Best financial planning tip for donut hole families

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we shifted 600k of assets into non reportable. mostly paying down our mortgage, but also wrapping up a long list of needs: new roof, added an ADU, did dental work, redid driveway, maxed retirement, updated a bunch of legal work like trusts, etc.

Yes, we are renovating the house and taking any left over assets and paying down the mortgage. I think this takes care of the asset side of the formula. Thanks

Does this really move the formula? It sounds nuts to me that you'd sink $600k into other things (other than the mortgage/retirement) with the hope of getting aid vs using it to pay for school. Does moving 600K into house/retirement really help? I thought they ask about the value of both of these.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Community college to in-state. Your kid will be fine, and you desperately need to learn to stop "keeping up appearances."

This isn't about keeping up appearances.
DS would really like to go to Duke or Brown and he is working his ass off to be an attractive candidate for those schools.

Best of luck!! These are super hard admits...

I know these are hard admits and even well qualified students have to get lucky but DS is a 4.5+ student with 1550 SAT and state level recognition in his extracurricular activities so I don't want to get caught flat footed in the event he does get in to one of these schools. It's not the GPA so much as it was the SAT score that got me worried.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we shifted 600k of assets into non reportable. mostly paying down our mortgage, but also wrapping up a long list of needs: new roof, added an ADU, did dental work, redid driveway, maxed retirement, updated a bunch of legal work like trusts, etc.

Yes, we are renovating the house and taking any left over assets and paying down the mortgage. I think this takes care of the asset side of the formula. Thanks

Does this really move the formula? It sounds nuts to me that you'd sink $600k into other things (other than the mortgage/retirement) with the hope of getting aid vs using it to pay for school. Does moving 600K into house/retirement really help? I thought they ask about the value of both of these.

We didn't have 600K that was a different poster. Colleges expect you to contribute 5% of your non-exempt assets to college education every year so even if you are paying off a 3% mortgage, you are actually getting an 8% return because you are relieving yourself of 3% interest and the 5% contribution.