FA for 200k HHI

[Anonymous]

I think you’re going to have to consider community college, parent loans and/or using home equity to pay.

I have an incredibly similar profile income wise (including the salaries), but we have socked away some money in 529s and continue to put that money in monthly. We also do anticipate cash flowing some as the 529 money runs low. I also wonder if I should just not work, but my income allows us to eat, so…

We have done our best to find schools that would cost between $25-30k after merit since we do not anticipate any need aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. My husband makes 145k and I make 65k. I feel like I'm better off not working. We just recently combined assets 5 years ago. I was making 40k until two years ago. We can only afford maybe 10k out of pocket per kid, per year to cash flow. Maybe 20k per year out of our retirement for both kids. UMD is 30k, they wouldn't even be able to afford most in state options it sounds like.

Check out UMBC’s new net price calculator. It now shows merit aid scenarios. 1300 SAT plus decent weighted GPA yields $7k annually, which gets your direct cost of attendance (tuition, fees, R&B) down to $20k. Merit at UMD (sounds like you are in state MD) is much tighter and of course it’s a more difficult admit. UMBC at this price is an excellent cost-quality option. DC can take moderate student loan of $5k annually and easily earn $5k, getting your cost down to $10k. Plus maybe another $2k for books and misc. expenses.

[Anonymous]

This I don’t get. Why should schools subsidize at all for rich people with large assets just cause they are in certain pots?

I am not rich income wise. But I have a 1.8 million dollar house and 2.5 million in my 401ks. I am over 59.5 so can tap the 402k with no penalty and mortgage free so can tap home equity. I could cry poverty based on income but is that right?

Let’s say I had same assets and lived in apartment and had no 401k and had 4.4 million in bank how is that different?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This I don’t get. Why should schools subsidize at all for rich people with large assets just cause they are in certain pots?

I am not rich income wise. But I have a 1.8 million dollar house and 2.5 million in my 401ks. I am over 59.5 so can tap the 402k with no penalty and mortgage free so can tap home equity. I could cry poverty based on income but is that right?

Let’s say I had same assets and lived in apartment and had no 401k and had 4.4 million in bank how is that different?

Nothing is different. You have just demonstrated the insanity of the college tuition and loan program in the US. If you have assets or higher income the only way to fight back is to accept the insanity and insist DC goes to a state school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:um, why have you put nothing aside for your kids' educations? We just recently got to this HHI, and we've been saving since our first was little and we were living on @$100K

Keep living on the $100K and save the rest for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This I don’t get. Why should schools subsidize at all for rich people with large assets just cause they are in certain pots?

I am not rich income wise. But I have a 1.8 million dollar house and 2.5 million in my 401ks. I am over 59.5 so can tap the 402k with no penalty and mortgage free so can tap home equity. I could cry poverty based on income but is that right?

Let’s say I had same assets and lived in apartment and had no 401k and had 4.4 million in bank how is that different?

You are extremely rich and arrogant.

[Anonymous]

Schools will vary a lot in aid for families around 200K income, so run the net price calculators. My kids' did not get any no aid from our state colleges or certain liberal arts colleges, but got enough aid from other similarly ranked small liberal arts colleges that their college costs were almost identical to our state college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. My husband makes 145k and I make 65k. I feel like I'm better off not working. We just recently combined assets 5 years ago. I was making 40k until two years ago. We can only afford maybe 10k out of pocket per kid, per year to cash flow. Maybe 20k per year out of our retirement for both kids. UMD is 30k, they wouldn't even be able to afford most in state options it sounds like.

How did you come up with 10k as what you can afford?
You can cut down on other things. Sell things you already own, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools will vary a lot in aid for families around 200K income, so run the net price calculators. My kids' did not get any no aid from our state colleges or certain liberal arts colleges, but got enough aid from other similarly ranked small liberal arts colleges that their college costs were almost identical to our state college.

