Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

Sounds like a horrible idea full of assumptions and pressure, as opposed to offering an exploratory period of life that is college (socially and intellectually), a nice option for those who can afford it.<p>Not everyone has to be coaxed into entrepreneurship, it&#x27;s an evil of our consumerist age. Your kid would probably rather participate in society at large than in your suicidal runway idea of a romanticized youth of modern times. &quot;Starting something&quot; with no experience at all is almost guaranteed to mean burned cash, family resentment and a bunch of hard lessons. Why not send them to military school and spare cash and suffering?

I don&#x27;t know.<p>Basically this means more or less that on the day your son (or daughter) becomes 18 you put on the table 2,000x100 US$ bills in a few neat stacks and ask him&#x2F;her whether he&#x2F;she likes it better to:<p>1) Study (hard) for the next 5 years (possibly in a remote city), living with one or more co-students in a tiny apartment and receive - say - some 500-600 bucks each month for petty expenses<p>OR:<p>2) get - here and now - all the 200,000 US$ as long as they are used ONLY in expenses related to the building of a new company, but of course with no particular form of control on expenses, as I trust you and you are big enough to make your own decisions.<p>With rigorously invented numbers (i.e. pure speculation or guessing), I would expect that out of 100 choosing option #1 70 would get after 5 or 6 years studying and a degree (without student debt to hunt them for the rest of their life) a decent, qualified job (and income), 20 a somewhat underpaid job, 5 no stable job&#x2F;income and 5 (for one reason or the other) something else.<p>Of those that chose option #2, I would expect that 5 manage to build a &quot;successful&quot; company, 15 a more or less good company (anyway providing enough income to have bills paid and raise a family) and 80 either building a company soon going to Chapter 11&#x2F;bankrupcy or building no company at all.<p>The good question would be how many of 18 years old would choose option #1 over #2?

I love this idea, but you need to nurture the entrepreneur in your child before giving them the money. Like a lot of people here, I have a decent degree from a good university; I can confirm that it hasn&#x27;t given me much more than a foot in the door for my next interview. Most of the academic knowledge I gained, I could have learnt by myself (in fact that&#x27;s what I did, even at university), and a lot of it is now redundant. In some ways, I feel a university education was a fairly bad use of my time and money. After uni, I got a &quot;good&quot; job, was hugely unsatisfied, saved some money and then started my own company. I cannot stress enough how difficult it can be to find direction when doing your own thing. As a kid you&#x27;re used to living within a fairly bounded, directed framework. When you have to define your own direction, it can unsettle you. Make sure your kids are comfortable with finding their own way - it&#x27;s not just about making them independent, but also about developing an intelligent work ethic (which I believe is the key characteristic of a good entrepreneur), and being comfortable in the midst of uncertainty.

I went the build your business route, if I had my time again I&#x27;d get the degree first, compared to the time, effort and risk of building a business taking 5 years to get a degree seems like time well spent. Getting a degree does not preclude you from starting a business, the reverse is not so universally true as youth is on your side when funding education in most countries. Few of my peers work in fields related to their degree, yet few would have their current standing were it not for holding a degree.

A fully qualified engineer will be in a much better position to provide valuable products and services than an 18 year old noob.<p>I guess it&#x27;s better than a gender studies degree, but believe it or not, undergraduate education is not completely useless. I learned a hell of a lot.

I have an &quot;after highschool&quot; fund. My parents called this a university fund. But I&#x27;m communicating it as money to use to figure out what you want to do with your life. My kids can use it to do whatever, so long as they can make a rational case for how they intend on spending it. They&#x27;ll also have to endure lots of dad talks and dad advice to make use of this resource.<p>If I&#x27;ve done my job as a parent well, I won&#x27;t have to worry about policing the &quot;proper&quot; use of this money.

Serious question: what do your kids know about running a company?

This seems like a problem that could be solved by simply having business development classes in high school. Much like all other skills, there is a need to understand what it takes to run a business; manage budgets, invoice and some rudimentary things. You don&#x27;t have to create some crazy big start-up, but these are skills that seem necessarily to understand before college. My sister started a therapy business after she was in college and there are basic skills that could of been taught in high school that would of better prepared things. I didn&#x27;t come across business plan proposals and contingency plans until college but these are pretty straightforward things that could of been taught far earlier IMHO.<p>Once you have that in place, if not in the education system, then through parenting and after-school programs, then by the time college comes around the &quot;decision to start a business&quot; won&#x27;t come with the unnecessary risk of not knowing how to run one.

I agree with the sentiment that college is not the only choice after high school and may not be the best place to cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit. However, I was surprised that after all the words used to describe how school was lacking in this particular direction, taking the kids out of school was not considered.<p>As some of the other commenters are suggesting, it may be too much of a jump to offer such a choice to the child at 18 if the child was not preparing for such an opportunity.<p>Homeschooling has its own critics and supporters and we don&#x27;t need to get into that here. But my question is this: If he&#x27;s going to trust his child to make a choice at 18, why not even earlier? How about 14? Or, in other words, why not have their education focus on learning how to make their own decisions as early as possible? And if school doesn&#x27;t provide this for his children, should they be there?<p>Granted, the author doesn&#x27;t outline what he plans on doing between now and the end of high school for his kids so maybe he is, in fact, preparing them for this decision. I just think that the decision would be too drastic to spring on an 18 year old who has had no preparation for it.

There&#x27;s a third option. Self educate. Take 200,000. Buy all the tools and equipment you need to do what you love. Do what you love for 5 to 10 years and you&#x27;ll have more than enough experience to be successful in your industry.

I always knew kids that wanted to start their own business - at least in high school and college. I grew up poor-to-middle class, nothing special, living in Indiana. I&#x27;m about 39 now. Some folks just don&#x27;t consider it so young, just like changing professions in one&#x27;s late 20&#x27;s. It usually goes along with the dream of not having to answer to a boss and&#x2F;or working hours one wants to work, but not always.<p>But I <i>do</i> think more folks would try if they could take the college money and invest it in things like starting a business, no matter what the business is, and wish more folks had this option.

The problem I see is that this option is about finantial success, not education.<p>Why not a third option of a fund to pay for 4 years of living&#x2F;travelling expenses, courses&#x2F;books&#x2F;workshops on a chosen field of knowledge?

Why not do both? You have so much time in college you can strt a side business in those 4 years. Yes college is a lot of assignments but looking back, you realize you could have still graduated doing 50% less work.

I find the title a little manufactured to be honest. He openly admits that if his kids decide they want to go to college then the fund will cover 4 years tuition, but if they decide to do something else then he&#x27;ll fund that pursuit too. I think his open-mindedness is great as college isn&#x27;t for everyone, but neither is entrepreneurialism. At the end of the day though, he&#x27;s not really replacing anything but rather he&#x27;s doing exactly what he was previously just with a different label.

If I were the parent I&#x27;d provide my kid with both options simultaneously: Money for college and additionally money to take two years off after college to do a startup.

Matching the return on a quality education is going to be tough.

whenever i see &quot;my kid&#x27;s college fund&quot;, im reminded how grateful i am to live in a more social country than the US.<p>(Norway here btw)

Silly if you think they are mutually exclusive