Answer: You need to have the conversation you probably should have initiated a few years ago, before she started the college application process. She must understand that what she wants and what you can afford to provide for her may be two very different things.

Start by applying for financial aid at the colleges that have accepted her (let’s hope she applied to more than one). The “estimated family contribution” calculator at FinAid.org can give you a rough idea of what you’ll be expected to pay, but the actual package you’re offered can vary somewhat depending on how much the school wants your daughter to attend. You may want to invest in some books to help you understand the process, such as the Princeton Review’s “Paying for College Without Going Broke, 2012 Edition” and education expert Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s workbook, “Shrinking the Cost of College,” available at thecollegesolution.com.

Once you have the financial aid offers you can see which schools may be within your grasp and which are too expensive. Some schools encourage students and their parents to borrow heavily to attend, but that can lead to financial disaster — particularly since she has so many years of schooling ahead. Your daughter should try to limit her borrowing for her undergraduate education to what’s available through the federal student loan program (typically $33,000, total) and avoid private student loans, which have fewer consumer protections.

You as a parent can borrow through the federal PLUS program, but it’s easy to go overboard. The PLUS program will lend you up to the full cost of your daughter’s education, but the loan payments could be overwhelming and could prevent you from retiring. Student loan debt is almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, so you should be cautious about taking it on.

Your daughter should be able to cobble together an affordable education if she’s flexible about where she gets her undergraduate degree. Beyond that, she should know that the military and the National Health Service Corps pay for medical school in exchange for several years of service.

Answer: The “free money” you know is out there may not be the answer to your problems.

Yes, there are scholarships your boy might get to help pay for his education. But if he receives any financial aid from the university, those scholarships may reduce the amount he gets in grants — another form of financial aid that doesn’t have to be paid back.

If, on the other hand, he doesn’t get any grants, the scholarships could reduce the amount of loans he’d otherwise need to take out. He can start his search for scholarships at FastWeb.com.

You definitely should apply for financial aid from the university, if you haven’t already. (FinAid.org’s estimated family contribution calculator can give you a rough idea of how much you’ll be expected to chip in, although the school’s actual package may differ somewhat.)

Then take a hard look at what this education is going to cost you. You may not be able to afford it. If you would have to stint on your retirement, or your son would have to borrow more than the federal student loan limits ($5,500 for his freshman year), you probably need to look for other alternatives.

One option is for your son to live at home and attend a two-year college to get some of his requirements out of the way. Another is an in-state school, or one with a golf team that wants him badly enough to offer a better merit-based package of aid. FinAid.org offers resources and ideas for getting an affordable education, as does college expert Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s workbook, “Shrinking the Cost of College,” available on her website, TheCollegeSolution.com.

What you don’t want to do is bankrupt yourself, or consign yourself or your son to huge student loan debts. No education is worth a lifetime of debt, particularly when other options are available (and you have two other kids to educate).

Answer: Don’t go back to school to “try” for a degree. Go to get one. A college education is economically useless if you don’t get that sheepskin.

The financial aid education site FinAid.org is a great resource. You’ll find an “estimated family contribution” calculator that will predict how much you’ll be expected to pay for your education and how much financial aid you can expect. You also can learn about federal student loans, which are available to just about everyone and which have reasonable, fixed rates and numerous consumer protections, including income-based repayment plans. Try to avoid private student loans, which have variable rates and few of those protections.

Answer: It’s never too late to go back to school — but it is possible to spend too much doing so.

The good news is that occupational therapy is a fast-growing field with many job opportunities. The bad news is that you typically need a master’s degree to be an occupational therapist, and master’s programs (as you know) aren’t cheap.

Plus, your age is a factor to consider. Getting hired after 50 is tough, regardless of your field.

So rather than invest a ton of money in a master’s program — or, worse yet, borrow to fund this education — consider becoming an occupational therapy assistant. This field is relatively high paying and usually requires an associate’s degree, which you can get at a low-cost community college.

Before you begin, though, you should research the job opportunities in your area to make sure demand is high enough that your age will be less of a factor.

