Do families with $250K in income get financial aid? If not, how do they afford college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have 1 kid that will go 4 yrs in state. The other is doing HS DE and will finish his last 2 yrs in state. I think where they go for grad school is more important than where they go for undergrad.

Grad school is not that big a commodity anymore, work experience ia valuable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 1 kid that will go 4 yrs in state. The other is doing HS DE and will finish his last 2 yrs in state. I think where they go for grad school is more important than where they go for undergrad.

Grad school is not that big a commodity anymore, work experience ia valuable.

Depends on the grad school. Good luck getting any work experience in many white collar jobs without a grad degree— doctor and many allied health fields, lawyer, CPA, etc. sure, you can get a BS in CS and be self taught from there. But it’s not like you can be a self taught surgeon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I went to an Ivy league school and my network here is largely people who went there and are very very advantaged. But many chose not-the-highest-paying careers b/c they were passionate about health, the environment, etc. So I am just trying to see how people make it work....(cue the Ivy haters)....and to get opinions outside of my biased privileged circle. I have been surprised that so many of my friends are sending their kids to top name schools and don't know how they afford it, particularly since all have at least two kids. My husband has always said MC-->UMD is what the path should be or perhaps his home country which has a decent university system.

It’s probably very hard if you have multiple kids.

A strategy for others:

- Be generous with what you have and can do. Don’t favor having a Porsche or extra cash over tuition if your kid gets a chance to major in Classical at Princeton and you’re too rich to get any aid.

- Be honest with your kid about finances from the time they have a piggy bank. Don’t tell your kid money for college is no object if it will be an object.

- You figure, modest saving every year (say, 18 years times $3,000) can pay for half a year of private college.

- Loans for the kid and you can pay half a year.

- The kid’s work can pay half a year. If the kid can’t earn and safe that much during high school and college, maybe spending a lot of money on college for that kid isn’t that smart.

- Shifting what you spend on your kid now to college can probably pay for most of a year.

- Tightening your belt can probably pay for about half a year of college.

This probably adds up to close to three years of college.

For the rest:

- Look for schools where your kid could graduate half a semester early.

- Take out some home equity loans.

- ROTC.

- Aim for private schools that love your kid and provide at least $50,000 in grant or discount aid over four years. Aid is a sign they love your kid. Complete lack of grant aid for a kid with $250K in annual income is a sign the school isn’t that rich or doesn’t especially like your kid.

- Focus on public universities and non-U.S. schools that have a full net cost under $75,000.

On what Earth can kid earn enough to pay 1/2 per year at a $90k or even a $70 or $60k school???

I mean that all work from 15 through could add up to about $40,000.

Maybe $10,000 for three summers in high school, $18,000 for three summers in college and $12,000 in college work-study. Or, less than that plus some small scholarships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four kids with an income maybe 20K higher than OP here. We started saving before they were born when we earned significantly less and had our own student loans, live in a small house that needs work, husband and I share one old car, no fancy vacations or extravagant lifestyle and have made saving for our retirement a priority too. Youngest of the 4 is now 2 years from finishing college. Three have gone to instate to UVA and the 4th was awarded a scholarship at a SLAC that made the cost of attending same as if she was in-state Virginia.

It’s called lots of sacrifice OP.

and that's something wrong in the US for the hard working middle class

Right here is the real point OP isn’t saying. You make $250k and you want a nice house, multiple nice cars, 2 vacations a year, AND be able to afford to send your kids to private university on someone else’s dime. You can afford public universities, OP. That is fine. Your kids will be fine. They aren’t “owed” an education at a $90k a year school. They aren’t “owed” financial aid. You could pay for it if you made a lot of sacrifices for many, many years. You didn’t and now you are annoyed. Why does everyone think private universities are meant for the middle class? They are not.

But, look at this thread carefully: The MIT, Cal Tech and Harvard type kids of parents earning $250,000, who are truly unusual kids and need an unusual environment, can usually go to those schools or near equivalents without the parents eating catfood.

It’s the normal bright kids who are usually well-served by going to a school like Towson who are going to Towson.

