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Ok, my mom and dad are divorced and mu mom makes around $27,000 and my dad makes around $50,000.

My mom remarried and my stepdad makes 100,000 but unfortunately he isnot going to contribute anything to the send me to college fund.

Considering this other stuff too:
-I live with my mom and stepdad in an average home(worth around $300,000)
-another house is in my stepdad's name but its really his son's because of his son's credit he was unable to by it himself so my stepdad did but the son pays the mortgage and stuff
-they are in some debt and have bad credit becuase of stuff like that
-my dad has some money saved up but not a lot.
-my dad lives in an apartment building he partially owns in NYC(like 25%)

Will I get any finaid because the most they will probably pay is $20,000?
And with the non-custodial payment thing do they still look at my stepdad's income even though he won't pay anything.

By Muzicgal04 (Muzicgal04) on Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 12:55 pm: Edit

just one thing.......a 300,000 dollar house is not an average home! perhaps in the city in which you live, this is considered average.....but that is by no means average in America as a whole, or the world.

By Evil_Robot (Evil_Robot) on Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 02:02 pm: Edit

Perhaps not where you live...but in Orange County, CA, the median house price is upwards of $400,000. Yikes.

By Muzicgal04 (Muzicgal04) on Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 05:01 pm: Edit

Where I live, the average house price is probably around 300,000 (it was the city with highest per capita income for many many years)...however, that is not the point. A 300,000 dollar house is NOT an average house other than in a specific town. In comparison even to the rest of the state, that would be a very expensive house.

By Classact14 (Classact14) on Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 09:48 pm: Edit

I live in Central New Jersey. The property values for the houses around here have gotten pretty high. Houses on my block have gone for 260,000-270,000 and I assume mine would go for higher(I guess its closer to around 280,000) because my mom does work on the house for low prices and we keepit in good condition. Maybe not in the price range, but house quality its pretty average. I bet if you looked at the national averages for land size my house would be close to the bottom.

By Classact14 (Classact14) on Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 09:51 pm: Edit

I looked it up. The average seems to be 274,000 for 2003.

http://economic-charts.com/em-cgi/data.exe/cenc25/c25m02

By Muzicgal04 (Muzicgal04) on Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 10:35 pm: Edit

wow, I stand corrected. my apologies

By Zephyrmaster (Zephyrmaster) on Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 01:35 am: Edit

I looked it up. The average seems to be 274,000 for 2003.

http://economic-charts.com/em-cgi/data.exe/cenc25/c25m02

That is including multi-million dollar ones, and ones with massive land areas right?

By Airforce (Airforce) on Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 02:34 am: Edit

i live in the bay area and the average is very high.

in the central coast, ie. hollister, morgan hill, and gilroy the average home is 400,000

my home is valued at around 1.1 million and our other old home that we rent out is worth about 410,000

in the valley, ie modesto, the average is very cheap,

my family could have a 8-10000 sqrft house if we lived their


i personally like the woodlands in texas
upper class area but compared to bay area real cheap for what you can get

my uncle lives lives their and has a 11,000 srft mansion and its awsome very nice and he built it for only 2 millinon where in some parts of the bay area it would be worth over 15 million.


anyone else live in the central coast?

By Jamimom (Jamimom) on Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 03:28 pm: Edit

There are some schools that will consider your stepfather's income and assets. I believe that is something covered in the Profile and individual college attachments.

By Somedaysoon (Somedaysoon) on Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 04:10 pm: Edit

Sucks that you live with a step parent that doesn't care about you enough to help pay for college. When he married your mom, he married her LIFE. That includes you.

And for your biological dad, that should be a given. Divorce does not resolve a parent's responsibilities to his child. You can say, "Gee, I'm not even married to Carol. Why should I have to pay for her kid's school?" He divorced your MOM - NOT YOU. Simply put, he's still accountable for you till you're 18 (legally) and forever (morally).

Simply put, when you make a committment to a child by MAKING IT or MARRY INTO ITS FAMILY, it's forever.

Don't take away the really needy people because your parents don't feel like paying.

By Jamimom (Jamimom) on Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 05:24 pm: Edit

Somedaysoon, it seems there is a lot of acrimony in your posts towards kids who are in situations where their parents or family situations make it so they cannot get money whether it is there or not. There really is not much a kid can do if they happen to be in a family that is not willing or able to pay. I have seen so many situations like that. Also in many states once a kid is 18, there is no obligation on the part of the parent to pay anything anymore. My close friend went through hell trying to get money for her kids for college, and basically the law was not on her side. Did not get a cent, and lost out on legal fees that she could not afford and is still paying . The kids ended up going to local state school though they got into some highly selective colleges because of the family situation. Though I understand why the college financial aid process is set up the way it is, there is plenty to sympathise with those caught in personal circumstances.
It is quite true that the information is out there and everyone should be keeping college costs in mind as they make their decisions in life, but a child cannot really intervene in a parents' choices just because it compromises their college finances. Most children are not aware of these things. If your mom marries someone when you are age 10, and that person is not going to be willing to contribute to your college 8 years later, you really are not in any position to bring this up at that age, nor should this issue cause a breakdown of the family as you are leaving it. And if you have a deadbeat dad or mom, there are often not many things you can do about it. I just recently helped a young lady chase down a deadbeat dad and sue him for back support and college. After all was said and done, she got a big $6000. And she was a persistant young lady who took a year off to do this. So believe me, the need is real for these kids.
I would be interested in seeing some constructive ideas for these kids. Telling their mom to divorce her husband, or sell the house is not really a viable option. Preserving the family is more important than beating out a few dollars for college. When I talk to kids and families, I look for solutions to their problems, not what they should have done, could have, would have done.

