My youngest daughter is starting college next year. She has 2 older siblings:
Oldest sibling: age 24. Moved back into house due to Covid. Plans to attend grad school online starting Jan 2021.
Middle sibling: age 22. Senior in college. No plans at this point. Applying for fellowships.
Between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022, I am providing more than half of their support.
Do I include the two older siblings for the question about parents number of family members?
How does the number of family members affect EFC? I submitted the FAFSA without them(I think incorrectly) and am seeing a higher EFC of $59K instead of $35K. Does that make sense?
A little more info: Last year, for my middle child in college, the EFC was $35K. My oldest daughter was living outside my house and supporting herself. The number of family members was 4. So, this year, I reduced the number of family members to 3 (perhaps incorrectly). I also had more income - about $18K more income. So, I did expect the FAFSA to show a higher EFC from the $35K last year. Just seems like too big of an increase. The only numbers that seem different are the number of family members and the income. So, just trying to make sense of it.
You can include the two older children in your household size. It should reduce the EFC somewhat (I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head how much). You shouldn’t include them in number in college, given the information you have posted.
As Kelsmom says, the older siblings are members of your household. But really that doesn’t reduce your EFC by that much. It’s have siblings in college at the same time that reduces your EFC more significantly.
Thanks for the replies. Doing some more digging into the fafsa submitted and doing some back of the envelope calculations (using the max 47% for the extra income and 5.65% for a little more in assets), I can see the EFC going up at most $14K. That leaves about another $10K that I’m not understanding. I wouldn’t think the error in family members would be that much. I have seen estimates of $500-$1,500 per household member. So, I’m still confused.
Thanks kelsmom. I did spend some time yesterday going through EFC formula. I got a better understanding of some of what I am seeing. One problem I had, and I imagine others have had, is that when you use the automatic IRS transfer tool you don’t see the numbers. I had forgotten that I had a one time shot to my AGI that was not in my regular income in 2019. I went through the whole equation and still think the EFC is about $8K higher than the equation shows, which is the equivalent of about $17K of income. I can only guess I’m subtracting too much in the “ALLOWANCES AGAINST PARENTS’ INCOME” income section.
I think I figured it out. It wasn’t in the “ALLOWANCES AGAINST PARENTS’ INCOME” section, it was in the parent’s income section. My work used to offer us additional life insurance that had a cash account associated with it earning a minimum of 4% interest. They stopped the plan in 2019 and returned the cash balance to us. Any interest earned became taxable. It showed up on my taxes as “Pension and annuities” where the total payout was listed and the interest was listed as the taxable amount. Yesterday, I had included the interest part that was taxable. I believe the non-taxable part of that disbursement should also be included in the Parents’ Income section under the question asking for “Total untaxed income and benefits”. With that amount, my EFC make sense. As an aside, not sure I really understand why that money would be included given that it was money I put into that account after tax. But since it is lumped into the pension and annuities section, I understand why it was probably added in.
One other point. The mistake I made with the number of family members added $10,190 to my income, or added close to $4,800 to my EFC. So I will be submitting an updated FAFSA. When I do that, I assume it automatically gets sent to the schools and I don’t need to notify them. Is that correct?
Yes, the schools will automatically get the update.
You can always request a special circumstances review of the life insurance issue. It’s worth a shot to ask if the schools might exclude it from income. Each school will make its own determination based on its own policies.
hi there - just reading through this - and hope this isn’t highjacking — but to clarify -
if we have a kid in grad school, and we are paying >50% of her expenses (but not tuition) . . . we can put her down in our household, but not as a kid in college on the FAFSA on s20’s FAFSA. is that right?
When grad school daughter fills out FAFSA for grad school, she’d not be independent then if we are paying 50+% of living expenses? does it make any difference monetarily in grad school if a kid is independent or not considering there’s no subsidized loans or pell grants?
A student “working on a master’s or doctorate program” will be independent for FAFSA purposes, regardless of support received from parents (see FAFSA question 47).