<p>I know they were two different posters…I should have differentiated my posts to the OP and the close to retiree.</p>
<p>OP, one thing to keep in mind is when parents of other students say their child got “aid” it may not in fact be gift aid. It may very well be loans and merit scholarships. A lot of people make the mistake of calling merit scholarships aid when in fact it has nothing to do with finances.</p>
<p>Thumper your suggestions are excellent and what we are thinking of doing. I will look at going back to work next year and start putting aside the money I earn towards all our children’s college cost. Also I truly don’t believe there is nothing wrong with the kids working or leaving college with some student loans. We just hope the loans are not so much that they have trouble paying them off in a timely manner. We will be ok due to careful budgeting. Sometimes I get caught up in the struggles of day to day. We’ve worked hard and have had some expenses due to both our parents having end of life health issues. I get worried because we got a taste of how much it can cost when you get elderly and have not saved (my father). Helping both my Dad and his with medical issues and then my dads funeral cut a lot of the money we thought would go to college savings. We’re trying to put money aside for retirement so we don’t burden our kids later in life but it seems so difficult. You always want better for your kids and I’m not sure that is going to be possible for our children.</p>
<p>It is not too late to rethink private HS costs. If the tuition is 10K a year X 3 kids, the savings would be nearly 120k!</p>
<p>Our family thought a long time about private HS and in the end decided that 1) the cost was too much and 2) we believed our kids could stay on track academically at a public 3) if we hadn’t taught them morals by the time they were 14, a private HS wasn’t going to make a huge difference.</p>
<p>We have one child at a private LAC and the other at UC Berkeley. Public schools can work out just fine and sometimes are the smarter choice in the big picture.</p>
<p>I understand people feeling their EFCs are too high. I came from an upper middle class family and my parents felt the same way. I went to a public university for free instead of a private university (and I got accepted into some good private schools) because of the high cost of attending private school.</p>
<p>Although the EFC sounds like it’s “what you can afford”, the fact is that how much you are willing to pay for college is a family decision. College is a business in the USA, and there are both BMWs and Fords. Choose your pick…</p>
<p>That someone finds the EFC too high doesn’t mean they didn’t save enough, or that they are whining because they are too rich. As an NMS finalist and high ACT scorer, I found out firsthand that some private schools don’t offer a lot of merit aid (notable exceptions include Case Western)</p>
<p>At a certain moral level, it is wrong that a young person is denied an earned opportunity because of who their parents were, but it happens every day.</p>
<p>Public universities are not bad at all. You can really distinguish yourself at a public university. If you are really intelligent, you can go to you in-state public, do well, and then do grad school at a prestigious university. PhD s pay a TA salary which isn’t much, but at least they don’t cost money.</p>
<p>“It was your choice to keep your retirement savings in an account that is NOT a retirement account.”</p>
<p>Um, that’s not true at all. We’ve always put the maximum allowable into the 401K. But the gov’t won’t let you put in more than the maximum–so the rest is in unprotected CDs and money market accounts. I suppose we could have squirreled it away in a Swiss bank or sumpin’, but I don’t think the IRS likes that very much, LOL.</p>
<p>For the record, since there seem to be three of us here with similar concerns: We’re the 60-ish seniors who’ve been saving forever. Our kids are home-schooled, not private-schooled, and we are very frugal. We have a not-so-great HHI, but we do have a retirement nest-egg. Just to clarify. :)</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>“I found out firsthand that some private schools don’t offer a lot of merit aid…”</p>
<p>Ain’t that the truth! It was even truer back when DH and I were young. DH was a National Merit Scholar with SATs in the high 700s. One school, the University of Detroit, I believe, offered him the grand total of $400 in merit aid. Even back then, that was kind of pathetic. </p>
<p>OTOH, I came from a working-class family, and the then-very-new New College contacted me out of he blue and basically offered to pay my way (almost the entire COA). I had never heard of the place, but that was an offer my parents could not resist. :)</p>
<p>“Public universities are not bad at all. You can really distinguish yourself at a public university. If you are really intelligent, you can go to you in-state public, do well, and then do grad school at a prestigious university…”</p>
<p>AMEN!! As NC residents, we could not agree more. :)</p>
<p>DS has applied to UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Asheville, Appalachian State, and Western Carolina. All have strong honors programs. (Not looking at ECU or UNC Wilmington. There are beach people, and then there are mountain people. DS is definitely mountain people. So are we–I guess we influenced him. Plus, he loves Appalachian culture and folklore…)</p>
<p>I was looking at UNC Asheville’s FinAid last night. The merit-based aid does not seem that great (compared with UNC Chapel Hill’s or Appalachian’s). OTOH, the total in-statde COA is around $13,000 – which is less than what we would have to pay <em>after</em> merit aid at a private OOS Catholic college DH is considering.</p>
<p>At Appalachian, the total COA is about $11,000 (which factors in their textbook-lending program). Plus, they have great (competitive) scholarships for National Merit Finalists.</p>
