- I had to pay my way through college, so I looked forward to helping my daughters pay for school.
- My financially devastating divorce made it impossible to help them as much as I planned.
- I feel guilty that I can’t help them, but I’m trying my best.
Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who worked in an office, had never heard of a marketing department, and couldn’t tell you what “CEO” stood for if my life depended on it. Three of my closest childhood friends were parents before they were 17, and the biggest goal of anyone I knew was graduating from high school. Most of my relatives made ends meet with blue-collar jobs like waitressing and construction. Going to college seemed downright revolutionary.
As a first-generation college student, earning a bachelor’s degree completely changed my life. I married another college graduate, waited until my 30s to have kids, and achieved a middle-class lifestyle with a rewarding career as a marketing professional that allowed me to work mostly from home.
But it wasn’t easy. With little to no financial assistance from my parents during college, I struggled to balance academics with earning the money I needed to support myself. I had to sell plasma, do work-study, and borrow student loans that I’m still repaying. I eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree — nearly a decade after taking my first community college class.
So, when my two daughters were born, I looked forward to helping them through college and hopefully making their experience easier than mine. I bought a house, explored college savings accounts, took graduate classes, and started a small business.
But everything changed after a financially devastating divorce from their dad.
Money has been tight since the divorce
When I got divorced, I struggled financially. I was forced to declare bankruptcy. I faced foreclosure. More than a decade as a single mom during a housing crisis that hit our region especially hard made it impossible to help my kids as much as I’d planned.
In Seattle, where our family lived and where I was legally obligated to remain due to our custody agreement, average rent prices continued to grow.
But my salary did not increase at the same rate, making life on just one income nearly impossible — even with monthly child-support payments from my ex-husband that did not include cost-of-living increases.
Since prices rarely go down, my Gen Z daughters are now spending more on housing and food. They’re also spending more money on college tuition than I did at the same age — even though they’re both enrolled in public schools.
I feel guilty for not being able to help my college-age daughters
So it’s hard not to feel guilty that I can’t support them more financially. I’d like to earn more money to pay off my student loans, buy a house, save for retirement, help my daughters through school, and avoid burdening them as I age.
But the reality is that they’re eligible for more financial aid, like grants and scholarships, if I remain low-income than if I somehow manage to claw my way back to middle-class status.
This means I must find other ways to help my kids through college, like being honest about my financial situation so we can talk openly about solutions and they can learn from my experience while building their own financial literacy. I also try to send care packages, make their favorite foods, offer a place to do laundry, promptly provide all the information they need to complete the FAFSA, and generally offer as much loving support as they can stand.
It may not be everything I wanted to give them, but it’s a lot more than I had at their age, and as parents, sometimes that’s the best we can do.
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