Would marrying for financial aid be a bad decision?

<p>I was wondering would it be unreasonable to decide to marry early (age 20-22) to receive financial aid? (Please no lectures on the sanctity of marriage)</p>

<p>Just wondering because I receive no financial aid whatsoever. I pay full tuition minus a very small amount of scholarships all by myself but no aid because I'm still considered a dependent.</p>

<p>Declaring independence seems like its harder because when i move out, i would live paycheck by paycheck whereas if I married my partner, we could move in together and split the monthly rent+bills and I'd be able to have more financial security this way (I did rough calculations for per month for rent, food, bills, and gas).</p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

<p>Would you want to marry this person anyway in the future or would this marriage be completely for financial aid? I think if you have been with your partner for awhile and plan on living with them anyway, there is nothing wrong with getting married. If you do not see a future with this person I would suggest not marrying them.</p>

<p>Much depends on the specific financial aid policy of your own college/university. Some will not allow a change of status after enrollment. Others will. To get a sense of how this will affect your eligibility for funds that are determined by the FAFSA, print out the formula, and do the math: <a href=“http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/091312EFCFormulaGuide1314.pdf[/url]”>http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/091312EFCFormulaGuide1314.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I would be marrying my boyfriend of two, almost three years. We planned on getting married after both graduated, but we both are getting no aid since we are dependent. </p>

<p>Our combine income would roughly be $40,000/year (me about 25-30k a year and him about 10-15k)? I’m not sure how that pans out FAFSA/EFC/aid-wise.</p>

<p>Never mind.</p>

<p>@happymomof1 thank you for the link!</p>

<p>But overall – is the idea of marrying for financial aid a bad one? Would it just be better to take out some loans / pay completely in full (and have very little play money)?</p>

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<p>From a federal aid perspective, it is really not going to help your cause because as young people you will have a lower asset protection threshold because you have more years until retirement ahead of you. You would not be eligible for a 0 EFC, even if you have other qualifying factors, because your spouse is your only dependent. You would not be gaining too much more that what you are getting now in financial aid as most likely you are not going to receive pell, you would just get 4k more in loans as an independent student.</p>

<p>For schools that give their own institutional aid, many already have policies in place that state if you start as a dependent student, you finish as a dependent student even if you meet the requirements that make you independent for federal aid. If you attend school that gives need based financial aid, once you get married you will need to include the income assets for you, your spouse and your parents (your spouse would have to do the same thing; include your assets, his assets and his parent’s assets).</p>

<p>Thanks for the info, sybbie719. Sorry if I sound stupid, but what exactly do assets consist of? Do they take into consideration parents refusing to pay for college? Sorry – even after 3 years of FAFSA, I don’t really understand it LOL. </p>

<p>Ideally, if we follow through with marriage (after much thinking of course), we would move out and pay everything on our own. Rent, food, bills, etc. </p>

<p>My college allows us to declare independence and file a form to change/reconsider aid for special circumstances. Our school, I am pretty sure, gives out money all based on need.</p>

<p>Financial aid formulas that are based on your parents income only consider if the parents can pay, according to the formula. It won’t vary if the parents won’t pay. Otherwise parents of all incomes will just say they won’t pay so the student gets free funds.</p>

<p>Does your school meet 100% demonstrated need?</p>

<p>Does your school grant need based institutional aid?</p>

<p>Does your school require the FAFSA only for financial aid or does it require the CSS profile or its own institutional form in addition to the FAFSA</p>

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<p>In short, yes.</p>

<p>If you plan on building a life with this person, I think it’s as good of an idea as any to get married. </p>

<p>A relationship that you don’t envision ending is a prerequisite, but that relationship is totally separate from the marriage (depending on your religion). In my view the marriage is the creation of a binding legal and economic unit that is recognized by the law as a single entity. It is also the expected relationship, though certainly not the only one, through which children are born where both parents maintain responsibility. </p>

<p>If you already have a marriageable relationship, then you need to do the math to see if the financial aid benefits that you can get now outweigh the additional tax penalty that you will pay when you both start working. Basically, the tax rates are progressive meaning that as your income increases, each incremental step may be taxed at a higher rate. Married couples often end up with higher taxes then they would have gotten had they stayed single because all of the second income is taxed at a higher rate, though the brackets are spaced further apart. For young professional couples this is often thousands per year.</p>

<p>There’s nothing particularly wrong with marrying in your early 20s, as long as you’re not doing it for financial aid purposes. Over time, being married (once and forever) is financially advantageous to being single. But don’t marry just for short-term financial benefit. Youthful jailbreak marriages to establish financial and psychological independence from one’s parents usually don’t last. Divorce is really expensive.</p>

<p>lullabies: How do you make $25k-$30k per year? It it earned income or unearned income?</p>

<p>I would run the financial aid calculators assuming you did get married and see.</p>

<p>I got married right after college because I needed health insurance and he was employed and I was not (we were 21 and 22). It’s been 25 years. I don’t agree that financial aid is a bad reason to get married, especially if you are both on board with the idea. I do think that you might not want to advertise that fact to any religious family members, AND you need to either elope or have a small wedding. Elope and have a big reception after college, once you guys get jobs.</p>

<p>We even were living together, and still had to get married because of the insurance. Living together without getting married to share expenses would NOT affect your status as a dependent, based on my experience in junior and senior years of college.</p>

<p>There usually is on campus married housing that might be a better deal than your average apartment.</p>

<p>Another way to “work the system” is for one of you to get a job at the university you are going to. I went to a pretty good private school that way, the job paid $11,000 per year, but the tuition benefits were well over $20,000 per year (back when).</p>

<p>'Course if your respective parents don’t want you to get married, they can bribe you by paying for your college :)</p>

<p>@sybbie719: They meet about 70-75% demonstrated need according to stats. I’m not sure about the institutional aid, but the FA office told me they offer grants based on EFC. So the lower the EFC, the more likely you’ll receive a grant. And we do FAFSA only. </p>

<p>@Madison85: Earned income. </p>

<p>I did a quick financial aid calculator thing, not sure how accurate it is, but it estimated my EFC to be 0. However, my income from this year is double (new job yay!) so my taxes next year would reflect that. I based my financial aid calculator with my last year’s income. I did a rough estimate on my taxes/this year’s income and my EFC changed to 1000-ish. It’s a significant difference because my EFC under my mom is 9-10k.</p>