Answer: You can, but why would you want to?

The big benefit to a 529 plan is that your returns can grow tax-free. That’s a boon for parents in higher tax brackets contributing for young children, since their money has years to grow and they can put at least some of their cash into riskier assets, such as stocks.

If you need the money within two years, though, it should be in a cash account that won’t earn much. (The average money market fund pays around 0.02% right now.) You wouldn’t be getting any real growth, so the tax benefit of a 529 plan is minuscule. What you would get are restrictions on how you use the money and possible complications for your tax returns. If you want to use education tax credits, for example, you won’t be able to apply those on expenses you’ve paid with a 529 withdrawal.

A simple FDIC-insured savings account — perhaps at an online bank that pays around 1% — is probably the better way to go.

I’ve run across 3 pretty cool infographics recently that describe what you need to know about three important topics:

How to Dispute a Credit Card Charge (from CreditDonkey)

529 Plans: The Antidote to College Sticker Shock (from Mint)

Education Earnings: Economic Boon or Bubble? (from CreditDonkey, again; probably should have been titled “Is a college education worthwhile?”)

It’s worth spending time with each of these graphics–you’ll emerge smarter for the experience. The only caveat I’d add is about Mint’s effort: it’s not just the cost of college that will give you sticker shock. The amounts you’re supposed to save to cover 100% of the bill are pretty gargantuan, even if you start with a newborn and aim only to pay for public college (over $600 a month). So remember that you don’t have to try to save for the whole cost and that anything you do save will help reduce your child’s future debt.

Okay, now for the weird graphic…it’s a J.P. Morgan graphic explaining the European crisis using Lego figures. (Clicking on the link that says “Via Reuters” will download the full graphic, complete with explanations, since the legend provided isn’t really detailed enough to figure out what’s going on.) I’m not sure it’s possible to create a graphic that would explain this particular crisis simply, but this one sure isn’t it.

I’ll be talking about:

• Why college is a must
• Why so many students drop out and how to avoid it
• Higher costs, deeper debts: What you need to know about student loans
• Finding a career that pays
• Managing your money in college and afterward

Dinner and my talk will begin at 6 p.m. at the Wichita Marriott.  At 7:30, a Financial Planning Workshop will be hosted for students and parents.

You must register to attend by clicking HERE.

Questions? Contact Gretchen Holthaus at gretchen.holthaus@wichita.edu.

The program is hosted by the College Access Challenge Grant through Wichita State’s Office for Faculty Development and Student Success.

Please share this with anyone you know who might be able to attend. Today’s families need all the help they can get ensuring their kids get educated to survive in this new economy.

Answer: Clearly you can’t afford your life. The fact that you incurred debt to switch to a career field you now hate indicates that you’re prone to making rash decisions. So the most important thing is that you thoroughly research your options before making your next step.

Contact a housing counselor approved by the Housing and Urban Development Department to discuss your loan modification options. You can get referrals from http://www.hud.gov. The modification process is so torturous and complex it can really pay to have an experienced hand guide you, but you shouldn’t pay thousands of dollars to an attorney or other “expert” when you can get low-cost or even free advice from a HUD-approved housing counselor.

If you can’t get a modification and your home costs are eating up more than 30% of your monthly income, seriously consider a short sale so you can move to a more affordable place. Here you will want an attorney’s help, because short-sale negotiations can be tough and the lender can keep you on the hook for the remaining debt if your agreement isn’t worded properly.

You’ll need to have a talk with your children as well. This will be difficult, but if you aren’t saving sufficiently for retirement, you can’t afford to help them with education costs. Your kids can get a college education on their own by working and using federal student loans, but they may need to switch to cheaper schools.

Think long and hard before you borrow any more money, for job training or anything else. A session with a career counselor could help you define other jobs you could get with your existing credentials. If you do need more training, get it the most cost-effective way possible. Nonprofit community colleges offer inexpensive courses at night that would allow you to keep your day job.

