You are probably already aware of the very high costs of sending your son or daughter to college, whether you have been researching it in preparation for them going, or whether you already have a child in college. And it is probably no news to you that despite your extensive and detailed planning and budgeting, your best guess is likely going to fall far short of the real costs.

Hopefully you have not encouraged your son or daughter to not consider college. A college education is a necessity in todays cruel hard world, and not having a college education almost guarantees a struggle through life. Life is hard enough as it is, why complicate matters? For economic reasons, you may have encouraged your son or daughter to seriously consider a local community college instead of the brand-name state university. But I would urge you to reconsider that suggestion, since you of course want to be able to give your son or daughter every possible advantage that they could have, and the education that they get at the four-year state university or brand name college is almost certainly going to better than the local community college. You are saying fine, but how can I afford it?

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