<p>Has anyone had any success talking with a financial aid office in this situation? The school is one of the most expensive LAC's (according to Forbes) and they offered NO aid at all. </p>
<p>Our Fafsa was 99,999 which is absolutely ridiculous. (tell me HOW can the cov't count Assets and Income and NOT Liabilities and expenses?)</p>
<p>So not only is my daughter not eligible for any aid from her institution, every scholarship that requires a Fafsa is ALSO out of bounds because it makes our VERY middle class family seem like we make a mint.</p>
<p>(Our family income is in the $100,000 range; we support a parent in assisted living @ $35,000 a year and are looking at $48,000 in college expenses.)</p>
<p>Please share any strategies or thoughts.</p>
<p>This IS the absolute right school for our daughter and she is beyond thrilled to have gotten the acceptance.</p>
<p>um....i'm in the same boat as you. My EFC is 53k...which is more than the tuition of any of the schools I will attend.
My only advice is for your daughter to apply to lots of outside and merit scholarships. It's really her only hope.
The school, when they receive the FAFSA, should take into account the liabilities as a special circumstance as my understanding goes. However, it's very unlikely your EFC will go down enough to actually make a difference. a 100k EFC is kind of extreme. Are you sure you filled it out correctly???</p>
<p>The estimator I used gave me a figure of 47,000, still high but perhaps could have kept her in the running for some of the scholarships.. Rotary, etc.</p>
<p>My husband and I are just a few years from retirement; I think that is probably as much the issue. You can only shelter so much in an IRA or 401K. I think I'm just venting my frustration with the FAFSA form itself and the cost of a college education.</p>
<p>We did the ethical thing and did not overbuy our house, and try to live within our means. We don't take (expensive) vacations or buy "things." Her education is our trip to Maui, I suppose. In the end it will be worth it. ( If not we will remind her of this as she choosing OUR nursing homes!)</p>
<p>I just looked at the college I think your daughter is going to (based on other posts you made).</p>
<p>They use the Profile too. So the value of your house is part of the equation. </p>
<p>you say you are near retirement, are you over 60?</p>
<p>the balance of your retirement plan doesn't affect the fafsa or CSS. The pre-tax money you put in does.</p>
<p>let the school know about the costs for relative care, that might help.</p>
<p>each payment I send to my son's school is more than I've ever spent on vacations in my entire life. heck, it's more than my last car cost (10 years ago when the car was 7 years old)</p>
<p>I moved the thermostat down to 63 today. If you're coming to visit me, I tell people, dress warm and bring your slippers</p>
<p>I'm afraid this falls under the category of "what were you thinking". I discouraged DD1 from applying ED since that would preclude us comparing offers from schools she was willing to attend.</p>
<p>I would talk with the financial aid officer about your circumstances. If you have a lot of potential cash assets (eg: stocks, bonds, CDs etc), or if there are substantial funds in your child's name, they could be refusing you on that. Also if the assets of the family member in the retirement home are in your name, that could hurt. We are in a similar situation to you (no debt, similar income-104K on line 37 of 1040) but our assets are mostly in retirement monies and the equity of our home (paid for in two years). Our EFC was estimated to 24,000 by FAFSA and the preliminary grant (block sum given by the college) estimated from colleges of a similar price range to yours (46-48K) have come back at 20-26K. Honest "this is what we have and this is what we can afford" talks can sometimes work. If they cannot work within what is reasonable for you, you can get out of the ED with a financial hardship and it won't interfere with your apps to other schools RD.</p>
<p>If your EFC was estimated at $47,000 its safe to assume you would be paying all (unless you're at HYP or know for a fact you would get merit aid). So you really shouldn't have agreed to the Early Decision. Not that this is helpful to you now. I think a family making $100,000 paying $35,000 for a parent in assisted living is very unique; you should make sure the school took that into consideration.</p>
<p>hehe well... I was thinking.... She wants to go to Kenyon and I want to give her the moon. She has applied for every merit scholarship under that moon; it just kills me that she is not eligible for so many community offers.</p>
<p>I do believe in education for education's sake. Who knows if she would have gotten in not ED. The percentages drop significantly. </p>
<p>Thanks tho for the reality check. :D I'm sure she will understand when I wear a 5 year old dress to her graduation. :D</p>
<p>
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I think a family making $100,000 paying $35,000 for a parent in assisted living is very unique; you should make sure the school took that into consideration.
