After the 2008-2009 bear market, education funding for children and grandchildren should be part of your retirement planning. Should you use your remaining retirement assets to pay for their private school and college? Costs are high now and still rising, so you might not want to make commitments you can’t afford.
If you pay to send one youngster to private school or to an expensive university, you really should do the same for all of your children or grandchildren. However, one year of higher education can cost more than $40,000 now, or $160,000+ for four years. If you do that for all your children or grandchildren, the total cost can be many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Therefore, you should run the numbers on education spending and see what paying those bills will mean for your retirement planning. See what you’ll have left if you pay for private school or expensive universities or both. If it looks like your retirement will be in jeopardy, you may have to reduce the amounts you expect to spend on schooling for your children or grandchildren.