Are there any schools that might give us financial aid?

[Anonymous]

OP, you lost my sympathy at 350K in inherited stock.

[Anonymous]

OP, it depends on which school you are considering. If you are looking at the "big 3" in DC, then your chance of getting any FA is somewhere between very, very slim and none. The number of lower income, qualified applicants exceeds available funds. Believe it or not, you are wealthy (by FA standards) and your net worth automatically disqualifies you.

You can search prior threads here but basically, this is the expectations of the school:
1) if you have SAHM, they will be expected to contribute to the household income. The FA calculation will include the potential salary your spouse COULD be earning if she/he got a job. So even if you have 1 income, the FA calculation will consider you could potentially have 2 incomes.
2) you will use the equity in your home, your savings, your stocks, etc. to pay tuition.
3) living expenses are given minimal credit. At 120K per year, your FA assessment will show that your contribution is in the 30-36K per year neighborhood. If your spouse is SAHM, your contribution will be higher.

Now, that being said... if you have your heart set on a private school I would encourage you to consider less expensive options. I don't know where you live, but Norwood in Bethesda is under 30K per year and is a lovely school. Grace Episcopal in Kensington runs around 20K and is truly a hidden gem of a school. Stone Ridge runs in the low 20's and is very good. If that is too expensive, there are some very good parish schools (I only know Maryland - sorry) but St. Elizabeth, Mercy, DeChantal... all are very good schools that run in the 6-8K per year range. That will take you from K-8 and they feed into the high schools.

Choosing a parish alternative will let you save up for 4 years of high school tuition. With no mortgage and a low cost lifestyle, you should be able to bank up the high school tuition without too much heartburn.

My DS went to parish K-8 then to G'town Prep for 9-12. He's at Duke on a large merit scholarship so it turned out to be a really good decision for us. There's no way we could have afforded the "big 3" tuition and we made too much for FA so it was a good option for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, it depends on which school you are considering. If you are looking at the "big 3" in DC, then your chance of getting any FA is somewhere between very, very slim and none. The number of lower income, qualified applicants exceeds available funds. Believe it or not, you are wealthy (by FA standards) and your net worth automatically disqualifies you.

You can search prior threads here but basically, this is the expectations of the school:
1) if you have SAHM, they will be expected to contribute to the household income. The FA calculation will include the potential salary your spouse COULD be earning if she/he got a job. So even if you have 1 income, the FA calculation will consider you could potentially have 2 incomes.
2) you will use the equity in your home, your savings, your stocks, etc. to pay tuition.
3) living expenses are given minimal credit. At 120K per year, your FA assessment will show that your contribution is in the 30-36K per year neighborhood. If your spouse is SAHM, your contribution will be higher.

Now, that being said... if you have your heart set on a private school I would encourage you to consider less expensive options. I don't know where you live, but Norwood in Bethesda is under 30K per year and is a lovely school. Grace Episcopal in Kensington runs around 20K and is truly a hidden gem of a school. Stone Ridge runs in the low 20's and is very good. If that is too expensive, there are some very good parish schools (I only know Maryland - sorry) but St. Elizabeth, Mercy, DeChantal... all are very good schools that run in the 6-8K per year range. That will take you from K-8 and they feed into the high schools.

Choosing a parish alternative will let you save up for 4 years of high school tuition. With no mortgage and a low cost lifestyle, you should be able to bank up the high school tuition without too much heartburn.

My DS went to parish K-8 then to G'town Prep for 9-12. He's at Duke on a large merit scholarship so it turned out to be a really good decision for us. There's no way we could have afforded the "big 3" tuition and we made too much for FA so it was a good option for us.

Sound advice. I wish I had considered the less expensive option and went with a Big 3-5-7-10 for upper school. The expense has been tremendous, and I will feel the financial impact (full pay) for years. I have used part of my retirement money to finance DC's education and expenses. Once my child became entrenched into the private school world and the longer I waited to possibly move DC, it has now become impossible, so to speak, to pull DC out with only 2 more years left before college. The upheaval would be too difficult for DC at this juncture.

So, I would encourage the OP to consider other options for now and put the $$$ into upper school which gives additional monies to add on that big nest egg. I should be so lucky! Also, I think we're talking $120,000 [/b]BEFORE[b] taxes.

[Anonymous]

OP just to give you a sense of things, we make $85K combined income (we both work), have two kids, pay $1500 rent on a 1 bedroom apt + den (with two kids shoved in there), have about $210K combined in student loans we're paying off (we both come from poor families so college and grad school was completely out of pocket), one used car that we make payments on. I think our car is our only asset. We have minimal 401Ks, but I don't actually remember that coming up in my FA application.

We take two vacations per year - both to see family on holidays or for family reunions. We are paying for childcare for our youngest and our oldest is just starting private school.

We get 60% aid and managed a scholarship from an independent fund apart from that, which the school helped us locate.

For us, the cost is still very very very hard, but since we can't afford to live in a good school district as it is actually cheaper to pay for this than the rent in a more expensive area, and also because we believe firmly that our child will thrive here moreso than public school, we are going forward with it. We'll see what continues to happen in the future.

Just thought I'd give some perspective from someone who DOES get FA. Not sure whether or not you should, but I thought it might help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Seriously, PP you disgust me. Not with your reasoning, but with your ranting.

It's important to ask questions. I teach my children that. I asked an honest question, to which I expected reasonable responses.

