This thread is completely distorting reality. I really don't think it is common for families to receive financial aid if there is a SAHP.

Anonymous wrote:People who sit on their butt all day and beg for a FA handout deserve to be judged. Shameless mooches. Nobody is saying go get a 50 to 60 hour a week jet-setting career for $100k plus salary. But anyone can go find part-time work at nearby daycare center or Amazon or Target. And get off Facebook for Christ’s sake during workday hours. Nothing makes you look like a more pathetic working-prime loser.

Are you listening to what the people who actually know are saying?
FA TAKES INTO ACCOUNT an income for the SAHP. And that is probably more than that person would get working minimum wage for 5 hours a day.

So all of you who want this person to go work at a daycare center during the school day (which, wtf? What day care center is going to hire someone only for napping hours??) would actually end up with the school granting MORE aid to that parent, because they'd have income.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope FA families are taking note. No matter how good the rhetoric at your school, this is what people really think. Wow.

Has there been another thread about this? There must be, but I haven’t seen it. The OP sounds very petty and bitter. I’m not a SAHM, but my mother was and she worked so hard to take care of us and our home. I couldn’t put a dollar figure on what she did for all of us. If there was a Target back then, I’m sure she would have been there getting us what we needed (you said that was one of this woman’s common activities). I quit FB because I find it stressful, but when I did do it, it didn’t take any time to throw up a post.
OP, this SAHM might be an extreme case. I don’t know any who don’t clean, cook, run all errands, and a myriad of other things.

That would be the same stuff that working mothers do while also paying for a SAHMs tuition.

Well, bully for you. Give yourself a cookie! Being so “busy” doesn’t make you a better person than a SAHM. Some families value having a calm, relaxed home with a SAHM over a harried, frazzled, stressed-out household with two working parents. Let me say it again until it sinks in. You do you.

Working to pay for my kids' tuition sure as hell makes me a better person than someone who doesn't work and then complains about what she gets. Private school is not a right - if she doesn't like what she's getting, then she should send her kids to the free school they are entitled to attend.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You are highly offensive and should be ashamed of yourself, OP.

Who are you to judge another adult's decision about how much and what type of work is "enough"? Some people have hidden disabilities and cannot work. Some foreigners do not have work visas. And a lot of people have decided that a parent at home relieves stress on the entire household.

If you have a problem with your private school dispensing aid to other families, then take it up with the school, not individual families.

Not OP, but OP's problem is with someone who doesn't work AND THEN COMPLAINS ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF FINANCIAL AID SHE IS GETTING. Do you people really not see the difference between this and someone who doesn't work but is grateful for the FA because they don't work due to aging parents or a SN kid? Or the families who have two working parents but get FA? OP's criticism is of a SAHM who complains about how little FA she gets while spending her day at Starbucks. I think anyone saying OP is crazy didn't actually read the post.

Either didn't read it or they're SAHMs purposely distorting the thread.

Boats and second homes can be financed. True now, true many years ago. I am truly shocked at the number of high-income people in general who have no concept that wealth is not something that you can see. Not in where someone lives, not in what someone drives, not in what someone wears.

My parents owned one home, no mortgage, and I received absolutely no financial aid for college. I couldn't even get federal loans. I had to pay my way through college. And I am young enough that this was virtually impossible. No young person could earn enough to pay for their own college in those days, and there were no influencers yet. I had very little social life in high school or college so that I could earn enough, through merit scholarships and work, to pay in full. To this day, there are people that I went to college with that assumed I was poor because I worked all through college. Those people had loans, federal and private, and didn't work as much as I did. I didn't judge them then, and I don't judge them now.

Nobody in the financial aid system is "gaming" it. It is virtually impossible to have objectively fair rules that govern financial aid, taking into account the diversity in this country, let alone this metro area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love this forum!

“Isn’t our school wonderful with giving sooo much FA!”
“We don’t even know who gets FA. It doesn’t matter since we are such a supportive community!”
“All the kids are treated the same regardless of FA.”

lol

You figure out who gets FA, you gossip about it and you treat FA families differently. Guaranteed your kids pick up on your attitude and take it to school with them.

NP. Don't be a moron. A family that is working but otherwise can't afford the tuition is NOT the same as a household with a SAHM that expects a handout. Not even close.

Another NP here. And one of the responses to the above was this:

“FA families are different - they get the same product for less than what we pay for it. And a reminder, private school is a luxury good. There are FREE school available to everyone. If you can't afford private school, DON'T GO.”

So you may feel differently, but there are people on this thread who are unhappy with FA families no matter their circumstances.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love this forum!

“Isn’t our school wonderful with giving sooo much FA!”
“We don’t even know who gets FA. It doesn’t matter since we are such a supportive community!”
“All the kids are treated the same regardless of FA.”

lol

You figure out who gets FA, you gossip about it and you treat FA families differently. Guaranteed your kids pick up on your attitude and take it to school with them.

NP. Don't be a moron. A family that is working but otherwise can't afford the tuition is NOT the same as a household with a SAHM that expects a handout. Not even close.

I wish the financial aid office would call the entitled SAHMs out. I'd love to be a fly on the wall while they attempt to justify why they deserve [more] financial aid.

Question 1: What exactly do you do all day Mrs. SAHM?

Question 2: Mrs. SAHM, if your own words, where does financial aid funding come from?

Anonymous wrote:
You are highly offensive and should be ashamed of yourself, OP.

Who are you to judge another adult's decision about how much and what type of work is "enough"? Some people have hidden disabilities and cannot work. Some foreigners do not have work visas. And a lot of people have decided that a parent at home relieves stress on the entire household.

