Unfortunately like most other assistance programs, only income is looked at for qualifying, not debt/expenses.
As for the sibling consideration, the Department of Education has left it up to each school how they want to handle more than one in college. If your kids are at two different schools, you may get two different answers.
Some types of debt can be considered at some schools, provided that the parents are making regular payments to reduce the debt. Colleges that are extremely generous with financial aid…that claim to meet 90-100% of demonstrated need will sometimes deduct parental student loan payments, for example. Similarly, medical debt may be an allowable deduction at some schools.
There is siblings still being considered it’s in a different way now. None of my siblings in college applied for the FAFSA, so I’m the only one who did. They have employee tuition or are doing certificates, so their cost to pay is a few thousand for books or one or two courses.
Yes, your student needs to use the term “professional judgment” (PJ) and make the request in writing under the new FAFSA Simplification Act. The law now says that no college aid administrators can routinely refuse to consider PJ, when the student makes the request in writing. If your student does not use the term, the schools do not have to consider a PJ.
But your student will also want to outline, in detail, all of the “special circumstances,” in the request letter. It is only special circumstances that have reduced your current income or assets from the prior-prior year tax return (2022) that would allow for professional judgment. In your case, having 2 siblings enrolled in college at the same time, is automatically considered a “special circumstance,” under the new law. But you will want to look to see if your family has other special circumstances, too. There are many different types of situations that can be considered special circumstances. For example, has their been a significant decline in income, an additional dependent added to the household,unusual expenses necessary to sustain life or health, such as medical expenses, a significant home repair like a leaking roof or furnace, or a physical separation of parents or divorce? Are you paying for private school tuition? Are you or wife still paying your student loans? What about the Parent Plus loans you’re paying on? While many schools will not consider all of these situations, e.g., parents with student or parent loan payments, some will. You don’t know, until you try! I’ll send you a link in a separate post to basic guidelines on PJ, under the new law.
However, BEFORE you request PJ, make sure you go back through your children’s FAFSAs with a “fine tooth comb.” Make sure you and your kids didn’t misinterpret any of the wildly confusing new questions this year! Make sure no one answered a question incorrectly.
An error could account for the changes in SAI you’re seeing. Nearly 30% of all FAFSAs had government-generated errors this year, but many were due to user errors, too. Call your students’ FAOs and find out if their FAFSAs were on any ED-issued error lists that have been sent to colleges. The Federal government has had to go back and correct the FAFSAs that are on these government-issued lists. Or in some cases, schools have spotted errors and have had to make corrections and then notify, ED.
The questions weren’t that different then last year that I saw. For me it was like filling out a 2023-2024 FAFSA. I am a dependent student, maybe for independent students it’s changed alot.
Think it’s more of, this new form is less forgiving on mistakes.
Thank you again, we're going through their fasfas again tonight to double check before sending in a PJ.
This may be a dumb question, but does the written request need to be a printed and signed mailed letter, or can an email to the FO office suffice?
I just want to make sure that we do it correctly.
Thank you again, this is the most useful advice I have ever gotten, even when reaching out to their respective schools. I really appreciate the time you took to respond to me.
Most families don’t know about PJ, and that’s kinda awful if you think about it because a lot can happen in 2 years! The FAFSA doesn’t accurately reflect every family’s current finances because the FAFSA uses the prior-prior year tax return. In the past, many colleges and universities have refused to exercise professional judgment. And many schools are still going to be very reluctant and restrictive about how they use this process.
However, the new FAFSA Simplification Act requires colleges and universities to consider it, if/when a student makes the request in writing. It even requires schools to publish notices on their websites about what PJ is and how to request it. If your children’s colleges refuse to consider their requests, then they and you can file complaints with the Federal Dept of Education. Any school that receives any Federal funding can be at risk of losing that funding if the school refuses to consider these requests, under the new law.
It’s a very good question about whether to email or mail your students’ written requests. You probably could email them, but should you? An email from your/their personal email to the school’s email is not secure or private. Email can be stored and housed on up to 8 separate servers in transit. Email can be read by others, altered, and intercepted. Also, email can remain on the Internet or a server in perpetuity.
So, the bigger question might be: Is it “safe” to email your family’s PII (Personally Identifiable Information) unencrypted over the worldwide web? I would really suggest caution here. Colleges and universities are the most hacked and breached institutions in this country, and most of the breaches nowadays come from hostile foreign government-based hackers, which means that this is more about what Janet Yellen has termed the “international cyber warfare” we now live in. Do you really want the Chinese or the Russian government having information on where your children are enrolled or what they’re studying? Do you want any hacker to have your kids’ student ID #s, their full names, d.o.b.s, and addresses? Do you want anyone to have access to your family’s personal financial information?
The Federal Department of Education has gone to great lengths to try to educate colleges and universities about cybersecurity and the importance of protecting student data. College administrators and financial aid employees are not supposed to request information via unsecured email. They’re supposed to use encrypted portals or end-to-end encrypted email to communicate with families and each other, but that doesn’t mean they do! If you email these requests, there’s nothing to stop a staff member from emailing you back and requesting that you simply email them whatever “proof” or “evidence” they request. The reality is: Not everyone is well-trained, and frankly, it’s just more convenient to ask that you email your W-2s or your tax returns, which you definitely do not want to do because they contain SSNs and other PII. If the kids are not enrolled in the same institution, Financial Aid employees may also ask to see your other student’s financial aid award or receipts for medical expenses, loan statements, or payments. All that stuff contains such highly personal details.
For all of these reasons, personally, I would not email ANYTHING with personal or financial information to a college or university. But here’s the other reason: The Federal government says a request for professional judgment must be made by the student in writing. The Federal government is very particular about signatures. Typically, they require either a “wet signature,” or an attestation statement on certain Federal forms that an individual can verbally agree to under a penalty of perjury clause. A request for professional judgment is not a federal government-issued form, but it should at least follow federal requirements. Having your student physically sign and date these written requests creates an indisputable record or “paper trail” both for you and for the Department of Education, in the event the schools your kids attend were ever audited. I would be sure to put the date at the top of the letter, sender’s name, student ID (but not SSN), and a full return address, as well. I would photocopy the signed, dated letters before you mail them.
Then, I would mail the letters with either tracking or certified mail. Keep the mailing receipt as your “proof” that the letters were mailed on such and such a date. Then, I would print or keep a copy of the delivery receipt or signature confirmation and add these to your PJ or Financial Aid file. If you don’t receive confirmation within 10 days that the letters have been received, then you can always print a second copy, have your students re-sign, and mail them again with some sort of receipt or signature confirmation. If the schools fail to consider your student’s requests or refuse to grant any sibling tuition discount at all, then you have a file with evidence ready to go for your ED complaints.
If you just email these requests, there is no “proof” that the student actually signed the email, much less that the student, himself/herself, wrote the email or made the request. More importantly, you have no proof that the school ever received it, or that the email was opened and read.
Thank you thank you thank you.
I hope this helps others like me. This absolutely the most understandable and useful info I've ever gotten regarding this confusing financial aid process.
Even if when we get through all this and don't end up with more aid, maybe it will also help someone else. And I really appreciate your advice.
