<p>MomOFour, I made this post because I read in the U Wash. St louis section. A student with 2350 SAT, great GPA, etc did not get one penny of scholarship. The parent said because they pay off their house etc and have a high EFC. That got me thinking again.</p>
<p>garland, my point is that you should do free spending. Because you could still send your kid to their first choice without paying a dime.</p>
<p>See sly_vt’s example. The more you save, the more you pay. PERIOD.</p>
<p>Laserbrother - Why don’t you use the Princeton financial aid calculator with your actual figures to see the actual results for your situation. An early poster did this and gave some example results and you can do this yourself instead of endlessly posting the same thing here.</p>
<p>I get your point, lb.</p>
<p>I think it is:</p>
<p>1) offensive
2)wrong</p>
<p>garland, my apology if I offended you. I just wanted to vent a little and did not mean to offend anyone. </p>
<p>I guess there are a lot parents here did the samething we did. i.e. when I buy a soda, I put in as much ice and and even some water to dilute it so it will last longer. We saved every penny we could in everyway. </p>
<p>Now come the college application and we found out we are being penalized big time. It is not fair.</p>
<p>No. You are not being penalized.</p>
<p>It has nothing to do with fairness.</p>
<p>You don’t need the money. You have it. Lucky you!</p>
<p>No one is taking anything away from you, or me. We make choices because we can. Lucky us.</p>
<p>In previous posts, you have called yourself “low income” and yet now you’re going on a multi-thousand spending spree.</p>
<p>While you continue to whine about unfairness, there are real, actual lower income people in the country, who can’t dream of having the choices you hold so much contempt for.</p>
<p>Not so lucky them.</p>
<p>Garland, laserbrother is comparing people at the same income level.
For some income levels, it is true that savers will pay more than spenders for college.</p>
<p>That’s the gripe and it is legit. </p>
<p>laserbrother is not saying he should pay less for college than somebody that makes less.</p>
<p>laserbrother, you mentioned Princeton. Did you check Princeton’s calculator?
It will give you a rough idea how much college will cost you.</p>
<p>[The</a> top rate for assessing savings in the parents name is 5.64%](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/savings/accountownership.phtml]The”>http://www.finaid.org/savings/accountownership.phtml)</p>
<p>Student assets are assessed at 20% ( down from 35%)</p>
<p>
What is the difference between you and the wild-spending families you are complaining about? They spent lavishly over a number of years. You plan to blow it all in one binge spending spree. You think that your plan makes you “worthy” of need-based aid, but they are not?</p>
<p>Huh?</p>
<p>dstark. Yep. Everyone’s situation is different.</p>
<p>I still maintain that it is not unfair, and that someone who has as much disposable cash as LB, who thinks that tossing it away to make the limited financial aid that exists possibly available to him, is playing “game the system” to a degree that I think is unwarranted, and possibly ill-thought-out (which doesn’t concern me for him, but with every new thread and post, I feel more and more sorry for his daughter.)</p>
<p>“What is the difference between you and the wild-spending families you are complaining about?”</p>
<p>There won’t be a difference. That’s the point.
Now, laserbrother’s college expenses will be similar to other spendthrifts.</p>
<p>(I’m not saying this strategy is wise).</p>
<p>As a full-pay parent, because we saved for it, I can tell you that it both hurts and feels good. It hurts, because we are not so affluent that it doesn’t affect our own life-style and retirement. It feels good because it is how we choose to spend our money. We pay for our son’s education as well as for the need gap in our grandson’s education.</p>
<p>Because we want to. Even though it hurts. It also feels good and makes us proud. I would venture to say that it feels better to see my $40K+/year go to my son’s tuition than it would feel to see it buy me a new car every year.</p>
<p>If you would enjoy seeing your money go to fancy cars and trips, but cannot enjoy seeing it go to your child’s education — I think therein may be the problem.</p>
<p>I’m not so much offended as worried. I hope you do not go off crazily spending your savings and then find yourself in a really bad spot. Please think this through before a wild spending spree that could put your family in a bad place. I don’t have a solid understanding of financial aid because we’re going to pay full cost (except for any merit aid) and we feel extremely fortunate to have the resources to do this. I can understand your feelings to a certain extent. Just please get better and more complete info before you act on this!</p>
<p>The system is as fair as life ever is. You have been living your life foolishly, moderation, not penny pinching, would have given you a lot more happiness and less stress now. You tried to beat the system instead of letting it work naturally. Let go of your resentment, it won’t change anything for the better. The American Dream always gets modified in the real world. Don’t count on your D getting into the top colleges either, there is a surplus of talented Asian Americans. H and I live far below our large income level by choice (we don’t need all the material goods we could spend money on), our frugal upbringings on different continents may be a reason. We could afford to send S anywhere but he only applied to two top schools and is at the excellent flagship U now. Is his life forever ruined? Are we disappointed? No and yes, but we can’t change the past and need to think forward.</p>
