<p>According to a recent book I just browsed through on how to pay for college, it said that the family allowance for a family of 4 is $23,660.00. Living in New York, this number is ridiculous. Out of curiosity, I did a rough estimate of what our basic, expenses are i.e., utilities (electric,oil), mortgage, property and school taxes, cable/internet/phone, car, home and health insurance, food, gas for commuting to work. That estimated number is a whopping $60,500 a year. This does not include credit card payments, car payments, emergency repairs/maintenance to cars or home, medical copayments, dental/orthodontist bills, birthdays, Christmas etc .which are also part of a normal basic life but more unpredictable. I was personally shocked because we do lot live a life of luxury. We do not have a huge fancy house. It is actually 50 years old and subject to wear and tear, our cars are 5 and 10 years old. I drive 26 miles each way to work daily and my husband drives 50 miles each way. Therefore, the cost of gas for our commute is very high. The cost of heating oil is very high. Insurance is very high. We do not have a public transportation system and car pooling has not worked out. There are no good paying jobs in our town or close vicinity. The drop in salary to work closer would never make up the cost of commuting. Nor do the jobs we have exist in these close by towns. We live here because the houses were cheaper when we bought, the prices and taxes are lower than those towns closer to the jobs, by a huge margin. Nonetheless, the property and school taxes creep up yearly and have gone into the double digits. In order to pay for the above, you do need to make over $100,000 because Uncle Sam takes roughly 30% off the top, social security another good chunk. In order to have extra money for luxuries (vacations, eating out) here, you need to make over 150K. YES! Unfortunately, we are lumped in with lower cost of living places. How to deal with this? The book suggested giving the financial aid officer a list of your expenses so that this may be considered. Has anyone does this and does the FAO actually care that your basic expenses are so much higher than someone in another state? My daughter has been looking at places like Brown, Boston College, Barnard, Emory, Chapel Hill. She will also look at a Suny (Geneseo), there are others but these are the ones she has shown most interest in right now. I would not want to put myself into further debt because job security is non-existent these days. I would also hate to have her graduate with substantial debt. Isnt this part of the reason the economy is messed up with people taking on too much debt? So to reiterate, has anyone living in a high cost of living state approached the FAOs with the reality of their basic expenses? If so, what has been the result?</p>
<p>When it is all one paragraph it is very difficult to read.</p>
<p>But I will say that we did not experience any colleges adjusting EFC by taking extra expenses into account.
Where we live is a choice- and where we attend college is as well.
Students should always have financial good fits as well as academic good fits on their list.</p>
<p>Makes no difference. There is some cost of living adjustment added into the equations before they come up with the EFC, but the schools really don’t care what your basic costs of living are. Just as Social Security doesn’t care when it gives a cost of living adjustment. </p>
<p>Can you imagine what would happen to financial aid offices if people started sending them their basic expenses? The packages would never be finished! </p>
<p>The only expenses that a college may care about would be the extraordinary ones - major unexpected medical bills, losses caused by natural disasters like Katrina, maybe unexpected job loss. Not the kind of expenses that everyone has.</p>
<p>lia, this comes up again and again. Your D is applying to some Ivies. I am sure that people on CC can tell you which ones will give a good a FA offer for families earning under 180k. My son did not apply to those types of schools, and we had to say no based upon the FAO at several. He had to apply to a lot of schools because we needed to compare FA offers. 1/2 were not affordable, and 1/2 were doable with student loans.</p>
<p>Actually, where you live is not always a choice. We live in NJ because at one time one of us worked for a pharmaceutical company. Telling everyone to pack up and move to a cheaper place (ME? MS?) in order to qualify for more FA is not feasible. Even the Feds supplement GS-level salaries with cost of living supplement; currently near NYC it is 26% over the GS-level salary.</p>
<p>I realize that it isn’t as clear cut as that- but I believe that is the way that FA views it.</p>
<p>My brother worked for a pharmecutical company that * moved* to NY, but he decided to move to the west coast instead, even though they were going to greatly increase his salary, he didn’t think it would have been enough to warrant the move.
( but was he shocked when he saw the prices in Seattle!)</p>
<p>Is the point here that “many people with calculated financial need can’t pay what the formulas calculate to be the family’s expected contribution”? That is certainly true.</p>
<p>That is pretty much common.
While our EFC has risen about $4,000 from when her sister was in college, our income hasn’t & that would have to be paid of course from after tax dollars.</p>
<p>It also is difficult, because her EFC, doesn’t take into account that I am also in college. So we have limited the choices to schools that come in at or under EFC.</p>
<p>Sorry for posting on one paragraph initially. I had to some copy paste as my computer was not cooperating.</p>
<p>We do not have the interest to move simply to get a a better EFC. That is a huge decision. As it is there is no guarantee, you will have a less expensive life. Costs might creep us, salaries and opportunities may be lower. You might find yourself proportionally in the same place. When we moved up here, we had a considerable cheaper lifestyle than our downcounty neighbors. However, the word got out there and as more people move in, the costs have increased significallty. My point is that the allowance for a family of 4 seems unrealistic because of the vast cost of living differences accross the country.</p>
<p>I wondered if it made a difference to bother going through the exercise with the FAO. If not, then we have to take some of those schools off the list as they will not be affordable.</p>
<p>As Chedva pointed out, there is a bit of an adjustment built into the finaid formulas based on where you live. BUT beyond that, it is my opinion that the financial aid offices do not consider your living expenses. Simply put…everyone has these to a greater or lesser degree. Yes, some areas are more costly, but in most cases the salary differential is there too. You should have a discussion with our college bound student regarding the costs and what your family can reasonably contribute. And yes…you may have to remove schools from your list that will not be affordable…many folks have to do this either prior to applying or after they get their finaid packages.</p>
<p>No, they don’t consider it. There are rules about what can be considered – things like large medical expenses – but beyond that and the blanket cost of living adjustments others have mentioned, no. You can say that you don’t have any choice about where you live, but legally, you do. More than that, the financial aid system would grind to a halt if decisions had to be made on a house-by-house basis. </p>
<p>You and your daughter need to put your numbers into a FA calculator if you haven’t already done so, and make sure her list matches what you’re going to be able to afford.</p>