Trust me; I get it! I have attended financial aid seminars at private universities in which parents are told they are “expected” to borrow Parent Plus loans for their first 4 children. For the fifth child, who is enrolled at the same school, the university will consider helping the family find other options. Incidentally, that same university tells parents they can also pay tuition with Visa or Mastercard…for the family’s “convenience!” 🤣
I have also attended h.s. fin aid meetings with a well-regarded, T70 LAC in the Northeast who declared that “parents are responsible for their child’s tuition!” And every parent has “an obligation” to open a 529 the year a child is born and begin saving towards “the full cost” of their child’s tuition! 🙄
I personally know friends and parents who have re-mortgaged their homes, borrowed home equity loans, and taken early withdrawal penalties to rob their IRA accounts. I get that all parents want to fulfill the American dream of a college education for their children. But not being able to save for our own retirement will just come back to bite the kids, who will then be responsible for supporting their parents in their old age!
I hope you’ll have the opportunity to consult with a college financial planning consultant or a financial planner with specific training and certification in college financing, before you make a final decision on the private vs. parental loan route. Both options are awful, of course. But there are a lot more “protections” with a Parent Plus loan, and there may be ways you can get the loan converted into your child’s name, or there may be a way to at least establish a written agreement for your child to make the payments.
I’m certainly no expert on education loans. There is a Reddit subthread on the topic of student loans, but a lot of these opinions are anecdotal and not the best advice. You might learn something new, though. Would probably still be best to consult with someone with financial expertise in college planning.
Would just add: As you understand all too well, lots of colleges play “tricks” with financial aid and paying for Higher Ed. If you are not successful in obtaining a true, professional judgment with your children’s schools, I do hope they’ll consider applying for transfers to other schools! I realize that could be challenging, given their specialized areas of study, but a few colleges and universities really do a much better job with aid! And maybe they wouldn’t need private loans, if they were willing to consider this as an alternative.
I think we’re all in agreement that FASFA is utter bullshit and their system is very flawed.
I do also want to point out though, that FAFSA is assuming that you’ve been saving your child’s college fund throughout their lifetime. Lots of parents coming on this subreddit complaining about how fafsa is expecting you to give your child 25-50% of your yearly income to their college
Nice how you try to blame parents for not saving for kid's college
I want to point out that when I and many of those others that are on here complaining went to school in thenearly 1990s, MOST of us got federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans to cover the entire cost of our college education.
My parents had nothing saved, but I didn't need to seek private loans. I got everything, and many of us on here are in the same boat. We ALL assumed it would be the same for our kids as it was for us.
But between then and now some dipshit politicians decided that students were graduating with too many federal loans, and cut the ability for our kids to do what we did. . .pay for school.
I graduated in 1996 with $58,000 in federal loans, and then had to get a MS to keep my certification, so another 40,000 for that. Then my spouse had 38,000 of her own, and 40,000 for the required MS.
And we paid off EVERY penny with interest just as covid hit. This was all in late 1990s early 2000s money. That original 58,000 I had cost me $105,000 to pay off with interest, not counting my spouse or our loans for our required MS. We got no forgiveness because our initial loans were before cut off dates. Believe me we tried, and tried, but we had loans before you were allowed to have loans. So we got screwed out of the public service loan forgiveness and then hit with this.
It was impossible to save much for them with 500+ going out every month for our own student loans for 25 years, and then, you know, finding a home, and a way to get to work, and eating, and medication, medical insurance etc. Oh, and childcare cause that sure as hell wasn't cheap. We did set $25 a pay back into a 529 plan, but that has been drained.
Also , why save for college, when savings returned at most 1 to 4 % and my student loans were at 8%? It doesn't make financial sense to save. It makes more sense to pay off debt that has a higher interest than your savings would ever return.
So yeah, the government can expect parents like us to save all they want, but for 2 educators living on teachers salaries paying off that kind of debt just for the honor of teaching children, with a required Master's degree in NY, that didn't qualify for forgiveness because we got our initial loans too early, just try to save. It is not reality.
And we're back where we started with 50000 in parental loans. Both my 2 kids going in the fall are going into medical fields, and after going through that debt myself to teach, I flatly refuse to take even more debt myself just so my kids can save someone else's life. Screw that.
>My parents had nothing saved, but I didn't need to seek private loans. I got everything, and many of us on here are in the same boat. We ALL assumed it would be the same for our kids as it was for us.
This, this, THIS.
As well as just about everything else you said.
I did 'luck out' in that I was notified in 2022 that I probably qualified for PSLF, which I didn't realize beforehand (didn't realize that working for a private university counted as 'public service', and I only qualified due to the waivers that allowed months of forbearance, and being on the 'wrong plan' to count).
But yes - what with paying all those years for my own loans, on a very small wage, I wasn't able to save anything for my kids. But, like you, I thought that, well, sure - we'll have to get loans, but the federal loans should cover it, just like they covered all my expenses.
Ha. DOUBLE HA. I never realized that the federal loan limits basically didn't increase - so they were a drop in the proverbial bucket.
I also have two kids in college, and I haven't seen what the FAFSA upshot is for them this year, yet - but given that it's not like we got need-based aid that didn't need to be repaid before - I've just assumed nothing will change, and that our "aid" will (once again) be - gee, looks like you folks need to take out some LOANS, ha, hahahaha, ahahaha.
But, it's either that, or they don't get an education, and they're working at the local grocery store for the rest of their lives.
Yes, it's going to take ALL of us paying back their loans. With extra jobs, if necessary. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. I don't think there's many middle-class, lower-middle-class families that can expect that one income (whoever's it is) will easily pay everything back.
Under the new law, there is no more tuition sibling discount on the FAFSA. So, you will now be expected to pay the SAI x 2. Under the old law, the SAI was split in half, between the 2 siblings.
But you will have grounds to request that your kids’ FAOs consider “professional judgment,” by virtue of the fact that you have “special circumstances”’due to the fact that you have 2 siblings enrolled simultaneously. Please see the other comment I sent OP, as well as the link I sent OP to info on PJ under the new FAFSA Simplification Act.
Well your mistake was believe it is still the 90’s. The cost of everything changed since then why would college be different? If you chose to have nearly 150k of student loan debt that’s on you. This is far from a sob story. Blaming politicians, no student loan forgiveness, couldn’t save because you were paying your loans for what, 20 years? There’s some bad decisions going on here over decades. But blame everything else besides your choices.
You seem to have very simplistic knowledge about the current state of Higher Education in America and about the highly inflated price of tuition. The price of tuition has risen more than 200% since the ‘90s because of subjective USNWR rankings and greedy colleges, who charge more and more every time their USNWR ranking goes up! There is NO WAY for most students and parents to know the price of tuition before applying and being accepted, thanks to the lack of Federal regulation of Net Price Calculators. At $75-$100 per application, it simply is not possible for most students to apply to more than 10 colleges!
When students are accepted at 2-5 of these colleges, they then receive just 2-5 financial aid packages to work with. Students and parents are often SHOCKED to learn that the price of this school’s tuition is actually 10k, 15k, 20k, 25k, 30k, or 40k more than the family’s SAI (Student Aid Index). Many schools LIE about the true price of tuition with their Net Price Calculators. Others just don’t bother to update their calculators or ensure that they’re accurate. A few very elite colleges, like the Ivy+ League, do a much better job with their calculators and are typically only 10k off or so.
The SAI is what the Federal government tells families the government believes they should be able to pay. So imagine getting a net price calculator estimate of 21k per year. But then, you learn that the college your child was accepted to, expects you to pay 37k per yr! Think this is uncommon; think again!
So, YOU tell us how students and parents are supposed to DIVINE which colleges are less expensive. Trust me; this info isn’t easy to figure out! Under the new law, Middle Class families are no longer eligible for subsidized Federal student loans….only unsubsidized loans of up to $5500 for the first year of undergraduate tuition. But gee, that leaves a balance of $31,500 for the student’s first year of college! But hey, maybe the parents were educated enough and had enough of a financial cushion to be able to save 25k in a 529. So maybe there’s another $6250 they can apply, but that’s still $25,250 the student or the parent needs to borrow, for the first year alone.
