Does high % of income deferral effect EFC under CSS/ PROFILE

twoinanddone
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 20:01:36 +0000

I don’t think it is ‘gaming’ the system. It is the system. There are a lot of things that are unfair to one group or another. IMO, single parents are very disadvantaged on the AOTC as it doesn’t matter if you have 5 kids in college or 1, you get no AOTC at $90k in income, which isn’t a particularly high income when you are supporting a family. You could have a single mother supporting 5 people, 4 of them in college, and get no AOTC while a family of 3 earning $150k per year with one in college getting the full AOTC. Unfair. People in high COL areas feel they are disadvantaged in the EFC calculations.

It’s the system. You have to set yourself up in the best way possible.

Doing financial planning to get the most in FA is good money management. If a family decides to put the 529 accounts in the children’s names as owners, that allows them not to report younger children’s account on an older sibling’s FAFSA. The downside to that is there is less flexibility of moving the money around. What is good for one family is not good for another, but it is not ‘gaming’ the system.

I don’t worry about other students not getting the aid if my child does. Aid isn’t always redistributed if the aid is not accepted by a student (work study, SEOG). Many school offer the merit aid assuming only a certain percentage will accept admissions, and then do not reaward it.