What is a "donut hole family"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ah yes, the mythical 400k house in the DMV

Why is that mythical?

There are houses from $350-500K, just not ones that poster wants. Life is about choices. If someone chooses a $350K house and saves $150K for college vs. someone paying $800K and not saving, why should the non-saver get aid and the saver get nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like a broken record on this thread. Before you assume you don't qualify for need-based aid, do a net price calculator. A non-school specific non-profit one is available here: https://myintuition.org/quick-college-cost-estimator/.

For most (all?) of the most selective schools, families with HHI of up to and even in some cases OVER $200k ARE receiving need-based financial aid. The families who are not are the families with significant non-retirement assets (savings or investments). If someone tells you they aren't receiving need-based aid with a $180k HHI income at one of these kinds of schools, they have big $$ in accounts somewhere (EXCLUDING retirement...financial aid does not consider retirement $).

There are persistent rumors out there that families making $100-200k are not receiving financial aid when it's not the case at the most-desired schools. I don't know why this misconception is so ubiquitous.

To drive this point home, just did the calculator -- for a family with $250k HHI, $200k in savings, and $200k in non-retirement investment funds, they WOULD STILL RECEIVE FINANCIAL AID AT BROWN. ($13k in financial aid a year, no loans)

At 250K a year there is no excuse they aren't saving more except for rare situations.

It wasn't $250 a year when my kids were born. It's $250,000 NOW. When my kids were born, we were making $105,000 a year as a family. (Nurse, public defender) DS1 had medical problems that were expensive. We funded a bunch of therapies out of pocket. We had our own student loans to pay. We bought a modest house in a good school district and sent the kids to public schools. We bought used Hondas and drove them until the wheels feel off. We elected to fully fund retirement, and that was pretty much all the savings room we had.

And, you still could save. We are in a similar situation. Had a SN kid in daily therapies for years at a huge expense plus an elderly parent, where one spouse had to quit their job between the kid and parent to care for them. And, yes, we still managed to put away money. A good school district is code for over spending on housing and justifying it. We don't have districts, we have counties and more expensive homes are considered better schools, which isn't always true. The difference is we don't vacation, we bought a house in an area you wouldn't buy and still sent ours to public, so we were able to save. If your priority is only a fully funded retirement, then you can pay for college but its all about life choices. Your kids will need to take loans and pay them off as you were to selfish to save. As your income went up, you easily could have put that extra money into a college fund. Or, as a nurse and attorney, you both easily could have taken other jobs to raise your HHI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ah yes, the mythical 400k house in the DMV

Why is that mythical?

There are houses from $350-500K, just not ones that poster wants. Life is about choices. If someone chooses a $350K house and saves $150K for college vs. someone paying $800K and not saving, why should the non-saver get aid and the saver get nothing.

NP Our house cost 400k and we saved, but not enough to have unlimited means to put two kids through a 60k+ education when we could stay in state and use the money for non negotiable costs such as helping kids with housing down the road. To me it would be utterly foolish to waste money on private college, I see it the same way as buying a fancy car. A flagship education is much better value.

[Anonymous]

All of these people saying “you could have saved” or “the person didn’t save” are just creating strawmen. It isn’t about people who saved zero for college. This thread has lost the plot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What should donut holes be thinking about with this new regime? And/or for students of Fed workers?

This administration is kicking up a lot of dust
The dust hasn't settled yet.
But it seems clear that DEI is gone for the time being and probably for good. It is a political loser for the Democrats in it's current incarnation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ah yes, the mythical 400k house in the DMV

Why is that mythical?

There are houses from $350-500K, just not ones that poster wants. Life is about choices. If someone chooses a $350K house and saves $150K for college vs. someone paying $800K and not saving, why should the non-saver get aid and the saver get nothing.

NP Our house cost 400k and we saved, but not enough to have unlimited means to put two kids through a 60k+ education when we could stay in state and use the money for non negotiable costs such as helping kids with housing down the road. To me it would be utterly foolish to waste money on private college, I see it the same way as buying a fancy car. A flagship education is much better value.

And, that's a reasonable choice. We are encouraging ours to go to a state school to pay for grad school, which to me is far more important than a fancy undergrad degree as its really luck of the professors you get vs. name brand. Only a few select majors need ivy schools.

My last car was pricier than planned but we keep them till they die and needed one good car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could someone please explain, because it sounds like people with nice resources feeling entitled to more than they can afford.

