Reply to Is there a calculator or benchmark for how much college we can afford?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Is there a calculator or benchmark for how much college we can afford?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My first is a senior and going through the college search and application process. We have saved [b]about $70,000 in a 529 f[/b]or her and make about $175,000.

We have filled out the FAFSA (EFC of $46,000) and gone through the net price calculators that show us how much we can expect to pay, but I don't have an idea of how much we can [i]afford.[/i]

When we bought houses and got a mortgages there will all sorts of calculators and rules-of-thumb that gave us an idea of how much house we could afford. I can't find anything similar for college.

Any guidance that worked for you all?[/quote]

As others have said, that 70K will get you at most one year at a slac or private university, most of which are now at $80K a year.  You need to get on top of this with your husband and a financial advisor ASAP so you don't dangle in front of your kid options that you cannot afford.  As a good (but not always accurate) rule of thumb, the average DCUM reader makes too much money to get any financial aid (determined by the FAFSA, which you must file with the fed government) so beyond the $5500 that all filers get in loans, you may, as we, did, with an HHI of $210 an EFC of 100 percent, meaning we would get no financial aid.  So we pushed forward assuming (correctly) that our kids would get no substantial merit aid and no financial aid, all of which turned out to be true.  We were thrilled when DS picked UVA over the more expensive privates that he was accepted to.  We banked the difference and can now suppose him overseas for graduate school and then perhaps law school.

so meet with an advisor.  Start looking closely at fees.  run the net price calculator on all college's websites (and take a screenshot if they project you might get a scholarship or merit of some sort - you may need that later when financial aid says "no no!".  Truly you must look exclusively to your instate network of offerings.  Also, community college with a transfer to a four-year institution is a viable course.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics