CSS and ED

<p>Just watched the instructions for filling out the PROFILE. </p>

<p>If I am understanding this correctly, if you are applying ED for a school and need to fill out the PROFILE by Nov 1st then the information that you put ito the PROFILE for that Nov 1st deadline is the same information that gets transmitted to schools that have a later deadline.</p>

<p>In other words whatever our financial information is on Nov 1st is the same information that schools use to come up with FA even if it is the folowing spring? You can't fill out the PROFILE on Nov 1st and then refill it out with updated information on Jan 1st or Feb 1st?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>Well…sort of. If you up don’t submit NOW to those other CSS Profile schools, you can actually put in the accurate information to send to them at a later date. What you cannot do is update the Profile to the ED school online.</p>

<p>Every school has some process for “updating” the Profile. Remember, really all that is updated is income and tax information from your actual taxes from 2014. Nothing else. Assets remain as of the date of the initial filing. </p>

<p>Some schools use IDOC, some just verify using the FAFSA and IRS data retrieval tool which you link your FAFSA to. You have to find out from the school what they want.</p>

<p>The important thing is to use the very best possible estimates for your 2014 tax year information when you fill out that Profile in November. You should have your most recent pay stubs…and you also should have your 2013 tax return to use as a guide. </p>

<p>Thanks, true, we will be able to update our salary info, etc after we do our taxes. Guess it was the asset information, I was mostly thinking of. </p>

<p>For example, we won’t have paid our other childs 2nd semester tuition by Nov 1 so our assets will be higher than I’d like! (on the other hand we won’t have had the chance to put more money in our 401k so maybe its a wash) but by the time we would’ve filled out the CSS profile for the other schools she is applying to, non-ED, our assets would be lower. </p>

<p>Well hopefully she will get in ED and we’ll get enough FA and then we won’t have to think about it!</p>

<ol>
<li><p>You might want to pay your other kid’s tuition early. The college will accept your money.</p></li>
<li><p>Re: money in a 401 K…any money you put INTO that account in 2014 will be added back as income when calculating need based financial aid. It’s the balance in your 401 K that is not an asset (although some Profile schools do ask for those balances). I’m not sure why you think adding more money to a 401k will be advantageous. These 401 k contributions will be considered as income.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Yes, do pay tuition and any other bills that you can before filing the PROFILE. THe form takes a snapshot of your assets that day and does not take into account any earmarked money, like what you have for your children’s tuiton, if you have money set aside to replace that roof, etc. Payday is not a good day to fill out PROFILE. </p>

<p>When you fill out FAFSA after Jan 1, you also should make sure of the same. No extra, earmarked money in accounts. Pay what you can. Also bear in mind that any assets in your student’s name is hit A LOT harder than if it’s in your name, (with some exceptions to 529 funds) so it might behoove your family to have the student repay you for expenses, and maybe put that money in a joint account with them with your name and ssn first. </p>

<p>401K is not much of an issue. You don’t get to deduct for fin aid purposes, as Thumper says. Unless you have money sitting in a regular account that you intend to transfer into a 401K. That you had better due during the statuatory deadline. That can be an issue.</p>

<p>Paying all my bills today, paying off any accounts that are on monthly payments, having some work done on our house this month to get ready to fill it out. Good idea about payng semester 2 early. Will do that, too.</p>

<p>I assumed that since the Profile schools do ask for IRA and 401K balances that they would count that as an asset? No? Some yes, some no? </p>

<p>You can out and out ask the financial aid office of given schools how they count qualified accounts. Also if NPCs ask about them, you can sometimes see that. However, at many schools, they are looked upon in sort of a holistic way or with odd formulas that make a staightforward answer difficult. In other words, they use them as assets if they are maybe over a certain amount but they also take current income and assets and age and other factors into account. You can understand that–someone with $20 million in qualified accounts should not be getting financial aid, for example and that money danged well should be taken into account. Someone with $200K and they have a modest income, should not. In between, is where it starts getting tricky and each school has their own way of handling this, just as they do with primary home equity values. </p>

<p>So you can play around with NPCS changing qualified plan money if they ask, and see what it does to your expected contribution and also ask fin aid, but YMMV. Some schools are more open about these things than others, but it seems to me getting this info is like pulling teeth. The answer on these thing is ofen, that it varies on the situation.</p>

<p>This is one of a number of reasons why ED is difficult when you have money constraints If the school your student applies to takes all of these thing into account in ways that other schools on the lists might not, you have to make that decision without knowing all of this. ED can work if you can stick to a dollar amount you can and are willing to pay and are not going for better deals. College A may take your 401 K accounts heavily into the equation while similar College B might not With ED, you have to ignore that and focus on whether you take or leave College A’s package, whether it 's doable and you are willing to make the sacrifices doing it without knowing what like colleges may offer. If you know what you are willing to pay and are not going to get pushed into going more that can be a problem for you fine. Often doesn’t work that way.</p>

<p>I’ve known a number of situations where parents are grim faced about ED when they see what their kid’s peers and class mates got in merit packages knowing that their kid was very much in the running and would have likely gotten a piece of that had the not gone ED and stuck with a full pay or high pay school in November of the season. Buyer’s remorse is a real thing and there often is valid reason for it Or the kid changes his mind and say, he wished he stuck with State U because he would have gotten into the honors program with his friend, and you are sitting there bug eyed with the prospect of paying double that or more, that yes, you can do it, but barely and it’s going to hurt and now your kid is flippantly telling you he’d have been just fine or prefers some other less pricey choice. That elusive bird on the bush often looks a lot better than when you got him in your hands and get a closer look, and better birds may come into the area. </p>

<p>So an ED school can work out beautifully when all are on board as to what is being given up, and the issues around it. With schools that are highly selective and truly Holy Grail schools to student and family, this is not usually an issue, but a lot of kids and parents want to go the ED route for reasons that are not so good, especially when truly not a first choice school, there are financial issues and you don’t know exactly what you are doing and just getting on that ED bandwagon through momentum.</p>

<p>Thanks for all that info. We told our kids we would pay for X amount per year. So as long as ED school gives us enough so that is what we end up paying, then fine. Per NPCs of schools we are looking at, ED school looks like they might give us the most anyway.</p>

<p>Then you are fine. Where it gets rough is when families are fuzzy about what they can pay, and what they really want to do is to get the best deal, school that they like best among a certain group for a certain amount of money, and when you have an ED fin aid offer, it’s in a vacuum You can’t see what a similar college might offer. With NPCs, a lot of this is less up in the air, but NPCs can be off too. I know families that were so hot on ED and then sometime during the next 4 years, (or even 4 months) they find it was a mistake. </p>