<p>My family's income is right at $40,000 a year...but that all comes from Social Security and Retirement. My parents are 70 and 75.
The money strictly goes to medicine, health care, doctor bills, and a large house payment.
Being as my mother has diabetes, the majority of our money goes towards the doctor bills and medication.
Our mortgage is a little more than $1,500 per month. We pay our insurance and property tax ourselves which runs roughly $3,500. To sum everything up, we really do not have money laying around to use towards a college education.
I have completed a mock FAFSA from a few websites and it estimates that my EFC is around $20,000...we don't even have that. We have NO savings, at all. I recently downgraded my dream college to a college that is $11,500 per year with meals, tuition, books, room, etc. I can not attend a community college. I live in a rural area and the nearest college is a private institution that tuition alone is $20,000.
The scholarship that is offered by the state I live in will give me $1,939, thus making my new total $9,526.
Does ANYONE have ANY suggestions as to how to help me go to college? My family WILL NOT take out loans and since I'll be seventeen when I enter college (fall 2013), I can not do it myself. There are no real working jobs here. The state's minimuim wage is lower than federal ($5.15), then take out my taxes, and I have pretty much nothing. My family will not support my entering the armed forces, either. I'm basically at a loss.</p>
<p>Also, my parents filed bankruptcy in 2010</p>
<p>Is there a reason you don’t want to go to community college?</p>
<p>Something does not add up. EFC 20000 when income is 40000. Its usually at most 25% or in your case 10000. I would speak to your guidance counselor and see if she can recommend a financial advisor. It appears you should get close to a full ride. Seek some help.</p>
<p>The FAFSA formula for 2013-2014 is available now. Google EFC formula 2014, and you will find a link. Print out the PDF, and work through it on paper. That way you will be able to see what you did wrong with the other calculator.</p>
<p>You need to find out if your parents can chip in anything for your education. Can the cover meals and transportation if you commute? Can they cover your health insurance and transportation home a couple times a year if you go away to school? Or is the simple truth that once you graduate from HS you are going to have to be completely self-supporting.?</p>
<p>Whoops, just caught the info about the rural location. You can borrow $5,500 in federal loans for your freshman year. That covers about half the COA at the state school you are looking at.</p>
<p>What are your grades, ACT/SAT scores, and likely major?</p>
<p>@milkyway I don’t have my own car, and I don’t have the funds for one right now. I also can’t go a certain ways out of town in case my parents need to use the car for an emergency, and if something was to happen to the car, we’d be “stuck” because we couldn’t get another one right away. It’s over eighty miles of commuting for community college.</p>
<p>@Yolie, I did the ACT mock FAFSA, but I definitely will.</p>
<p>@happymomof1, I will definitely do that. My parents cover my health insurance and everything, they just don’t have the college funds. I’m just afraid that my FAFSA is going to go to the school and I’m going to have that set amount, regardless of my situation. It shows we have money, but it doesn’t show where the money goes, and as the result of where it goes, there’s none left over.</p>
<p>My family won’t let me take out loans, and many of the scholarships I’ve applied for state that I must go to college directly after graduation, and as I said, I graduate a couple months after my seventeenth birthday, so I really can’t take out loans myself.</p>
<p>4.0 GPA, 23 ACT (My math killed it, my OTHER subject scores were 26-29), Agriculture/Animal Science (one of the biggest industries in my state). I got accepted into the college I want to attend on Friday.</p>
<p>I should also note, this school doesn’t offer scholarships strictly on merit.