I'm fully aware of the purpose of financial aid, but I'm not sure it's fairly distributed when people on financial aid are picking their kids up in Beamers. These are not the people you describe who have nothing. I'd never expect a school to give money to me instead of people who are very poor, but if they are giving handouts to the Beamer-and iPhone crowd, I'd think they'd think I was eligible too.

We're hardworking, frugal and cautious, not stupid. Save your disgust for someone lazy who has their hand out -- they deserve it. (And if you can add, we have $850K in net worth, not $1M, all of which is illiquid.) We live on our income, something many people don't do. Those are the disgusting ones.

I am not the person you are responding to, but if this really bothers you then you should sell your house, spend down your assets, buy a BMW on credit, then try to apply again for financial aid.

[Anonymous]

OP, you obviously value the $350k nest egg over private school. That is certainly a valid choice- many would say it is a smart choice. The problem with getting aid is that the schools will expect you to value the private education over pretty much everything else. Since you don't have a mortgage, you should easily be able to afford tuition for one child on your HHI and still have money left over for savings. You could use money from your $350k to pay the other half of tuition. You could swing it if it were important enough to you.

As for the other people receiving aid who live grand lifestyles- you don't really know all the details but I think it's a safe assumption that they aren't people with a net worth of $850k.

[Anonymous]

OP, I can't understand why you live so frugally on $120k when you have no mortgage. Our HHI is less then $100k, we have a mortgage, we take vacations (mostly with family, though many of them live overseas so we have to pay airfares), we frequently eat out here in DC, and we buy new clothes. Where is all your money going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have an HHI of about $120K for a family of four. We live very frugally: old cars, cheap vacations with relatives, no dining out, no iphones, buying clothing at thrift shops and Target. Our house is worth about $500K, and we have no mortgage. Plus we have some inherited stocks worth about $350K. We worked very hard to pay off our mortgage, and we never touch the stocks because they are for our retirement.

In the DC area, we are basically lower middle class or working class based on our income.

We applied for financial aid at a several schools and were turned down. They said we are not eligible because of the value of our house and our savings. I am not saying we are poor, but our modest house and our stocks are our nest egg. We are not in fields that are lucrative, so we need to hang onto some savings for when we retire.

It seems crazy to me that we are not eligible for at least some financial aid. There are families receiving financial aid at the school we want to send our DD to that drive Mercedes or BMWs (leased), live in huge houses (rented or mortgaged to the hilt), wear nice clothes from Nieman Marcus, own expensive computers, ipads, go on expensive vacations. We feel that as prudent, frugal savers, we are being penalized. If we spent like crazy, borrowed money to buy everything, we could live like that too AND we'd be eligible for financial aid.

Are there any schools in the DC area that would give us at least some help? Do any have a slightly more generous financial aid policy? Our school district is not very good, so we'll have to move if we don't send DD to a private school.

OP, see what you started. Didn't you even realize that your post would bring out all the holier-than thou's?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
SMH.


???

SMH = shaking my head

I am, too. $120K with no living expenses and a $350K inheritance (which I assume pays dividends, right, OP?) is not working class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have an HHI of about $120K for a family of four. We live very frugally: old cars, cheap vacations with relatives, no dining out, no iphones, buying clothing at thrift shops and Target. Our house is worth about $500K, and we have no mortgage. Plus we have some inherited stocks worth about $350K. We worked very hard to pay off our mortgage, and we never touch the stocks because they are for our retirement.

In the DC area, we are basically lower middle class or working class based on our income.

We applied for financial aid at a several schools and were turned down. They said we are not eligible because of the value of our house and our savings. I am not saying we are poor, but our modest house and our stocks are our nest egg. We are not in fields that are lucrative, so we need to hang onto some savings for when we retire.

It seems crazy to me that we are not eligible for at least some financial aid. There are families receiving financial aid at the school we want to send our DD to that drive Mercedes or BMWs (leased), live in huge houses (rented or mortgaged to the hilt), wear nice clothes from Nieman Marcus, own expensive computers, ipads, go on expensive vacations. We feel that as prudent, frugal savers, we are being penalized. If we spent like crazy, borrowed money to buy everything, we could live like that too AND we'd be eligible for financial aid.

Are there any schools in the DC area that would give us at least some help? Do any have a slightly more generous financial aid policy? Our school district is not very good, so we'll have to move if we don't send DD to a private school.

OP, see what you started. Didn't you even realize that your post would bring out all the holier-than thou's?

It's not about "holier than thou" its about wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Its about wanting private, but not wanting it enough to spend your own money.

[Anonymous]

agree with PP. That and the attitude that they somehow deserved to be rewarded for their fiscal choices (however admirable, and enviable) with FA.

[Anonymous]

Should OP go the private school route, I can only imagine the pucker factor when the Annual Fund folks start calling!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your net worth is close to 1M you will be hard pressed to cry poor.

I didn't cry poor. I asked whether any schools are so rich that they have generous financial aid policies that would give some help to our family. By DC standards, we are nothing close to rich. If the answer is no, fine. But don't misrepresent what I said. I can't understand why asking causes such resentment. Maybe you aren't so good at saving yourselves?

You didn't save your $350K nest egg, did you? You have zero sense of your relative financial standing. You are not poor by DC standards. To even suggest it is appalling. Go read a newspaper, will you?

[Anonymous]

Maybe OP should read that "school for douche bags" thread

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe OP should read that "school for douche bags" thread

No matter what you may think of the OP, your comment was crude and boorish even by DCUM standards.