As a single parent sending two awesome kids to college, I will be burying myself in debt over the next 14 years.
Why should I complain?
I made over $91,000 last year because I jumped at every opportunity to work overtime. I have no savings and no other parent willing to provide college payments. My Parent Plus Loans after my first son was in college for 2 years now costs about $500 a month. This year (and the next 3 years) both will be in school. I begin to hyperventilate when I think what my payments will be before I'm done.
My kids did their part and got scholarship money. College is STILL too expensive...but even more expensive not to provide my kids with this opportunity to provide themselves with a reasonable income in the future.... ==================================================
Opportunities exist everywhere. In your situation, the college tax credit should probably be used to pay interest on those parent college loans. You want to use it in a way that increases it's value. That is, if you are planning to pay them off in the standard ten years repayment. Hopefully, you have a figure in mind that you know you can afford to borrow, and you've added that to the scholarship money, your children's federal student loan amounts and the tax credit funds, to set an overall college funding amount that your children must stick to.
If you are borrowing (using the PLUS loans) an amount of money that meets the "tuition gap" as set by the school, and not by the amount you have calculated you can afford- you will be in for trouble.
You cannot just do open-ended borrowing up to their cost of attendance without considering how able you will be to pay it back. Your children should not be going to schools that cost more than than the amount you can afford to borrow + their loans + scholarship money + anything you have already saved for their college educations.
