<p>Okay, trying not to hit a dead horse here, but something’s not right here. We are right in the middle of the 25 percent tax bracket (when non-mandatory retirement is added back in to our income) and our EFC is way less than 45k (though it’s considerably higher than what Exeter actually asks us to pay). So I’m guessing that those of you with these higher EFC’s are either putting away a LOT into retirement (and again–good for you!) OR have other savings/investments that boarding schools feel that you could put towards tuition for four years OR you’re calculating something incorrectly. The financial aid calculators are based on your income, not your AGI or tax bracket–and I notice nobody’s talking income here. </p>
<p>I’m trying to be sympathetic, but I find this all a little hard to take. I mean, my family–with no debt, a house over our heads, meat in the freezer, clothes in our closets, the occasional Chinese take-out in our bellies, and decent retirement savings–does qualify for good aid in that tax bracket–so obviously all 25 percent tax bracketers are not created equal, and you all have got something we haven’t.</p>
<p>Good point, Classicalmama. Tax brackets of <em>Taxable</em> income can be misleading although that’s how tax brackets are applied. To compare apples to apples though, we’d better stick with the <em>gross</em> income with the portion of your paycheck set aside for retirement added back in because PFS would take all income for the year into consideration.</p>
<p>@ classicalmama: You must have forgotten how it had been in NE. My area, which is hours away from NE or NY, is not one of those overpriced real estate markets, but house prices for middle-income families range from 300k (multi-dwelling row/town houses) to 600k (no frill single family detached house). I’ve never seen a house at 100k around here, not even for a fixer upper shack. </p>
<p>@ ChoatieMom: Welcome to the thread! You were one of those crazies I was talking about in my OP. I think I would have to follow your lead. </p>
<p>My main interest in starting this thread was to see if there are anyone else out there who are like ChoatieMom or myself, making drastic changes in family finance and life style for better education.</p>
<p>classicalmama - we had alot of equity in our home. So, we refinanced and took cash out, used that to help pay for BS. That was probably some of the difference.</p>
<p>If you dont have a truly good school in your town, and can pay the tuition if you make a lifestyle change for 4 years, then I’d say go for it. If you have to borrow the money, then it doesnt make any sense, esp. since you will have almost the same exact situation if your kid wants to go to a private college.</p>
<p>classicalmama: No, current retirement savings are not held against you. We live in a low cost of living area and our remaining mortgage is less than $100K. We indicated that we thought we could pay half of the tuition. The schools felt that with our no-debt scenario, we would easily qualify for loans for whatever we could not cover and, when BS was done, we could “easily” pay them back. I realize I am being a bit disingenuous crying “poor” when loans were an option, but not an option for us as we will not take on debt for any reason. Thus, we are living seriously hand-to-mouth for the time being. I also realize that many families cannot write that check under any scenario and that BS is a luxury (no one is going to die if their child does not attend BS), so I am not asking anyone to feel sorry for us. I’m simply sharing a scenario where choosing BS without loans is taking every single disposable cent from us. The schools DID understand that a no-loan scenario might be untenable, but no FA was forthcoming.</p>
<p>Sharing Gift: I do remember that well; in fact, the cost of living is mainly what keeps me from living there. My point is that families who qualify for aid have a lower standard of living and make less money than those who don’t qualify for aid. And there are a lot of us out there. </p>
<p>If I were living on the East Coast, the hard fact is that my kid wouldn’t be in boarding school, because we wouldn’t be able to afford it AND housing unless we took out loans–and like ChoatieMom, we wouldn’t make that choice. On the other hand, I’d have so many other educational opportunities available than I have here. In Massachusetts, for example, I could drive my kid 30 minutes from just about anywhere and get him into a great public school or lower cost private school. Or I could have continued to homeschool him and found low-cost resources and a supportive, like-minded community for that. </p>
<p>It feels unfair in some ways that there are people who can write that tuition check without a thought. But there are blessings to the life I’ve chosen to live, and paths for my kids mostly seem to open up as they should. I’m willing to believe that the boarding school bill is too much of a strain on families that have made other good choices about how they’ve spent their money. But…there are always other doors to open. </p>
<p>Choatie Mom—makes sense to me, and that’s a decision I suspect we’ll be making in a few years as well, when colleges come into the picture. I’m mindful that Exeter’s no-loan policies and better-than-average aid are mostly what keep meat in our freezer. :)</p>
<p>OP, I swear I don’t mean this in a judgmental way at all, but when you say “making drastic changes in family finance and lifestyle for better education,” it’s not the same as “without financial aid, I have to tell my kid he can’t go.” </p>
<p>So if some of us get a little ruffled, it’s just because we are envious of having that small bit of wiggle room. Believe me, I <em>get</em> how hard it is for anyone to write a 50k check, for anything. But for most people it’s just not an option.</p>
<p>This can happen when the family has several kids in tuition-paying schools (i.e., private primary or secondary schools or colleges).</p>
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<p>The EFC formula varies your expected housing costs based on where you live, so if you live in the northeast they will expect you to be spending more on housing than if you lived in the midwest, and thus give you a smaller EFC. However, the expected housing costs are still based on “modest” housing. A problem that can occur for middle class families is that they take on a big mortgage so they can move to town with a better school system, find the schools still aren’t adequate, but can’t afford private school tuition because they’re spending so much on the mortgage.</p>