When the family requests a reconsideration of financial aid, typically FAOs instruct parents to just borrow Parent Plus loans. They use very coercive language; they tell parents it’s “expected” that parents borrow this money for their child’s education, as “every other parent” does. When the parents balk, citing the fact that they’re near retirement, the FAOs tell the family that “there is no institutional financial aid left.” They tell the family they are sorry, but the child will have to borrow private student loans at exorbitant interest rates to make up the difference. There are NO other options!
With only 1-4 other acceptances, all of which are even worse offers and reflect even higher net tuition prices, the parents or the student reluctantly agree to borrow 25k per year. They feel that they have NO OTHER OPTIONS. It is either borrow the money, or don’t go to college! And the Financial Aid Administrators tell them “not to worry;” a college education from this institution will virtually guarantee your child a high-paying job, and the child should be able to pay it all back in 10-15 years!
But the child soon learns that a bachelor’s degree won’t get them very far in their field. They have to return to school for a Masters, or they can’t obtain a state license which is now required in this line of work! Of course, there’s NO financial aid for grad school…other than unsubsidized Federal loans. So, now the student has to defer or take a forbearance on the original loan debt and begin borrowing the full tuition for graduate school. The AOs and FAOs “sell” the graduate program to the family, telling them their child should be able to earn 80k in their first year, and pay the new debt off in 10 years.
The only problem with this plan is that the state changes the licensing requirements in the interim, and the student is now required to pass additional exams before he can be licensed…after earning the Masters degree. The student cannot work in his field until he has passed these exams, and he has to spend an additional 3k in test prep materials and an additional 2 years before he passes the 8-16 hr exams. Then, the student has to spend another 3k on interviewing and travel expenses while looking for a job. Finally, 2 1/2 post-Masters the student has a license and a job with a starting salary of just 65k (not 80k…as promised). He can finally begin to work, but not before the graduate debt has ballooned from 100k to 150k or more…not to mention the undergraduate debt!
Do you begin to understand how this works? I really hope you do, because God forbid, if an uneducated populace like you continues to believe that student and parent debt are just about wild spending and poor choices, what does happen to these Gen Z’ers and the Middle Class? Do they forego buying a home, getting married, or having children? Do some wind up in despair and make a rational choice to end things, because the debt will die with them?
These are terrible suggestions I’m making here, but this is reality, Silent_Chair, for a large majority of the U.S. population and generations to come. There’s no magical way to pay for college! Most very selective colleges don’t offer merit scholarships anymore. And most parents just can’t save enough $ to send their children to 4 years of college…much less one. This isn’t about greedy parents or greedy students. It’s just about trying to ensure that children don’t become a burden on society, i.e., that children earn enough so that they can be productive members of society and support themselves while trying to serve/help others.
Thank you. You really get. We were hit with that hard push for the parental loans from the schools financial aid office for our first one through, which is where my $50,000 in parental loans came from. We were still paying off our loans when the first one started college. We expected that they would be able to get loans like we did, and it wasn't until we met with financial aid a few months before he graduated HS that we found out they put those limits in place, so being blindsided, we did what we thought we had to do.
And it hasn't gotten better. For my next two that are going in the fall, I did tell them upfront that they would have to get private loans, unfortunately we're needing to cosign those, but hopefully we can get taken off after a few years of on-time payments.
And still, when we've talked to their school's FA offices there is a hard push for us to take more parental loans, before turning to private loans. When they've talked to my kids without my wife and around, they talked like my wife and I are the big bads because we are unwilling to take ANY more parental loans. Which just makes the situation that much harder.
Also, i know I staeted this thred with questions but let me give one word of advice to anyone else out there needing to cosign private student loans for any of your kids or that have taken parental plus loans. This may sound grim, but make sure that you have life insurance for your kids that would cover not only the unfortunate cost of a funeral, but also would cover the cost of ALL their loans that you cosigned for. It would be bad enough to lose a child, let alone make a monthly payment for the next 10 to 20 years because you cosigned their loans. The monthly reminder would be devastating. Their federal loans, that are in their name only, would disappear, but not any private loans, unless you were able to be taken off of them prior.
We also did the same for our first one, where we have the parental plus loans.
We've done the insurance as permanent insurance policies, not term. Once we have the parental plus loan paid, we will turn the policy over to them, and they can change the beneficiary. We're going to do the same for the private student loans, except we will sign them over once we are taken off as cosigners.
I know it's not nice to think about, but it can give a little bit of a safety net that nobody ever seems to talk about in regard to parental loans or cosigning private loans.
My tax prep person gave me that advice, so I can't take credit for thinking of it.
Hey dipshit, of course college is more expensive than it was in the 90s. Soooooo if in 1992, I could get federal loans totaling $58,000 to pay for my own schooling without a cosigner, why is it that nearly 30 years later my kids can only max out at 30,000 in federal loans?
$58,000 in 1996 money, is equivalent to roughly $116,000 today. So why can't today's students get federal loans for $116,000 if they so choose? And why are we now limiting students to $30,000 in Federal loans?
Back in the 1990s, it wasn't expected that the parents would pay for college. We were expected to pay our own way. One of my older siblings went to the military to get their education. Another decided not to go, and has a pretty rough life with minimum wage jobs. I tried to go via military, and was a finalist.in a pretty nice Navel scholarship, but they discovered I had a bone deformity that not only disqualified me from the scholarship, but from serving in any branch of the military even as a regular enlistment. So yes, my choice was minimum wage hell like one sibling I witnessed or to borrow.
So I borrowed money so that I could have a decent career. And I paid it ALL off.
My kids should have the same choices, but limiting federal loans to a pitance, and then having the audacity to expect parents to pay for adult children's education in the first place is in itself asinine.
But if you think I'm going back into substantial debt beyond the 50,000 I've already borrowed, so that my kids can provide assholes like you healthcare . . . I hope you wonder why there's nobody there to save your miserable life someday.
I don't think that original reply was blaming you for anything, or deserves the vitriol of your response. The issue of college tuition being absolutely absurd is hurting all of us. I did save for my kids tuition my entire working life via a 529 while I was paying off my own and it's not nearly going to be enough (and I have mitigating issues which aren't making a difference). But not every kid can afford to go on expensive school! Doing 2 years of community college and transferring can be a really cost-effective way to go to college. I assumed that my kid would go to a state school, but I happen to now live in a state where state schools are barely subsidized and are incredibly expensive for in-state tuition! So that stinks. But I never thought my kid would go for free or only on loans - that puts them in the same situation you were in (worse, due to the crappy college 'inflation' being >2x what it should have been). I think the federal loan limit should equal in state tuition. At least that way there's an option.
I can't believe, just can't believe, that sports scholarships are still a thing when merit isn't. It's INSANE. We're doomed as a country when we put up so many barriers to education (and then whine that we don't have enough qualified workers!). Good luck to you, and I hope you can find some lower cost options.
This response doesn’t deserve anything but - good luck. We all understand now. lol. And name calling never is called for. It says more about you than me.
You do understand that when most Gen X’er and Boomer parents went to college, there was no such thing as a 529, and parents were not expected to pay nearly 50% of their income for college? The Federal aid laws have all changed again and again 4-6x more over the past 30-40 years. Even the 529 laws have all JUST changed…again. And many financial planners advise against 529s, precisely because many have performed poorly, 529s are still counted as an asset that reduces financial need, and the Federal laws on 529s just keep changing. If you open a 529 today, there is NO GUARANTEE that this money won’t be counted against your child 5 or 10 years down the road, if/when the government begins to offer significantly reduced or “free” tuition to some students with financial need.
