How much aid can I get realistically?

damara
Sat, 11 Oct 2014 03:53:44 +0000

I’ll try my best to explain my situation here.

So my father is retired. He gets 30k social security 20k pension, 50k on stock dividends and fluctuating extra income from stocks (last year around 50k, year before around 20k). Mother works, makes around 20k.

Total comes to between 140-170k gross income. Home eq. is maybe 400k and we have around 500k in stocks as assets.

I have a twin sister also entering college this year and one younger brother who will be a sophomore in high school. I’m worried about aid because both of us are applying to pretty expensive private colleges (Ivies, highly ranked LACs). I know there’s some discount with 2+ kids in college but I don’t know how much.

I know FAFSA expects something around 6% of assets/year minus a 50k or so “nest egg” which would put my EFC around 27k + whatever they expect us to pay based on income. So I’m expecting around 35 to 40k EFC. But with me and my sister both that’s 70-80k a year which is very unrealistic, especially since our college funds would mostly come from the money my dad gets from stocks, but by taking money from his stocks to pay for college, that asset money would go down + our income would go down… Especially bad because my dad is in his 60s, retired, and in declining health.

TLDR: Making 140-170k gross with 400k house + 500k stocks. Guessing me and my sister both will be expected to pay around 35-40k because of our assets but after tax my family gets maybe 110k net and with both of us in college paying 75-80k it would be a huge burden. Taking money from our stocks would lower our income.

Thanks for any help. I’m really unsure of where I stand right now since my father basically dropped this bomb on me a couple hours ago when trying to fill out the Profile. Until then I really had absolutely no clue how much we made-- I assumed only my mother’s work and my father’s 50k or so in retirement funds. I certainly had no clue about his half a million in stocks. All my hopes were on financial aid but I’m not sure how much of a reality that is at this point.