What did I do wrong on my FAFSA?

Paying for College
1

My second child is going off to college this fall, and I’m confused about our FAFSA numbers.
Last year my oldest was a freshman and her FAFSA was about 5000.
This year she is a sophomore and I’ll have 2 in college. Both of their FAFSA scores are over 10000.
How can that be? Our income did not change substantially from the previous year.

2

By any chance…did you do an IRA or TSA rollover in 2016?

3

Nope

4

What do you mean by this:

And this:

Do you mean that’s your Expected Family Contribution (EFC)?

5

Yes

6

Do you still have the Student Aid Report from last year? Compare it to this year’s. See where the numbers are different.

7

That’s a good idea. Thanx : )

8

Were your contributions to tax deferred retirement accounts the same?

9

Yes, I think I’ve figured out the difference by looking at last year’s vs. this year’s FAFSA. Thank you!

10

Whew. So can you amend ithem both and resubmit?

11

I’m not sure. I think I made a big mistake on last year’s FAFSA : (

12

A mistake big enough to be 4x the EFC for last year? If last year’s was $5000, this year’s would have to be $20k for you to have 2 in school and get $10k for each.

13

I don’t know. I’m a pastor and I have a housing allowance (about $30k). When I did the financial part of the FAFSA last year, I just transferred the financial numbers from my taxes. But when I did it this year, and I transferred the numbers from taxes, and I noticed that the housing allowance was empty, so I put it in manually.

14

@twoinanddone The $10k refers to EFC, not the amount of financial aid received. His EFC doubled, from $5k to $10k.

15

No, he had one in school last year ($5k EFC) and has two in this year ($10k each). When you have two in school, the EFC is about half for each kid (if their assets and earnings are the same)

16

Anyone know how to tag this OP…??

I don’t think a $30,000 increase in income would result in $15,000 additional EFC…but I could be wrong about that!

You CAN update the current 2017-2018 FAFSA.

  1. What is the cost of attendance at child 1 college? Does the school meet full need, and did you also have to complete a CSS Profile?
  2. When you did the 2017-2018 FAFSA, did you link to the IRS DRT? If not, did your school require a text transcript be sent?
  3. Did your kiddo receive any federally funded need based aid...a portion of the Pell? SEOG?

If your college doesn’t meet full need, it is possible that their institutional aid would not be “adjusted” for the current year.

However, if your kiddo received $900 in Pell Grant money to which she was not entitled, that would likely need to be paid back.

17

Thank you thumper1, this is really helpful. I’ll talk with the financial aid dept. today.

18

Do,you have a copy of your kids financial aid award from last year? Look at that!

19

@thumper We’re also a clergy family. Housing allowance isn’t just an increase in income by $30K, it’s an increase in untaxed income (clergy pay SE taxes on housing, but not income tax). OP already got the benefit of the SE deduction as that affects his or her AGI, which was on the return. While I wouldn’t expect the EFC to increase by 50% of the housing allowance, I would expect a bigger increase than with $30K of regular income.

20

Thanks @ordinarylives