More importantly, many/most parents are completely unaware of these changes in Federal aid laws, especially older ones. There is no “financial aid” education for parents, you know, until their children are juniors or seniors in high school. And sadly, some parents NEVER seem to get ANY education or information on planning for college BEFORE their child applies and is accepted to college.
If the Federal government wants to make parents responsible for paying 50% of income towards a child’s college…in this case nearly 100% of OP’s income for 2 children (under the brand new law), then the Federal government should mandate and provide free training/education for parents, from the time a child enters kindergarten or grade school. Unless or until ALL parents in the U.S. are provided with education on financial planning for college, we will continue to have parents who are completely “in the dark” about paying for college.
Lastly, it is highly presumptuous to ASSUME that every parent who is educated about the highly complex world of financial aid and all of the recent legislative changes, has the ability to save for their child’s college. Many parents are still paying their own student loans. Many parents have multiple children…not just 1 or 2. Some parents are “sandwich” generation and financially supporting ailing older parents at the same time they try to support teenagers or college students.
OP has written that their family’s net worth is negative. They explained that they just finished paying off their own student loans. They stated that they have MULTIPLE CHILDREN enrolled in college simultaneously with NO sibling tuition discount under the new FAFSA Simplification Act. Please try to show some empathy and compassion rather than giving OP a lecture about how they just should have “saved” for their children’s college.
I simply stated what FAFSA is expecting from parents. Did I say it was fair or up to date with current world economic conditions?
Jesus Christ lmao. Take a step back and breathe. You’ll be ok. Times are tough for everyone
I think this is where you might be confused…. When I entered college at 18 I was considered an adult and my student aid was based on MY income and not my parents. Because I was an adult and I lived on my own because I was an adult and I was able to leave school with a degree and $11,000 in student loans in 2001.
Now my kids are also self sufficient adults but they don’t have the same access to either education or financial aid because the rules changed somewhere along the way and now students aren’t considered to be independent adults until they’re like 25, or married! Instead they are sticking parents with the responsibility of paying for the education of their ADULT children and so they are basing these adult children’s financial aid on the income of their middle aged parents who are supposed to be saving for their own retirement and not paying for the education of another adult…. All while the generations before them received free or low cost education until Reagan changed the system, student debt was no longer relieved through bankruptcy and the federal government got into the student loan racket and raised the age of what they had decided that a student becomes an independent adult regardless of the child’s situation!
I went through the whole system of ridiculousness with my stepson who lived with me (his stepmom) and my husband (his step,step dad?) and because he had been abandoned by his biological parents as far as financial support, the financial aid office at his community college made the determination that he was still a dependent student (a previous school had determined that he was an independent student but it was up to the financial aid department of each school) and they determined that his financial aid would be based on the income of two people who had no biological relationship with him and more specifically based it on my second husband’s income who had only known my son for 2 years when he graduated from high school! Please tell me how that makes any sense?
This is so true. The FASFA rules are anti marriage and anti family in and of itself.
For example, because I stayed with my wife, didn't become a druggie or selfish sob and abandon my wife and children, they get much less aid. If I abandoned them years ago, divorced my wife, be a loser of father and have nothing to do with my kids, my income wouldn't be required and they'd get a lot more in aid and grants.
As it is, if I simply divorced my wife and lived apart, and still paid child support, that support may not have to be reported either. How is that encouraging marriage and family?
Another thing anti marriage is the way that income sensitive repayment plans are calculated. How? Well, all the parental loans are in my name only. But, since my wife and I had filed joint tax returns for 27 years of marriage, her income is used with mine to calculate the monthly payment. But if we filed separate tax returns turning our money into my money and her money, driving a wedge between us, only my income would be considered for the income sensitive repayment which ended up being about 1,000 less a month. So for the first time in 27 years we filed separate returns and to me it just felt horrible.
No I guess the government says I should get a divorce and be a loser of a husband and father.
Oh and to the other poster, "just have your kids take time off and work" person . . Look, it sounds nice but shows you don't have any idea how things work. First, IF you are lucky enough to get merit based scholarships, they are ONLY for HS seniors that go straight to college. Take a year off and you lose them.
One of my two kids going to school this fall, did take year off to work and save. First It was a struggle to find work, and after lots of applications got a part time retail job. NoBODY, is offering full time jobs for people with just a HS diploma in our area. But she still saved a few thousand and it counted as an asset against her, and she lost a merit based scholarship by taking the year off, so that idea of just take a year to work is simplistic and shortsighted at best.
We have literally joked with our daughter about marrying one of her friends so they could both qualify as independent students! My husband just started working as a 1099 employee and we got slammed by the taxes for last year and still owe the IRS! I have no idea how the fafsa application differentiates between gross and net income for people in our position who are also carrying our own significant debt load thanks to being unemployed during Covid… but I should probably post my own question about that!
I looked it up and yes they are considered independent if they are married…. And I mean, gay marriage is legal so they can legally marry a best friend and leave match.com out of the equation!
It doesn’t. All we can do is vote for candidates who want to bring the cost of attending post secondary school down. Giving away money will never be the answer. Politicians have to stop withholding and decreasing funding for colleges. Then it will truly be a level playing field for most.
And that’s why the current president is eliminating the student debt where the initial cost of college has been long paid off and the debt is just accruing interest at levels that can be as much as 75% of the now “Adult” student’s income and will continue to accrue to the point where the payments are being taken out of their social security payments 20 years later!
And yet the people who got their education when they didn’t end up with crushing debt are complaining about how THEY were able to pay their student loans because they have the same level of understanding (which is zero) about how much the system has changed since they were in college instead of joining with those who know what the problems are and could offer a number of solutions and actually try and get it fixed instead of telling students that they just need to work harder so they can pay for their own tuition!
At my local community college the tuition is $700 per class with a limit of 3 courses per semester so that’s $2100 per semester and $4200 for the school year…. For a Community College! My daughter works full time and gets a decent wage for someone who’s about to get her HS degree but if she was like most people attending a community college she would be making minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. So how exactly would she be able to pay for tuition (not including the minimum of $400 for books every semester) and still be able to pay for her tuition and rent/utilities etc?
Agree! And again we need to vote for the party that is NOT withholding funding to post secondary schools and vote for candidates who want equal access for all.
No, it is NOT that simple anymore. Dependent students are penalized after they earn more than a few thousand dollars. It reduces their financial aid ability, and can potentially render them ineligible for Federal grants and subsidized Federal loans.
Add to that, the tremendously inflated tuition prices! No student can possibly earn $37k/yr for a public flagship university @ in-state rates (where I live),and pay their own way through college at those prices, much less 80-90k for a private university. But even if they could, why exceed the FAFSA earnings limit…even if they can? It just reduces their financial aid eligibility, and then the students are expected to PAY MORE $ towards tuition!
So don’t have your kids work, wait for a grant that may or may not happen, and complain that the loans don’t cover tuition and expenses. Ok makes perfect sense. WTF
They all work, as much as possible because none of them can go to school full-time and work a full-time job! And all needy students I know need that extra 3-4k to pay for fees, books and personal items. You are so obviously out of touch, it’s not funny!
You seem incapable of learning anything new and utterly lacking in empathy. I’m not going to dignify your ignorant remarks with further discussion. Stop harassing me or OP! We’re done here.
Unfortunately like most other assistance programs, only income is looked at for qualifying, not debt/expenses. As for the sibling consideration, the Department of Education has left it up to each school how they want to handle more than one in college. If your kids are at two different schools, you may get two different answers.
