re: Is undergrad college worth it?

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quote: Welding school or be a machinist Is this correct? quote: The average salary for a welder is $18.24 per hour in the United States.

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Not if you get the right training. These kids are making $30/hr min. LINK

Prospects are better with a degree than without, especially for women.

Also easier to go back and learn a trade than it is to go back and get a 4 year degree. The former doesn't take as long or cost as much.

If you’re in LA and they get TOPS I don’t see why not at least give college a shot for how little it will cost. You need a degree to do just about anything other than trade school, or at least to move up into management at some point.

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Not if you get the right training. These kids are making $30/hr min. LINK

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If they are making 30 then folks are making ~10-12/hr. You know, that whole average thing.

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But practical things are more important than reading fancy books that teach you fancy words.

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Indubitably

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Imagine if that college savings went to get them a down payment in their first piece of real estate. Say a 3 bedroom house they could rent out 2 of the bedrooms to friends they’d be rooming with anyway in college. Only this way they’re building equity and living for free or maybe making a profit. With the money saved from the house hack, they could get I to other real estate and keep expanding. Or other investing. On the path to financial freedom at a young age. Their age peers in contrast are not getting experience in the job market and most won’t even use what they learn in class. To say nothing of paying money to go to college and not making money in the marketplace. In before all the “college experience “ people. They can get experience elsewhere. Also when I was at LSU one guy dropped out pretty early on went I to sales. He still hung out with everyone, went to the parties, etc. Only difference was he was making money instead of wasting time in class.

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Imagine giving them $60,000 on a down payment for a house at 18 years old to try an "alternative" path to success and realize not only does this kid know nothing about real estate, neither does the parents other than what they've read on half baked internet articles that have the sole intention of getting ad revenue from clicks.

OP, unless your kid specifies this is what they want to do, it's god awful advice. Pushing anything in which your kid has not expressed interest is awful advice.

If you have 6 kids, it's likely for a couple of them college is the best choice. One may be an electrician. One may want to live in a van and pursue acting. There is no point in thinking about their careers now. Tell them the importance of school and go from there.

Please don't gift them tens of thousands of dollars for a down payment on a house that they will ruin.

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But practical things are more important than reading fancy books that teach you fancy words.

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Were you wearing overalls and a soiled trucker hat when you typed this?

Teach them how to pull out.

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do you really think it’s worth a 4-6 year lag in your career/expenses for a social experience?

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It’s not just a social experience, it plays a huge role in your overall social and personal development. Learning how to network, live on your own, be responsible, etc. And you’re more likely to meet life long friends there than just people you were forced to be friends with growing up due to proximity.

That said, unless they want to go into something highly specialized like engineering or medicine, my kids will be encouraged to live in the college town of their choosing and do online or community college classes. The cost of that 4 year piece of paper for a business “education” just is not worth it.

Was certainly for me. My weaknesses are that I’m not good with my hands and I’m risk averse, so trade school or starting some business would have been a pretty bad idea.

But my analytical and problem solving skills are excellent, so getting a finance degree was absolutely the best choice I could have made. Sure I had student loan payments for 15 years but so what, they weren’t terrible as I went to a state school and always had a job while in school.

Point being, blanket statements are stupid. Sure lots of high school grads are successful but it’s a tougher road. Not everyone wants to start a business, some people just want to be an accountant and have a good and stable career that pays enough to have a nice house and take a couple of vacations a year. Nothing wrong with that.