Get real. When I'm 59 I'll still have a kid in college. Not everyone can be in a position to retire early.
Fortunately you are not everyone. College is easily affordable if students choose to get loans, work part time, etc. Yes, speaking from experience.
If current plans hold, I'll still have two little girls in elementary school! Fortunately their grandmother (an IT type as it happens, who just got laid off due to a corporate merger), who the courts will not let care for them, is starting a college fund for them now. I'm their great uncle by marriage, and we are probably going to become their legal guardians and perhaps adopt them.
We live in a culture where personal responsibility and accepting the consequences for "our" choices somehow have been relegated to someone else.
why do you have to pay for your kid's college? Can't he/she get a job, get a loan, ROTC scholarship, apply for grants in aid. I've got 4 of the little buggers heading off for college at 2 year intervals starting in 2010. I 've saved for the last 17 years, since I was married in order to "help" but not pay for everything.
The kids that got drunk the most and needed to "find" themselves had everything given to them by mommy and daddy. If you pay for something with sweat equity, you want to learn a craft, get out in 4 years and care about what you're learning.
Health insurance is a bear, but with HMO's and other differed IRA type of health programs, a little prioritization by Harry could put him back on his feet.
Life is hard, I feel for him, cause that's what happened to my sister. However she made the change to consultant, moved from LA to Austin and is loving every minute of it. She's got more "work" than she can handle as "project manager" for Oracle systems and other d-base problems.
But somebody earlier hit the nail on the head... she kept on upgrading her skills continuosly. She says it's a pain in the a#@ but it's made her a hot commodity as far as IT work is concerned.
I see three things in her that struck me as behavioral that made her employable forever. She worked hard without complaining or blaming, she was always willing to travel and move and she kept upgrading skills.
I think being married with kids in school would be tought to just up and move but sometimes you've got to make sacrifices.
I'm 50 and have seven children. The youngest is 4. I can relate.