FAFSA, CCS, you loans and your savings

thumper1
Sun, 15 Sep 2019 17:52:51 +0000

Should consider to pay off house and car before filling FAFSA and CCS to reduce “savings”?

The bulk of the need based aid calculation is based on your income.

Do you have all that money in liquid accounts to pay off those loans?

Keep in mind that some CSS Profile schools use the equity in your primary residence to some degree when calculating their need based aid awards. You might just be trading a savings account asset for a home equity asset…and that would gain you nothing in terms of need based aid…except that your savings is liquid and available…and home equity would only be useful if you sell your house or take out a home equity loan.

Free advice that I’m going to paraphrase from another poster. Do not do anything for financial aid gain that you weren’t planning to do anyway. So, if you were not planning to pay off that house and car loan…don’t do it just because you think it will give you more need based aid, because it might not.

If your kids attend colleges that don’t guarantee to meet full need for all students, all these financial gymnastics might yield you $0 in more need based aid.

With one student in college and ah income of $200,000, it’s unlikely that you will see need based aid at most colleges.

Figure out how much you can pay annually…and then let your kid know now! Let them know that acceptances without enough aid to attend will need to be dropped from consideration.

Look for places with guaranteed need based aid based on stats, or schools that are within your price point.

If you tell folks here your price point, and your kids SAT or ACT score and GPA, I’m sure they can give you suggestions re: places where your budget can be met.

ETA…I found this from you…

Child has relatively strong SAT. Math 790. English 760

1550 SAT? Is that from one sitting? If so, look immediately at University of Alabama where your kid would get great merit aid assuming GPA is as high. Look at University of Arizona, Arizona State, University of New Mexico…all places where she would get great merit aid.

All have very fine engineering programs!

One last thing…yes, you MIGHT see additional aid when you have multiple kids in college…but I would suggest you not count on this. Life happens, and sometimes kids don’t go to college, or they enlist in the military, or go to trade school. Or delay their entry to college for a few years for some reason.