promoearn: The Daily Money: Families look for ways to pay for college without loans

Monday, July 11, 2022

The Daily Money: Families look for ways to pay for college without loans

ALL THE MONEY NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Monday, July 11

Good morning, Daily Money readers. It's Jayme Deerwester here with you on this Monday morning.

So just as we were all about to call it a week on Friday, Elon Musk announced he's walking away from his deal to buy Twitter. But can he?

According to the filing with the SEC on April 25, the deal calls for Musk to pay Twitter a $1 billion breakup fee if he terminates the deal. And Twitter may be able to force Musk to complete the deal, legal observers say.

At issue is whether the prevalence of bots on the social media platform is "fundamental to Twitter's business and financial performance" as Musk's lawyers have argued.

"The question is whether or not this is really material information," UCLA law professor James Park said. "It should be fairly obvious that there's potentially fake spam accounts at a company like Twitter."

"(Musk) can make this argument, but I think it's a weak one," he said. "To me, this is just a pretext for him to pull out of the deal."

One possible reason: Musk lost $47.8 billion this year. In fact, even if he winds up paying $1 billion breakup fee, he'd likely make back all that money by not buying Twitter.

Move out of state? Sell the house? Here's how Americans pay for college

Selling the house. Tapping retirement funds. Renting out a spare room. Those are just some of the ways families are paying ever-mounting college costs. And that's not counting the decisions made by students themselves, who, besides working their way through school, are joining the National Guard, opting for community college, or applying to cheaper universities overseas to afford tuition – if they choose to go to college at all.

"We're not willing to take out loans," says Joyelle Tilton, whose family relocated from Nevada to Massachusetts during her son's senior year of high school in order to qualify for in-state tuition there.

"I'm willing to make sacrifices in other areas,'' she says. "My husband is still paying off his school loan and probably will till the day he dies.''

Meanwhile, cities like Atlanta are starting to seed college funds for kindergartners. A child with a college savings account, no matter the dollar amount in it, is 6 times more likely to go to college, according to a Center for Social Development study. They are also 4 times more likely to graduate.

🎧 Mood music 🎧

On "Reaper," HXLT raps about the financial and emotional costs of going to college out of a sense of obligation to meet family and societal expectations.

"Daddy told you, 'Son you have to take our advice.' But just because they live this way don't mean that it's right. So they say to make him proud that you have to graduate college. Because they want you to be stable in life and have lots of knowledge. But it's not really the school, they just want you to be successful. But the student loans and college tuition is way too stressful."

About The Daily Money

Each weekday, The Daily Money delivers the best consumer news from USA TODAY. We break down financial news and provide the TLDR version: how decisions by the Federal Reserve, government and companies impact you. It even comes with its own Spotify playlist . It features nearly every song quoted here.

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