@LvMy2Byz There is a very good reason why the FAFSAs will not be sent to the schools until later this month. It is quite possible that there are issues with the calculations … so it’s possible that your SAI could change in the coming weeks. If that happens, the federal processor will recalculate your SAI before your FAFSA gets sent to the schools.
Of course, your SAI might be correct and might not change. No way to know just yet (although you could manually calculate it using the federal SAI formula).
The SAI is calculated after pulling in the IRS data. That happens seamlessly in the background as soon as you click on the approval at the beginning of the FAFSA process.
I wouldn’t put much stock in the SAI chart you found.
You don’t have to wait until the schools receive your FAFSA to make updates. You just have to wait until your FAFSA has been processed, Your first and second sets of schools will receive your FAFSA at the same time later this month.
@kelsmom. Do you know whether submitted forms will still be processed in a few days? Or will the processing date be the same as the late January date when the information will be sent colleges? We made a huge mistake on the form, and now we can’t seem to fix it. I hope to correct the information BEFORE my daughter’s scholarship deadline of 1/15 since the scholarship is based off the information provided by the FAFSA form. I understand that I can’t make the correction until the form has been processed, but it is unclear to me whether the processing time is 1-3 days (as stated by the confirmation email from FAFSA) or “late January” (as described in the status tracker in her account). I am hoping that I will have an opportunity to fix the mistake before 1/15.
The processing time should just be a couple days (fastest if you already had your FSA accounts set up in advance). The email that the student gets once it has been accepted by the processor should have the date it was processed. If you make changes, the original processing date will be tied to the FAFSA, but you’ll want to get your update submitted by the deadline to be sure that they get the new information by the deadline (just in case … but due to the fact that they won’t get any FAFSAs until after the deadline, you should be okay based on the original processing date).
Thank you. That is a huge relief. She submitted on 1/1 (Monday) so we’ll just sit tight for a couple more days. If the processing is not complete by Friday, I will try calling. I want to kick myself. I misunderstood the directions, and I rushing to complete my part because had been booted out several times. If if I had just slowed down, I probably would not have made the error. The whole thing is so stressful.
This is so incredibly frustrating—every time I open the website it’s literally on planned maintenance. i was able to start filling out the form on jan 1, but then it kicked me out??? and i havent been able to get in since.
yes I got stuck on step 3, where the address and phone number page, can’t continue.
My is NY address, and I found out that if I choose no SSN and a random birthday, the address page can continue to the next page, if I use my SSN and birthday, then I got stuck on address page. Please let me know if you have any update, thanks!
I can’t continue the contact information page(the address page), can you tell how to go through this page? it’s on step 3. can’t continue to next step. Thank you very much!
How does the new SAI compare to the previous EFC? Would you expect them to be in the same ballpark?
I know they aren’t the same but I was surprised when the estimated SAI S24 got this morning (43,000) was half the EFC we got last year for S23. We don’t qualify for a Pell Grant either way, but I was surprised it was so much lower than the EFC from last year.
Our '21 to '22 tax filing wasn’t substantially different one year to the next and our EFC to SAI decreased by about 10% - but until I get final SAI I’m not banking on anything.
The formula guide is available online so you can fill out the worksheet by hand to see how the calculation is done. I used the EFC formula guide in previous years and found the SAI one this year…having done it in the past, I was able to notice some of the changed calculations (like contributions to 401Ks not being added back to income this year and, if I remember right, an asset protection allowance being put back in after having been removed last year).
Here is the formula guide if you want to look at it -
I am filling out the FAFSA this morning, and there was information in the beginning of the process (a video) about what happens after you fill out the form. In the upper right corner of that video a little pop up appeared stating that processing would happen late January. Maybe they will actually get to it earlier, but that was what it said.
D24 has completed her portion of the FAFSA. However, As parents, neither wife nor I can create a parent account. We get stuck on step number 3 in creating an account (we are in Tennessee). There is no error, it just freezes. We have tried it on three different computers (both Windows and Apple) and an iPhone. We have used: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and MS Edge. Same problem in creating an account in step 3 in each event. The help line “helpfully” suggests using Chrome, which did not work. Any ideas?
If FAFSA does not include 401K contributions, that could be significant. Are they also not including HSA/FSA contributions?
If those types of contributions are not being added back in, that’s a big difference from previous years (and the CSS).
Here’s some other interesting data as I just did for S22 and S24 -
For the parental assets for S22 the total value was over 100K higher than S24 due to S22 being the current beneficiary of 529.
Even though parent assets were lopsided, both S22 and S24 had identical SAI’s.
Also notable, our SAI was about 40% lower than the 2022 and 2023 EFC.
So looking at the form linked above, after plugging in the AGI, this is the definition of “Parents’ Deductible Payments to IRA/KEOGH/Other” which is added back in.
The response indicates the total amount of tax-deductible payments the student’s parents made to their IRA, self-employed SEP, SIMPLE, Keogh, and other qualified accounts in 2021. Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and Keogh accounts are private accounts established by people saving for retirement.
IRA/Keogh payments can be found on IRS Form 1040 Schedule 1-line 16 + line 20.
I always want to see what “other” is defined as.
Unless I am missing something, does this give an advantage to persons with employer 401K’s?
Edit: The answer seems to be yes! One of the biggest changes coming from FAFSA Simplification is that the FAFSA will only use tax return data for income-- not W-2 data. That means that your pre-tax contributions to your employer’s 401k or 403b or to your HSA no longer have to be added back.
