My EFC is so much higher than I expected. Should I have used a consultant?

Applying to College
1

I wonder if i should have paid one of those consultants to do the forms for us. but $3000 to fill out forms seems crazy to me.

2

I doubt it. If you are like us, the consultant that could have helped the most was a financial advisor ten years ago who would have made sure we invested our money in the right kind of accounts and assets to exclude the most from available EFC under the FAFSA formula.

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3

Unless you want to quit your job and give the consultant most of your assets, they can’t lower your EFC. They can, however, look at your kid’s grades and tell you which schools will likely give them a lot of merit aid. Fortunately, you can get the same advice here ob CC for just the cost of reading and responding to posts. Put up a post with all your kid’s stats and that you are seeking merit aid, then be open to what people post. The schools may not be prestige schools, but the merit aid will make them affordable.

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4

I don’t think the FAFSA has loopholes the way taxes may for some :slight_smile: Not sure what a consultant could do.

5

@Summer1974

When you say your Fafsa EFC was higher than you expected…what does that mean?

I think most people are surprised by the amount their EFC is.

A consultant would do you no good. And if you could afford $3000 to have someone fill out the free FAFSA, it’s likely you are not low income, right?

6

The one FAFSA mistake that people seem to easily make concerns rollovers. If you had a rollover and didn’t check the right box it gets included as income and inflates the EFC. This can be corrected by contacting each college your child applied to and have them make the correction.

7

There are lots of mistakes folks can make when completing the fafsa.

  1. Did you use the IRS Data Retrieval tool? If not, print out your form and check every single entry. Check for incorrect placement of decimal points, and added zeros.

  2. If you had a TSA or IRA rollover in 2020, you needed to indicate this by checking a teeny little box on the FAFSA. If not checked, that money is included as income. The colleges can easily correct this.

  3. Make sure you put your parent info under the parent info section only.

  4. Did you include balances in your retirement accounts as assets? If so…that needs to be changed. Money is actual retirement accounts are not counted as assets.

  5. Understand that any contributions you made to your tax deferred retirement accounts are added back in as income. So…your income for FAFSA purposes could be higher than for IRS purposes.

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