What's The Best Way to Invest for Your Grandchildren's College Education?

“One of their arguments is that the Army needs more personnel than the Air Force and there is a possibility that mid-way through college the Air Force will determine that they’re ‘overstaffed’, will not need new officers, and will discontinue his scholarship. I wonder if that’s true?”

You might get some good answers to that on a military forum like military.com, or google for “military forum” and you will probably find many.

I just read a story that the military is considering laying off a huge number of people, something like 100,000 people. I think I saw the article here sometime in the past week or two. I don’t remember what branch of service it was.

“A friend of mine knows how to use heavy machinery. No college at all. He makes $100K+ a year.”

You people who keep preaching on about trades (plumbing work and here, operating heavy machinery), you present one helluva an assumption, that the people you want to do this have mechanical ability. And damn it, not everyone does; I’d say few do. So, you’re trying to put the old square rod into the round hole. And they don’t always fit, folks!

That is fine if someone doesn’t have the aptitude for the trades, that is what college is for. The bigger problem is for the last 30 years or so this type of work has been made fun of and made socially unacceptable. Even when I was a kid, the Votech kids were ridiculed overall for being a lower social status so much that no sensible person would go even if they would rather do that then take the college prep classes. Work like this should get equal importance and respect so that kids feel they can go this direction and succeed quite well.

Even the way our Gov’t handles this stuff encourages this thinking. Look at all these stupid Gov’t programs that have been pushed by Clinton, Bush II and Obummer for the unemployed and the intercity poor. Free or near free college. Retraining for unemployed with college programs. Remember in the 90’s when everyone and their brother was a computer programmer? How many of those did we need? Not many judging how most had to back and do something else. What about focusing on other jobs we need. I am a slumlord and I can tell you that there is a shortage of well trained people in the trades to take over for all the old timers hanging up their tools.

Even if you end up going to college, the problem with my contemporaries in their 30’s and 40’s is that they have absolutely no idea how a screw driver works. When I was a kid, the neighborhood accountant or teacher could at least change a tire or handle light repairs around the house or even cook themselves a meal. Now I have friends who look at me as some sort of wizard because I can install a dishwasher. They are constantly calling the dwindling numbers of blue collar people to do it for them. This is not how the US operated in the past and will not help us get back on out feet. It is time to encourage people getting into these fields again.

Well-stated, sir.

I agree that manual work, even the highly skilled trades, has been made fun, completely unjustifiably so.

I have nothing but admiration for those who are capable of doing such work. Those folks really make the world go ‘round in my opinion and they deserve our respect.

I was just pointing out that not everyone has the capability of succeeding in such work.

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