Why education should never be financed

I made a statement on twitter the other day :the only things that should be financed are a house and a NEW car. Now I just happened to check my responses and somebody added in education, now while I guess they thought I was shorting education I'm not it should NEVER be financed. The reasoning is simple normally you have 18 years(at least) to prepare for your child's educational funding.

I mean think about it, even before you know if your child is going to go to college you know you have a child, that you would LIKE to go to college, start socking away the cash. Will it take some sacrifice yes, but then if your child's education is important to you then I'm sure you'll believe it's worth it, on top of that you can use the process to teach your child(ren) about savings, and possibly investing. Most peoples problem with paying for education comes in the fact that they always worry about the big chunks late, the earlier you start the less you have to start with. You can start with $100-$150 a month, and no that is not a lot of money 25-37.50 a week you probably blow that going to lunch each week. Now you could put that into a money market account and let that grow over the period of you child's public/private school education up to 12th grade at minimum with no interest compounding that's  $20,400-30,600. That's a nice amount of money, as school tuition is constantly getting more expensive thats not 4 years in college but it is at least 1 or 2 depending on the school(or possibly the full tuition at say a specialty school culinary arts, devry, ITT, etc).

Now I said that was without interest, I suck at the interest calculations I would have to basically add up month by month over the span of the 17 years to give you what that would be like with the interest added it. Most of us suck at long term planning because mentally we have a "well that can wait til later attitude", if it's important the planning and saving for it can't. You don't have to do it all today, but you damn sure need to start not only thinking about it but saving for it and formulating a plan for how you're going to make it happen.

Just like you can run and check your bank account to see how much is in it when you wanna splurge and buy something if you have a dream, wish, hope whatever then the second you get that gleam in ya eye you need to put some dollars away for it.  If you wanna use some of that growing nest egg to invest and take a chance on a stock growing over that time to help accelerate the value of the funds in the account fine, plenty of books on investing pick one up and be my guest.

But honestly if you have something you want to do, and in your heart you really wanna do it then prepare to do it. If you look into something far enough out that you want and break down how much it will cost you for it, the further out you start the better off you are.

And by the way at the top I said houses and NEW(yes I'm emphasizing new if you finance a used car you are financing someone else's problem that they could either no longer afford or didn't wanna deal with anymore) car, but that's something you should also be saving for. you should walk into the bank, or finance persons office with at least 35% as a down payment again if you know you want something that far out SAVE UP FOR IT. People get stuck in these endless cycles of debt because at the last minute they realize "Oh you know I want one of these too" shit if you dream is home ownership sock some money away, a car sock some money away. The more you have saved to put down on it, the less you owe on it over the time of the loan and the smaller your payments will be.

Lots of people have been sold on the credit, credit, credit ideal and not including saving with that credit. Which is why debt levels are so high and savings rates so low, nothing beats cash, not even a good credit score. Why because your credit score says you SHOULD be able to afford something and can be reasonably expedited to pay off said debt, having the cash for it guarantees that you can afford it and there is either no or very little debt to pay off. Your credit score is your enemy high or low, it just says how much somebody is going to allow you to owe them, be owed don't owe save up for what you want.