I would add…living separately once married can be very costly. Some colleges have married student housing. Some don’t. In some places, regular rentals are very costly. In others, they aren’t so bad.
There are spouses out there who get their bachelors degrees, and find jobs, and willingly relocate to be where their doctor spouse ends up…and that spouse with the degree supports that medical school student.
But for you, that is years down the road with no certainties. Right now…you know you want to go to undergrad school…so concentrate on that.
I don’t understand this either. Let’s say I’m in med school and he’s working. We would each have expenses. I get that the expenses would be combined if we got married, but I don’t get why they would be increased. Of course we might need to rent a room instead of an apartment, but again I don’t see how they would cost more than each of us sharing a room with someone else somewhere.
Some medical school students at some places share apartments or houses with 4 or sometimes more people. In high rent areas, this is sometimes the only way to keep costs down.
Most married couples would prefer to have a place NOT shared with others…and in some areas, this can be very costly.
Also, in some places owning and parking a car can have extremely high costs…and one or both of you could need a car if living off campus.
OP- wondering why you would post your question on a message board if you weren’t interested in hearing about the risks and downsides to your plan.
If you guys want to get married, you don’t need the approval of a bunch of people you don’t know to do so. Just get married if you’re of age in your respective states, and deal with the consequences down the road.
To me- the act of asking for advice from total strangers suggests a certain ambivalence. So if you’re wondering “hey, this seems like a great way to get more aid and reduce our loans” you’ve now heard from folks that it ain’t necessarily so, as the song goes, you may NOT get more aid. And there are other complications that as teenagers you may not have considered. And that living apart for some or all of your schooling, professional training, etc. sounds romantic and glamourous. But those of us who have done it know that it is tiring and expensive and grinding on a relationship-- and DEFINITELY not a way to save up money for the future. Spouse and I lived apart for various reasons over the years and if you think one of you wants to get on an airplane on a Friday afternoon when all you want to do is sleep after a long tiring week… when you know that you are BACK on the plane on Sunday… it’s awful. Two married people living in the same city aren’t spending every nickel of their discretionary income visiting each other.
But you do you. Plenty of people get married for lots of different reasons- you doing it to figure out a workaround on the financial aid formulas is just another one of those reasons. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn’t. Just like everything else in life.
@aunt_bea said that getting married but not living together would be considered fraud. So, I asked why that would be when I know many married couples who don’t live together and it isn’t considered fraud. I didn’t say it wouldn’t be hard or expensive, I asked about why it would be considered fraud.
I learned on this thread that it’s possible that schools that meet full need won’t give a benefit to married couples. So, if we get into a combination of schools where this might be a possibility, then we will need to ask that question, and other questions like how it would impact financial help from our parents before we commit. Now that I know that, I feel like there isn’t anything to do but wait to see where I get in.
But then people seem to have moved on to saying that our original plan of getting married after undergraduate doesn’t make sense, and I am asking questions to understand that.
I get that if there is a period of separation, that’s really hard. I am not glamorizing it but I don’t really understand why living separately when married would be either harder or more expensive than living separately from a long term partner you love.
I also don’t really understand the logic that living with a husband and two other people in a 2 BR, is more expensive than living with a partner and two other people in a 2 BR, or each of us living in separate 2 BRs with 3 roommates each. I do understand that in any of those situations I would probably wish we had a 1 BR to ourselves, but I don’t understand how being married makes it worse.
I came here to ask a specific question, and I got a specific answer which is great. Now this seems to have led to a different discussion, which is fine, but I want to understand what people are saying.
You do you. Filing federal, state, local taxes, health insurance, other employee benefits such as disability, legal rights, credit issues, potential legal liability- most of these do not treat a romantic relationship the same as either an official domestic partnership or a marriage. Whether or not you care (and yes, if someone believes a spouse is getting medical benefits to which they are not entitled because the marriage is fraudulent you’d better believe the insurance company would investigate) is entirely up to you. And depends on the state where you live. And depends on whether one party has more money than the other (in case of someone being sued, they’re going after the deep pocket.) Etc.
If none of this matters to you- again, ignore the free advice you are getting from total strangers on the internet. But I’d be sitting my kid down with a lawyer and a financial advisor before I signed off on a newly graduated HS kid getting married no matter how much they loved each other and no matter how much they believed they’ve found their soul mate. Good luck to you both.
I said, “MIGHT” consider fraud if you are getting married to get additional aid. If you have two residences, you don’t know if the school will support giving you additional monies to fund two residences when married students are typically in married student housing or in one off-campus apartment living together. I dont think they’ll look favorably on seeing 2 sets of household expenses. Every university is different. You need to ask.
If you love each other, and have to marry each sooner than later, then that’s your choice. If you expect to be rewarded for it, monetarily, by a university, that may not happen.
As it happens, the universities are on budgets. They tend to be sticklers for sticking to those budgets. Most of my friends, in those early marriages, didn’t really get much of a bump in funding, unless they were assigned to Married Student housing because the rents were cheaper and the housing areas were quieter.
You do you. Be aware that if you apply for FA as a married couple, each university will have different methods to assess if you will qualify for any funding benefits.
The assumption is that 2 married people under the age of 24 where that means a different financial status are going to be living together as evidence of that special status.
If you marry and live separately and/or still depend on parents, it may start a verification wrt financial benefits that may void the benefit. Basically any sort of aid you get comes with strings and hoops to jump through. The more you get, the more stringent the strings and the more complicated the hoops.
As you know, if the 2 married people/domestic partners aren’t living in married housing and aren’t attending college and don’t receive any sort of aid (food stamps, federal aid) there’s no control of anything. They live their lives in any way they please as long as they don’t impinge on other people’s lives.