FAFSA Help: EFC Rises with a Decrease in Income earned from Wages

There must be something wrong with OP’s FAFSA filing.

@mom2collegekids the AGI combines the income from the rental ($10k), the business ($20k), and both my parent’s wages ($30k together). I originally put 50k for the wages my dad gets, which adds the income from the business and rental, but discovered they only want what the W-2 forms say.

@austinmshauri Just a $4.5k merit scholarship from the University of Delaware. I’m already applying for many scholarships, so all I can do is just apply and play the waiting game.

@billcsho I probably am, and I’m not sure if I’m doing this right.

Are you in state for Delaware, @h2ooooooo? The in state COA for the Univ. of DE ($24k) - $5k from your parents - your $4500 grant - the $5500 federal student loan still leaves you with a $9k gap/year. I don’t think you can earn enough to cover that.

Do you have any financial safeties where you qualify for better merit or any school you can commute to from home in case your scholarships don’t work out?

OP, the instructions actually do tell you to add IRS 1040 line 7 and line 12 to come up with the number for income from work (lines 39 and 40). If all of the income on IRS 1040 lines 7 and 12 add up to $50k, FAFSA lines 39 and 40 should also add up to $50k. Not reporting all of that as income from working (FAFSA lines 39 & 40), it has the effect of increasing the EFC because of the adjustments in the formula due to reporting income that is not associated with work (for example, if you had an amount on line 21 of the tax return).

@austinmshauri I’m from New Jersey. Already looked into the schools here and theie financial aid packages don’t look good. I getting a decent package from Rutgers but I am going to Newark and not to New Brunswick for engineering which I originally intended. NJIT admitted me for Mechanical Engineering, but all I got was $7k in work study and loans.

Rutgers only offered a $2,500k grant, so I was left to pay about $4-5k in extra expenses (the rest were loans).

@kelsmom‌ My mother made some money (10k). The issue is where do we put the extra 20-30k in, that wasn’t gained by wages? With what parent?