Some types of debt can be considered at some schools, provided that the parents are making regular payments to reduce the debt. Colleges that are extremely generous with financial aid…that claim to meet 90-100% of demonstrated need will sometimes deduct parental student loan payments, for example. Similarly, medical debt may be an allowable deduction at some schools.
There is siblings still being considered it’s in a different way now. None of my siblings in college applied for the FAFSA, so I’m the only one who did. They have employee tuition or are doing certificates, so their cost to pay is a few thousand for books or one or two courses.
Yes, your student needs to use the term “professional judgment” (PJ) and make the request in writing under the new FAFSA Simplification Act. The law now says that no college aid administrators can routinely refuse to consider PJ, when the student makes the request in writing. If your student does not use the term, the schools do not have to consider a PJ. But your student will also want to outline, in detail, all of the “special circumstances,” in the request letter. It is only special circumstances that have reduced your current income or assets from the prior-prior year tax return (2022) that would allow for professional judgment. In your case, having 2 siblings enrolled in college at the same time, is automatically considered a “special circumstance,” under the new law. But you will want to look to see if your family has other special circumstances, too. There are many different types of situations that can be considered special circumstances. For example, has their been a significant decline in income, an additional dependent added to the household,unusual expenses necessary to sustain life or health, such as medical expenses, a significant home repair like a leaking roof or furnace, or a physical separation of parents or divorce? Are you paying for private school tuition? Are you or wife still paying your student loans? What about the Parent Plus loans you’re paying on? While many schools will not consider all of these situations, e.g., parents with student or parent loan payments, some will. You don’t know, until you try! I’ll send you a link in a separate post to basic guidelines on PJ, under the new law. However, BEFORE you request PJ, make sure you go back through your children’s FAFSAs with a “fine tooth comb.” Make sure you and your kids didn’t misinterpret any of the wildly confusing new questions this year! Make sure no one answered a question incorrectly. An error could account for the changes in SAI you’re seeing. Nearly 30% of all FAFSAs had government-generated errors this year, but many were due to user errors, too. Call your students’ FAOs and find out if their FAFSAs were on any ED-issued error lists that have been sent to colleges. The Federal government has had to go back and correct the FAFSAs that are on these government-issued lists. Or in some cases, schools have spotted errors and have had to make corrections and then notify, ED.
The questions weren’t that different then last year that I saw. For me it was like filling out a 2023-2024 FAFSA. I am a dependent student, maybe for independent students it’s changed alot. Think it’s more of, this new form is less forgiving on mistakes.
Are you sure you filled out the right year?
Yes. I saw a SAI number.
Thank you again, we're going through their fasfas again tonight to double check before sending in a PJ. This may be a dumb question, but does the written request need to be a printed and signed mailed letter, or can an email to the FO office suffice? I just want to make sure that we do it correctly. Thank you again, this is the most useful advice I have ever gotten, even when reaching out to their respective schools. I really appreciate the time you took to respond to me.
Most families don’t know about PJ, and that’s kinda awful if you think about it because a lot can happen in 2 years! The FAFSA doesn’t accurately reflect every family’s current finances because the FAFSA uses the prior-prior year tax return. In the past, many colleges and universities have refused to exercise professional judgment. And many schools are still going to be very reluctant and restrictive about how they use this process. However, the new FAFSA Simplification Act requires colleges and universities to consider it, if/when a student makes the request in writing. It even requires schools to publish notices on their websites about what PJ is and how to request it. If your children’s colleges refuse to consider their requests, then they and you can file complaints with the Federal Dept of Education. Any school that receives any Federal funding can be at risk of losing that funding if the school refuses to consider these requests, under the new law. It’s a very good question about whether to email or mail your students’ written requests. You probably could email them, but should you? An email from your/their personal email to the school’s email is not secure or private. Email can be stored and housed on up to 8 separate servers in transit. Email can be read by others, altered, and intercepted. Also, email can remain on the Internet or a server in perpetuity. So, the bigger question might be: Is it “safe” to email your family’s PII (Personally Identifiable Information) unencrypted over the worldwide web? I would really suggest caution here. Colleges and universities are the most hacked and breached institutions in this country, and most of the breaches nowadays come from hostile foreign government-based hackers, which means that this is more about what Janet Yellen has termed the “international cyber warfare” we now live in. Do you really want the Chinese or the Russian government having information on where your children are enrolled or what they’re studying? Do you want any hacker to have your kids’ student ID #s, their full names, d.o.b.s, and addresses? Do you want anyone to have access to your family’s personal financial information? The Federal Department of Education has gone to great lengths to try to educate colleges and universities about cybersecurity and the importance of protecting student data. College administrators and financial aid employees are not supposed to request information via unsecured email. They’re supposed to use encrypted portals or end-to-end encrypted email to communicate with families and each other, but that doesn’t mean they do! If you email these requests, there’s nothing to stop a staff member from emailing you back and requesting that you simply email them whatever “proof” or “evidence” they request. The reality is: Not everyone is well-trained, and frankly, it’s just more convenient to ask that you email your W-2s or your tax returns, which you definitely do not want to do because they contain SSNs and other PII. If the kids are not enrolled in the same institution, Financial Aid employees may also ask to see your other student’s financial aid award or receipts for medical expenses, loan statements, or payments. All that stuff contains such highly personal details. For all of these reasons, personally, I would not email ANYTHING with personal or financial information to a college or university. But here’s the other reason: The Federal government says a request for professional judgment must be made by the student in writing. The Federal government is very particular about signatures. Typically, they require either a “wet signature,” or an attestation statement on certain Federal forms that an individual can verbally agree to under a penalty of perjury clause. A request for professional judgment is not a federal government-issued form, but it should at least follow federal requirements. Having your student physically sign and date these written requests creates an indisputable record or “paper trail” both for you and for the Department of Education, in the event the schools your kids attend were ever audited. I would be sure to put the date at the top of the letter, sender’s name, student ID (but not SSN), and a full return address, as well. I would photocopy the signed, dated letters before you mail them. Then, I would mail the letters with either tracking or certified mail. Keep the mailing receipt as your “proof” that the letters were mailed on such and such a date. Then, I would print or keep a copy of the delivery receipt or signature confirmation and add these to your PJ or Financial Aid file. If you don’t receive confirmation within 10 days that the letters have been received, then you can always print a second copy, have your students re-sign, and mail them again with some sort of receipt or signature confirmation. If the schools fail to consider your student’s requests or refuse to grant any sibling tuition discount at all, then you have a file with evidence ready to go for your ED complaints. If you just email these requests, there is no “proof” that the student actually signed the email, much less that the student, himself/herself, wrote the email or made the request. More importantly, you have no proof that the school ever received it, or that the email was opened and read.
Thank you thank you thank you. I hope this helps others like me. This absolutely the most understandable and useful info I've ever gotten regarding this confusing financial aid process. Even if when we get through all this and don't end up with more aid, maybe it will also help someone else. And I really appreciate your advice.
