Education is so important to me that when the real estate businesses I had in the early 1990’s were experiencing trouble, I cut back on all my expenses, except sending my two children to private colleges with a price tag of over $27,000 per year EACH. Now that my daughter has a graduate degree from Harvard, and my son is an amazingly creative programmer, I'm glad I did not skimp on their education. The real estate market changed, I could wait for that, but my kids could not go back and get a good education.