[Anonymous]

You don’t have to suddenly come up with 70K in disposable income. You know for almost 20 years that this expense is coming.

And when your kid is in college, you are probably making much more than you have before, so you can contribute more than in the early years.

Plus, if you are willing to send your kid to a second tier SLAC , the discount will likely pay close to half of your tuition costs.

So you are really misrepresenting the options OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don’t have to suddenly come up with 70K in disposable income. You know for almost 20 years that this expense is coming.

And when your kid is in college, you are probably making much more than you have before, so you can contribute more than in the early years.

Plus, if you are willing to send your kid to a second tier SLAC , the discount will likely pay close to half of your tuition costs.

So you are really misrepresenting the options OP.

That is true but I didn't have any disposable income until he hit middle school and even then it was a few thousand a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four kids with an income maybe 20K higher than OP here. We started saving before they were born when we earned significantly less and had our own student loans, live in a small house that needs work, husband and I share one old car, no fancy vacations or extravagant lifestyle and have made saving for our retirement a priority too. Youngest of the 4 is now 2 years from finishing college. Three have gone to instate to UVA and the 4th was awarded a scholarship at a SLAC that made the cost of attending same as if she was in-state Virginia.

It’s called lots of sacrifice OP.

and that's something wrong in the US for the hard working middle class

Right here is the real point OP isn’t saying. You make $250k and you want a nice house, multiple nice cars, 2 vacations a year, AND be able to afford to send your kids to private university on someone else’s dime. You can afford public universities, OP. That is fine. Your kids will be fine. They aren’t “owed” an education at a $90k a year school. They aren’t “owed” financial aid. You could pay for it if you made a lot of sacrifices for many, many years. You didn’t and now you are annoyed. Why does everyone think private universities are meant for the middle class? They are not.

That’s a lot of rationalizing on your part. While I agree that public universities are more than sufficient and in many cases superior, I disagree that some “blame” should be lodged at OP or other families in question. No where else in the world charges students $90-$100k each year to attend college. It’s absurd. Most families can not save $360-$400k…PER CHILD.

So yes, public university it is! No arguing there. I dislike this rationalizing and blame people start getting into “you aren’t owed anything” blah blah, as if people are the problem. People are not the problem. Most people are doing the best they can with little resources and in a punishing system where we have expensive health care, no pensions, no child care and exorbitant college.

+1 People on this board are always blaming other people for objecting to the insane cost of college. But as this poster notes, no where else in the world is college, public or private, so expensive. And even here it wasn’t this expensive until recently. While private college has always been considered expensive, if you apply a regular inflation adjustment to tuition, room and board cost from 1985 it would be about $50K not the nearly $90k it costs today (for those not getting aid). That is a big deviation. It is fair for people to have the opinion that things could and should be done differently at these schools.

Yeah. I have neighbors that went to a well-known private that was around $60-65k tuition/room&board about 15 years ago and did not understand that tuition at their school is now just a few thousand short of $100k/year. It spiked insanely from the 80s-2024. It was not a slow incremental increase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four kids with an income maybe 20K higher than OP here. We started saving before they were born when we earned significantly less and had our own student loans, live in a small house that needs work, husband and I share one old car, no fancy vacations or extravagant lifestyle and have made saving for our retirement a priority too. Youngest of the 4 is now 2 years from finishing college. Three have gone to instate to UVA and the 4th was awarded a scholarship at a SLAC that made the cost of attending same as if she was in-state Virginia.

It’s called lots of sacrifice OP.

and that's something wrong in the US for the hard working middle class

Right here is the real point OP isn’t saying. You make $250k and you want a nice house, multiple nice cars, 2 vacations a year, AND be able to afford to send your kids to private university on someone else’s dime. You can afford public universities, OP. That is fine. Your kids will be fine. They aren’t “owed” an education at a $90k a year school. They aren’t “owed” financial aid. You could pay for it if you made a lot of sacrifices for many, many years. You didn’t and now you are annoyed. Why does everyone think private universities are meant for the middle class? They are not.

