Financial Aid

Questions about retirement plan contributions and help for a student whose brother has cancer

The Fastweb Team

August 23, 2017

Questions about retirement plan contributions and help for a student whose brother has cancer
<b>We are a family of 4 with gross income of about $58,000. With IRA and 401(k) contributions and pretax health care deductions our AGI is about $47,000. Would it benefit us as far as financial aid grants go to max out on our retirement accounts and knock our family AGI down to about $30,000 or less? Or do the aid people see the gross income of $58,000 and ignore the $30,000 AGI? Next fall one child enters college
and one will still be at home. — Michael B. The basic philosophy of need analysis is to assess a portion of discretionary income, which is calculated by subtracting non-discretionary expenses from total income. IRA and 401(k)
contributions are considered voluntary and so will be added to adjusted gross income when calculating total income. Thus your IRA and 401(k) contributions will be counted, and maximizing your contributions will not reduce your expected family contribution. However, the pretax health care deductions, including any flexible spending arrangements (cafeteria plans), are ignored by the
formula and so will increase aid eligibility. There are two important thresholds on adjusted gross income in the need analysis formula, one at $50,000 and one at $30,000. Families that satisfy certain other criteria are eligible for the simplified needs test when their adjusted gross income is less than $50,000. The simplified needs test ignores assets. Families that satisfy certain other criteria are eligible for automatic zero EFC when their adjusted gross income is less than $30,000. As the name suggests, this sets the expected family contribution to zero, allowing the applicant to qualify for a full Pell Grant. Your income is quite close to the $50,000 threshold. If you have significant assets other than the family home, retirement accounts, and a small business, it may be worthwhile to consider ways of reducing your adjusted gross income below the $50,000 threshold. The most common methods include realizing a capital loss of up to $3,000, maximizing cafeteria plans, and using the tuition and fees deduction and the student loan interest deduction. (However, the Hope Scholarship tax credit may offer a better financial benefit than the tuition and fees deduction, so you will have to evaluate the tradeoffs of using the tuition and fees deduction instead.)
The need analysis formulas are heavily weighted toward income, so reducing your adjusted gross income will also decrease your expected family contribution and increase eligibility for need-based financial aid. Even though your retirement plan contributions do not affect your eligibility for need-based financial aid, you should continue contributing to your retirement plans. Contribute at least enough to maximize the employer match, if any, as that represents free money. What are my options are for receiving hardship support to assist in paying for my daughter's college education? My son was diagnosed with cancer in 2005. Since then the medical bills have drained my savings. Even though I make a decent living, finances are tight. In February my son's cancer returned requiring very aggressive chemotherapy and medical care. My daughter has received scholarship money but it is not enough. My income as reported on the FAFSA does not reflect my expenses or situation. — Martin S. Ask the college for a professional judgment review. Some colleges call it a special circumstances review or financial aid appeal. The college will want documentation of your son's situation. A letter from his doctor and copies of one year's worth of unreimbursed medical bills should be sufficient. If the college financial aid administrator determines that your situation merits an adjustment, she will reduce your income on the FAFSA by the amount of your unreimbursed medical expenses. (The amount of the reduction may be slightly less, to the extent that medical expenses are already considered by the income protection allowance in the need analysis formula.) This will decrease the expected family contribution and increase the amount of financial aid. There are also several scholarships available for siblings of children who have had cancer. You can find a list of such cancer scholarships on the FinAid site at finaid.org/cancer. Tell the dean of student affairs at the college about your family's situation. The dean can alert the college's counseling staff to pay extra attention to your daughter, since she may be worried about her brother's health. A cancer diagnosis is stressful for the entire family.

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