<p>Will Brown re-evaluate their financial aid award (in the good direction!) for subsequent years? We are paying about 50% of our take home pay, 35% of gross pay, for my D’s first year.</p>
<p>It NEVER gets better…</p>
<p>No, usually gets worse as loans increase… But 50% of takehome pay sounds way too high. We pay about 1/3 of our takehome pay -exactly what our FAFSA EFC is. Does your financial aid mirror your EFC?</p>
<p>Ha, our EFC EXCEEDS take-home pay! We’ve obviously saved too much…</p>
<p>motherdear:</p>
<p>Wow… if your EFC exceeds your take home pay, has one of you stopped working or retired? </p>
<p>Or, did you put money in your child’s name??? (I think “non rich people” are learning to keep college money in parents names. And some are trying to spend kid’s college account down the first year (using more than the 35% or so that FAFSA recommends) so kid will qualify for more in subsequent years. After all, why take out loans if money is sitting in kid’s account.)</p>
<p>Our EFC was estimated at about $90K. I’m a SAH mom, H is active -duty.</p>
<p>I think we did save too much in kid’s name. When we set up the UFGM acct. the 35% rule wasn’t in place for FAFSA (or I just didn’t know about it). Child also worked “too much” in jr. yr. ''05 because of a summer job and spring semester congressional appt. </p>
<p>This will not be happening with subsequent kids (as much savings in their SSNs).</p>
<p>Motherdear:</p>
<p>Wow!! That is the highest EFC I’ve seen from a ‘regular family". My brother also didn’t know that money in his young kids’ names will be counted so high when they become “college age”. So, he is either moving his three older kids’ money into the youngest’s account (with a private notation as to how much goes to which child) or just moving all the kids’ money to one account with parents’ names). Never in his wildest dreams did he think that having kids’ accounts would cause FAFSA to think all that $$ should be used solely for college. His intent was for the money to be used to buy their first cars or as down payments for their first homes.</p>
<p>to OP:
Some families spend down their kid’s college account down the first year (using more than the 35% or so that FAFSA recommends - it’s only a recommendation) so kid will qualify for more FA in subsequent years. This means if a kid has $50K in his college fund and his freshman year costs 45K, then 45K is withdrawn from the account. Therefore, when FAFSA form is filled out the following year, there is only $5K in college acct and kid can qualify for more FA. There is no reason to take out loans the first year in college if the money is sitting in kid’s college acct.</p>
<p>Thanks. We (I) did make the UGMA mistake, although it is not a huge account.</p>
<p>Our out of pocket PAYMENT next year will be about 2/3 of our take home pay. Our two kids do NOT attend schools that meet 100% of need. We’re not quite sure where all that money is going to come from yet, but we’ll figure it out. Our out of pocket expense will be almost $80,000. You do the math!! EFC…hah. Ours is $20000 per child.</p>
<p>thumper – yikes!</p>
<p>Hope you like peanut butter sandwiches…</p>
<p>Are your kids taking out any loans to help with this?</p>
<p>We will spend down Oldest Child’s acct first. That will about 3 semesters of her tuition. We live in a state where the top 2 state schools are very selective, even for IS residents so Child was WL at one and rejected at the other. We are pursuing the WL.</p>
<p>My H and I and our sibs all went to private colleges on our parents’ dime so we are in that mindset and that’s why we started saving. Our families were basic middle-class, not wealthy.</p>
<p>AFAIK, we can’t transfer funds from UGMA accts from 1 kid to another. Needless to say we stopped contributing to both kids accts when we realized the 35% assessment.</p>