That’s a lot of rationalizing on your part. While I agree that public universities are more than sufficient and in many cases superior, I disagree that some “blame” should be lodged at OP or other families in question. No where else in the world charges students $90-$100k each year to attend college. It’s absurd. Most families can not save $360-$400k…PER CHILD.

So yes, public university it is! No arguing there. I dislike this rationalizing and blame people start getting into “you aren’t owed anything” blah blah, as if people are the problem. People are not the problem. Most people are doing the best they can with little resources and in a punishing system where we have expensive health care, no pensions, no child care and exorbitant college.

+1 People on this board are always blaming other people for objecting to the insane cost of college. But as this poster notes, no where else in the world is college, public or private, so expensive. And even here it wasn’t this expensive until recently. While private college has always been considered expensive, if you apply a regular inflation adjustment to tuition, room and board cost from 1985 it would be about $50K not the nearly $90k it costs today (for those not getting aid). That is a big deviation. It is fair for people to have the opinion that things could and should be done differently at these schools.

Yeah. I have neighbors that went to a well-known private that was around $60-65k tuition/room&board about 15 years ago and did not understand that tuition at their school is now just a few thousand short of $100k/year. It spiked insanely from the 80s-2024. It was not a slow incremental increase.

Tuition is not 100k. Tuition room and board is between 85 and 90 at almost all elite colleges, NOT counting the “personal expenses “ and insurance fees the vast majority do not have to pay. Personal expenses is no different than one pays for them in high school; clothing, shoes, books etc, so it is not an additional cost to the family. in fact often one gets to save by not having sports , music and dance fees in college. We have kids at different T10/ivy and they have both been 3-4k less than the estimated total cost.
It is a lot of money but there are plenty of on campus jobs and access to paid TA or other jobs at ivies and the T10privates. These jobs often are 8-12 hrs per week and pay 2k-5k per semester! Summer jobs are not too hard to get and can net at least 5k (more if they work and live at home in summer). Anyone who did private school in DMV is already used to shelling out 30k+ per kid, so that shifts to college spending, plus anyone who saved minimum over the last 18 yrs should at least have 40k in 529. Even with a 3500 per month mortgage there is money enough on 250k to pay for one kid in private college, with the kid helping out if needed, from semester and summer jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My base Fed salary as a GS-14, step 10, is $190k. With bonuses slightly over $200k. That’s just one of our salaries. Married y to o myself HHI would bf $400k two Feds.

Feds get bonuses? As in multiple? I didn't know feds even get one bonus. Which branch?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four kids with an income maybe 20K higher than OP here. We started saving before they were born when we earned significantly less and had our own student loans, live in a small house that needs work, husband and I share one old car, no fancy vacations or extravagant lifestyle and have made saving for our retirement a priority too. Youngest of the 4 is now 2 years from finishing college. Three have gone to instate to UVA and the 4th was awarded a scholarship at a SLAC that made the cost of attending same as if she was in-state Virginia.

It’s called lots of sacrifice OP.

and that's something wrong in the US for the hard working middle class

Right here is the real point OP isn’t saying. You make $250k and you want a nice house, multiple nice cars, 2 vacations a year, AND be able to afford to send your kids to private university on someone else’s dime. You can afford public universities, OP. That is fine. Your kids will be fine. They aren’t “owed” an education at a $90k a year school. They aren’t “owed” financial aid. You could pay for it if you made a lot of sacrifices for many, many years. You didn’t and now you are annoyed. Why does everyone think private universities are meant for the middle class? They are not.

But, look at this thread carefully: The MIT, Cal Tech and Harvard type kids of parents earning $250,000, who are truly unusual kids and need an unusual environment, can usually go to those schools or near equivalents without the parents eating catfood.

It’s the normal bright kids who are usually well-served by going to a school like Towson who are going to Towson.

+1

It usually works out for the best

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four kids with an income maybe 20K higher than OP here. We started saving before they were born when we earned significantly less and had our own student loans, live in a small house that needs work, husband and I share one old car, no fancy vacations or extravagant lifestyle and have made saving for our retirement a priority too. Youngest of the 4 is now 2 years from finishing college. Three have gone to instate to UVA and the 4th was awarded a scholarship at a SLAC that made the cost of attending same as if she was in-state Virginia.