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</p>
<p>You can try this, but I do not think it will work. The reason is that no child is legally obligated to support a parent. It might be choice, and moral choice, but it is still a choice. I have read about people stating that they need to support other family members. I don't think that this will work.</p>
<p>Thanks for pointing this out. I am very surprised. The reason is because children are not legally required to support their parents. This is very interesting. Keep in mind that assisted living is a combination of rent, and care. I wonder if they ask for bills one pays relating to care, or they consider the entire bill. Where does it end, I wonder. If an elderly parent is living in senior housing and children say they are paying the rent, is this considered? It does not say "assisted living", it says elder care expenses (ie: nursing home) and there is a distinct difference. Please let us know if they consider any or all of these expenses. If they consider all elder care expenses (how it is worded), then if I pay for mom's glasses, second hearing aid, special orthopedic shoes, and dentures all in the same year are those items which medicare did not cover (assumption) now considered when I get an aid package? Also, what is to stop someone from paying rent for a parent by check and having that senior give the money back to the child as cash? This is another reason that I am surpised. Is that money still considered elder care?</p>
<p>The college FA office can decide whether the assisted living expenses justify more aid to the student. Sometimes in elder care situations there might be very compelling reasons for the parents to be supporting the grandparents. Personally, I'm way too selfish to spend $35,000/year on my parent, but the FA office may believe the OP has no other moral choice.</p>
<p>Muffy, I see a huge area where cheating could go on. What would stop some people (elder's S or D) from writing a check for assisted living, and then having that amount of money taken out of the elder's account in cash? Who would know if the elder has considerable money of their own? The elders are not required to give their financial information to colleges. Also, there are many physically able seniors, who are mentally just fine too (plenty of gray area too), who move into assisted living because they anticipate a possible health issue sometime in the future. What is the difference between them and a senior who elects to live in their home, or a regular apartment complex? Assisted living is not necessarily similar in the type of clients as one would see patients in a nursing home (though they can be).</p>
<p>Any third party can give a family requesting FA large amounts of cash (I wish I had such third parties in my life!!!) without the FA office being any wiser. But for most families requesting FA that doesn't happen. I assume the OP would send in copies of cancelled checks paid from OP to the assisted living facility. Some seniors have very little income and literally can't live in a healthy environment on what they do have, whether they're in their own home or assisted living. Some of them refuse to leave their home where they've lived all their life, but will injure themselves if family members don't hire aides. I don't know the specifics of the OP's parent.</p>
<p>I guess you are right about 3rd parties. I don't have any either. I know that it is tricky with elderly. I am just commenting that I see plenty of opportunities to get efc lowered by writing checks for an elderly parent, and that parent might be paying it right back to son or daughter.</p>
<p>That's the fundamental problem with the whole system. It's open to abuse. There have to be a lot of grandparents out there willing to help with college expenses, and I doubt many of them are reporting it on FAFSA. I understand it asks the question, but that doesn't mean people are being honest about it. </p>
<p>I also understand that there is no perfect system. Tax returns have the same problem. So many people tell me that their neighbor deducts this, or their brother in law claims that. I tell them they can deduct anything they want until they are audited.</p>
<p>beekay : "We did the ethical thing and did not overbuy our house, and try to live within our means."</p>
<p>You are teaching your children a very valuable lesson...INTEGRITY! We all know that life is not fair. We hear stories of people "cheating" the system. </p>
<p>This next portion is a little off topic but may be useful for parents that are approaching the reality of caring for an elderly parent. </p>
<p>We have been audited by the IRS two years in a row. both times they raised the question of our charitable giving. A few years after My DH and I got married, we opened a separate checking account specifically for our church and charitable giving. This discipline has saved us a lot of paperwork with each audit. Each payday we would deposit a certain amount into the "GIVING" checking account. For the 1st Audit we only had to get copies of a limited number of checks when a contributioin report was not issued.<br>
You can use this same principle to document the care of your elderly parent(s). BTW, The second audit has been closed since we were able to document the first audit so thoroughly. PTL!</p>