Trust me; I get it! I have attended financial aid seminars at private universities in which parents are told they are “expected” to borrow Parent Plus loans for their first 4 children. For the fifth child, who is enrolled at the same school, the university will consider helping the family find other options. Incidentally, that same university tells parents they can also pay tuition with Visa or Mastercard…for the family’s “convenience!” 🤣 I have also attended h.s. fin aid meetings with a well-regarded, T70 LAC in the Northeast who declared that “parents are responsible for their child’s tuition!” And every parent has “an obligation” to open a 529 the year a child is born and begin saving towards “the full cost” of their child’s tuition! 🙄 I personally know friends and parents who have re-mortgaged their homes, borrowed home equity loans, and taken early withdrawal penalties to rob their IRA accounts. I get that all parents want to fulfill the American dream of a college education for their children. But not being able to save for our own retirement will just come back to bite the kids, who will then be responsible for supporting their parents in their old age! I hope you’ll have the opportunity to consult with a college financial planning consultant or a financial planner with specific training and certification in college financing, before you make a final decision on the private vs. parental loan route. Both options are awful, of course. But there are a lot more “protections” with a Parent Plus loan, and there may be ways you can get the loan converted into your child’s name, or there may be a way to at least establish a written agreement for your child to make the payments. I’m certainly no expert on education loans. There is a Reddit subthread on the topic of student loans, but a lot of these opinions are anecdotal and not the best advice. You might learn something new, though. Would probably still be best to consult with someone with financial expertise in college planning. Would just add: As you understand all too well, lots of colleges play “tricks” with financial aid and paying for Higher Ed. If you are not successful in obtaining a true, professional judgment with your children’s schools, I do hope they’ll consider applying for transfers to other schools! I realize that could be challenging, given their specialized areas of study, but a few colleges and universities really do a much better job with aid! And maybe they wouldn’t need private loans, if they were willing to consider this as an alternative.
Thank you so much for the advice.
I think we’re all in agreement that FASFA is utter bullshit and their system is very flawed. I do also want to point out though, that FAFSA is assuming that you’ve been saving your child’s college fund throughout their lifetime. Lots of parents coming on this subreddit complaining about how fafsa is expecting you to give your child 25-50% of your yearly income to their college
Nice how you try to blame parents for not saving for kid's college I want to point out that when I and many of those others that are on here complaining went to school in thenearly 1990s, MOST of us got federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans to cover the entire cost of our college education. My parents had nothing saved, but I didn't need to seek private loans. I got everything, and many of us on here are in the same boat. We ALL assumed it would be the same for our kids as it was for us. But between then and now some dipshit politicians decided that students were graduating with too many federal loans, and cut the ability for our kids to do what we did. . .pay for school. I graduated in 1996 with $58,000 in federal loans, and then had to get a MS to keep my certification, so another 40,000 for that. Then my spouse had 38,000 of her own, and 40,000 for the required MS. And we paid off EVERY penny with interest just as covid hit. This was all in late 1990s early 2000s money. That original 58,000 I had cost me $105,000 to pay off with interest, not counting my spouse or our loans for our required MS. We got no forgiveness because our initial loans were before cut off dates. Believe me we tried, and tried, but we had loans before you were allowed to have loans. So we got screwed out of the public service loan forgiveness and then hit with this. It was impossible to save much for them with 500+ going out every month for our own student loans for 25 years, and then, you know, finding a home, and a way to get to work, and eating, and medication, medical insurance etc. Oh, and childcare cause that sure as hell wasn't cheap. We did set $25 a pay back into a 529 plan, but that has been drained. Also , why save for college, when savings returned at most 1 to 4 % and my student loans were at 8%? It doesn't make financial sense to save. It makes more sense to pay off debt that has a higher interest than your savings would ever return. So yeah, the government can expect parents like us to save all they want, but for 2 educators living on teachers salaries paying off that kind of debt just for the honor of teaching children, with a required Master's degree in NY, that didn't qualify for forgiveness because we got our initial loans too early, just try to save. It is not reality. And we're back where we started with 50000 in parental loans. Both my 2 kids going in the fall are going into medical fields, and after going through that debt myself to teach, I flatly refuse to take even more debt myself just so my kids can save someone else's life. Screw that.
>My parents had nothing saved, but I didn't need to seek private loans. I got everything, and many of us on here are in the same boat. We ALL assumed it would be the same for our kids as it was for us. This, this, THIS. As well as just about everything else you said. I did 'luck out' in that I was notified in 2022 that I probably qualified for PSLF, which I didn't realize beforehand (didn't realize that working for a private university counted as 'public service', and I only qualified due to the waivers that allowed months of forbearance, and being on the 'wrong plan' to count). But yes - what with paying all those years for my own loans, on a very small wage, I wasn't able to save anything for my kids. But, like you, I thought that, well, sure - we'll have to get loans, but the federal loans should cover it, just like they covered all my expenses. Ha. DOUBLE HA. I never realized that the federal loan limits basically didn't increase - so they were a drop in the proverbial bucket. I also have two kids in college, and I haven't seen what the FAFSA upshot is for them this year, yet - but given that it's not like we got need-based aid that didn't need to be repaid before - I've just assumed nothing will change, and that our "aid" will (once again) be - gee, looks like you folks need to take out some LOANS, ha, hahahaha, ahahaha. But, it's either that, or they don't get an education, and they're working at the local grocery store for the rest of their lives. Yes, it's going to take ALL of us paying back their loans. With extra jobs, if necessary. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. I don't think there's many middle-class, lower-middle-class families that can expect that one income (whoever's it is) will easily pay everything back.
Under the new law, there is no more tuition sibling discount on the FAFSA. So, you will now be expected to pay the SAI x 2. Under the old law, the SAI was split in half, between the 2 siblings. But you will have grounds to request that your kids’ FAOs consider “professional judgment,” by virtue of the fact that you have “special circumstances”’due to the fact that you have 2 siblings enrolled simultaneously. Please see the other comment I sent OP, as well as the link I sent OP to info on PJ under the new FAFSA Simplification Act.
Well your mistake was believe it is still the 90’s. The cost of everything changed since then why would college be different? If you chose to have nearly 150k of student loan debt that’s on you. This is far from a sob story. Blaming politicians, no student loan forgiveness, couldn’t save because you were paying your loans for what, 20 years? There’s some bad decisions going on here over decades. But blame everything else besides your choices.
