Skip two years of college debt and give your family a lifetime of wealth
My grandfather advised my dad to skip buying coffee and to set that money aside for retirement. My dad taught me the same lesson. Given the cost of everything today — and the relatively paltry cost of coffee compared to healthcare and housing — it can be hard to take that advice seriously. This is especially true for elder Millennials and Gen X parents who are sending their kids off to four-year schools that cost over $100,000, plus interest.
The good news is that these parents do have a simple solution — one that can not only secure their own financial future but also set their kids up for retirement a half-century from now. They should seriously consider the value that community college and blue-collar certification programs will bring to the entire family's financial legacy.
Let's start with the sticker shock. The annual cost of an undergraduate degree is over $38,000. Annual attendance at a community college costs, on average, about $3,890 — roughly 10% of the price of a four-year school. Students earning a two-year associate's degree could save almost $70,000 for virtually the same first two years of education their peers receive at "prestigious" institutions.
But the raw tuition savings don't tell the whole story. Over half of student loans are federally backed, and last school year's lowest interest rate on those loans was 6.39%. Paying back the difference — $68,220 — these loans at $500 a month would cost an additional $53,851 in interest — a total of over $122,000 repaid to get back to zero.
Compare that to paying under $8,000 cash for two years of community college. That's a $114,000 swing over the roughly 20 years it takes to pay off the first two years of a borrowed four-year degree.
Instead of making banks richer, parents and their children would be set up for the American Dream, whatever that looks like for them.
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Now, consider the kid who starts earning at 20 because he pursued a certification program that gave him a strong starting wage, real benefits and something white-collar workers can no longer take for granted: job security in the artificial intelligence (AI) era.
Plumbers made a median income of $62,970 in 2024, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting steady pay growth through 2034. That income and security come for the average cost of around $3,000 in training plus the requisite tools and licensing – still a lot cheaper than a debt-laden college education. Electricians require a bit more educational investment but have double the job growth projected by 2034, along with high income potential when their career is still very young.
Jensen Huang of Nvidia has said skilled manufacturing trades will earn six-figure salaries. But even if you don’t believe the billionaire with a vested interest, that trend was already on its way before data centers. Blue-collar workers of all types already had decades of critical employment in front of them due to supply and demand (few Millennials work with their hands) and the backlog of deferred maintenance in homes, schools, commercial buildings, highways and bridges.
After all, you can't train a model to snake a drain.
Picture your kid at 35, debt-free, with a solid 15-year career under his belt already. Maybe he’s thriving in his starter home, with an easy mortgage payment. Maybe he’s already got a couple of kids running around because debt didn’t intimidate him out of starting a family.
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Instead of spending tens of thousands on the promise of a white-collar career that may be disrupted by AI, parents can watch their kids earn tens of thousands of dollars before they are allowed to drink.
Grandpa's coffee lesson was always just to show that small, consistent financial decisions compound into life-changing outcomes. The difference now isn't a few dollars a day — it's a few thousand a year, with interest payments stretching into middle age, versus a $3,890 golden goose.
That’s worth a celebration. Tell Grandpa you’re taking him out for a latte.