It’s called lots of sacrifice OP.

and that's something wrong in the US for the hard working middle class

Right here is the real point OP isn’t saying. You make $250k and you want a nice house, multiple nice cars, 2 vacations a year, AND be able to afford to send your kids to private university on someone else’s dime. You can afford public universities, OP. That is fine. Your kids will be fine. They aren’t “owed” an education at a $90k a year school. They aren’t “owed” financial aid. You could pay for it if you made a lot of sacrifices for many, many years. You didn’t and now you are annoyed. Why does everyone think private universities are meant for the middle class? They are not.

That’s a lot of rationalizing on your part. While I agree that public universities are more than sufficient and in many cases superior, I disagree that some “blame” should be lodged at OP or other families in question. No where else in the world charges students $90-$100k each year to attend college. It’s absurd. Most families can not save $360-$400k…PER CHILD.

So yes, public university it is! No arguing there. I dislike this rationalizing and blame people start getting into “you aren’t owed anything” blah blah, as if people are the problem. People are not the problem. Most people are doing the best they can with little resources and in a punishing system where we have expensive health care, no pensions, no child care and exorbitant college.

+1 People on this board are always blaming other people for objecting to the insane cost of college. But as this poster notes, no where else in the world is college, public or private, so expensive. And even here it wasn’t this expensive until recently. While private college has always been considered expensive, if you apply a regular inflation adjustment to tuition, room and board cost from 1985 it would be about $50K not the nearly $90k it costs today (for those not getting aid). That is a big deviation. It is fair for people to have the opinion that things could and should be done differently at these schools.

Yeah. I have neighbors that went to a well-known private that was around $60-65k tuition/room&board about 15 years ago and did not understand that tuition at their school is now just a few thousand short of $100k/year. It spiked insanely from the 80s-2024. It was not a slow incremental increase.

Tuition is not 100k. Tuition room and board is between 85 and 90 at almost all elite colleges, NOT counting the “personal expenses “ and insurance fees the vast majority do not have to pay. Personal expenses is no different than one pays for them in high school; clothing, shoes, books etc, so it is not an additional cost to the family. in fact often one gets to save by not having sports , music and dance fees in college. We have kids at different T10/ivy and they have both been 3-4k less than the estimated total cost.
It is a lot of money but there are plenty of on campus jobs and access to paid TA or other jobs at ivies and the T10privates. These jobs often are 8-12 hrs per week and pay 2k-5k per semester! Summer jobs are not too hard to get and can net at least 5k (more if they work and live at home in summer). Anyone who did private school in DMV is already used to shelling out 30k+ per kid, so that shifts to college spending, plus anyone who saved minimum over the last 18 yrs should at least have 40k in 529. Even with a 3500 per month mortgage there is money enough on 250k to pay for one kid in private college, with the kid helping out if needed, from semester and summer jobs.

Pp said almost $100k for tuition/room&board. True with Tufts. And Christ, $85k-90k isn’t drastically cheaper.

[Anonymous]

Lmaof that $90k is fine and it’s not $100k!!! Like that $10k is really much different.

By the time Freshmen in high school get to college a lot will have crossed the 6-figure mark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four kids with an income maybe 20K higher than OP here. We started saving before they were born when we earned significantly less and had our own student loans, live in a small house that needs work, husband and I share one old car, no fancy vacations or extravagant lifestyle and have made saving for our retirement a priority too. Youngest of the 4 is now 2 years from finishing college. Three have gone to instate to UVA and the 4th was awarded a scholarship at a SLAC that made the cost of attending same as if she was in-state Virginia.

