My last post highlighted some of the tax benefits of 529 plans. One of the lesser-known benefits is that 529 plans get preferential treatment on the FAFSA. How? A couple of ways.
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Are you the parent of a high school junior? If so, 2014 is your “base year” for financial aid purposes. What does that mean? It means that your initial financial aid applications—FAFSA and/or CSS PROFILE—will be based on your income and assets for 2014. Now is a good time to make plans or adjustments that will help you in aid…
Since it’s college acceptance season, there are a lot of great articles out there about evaluating offers. Apologies for offering less original content here but reinventing the wheel doesn’t help. Here is a great article from the New York Times that will help you be a more informed consumer of your various offers.
(Is that alliteration or what?) Did you get an aid award that’s not what you’re hoping for? Recently the New York Times wrote about appealing financial aid awards. For the article, Ron Lieber sent a questionnaire to aid officers at some of the priciest private schools asking about their appeals process. Occidental College’s completed questionnaire is extremely helpful for understanding…
Divorced parents tend to have a number of questions about aid issues and college applications in general. Let’s start with the basics: Do both parents’ incomes count? And what about new spouses’? As is so often the case, the answer is different depending on the aid form. The FAFSA is simple so let’s start there. The FAFSA only counts the…