Brilliant family

A few points...

Wouldn't the cost of living increase with inflation yearly, too?
What parent contributes half a million dollars to each of three childrens' tuition (apart from billionaires) ?
Once you are in graduate school, you usually don't pay for tuition and earn a stipend, so it is unlikely that the parents would pay for 10 years of education.

Obviously these aren't relevant to solving the problem as stated; I just wanted to bring them up.

Originally posted by sven1000
A few points...

Wouldn't the cost of living increase with inflation yearly, too?
What parent contributes half a million dollars to each of three childrens' tuition (apart from billionaires) ?
Once you are in graduate school, you usually don't pay for tuition and earn a stipend, so it is unlikely that the parents would pay for 10 years of education.

...[text shortened]... usly these aren't relevant to solving the problem as stated; I just wanted to bring them up.

on top of that....the parents of the children would have had to pull the 1.5 mil out in incriments, not one lump sum at the end of thirty years.

i have a feeling this would change the balance somewhat pushing it to less than the balance i solved for