No. It is a family that won’t qualify for FA but that doesn’t have the resources to reasonably handle tuition at the priciest/most elite colleges. I don’t know about families feeling entitled, but from the colleges’ standpoint it is a real problem that they are concerned about. They don’t want their student populations to come from two stratified socioeconomic groups.

This is the most accurate and sound answer so far.

Most of the previous answers are marinated in judgment. The government won't allow me to liquidate my 401K without a 10% penalty yet that same money is counted by colleges as money I have available to pay for college. The schools don't even subtract the 10% that would be paid to the US government.

I'm not complaining. We just told the kids they could not apply to certain schools.

I can't think of a single college that counts your retirement assets against you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of these people saying “you could have saved” or “the person didn’t save” are just creating strawmen. It isn’t about people who saved zero for college. This thread has lost the plot.

No, if you want your kids at pricy schools, you need to plan accordingly. Feeling entitled to send your kids on full rides to the most expensive schools is absurd.

[Anonymous]

If you kid doesn't get into ivy+ you better have a very good reason to full pay at a private if you are donut hole. Even most ivy+ are pretty borderline. Harvard Stanford MIT are almost certainly worth it over your child lifetime but I can't really see anything more expensive than UVA otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of these people saying “you could have saved” or “the person didn’t save” are just creating strawmen. It isn’t about people who saved zero for college. This thread has lost the plot.

No, if you want your kids at pricy schools, you need to plan accordingly. Feeling entitled to send your kids on full rides to the most expensive schools is absurd.

Again, this is a strawman. No one is saying this. What a useless thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like a broken record on this thread. Before you assume you don't qualify for need-based aid, do a net price calculator. A non-school specific non-profit one is available here: https://myintuition.org/quick-college-cost-estimator/.

For most (all?) of the most selective schools, families with HHI of up to and even in some cases OVER $200k ARE receiving need-based financial aid. The families who are not are the families with significant non-retirement assets (savings or investments). If someone tells you they aren't receiving need-based aid with a $180k HHI income at one of these kinds of schools, they have big $$ in accounts somewhere (EXCLUDING retirement...financial aid does not consider retirement $).

There are persistent rumors out there that families making $100-200k are not receiving financial aid when it's not the case at the most-desired schools. I don't know why this misconception is so ubiquitous.

To drive this point home, just did the calculator -- for a family with $250k HHI, $200k in savings, and $200k in non-retirement investment funds, they WOULD STILL RECEIVE FINANCIAL AID AT BROWN. ($13k in financial aid a year, no loans)

At 250K a year there is no excuse they aren't saving more except for rare situations.

It wasn't $250 a year when my kids were born. It's $250,000 NOW. When my kids were born, we were making $105,000 a year as a family. (Nurse, public defender) DS1 had medical problems that were expensive. We funded a bunch of therapies out of pocket. We had our own student loans to pay. We bought a modest house in a good school district and sent the kids to public schools. We bought used Hondas and drove them until the wheels feel off. We elected to fully fund retirement, and that was pretty much all the savings room we had.

And, you still could save. We are in a similar situation. Had a SN kid in daily therapies for years at a huge expense plus an elderly parent, where one spouse had to quit their job between the kid and parent to care for them. And, yes, we still managed to put away money. A good school district is code for over spending on housing and justifying it. We don't have districts, we have counties and more expensive homes are considered better schools, which isn't always true. The difference is we don't vacation, we bought a house in an area you wouldn't buy and still sent ours to public, so we were able to save. If your priority is only a fully funded retirement, then you can pay for college but its all about life choices. Your kids will need to take loans and pay them off as you were to selfish to save. As your income went up, you easily could have put that extra money into a college fund. Or, as a nurse and attorney, you both easily could have taken other jobs to raise your HHI.

Yes you big dummy, get DIFFERENT CAREERS and also screw over your own retirement so you can hand over all the extra income to Yale ($41 billion endowment).

You think Yale should spend their OWN money? Ha ha ha ha you just don’t get it.

Look I chose to be a neurologist and marry a Rockefeller and also live in West Baltimore, and I only eat ramen. Maybe you should live a virtuous life and make the same choices I did then you could also save every penny to give to MIT. My kid has no legs and we gave up prosthetics and physical therapy just so they could go to NYU.