Hello,

Please help if me and my wife make over say 170k per year. But we want our child(19) to fund their own college education as we have already paid for 2 years in full. Now that my child has the associates degree we no longer want to fund this even while being a co-signor on loans. It appears that i can find some things to assist my daughter but not a lot and the terms are not the greatest. Just checking and looking and its rather disheartening to see that she is punished for my success. Any ideas are appreciated thanks

-heath-

First of all, you and your wife's salaries, combined with the fact that your daughter is under the age of 24 and and an undergraduate student, will make it difficult for your daughter to obtain enough resources to fund her education completely independently. My first suggestion would be for her to file the FAFSA and apply for federal financial aid. Although she probably will not qualify for any need-based aid she might qualify for an unsubsidized Stafford loan. Secondly, I would suggest that your daughter start applying for scholarships. Two great scholarship resources are www.StudentScholarshipSearch.com and www.ScholarshipPoints.com. Finally, your daughter could apply for private student loans, but she will most likely need a cosigner. You can check out www.privatestudentloans.com to see those loan options.

My parents have a high income but they also have a lot of bills to pay for. Somehow the FAFSA says that they can contribute a lot more than is truly possible. Is there a way to fix this.

I actually wrote a blog about this situation I think both of you would find useful. Check it out on the Student Loan Network blog: http://blog.studentloannetwork.com/financial-aid/federal-aid-for-students-without-need/