This was our experience too. The private colleges know how to market their school. We didn’t qualify for any “financial” aid but most of the private colleges offered DD a chunk of merit scholarships. Catholic colleges were especially generous- bringing their costs down to state school levels, which offered us zero.

[Anonymous]

I just got a brochure from Colgate claiming that with HHI $211,500 you’d get a grant of $48,920 plus work-study and a student loan, reducing the family cost to $32,800.

Any Colgate families here actually getting that kind of grant aid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just got a brochure from Colgate claiming that with HHI $211,500 you’d get a grant of $48,920 plus work-study and a student loan, reducing the family cost to $32,800.

Any Colgate families here actually getting that kind of grant aid?

The "Colgate commitment" assumes typically family assets (whatever that means.) So if you have any substantial assets, this is not you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. My husband makes 145k and I make 65k. I feel like I'm better off not working. We just recently combined assets 5 years ago. I was making 40k until two years ago. We can only afford maybe 10k out of pocket per kid, per year to cash flow. Maybe 20k per year out of our retirement for both kids. UMD is 30k, they wouldn't even be able to afford most in state options it sounds like.

Ideas:

- You’re probably already spending at least $10,000 per year on your child for fees, activities, food, etc. If the $10,000 amount in that post doesn’t include that $10,000, you can pay $20,000 from cash flow.

- Your kid can and should take out about $7,000 in federal student loans per year. If you can pay that off yourself, great. If your kid has to pay that off, that’s life. The people whimpering about student loans debt are ignoring the fact that your kid will probably earn a minimum of $2 million over 40 years, in 2024 dollars. Even if your kid never has a great job. Why not borrow that and learn a lot and have fun for four years?

- Your kid can probably earn at least $6,000 per year from working.

That brings you to about $33,000 per year. That’s probably about enough to pay for tuition, room, board and fees for your state flagship. If it’s not, rent out your kid’s bedroom and maybe you can generate $6,000 in extra cash per year that way.

Your kid can also probably afford to:

- Go to a nearby regional four-year college and live at home.

- Go to some colleges in other states that offer tuition close to in-state levels for all students. Example: South Dakota State University.

- Probably get enough merit aid to go to some respectable private college, especially if you kid gets earnings under to $10,000 per year and you can actually get $7,500 per year by renting out a bedroom.

- Probably pay for an English-language bachelor’s degree program in Europe. If you look very carefully, you can find programs where the total cost would be under $20,000 per year, including travel. (This would work only for a very mature, independent kid with at least four AP test scores of 3 or higher who wants an adventure and doesn’t want a traditional U.S. student experience.)

If your kid can’t earn enough and get enough merit aid to go to other types of colleges, then that’s a bit annoying but isn’t a catastrophe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:um, why have you put nothing aside for your kids' educations? We just recently got to this HHI, and we've been saving since our first was little and we were living on @$100K

Keep living on the $100K and save the rest for college.

That’s nice, but we wanted a second child, so we needed something larger than a 2 br th. Our expenses grew over time along with our income.

We’re putting money into retirement and a 529 along with paying regular bills

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on your assets and the school. Our HHI is 211k and we pay 41k per year for college. We have a FA grant of 46ish thousand.

How’d you get that? I assumed income like $211k is full pay.

I just ran Bowdoin's NPC with a 200k income and got a 40k grant

I am not the one who posted the Bowdoin example but was about to respond with those exact numbers! Our kid is a junior at Bowdoin and we get a $40,000 grant with our income of $200,000. They have a nice endowment and made decision to go to no-loan. They also give each student a brand new lap top and provide $6,000 to cover non-paid summer internships. We did not know all of this when they got into Bowdoin but feel very lucky that he landed there. Ignore the people saying you won't qualify for anything. Make a spread sheet of all the schools on your kid's list. Run the NPC. Talk to financial aid folks. And create a school list that has realistic mix of schools including those that have merit aid or allow your kid to stack scholarships.

[Anonymous]

Take a look at schools in Canada and Europe. You will be pleasantly surprised by how much lower those costs are even with factoring in travel expenses.