If you have a problem with your private school dispensing aid to other families, then take it up with the school, not individual families.

Not OP, but OP's problem is with someone who doesn't work AND THEN COMPLAINS ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF FINANCIAL AID SHE IS GETTING. Do you people really not see the difference between this and someone who doesn't work but is grateful for the FA because they don't work due to aging parents or a SN kid? Or the families who have two working parents but get FA? OP's criticism is of a SAHM who complains about how little FA she gets while spending her day at Starbucks. I think anyone saying OP is crazy didn't actually read the post.

Anonymous wrote:I love this forum!

“Isn’t our school wonderful with giving sooo much FA!”
“We don’t even know who gets FA. It doesn’t matter since we are such a supportive community!”
“All the kids are treated the same regardless of FA.”

lol

You figure out who gets FA, you gossip about it and you treat FA families differently. Guaranteed your kids pick up on your attitude and take it to school with them.

NP. Don't be a moron. A family that is working but otherwise can't afford the tuition is NOT the same as a household with a SAHM that expects a handout. Not even close.

And those you say mind your own business shock me. We hear good examples on this board every day of why people need to care for others. That can't be true only sometimes. Minding others business in this arena is critical. If someone is perceived as gaming the system it has an effect on the willingness of others to step up. It has an effect on the availability of financial aid to those who "really" need it. I'm not making a judgment on whether the first family really does or doesn't need it, just that yes, everyone should care how resources are distributed.

I had a good friend in college on financial aid. Her parents had a second home (no, not a rental property) and a boat. Stayed with me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only family I know at our private with a non-working parent has significant health issues. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, and she doesn’t share it widely. So I think we have to assume there are good reasons.

Even if it isn’t true for everyone, I would rather believe that.

This. It's just must less stress for me to think on the positive side than calculate who is possibly working the system and getting more than the supposedly deserve.

FA moochers don’t see themselves as “working” a system, they have no self-awareness, they take no agency for their character flaws. To them that pot of FA money is for people just like them. And they deserve more of it.

FA moochers? You likely don't even give to the annual fund, or if you do, I bet you're on the last page.

JFC

Yes. Moochers. Give ALL the FA aid available to a two parent working household -- someone at the lower SES. Or a family that bring diverse perspectives. That what is financial aid is for. Not for Lily to go to a private school while her mother plays tennis at the club.

And yes, we all agree that a parent with health issues isn't what we are talking about. Or a family with a special needs child. But good try.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only family I know at our private with a non-working parent has significant health issues. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, and she doesn’t share it widely. So I think we have to assume there are good reasons.

Even if it isn’t true for everyone, I would rather believe that.

This. It's just must less stress for me to think on the positive side than calculate who is possibly working the system and getting more than the supposedly deserve.

FA moochers don’t see themselves as “working” a system, they have no self-awareness, they take no agency for their character flaws. To them that pot of FA money is for people just like them. And they deserve more of it.

FA moochers? You likely don't even give to the annual fund, or if you do, I bet you're on the last page.

JFC

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only family I know at our private with a non-working parent has significant health issues. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, and she doesn’t share it widely. So I think we have to assume there are good reasons.

Even if it isn’t true for everyone, I would rather believe that.

This. It's just must less stress for me to think on the positive side than calculate who is possibly working the system and getting more than the supposedly deserve.

FA moochers don’t see themselves as “working” a system, they have no self-awareness, they take no agency for their character flaws. To them that pot of FA money is for people just like them. And they deserve more of it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're not a financial aid family but we're close with a family who is. I went to college with the mom, who constantly complains about private school's aid offer. She doesn't work and her husband isn't making big bucks. It was understandable when the youngest was a toddler, I guess, but youngest is now in 2nd grade, so there's no excuse that she can't work a part-time job. I wasn't sure how or if private schools nudge aid families that it's expected both work? Is it just written on forms or do they come out and tell you directly? Because clearly she hasn't gotten the hint.

For the record, her pre-Corona routine was spent posting all day on Facebook, Starbucks visits, walking neighborhood with another (far wealthier) SAHM, and aimlessly browsing Target, Whole Foods and Trader Joes until the kids needed to be picked up from school.

I just don't get how someone could be so clueless that the rest of her girlfriends are working all day (to pay for private), while she's idle, yet thinks her kids deserve a full boat of aid. It's bugs me so much. Is it entitlement or genuine cluelessness?

No one is getting “full boat” at dc area private day schools.

+1 I'm a single parent and don't make a lot at all. I still pay $15K

Saying you are a single parent doesn't mean much as you may get child support and if you can afford to pay $15K, you are still probably making over $100K which is more than many dual parent make.

I know 4 or 5 single parents who are high earners, like partners at law firms and doctors, with no other in the picture. They are not asking for aid.

Well good for them. That's not my situation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love this forum!

“Isn’t our school wonderful with giving sooo much FA!”
“We don’t even know who gets FA. It doesn’t matter since we are such a supportive community!”
“All the kids are treated the same regardless of FA.”

lol

You figure out who gets FA, you gossip about it and you treat FA families differently. Guaranteed your kids pick up on your attitude and take it to school with them.

FA families are different - they get the same product for less than what we pay for it. And a reminder, private school is a luxury good. There are FREE school available to everyone. If you can't afford private school, DON'T GO.

I assume this is directed at the SAHM with no medical issues that doesn't work, doesn't volunteer or help at school and gets aid.

One would hope but your assumption is likely incorrect.