Reply to Is college aid process biased against prudent savers?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Is college aid process biased against prudent savers?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]The Princeton college publishing folks have a book on how to plan for college so you maximize financial aid. A lot of the info is useful facts for middle class families, like where to find your pre-tax contributions on your W2 so you can fill out the FAFSA. But they also have a whole chapter on how rich people can try to qualify for FA, like how to structure your kid's trust fund so it doesn't affect FA. The authors have a consulting business on the side and they claim to have helped a family that had a million dollar apartment in Manhattan get FA.

For most of us there are limits to these strategies. You can only sock away about $17000 a year in a retirement savings account (and that's if you're over age 50 or maybe it's age 55). If you buy a million dollar apartment, it would need to be fully paid for by the time your kid needs college, because you can't qualify for FA with high income.
 
This does beg the question of ethics. Like with the tax code, you're not doing anything illegal as long as you follow the law. But from an ethical standpoint, it seems like the family with the million dollar home should be required to take out a home equity loan to finance college. Just my two cents.[/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