Although you don’t think you’ll ever be able to retire, at some point you won’t be able to continue working. Your priority should be to pay off your debt and build up your retirement savings so that you have more to live on than Social Security checks. Everything that doesn’t serve those goals has to be discarded, as difficult and painful as that may be.

Answer: Please rethink this plan, because your family probably cannot afford this education.

Federal student loans would allow your son to borrow, at most, about a third of this school’s cost. If he were to borrow the rest of the money, he would have to turn to private student loans, which have variable rates and none of the consumer protections embedded in federal student loans. Private student loans are like using credit cards to pay for college — except unlike credit card debt, student loan debt can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.

The other alternative would be for you to borrow the difference between his federal student loans and the cost of his education using PLUS loans. These are federal education loans for parents and graduate students. As with federal student loans, the rates for PLUS loans are fixed, although they’re somewhat higher — 7.9%, compared with 6.8% for unsubsidized Stafford student loans.

But using PLUS loans means taking on a lot of debt at a time in your life when you should be concentrating on saving for your own retirement. If making the payments would interfere with your ability to contribute sufficiently to your retirement funds, you shouldn’t even consider borrowing the money.

Even if you already have a well-funded retirement plan, you should think twice. Your son may be able to get a better, more affordable education from a public college — particularly if he starts at a two-year community college nearby, allowing him to live at home more cheaply, and then transfers to a four-year school.

For-profit colleges can be expensive, and loans made to students who attend four-year for-profit colleges have twice the default rates of loans made to other college students. Figures provided by the U.S. Department of Education show that of loans that entered repayment in 1995, 30% of those made to students attending four-year for-profit colleges were in default 15 years later, compared with 15.1% for four-year public colleges and 13.6% for four-year private nonprofit schools.

That high default rate should give you pause, even if you were paying cash for this education, because it indicates that many graduates either aren’t finishing their educations or aren’t finding jobs that pay well enough to repay their loans.

Critics complain that for-profit schools often over-promise and under-deliver when it comes to training students for existing jobs. The for-profit schools attribute high default rates to the demographics of their students, who are more likely to be lower income and from minority groups than other college attendees.

You may feel guilty for shorting your son when it came to saving for college. But please don’t compound the problem by blessing an education that could leave him, and you, with unaffordable debt.

Answer: You’re already in trouble. You have an unaffordable mortgage, a whopping pile of debt and you’ve defaulted on your credit cards and student loans. Your desire to pay your bills is irrelevant at this point: You’re in too deep.

You may be able to avoid bankruptcy if you find a job after graduation that substantially boosts your income. In the meantime, you could give yourself some wiggle room by getting a roommate to help pay the mortgage and talking to your lenders about economic hardship options. (You can learn more about these at the financial aid site FinAid.org; search for “Trouble Paying Debt.”)

Before you make deals with any lenders, though, you should talk to an experienced bankruptcy attorney (check the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys at http://www.nacba.org for referrals) about your situation. You don’t say how much you owe on credit cards, but if the minimum payments are eating up that much of your income, it’s probably tens of thousands of dollars. If your job prospects when you graduate aren’t sterling, you may never be able to pay off that debt. You won’t be able to erase the student loans in bankruptcy, but you might be able to get rid of the credit card debt.

In the future, you need to understand two things. One is that carrying any credit card balance is a recipe for disaster. You shouldn’t have charged more than you could afford to pay each month, since that allowed you to keep living a lifestyle that wasn’t sustainable. Anyone who can’t pay more than the minimum on a credit card is in serious trouble, and using one card to pay another is insane.

The other thing to remember is that mortgages aren’t good debt if you can’t afford the payments — and a payment that eats up half your take-home pay is the very definition of unaffordable. Another clue that you bought too much house is the interest-only mortgage. If you can’t afford to buy a house using a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage, you can’t afford the house.

Your credit scores should be the least of your worries at this point. Go get some good counsel, consider your options and make a plan to deal with this mess. Once you’re on the other side, you can start rebuilding your finances and your credit.