"We Will Figure It Out" Is Not a Financial Plan

"We will figure it out."

I understand why families say it. A scholar falls in love with a college for all kinds of reasons: the name, the prestige, the location, the feeling of finally belonging somewhere. Some campuses offer an experience that truly cannot be replicated anywhere else, and I would never dismiss what that means to a young person who has worked hard to get there. But love for a school and a plan to pay for it are two different things, and hope is not a strategy.