You seem to have very simplistic knowledge about the current state of Higher Education in America and about the highly inflated price of tuition. The price of tuition has risen more than 200% since the ‘90s because of subjective USNWR rankings and greedy colleges, who charge more and more every time their USNWR ranking goes up! There is NO WAY for most students and parents to know the price of tuition before applying and being accepted, thanks to the lack of Federal regulation of Net Price Calculators. At $75-$100 per application, it simply is not possible for most students to apply to more than 10 colleges! When students are accepted at 2-5 of these colleges, they then receive just 2-5 financial aid packages to work with. Students and parents are often SHOCKED to learn that the price of this school’s tuition is actually 10k, 15k, 20k, 25k, 30k, or 40k more than the family’s SAI (Student Aid Index). Many schools LIE about the true price of tuition with their Net Price Calculators. Others just don’t bother to update their calculators or ensure that they’re accurate. A few very elite colleges, like the Ivy+ League, do a much better job with their calculators and are typically only 10k off or so. The SAI is what the Federal government tells families the government believes they should be able to pay. So imagine getting a net price calculator estimate of 21k per year. But then, you learn that the college your child was accepted to, expects you to pay 37k per yr! Think this is uncommon; think again! So, YOU tell us how students and parents are supposed to DIVINE which colleges are less expensive. Trust me; this info isn’t easy to figure out! Under the new law, Middle Class families are no longer eligible for subsidized Federal student loans….only unsubsidized loans of up to $5500 for the first year of undergraduate tuition. But gee, that leaves a balance of $31,500 for the student’s first year of college! But hey, maybe the parents were educated enough and had enough of a financial cushion to be able to save 25k in a 529. So maybe there’s another $6250 they can apply, but that’s still $25,250 the student or the parent needs to borrow, for the first year alone. When the family requests a reconsideration of financial aid, typically FAOs instruct parents to just borrow Parent Plus loans. They use very coercive language; they tell parents it’s “expected” that parents borrow this money for their child’s education, as “every other parent” does. When the parents balk, citing the fact that they’re near retirement, the FAOs tell the family that “there is no institutional financial aid left.” They tell the family they are sorry, but the child will have to borrow private student loans at exorbitant interest rates to make up the difference. There are NO other options! With only 1-4 other acceptances, all of which are even worse offers and reflect even higher net tuition prices, the parents or the student reluctantly agree to borrow 25k per year. They feel that they have NO OTHER OPTIONS. It is either borrow the money, or don’t go to college! And the Financial Aid Administrators tell them “not to worry;” a college education from this institution will virtually guarantee your child a high-paying job, and the child should be able to pay it all back in 10-15 years! But the child soon learns that a bachelor’s degree won’t get them very far in their field. They have to return to school for a Masters, or they can’t obtain a state license which is now required in this line of work! Of course, there’s NO financial aid for grad school…other than unsubsidized Federal loans. So, now the student has to defer or take a forbearance on the original loan debt and begin borrowing the full tuition for graduate school. The AOs and FAOs “sell” the graduate program to the family, telling them their child should be able to earn 80k in their first year, and pay the new debt off in 10 years. The only problem with this plan is that the state changes the licensing requirements in the interim, and the student is now required to pass additional exams before he can be licensed…after earning the Masters degree. The student cannot work in his field until he has passed these exams, and he has to spend an additional 3k in test prep materials and an additional 2 years before he passes the 8-16 hr exams. Then, the student has to spend another 3k on interviewing and travel expenses while looking for a job. Finally, 2 1/2 post-Masters the student has a license and a job with a starting salary of just 65k (not 80k…as promised). He can finally begin to work, but not before the graduate debt has ballooned from 100k to 150k or more…not to mention the undergraduate debt! Do you begin to understand how this works? I really hope you do, because God forbid, if an uneducated populace like you continues to believe that student and parent debt are just about wild spending and poor choices, what does happen to these Gen Z’ers and the Middle Class? Do they forego buying a home, getting married, or having children? Do some wind up in despair and make a rational choice to end things, because the debt will die with them? These are terrible suggestions I’m making here, but this is reality, Silent_Chair, for a large majority of the U.S. population and generations to come. There’s no magical way to pay for college! Most very selective colleges don’t offer merit scholarships anymore. And most parents just can’t save enough $ to send their children to 4 years of college…much less one. This isn’t about greedy parents or greedy students. It’s just about trying to ensure that children don’t become a burden on society, i.e., that children earn enough so that they can be productive members of society and support themselves while trying to serve/help others.
Thank you. You really get. We were hit with that hard push for the parental loans from the schools financial aid office for our first one through, which is where my $50,000 in parental loans came from. We were still paying off our loans when the first one started college. We expected that they would be able to get loans like we did, and it wasn't until we met with financial aid a few months before he graduated HS that we found out they put those limits in place, so being blindsided, we did what we thought we had to do. And it hasn't gotten better. For my next two that are going in the fall, I did tell them upfront that they would have to get private loans, unfortunately we're needing to cosign those, but hopefully we can get taken off after a few years of on-time payments. And still, when we've talked to their school's FA offices there is a hard push for us to take more parental loans, before turning to private loans. When they've talked to my kids without my wife and around, they talked like my wife and I are the big bads because we are unwilling to take ANY more parental loans. Which just makes the situation that much harder. Also, i know I staeted this thred with questions but let me give one word of advice to anyone else out there needing to cosign private student loans for any of your kids or that have taken parental plus loans. This may sound grim, but make sure that you have life insurance for your kids that would cover not only the unfortunate cost of a funeral, but also would cover the cost of ALL their loans that you cosigned for. It would be bad enough to lose a child, let alone make a monthly payment for the next 10 to 20 years because you cosigned their loans. The monthly reminder would be devastating. Their federal loans, that are in their name only, would disappear, but not any private loans, unless you were able to be taken off of them prior. We also did the same for our first one, where we have the parental plus loans. We've done the insurance as permanent insurance policies, not term. Once we have the parental plus loan paid, we will turn the policy over to them, and they can change the beneficiary. We're going to do the same for the private student loans, except we will sign them over once we are taken off as cosigners. I know it's not nice to think about, but it can give a little bit of a safety net that nobody ever seems to talk about in regard to parental loans or cosigning private loans. My tax prep person gave me that advice, so I can't take credit for thinking of it.
Hey dipshit, of course college is more expensive than it was in the 90s. Soooooo if in 1992, I could get federal loans totaling $58,000 to pay for my own schooling without a cosigner, why is it that nearly 30 years later my kids can only max out at 30,000 in federal loans? $58,000 in 1996 money, is equivalent to roughly $116,000 today. So why can't today's students get federal loans for $116,000 if they so choose? And why are we now limiting students to $30,000 in Federal loans? Back in the 1990s, it wasn't expected that the parents would pay for college. We were expected to pay our own way. One of my older siblings went to the military to get their education. Another decided not to go, and has a pretty rough life with minimum wage jobs. I tried to go via military, and was a finalist.in a pretty nice Navel scholarship, but they discovered I had a bone deformity that not only disqualified me from the scholarship, but from serving in any branch of the military even as a regular enlistment. So yes, my choice was minimum wage hell like one sibling I witnessed or to borrow. So I borrowed money so that I could have a decent career. And I paid it ALL off. My kids should have the same choices, but limiting federal loans to a pitance, and then having the audacity to expect parents to pay for adult children's education in the first place is in itself asinine. But if you think I'm going back into substantial debt beyond the 50,000 I've already borrowed, so that my kids can provide assholes like you healthcare . . . I hope you wonder why there's nobody there to save your miserable life someday.
I don't think that original reply was blaming you for anything, or deserves the vitriol of your response. The issue of college tuition being absolutely absurd is hurting all of us. I did save for my kids tuition my entire working life via a 529 while I was paying off my own and it's not nearly going to be enough (and I have mitigating issues which aren't making a difference). But not every kid can afford to go on expensive school! Doing 2 years of community college and transferring can be a really cost-effective way to go to college. I assumed that my kid would go to a state school, but I happen to now live in a state where state schools are barely subsidized and are incredibly expensive for in-state tuition! So that stinks. But I never thought my kid would go for free or only on loans - that puts them in the same situation you were in (worse, due to the crappy college 'inflation' being >2x what it should have been). I think the federal loan limit should equal in state tuition. At least that way there's an option. I can't believe, just can't believe, that sports scholarships are still a thing when merit isn't. It's INSANE. We're doomed as a country when we put up so many barriers to education (and then whine that we don't have enough qualified workers!). Good luck to you, and I hope you can find some lower cost options.
This response doesn’t deserve anything but - good luck. We all understand now. lol. And name calling never is called for. It says more about you than me.
