Reply to Recommendations for Funding College

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Recommendations for Funding College"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We’re you not making over $150,000 until very recently? If you didn’t want to save for college, then you either need to take parent plus loans or look at less expensive schools. [/quote]

No, we’ve been making quite a bit more than this for some time. We have clearly underfunded our 529. Too late to fix it now and, honestly, we didn’t realize until just a year or two ago that many colleges don’t offer merit-only-based scholarships. There must also be a demonstrated financial need. DH grew up dirt poor and received a full scholarship to a T20 school and then a full ride after through to a Ph.D. I went to a cheap in-state school.

But…we ran multiple college financial aid net price calculators and even with our below-par 529 balances, we’re told our net price is whatever the college charges and that our affordability is more than double the actual $80K cost. So, sure seems like the colleges think we can easily afford to send our kids there. Just wondering what levers they’re expecting us to pull?[/quote]

They were expecting you to save more. College is not a surprise expense. You could have  easily saved more.  Our income started near $100k when our children were born and is now around $200k. We were able to save around $400k. We knew college was coming up and we saved as much as we could from the start.  Not all of it was in 529s - we kept those to the expected cost of our in state options.  In the end, we ended up spending around $360k. Both graduated in the past two years. [/quote]

This is not entirely true. Run through a few financial aid calculations and [b]zero out[/b] all parental and student assets, investments, college savings, and home ownership. Then enter a parental AGI of $400K. Even with $0 saved for college, $0 in other savings, and no home to borrow against, colleges will still expect a family with this kind of income to make it happen through cash flow or loans. The lack of OP’s sufficient 529 savings really doesn’t matter – except it forces taking from cash flow to be their only real option. [/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