<p>I am the parent of a student filling out FAFSA. We consider our full financial position to be confidential and do not want to share it with our child. Is there a way to apply for FAFSA without disclosing this information to our child?</p>
<p>Yes, some students may not like it but you can fill get your child's information from him/her set up both set of pins and fill out the forms yourself.</p>
<p>but then -- when the student prints off the SAR, doesn't it list all that info??</p>
<p>I never understood why parents do that. Why?</p>
<p>my suggestion would be that you call FAFSA on monday and ask them how to keep your financial information private from your child. I am certain they can explain how it will work.</p>
<p>Agrophobic -- there are many reasons parents may not want to share their financials with a child. I do not know the OP's reason, but I can imagine things like -- divorce situation, step-parent situation, student having friends or past reputation that involved questionable activities, and more. I can also imagine that a parent might feel that they would be under pressure to pay more than they want to for college if the student had there financial information. children are not entitled to their parents financial information.</p>
<p>Sheesh, It's not like it's some big secret. How are children supposed to learn about financial matters in the family income is shrouded in mystery. It's not like anyone is asking you to give your kid power of attorney.</p>
<p>It is still not your right to have that financial information.</p>
<p>I didn't say it was my right. I just find it rather sad that some parents would not feel that they were able to have open, honest relationships with their children.</p>
<p>Personally, our family is very open with our financial information. but I can see many situations where a parent would not want to share the information.</p>
<p>I know that when I was in high school, a friend divorced parents were constantly asking her to find out about the financial situation of the other parent. I knew a boy who stole credit cards and checks from his parents and stole thousands. Sometimes kids keep bad company. Sometimes kids and parents don't have very good relationships -- it is a pity, but it is not always the parents fault.</p>
<p>Financial responsibility can be taught without opening the parent's bank statement. It is easier and more effective to use the child's bank statement because it has an impact on them at their stage of life.
Agrophobic, the why is very simple and hsmomstef has it in one - I do not want the private financial information of me and my new partner shared with my ex and that is what will happen if my daughter has it.</p>
<p>I'm another parent that in the past has not given detailed info about my finances to my kids because of issues with my ex. But I have just done the FAFSA's for my kids -- they never asked to look at them. Both my kids simply wanted me to take care of the financial forms, and in the end they just accept my word for how much I can afford to pay. They have a rough idea of what I earn -- I just don't particularly want my ex to know how much is in savings and/or where it is.</p>
<p>Calmom,</p>
<p>Did you put your child's email address on the form? I think the concern is that if that is done, the KID gets the SAR instead of the parent, which causes me a little concern as well. I am not worried about the my S2 having the information, just that he might not even tell me when the email comes, and I would not have access to the SAR at all. It seems a little off to me that the information is nearly all parent in our case, and the student gets the link to the SAR.</p>
<p>I talked to my D at the beginning of the process using a lot of financial aid calculators to get a ball park idea of where we stood financially. I also told her how much I was willing to payout/borrow regardless of what the EFC would state. </p>
<p>We also talked about how much she would save/put aside to help out. After that conversation, D did not care and personally I felt she no longer had a need to be involved in the process. </p>
<p>She doesn't feel slighted by this, or makes statements like How are children supposed to learn about financial matters in the family income is shrouded in mystery because my money is not her money (and she happens to be very good at being fiscally responsible and handling money beecause she has been handling her own money since she was 12 years old ). </p>
<p>I agree with stef, private parent and calmon so one situation is not dependent on the other.</p>
<p>My personal take is after the initial conversation about how much is going to be allocated toward the education, I really don't see a need for my child to be involved in the process.</p>
<p>I filed the fafsa, we set up a pin, everything was e-mailed back to me. We discussed the final offers to determine what was doable or what we would have to do to make the situation work. It works in our house and everything is good.</p>
<p>Since renewals are filed while she is away at school, her W-2s. scholarship information all comes to the house. I recently filed the Fafsa for her junior year, will send out the IDOC and supplemental information to the college board. </p>
<p>I read the SAR, saw the EFC, figure out how I am going to pay it and keep it moving. When the award letter comes we discuss her student contribution, how much she will have to earn in work study, etc.</p>
<p>momofthree, we did the following b/c we did not want to miss important college information, nor fafsa info, etc.-we set up a seperate email address just for college email, for our son and for us. This way nothing is lost, and only college email is under this email address.</p>
<p>Northeastmom,</p>
<p>Now, that was a smart thing to do!!! I will do that next year! I did just mention to S2 that he would soon be receiving an email from the FAFSA folks, and that I would appreciate his forwarding that to me. I think he will remember to do so. Hope so!</p>
<p>momofthree, It worked very well. There were two colleges that offered online chats and would email my son about it. My son would ordinarily not even open this mail, but since it came to the college email address I was able to open it, and tell him about it. He then participated in a few of these. I explained to him that this is another way of demonstrating interest (at that time he was not accepted yet). The schools had one register one's name prior to participating, and then one school sent back an email "thank you" for participating.</p>
<p>northeastmom - that's a REALLY good idea! You should add it to one of those threads that deal with "things we'd do if we could do it over again". My son got where he would ignore e-mails from colleges because there were so many spam-type messages from colleges that got his address from other college-related websites. Add that to the fact that he didn't always read them too carefully, so he was liable to miss important info. </p>
<p>He also got some important college emails that required a timely response, but he was out of town and didn't get the messages for several days. Your method would avoid all of that. I'm going to suggest it to S2.</p>
<p>patsmom, That is a good idea, I will search for that thread. My son received a lot of mail at his regular email address, including mail from schools he is very interested in. He did not open any of them and told me that it is all junk mail!</p>
<p>We also have the college only e-mail account. I hate to disagree with the other posters but I think all the cloak and dagger stuff can feed into a sense by either the child or ex that not everything is being disclosed, or being disclosed properly. I will not get into particulars of what calmom or I would usually require in a Divorce decree as to the exchange of financial information by the non-domiciliary (the child support payor) parent to the other parent if child support was still court ordered. Her experience may be different than mine.</p>
<p>And not to put too fine a point on it, and I could be mistaken since I'm doing this from memory but isn't the student (in our case, a legal adult) required to sign the document? We did it online for both Profile and fafsa so it was a mouse click, but still it was "her" mouse click. I certainly would never allow a client of mine to sign a document that on its face recites the criminal penalties for false statements without reading it . Would y'all? What are you going to say to the kid ? I won't trust you with this info but here , trust that I have done this correctly? Seems odd, but thankfully I'm not in that position.</p>
<p>Northeastmom,</p>
<p>Your wonderful idea might be a great one to put on the thread about parents of seniors helping parents of juniors.</p>
<p>As an aside, are you bracing for for the blizzard??? My son is at Brown, and we in TN have so far gotten more snow than he this winter, but that is fixin" to change!</p>