<p>I’m with you, Overtheedge and 3boys! Us: one young child with a serious medical problem, so lots of uncovered health care costs and my wife’s forced abandonment of her career (and 40% of our income) at age 42. Plus, my chronically ill mother moving in with us. That forced a) helping with her living expenses, b) some physical re-design of our house, thereby lowering it’s value, because it is so specific to us, and we’re now a bit house-poor, and c) eventually there were home health aides and then nursing home costs. So, savings wiped out, income decreased, house not very salable because of all of the very specific modifications, and an EFC that we won’t be able to meet because of my income and that not all of these factors are taken into account by FAFSA and net price calculators. </p>
<p>Paying for college is going to be TOUGH. I don’t expect any sympathy, because many have it worse than me and in the case of my mother’s impact on our finances that was a conscious decision over which we had control. As the two of you have pointed out, though, what gets us furious is to be labelled as selfish or lazy. Maybe my kids will go to relatively low-cost public universities. Maybe they’ll get enough merit aid to go to more of what they see as a dream school. If they do, it’s not charity - it’s the school making an investment that it thinks will pay off for it in terms of inflating the school’s stats, adding a very talented kid to the student body, and/or having a successful and perhaps wealthy alum to hit up for donations in a few decades.</p>