At Boston University, you can get a great education in the heart of Bean Town. Now, you can also stay in luxury while you’re doing it. There is a new dorm building that boasts a 25th floor of rooms that are so luxurious, you will be sending your child away for only $13,000 a semester (that doesn’t include tuition).

The suites have city views of Boston, private baths, accommodating common areas, a 24 hour reading room, and a plasma tv in the media lounge. The rooms cost $5,000 more than the standard room and are only available to 14 students.

When the Boston Globe was able to catch up with one of the students that was “lucky enough” to get picked to live in the dorm, she said that she would be paying for the dorm with student loans and that all her friends were “too cheap” to live there. I don’t want to be mean or anything, but perhaps her friends were “too smart” to live there. I mean, this girl is paying $26,000 to live in a dorm that she will have to pay interest on for what? I can’t figure out what is so pressing that she has to spend the extra $10,000 to stay there.

When I lived in the dorm, there were private bathrooms in some of the rooms but they didn’t cost extra. There was a “media room” with a big screen tv and there were study rooms strewn throughout the building. All of that for only $3,000-$4,000 a semester.

She will end up paying for that room for the next 10 years thanks to her decision to live there this year. Many students won’t be paying for the dorm with savings, but with loans. That is certainly not the way you want to start your future right after college.

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It’s looking more and more that if you have discipline and want to save for the future, going to college may be a bad investment. A four year college degree costs too much and proves too little. It has become increasingly unlikely to be able to make up the cost of a college degree, even with the fact that college grads get paid more.

In an example for the New York Post as written by SmartMoney associate editor Jack Hough, if you look at two people from similar backgrounds each of whom save $16,594 for college. One decides to not go to college and invests his savings in a mutual fund that tracks the broad stock market. He ends up making an average pay that peaks at $32,538. He adds to his savings 5% of his after-tax income and it returns 8% a year.

His friend goes to college. He goes to public school and transfers to a private school. He ends up spending $48,286 in tuition and fees. These fees do not include room and board. He ends up spending $34,044 after grants. When he finishes school he owes $17,450 at 5% in student loans. He starts making just over $23,000 a year after taxes and peaks at almost $57K. Like his friend, he sets aside 5%. It will take him 12 years to pay off his loans. When he finally escapes from the debt at age 34, he starts investing in the same fund as his friend. He is able to make bigger monthly contributions. However, when they reach 65, the friend who didn’t go to college will have saved almost $1.3 million while the one with the degree will have less than a third of what his friend saved.

I believe that this all comes back to the fact that many people don’t think about saving rather they want to have a comfortable lifestyle while they can enjoy it. I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy things when you’re 65, but you can enjoy travel and have more ability to do so when you’re younger.

Erin Burt, contributing editor for Kiplinger.com, gives five steps to getting you started on the right foot.

If you’re just getting started with your financial future, these steps can be useful. I really enjoyed the part about paying off debt by the time you’re 30. I was recently able to pay off my credit cards and am pretty happy about it…just in time to start paying tens of thousands in student loans!