I don’t get where he is poormouthing. We have no quote in context from him. That is your interpretation of what he is saying.
I think that “I can’t afford it, if I want to maintain my current lifestyle and not break into savings or take out loans” is refreshingly close to the truth - and something I wish I’d hear a lot more people say. If its poormouthing to say you can’t afford something - even if you can’t afford it because your priorities are different - I’m not seeing that being an insult.
I won’t say Ridge needs a seven figure job just to put the kids through college, but he’ll very possibly need more than 175,000/year to send them to the college of their choice. I live in NY. The cost of a state university including room and board is currently about 15,000/year. My two kids are a year apart between them, so I'll be paying for two at once. It is unlikely, even though we have a six figure income, that I will be able to afford anything more expensive than a state university, and even that will be a stretch. I don't expect that they will be eligible for financial aid, except for possibly loans. Could I have been able to afford more if we had lived differently? Sure. By the time my kids graduate from high school, I will have spent over 66,000 on private school tuition ( assuming it doesn’t increase over the next 3 years, which it will). That’s money which wasn’t saved for college. I could have lived somewhere outside of NYC, which would have lowered some of my expenses (but probably would also have resulted in my husband earning less).
Sure ,families making much less than $175,000/year have children who attend Ivy League colleges - but I don’t know that I would count most of them as “parents putting the kid through college”. To me, “parents putting the kids through college” means parents paying most of the cost, not the parents paying a relatively small amount left over after the kids get scholarships , financial aid , loans or jobs.