[quote=AN][quote=bearishgurl]Uhh, the only problem I see with this idea is that you would need to quit your job at least one tax year before you file your kid’s FAFSA by January of their senior year. Meaning, quit work during their sophomore year or first semester of their junior year of HS, at the latest. At that point, you have NO IDEA if they’ll be accepted to Stanford and likely won’t find out until Feb through April of their senior year of HS.
Since Stanford only admits ~5% of all freshman applicants, I think that’s quite a gamble to take with your OWN future, AN, considering you’ll likely still be “young” when your kid(s) apply for college![/quote]It’s not a gamble if I save enough to retire by then. If I don’t, I can always start working for start ups around town and take a low pay in exchange for a lot of equity.[/quote]
Ivy League schools and most private colleges (including Stanford) don’t just rely on FAFSA to calculate EFC (Expected Family Contribution). In addition to FAFSA, they use CSS Profile. FAFSA does not consider most assets and just consider AGI when calculating EFC. So most of the times FAFSA’s EFC is higher than the actual EFC from the college.
EFC calculation relies heavily on current income but also considers assets. Assets can be savings, money market, CDs, stocks, bonds, investment property equity, home equity, 529 or any other college savings, etc. The CSS profile even asks balances and current contribution to retirement accounts and current automobiles. Colleges uses these informations the way they want it to calculate your EFC.
So AN, even if you retire but your wife still works and makes about 90K a year and about 1.5 M in asset, you will still be full pay.
All colleges has an NPC calculator on their website. Here’s one for Harvard:
