You don’t have to show your total financial picture. Lay out what you will pay. Clarify whether you expect her to take her federal loans. If NPCs need to be run, you can do that and just tell her the EFC and loan amounts.
Kids really do connect the dots on finances- but you need to give them the information.
One of my kids was working in his first job- got strep throat- called me after visiting the doctor to ask “how did you guys manage the co-pays all those years when one of us was sick every week and we were constantly at the pediatricians?”
This was already having done the math on where almost 50% of his paycheck was going every month between FICA, benefits, etc. His company offered a gold plated disability plan- HR told him to take it- it was called “Income maintenance” and who doesn’t want “Income Maintenance”. His parents told him that since he had no dependents, he didn’t NEED gold plated disability insurance.
It only took one paycheck for him to realize what that “free” money was costing him.
My bad. Why did I let him reach the age of 22 without realizing that even with GREAT health insurance (which we had at the time) we still had to pay the doctor for each and every visit? And that GREAT health insurance has a huge, deductible amount out of every single paycheck? Why didn’t I show him my paystub to see where all the dough goes before it even gets to me?
Kids catch on if you let them. If you’ve shielded your daughter from what a bite your education loans have taken out of your paychecks every month, then share that with her. Let her realize the impact of being 30 years old and living like a grad student- even with a good job- because you’ve got that payment due every single month.
She should know that she can’t just take loans to make up any difference. The federal limits are fr-5500, so-6500, jr and sr-7500. Anything above that would have to be a parent loan or a private student loan that requires a cosigner. Are you willing to borrow or cosign? She doesn’t need to know the specifics of your financials, but she does need to know what you will contribute.
A once a week “college talk meeting” seems perfect for your situation.
I am not trying to hide our financial situation from our children. I just don’t want her to give up on pursuing merit aid because she is comfortable with a number.
We have always been relatively open about the finances in the family. We don’t go out of our way to hide things from the kiddos. They know there are limits to what can be spent. D has had jobs the last two summers. Actually multiple jobs. So she understands the value of a dollar. We joke because she knows what friends of hers have to pay for their own gas. They are the kids that know the price of gas and when it last changed. Kids who live off their parents credit cards don’t have a clue the price of gas.
@gpo613 Not sure if you have a Nanny cam on me, but this is also my struggle. Twin A wasted the entire summer not getting anything done and fighting me tooth and nail. It is such a complex push and pull. Her twin is totally motivated and I’m pulling my hair out with my one. I keep saying it’s like pushing an elephant in golf shoes up a mountain. Since I have twins on both ends of the spectrum, I am confident in saying that until you have a stubborn kid, you don’t get how exhausting and stressful it is.
I tried the weekly talk sessions and nothing was accomplished in between. Gap year is not an option. She says she wants to go to New England for school, but doesn’t work on apps consistently. I did explain last night that until I saw progress there would be zero time with her BF.
@tpike12 Thank you for the Trello suggestion. Sounds brilliant and I will try it. I just want her Common App complete and then she can do the supplemental information for each school as needed.
P.S. Can we have a new thread for parents who research for a living? It brings a whole new level to the neurotic parent aspect!
OP- I think when you say “You need to be focused on maximizing merit aid”, you believe it’s going to maximize the number of good, affordable options your D has come April. What your D is hearing is “My parents keep nagging me to get more and better scholarships. What’s the point of getting a huge package to a college I don’t want to go to, and as long as I come in at or under budget, why does it matter how many scholarships I could have/should have gotten and turned down?”
Somewhere between lies truth and I think if you could ease up a little, you and your D could find your way to the truth. She can only attend one college (she’s right!) and as long as it comes in under budget, she’s met the goal, right? In your perfect world, she’d have 6-8 great places to choose from-- one has nicer weather but slightly less money. One has terrible weather but more money. One has a really great study abroad program but not as good in her major, one has no study abroad but is the best in her field. Etc. This is a conversation you want to have in March.
But your D isn’t ready to take all of this in. I think your strategy right now is to tell her that her job is to complete two solid applications to two safety type schools (she can get in, you can afford it) and then back off. By late November if she’s panicked that she could have/wants to do more, she’s got an entire month to get cracking. By the time the rest of her classmates are buzzing about college, that may be the firecracker lit under her that she needs to get motivated.
Right now? She’s not hearing you. And the more you talk, the less she listens.
I agree now is not the time to be pushing schools for more aid. I would be doing that in April before the deadline. And if you applied ED and your FA is in range of the NPC you really don’t have room to negotiate.
Do you have a single financial and academic safety that could be the ultimate fall back and just lay a bit lower on the process besides that? I do think a once a week check in might be a nice goal.
I do think at the end of the day, it is ok for parents to do financial aid phone calls at the end. But I’d wait until you have all your offers on the table before doing that. Schools will have better numbers for their own budgets later in the year too. They aren’t going to want to give up the bank early in the process.
I also did what @momofthreeboys did. We have a limited financial budget, with 1 year difference between kid 1 and kid 2. We just dropped kid 1 off at college. I started the list of schools that looked like they’d be within budget, and kid narrowed down (with some help). There were a few twists in the process, but using the net price calculator was very important for us. I taught kid 2 how to fill out the each college’s NPC for list building. While the college is their choice, I will say that my kids absolutely needed guidance on the financial aspects. It took me a year of research to really feel like I understood the best approach for financial aid for our family. Every family is different, and it took me a long time to get to the point that I decided that we, the parents, would not take out any additional loans, that just the student loans were being taken out. I know our high school encourages the kids to fully own this process, which contributed to my kid resenting my involvement, but my involvement led to kid 1 having lots of good affordable options for a final decision. And for what it’s worth, you’re correct to worry about the money.
Also, in the spring when we had all the financial aid offers, I did use that information to discuss more aid with son’s "top 3 " schools. 2 of them offered a bit more to be competitive. But it was the spring when the tables turn and the schools want the admitted students to attend.
Every kid is different, but our middle one was a huge challenge. We finally took his psychiatrist’s advice and “said nothing, did nothing.” He took a total of 2 1/2 years off and found his passion. When he was ready to go to college, HE did all the legwork and research. Just amazing. I know if we had pushed him in high school, it would have been a disaster. I know this is an extreme example, but it is a possibility!
Now he’s got the fun job of trying to get his visa renewed in a Middle Eastern country whose bureaucrats are leery of an American kid going to Lebanon to study English!
My #1 never wanted to talk about colleges. He didn’t look at guidebooks, hardly looked at colleges on the web. He considered himself too busy to do this (he was in fact very busy as a debater and opinion editor of school paper). So I was the one who composed his list (with his “nod” in agreement), which included a couple of large in-state universities plus a pack of small LAC’s and the UofChicago. His job was to take the tests, which he had a knack for; and he got very high scores. Also he had to write the essays, which was not hard or time-consuming for him. He got into the instate universities, several LAC’s and one private university (University of Chicago). His first visit to UChicago was on admitted students day, at which time he declared “this will do.”
I probably put in less time using this approach (no long trips). And it worked fine in the end. No sense driving him crazy when he was already tied up in summers (debate camps) and the academic year. We felt that he had two perfectly satisfactory in-state automatic admits at large unis. They even offered him merit money. So we never worried about the outcome.
“My D is telling me that I am talking to her too much regarding the whole college selection process.”
Then you’ll have to back off and stop asking her about college, until she approaches you with a question or suggestion. You can do the once a week thing, but again is she thinks that’s too structured, that may not help.
“She wants to do things for herself on her own terms. I can respect that, but I still want to help guide her to the best decision.”
You may need to tell her that’s a double-edged sword, if she does things on her own terms and doesn’t want to be questioned or reminded of deadlines, she has to take full ownership of the process. I think not talking about it for a while with her will really help and hopefully you can figure out a plan from there. Good luck!
@MaineLonghorn I have a friend who did exactly the same thing with her youngest. Her oldest had a disastrous freshman year, and didn’t turn it around sophomore year. They came to the conclusion they’d done way to much handholding and let the younger son lead the process. He never got around to applying as a senior, but did manage to get an AmeriCorps position. After a gap year he went to college and did very well.
My kids liked having me to do the initial pass through on suggestions, based on what they said their priorities were, but then had their own ideas about where to go from there. No visits after an initial few for the oldest, while the second loved visiting colleges. Both were willing to find a school with an early application, but neither sent anything in earlier than it needed to be done. There was no essay writing in August or anything like that. I was just glad they pulled together the Common Application portion of the task in time for EA.
@tpike12 I am laughing so hard at your college planning Trello board. I thought about Kanbaning this whole process myself. 
To the OP, I hear you. I am a researcher by nature and once I get going on something, I’m all in. Plus, finances are a thing on our end as well and I do not want my kid getting all excited when the school might not be an option. I have a spreadsheet and have researched many schools. S19? He pretty much complained about all the visits.
My husband finally sat S19 down this summer and said “Mom is doing too much of the work. S19 you need to get actively involved here.” We came to an agreement. S19 would take control and I could ask every few days how things are going. S19 would let me know if he needed a visit scheduled or help with anything.
It’s been working. I’m learning to let go a bit. And the funny thing in all of it is that S19 and I had left our state flagship off the list due to its size. Well, S19 went there on for a high school field trip back in the spring and decided he loved it. And it is now his top choice. So yeah, he ended up figuring some of it out for himself anyway.
Let her take charge. I know it’s hard, but she sounds like she will do much better with some breathing space. Tell her you won’t bring the subject up for one week. Then, at the end of that week, you will ask her how it’s going. Accept her answer. You might find that she has some questions for you or that she needs more time.
@InfiniteWaves - my wife laughs at me too.
One nice thing about the Trello board is that my D can pull it up on her phone at any time to see what her highest college planning priorities are, along with any due dates. PLus it has the real time updates that everyone in s group can see.
My D and S also run a fund raising event in the fall with a small committee of other kids and I’m going to help them create a Trello board for planning and tracking the tasks. My S is the one that really needs an organizational system to help keep him on task, so I’m hoping he will like it and embrace it.
My D hated talking about college. Our conversations usually ended up with me yelling and her crying. Finally we started scheduling our college talks over pho and we were both better behaved in public.
To this day, I don’t think she would have applied to any schools if I didn’t push her, nag her and give her deadlines. I knew she was ready she was just scared. She ultimately got a half tuition scholarship at a school where I forced her to submit her application by the merit deadline. We fought over that because the school was a reach so she was sure she wasn’t going to get in let alone with merit. Now, her friends who are still in high school are asking her for tips. She’s telling everyone to make sure they get their apps in early! She also told them to finish their common app essay over the summer.
We both laugh now but it was a very stressful couple of months!
@Marcie123 Thanks for that note. I haven’t started yelling yet, which is out of character for me. I can be a yeller.
Overall she is doing good. I have let her come to me the last few days and she has on some things. Even though she dropped her fall sport she is a busy kid. She works some and always seems to have something going on. Although she has this weekend free and it might be the last totally free weekend until 11/1, so when I point that out to her tonight and suggest doing some work on apps she probably will not like me or take offense.
She is a good kid and will get there. I just think the hoops the kids and parents must jump through these days just suck. It was quite different 28 years ago for myself and my folks.
@gpo613 mine was super busy too. She was ASB president, varsity cheer captain and on a competition civics team. I did a lot of legwork for her. Partly because she was so busy and partly because I found it fun.
Once we had her final list of schools, I went through the applications and made a list of essays that were required. I arranged them by dates- her EA schools were also her safeties so she started with those. Then she did her ED school (she was deferred then rejected). Then there were two schools that had merit deadlines of 12/1. She had all of those in by the end of November. Then she had 2 left that I think she finished over winter break.
This is a great advise. Just keep your dd’s identifiable information out. When you are done, make a simple and organized list of suggestions to your dd to review.