This is the third time we’ve filled out the FAFSA. No issues the last 2 years. The EFC for 2017-18 was $7759. 2018-19 the EFC was $6834. We only had one student in college.
This year we filled out the FAFSA and the EFC for kid one who is already in college is $17,772 and for kid two who will be graduating from high school in 2019 the EFC is $17,600. ???
We used the IRS retrieval tool. I double checked that I didn’t add an extra zero to the tax deferred retirement contribution. Our 2017 AGI was about $6000 more than it was in 2016. Kid 1 made about $500 more in income and $600 more in assets than she did for last year’s FAFSA. Our assets are still minimal.
Any ideas why the EFC is so much higher? Thanks.
Did you do a TSA or IRA rollover in 2017?
^^^
Also wondering if you did the above?
Also, are you sure that you put your info in the parents’ section instead of child’s section?
Can you print out last years and print out this years and do a side by side comparison?
And it sounds like you now will have three kids in college, right? Did you indicate that there would be three in college on all of those FAFSA forms?
Will they have 3? I thought that they had one for last FAFSA, and now have two for this year’s FAFSAs? Or am I confused?
Oops…I read that wrong.
So…did you indicate you would have TWO in college?
Actually if your total FAFSA for one kid was $6800, and now it’s $17,000 EACH for two…your total family contribution more than quadrupled.
@thumper1 I’ll have 2 kids in college Fall of 2019. Right now, I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and a son who is a high school senior. I went back through our tax documents and yes, there was an IRA rollover of $53, 771.
@mom2collegekids That was my first thought that I put our info in the child’s section but that was fine. There is an IRA rollover. I did look at each side by side and other than the info that was imported from the IRS, it’s the same.
How does an IRA rollover change things? I didn’t even think about that because it was a rollover vs. taking a distribution. I appreciate the help…I went from being all smug about how easy the FAFSA was the last 2 years to panicking over it this go around!
Right…so it sounds like some combo of problems…
Maybe only indicated 1 in college
Maybe put parent income or assets in student’s section
Maybe a rollover of some type
Maybe some change in retirement contribution.
Ok…so the rollover. Isn’t there a place on FAFSA to indicate a rollover?
That $53,000 rollover was included in your income UNLESS you specifically completed the question about this…and checked a little box on the FAFSA about this rollover.
You need to contact the colleges as they need to make this adjustment. You will need to provide documentation of the rollover.
You aren’t the only one this has happened to.
Thank you so much @mom2collegekids and @thumper1 !