It’s called lots of sacrifice OP.

and that's something wrong in the US for the hard working middle class

Right here is the real point OP isn’t saying. You make $250k and you want a nice house, multiple nice cars, 2 vacations a year, AND be able to afford to send your kids to private university on someone else’s dime. You can afford public universities, OP. That is fine. Your kids will be fine. They aren’t “owed” an education at a $90k a year school. They aren’t “owed” financial aid. You could pay for it if you made a lot of sacrifices for many, many years. You didn’t and now you are annoyed. Why does everyone think private universities are meant for the middle class? They are not.

because those schools have a lot of money and a lot of place for students. if they can give aid to the "poor" they can give it to middle class as well.

And there are plenty of schools that give excellent merit aid to everyone. Just not T30 schools. If you don't want to plan and save and actually pay for school yourself, you step down 1-2 tiers and get a great education for a lot less.

Once again, NOBODY is entitled to an elite education for free. But there are 3K+ other excellent universities that can be affordable for you.

why are you so angry? is it because you lived like crap for so many years so that you can save gazillion dollars for private colleges? and now you are upset that yes, those colleges give substantial financial aid to 250k families, as they should?

Bingo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lmaof that $90k is fine and it’s not $100k!!! Like that $10k is really much different.

By the time Freshmen in high school get to college a lot will have crossed the 6-figure mark.

that's 10k more for lattes! nothing to scoff at

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are at around that income bracket with a highly achieving kid. We figured that we can cash flow the state flagship (UMD-CP is relatively cheap / subsidized), so we never opened a 529 or anything else that would ever impact our financial aid should the kid get into a top college. We also restructured our assets and savings to maximize financial aid.

We have been paying 30k-50k per year for an Ivy.

Can you give some examples of this? I know taking savings and paying off your mortgage is one strategy. Any others?

We bought Maryland pre-paid plan for another child after asking the grandmom to open the account. She put 100 dollars into it and we put in 50K. Did not have to report those 50K on the CSS profile for the older kid. We expect we will be in a different income bracket in 10 years for the little one, and will benefit from having a 529 plan of some kind for a modest sum. Plus, that's our last child.

We prepaid all of our expenses a full year ahead before filing FAFSA/CSS. I was leasing an office; we paid rent a full year ahead etc. You need to move cash into invisible assets.

We cash flowed as much of college as possible. All money went to expenses, retirement savings, or kid's college payments. We barely maintained a balance in our checking account, but also only took 30K in loans over 4 years. Balance on a checking account = less favorable CSS profile outcome. Stupidest thing to do is maintain 50K on the checking account just in case, run up a credit card balance, and borrow to pay for college, unless there is a tangible chance of loan forgiveness. The goal is to pay less for college.

We paid off a leased car and held onto it for a couple of months. Filed FAFSA/CSS. It was not a fancy car and did not tip off any luxury scales. It was basically a vehicle, so to speak, to contain about 30K. Once financials were awarded, we sold it at a profit since cars appreciated, and used the profit to avoid taking out a loan that semester.

Once kid was accepted to CSS profile meets needs school, I started my own business finally. My first two years of trials and errors were effectively sponsored by my kid's university. During that time, in between financial cycles, we sold an old rental property and purchased an office for my business.

None of this will help people with 1/2 million in savings, but it helped us as a normal middle class family. The fact that the universities can use 5% per year of the 529 account ear-marked for another child is ASININE, so we had to avoid that. Pay off EVERYTHING, avoid any live money on checking and savings accounts. Remember retirement savings cannot be used as a part of CSS profile, so maximize those accounts to keep live money off of your checking account. That's it

So, you essentially got rid of any emergency savings like 6 months of living expenses that you should keep just in case? I guess you can do that if your spouse’s job is very secure. You were also in a somewhat unusual situation of starting your business right at that time - your advice wouldn’t help those who work for W2. Also, you submit your docs every year, so you have to lay low for 4 years.

All in, you were a special case, and you took some serious risks. I don’t think your advice should be seriously considered.

I mean, when your emergency fund gets taxed at 5% per year by your child’s university x 4 years, it becomes a poor saving vehicle at that time. TSP loans run at well below that.

We did absolutely take risks faced with this financial disaster called college education. If my spouse lost his job, we would file with the school at that time for change in circumstances. And, since there is no obvious emergency fund, the college would not be able to tell us “just use these savings you have”.