<p>Based on your other posts, it is good you are learning to deal with the realities now. It will be tough, but you can change your attitudes and live the remainder of your life more happily. Your family will benefit also. Even though we are seeing the worst side of you I am hoping we online strangers are able to help you vent and work through your disappointments. Learn to see the bright side of situations- for example, I could complain about how much I pay in taxes, but then I consider that I have the money to pay the taxes and still have plenty left. Instead of looking at how bad your situation is, consider how much better it is than so many others, or how much worse it could have been. </p>
<p>Just spent way too much time with my post, several in between. Keep wrestling with those internal demons and you will enjoy life.</p>
<p>Garland, if two families have the same income for twenty years and one family spends all the money on consumer goods, and the other saves the money and now has to pay more for college, it is unfair. (Just an example of unfairness).</p>
<p>The system we have now to pay for college isn’t perfect. Judgments are made on who is going to pay and how much.</p>
<p>Savers are penalized, but that is the system.</p>
<p>If most of the money is in his daughters name for college- and he is planning on spending it on things for her- then that could be a wise strategy, if as bethie reminds, there are still resources to pay for college if the aid doesn’t come through as expected.</p>
<p>Its perfectly legit to use money from a college fund for a computer for D to use at college for example.
I don’t think I would spend money on a whirlwind vacation that I otherwise hadn’t been planning on, just to see if that would increase need based aid, that seems pretty foolhardy to me, but if you want to spend down your own savings because you feel that you have been living too carefully and want to enjoy it- thats obviously your decision.</p>
<p>But as some schools require financial records not just for the previous year, but for * two* years previous to applying for college- they may ask where your savings went.</p>
<p>I imagine they do that to see if the year that is being scrutinized is abberant. Many parents for example have complained that they received a big bonus that year, which won’t be repeated. But it could also illuminate attempts to artificially lower finances.</p>
<p>Actually, I think what gripes me more is that a person making $100,000 in NYC area, (Bay area, Boston and no doubt some other places) can feel lower middle class where you’d feel rich elsewhere. We save very little beyond what automatically goes into the retirement accounts (maximum allowed). We don’t pinch pennies, but we live in a fairly modest house, in a fairly modest town, keep our cars forever etc. Luckily I inherited some $$ last year that will finance colleges, but I can’t imagine paying our EFCs otherwise.</p>
<p>Realistically of course I know we are very lucky to be making a comfortable income and are happy that we can tell our kids they can go where they like.</p>
<p>But mathmom, if you lived in some of those areas where $100,000 would make you a lot richer, often the jobs in those areas don’t pay that much.</p>
<p>( and thats probably why we are living in LA/NYC/Seattle instead of [here](<a href=“http://www.komotv.com/news/local/6502942.html”>http://www.komotv.com/news/local/6502942.html</a>) )</p>
<p>median house value $100,000-
Median income- less than $40,000
Closest city with over 50,000 population is 59 miles away
75% of residents have a high school degree or higher</p>
<p>laser,</p>
<p>keep in mind that financial aid operated on the premise of :</p>
<p>Cost of attendance - EFC (expected family contribution ) = demonstrated need.</p>
<p>Your EFC is what you will have to pay out of pocket. If you don’t have the money to write this check, then you will have to borrow (foolish choice since you once had the money and now ill no longer have it).</p>
<p>You forget about the parents who on paper the colleges say that they can afford to pay X amount of $$ and then the reality is that they don’t have the money (haven’t saved, too much debt, are not in a position to borrow from their home equity because they can’t afford the increased mortgage payments).</p>
<p>Guess what happens to these students? they go to school other places as colleges do not give you extra money because you cannot afford to pay your EFC.</p>
<p>Laser, it sound like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want your child to have an “elite” school education how ever you don’t want to pay for it (or pay more than someone else is paying). IMHO, I think that you should take the ivies and any school that gives need based aid off of your list since their policies are not radically changing any time soon and look for schools where your D stands a good chance of getting a lot of merit aid.</p>