Reply to At what income are you unlikely to get any aid?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our HHI is $145K, but we have $350K in savings outside of retirement accounts. Three years ago, we were denied any aid at every private college including Yale. The FAFSA said we could pay $59K. Ha. Ha. Ha. We're very close to retirement too. 
Our youngest child is going in-state with merit aid and a bunch of scholarships. We would not allow DC to apply to any private colleges because even with merit, in-state would always be cheaper. 
I really don't get what "qualifies" you for FA, especially at very wealthy colleges (think Northwestern, HYPSM, Haverford, etc.). We're middle class, live in a small house, drive old cars, live frugally. Why should we spend most of our savings to send our DC to a fancy private college? Why do the colleges think this is reasonable? We'd be crazy to do so, especially so near to retirement. It would be irresponsible of us to spend down our rainy-day fund. What if one of us gets laid off? We'd have no savings to fall back on.
Thank God for in-state colleges!!! [/quote]

How much equity do you have in your house? [b]I found that equity was more of a problem than savings outside of retirement[/b].[/quote]

How do you know this?

The FAFSA doesn't even ask about home equity.

The CSS asks for retirement accounts and home equity, savings, etc., but how do you know what factors are the most important? [/quote]

I was referring to schools that use CSS. If you run NPC’s for schools that consider home equity vs those that don’t you can see a difference of at least $5k/$100k equity in parental contribution depending on how much equity you have in your house. Also, check out this website that explains the issue: https://www.edmit.me/home-equity-financial-aid-calculator

Of course if you have high non- retirement savings that will be an issue too. But for people with low to moderate savings and/or 529 accounts, home equity can be the difference of $20-30k in you have $400k+ equity in your home. For our family they eliminated many schools.[/quote]

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