My fiance and I are trying to figure out if it would be in our best interest to wait until after I finish school to get married. I’ve tried that FAFSA caster, but its confusing to me and I don’t know if I even did it right. I am considered independent, and make about $11k a year working part time. He makes about 30k a year working full time. I have a child of my own, and he has a child as well. My EFC is 0, but when I put our incomes together as if we were married, it is still 0. We are both living with our parents for the time being, so we don’t own anything but our cars, really. Also I don’t know what EFC even is so if someone could please help me figure out if getting married would even affect my financial aid, that would be GREAT!
If your current EFC is $0…what is there to gain? You can’t get a LOWER EFC than $0.
Finish what school? High school, or college?
If your EFC is $0 and you also get a $0 when adding your finance’s income (seems right if you would be a family of 4 earning about $40k), then it probably won’t matter if you are married or not. You can’t get less than a $0 EFC. However, it is more likely that the $40k in income is inching closer to a salary level where you might lose some FA.
The OP doesn’t know what EFC IS!
@lannnaxoxo are you currently IN college. Are you receiving need based financial aid?
For your EFC information or definition:
https://fafsa.ed.gov/help/fftoc01g.htm
This does not mean that an EFC of $0, will make your college costs $0 nor free. It means that they use the $0 to calculate your eligibility for federal dollars. Which are really minimal and are not going to fully cover your university costs.
The most dollars come from the universities themselves.
Also…if your current EFC is $0 you won’t get more need based aid just because you are married.
Is that what you are asking?
Seeking clarification
Is your fiancé a dependent student (under 24)?
Is he also planning on attending school?
The way I see it is if fiancé is a dependent making 30k a tea when combined with his parent’s income/assets he is probably not eligible for financial aid.
He can’t be dependent for the baby because of the 51% support.
This if he passed the 51% support this would mean that if he is independent.
however, it would also mean that Op can’t be independent if they are parents to the same child and each one is living with their parents.
If they get married, then both of them are independent by virtue of the marriage.
The real crux of the question (imho) is if they do get married, will Op lose any of her aid because now they would be a household of 3 making $41k.
this would be too much for an automatic 0 EFC but under the threshold for simplified needs test. However, any bills in your name by either of your parents would need to be included on the FAFSA