???
If you want help, please provide the answers to the questions that people have asked…
how much can you contribute each year?
what is your child’s major and career goal?
when will your child be taking the ACT/SAT? Having a high GPA is a dime a dozen these days. Schools like Yale want very high test scores AND a fabulous resume as well.
BTW…your $4k net cost at Yale seems like a mistake. Yale tends to have a 10% net cost for families with a $200k income…so about $20k.
Perhaps the OP is paying for a NYC private school and the tuition can be reallocated. It’s the current situation for a BIL and working out just fine.
OP. Good luck and keep plugging in the NPC figures.
Yes, you are in for a rough time for FA. However, I am very sympathetic to your high COL area-- high tax too! What everyone else says here about the assets, FAFSA, and CSS all seem like good advice. Can’t change what has been saved or not up to this point so do the best you can starting now.
FAFSA has a formula to calculate the EFC (expected family contribution). It has an income contribution and an asset contribution. Assuming your AGI is 200k, you need to add back any retirement plan contribution for the year to get to the total income. Then there is an income allowance which is normally the total of your income tax, state allowance and social security tax allowance, income protection allowance, employment expense allowance, etc. Total income minus the income allowance is the available income that can be used to pay tuitions. Add in asset (0 in this case) and lookup that number from a table to get the parent contribution. I’d think in this case, maybe roughly a 30%. If you only have 1 kid in college, this will be the expected family contribution. You should be able to get some aid from good aid schools. The whole formula is public information.
Depending on your kid’s interests, there are some fantastic bargains at CUNY. There are people going into big time debt for their kid to study finance at a private U for example- when Baruch has a program which is more highly rated and an incredible value. If your kid has the stats for Macauley honors- wow.
You’re likely going to have a FAFSA EFC of somewhere between $50k to 70k per year.
? Did the SUNY show merit? If not, I can’t see how you’d get that result
I like the refer to the current group applying to college “recession survivors.” These kids grew up during the recession which was very regional. Some areas were hit much harder than others. I understand if you (or anyone else) wasn’t able to save for college. I know in our family if the economy was what it is now while our kids were growing up, we would have been able to save more.
I don’t think you will get any financial aid but it sounds like you will get merit money. SUNY will be your best value but you never know what merit will do for you at private schools. Good luck.
@AndrewGratitude SUNY won’t come in at that price without merit. Is the NYS STEM award being included? Some of the SUNY schools give merit specific to that school…but not all.
The best advice is to use the NPCs for every school of interest. If you give us more information such as your budget (can you afford to contribute anything?), gpa, test scores etc we can suggest some schools.
Yale seems to be a mistake. I just filled out the NPC for a $200,000 income, no assets, no home ownership, etc one student in school…and got a cost of $33,800.
It appears that the student is a current junior. Are there test scores yet? What kind of classes? Regents? AP? Being a straight A student is great (congrats!) but doesn’t give us enough information.
Without more information, it will be difficult to help.
Seconding @blossom CUNY is an amazing, affordable option. I know a lot of city kids may not want to stay, but a friend’s son got the Macauley Honors and it was amazing. I believe free, plus a study abroad stipend. He’s been gainfully employed in the NYC finance scene since graduation.
Thanks for all your comments. It’s embarassing, to say the least, when you have not saved for you only kid’s college. Your comments have been so helpful and given with such respect that I, well, I’m just grateful.
For those kind enough to ask–11th grader, 4 APs (including physics) this year, Student play lead as a soph last year and again this year (both music and drama), 3rd year speech (DM-broke once…so far!), 96 avg to date in a specialized HS of about 2500 kids. Thanks again!
No need to be embarrassed about college savings. The very vast majority of families have no college savings…or if they have college savings, it’s not very much.
As an example, the Thumper family didn’t have a nickel of college savings. Zero. But both parents were professionals employed full time. One income was used to pay family expenses. The other was dedicated solely to college costs for seven years. For us, that plan worked just fine as the one parent income was sufficient to pay the bills. And the other was sufficient to pay all of the college costs at pricey private colleges for seven years out of current income only.
You are so…so fortunate to have the many SUNY colleges, and CUNY as instate modestly priced options. Once your kiddo has ACT or SAT scores, it will be easier to point you in the direction of finding potential merit aid which could make college affordable.
I would suggest that you formulate a budget for college…in other words, how much can you dedicate to college costs annually for your kid. That number will be important at some point.
We didn’t have saving, either, used it for private hs (owing to issues with the local public.) An expensive area, though nowhere near what NYC costs.
We used income, the kids took the student loans, but we did take modest Parent Plus loans. (Very modest, in comparison to what some tell.)
My caution is always: no more parent loans than you can project paying back in a few years. We knew the larger income was secure. We knew we could afford the rest of living expenses and the payback.
Most have not saved. Right now, that’s not the issue at all.
The QUESTION is… when your only child goes off to college, HOW MUCH CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE EACH YEAR? $5k? $10k? $20k? More? Less? WHAT???
^^^ This is so important.
Again, estimate how much each year you can contribute towards college.
If you don’t know, look at it this way… how much EACH MONTH could you contribute towards college? You know your situation. If you literally have ZERO left over each month to put towards college, then that’s going to be a big issue.
I have a non-traditional job with many highs and lows. However, to answer your question, $4-$5K per month.
You can pay $4000 a month out of current earnings?
Ok…here is my suggestion. Start putting $4000 a month in a dedicated savings account…start this month. Do this for 6 months. See if you really think it will be sustainable for 4 years of college.
After 2 years (about how long you have until college time comes), you will have over $180,000 in a savings at $4000 a month. That’s $45000 a year for college. If you can then continue to dedicate $40,000 annually (that’s a tad less than $4000 a month), you should be able to cover college costs at most places.
Your child is a junior and seems to be a good student, but right now doesn’t have test scores. I am quite certain that there are a few SUNY schools that he/she would get into and like.
If you can save $4000 a month starting right now…junior year…then by the time your child goes away to school you will be able to cover the cost of SUNY for 4 years. If you keep adding to this you will have more options.
Seems unlikely that a top HS student wouldn’t have at least 1 PSAT score, if not 2. Is that not a thing in NY? Sometimes it is worth coming to CC to see what a top student from a top school really looks like.
Please clarify. Are you saying that you can contribute $4k-5k PER MONTH towards college out of current income? Meaning that you can pay $48k-60k per year towards college?
If so, and your child is a junior, then test that ability by NOW saving $4k-5k per month in a 529. That will let you know if you can sustain such a contribution for 48 straight months.
Of course, keep in mind that nearly all families have a few unexpected big expenses come up each year: dental work, health issue, etc, so be sure to take those into acct.