One small thing you can consider doing is to max out your retirement contributions. They will be added back to your income, but they won’t count as assessable assets. But assets are only assessed at 5.6% and income is assessed much higher – so that is not necessarily a worthwhile plan.
For the same reason , if the school is FAFSA only, you could pay down your mortgage as FAFSA schools (and some CSS profile schools) exclude home equity as an asset.
Otherwise, there’s not much you can do to regarding income, as @blossom was noting above – and income is where the majority of financial aid assessment comes into play.
I work at a private college that offers enormous amounts of need based aid to students from low income families. But family includes mom, dad, stepmom, and stepdad. I can’t think of any schools that are going to discount a yearly income of nearly a quarter of a million dollars from dad’s household and just use mom’s income instead. I don’t think there are many ways to substantially lower your EFC, so that means your options are to pay your EFC or find less expensive schools. If you can’t/won’t pay your EFC then the only option is finding a less expensive school. Just because your stepdaughter and her mom insist the $75k school is the only option doesn’t mean you need to agree or pay for it.
You and your spouse need to be actively involved in this process. You need to set a firm budget and he needs to let his daughter know what that number is as soon as he can. He should let her know that anything that comes in above that number isn’t an option. If she only applies to expensive schools then her options are a gap year or community college. If she were my kid I’d gently but firmly start pushing back on the idea that not being ready to leave home means a $75k/year college. Not being ready for residential college means a gap year or cc.
Is she in NYS too? What major is she choosing that’s not available at a state university?
You may want to run the net price calculator for each of these schools under each scenario (current FAFSA rules and future FAFSA rules) to see what the likely net price will be. Then you will have actual estimates that you can share with her.
It looks like there is the assumption that the private school will give her good financial aid (at least under current FAFSA rules using her mother’s $28k income), even though that assumption is not necessarily correct.
If you and your husband are willing to pay for her to attend and live at a SUNY with her major, then does her mother (who would not have to contribute anything) have any say at all? Paying for her to attend a SUNY residentially is likely to cost a lot less than her living with her mother to attend the expensive private school.
My friend was divorced 2-3 years ago. His custodial ex makes $50K or less and S20 gets about $9K in aid but commutes to a public U and works 15-20 hours a week. Tuition and fees are $15K. Got some merit money as well.
Skidmore College, as just an example of a NYS private college, the CSS PROFILE is required for Skidmore Grant eligibility determination . The FAFSA is required for Federal aid eligibility determination.
Is the College need aware, like Skidmore, or able to meet full need?
I imagine you and your husband donate the full amount to 401Ks and HSA plans (~$7K), both of which are income reducers.
I checked the CSS list and this school isn’t on it, I was aware that they require non custodial parent info.
We both do already defer max into 401k and HSA. But do not have the option to defer more to out years.
I appreciate that it may be a little hard to give advice because the situation we’re in is different, and I e been trying to keep it focused on the financing aspect. I’m not sure if anyone is familiar with the concept of “parental alienation “, but that’s our life. When my husbands lawyer had it put in the divorce to stipulate a max college payment equal to state schools, his ex-wife told the daughter that her dad was going to make her go to a special school away from all her friends. The mother told D that she lays in D’s bed and cries because she missed D so much. She told D that if D ever came to live with us, D wouldn’t be able to bring any of her things because the mother paid for everything so it was hers. Their relationship is very unhealthy, codependent, one psychologist said they were “enmeshed”
It’s a nightmare.
And we don’t really have any say in to what school. Even if we offered to foot the whole bill, the mother would emotionally manipulate D into not going.
But, it doesn’t look like there’s anything much we can do now other than wait to see if she’s accepted and what the aid package is.
Sasha, hugs to you. I realize you are trying to make the best of a sub-optimal situation and I give you a lot of credit for not throwing your hands up and telling your husband “She can fold sweaters at the Gap for the next 20 years”.
I hope you have people IRL who are supporting you emotionally! This kind of sounds dreadful- being the financial backstop, no ability to have a rational conversation with your StepD about some realistic options/boundaries, and I’m sure your H feeling guilty that his D is being brought up in a very unhealthy dynamic.
Unfortunately they are not income reducers for financial aid. They are added back in as untaxed income and treated the same as taxed income. They are, of course, income reducers for tax purposes.
The daughter and mother need to be reminded of the budget/agreement . Many, if not most, kids , go to community college or state schools even in families where there is no divorce. Or work hard to find schools with merit money that bring things down to instate type prices. Good luck.
