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Dear Mr. Berko:

Dear D.A.:

How can you folks be so un-American? You refuse to owe Sears, Macy’s or a small loan company, and you won’t take out a home equity loan? It’s un-American to own a home worth more than the mortgage and own two cars free and clear. Americans who have no credit-card debt ought to be prosecuted for treason. How can you folks be such financial Luddites?

The best way to help your kids is not to pay their college costs but accumulate enough money 15 years hence so that you can pay for your retirement costs. Now as sure as God gave my granddaughter dimples, most folks who hang up their tools in a dozen years are going to be shocked and surprised. They will not have enough savings to retire, will be forced to accept a lower living standard and may have to spend some time in the Alpo line every week waiting for food handouts. I suggest you sedulously prepare for your retirement so you won’t suffer such indignity and have to depend on your kids for support during your non-working years.

But it’s going to be much tougher than you think, because the stock market’s average annual return of 9.6 percent will be facing serious headwinds for years to come. Sadly, most folks get lousy investment advice, because it’s so difficult today to find an adviser in this new economy who is client-centered, with the specialized skills to understand the changing metrics of managing money. And from my catbird seat, you folks don’t have and won’t have enough assets for even minor comfort in retirement. I very strongly recommend that you copiously devote the remainder of your working lives to gathering assets for your “golden” years, if you’re fortunate enough to have them. Forget about saving for your kids’ college costs and ask yourselves, “How can we save enough money to pay our retirement costs?”

Still, there are many ways to get education money for your kids. (1) Each of you can get second jobs and save like squirrels collecting nuts for winter. (2) Take a maximum mortgage on your home when the kids are ready to matriculate. (3) Borrow the money from your retirement plan and close your wife’s Roth IRA. (4) Sell your home when the kids are ready to enroll, rent a small apartment or mobile home for yourselves and use the sales proceeds to pay for tuition, books, etc. (5) Put all of their college costs on numerous credit cards and reduce the balances when you have the money. (6) Tell the kids to join the armed services, which will, after they complete a tour, pay for their college. (7) Have your kids learn Spanish and send them to college in Mexico. (8) Tuition costs in Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and France run from nothing to a maximum of $4,000 a year. Send the kids to a European university, which will look a lot better on a job application than a “B.S. from the U.S.” (9) Check out the many grants, loans, endowments, fellowships, stipends, allowances, gifts, honorariums, etc., begging to be awarded. Put the resulting money in your kids’ bank account, tell them to find part-time jobs and send them off to school. (10) Tell the kids to get full-time jobs, save every coin they can, live at home and make applications to college when they’ve accumulated enough green. (11) Tell them to work semi-full time; attend college partly full time. This will take an extra few years if they are serious about getting a degree. And (12) the American way. Borrow as much as you can, using every bit of collateral and artifice you can find, borrow with signature loans, no-credit loans, max your plastic and go on the hook over the hilt. Accumulate all that cash in your kids’ bank accounts and then declare bankruptcy.

Please address your financial questions to Malcolm Berko, P.O. Box 8303, Largo, Fla. 33775 or e-mail him at mjberko@yahoo.com.