<p>Pizzagirl - No my husband never adopted my son. We always assumed it would be better, financially, if he didn’t and I don’t think his biological dad would agree to it anyway.</p>
<p>Vossron - Yes, I know. Some is debt. We also have a 2nd loan on our home that we had some major unexpected repairs (like a new roof) occur. We also refinanced years ago (we’ve been married 11 years) to a 15 year mortgage. This upped our payment but puts us in line to have the mortgage paid off when my husband retires (he is 53 and I am 41) which was important to us because we both had divorces and needed to start over again at an older age. For the first 3 years, the child support he paid out equaled what came in for my son. Obviously, after the incarceration that was not true but we still needed to pay child support for his daughter for 7 years. Also, husband has an eldery mother ( in another state) who needed to be placed in assisted living 3 years after our marriage. For several years she was able to pay it out of the proceeds of the sale of her home. Unfortunately, she needs assistance now and we share that cost with his brothers. We also are Christians who believe in tithing. </p>
<p>Our EFC comes out (according to the calculations I did on a website) to 29041. That’s 2900 over 10 months. I think after looking at our budget that we can do @1500 max. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we made these decisions based upon what I knew about college costs when my son was little (ie: step parent income did not count). That is why we did not get aggressive about saving. I am a teacher so my income is much lower than my husband’s income. I only found out 2 years ago that things had changed when my divorced/remarried friend’s daughter began applying for college and she told me that the income considerations had changed.</p>