Honestly, would my wife and I need to save up only $1k per month for the next 16 years to pay for my kid's college? That sounds absurdly do-able and easy. I'm all for trade school too. My Wife and I went to a more technical college and are doing fairly good for ourselves. Will hope our kid goes the same path. We got our college degree and in between years we had jobs in our industry and did interning. That's the best of both worlds IMO.
Honestly, would my wife and I need to save up only $1k per month for the next 16 years to pay for my kid’s college?
16x12 = 192,000.. Where are you getting this number from? That's enough to put 2 kids through even the more expensive US colleges, assuming investments outperform tuition hikes
Given inflation, current estimates put the cost of a 4 year degree at about 180k in 2040, so not an unreasonable savings estimate. That number is both available from online estimates as well as what my own financial planner gave me when discussing my daughter's college fund