Cal Grant, Blue & Gold questions -- need serious help!

theatermajormama
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:58:52 +0000

We were happy our son got into UCLA, and now the challenge is paying for it.

We make just over 80k (adjusted gross income, which I think is what FAFSA goes by, correct)?

Therefore, we did not qualify for a Cal Grant. I also saw that we were slightly over the 60k in “assets” that disqualifies you.

We decided not to even contribute to our IRAs this year, because we’re trying to scape up every cent for college, and we heard that FAFSA does not deduct your IRA contributions (?) so we would still be above $80 as far as FAFSA is concerned.

Now today I read that Blue & Gold goes by different rules – even if we don’t qualify for Cal Grant (because our “huge life savings of $60k”), we would qualify for Blue & Gold if our income was under $80k.

Is this true? And if so, do they go by adjusted gross income? And if so, do they go by your “real” adjusted gross income or do they do some tricky thing like adding your IRA contributions back in, which is what FAFSA does when figuring your expected family contribution?

In other words, should we have contributed to our IRAs to bring it under $80k? If I have missed the boat on some decent source of financial aid, I’m kicking myself right now.

Is there any way to rectify the situation? We could still, for instance, contribute to the IRAs as previously planned by the usual deadline, file an amended tax return and an amended FAFSA – but I don’t know if it would do any good at this point.

Does anyone have experience in this program that would help me sort out what we should do? Thanks!

PS Even if we got the full tuition / Blue & Gold, the amount we would still have to pay, with room and board and all that, is still greater than the family contribution FAFSA came up with. So, even if we do get Blue & Gold, we’ll still have to pay more than FAFSA says.

In other words, how FAFSA figures it shouldn’t matter–if FAFSA continues to count the IRA money, that wouldn’t hurt us – my main question is: What does Blue & Gold “count” as your $80k (adjusted gross? with or without your IRA contributions)? And can we try to rectify the situation and have a chance if we present amended numbers?

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