Financial aid question for families with kids at a non-traditional private school

[Anonymous]

I keep seeing on the websites that a high percentage of students at these non-traditional schools (like Howard Gardner or Sycamore School) receive financial aid. Can anyone tell me more about what your financials need to be to qualify? Our HHI is about $180k, but we have money in a 529 for our child. Do we have to spend down the 529 before we'd qualify for financial aid? That would make sense to me.

[Anonymous]

I can’t speak to those specific schools, but we get financial aid at a private school and have 529s for all kids. Similar income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can’t speak to those specific schools, but we get financial aid at a private school and have 529s for all kids. Similar income.

Thank you for responding! I wasn’t looking for info re those particular schools. Thanks for responding.

[Anonymous]

We have a similar income although multiple kids. We received a substantial offer of financial aid from a school like you mentioned (but not one of those). We also have 529 money. I’m not sure if that came into play. We did use some of that to pay the remainder of the tuition. You can only spend $10K per year of 529 money if it’s not college.

[Anonymous]

$10K per year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a similar income although multiple kids. We received a substantial offer of financial aid from a school like you mentioned (but not one of those). We also have 529 money. I’m not sure if that came into play. We did use some of that to pay the remainder of the tuition. You can only spend $10K per year of 529 money if it’s not college.

I did not realize you can only spend $10k per year from your 529 for k-12.