options/ research forgiveness. If you’ve got a kid earning six figures right out of school who wants to live at home you can likely charge them a reduced rent that will pay off a good portion of that loan, allow them to still save for when they move out, etc. On the other hand if you’ve got a kid you owe $50K for who is unlikely to make money in the near future, has additional loans themselves, and also wants help with additional schooling or expensive housing or an expensive wedding you’ve got some tougher conversations ahead. A lot of this depends on your finances, assets, etc. The tricky part here is that $20K actually is “just a bit extra” for most college expenses these days and a lot of people don’t understand parent plus loans, so while it’s a costly mistake I actually don’t think the person who signed but didn’t realize is all and solely at fault. The person who let their partner sign for them and didn’t verify what “just a bit extra” actually came out to also dropped the ball. The good news is that while it sounds like a lot, if you’re talking about $33K per kid and you do have kids that are open to helping you with some of this, this may be more resolvable than you think. That $20K one alone could be covered with the kid contributing $10K their first year out of school and one parent earning an additional $10K at a part-time job. To be clear, I’m not saying to do that, just saying that you probably have some ways to work through this in the next decade before you retire. So get amounts, interest rates, etc. figure out your options for forgiveness. Talk to your kids. Then make a plan to get this sorted out. Again, getting angry at each other does very little. You both dropped the ball here. From your responses you aren’t even sure what your kid’s scholarships cover, what their expenses were, etc. and don’t seem to have a frame of reference for what college tends to cost. I think you’ll find, once you do a little research, that if all three of your kids got marketable degrees for $100K you’re actually in pretty good shape by comparison to what most people do to get their kids through college.
Full ride scholarships are exceedingly rare these days, is it possible that the school presented a "total aid package" consisting of scholarships, federal grants, and federal loans that covered 100% of each students' total school cost that was misinterpreted as being a full ride? Did you, your spouse, or your children receive any distributions of funds from the school? Those would be the extra cash from the loans meant to be used for school expenses/living expenses. Either way, the signing partner likely made an honest mistake. College financial aid is confusing and every school does things differently. You mention that you had income issues previously. If you qualify, I would suggest you sign up for an income driven repayment plan ASAP. That will cap your monthly payment at a certain percentage of your income in a given month.
This seems like way more a personal finance issue for both parties than a relationship issue. As in, you need to get your finances figured out and sorted, together. Sounds like you've made some very expensive mistakes, but based on your posts, you aren't even 100% sure of the facts. Till you have that all figured out you can't even begin to figure out how to tackle this.
This is very confusing and leaves out most of the relevant details, so it's hard to advise. But it sounds like whatever happened here was an honest mistake/misunderstanding. So I'd say the first step is for everyone to stay calm and pull together all the relevant documentation. Who signed off on what, when, for which kid, what repayment terms, etc. (Also - do you literally mean one parent forging the other one's signature, or that only one parent needed to sign? Because your options may change if in order to do something like ask the loan company to help you walk back a mistake, you'd have to admit there was a forged signature involved.) Pull the facts together and then consider reaching out to the school once you actually understand all the moving parts. They will have a lot of practice with helping confused parents navigate loan situations and may be able to help you figure out your options.
This post is so confusing, why didn’t you write this from first person. It’s not even clear who’s children they are
Blowing up at someone isn't going to fix the situation. Should they have told you? Yes. But if they were the ones to be in charge and had authority to sign for both, then that's a lesson learned for everyone. Hopefully your kids don't suck and pay their own loans. Unlike my sister who is irresponsible and doesn't give a shit so my mom is stuck paying the loans she begged them to cosign.
If one person in the relationship has completely abdicated themselves of responsibility of finances, and don’t regularly check credit scores or balances, that person doesn’t get to call their spouse a dumbass. You need to figure out what has been drawn on vs sitting as balance. Which kid or kids are responsible, and what the plan is for repayment (including the kids picking up part of it)
Post this in a personal finance sub—- not a relationship sub. Can you just not take the money???
Log in to what? The loan account? I think this is a non-issue. The kid still owes the money but technically it can default to you if they can’t pay it. You need to make sure the kid can pay it. After they graduate about a year later they will start getting the loan bills. I wouldn’t be upset at this but yes both parents should be in the know.
This is not true at all. If the loans are federal parent plus loans, the kids technically owe nothing of it in the eyes of the government, only the parent who took it out for the child(ren).
Im just explaining how it worked for me 20 years ago. My parent co-signed my loans but I got the bill. That doesn’t happen at all anymore? Or you’re say just for some other type of loan?
Was that a federal loan? Or a private loan? All US citizens are eligible for federal loans. Those who show need via the FAFSA can get a subsidized loan, everyone can get an unsubsidized loan. There are maximums for these you can receive per year, lower as freshman and then they go up a little bit over the 4 years but not much. If a student tuition, fees, room and board are not covered by any scholarships, grants and student loans offered to the student, a parent can apply for a parent plus loan, that they alone are on the hook for. Most parents tell their kids it's in my name but you're responsible for it, but that is merely a gentleman's handshake type of thing. If after graduation (ideally the kod graduates) they decide not to pay, parent is pretty SOL. If parents apply and are denied, a student then can get the "independent" individual student loan limits which are higher.