Go to the college’s financial aid web pages to verify. Sometimes, the College Board’s CSS Profile list is outdated.
While you are there, use the college’s net price calculator to get an estimate of its financial aid under both cases of who is the FAFSA custodial parent.
But if the school is FAFSA only, it doesn’t really matter how much the non-custodial parent makes (for right now, and that’s how the current NPCs are set up). Remember to add in the $17k per year the mother is receiving in child support, so the child’s current family income with mother’s earnings and child support should be about $45k? You’ll have to guess on assets. It should give you a ballpark number for need based financial aid. If her income is $45k, the daughter probably won’t get a full Pell grant, and even for the years my kids got a full Pell grant, they didn’t receive anywhere near $4k as SEOG (I think they each got about $1000 per year, one at a state school, one at a private). It kind of depends on how many other kids at the school also need SEOG money, and that’s not something you can control.
You might explain to the mother that the FAFSA rules are changing and the only way for her to remain the custodial parent for FAFSA is for her to supply the majority of support for the child. She can estimate an amount for room and board, clothes, car rides, cell phone, etc. Could they agree to reduce the father’s support to $10k per year for the next few years with a lump sum due at college graduation? For the mother to remain the custodial parent for FAFSA, she has to pay $1 more for the support of the child than the father.
Or you can have an honest conversation with daughter and mother saying, “Look, the FA at colleges based on FAFSA is changing in '23-24 filing. We’ll complete the forms but it’s likely you will no longer qualify for need based financial aid because of the child support we pay means we’ll be the custodial parent(s) for FAFSA. We’ll continue paying the $17k child support and an additional $8k for tuition, but that’s it. If you choose a school that costs more than that, you will have to pay for it. We want you to go to college and want to help you find an affordable option but we have to all agree to it and how to finance it.”
Maybe the $35k merit scholarship, the $17k, the $8k, ( =$60k) and living at home from sophomore year on will be enough. The mom has to be prepared to ‘lose’ that $17k from her household accounts. That is always a shock to people who have been receiving that money every month (whether it happens at age 18 or 21).
The school can’t hold you responsible for the bill if you don’t agree to pay it. He is required to pay the ~$8k per year and that agreement is with his ex, not with any college. The college expects the student to pay. If he doesn’t pay the tuition, ex can sue him but not the college.
Since the expensive private college supposedly uses only the custodial parent finances, the NPC should be reasonably accurate if all of the custodial parent finances are properly entered (including child support receipts and the like). Of course, if the college actually does use both parents’ finances, then both need to be put into the NPC.
It appears that the OP and the student’s parents are all expecting the student to get close to a full ride on need-based aid from the expensive private college, at least while the lower income parent is the custodial parent. Depending on the college, that may not be anywhere close to true, in which case running the NPC is likely to show them that, even if it is a little off in the details.
there is no 28k income. There is 28k in income and 17.5 in child support.
So don’t look at this from the perspective of mom makes 28k. The school is going to look at mom’s income as 45.5k. Op’s stepdaughter will probably not receive full TAP from NYS (the drop off from the $5165 for a family with a 0 EFC is really steep if you don’t have a 0 EFC). Your daughter most likely not receive SEOG (which is already limited) as those monies are usually set aside from families with 0 EFCs who are also getting one of the NYS opportunity programs *SEEK, CD, EOP, HEOP), which your stepdaughter will not be eligible for.
Also look at the scholarship- and the wording. If the scholarship if applied to tuition, it may be offset by any TAP, your stepdaughter receives because TAP can only be used for tuition. Remember even with scholarships- tuition is a qualified educational expense , where room and board are not considered qualified ed expenses. How much is the tuition at this school? Any TAP and pell will most likely be applied first.
IF you want to know what the college requires for financial aid consideration, go directly to the school’s website. Just because the school does not use the CSS profile, does not mean that they are not collecting information from both the custodial and the non custodial parents- they just use their own forms to do so. Does the school meet 100% demonstrated need? If they do not, then there is going to be a gap? How do you plan to fill the gap when mom is only working with ~45k in income?
You must make sure that what ever you decide, you must look at this as a 4 year plan where schools are looking at parents as the first in line to pay for their child’s college.
You, your husband, and his ex-wife need to have a serious talk about money and how much they are willing to pay/borrow to send your stepdaughter to school. You are very fortunate to live in NYS, where there are 64 SUNY schools (I am quite sure that one of them will have what she wants to study).