<p>What you can afford - and what you are "willing" to pay may be two different issues!</p>
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What you can afford - and what you are "willing" to pay may be two different issues
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<p>Precisely.</p>
<p>The Columbia thing is not something I encouraged. I've told her it would be too expensive. I found out after the fact she applied, I think kids apply just to see if they can get in... an ego thing I would say. But they did schedule her for an interview so she's not been eliminated yet. </p>
<p>When April rolls around and we can compare accepted schools to final cost we'll see. I suppose I should hope she doesn't get accepted to Columbia or maybe it just doesn't matter. 40K+ per year is just plain ole out of the question.</p>
<p>My next kid in line is a B+ student. Certainly college level but doubtfull much merit aid will come his way based, so more money will be needed there.</p>
<p>I keep reading forty thousand, but private colleges really are going to cost fifty thousand a year.</p>
<p>People who have to take care of their retirement are being squeezed.</p>
<p>It is going to be very difficult for parents to put three kids through college and save for their retirement, if they don't have much in savings by the time they are 45-50. They are going to need a very big income, larger than $150,000.</p>
<p>To the OP, do what is right for your family.</p>
<p>This describes our situation perfectly--EFC of 43000. AGI is below 100,000. Because we saved and invested, instead of blowing $$ on cars, vacations, houses and fancy lifestyles for the last 25 years, financial aid is out of the question. The incentives are surely flawed in this formula.</p>
<p>students can also be expected to pickup some of the costs of their education</p>
<p>$3,000 or so from a summer job can go right to tuition
$1,000 to $2,000 from a school year job, will cover books, and personal items.
All students will be eligible for unsubsidized Stafford loans.
I really don't know your families typical debt load, so I won't advise you on how much you can afford for school,but 40K is typical for your income.
It sounds like a clear discussion is needed, if you are thinking instate U and your daughter is thinking Columbia.
Schools also can tweak your EFC depending on how much they want you. Some schools known to only offer need aid, have found reason to give aid to students who would add a lot to the wschool</p>
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<blockquote> <p>additonal chidren attend college during the same period of time while you first born is in school your EFC is not suddenly doubled or tripled but rather cut in half and by a third. >></p> </blockquote>
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<p>This is true. Our EFC for next year (based on our estimate FAFSA) is 1/2 of what it was last year. BUT....this is NOT translating into more "free" money (grants or scholarships) for either of our children. Our EFC is now $18000. DD's largest offer thus far is a $6000 grant at her #1 choice school with a COA of about $42K. The rest they "gave us" in the form of a Plus Loan. This school uses the Profile and our home equity is assumed to be available to us. We live in CT...a mighty pricey place to live...but we've lived in our house for a while and the equity is there. We are not happy about borrowing against our home, but we will. NOW regarding DS...presumably his EFC will also be about $18000 (on his also very expensive private school). His school does NOT meet 100% of need. He currently gets a scholarship of $10K, plus the Stafford Loan, making his award about $15K. That leaves a $3k gap which I think is mighty unlikely to be filled. What possible motivation would they have to give a senior additional aid? It's not like he's not going to return for his senior year. Oh...and when our EFC was close to $40K....his finaid was the same. Maybe both kids will have full subsidized Stafford loans for the year they overlap. Still...we can and will make this happen for our kids. We knew when we HAD kids that college would be an expensive venture. And that is that. We are trying to make the best of it...and btw...we are NOT that far from retirement. In fact, I could retire as early as a year from now. Of course then how would we pay the bills at all?? When we got our EFC for our son, the first in college, we were stunned. But the reality is that we have been able to pay those bills by doing some significant belt tightening. We have used quite a bit of our meager savings and a small inheritance as well to fund the college expenses. Could we have done it differently, sure. Did we? No.</p>
<p>Sybbie-- do you mean by cut in half and by a third? I understand that the EFC on fafsa is split if you have two children in school at the same time but what do you mean by a third. Thanks
You Wrote:
If you additonal chidren attend college during the same period of time while you first born is in school your EFC is not suddenly doubled or tripled but rather cut in half and by a third.</p>
<p>dstark mentioned, "People who have to take care of their retirement are being squeezed.'</p>
<p>Absolutely! I am now 14 years away from my social security retirement age. My mother has just quit work at age 69 and can't pay her bills unless she gets financial help from me. My son has several pricy colleges (not ivy, but still $$$) on his list and my 11 year old daughter will be ready to go to college just as my income earning ability is rapidly waning! Add on top of that the need to get that retirement account growing and there's plenty to work on! :)</p>
<p>Not complaining, just adding to the chorus that all EFC's are not created equal. :)</p>
<p>Fluctuating incomes are common. We saved during "up" years", with the result that we have about 40% of what has turned out to be our EFC available from college-designated savings each year now. Yes, choices have to be made. We'll put less into retirement savings during the 8 years we'll have kids doing undergraduate studies, and probably borrow some as well. That's our "lifestyle choice." We've told our kids that any college costs above our EFC will have to be figured out my them. (Our EFC per kid turns out to just about equal the cost of attending UC, so that's option #1 for our kids.)</p>
<p>It's not like the cost of college is a secret. Every year we see a post like this one. It makes me wonder what the posters expected?</p>
<p>Here are some data on income distributions:
In 2004 the median household income in the U.S. was about $45,000. Only 5% of households had income above about $158,000. These numbers have probably gone up a bit in the past year or so, but probably not by much. In my view it is unlikely that we'll see much financial aid directed at families with incomes in the top 5% or 10% of the population, and I wouldn't expect there to be much.</p>
