<p>I am surprised reading here how many kids fill out the FAFSA on their own, and how many even know how much their parents have in their 401k.</p>
<p>Do u disclose to your kids your income & financial data? Do u give your kids your tax returns?</p>
<p>We do. Not. Our kids do know how much we have saved for their college, but they don’t know. How much we make. </p>
<p>No. If they did, they would wisely kill me and have it all now. I am fine writing their checks for college, as that number is big enough each year; they do not need all that other info now. Maybe in 20 years.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how you can hide it. I tried at least.</p>
<p>My dad is 80 and I still have no clue how much he made ever. And frankly, I did not care, so I guess you have to care about it first to want to know. My kids do not care either. They better not; they have everything they want or need. Details at this point are inconsequential.</p>
<p>No, we don’t share the numbers. They have a vague idea, of course, but we figured that if this is information that we’d rather keep private, it’s probably better not to share too many details. </p>
<p>Any student has access to what was filed on FAFSA. The Student has ownership of that info. I don’t think my kids particularly care. It’s not come up. They just know how much we will pay for their education and what we will pay for them and what we will not. </p>
<p>My cousin had a very difficult time with this. Her son was extremely curious about this and has badgered his parents about the numbers for the past several years making this a sore issue. He has studied the FAFSA numbers and tax info that is now available to him very carefully and has been nasty about the entire thing. </p>
<p>My S has zero interest in this. Even if we want to let him know about it, he will most likely not pay any attention to it.</p>
<p>If he would like to take over the task (filing FAFSA) now, we will be very happy to let him take it over. There is really no secret in our family. (But when he has his own family, we do not want to know his family’s financial details. He may not care about it, but we are not sure about how the future DIL would like to handle this. So it is better not to know anything about it. Their “permission” to allow us to access to our grandson or granddaughter, if any, is much more important :))</p>
<p>For those who do not disclose the details to the kid, do you run the net price calculators yourself and tell the kid whether the schools are affordable on need-based financial aid, or if the schools require merit scholarships to be affordable?</p>
<p>A reasonable kid would want to know whether a given college is likely affordable (on just need-based aid and/or automatic-for-stats merit), maybe affordable (based on competitive merit), or not affordable before deciding whether to put it on the application list.</p>
<p>Wow, I knew what my dad made when he retired (60K as a systems engineer in 1990) and my kids know what my dh makes as a delivery driver. It’s not a big deal. I still fill out the FAFSA and I run f. aid calculators, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t tell them our income and assets; it’s pretty straight forward. </p>
<p>My dd pretty much filed FAFSA herself with our help. She knows how much we make, how much we have, not a secret there, no problem and no attitude.</p>
<p>I don’t see it as a big secret although our kids have never expressed too much interest in the details. Our big kids know how much money we bring in and they know what our outlays are. I don’t think they know the value of our retirement, but I think that’s because they’ve never asked. They know we don’t qualify for financial aid and they know we said we will cover up to the cost of Penn State and beyond that, they can forget about it. </p>
<p>Our kids like our comfortable (but not upscale) lifestyle and don’t want to change it. Because our daughter has worked so hard, and her school is pushing the fancy colleges so hard, we briefly relented from our PSU ceiling and gave her the option of applying to both Princeton (an Ivy League bargain at 54k) and Penn (as a commuter). We’d almost certainly have to do PLUS loans for either of those schools, but she could likely graduate debt free. She understands that either of those options would make money very tight at home and her options for studying abroad and summers would be severely restricted. She won’t even consider them. </p>
<p>Absolutely not. That’s our business, not theirs. I can see how it might differ if we were filling out financial aid forms, but since we don’t have to – nope. They have no idea what we make or what we have in the bank. </p>
<p>I filled out my fafsa all four years. My parents just gave me their tax forms. Finances have never been secret in my family and I hope to raise my kids the same way. </p>
<p>We have a running joke not to tell D1 when either of us receives a bonus or raise, because she will think it is hers to spend. Our Fidelity statements, bank statements, credit card bills (paid in full each month), sit on the counter or desk for a few days between arriving, being paid, and filed. It is very likely that the kids look at these. What I hope they see is hard working income, small amounts of money in the bank statements, and much larger amounts in the investment accounts. We came from families where salaries were published or known generally – public salaries, teacher pay, and military pay scales. I also have an excel spreadsheet often left open on my computer. It shows after-tax income and categories including lines for clothes and activities for each D. </p>
<p>When we say we can’t afford something or that we have to make a different choice, they do not challenge us in any way. It seems to work well for us.</p>
<p>We told our kids very early on how much we could afford to pay for college. That amount was the most significant factor in where they applied. They also witnessed us spending conservatively as they grew up, knowing that we were saving for college and retirement. But they did not have access to our financial information, nor did they complete the FAFSA. I did that for a few years - then our situation changed, and FAFSA was no longer required.</p>
<p>An interesting reversal now - they know more about our financial situation, as we have shown them that, unless something unforeseen happens, we won’t need financial support when we’re elderly. I know that much about my own mother’s finances. I wish my husband’s parents would share that info with him, so that we could refine our own planning. But we were raised to be very private about money, which does have its limitations.</p>
<p>We are both public employees so our salaries are public record. We’d probably be pretty open about it anyway. They really aren’t too interested in most of the boring details. </p>
<p>When I went to college, I did fill out my own financial aid forms as a teenager. Yes, I was one of those kids. But,t the way my mind worked, the numbers meant nothing to me. I just completed the forms, and was left with no more of an idea of what my parents made or had, as there was simply no lasting focus on this. The same with my DH, the same with his cousins who did as I did. Why? I don’t know. Our minds were not on that situation, so the info just went right by us. I worked with personal financial info for clients for year, and it was the same way with me. The info just did not stick. Did not mull over it. </p>
<p>Now, with our own financial data, it’s a whole other story.</p>
<p>I distinctly remember being in a freshman econ class in college and the prof was trying to make the point that we (the assembled students) were wealthier than the country as a whole (which was absolutely correct) and we filled out an anonymous survey asking what our parents made. I had absolutely no idea and just guessed at it – and I probably guessed 1/4 of what the actual number was. That said, there is some middle ground - I’m currently heavily involved in one of my parents’ finances and wish I didn’t have to be. </p>
<p>For our own kids, I think our focus is on “here are the lessons we’ve learned on how to earn / spend / use / invest money wisely” (for example, helping them get credit cards that give miles or points and that they pay off every month, managing investments, learning how to calculate and pay taxes) but that doesn’t require them knowing how much it is that we make or have in the bank - only that we have enough that they don’t need to worry about. </p>
<p>My D had to do a mock domestic budget project in HS with at least 15 different categories. She was having a hard time figuring out categories, so I decided to use the assignment as a teachable moment. I sat down with her and showed her our tax returns, property tax bills, mortgage statements, utility bills, etc. so she could see just how much money it takes to live in the way she takes for granted. I showed her how 15 categories of spending are easily possible. It was eye-opening for her to be able to attach practical meaning to sums. She understood that the information I was sharing with her was not to be discussed with others.</p>
<p>I wish my own parents had been more open about money with me. I would have been less naive about finances when I was starting out. </p>