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No, it is largely OBJECTIVE, with a set of standards developed from objective numerical guidelines which are applied uniformly across the board, in a set formula -- and it happens to be tiered to a lower-middle class living standard than to a higher one. </p>
<p>It is ridiculous for people to argue that $65K is not enough to live on when Garland & I obviously live on less --- I'm not dead, my bills are paid, I've got a car in good working order and a house with a roof over my head. </p>
<p>The "self-sufficiency" numbers are not a concept I made up -- it is an objective standard, arrived at by agencies which specialize in such things, which is used to arrive at higher numbers than the federal poverty index, and is supposed to essentially give the figures necessary for meeting basic needs in a given area. (food, clothing, shelter, taxes, necessary insurance, day-to-day living expenses -- NOT meals out, movies, retirement savings, or college, which are all something beyond basic needs). The federal poverty index numbers are the even lower numbers that are used to determine things like eligibility for food stamps or free lunches at school. </p>
<p>Those who rail against the college financial aid system do not seem to understand it. For example, as Oldinjersey noted, it DOES have a subjective component that allows financial aid officers to take into account special circumstances, such as excess medical bills or the need to support an infirm family member. It is that subjective element that allowed my daughter to qualify for a Pell grant this year -- the financial aid people at her school used info about our expenses from my schedule C to offset the income, and revised the FAFSA that I had previously submitted. </p>
<p>All the federal aid put together won't make a dent in the tuition at Harvard. If Harvard announces that henceforth every family with less than a $60K income can attend for free -- or if they extended the same largess to families with a $120K income -- it would have nothing to do with the federal aid system. It is just the way a private college determines pricing in order to enable desired students to attend. And even though I make much less than $60K, my daughter doesn't get to attend school for free, because that's a Harvard program and she doesn't attend Harvard. </p>
<p>I had a FAFSA EFC last year of $5600, which Barnard recalculated to around $2800 -- and Barnard expects us to actually contribute around $13K to her education; Chicago would have wanted us to contribute around $25K. The UC's --which do rely solely on FAFSA -- wanted around $7K. Those numbers are based on 2 in college, and my son turns 24 this year, so he drops off the calculation for next year and my costs will go up -- my guess is that I will have a FAFSA EFC of around $12K and end up paying Barnard around $20K for my d's sophomore year. </p>
<p>So what it all means is one figure to determine eligibility for subsidized loans, and a figure at least $8K higher at a "100% need" school to actually pay for college, which I can fill (if I have to) out of my $50K income with a PLUS loan. I'm sure I would have enough out of my current income and assets to meet my FAFSA EFC of $5600 -- but none of the colleges offered my daughter financial aid that would meet that figure. My kid was among the top 5 in her high school graduating class, with good enough credentials to be accepted at Barnard & Chicago. What about the kids who are merely in the top 10% of the class, with B+ averages? Where does the financial aid "system" leave them? </p>
<p>The answer is that those kids don't get into 100% need schools - so they are not attending colleges that will fill the gap between federal need based aid and actual cost of attendance, and they instead attend the type of schools where the federal aid is at least enough to pay their tuition costs. </p>
<p>I'm not complaining about the extra costs I have to pay at Barnard -- I never in my wildest dreams thought my daughter would be accepted there or afford to attend; I spent all last year trying to fire up my daughter's enthusiasm for UC Santa Barbara. And I'm very willing to pay the difference for the Ivy League caliber education. </p>
<p>But I am irked when people have so much, much <em>more</em> than I do in the way of material assets and who don't understand the system, create fictionalized scenarios based on the false notion that they are being penalized for their savings. It adds insult to injury when someone opines that an amount of money far in excess than I ever earn is not nearly enough to make ends meet. I am keenly aware of the plight of the probably 40% of the populace that has less than I do -- and I don't envy them one bit. But it doesn't seem that the 6-figure earners have any real concept of how MOST Americans live. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that if I suddenly had an increase of after-tax income to $100K, I'd probably come out at the end of the year with $50K to spare, because my lifestyle only costs about $50K to sustain. I understand that if I made that kind of money regularly, I'd probably experience an upward creep in expenses, as I started to take more and more thing for granted -- maybe I'd start to get my hair & nails done regularly, or shop for clothes someplace more expensive than Ross; maybe I'd hire a housekeeper to come in an clean my house once or twice a week; maybe I'd add HBO to my cable package. Pretty soon it would probably cost me $70 or $80K to pay all my annual expenses.... but I don't think that would make me forget that I was better off than almost everyone else. To me, more money would mean that I would have the ability to buy more things with it, and I would be grateful for the opportunity to spend my own dollars on the things that I want. I already am, because from where I sit, a $50K annual income actually feels pretty good -- maybe because I spent so many years living on less.</p>