Help Lucas get to grad school!

This is one of those posts I would never write under normal circumstances, but I cannot even remember when circumstances stopped being normal. I am not even certain what normal is anymore.

I am actually writing this post for my son Lucas. I am writing this because writing this is the very least I can do for him, after all he has done for me and his brother and sister, especially since we moved out on our own this past December.

To say that Lucas’s entire life has been an adventure would be an understatement. As a military child, he was brought up on change and survived the chaos of upheaval, living in seven states and attending eight different schools. Despite it all, he always studied hard and ultimately graduated from high school in the top 10% of his class, and then went on to earn his undergraduate degree from UCF, staying on the dean’s list or president’s list every semester.

The remarkable part of all this, is that Lucas was also working at Starbucks and doing everything he could to help me out and to be there for Nick and Bailey, picking up the slack for the ones who were supposed to be around and weren’t.

Luke is set to leave us in 26 days. Back in May I reported that he was supposed to go to the University of Roehampton in London, but they canceled his program. That’s alright, though, because his backup school is the University of Surrey and it’s going to be brilliant! Luke has worked so hard for this opportunity, to make it happen, to put the pieces in place; I have never seen anyone work so hard for anything.

We were sitting here, though, trying to do his financial aid and if he borrows $50,000, which will cover the entire year’s expenses, he will literally have to pay $52,000 in interest, so he’ll need to repay over $100,000 over the next ten years. That’s over 100%—I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. (This is precisely why I have to have a life insurance policy in place to pay off my school loans when I am dead, so that my kids are not burdened with them.)

Anyway, is anyone interested in investing in this kid? Something, anything that would be more reasonable than what the Department of Education is offering? I know I sound crazy right now, but I really want this opportunity for Luke, but I don’t want it to ruin every minute of the ten years afterward with a $1,000 a month loan payment. He’ll never get ahead like that.

Or how about this: If every person on my friend’s list could spot $108.50, Luke would have his money.

The problem is that he has to either have an alternative or accept the offer by Monday, at the latest.