Sally Brandon, Vice President of Client Services, explains why it’s usually better to finance your retirement instead of your kids’ needs, such as a saving for college. More on kids and retirement priorities.
transcript
I think it’s an interesting thing that I’m having to deal with personally right now. I have a son that’s a senior in high school, about to go to college. And it’s unfortunately something I wish I would have thought about a lot earlier in life, as to whether I should be funding his college or funding my retirement.
And, being a mother, I think my instinct is wanting to pay for everything for him for college and maybe put off my own retirement. But in reality, that would be doing myself and quite honestly my children a disservice in the future. Where they could take a loan out for college, and I can’t take a loan out for retirement. Not only that but then I could potentially be a burden for them later in life.
Ideally, it would be great if you could fund both college and retirement. But, if you really had to choose, I think families are much better off putting money into their own retirement, knowing that their children could take out a loan or find other sources of scholarships or grants to fund their education.
