Did your H receive a severance? Did he pull money out of a 401k or similar?
It sounds like you have a LOT of savings and/or your husband earned a good bit in 2014 before he was laid off.
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Is there such a thing as a financial safety when you are expecting to pay 10k/year?
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Sure there can be! If your child gets a full tuition award or more from Alabama, then remaining costs could be about $10k per year if your child can either do a $5k student loan or work/save over summers and take a smaller loan.
Yes!! Tour Alabama! Soon!!! Set up the tour online, and then contact the Honors College to give them your tour time, date, stats, and intended major/career goal. I can give you the contact info.
cptofthehouse: Yes, I am now very leery. I do not trust ANY of the NPC’s. We will just have to wait and see how the real numbers pan out.
Mom2collegekids: Yes on some severance and we cashed out some stocks stupidly in panic at the end of 2013 before getting the severance (which we had to fight for). He was displaced Nov 2013 but it legally got changed to Feb 2014 b/c that’s when the lawyers settled. But yes, we do have savings. We were saving all these years to pay for college! But for the time being we have to live on it. I am letting my hair go gray, we eat more beans, and we canceled cable!
Honestly, we are not financially wise people except in the simplest sense (save and don’t rack up credit card debt!). All these nuances make my head spin.
The reality is Tufts is a longshot even with ED. So we will see if it turns out to be a problem.
Thanks for your help.
Everyone, don’t trust those NPCs until the $$ is in your hand!
Another thing–I was mistakenly under the impression that the CSS Profile was the scary part of applying for aid. They ask a lot more questions. But it seems like it also paints a more accurate picture and allows for more situations, and might work in your favor in some cases, more so than the FAFSA-only schools. Lessons being learned!
FAFSA is simplistic. If your husband got a severance package of $75k, it is no different than if that was his salary (except that the govt probably took a flat 25% in taxes). No different than me earning that amount over the year, and FAFSA doesn’t really care that your family used to make more (although a school might listen to your situation). FAFSA is just a numbers game. How much did you earn, how many in your family, how much in savings? Numbers.
The NPCs work just fine if you aren’t getting much aid. The schools I ran my numbers through all came up with the merit aid the school would give plus nothing for need based aid. Where they don’t work as well is if you need to explain the numbers, if your AGI is very different than your gross income, and you need to add back in the 401k amounts or business expenses or if you have losses.
Here is what concerns me: your DD is applying ED to Tufts. If accepted, Tufts financial aid department will give you an estinated financial aid package based on the info you have provided. If part of that info assumes that you are going to qualify for a zero EFC, which appears to be the case with that full PELL grant, but your actual FAFSA EFC comes out to be something else altogether, that is going to be a problem. A verification process would have to be done and the financial aid officers would have to decide whether your family in fact does qualify for a professional judgement to get that zero EFC which a preliminary read of your PROFILE has led them to believe. If the verification process turns up info that makes it not possible or ethical to make that professional judgement, your financial aid package may altogether change.
This would not be such a big problem without the ED. You can compare packages and see what merit/aid combos are the best. But if accepted ED, your DD is required to withdraw all of her other applications upon acceptance. She and you have to make the assumption that the estimated aid package will stand muster when the actual FAFSA EFC comes out, which is not an assumption I would want to make. If you have indeed already filed FAFSA, and Tufts does get your SAR which will have your actual EFC, your aid package estimate will likely be close. But if that actual EFC comes out so way off from their assumptions, it is a problem if the professional judgement cannot be made. There is only so much leeway fin aid officers are allowed to make on these things when it comes to changing EFC, and rather than relying on your narrative, they will need actual records and have to use them as the rules so state. IMO, your DD should not have applied ED because of this huge uncertainty that exists.
Also, some schools have provisions in the financial aid policies that do not permit them to give more financial aid than the FAFSA EFC. Unless a family pays the EFC, the school cannot use any federal funds which includes work study, subsidized loans, SEOG, PELL in the aid package. It all has to be school money. That’s a federal reg, and no way around this. So if a school fin aid officer cannot make professional judgement to reduce the EFC, the federal aid will only be available commensurate to the need that comes from that EFC and COA of the school, and the school would have to come up with ALL of the money in the fin aid package. This is not something schools tend to advertise in their fin aid section. You have to ask outright.
Unless you can get your FAFSA done ASAP, and get it to Tufts so that they have the actual FAFSA EFC when making the fin aid estimate package, you are putting yourself at considerable risk.
^^ could always switch Tufts to RD.
My opinion…there are too many “ifs” in the financial aid picture for this family for ED to be a good option. Clearly, they need good aid for this student to attend a school like Tufts. At this point, there is no way to reduce how Tufts will calculate their need based aid…never mind that FAFSA results are iffy based on what is reported here.
This must be an ED2 application to Tufts.
Has this student already received an acceptance to a public U iversitiniversities in their home state which is affordable…in case the ED2 results aren’t favorable (acceptance or financial)?
If not, I agree that a switch to RD would be a good idea. This would give this family the ability to compare net costs at all colleges to which the student gets accepted.
That’s what I would do. ^^. I don’t think ED is a good idea in this case with the uncertainties present. Could end up with an actual package that is unaffordable after verification and cross check with FAFSA and personal judgement review.
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