My son is filling out the FAFSA for the first time and I actually completed my taxes (predictive) already to be able to provide the most accurate financial information at the onset.
My issue, I don’t want to provide my son with our detailed financial information for two main reasons.
1 - None of his business - I don't believe a child should have full exposure to parental finances.
2 - Don't want to negatively impact his outlook if he sees how much we make compared to what he may make when he graduates.
Since we have to create an ID to sign the FAFSA anyway wouldn’t it have been easy to extract the parent portion of the FAFSA and have it linked to the student part upon submission?
Also, This seems to conflict with the FERPA act which prevents schools from disclosing this info to students especially in cases of divorce, Duh?
Is it just me?
Thanks
The FAFSA is actually your student’s document, not yours. The requirement is that it include parent financial information. You agree to include that so how can this violate FERPA? That is the requirement.
There is no honest way to complete a FAFSA and prevent the student from seeing the completed FAFSA.
IDK if you think your child will tell your ex your income or something?
FAFSA onlyasks for the student’s income/assets and the custodial parent’s income/assets - the non-custodial parent never sees it or has any part in filling it out. But the EFC it produces will make it fairly obvious what your part was if your student really wants to work backwards and figure it out.
Basically, no, there’s no way to have them be separate. Either you do it all (which you aren’t supposed to do but I’m sure many parents do it anyway), or your kid does it all with info you provide, or he does his part and you do yours and submit together. I suppose I’d go with the last option and just ask him not to look.
I have no desire to coach my son through my finances, either.
Personally, I think it’s ridiculous to insist that students complete the forms themselves when it requires pretty sensitive personal information from their parents. Many colleges require FA forms even when applying for merit scholarships. Why is it necessary for my child to know about all of my investments and assets for him to secure a merit scholarship?
“Honest” or not, I filled out both the FAFSA and CSS Profile. FAFSA was a lot easier than I’d expected. I thought the CSS Profile had a lot more detail. It doesn’t prevent my son from seeing the data but I don’t think he’s interested enough to go back in to review the numbers. He wouldn’t understand it anyway.
Just remember…if there is something done that looks like it was done incorrectly for financial aid gain…your KID will be the one subject to fraud charges, and fines…not you (the parent).
Your kid is supposed to get his own username and password, and signs saying he won’t share that with anyone.
If your kid takes a Direct Loan, that same username and password are used to sign the master promissory note…do you plan to do that as well? The loan is not in your name…it is in your student’s name.
The net-net is your child can and will see the information when they print or access the SAR or when they log on to the FAFSA. Remember that he is also responsible for attesting to the information that you put on the FAFSA is correct and true
Not sure what you’re getting at. Everything’s in his name. Merit scholarship’s in his name, too. I don’t think we’re confused about that. But my finances, taxes, etc. are in my name, and I’m perfectly capable of providing that information to FAFSA or the College Board or whoever needs it. I just think it’s hypocritical to say that it’s the student’s financial data if it’s really not.
Pretty much guarantee that if I can make a mistake answering the sometimes cryptical questions on the CSS Profile, my son is bound to make much bigger ones.
Or are you implying that I’m completing the forms so that I can try to cheat…?
I am not suggesting that you hand over your financial documents and let your kid do the FAFSA and Profile all by themselves. We entered our info…and we helped our kid entered his. We then had our kid sign with their username and password… we signed with ours.
If you really don’t want your kid to look at your FAFSA info ever, you would need to apply for a username and password for them…and never give them that info.
And as you pointed out @ScreenName48105 most kids aren’t going to scrutinize the FAFSA or Profile anyway. I think a lot of folks do it your way.
But my kids both have their username and password info…because both had Direct Loans…
I don’t agree with @4kidsdad
Actually, many students never see what their parents put on FAFSA. The kid puts in his info, the parents often put in their info…and often the kid never goes back in and looks at what the parents put in.
Would your child go back in and look? Many wouldn’t.
In fact, many parents fill out the entire FAFSA all by themselves, putting in their kids’ info for them. Technically, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but often that’s the way it goes.
My kids had no interest in looking at the forms…as far as I know. If they went in and read the FAFSA and Profile, I never heard about it. We also had print out copies of every FAFSA and Profile…in a nice file, just in case we needed them. We just shredded them all.
Again, I don’t think most kids even see or look at what parents put in.
I agree that it’s none of the kids’ business…and kids can get wrong impressions by what they see.
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2 - Don't want to negatively impact his outlook if he sees how much we make compared to what he may make when he graduates.
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^^ What are you saying here? Are you saying that you’re afraid that he’ll wrongly think he’ll be earning 6 figures when he graduates? or what?
What does this mean? Does your son expect to earn the same salary right out of college as someone who has presumably been in the workforce for many years? If so, it’s time to recalibrate some expectations.
I know many many FAFSA are done by the parents. But, I don’t think we should suggest this on the forum.
I doubt if my kids know what FAFSA is, including the one took a college class in “Personal Finance”.
I’m filling out all the FAFSA and CSS. We are paying for his college entirely except for a small amount of need based aid at the very expensive schools. He is a responsible kid but when it’s not his money I’m concerned that deadlines won’t be met later when he is busy and in more limited contact with us. I don’t really care that he knows what’s on the forms but there is no way he knows how to fill them out properly. I will give him the login and password I set up but I doubt he cares to go through it.
I WISH my kids were more involved in filling out the FAFSA and taxes! The problem for us last year was they were both gone at school when I was working on taxes, and when I used the DRT to finalize the FAFSA. Then one was gone in the summer to a camp with very little web access when some additional tax forms needed to be submitted to her FA office. They may be home for the first year filing, but rarely are kids at the same place with parents for filing in the later years. I’d gladly give them all the bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, 1099s and 1098 if they’d do all the taxes and FAFSA paperwork. Alas, I will be doing them for many years to come.
It took me weeks to do the taxes for the 3 of us last year because of the scholarship reporting, the little jobs they had, the QEE amounts for textbooks. I’m hoping it was just a learning curve and that this year I’ll cruise through them.
I remember a few years ago when my daughter was first learning to drive, I bought gas for a day trip. At the end of the day, I needed gas again. “It cost $50 to drive today!!!” She couldn’t believe that I actually put $50 into the gas tank several times a week.
I think it would be a good idea if the Feds divorced the Student info from the Parent info so each could only see their own data. The student could see the final EFC and not know the details. But who knows how long a change like that would take…
I agree. It probably wouldn’t be all that difficult to hide info from the student, but it would be a huge shift in policy. The technology was not there once upon a time, but it is now … this is an idea worth bringing up to your Congressperson (since Congress holds sway on federal aid policy).
But who is responsible if the FAFSA has wrong info? Who will lose college aid or go to jail?
But how would a student know whether or not the info the parent provides is correct? The student is not responsible for providing accurate parent financial info … the parent is responsible for that. There is no reason the student cannot see the parent marital status, household size and number in college … just hide the income and asset info.