<p>As practicing Catholics, we would love to send DH to a Catholic college where the Faith is strong and the culture is steeped in Catholicism. DH would prefer that, too. But you can find a strong Catholic student community at any public university, too. The Catholic student community at Western Carolina seems to be especially strong. My alma mater, New College, was Pagan U., but I found a great core group of friends (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish) who shared my values, and I had a fantastic time. :)</p>
<p>I don’t want to get into a argument about retirement…I DO believe folks should contribute as much as possible to their retirement savings AND should start to do so at as young an age as possible. </p>
<p>Money in non-retiremnent accounts and your other assets are assessed at 5.6% approximately of their total amount AFTER your asset protection allowance. This means that about 24% minus any interest your account earn will be used for college costs for all FOUR years from your assets. I’m sorry, but that does not seem unreasonable for me. You will still have better than 75% of your non-retirement assets in the bank when you are done.</p>
<p>If you have “always” contributed the max to your IRA/TSA accounts, and you are over 60, you have quite a retirement nest egg in your retirement accounts alone and that is really a blessing for you and your family. You have planned well if you have this amount of retirement savings AND additional money in other savings as well. Clearly you have been careful with your spending and good with your saving.</p>
<p>For discussion, let’s say you have $100,000 in your non-retirement savings…that would be about $5600 assessed as an asset for your child for the first year. You would have over $94,000 left. </p>
<p>The schools do not assess your FULL assets…a percentage is used. </p>
<p>I guess if I had that money in the bank and was facing college costs, I wouldn’t be adverse to that $5600 amount assessed on my savings asset. BUT that is my opinion only.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids – DH has applied to Bama…thanks, again, for the tip. Having trouble figuring out how to do the scholarship app (even after following the instructions at the website), but have email into admissions about that…will hear back tomorrow, I’m guessing. Thanks again! And oh my gosh, what a gorgeous campus; have loved your pics of it.</p>
<p>Sorry for getting off-topic. We may now return to our original topic. :)</p>
<p>Wow, Thumper–that is FANTASTIC info. Thank you!!! We are new to this and have not done the FAFSA yet. My DH has been assuming the worst – a wholesale assault on our hard-earned savings.</p>
<p>(I wasn’t trying to argue, BTW. Not at all. Sorry if it came across that way.)</p>
<p>I am going to send your info to my email acc’t and print it out at work tomorrow. Thanks again!</p>
<p>(Yes, we are savers. It helps to live in a part of the country where the cost of living is pretty reasonable. Also, I work for a giant apparel company, and let’s just say that I owe my soul to the company store, LOL.)</p>
<p>Lady Dianeski, that is the %age that the FAFSA will compute for your assets. BUT buyer beware…it doesn’t mean that the colleges will ALL give you full aid…the difference between the Cost of Attendance and your EFC. Many schools do “gap” but they would do that whether you had money in your savings…or not. That you have some savings puts you in a position to make a family decision of HOW MUCH of that savings you are willing to contribute to your child’s college education. The FAFSA calculation will add in 5.6% (approximately)…but you may actually need to contribute more if the school “gaps” you…and many FAFSA schools do.</p>
<p>Oops, @mom2collegekids–I meant DS, not DH. Getting my GeekCode mixed up!</p>
<p>Thanks again, Thumper. We are definitely willing to contribute some $$$…please don’t get me wrong. We just don’t want to be left in the position where a lengthy illness in old age will completely sap our savings. DH probably worries about that a bit too much – his parents communicated their Depression-vintage anxieties to him, I think – but I think that, to some extent, it’s a legitimate concern for all near-retirees.</p>
<p>If we can qualify for <em>any</em> need-based aid, we will be thrilled. We’d been assuming we would have to count entirely on merit aid.</p>
<p>Ladydianeski…another thing you should do is run your family numbers (income/assets etc) through one of the online financial aid calculators. You will get a GUESTIMATE of your family contribution by doing so.</p>
<p>If your child is applying to schools that use the CSS Profile, no one really knows the amount they assess your assets for family contribution purposes. Just FYI.</p>
<p>And one other thing…remember that the contributions you are making to your retirement account (401K) are added back IN to the income line for FAFSA purposes calculations. The balance IN your retirement accounts are not assessed in the FAFSA calculations…but those contributions you are making will be add back in as income…so if you are contributing $40K per year…your income line will be your taxable income on your w-2 form PLUS those pretax retirement account contributions.</p>
<p>
If they are contributing $40K per year to their 401K accounts one would hope they wouldn’t be needing aid.</p>
<p>Thumper…</p>
<p>I know how FAFSA looks at parents’ assets, but how does CSS Profile? Could a CSS Profile school consider what’s in a 401k or expect parents to pay more out of savings?</p>
<p>LOL–yeah, @sylvan, $40K would be a stretch. 
But all figures here are just hypotheticals, anyway, as none of us wants to get too explicit about actual figures. (Rightly so!)</p>
<p>OK, I am really dumb here…I’m lucky I can remember how to spell the FAFSA acronym. But…what on earth is CSS? (In e-commerce, my sub-field within the apparel biz, CSS means Cascading Style Sheets, but I’m assuming it doesn’t mean that here. :-))</p>