[scottmandue]

Disclaimer, if I had the money I would pay for my step daughters education, no questions asked... however:

Back-story: I'm an average middle age white collar guy pulling in around $45K a year after taxes, have a nice house, secure job, great medical benefits and a pension. Wife just moved from Oregon to Cali and is looking for work...

Her daughter just started a U of Oregon, she is a good kid, never been in trouble, straight A student and into sports. We stressed to her that we can't pay for collage outright so she needed to pursue grants and scholarships... she did but came up a few thousand dollars short so we took out student loans to cover the rest.

Long story short, wife's dad past away, her sister read the will in front of the whole family, each of the siblings get around $30K... now the daughter hearing that (I'm sure to an 18 YO is sounds like a fortune) starts hinting "so what are we going to do with the inheritance?"

Even longer story short, should we reserve the money for future use (she is in her first year at college) two, three, or six years down the road or offer to help her out now? Will keeping the loan help her build credit for when she goes out into the cold hard world?

Even more important we want her to have a sense of finical responsibility and not to get a mentality that we will always swoop in and pay off her debts.

What think ye PPOT?