Sell Our House To Pay For Our Son's College?

If your private student loans are in default, you're not out of options. Go to why refi.com slash Ramsey. We saved up a ton for college for my son, put it in the college fund. It grew to like $120,000. I thought for sure that would be enough to get them through like three, maybe four years. And we're coming up on year two. It looks like it'll all be eaten up by the end of year two. And yeah, I feel bad. Yeah, we, we thought he'd be able to get some help. We thought we'd be able to get a financial aid package or, or some kind of assistance, but so far, no luck because we're making too much money. They say, and we've saved up too much on the side. What's it cost every year? It's about $65,000 right now. Wow. What do you guys make? Yeah. Uh, just over 200. Um, and so the options we're looking at is, you know, I've, I've got the house for, so we've got a pretty nice house right now. So I'm going to take some equity out of there to help him. Oh boy. You're going to take a HELOC to pay for your kid's college? No, no. I was just going to sell the house and buy another one for cash and then put the money aside. Okay. Wait, would you downgrade anyways? Or was this just for the purpose of cashflow in college? Uh, we, our, our mark, our house like doubled in value in about five years. And so we were thinking about just like, you know, making some cash off it and, and slightly downgrading. We love the place, but you know, with property taxes and everything else going up too, we thought we could kind of, you know, have a win-win here and put the money aside and help him as well. What would be the equity? What would you take if you sold it? Uh, we're looking for like 1.2 million and then to buy something for about seven or $800,000. Okay. Um, let me ask you this. What's he studying and is he the only child? Um, no, he's not. The only child, uh, is his sister's coming up behind in about four years. And there's not as much saved for her account. We'll probably have the same problem there. Um, and he is, uh, he's a film major, actually not too far from you guys at, uh, at Belmont university there. Okay. Interesting. What's his end goal with filmmaking? What's that? What's his end goal with filmmaking? Um, I mean, he's already put out his own documentary that's on Netflix and, uh, Amazon prime right now. Yeah. He was able to put something up professionally in high school. So that's nuts. What does he need school for? That's my question. I'm concerned about that. People are going to school to get the degree to hopefully one day be on Netflix and he's already on there. Uh, I, I hear you. I hear you. I mean, so I have, I have no degrees and my wife has four degrees. So we kind of see it both ways. I mean, I don't think you, I don't think you need a degree to do something great. Absolutely. At the same time, like he, uh, I mean, he's, he's killing it there and you know, he's connected in on music row there and with a lot of people there. So we do think there's some benefits there. It's also, you know, a Christian university. So we're, you know, enjoying that aspect of him kind of growing up in that. Uh, but it's just more than we thought we'd ever end up paying. And have you tried to figure it out? Should we let him, you know, I mean, even if he takes a part-time job, it's not going to help that much. I mean, your income is the secret sauce here. So you've, you've, uh, so obviously there's a problem to solve. I agree with you on that. You've explored the avenue of solving the financial side of it. Has there been any talk or exploration on what other education avenues there are, like, is there another way that he could pursue some education in the same field that's not at the expense of Belmont that you guys can actually afford, I would love for you guys to explore that side of the equation because it does exist and I would hate for you to feel like you're backed against this wall. This is the only place he can go to school. Um, you see what I'm saying? What have you guys looked at in, on that side of the equation? Yeah, we we've looked around a little bit. We haven't really done all of our homework there. He's kind of, uh, uh, he's got a hard head a little bit. So like when he finds a path, he liked the, you know, that's how he was able to put out his own documentary in high school, basically. Right. He just gets stuff done. So that's true, but he's not, he's not getting done there. He has, well, can I talk to you like parent to parent? Yep. It's not his choice because you're paying. So you do, he doesn't get to choose that part, right? You can say we can either afford this or we can't. We're willing to do this or we're not. So you still do hold a level of say so in this conversation. And I don't want you to forget that because selling your house and taking the equity is a huge step. George and I haven't asked you what you have in retirement yet. And you know that the sister's coming on down the line and there could be some expense there. So let's ask those questions. What do you guys have locked away in retirement? Hopefully it's juicy. We've yeah, we've been teaching you for a while. We haven't in the last five years since COVID, but we followed the Ramsey principles for a long time. So we have over a million in retirement right now. The house is a million plus. Awesome. And what are you going to really well kind of enter? Uh, about 110 or so right now. Oh, fantastic. Okay. That's good. So you're talking like a million, you'll, you'll walk away in profit of like $900,000, something, something like that. Yeah. The goal is over a million. Yeah. And then buy something for, you know, I'm fine buying something for six or seven and you know, just putting some cash on the side. Okay. It's going to be your choice, but here's your options. Number one, of course, sell the house. Use some of the profits to cashflow the rest of college and probably locks them away for the daughter too. Right. Option two, we don't sell the house and we use this income that you have. And that's going to mean sacrifices in the budget to go. We've got a cashflow of 60 grand of school out of our $200,000 in income. That's option two. And then the last option is what Jay's been talking about, which is could he transfer to middle Tennessee state if they have a filmmaking program and still be just as fine. And he's got relationships, keep building those relationships, keep getting indoors, keep working on set. Like all of those on the job experiences is really what's going to help him. Uh, so yeah, those are the three options. I tell you, this is, uh, this company has hired a lot of guys who have went to film school or have the audio degrees in this media creative space. And they don't get paid more because they went to Belmont versus MTSU. So I just want to make sure that we're clear on the ROI of this degree. And again, he's the secret sauce in all of this, not this piece of paper that says, Hey, you sat in class and did great. And maybe learned a thing or two, the real experience, making the films, making the connections, building his portfolio, getting on Netflix. His professor probably doesn't have a documentary on Netflix. He should be teaching this class. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, I think we're on the same page there, so I just wanted to hear somebody else say it. So I appreciate you guys. Have him watch this call and he can message me and, you know, just rip me a new one if he's upset. But I just think he's so sharp that we need to look at this a little bit more, you know, cautiously to go, dude, do you really want to graduate with a bunch of debt? No, that's off the table and you guys selling your house, making all these sacrifices. You can do that. You're awesome parents, but it just feels like a pretty drastic move for something that's avoidable. Yeah. And I also want to call this out too, and I don't know that this is true, but it's worth saying. I think a lot of times you can get focused on the notoriety of the way a university title sounds. Oh, they went to Mount Juilliard. Oh, they went to Harvard, Princeton, Princeton, Ivy league. Sorry. A lot, a lot of conversations to have Reggie. I hope you can talk to him and come up with a game plan. The key is you guys are unified on what the plan is. There's no surprises and you make peaceful, whatever decision you Out of those three, you got to make peace with and go, all right, this is a season. It's not forever. We're going to be okay. But the goal is we're going to avoid debt and make sure he graduates in four years or less. YREFI refinances defaulted private student loans for struggling borrowers. Learn more at YREFY.com slash Ramsey.