Help your kids -- don't pay for college

RacerX remembers the college experience: You get a credit card and "probably then only use the card for emergencies -- no pizza or beer left in the house! Taking our girlfriend out! Maybe even rent once or twice," he writes. Since you know nothing about finances, you get a second credit card to make payments on the first, and so the cycle goes.

His kids won't be like that, he says. Why? Because he and Mrs. X have decided they're not paying for their kids' college education. Why not? you ask. Because every kid they know who went to college "on the parent express" left school unprepared for life -- and sometimes didn't even graduate.

• Bing: Let someone else pay -- get a scholarship
  

"They took basket weaving and Klingon 301," he writes at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Money. "They never worked the menial jobs that give you an appreciation for honest work, honest wages."

RacerX calls his approach "college the poor kids' way." He writes, "Everyone that I know who paid their own way had it hard. But they studied hard and really wanted it."

The parents' role in their children's success is to give them an education in personal finance before they go -- basics in budgeting, credit, saving, spending and investing. "Their first real investment will be in securing more income by having a college degree," he writes. "Their investment will be in themselves. And what a great investment to make."

Published Feb. 27, 2008