<p>This question is for the parents who’ve been through this already. FAFSA says our EFC is one number, but when I go through all our monthly bills, I don’t see how it’s possible that we can ever meet that number. And we don’t have an excessive amount of bills, we only have one credit card that we use for gas and groceries, it gets paid off monthly. I guess I can cut cable (although I am the main TV watcher in our house), and our grocery, water and electricity bills should all be lower when D is not at home anymore. But it seems impossible! </p>
<p>How did you meet your EFC? What did you cut, what steps did you take?</p>
<p>EFC is not meant to be met from monthly income alone.
( not what I expected to find out)
It is meant to be met from savings, loans, monthly income and student summer income.
Our daughter earned $3,000 summers that went right to EFC.
She had a workstudy job during school year that paid for books and personal expenses.
We had little we could cut, our house is already less than 1000sq ft, we don’t have cable or credit cards( & internet access is dial up)- we had to refinance our house to access money for college as well as borrow from retirement accounts and take out PLUS loans.
A bit is covered from savings & when we get our income tax refund back we apply it to the loan/retirement ( if it doesn’t get eaten up by need to replace the roof, tires or the electrical system first)</p>
<p>I sound like an 8 yr old boy we met at xmas who told everyone who would listen that his parents wouldn’t get him cable and he was the last one on the planet to have it.
He was not amused when my oldest told him she didn’t have it till she was 24 ;)</p>
<p>It’s impossible out of current income for a lot of people. I read a recommendation that 1/3 should come from savings, 1/3 from current income, and 1/3 from home equity each year. Our family will be looking for 1/3 to come from merit aid because we’d run out of home equity before we’d run out of kids to educate. As for cutting monthly expenses, go over where the extra money goes, not the regular montly bills, but the discretionary income, and make a plan to be misers with that money.</p>
<p>Where did you get the idea that you could just pay for college out of adjustments to your current income and expenses, as if it were another utility bill? That might work for a live at home, community college education, but for live away, 4 year college education, that was probably not a reasonable plan. Most people pay their EFC out of funds they have saved for that purpose.</p>
<p>We have no savings - although we are well above poverty level, we live in an expensive part of the country, and we recently blew through a chunk of money we set aside for college to pay for car repairs (we only have one car, and it’s paid in full). I was a teenage mom, so we were hovering at poverty level for a good chunk of D’s life. I never really thought it would be a monthly bill, just like a utility, but I’m really at a loss to figure out how we are going to meet the EFC. We just don’t have that money.</p>
<p>And remember, too, that the EFC is just an estimate, not a bill you need to write a check for each year. I’ve found that our out-of-pocket costs are less than our EFC, since the colleges (UCLA in our case) estimates of cost of attendance were higher than our son’s actual expenses. There were some items that seemed to be padded a bit-- miscellaneous expenses, transportation, and insurance (which we’d already covered). Even room and board estimates for students living off campus can end up being higher than actual expenses, and the financial aid package is based on the estimates, so there can be a savings there. A student who works and is frugal can really help cut the actual parental contribution.</p>
<p>Its good that as more information comes online, parents can get a better idea of what the obligations will be before teh FAFSA is even filed formally.
Schools that use PROFILE also may tweak the EFC, either by indentifying more expenses to deduct or more assets to cash in.
It also can be a shock to realize that while you are trying to figure out how you will pay EFC, the schools aid offer leaves a gap even higher than EFC.
Lots of ways to reduce it though.
My D took a year off and volunteered with an Americorp program, earning an educational stipend and increasing her list of colleges to include a school that met 100% of EFC.
It is doable, just takes a little extra planning and worrying.</p>
<p>Lots of people AREN’T able to pay their EFC, so you are not alone!</p>
<p>Their kids either end up someplace less expensive (living at home, etc) or the parents take out the dreaded PLUS loan.</p>
<p>It’s a bit of a catch 22 - those of us who did save, end up with very high EFCs (sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy). Those who didn’t save might have to send their kids someplace less expensive than they thought, mortgage their futures, or blow through their retirements (none of which I’d recommend, but, hey, different strokes…).</p>
<p>"We have no savings - although we are well above poverty level, we live in an expensive part of the country, and we recently blew through a chunk of money we set aside for college to pay for car repairs (we only have one car, and it’s paid in full). "</p>
<p>You take out loans, you get new credit cards and don’t pay off the balance each month, you take out a second mortgage, you cut back on your other expenses. That’s how people pay their EFC, the same way most people pay for large purchases like cars or houses – by taking out loans and using credit.</p>
<p>After all, college is something major that will offer benefits to your student for the rest of their life.Consequently, many people decide it’s worth not only cutting back on one’s expenses, working extra jobs, and delaying one’s retirement, but it’s also worht taking out loans, running up credit cards (all within reason) to pay for one’s kid’s college education. </p>
<p>Probably only some low income and middle class people whose kids commute to low cost colleges manage to send their kids to college without doing the kinds of things that I mentioned. [Of course, the wealthy are able to pay EFC with no problem.]</p>
<p>I just filled out the fafsa last night with estimates and I was blown away with the EFC! I really hadn’t expected it to be that high. I knew we weren’t going to be eligible for fed’l money but I was expecting a lower EFC to help with institutional aid. I told D to please take the scholarship apps. seriously and take her time with the essays. We really want her at a smaller and more selective school instead of our enormous state school where the academic advising is terrible, too many TA’s, etc.</p>
<p>It is a shocker for many. What is even worse is for those who do get a low or affordable EFC, and come to find out that their kids’ choices do not give 100% of need, or use another methodology (PROFILE, individual forms) that often comes out more stringent. I don’t know any school off hand that uses FAFSA alone AND guarantees 100% of need. Now should you be fortunate enough to still come out with a need package, you may get your nasty surprise when the actual aid numbers from the schools come and you find the package filled with self help (loans and work study). We have friends who had meticulously worked out how they were going to meet their need figure, and it included their daughter working parttime at a restaraunt where she had worked summers, and this job yields some pretty hefty tips. Well, her package had max work study, in a addition to heavy loans. To work both jobs would be inadvisable for a freshman, andin any case her working was going to defray the EFC, but was taken up by the package. Also, the loans in addition to the loans that the family was going to take to meet EFC really put them in a bind.</p>
<p>As I just mentioned on another EFC thread, I hadn’t submitted my FAFSA when I posted my question, I was just flashing back to the FAFSA I submitted a few years ago, when I went back to school (it turned out to be irrelevant, since I only took 1 class per semester). That EFC was frighteningly large, but I was also working at a job where I made a lot more money than I make now. I submitted the FAFSA for D today, and the number came back a lot more manageable.</p>