By Somedaysoon (Somedaysoon) on Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 08:32 pm: Edit

Let me start by saying, I agree with a lot you said.

I know kids can go through HELL trying to get money from their waste-of-oxygen-dead-beat parents. I, myself, am the daughter of a physically abusive jerk of a father that I haven't seen him in over a decade. I don't know if he's alive, and frankly, I don't care.

It's for this VERY reason that Im adamantly against the more privileged kids looking for loopholes in the FA system. Look at these situations:

"My parents - that I live with - don't wanna give up their BMW to send me to college."
"Three people claim me as a depandant, so I'll pick the two that make the least amount of money."
"My parents are divorced, even though I still hang out with both of them. I'll just say that I live in a single income family."
"I'll hide my savings by transferring it to someone else's name to make it look like I'm poor"

All I'm saying is this. People who stretch the truth to get more FA directly take money away from those who REALLY need it. I just think that people often lose sight that there are people out there with serious problems:

* kids in foster homes
* kids who live out of trailers with a drunk parent that makes 12,000 a year as a waitress.
* kids on welfare, living in section 8 housing

I know college is expensive, and no one wants to pay for it. But please, realize that some situations are rediculously petty in comparison to others.

By Jamimom (Jamimom) on Monday, December 29, 2003 - 02:28 am: Edit

There are fraudulent claims in every system. And financial aid gets its share. And when you look at the many other problems in the world, our society, our community, our families, going to an expensive college is truly a luxurious problem for anyone regardless of his/her socioeconomic situation. I work with kids who are in an inner city school where very few go to college. It is a luxury these kids cannot imagine because they are barely going to get out of highschool with an 8th grade education. The very few who do go to college have problems with financial aid because no one wants to be bothered with the paperwork after the issue of the application has been dealt with. Some of these kids will not be alive in the year after they leave highschool. To even think about $40,000+ colleges is ludicrous in this environment. There are magnet programs and private schools and decent districts that any family with the wherewithal to get the heck out of this area have taken advantage of, and these kids that are left here don't have the firepower in their brains, or talent so that society is interested in giving them better than this. Their families have too many other problems to deal with these kids' educations. If these kids did better,much better in school and on their standardized tests, they would get full rides at some schools , but as it stands , college is not in their immediate future. I just try to inject the idea of it in their minds for them to mull on the subject and maybe want to go later when their lives have cleared up a little more and their priorities have changed.
On the other hand there are parents who want to pay for college. They either have the money or are willing to move heaven and earth to get the money to pay for their child's education. So you have the two extremes.
I generally see parents who are willing to pay for a certain category of college. Or for certain stipulation. I see parents who did not prepare for any reason you can give for their child's education. And then the time has come. These parents are hardly deadbeats or waste of oxygen people. They are dearly beloved parents who are just humans and are not perfect or have priorities that do not mesh with their kids'. It does not help the kid to have a wealthy parent, if he refuses to pay the tab. And he may have some legitimate reasons for not wanting to pay. The problem is that the kid is going to college, but the college uses the parents' ability to pay for resources, and there is often a disconnect here. The rules for financial aid exist and are changed to try to catch the abuses to the system and yet not eliminate too many kids. But the fact of the matter is that if your family will not support you and is capable of doing so, you cannot get aid. And "capable" is defined pretty much by the EFC.
I went to college at a time when there were many more loophole than there are today. One of my roommates came from a wealthy family, and they had her declared independent so that she got all kinds of aid and benefits (including food stamps). I, for one, made money through perfectly legal double dipping of financial and merit aid. These loopholes have been closed now. But there is nothing wrong with studying the rules for eligibility and rearranging ones resources and savings so that the student's financial aid will be maximized. As long as what you are doing is within the rules, it is certainly permissable and not unethical. To say that you should arrange your income and assets so you are not eligible for aid so that a more deserving soul would get it is far fetched to me. This is not purely a need issue for the colleges either. Many exclude items like home equity, private school tuition for siblings and other extravagances from asset/income figures when calculating EFC because they do not want to exclude a certain category of students. Then there are the pure merit programs. I know people who feel strongly that anyone who can afford college should not be applying for that aid so that it is available for those who need it. I disagree. The issues involved are much more complex than that.
Just to give you a little background about myself, I took in 5 foster children who were dumped by their parents raising my kid count to 9. I work with kids who are as far from those on this web site as you can get. So my natural sympathies are for those who are disadvantaged as much of my time and resources have been put towards helping them. But, it is not that simple of an issue to say that only those who really need the money should be applying for financial aid. That is not what the schools, or financial aid programs, for that matter are saying. That is an opinion. And for many of these schools that are need blind, it is not a taking from those who are more needy when you apply for aid. There is also a very large, very gray area as to who is "wealthy" and who is "poor". Many, many people are in between those extremes.