There’s less than five schools in the state the offer this major, and one of the other school’s tuition is $26K alone.</p>
<p>sending you a pm</p>
<p>Unless there is some information you have omitted in your post, you must have put some incorrect data in when you did these mock FAFSAs. Even if it were earned income, An income of $40,000 would not produce an EFC of anywhere near 20,000 - maybe 2000-3000. And untaxed social security income is not even reported on FAFSA, so that would reduce it still further.</p>
<p>Recheck your data.</p>
<p>Well, I entered “0” on everything, except for the “Untaxed earning” part, which was $40,000.</p>
<p>Is it possible for me to write a letter or get in touch with the school regarding my circumstances when I send my FAFSA results?</p>
<p>Is there a November administration of the SAT? If so, I would suggest you take it. Some students do better on the SAT than the ACT.</p>
<p>I agree with others…something isn’t adding up here. Unless your parents have significant assets (money in accounts that are NOT retirement accounts, real estate that is NOT your primary residence), something just isn’t right. </p>
<p>Do a net price calculator for the school(s) you are interested in applying to. Make sure you answer the questions VERY accurately. You will likely need your parents’ 2011 tax return at least for guidance. Adjust the numbers to reflect as closely as you can the 2012 figures.</p>
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<p>I agree with Swimcatsmom.</p>
<p>Was the income you put under “untaxed income” all untaxed SS income? If so, I don’t believe you report that on the FAFSA at all. Look at the instructions (maybe someone can post them here) and I believe it says NOT to include this.</p>
<p>Check to be sure you are reporting what you have to report! I’m not 100
% positive of YOUR situation…so you need to check this yourself.</p>
<p>My parents haven’t filed any taxes, so they said.</p>
<p>I’m not going to re-take because the top precentile at this school is a 22 (I live in Georgia, go figure), and they don’t offer strictly merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I did the one on the ACT’s website.</p>
<p>Even if the $40,000 were reportable untaxed income, the EFC would not be anywhere near 20,000. And untaxed social security income is not reportable income for FAFSA. Your EFC should be in the 0 to 3,000 range depending on how much of the 40,000 is untaxed social security.</p>
<p>There is definitely something wrong somewhere. You didn’t by any chance click on independent student and put the 40,000 as your own income rather than parent income did you? Then the 20,000 would make somewhat more sense (though would still be a little high as even an independent student has around $6,000 protected income).</p>
<p>The calculator on the ACT website is NOT school specific. You should do the Net Price Calculators on each school website…not some generic EFC calculator out there.</p>
<p>Re: questions…one of the most commonly wrong answered questions relates to guardianship. Did you answer YES when asked if you were in guardianship? If your guardians are your parents, the answer is NO to that question.</p>
<p>If you are in Georgia, would you be eligible for the HOPE? I don’t know the criteria but that is worth checking.</p>
<p>Yes, HOPE takes off $1,939 for me, so my new total would be $9,526 (books, tuition, room).</p>
<p>I don’t remember, I just remember putting I was dependent of them.</p>
<p>I went to the ACT EFC calculator and input data with 40,000 in the untaxed parent income section, and it came out with an EFC of 3,960. Did you put 40,000 in the student income section as well? That would bump it up to 20,000.</p>
<p>Redo the calculator. make sure you enter the correct data in the correct fields. Especially check for:
- Independent vs dependent student (you are dependent)
- Parent vs student income. There are 2 separate sections for student and parent financial data. Student income has a much higher impact on the EFC than parent income, so if you inadvertently put parent income in the student income section your EFC will be hugely inflated.
- Don’t report untaxed social security. That is not reported on FAFSA.</p>
<p>The ACT calculator is not very detailed or accurate. It does not take into account any of the special formulas such as simplified needs or automatic 0, nor does it tell you to omit certain income such as untaxed social security income. I suspect your EFC will be close to 0, if not 0.</p>
<p>Yes, it sounds like the student put that the retirement/SS income in the STUDENT’s section…instead of the parent section.</p>
<p>No way would a family with an income of $40k have a $20k EFC unless they had a LOT of assets.</p>
<p>So, the EFC will be much, much lower.</p>
<p>that said, if your family has a lot of uncovered medical expenses, then they need to keep good records of those and submit for perhaps some adjustment made by the school.</p>
<p>What is this unique major? And can’t you start at a CC first?</p>
<p>I’m going to go re-try that.</p>
<p>Well, the way I’m going to do it is I’m getting an associates degree in Pre-Veterinary Medicine, which I can start right after graduating HS, then I’ll finish that, and go into my major. My intended school is mostly a two year school with only four or five bachelors degrees.</p>
<p>We don’t have taxes, or so I was told. The money comes from Social Security and Retirement. They said they haven’t done income taxes in years.</p>
<p>It’s over eighty miles a day for CC, and in a previous post on here, I mentioned why I cannot.</p>