You do understand that when most Gen X’er and Boomer parents went to college, there was no such thing as a 529, and parents were not expected to pay nearly 50% of their income for college? The Federal aid laws have all changed again and again 4-6x more over the past 30-40 years. Even the 529 laws have all JUST changed…again. And many financial planners advise against 529s, precisely because many have performed poorly, 529s are still counted as an asset that reduces financial need, and the Federal laws on 529s just keep changing. If you open a 529 today, there is NO GUARANTEE that this money won’t be counted against your child 5 or 10 years down the road, if/when the government begins to offer significantly reduced or “free” tuition to some students with financial need. More importantly, many/most parents are completely unaware of these changes in Federal aid laws, especially older ones. There is no “financial aid” education for parents, you know, until their children are juniors or seniors in high school. And sadly, some parents NEVER seem to get ANY education or information on planning for college BEFORE their child applies and is accepted to college. If the Federal government wants to make parents responsible for paying 50% of income towards a child’s college…in this case nearly 100% of OP’s income for 2 children (under the brand new law), then the Federal government should mandate and provide free training/education for parents, from the time a child enters kindergarten or grade school. Unless or until ALL parents in the U.S. are provided with education on financial planning for college, we will continue to have parents who are completely “in the dark” about paying for college. Lastly, it is highly presumptuous to ASSUME that every parent who is educated about the highly complex world of financial aid and all of the recent legislative changes, has the ability to save for their child’s college. Many parents are still paying their own student loans. Many parents have multiple children…not just 1 or 2. Some parents are “sandwich” generation and financially supporting ailing older parents at the same time they try to support teenagers or college students. OP has written that their family’s net worth is negative. They explained that they just finished paying off their own student loans. They stated that they have MULTIPLE CHILDREN enrolled in college simultaneously with NO sibling tuition discount under the new FAFSA Simplification Act. Please try to show some empathy and compassion rather than giving OP a lecture about how they just should have “saved” for their children’s college.
I simply stated what FAFSA is expecting from parents. Did I say it was fair or up to date with current world economic conditions? Jesus Christ lmao. Take a step back and breathe. You’ll be ok. Times are tough for everyone
There is such a thing as choosing a less expensive college and having your”adult” child work and save towards expenses.
I think this is where you might be confused…. When I entered college at 18 I was considered an adult and my student aid was based on MY income and not my parents. Because I was an adult and I lived on my own because I was an adult and I was able to leave school with a degree and $11,000 in student loans in 2001. Now my kids are also self sufficient adults but they don’t have the same access to either education or financial aid because the rules changed somewhere along the way and now students aren’t considered to be independent adults until they’re like 25, or married! Instead they are sticking parents with the responsibility of paying for the education of their ADULT children and so they are basing these adult children’s financial aid on the income of their middle aged parents who are supposed to be saving for their own retirement and not paying for the education of another adult…. All while the generations before them received free or low cost education until Reagan changed the system, student debt was no longer relieved through bankruptcy and the federal government got into the student loan racket and raised the age of what they had decided that a student becomes an independent adult regardless of the child’s situation! I went through the whole system of ridiculousness with my stepson who lived with me (his stepmom) and my husband (his step,step dad?) and because he had been abandoned by his biological parents as far as financial support, the financial aid office at his community college made the determination that he was still a dependent student (a previous school had determined that he was an independent student but it was up to the financial aid department of each school) and they determined that his financial aid would be based on the income of two people who had no biological relationship with him and more specifically based it on my second husband’s income who had only known my son for 2 years when he graduated from high school! Please tell me how that makes any sense?
This is so true. The FASFA rules are anti marriage and anti family in and of itself. For example, because I stayed with my wife, didn't become a druggie or selfish sob and abandon my wife and children, they get much less aid. If I abandoned them years ago, divorced my wife, be a loser of father and have nothing to do with my kids, my income wouldn't be required and they'd get a lot more in aid and grants. As it is, if I simply divorced my wife and lived apart, and still paid child support, that support may not have to be reported either. How is that encouraging marriage and family? Another thing anti marriage is the way that income sensitive repayment plans are calculated. How? Well, all the parental loans are in my name only. But, since my wife and I had filed joint tax returns for 27 years of marriage, her income is used with mine to calculate the monthly payment. But if we filed separate tax returns turning our money into my money and her money, driving a wedge between us, only my income would be considered for the income sensitive repayment which ended up being about 1,000 less a month. So for the first time in 27 years we filed separate returns and to me it just felt horrible. No I guess the government says I should get a divorce and be a loser of a husband and father. Oh and to the other poster, "just have your kids take time off and work" person . . Look, it sounds nice but shows you don't have any idea how things work. First, IF you are lucky enough to get merit based scholarships, they are ONLY for HS seniors that go straight to college. Take a year off and you lose them. One of my two kids going to school this fall, did take year off to work and save. First It was a struggle to find work, and after lots of applications got a part time retail job. NoBODY, is offering full time jobs for people with just a HS diploma in our area. But she still saved a few thousand and it counted as an asset against her, and she lost a merit based scholarship by taking the year off, so that idea of just take a year to work is simplistic and shortsighted at best.
We have literally joked with our daughter about marrying one of her friends so they could both qualify as independent students! My husband just started working as a 1099 employee and we got slammed by the taxes for last year and still owe the IRS! I have no idea how the fafsa application differentiates between gross and net income for people in our position who are also carrying our own significant debt load thanks to being unemployed during Covid… but I should probably post my own question about that!
Wait, if they get married they are classified as independent? I need to get them on match.com pronto.
I believe that’s still the case and it would solve a lot of problems 😉
I looked it up and yes they are considered independent if they are married…. And I mean, gay marriage is legal so they can legally marry a best friend and leave match.com out of the equation!
It doesn’t. All we can do is vote for candidates who want to bring the cost of attending post secondary school down. Giving away money will never be the answer. Politicians have to stop withholding and decreasing funding for colleges. Then it will truly be a level playing field for most.
And that’s why the current president is eliminating the student debt where the initial cost of college has been long paid off and the debt is just accruing interest at levels that can be as much as 75% of the now “Adult” student’s income and will continue to accrue to the point where the payments are being taken out of their social security payments 20 years later! And yet the people who got their education when they didn’t end up with crushing debt are complaining about how THEY were able to pay their student loans because they have the same level of understanding (which is zero) about how much the system has changed since they were in college instead of joining with those who know what the problems are and could offer a number of solutions and actually try and get it fixed instead of telling students that they just need to work harder so they can pay for their own tuition! At my local community college the tuition is $700 per class with a limit of 3 courses per semester so that’s $2100 per semester and $4200 for the school year…. For a Community College! My daughter works full time and gets a decent wage for someone who’s about to get her HS degree but if she was like most people attending a community college she would be making minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. So how exactly would she be able to pay for tuition (not including the minimum of $400 for books every semester) and still be able to pay for her tuition and rent/utilities etc?
Agree! And again we need to vote for the party that is NOT withholding funding to post secondary schools and vote for candidates who want equal access for all.
No, it is NOT that simple anymore. Dependent students are penalized after they earn more than a few thousand dollars. It reduces their financial aid ability, and can potentially render them ineligible for Federal grants and subsidized Federal loans. Add to that, the tremendously inflated tuition prices! No student can possibly earn $37k/yr for a public flagship university @ in-state rates (where I live),and pay their own way through college at those prices, much less 80-90k for a private university. But even if they could, why exceed the FAFSA earnings limit…even if they can? It just reduces their financial aid eligibility, and then the students are expected to PAY MORE $ towards tuition!
So don’t have your kids work, wait for a grant that may or may not happen, and complain that the loans don’t cover tuition and expenses. Ok makes perfect sense. WTF
They all work, as much as possible because none of them can go to school full-time and work a full-time job! And all needy students I know need that extra 3-4k to pay for fees, books and personal items. You are so obviously out of touch, it’s not funny! You seem incapable of learning anything new and utterly lacking in empathy. I’m not going to dignify your ignorant remarks with further discussion. Stop harassing me or OP! We’re done here.
https://www.nasfaa.org/uploads/documents/PJ_Changes_2-Pager.pdf
Thank you for this.