The 2014 Winter Music Tour

Like I talked about in yesterday's post, Hubs & #2 Son didn't go to his music audition down at VCU in Richmond.
Yes folks, the second half of the 2014 Winter Music Audition Tour has been canceled.
#2 Son had 4 different college auditions scheduled this Winter at 4 different schools.
He's had the Temple and Mansfield auditions and the VCU and Marywood auditions were on the blocks for this weekend and next week, respectively.

Well that plan changed earlier this week when #2 got some mail......

 

So he has gotten both his "Congratulations to our school" and his "Congratulations to our program" college letters from Mansfield.

Seeing as Mansfield was his 2nd choice(and Temple his 1st choice), he sees no reason to continue on with more auditions to schools that were his 3rd and 4th choices.

So he's going to Mansfield in the Fall.....for now.
We still haven't heard from Temple yet and we don't expect to hear from them until March sometime as their last audition date is February 23rd but the undergraduate deadline for applying is March 1st.

So we don't know the important stuff yet......
Like if #2 Son is going to be an Owl or a Mountie in the Fall.
And whether we will be required to shell out $28,032 or $21,010 in the Fall.

bleh.

Not that we get any non loan help from the Feds.
I fill out the FAFSA every year for some kid or kids and they always tell us our "expected family contribution" toward their studies is some ridiculous amount.

This year was no different.
FAFSA indicated we are expected to contribute......$42,803 toward our son's educational needs for 2014-2015.
Now look at the two amounts above for those two schools.
Do either of them even approach $42,803 a year?
No, they do not.

The only school that came close was Marywood U., a small local private school at $46,556 if you lived on campus, but they estimate will cost $33,390 if you live at home(and #2 would be living at home at least for a couple of those years).  And that is before the $10-$15K merit scholarship they promised he'd get if he attended that school.

You see, FAFSA considers us "rich".  Because we've scrimped and saved and paid everything off, don't live off of credit cards or have debts, and we have a nice pile of cash because we live so far below our means.
Hubs makes a good income but if he spent like his colleagues seem to do(bigger houses, expensive vacations to Europe each year, nicer cars, etc.)we'd be struggling to pay our bills like they are.

The problem with paying for college, besides just paying for college, is that the Feds think if you have a pile of cash in savings that it's available for you to spend it down on college costs and they expect you to do just that.
They don't take into consideration that first, we are OLD parents.  We had our kids late thus we are "this close" to retirement.  We don't have years to go after sending our kids to college to recover from spending down all this money like people who have their kids in their 20's and very early 30's do.
In addition, most of this pile of money we have saved is earmarked for our retirement years.  It is not in a protected retirement fund like a 401K so it is counted against us when it comes to measuring what parents have available for educational funding and how grant money is doled out and to whom.

Even with the portion of our savings that IS earmarked for #2 Son's college funding, he will still need to come up with about $15K more over the course of 4 years to cover the least expensive of the 2 schools where he wants to go.  And that doesn't take into consideration the costs going up(and they do every year)over the next 4 years.  Plus a car and car expenses which he will need his Senior year to do his student teaching(definitely if he attends Mansfield and perhaps if he is at Temple, in a big city, if he has to teach in the suburbs).

But the FAFSA folks will only allow us unsubsidized loans because of our level of savings.  So we are hoping for a small merit scholarship from whichever school #2 Son attends to offset just a tiny piece of the price tag on school.  Both our other two kids got something where they attended for academic merit.  If #2 Son gets anything it will be on the strength of his artistic talent, but those kind of awards are even fewer and farther between.

Hubs is probably going to retire from his company before #2 Son graduates with his degree, so I am wondering when we no longer have an income coming in and are living off of these savings, how that will affect the FAFSA formula.  We would still have most if not all of our pile of savings at that point but no regular income.
So there is some unknown for us there, as we hadn't dealt with college in this particular circumstance before.

Anyway.....I didn't mean to turn this into a FAFSA and College is ridiculously expensive tirade, but I did, didn't I? ;-)

We are happy for our son, that he got his admittance wish(at least one of them),and we are crossing our fingers he gets some sort of financial award from somewhere.

And I am counting the days until he leaves in August and is no longer destroying what passes for clean in my kitchen....WoooHooo!

Sluggy