We have 5 kids and live on my husband's public school salary. We have no way of saving for their college education.

• Our kids are ages 5 to 16 and all attend public school.
• My husband is a public school teacher and I'm a freelancer, so we don't have a way to pay for college.

My husband and I have five children, ages 5 to 16, and we have no plans to pay for our kids' college educations, primarily because we simply can't afford it.

I have mixed feelings about our inability to fund our children's college educations because, on one hand, I would love to be able to take the burden of student debt away from them and provide them with a fresh starting line in life, but on the other hand, I know firsthand that there are benefits to learning to pay your own way too.

We don't have the money

I am a freelancer, and my husband is a public school teacher. Despite the fact that my husband has a Master's degree and 16 years of teaching, his income is still below the poverty level for our family size.

We have a comfortable life, but funding five children's college educations is just not possible with the income we currently have.

We both paid for our college

Neither my husband nor I come from families that could pay for our college, nor did it ever cross our minds that it might even be an option. My husband comes from a family of small-town farmers and my parents were first-generation college graduates without any extra money to spare.

We both had to get scholarships and loans to pay for our college — we worked as teenagers, my husband qualified for the PELL grant, and I chose a school that offered full-tuition scholarships to high school valedictorians (and succeeded in becoming valedictorian to secure my free tuition).

We recognize that times are very, very different now, but we both believe that there are creative ways that teens can at least partly fund their college degrees outside of family money, and we plan to encourage our children to find ways to pay for their future educations.

Our oldest is taking advantage of early college programs

Recently, I attended an orientation with my 16-year-old for her early college program. I was not familiar with early college programs, but they've become popular in our local area, both for the support they can offer teens transitioning to college and the cost savings they can offer.

Early college programs vary by state, but most work through a partnership with a local college and offer high schoolers a chance to take modified college courses alongside their high school curriculum for free.

Students in the program take an additional year of high school that, 's a full college course load, and then graduate high school with up to 60 college credits, sometimes enough for a full associate's degree. The program then works with the student to transition them onto the next step, including transferring those credits to a four-year school if that's their wish. My daughter is excited about the program and took the steps to sign up for it on her own, and I know a lot of it is driven by the fact that she knows we can't pay for her college.

We have small savings for each child

It was our choice to have a large family, and despite having children young (our first was born while we were still college students) and having limited financial resources from the start, I have done my best to have some kind of savings for my children. I started savings accounts for each of them after they were born and set up automatic transfers.

Through the years, sometimes, it has only been $25 bucks every quarter that we could contribute, but in my mind, it would be better than nothing. It's my hope that even a small amount will help them when they are ready for the next steps after high school, even if it only covers books.

I just opened a 529

Last year, when my daughter turned 15, it really hit me how fast college was approaching, so I panicked a little about how we could help her.

Along with the early college program, I took the small amount of savings we did have for her and opened a 529 education account. These plans are state-specific but are interest-earning savings accounts specifically for education costs. Although it would have been best if I had started the account much earlier, once again, I figured something was better than nothing.

I switched our automatic savings transfers to her into the 529 — making them tax-deductible for us — and the account is already earning interest for her. I can also ask grandparents to donate to the account. The catch is that all the money has to be used for educational purposes, but things like trade school and school expenses qualify..

Finances continue to be a struggle for us, but I know that even a small amount can make a difference, and I have to hope that there will be some life lessons and positive benefits for my kids, too, in not having their degrees handed to them, even if I wish we could afford it.