<p>We’re in a strikingly similar boat, I’d say! What you described makes lots of sense to me. </p>
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<p>These are what we do too. Well…except, I don’t think I have enough meat in the freezer nor, as I am repeatedly reminded, enough savings in my retirement account. And 70% of the house over my head is not actually mine.</p>
<p>Seriously, after COLA, we’re not that different from each other.</p>
<p>If you have paid your house off (with a windfall years ago) and you have low income (very low when you think of a family of six) is there an automatic assumption that one mortgages their house? That monthly bill alone would be prohibitive-</p>
<p>I hesitate to post this and please don’t throw things, but we have become vegetarian. No joke. We really couldn’t find anywhere to cut in our budget; food came under scrutiny along with everything else. There have been a lot of health benefits from this, so we plan to continue eating this way even after the BS bills are gone. Again, not asking for pity but sometimes there really isn’t much to cut out.</p>
<p>So going off on a new tangent, this will be our first time filling out the SSS (going to tackle it today, in fact!) I have a couple of questions for you seasoned pros.</p>
<p>When I complete this form today, will it tell me what my EFC is, or do we not learn that until later in the process?</p>
<p>Second question: I have heard that credit card debt is considered, but car payment debt is not. Is that true? Seems strange that you can run your credit card up irresponsibly and have that work in your favor, but yet a car payment, which is a necessary living expense, works against you. Perhaps we should pay off the car loans on our credit card? </p>
<p>(And yes I am well aware that some people have credit card debt for reasons other than irresponsibility – just using the example of those who are).</p>
<p>SharingGift, I feel as if you’re standing at the edge of a precipice, and we’re trying to talk you down. For what it’s worth, it sounds as if your EFC signals you can’t afford BS without financial aid. I would urge you to apply for financial aid. By the standards of BS, you don’t need much, but $5,000 is a large amount for a family to find under the couch cushions.</p>
<p>Second, have you investigated any day schools or parochial schools in your vicinity? Given your EFC, you should be able to afford tuition to a day school with good budgeting.</p>
<p>Third, is your child an only child? If she/he gets into a good boarding school, do you need a house in a “good school district?” Could you downsize or move? I live in the Northeast. Houses just over the boundary into a good school district can cost significantly more. </p>
<p>Sending your child to boarding school could significantly lessen her college choices. If your local school system is good, I would opt to invest in enrichment during high school, building up a nest egg for college applications. With good test scores, good class rank, good GPA, and needing only a little FA, your child would likely do just as well applying from her local public school. There are also quite a few academic and EC competitions which could burnish an application–many of those competitions are planned with the public school schedule in mind, not the BS schedule.</p>
<p>freshlook: Our mortgage is paid off, but our house isn’t worth much, so I don’t get the sense that no mortgage counts against us. But I suspect the answer is, it depends. I think the big family/small income will probably work in your favor.</p>
<p>booklady: I suspect that credit card debt and car debt are considered equally. But…driving newer cars is definitely a luxury item in the world of FA.</p>
<p>ChoatieMom: Strange but true factoid…where I live, meat is often cheaper than fresh fruits and veggies. People hunt and grow their own chickens and pigs, but the growing season is short, so it’s more of a luxury to be a vegetarian…agree with you though that that particular hardship is probably a blessing in disguise.</p>
<p>Classicalmama: your post startled me…the first time I scanned it I thought “People hunt chickens and pigs? Where on earth does she live?” LOL. Time for a nap, I think!! :)</p>
<p>Ha! And I’ve just been teaching the importance of writing parallel sentences. Correction: hunt deer and quail (and bears, but bear meat, ish!) and raise their own chickens and pigs. Beverly Hillbillies, northern style, that’s us!</p>
<p>Please. I don’t want to be known as the BS bag lady. We aren’t in any danger of starvation, we’ve just made some choices that make peculiar sense to us. There was a thread quite a while back about what BS families are doing to make it all possible, [thread=1241313]Frugality tips please[/thread], and there were some pretty interesting and excellent suggestions there. Seems all but the wealthiest among us are making sacrifices; ours are no less admirable than what many others here are doing.</p>
<p>But, classicalmama, I hadn’t thought of stalking the local game – perhaps we can learn to like lizard. Better wipe off the fancy eatin’ table.</p>
<p>Back to OP: I think there’s a line where schools would think if it’s “reasonable” to apply for FA. To me, if it’s reasonable then even if they might not be able to offer you FA they wouldn’t think you are trying to game the system and therefore question whether you are serious in doing everything you can to make BS possible for your kid. The consensus for that “line” in the world of college seems to be a gross income of 180K. Since I always believe BS in general is more generous than colleges, I’d say 200K of household gross income may be that line for BS. Use it as a reference of course. There are families earning less than that don’t get FA (as some of the posters on this thread can attest to that), and if you look at Exeter’s FA profiler there are families with income of more than 200K that are getting FA. Family circumstances and how they are considered in different schools play a big role in the FA decisions but you will not know how it works out for you unless you try.</p>
I think I would have to follow your lead. </p>