Dear Mr. Berko: Our 20-year-old son will finish high school this December when he completes his online courses. He broke his arm playing varsity football three years ago and can’t qualify for a football scholarship. He is a fair student, with minor problems in reading and math, and had to repeat several courses. He needs a challenge. His counselor and we think the University of Central Florida would give him this challenge. Our problem is the money. We have $105,000 in our individual retirement accounts. I have $43,000 in my 401(k), and my wife has $51,000 in her 401(k). I’ve enclosed all of the investments in those plans for your opinion. We need to raise $30,000, so please tell us what stocks or funds to sell. Or should our son take out a student loan if we co-sign? What’s the best way?
— D.S., Tampa, Fla.
Dear D.S.: Two years ago, Bill Gates gave your county’s school system a $100 million grant to improve teaching skills and student test scores. What an abominable failure — and it’s nationwide! Florida’s K-12 schools are called failure factories.
You don’t have a “best way.” UCF, at best, has barely modest academic credentials, so anyone with tuition money is admitted to its 62,000-person student body. And if students lack the tuition, financial counselors are there to help them borrow all the money they need. Our school systems have morphed into huge multilevel conglomerates that excel in “assembly-line learning.” Though UCF lacks the faculty to cuddle your kid or teach him elementary math or how to read, he’d get a degree because grade inflation is rampant. But giving tuition money to the kid from your retirement cookie jar would be the equivalent of tossing it in the toilet. You’d never get it back — neither in cash, nor in satisfaction.
If you value a comfortable retirement, don’t take $30,000 from your IRA. It might be the difference between having dinner at Denny’s and buying day-old bread, tuna, macaroni, ketchup and rice at Dollar Tree. You don’t owe your kid that kind of sacrifice!