<p>Is a Columbia education worth twice as much as an education at UMass? Based on research of incomes earned by college graduates, it doesn't seem so based soley on future earnings. But there are intangibles beyond the income earned in a career. That's why we want our kids to go to college rather than buying them a tractor-trailer rig and sending them to truck driving school.</p>
<p>The high and rapidly rising cost (or list price) of college education has been well publicized for at least the past decade -- probably longer. If we feel we can't or don't choose to spend $40,000 per year on our kids' college education that is our family's choice. But the cost should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.</p>
<p>Not everyone can go to those top schools, I'd tell your kid what you're willing to contribute, and if they want columbia then they'll know the financial repurcussions of taking on such an expensive school when you're only kicking in 10k a year. My dad makes 90-100 a year, and I'm not expecting him to pay anything for me, I'm going state school with decent merit money and I'm going to take care of myself. Teach your kid some independence and let them make their own decisions. If you don't have the money to give to them, let them know and they can choose for themselves.</p>
<p>There have been many threads about the parents' responsibility to pay and whether it's worth it, etc. Everyone's situation is unique, so it's very hard to generalize. However a couple of points have occurred to me in all this.</p>
<p>One, don't complain about living in a 'high cost' area. In my neighborhood there's a reason people pay more for the premium lots. If FAFSA etc., gave you a pass for that, then it wouldn't be a premium. (I welcome you to consider an alternative - the hospitable midwest.) </p>
<p>Two, go ahead and sacrifice the new cars and vacations, but please, don't mortgage your retirement for college. I remember someone on this forum cheerfully say they plan to work til they're 90 (because of college bills). Fine, but there's no guarantee they will have their job tomorrow, much less til they're 90 or even the more realistic 70). Social security, pension plans, and good health insurance will likely not be what we planned either.</p>
<p>trying to take all the fun out of complaining are you?</p>
<p>We know tuition is going up- it has been going up more than inflation for years.
However isnt it more fun to track the price of the championship hotdog?
Qwest dog</p>
<p>I empathize with you FooMonChew and I join Ellen and Sunny Seas in their opinions of the fairness of FAFSA. Our EFC was something like 35% of our gross income which is substantially less than yours, and my son's preferred college (CMU) went exactly by that FAFSA number. (Why not...it was darned near the full COA.) When we appealed and tried to figure out how we could be expected to come up with so much cash, the rep told me that CMU "heavily assessed the 401K because parents were expected to make up for the loss with Plus Loans." </p>
<p>I definitely feel that we have been punished for passing on luxuries to live frugally and save for retirement and college. Why should we subsidize others who saved nothing? Given that our son knows he will attend graduate or professional school, we opted for the state school with very little debt. Although we were initially disappointed, we are all now relieved and happy with our decision.</p>
<p>Our EFC was $65,000! Ha! Mostly due to savings. However, since the savings won't last for all four years for both kids we still had to choose schools that were affordable.</p>
<p>The thing that can distort reality on CC is that there apparently are a lot of very wealthy families here, who will simply send their kids to the finest school that they get into. (There is, no doubt, sacrifice involved for many, but really, to shell out $40,000+ there must be a fair amount of give in the budget!)</p>
<p>Anyway, that's lucky for them, but in the rest of the world most people need to carefully look at the price tag, figure out how they're going to pay not just in year #1 but in year #4 or #5 too, and choose a school accordingly.</p>
<p>Not many people really want to work until they're 90 either!</p>
<p>Foomon--Yep, about 70,000/yr out of about 160,000. I don't get why people find that so hard to believe. As DadX3 pointed out, the medium income is less than a third of that. So why shouldn't we be able to live on what's left, even after taxes, etc.?</p>
<p>And to those who point out other reasons, 1) like I said, we live in NE NJ, a very high cost of living area. yet we still saved. 2) we are also funding our own retirement.</p>
<p>Our secret? the book "your money or your life?" which discusses making choices in your lifestyle to cut down on working, and do more of what you really want. So my H was able to quit working, go back to school, and is now looking for starting teacher pay while working as a sub. While we live on my itty bitty salary. And still pay full-fare to S's college.</p>
<p>Look, don't worry about med school--that's what loans were for. We funded it entirely thru loans, yet H was still able to do primary care, community service type medicine and get the loans paid off. And because we never lived the 'doctor' lifestyle, he can quit it, and start over in teaching, and the college bills are still getting paid.</p>
<p>I guarantee that many folks here have lived a more affluent lifestyle than us--but we had a choice--that, or college. We chose college.</p>
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Sybbie-- do you mean by cut in half and by a third? I understand that the EFC on fafsa is split if you have two children in school at the same time but what do you mean by a third. Thanks
You Wrote:
If you additonal chidren attend college during the same period of time while you first born is in school your EFC is not suddenly doubled or tripled but rather cut in half and by a third.
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<p>Op stated he has 3 children</p>
<p>In OP's case if the EFC is $40,000 for the first kid that is what it is. </p>
<p>If OP has 2 kids in college, this same $40,000 EFC would be spilt between his 2 kids.</p>
<p>If all 3 of them are in college at the same time then the sam $40,000 EFC would be spilt among his 3 children.</p>
<p>If OP is paying tuition for private secondary school, the CSS profile also takes this amount of $ into consideration</p>
<p>Age of parents makes a difference, too. Parents could be 40 or younger, with not much savings yet but plenty of time to increase income and savings after education is paid for. Or, parents could be pushing retirement, at their peak earning years (but soon facing reduced income), and have life savings in hand that can't be replenished after they pay for college.</p>