Name: New Fafsa Application Changes Could Boost Your Financial Aid
Uploaded: 2023-11-06T22:28:00Z
Duration: 5 min 30 s
Description: Changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, will allow people to make contributions to their 401(k) without it impacting the amount of financial aid they receive. WSJ personal-finance reporter Oyin Adedoyin joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss. PHOTO: ISTOCK

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Changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, will allow people to make contributions to their 401(k) without it impacting the amount of financial aid they receive. WSJ personal-finance reporter Oyin Adedoyin joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss. PHOTO: ISTOCK

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New Fafsa Application Changes Could Boost Your Financial Aid

JR: Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, November 7th. I'm JR Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. Changes to the way families apply for college financial aid will allow them to save for retirement without jeopardizing their eligibility for higher education assistance. Wall Street Journal of Personal Finance reporter, Oyin Adedoyin joins me. So Oyin, under the current plan, how do retirement savings figure into the application for financial aid?

Oyin: Currently, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, also known as the FAFSA, asks families how much they contribute to their work-sponsored retirement accounts. Now, families are already expected to contribute anywhere from 22% to 47% of their discretionary income towards paying for college. And so those retirement contributions would then be factored back into the total income that families were expected to contribute.

JR: Oh, and that could count against eligibility.

Oyin: Yep, that could make them less eligible for financial aid.

JR: So what kind of position did that put families and students in?

Oyin: That put families and students in a tough position. Parents had to decide between contributing to their own financial aid accounts and contributing to their kids' college funds. Among qualified retirement plans managed by Vanguard, nearly 60% of participants with income of more than $150,000 contributed the maximum amounts allowed last year. When you compare that to people making about $75,000 and upwards of $99,000, only 4% of those participants contributed the maximum amount to their retirement accounts.

JR: Wow, having to decide between saving for retirement and funding a college education, that could be a tough decision for a family.

Oyin: It can, and for many years, families placed retirement over saving for a college fund, but for the first time last year in a survey by Fidelity, college savings ranked higher than retirement and this is largely because of inflation and how much pressure that's put on families as well as just the rising cost of college in general.

JR: So how will this change under the new plan and when does it take effect?

Oyin: The new plan takes effect in December, but the interesting thing about FAFSA is that it collects tax information from two years before the application. If you contribute more to your retirement accounts this year, it won't have an impact on the financial aid award for 2024 to 2025 school year, but it will affect the amount of your award for the 2025 to 2026 academic school year.

JR: Why did the education department make this change?

Oyin: To maximize the number of federal dollars going towards students for free financial aid and also in some cases institutional aid as well.

JR: Who's likely to benefit the most from this?

Oyin: Families that are making around $100,000 or less are likely to benefit the most because max contributions to your retirement accounts can dock you down to about 80K or less, which kind of opens you up for more financial aid.

JR: Now, what does it mean in terms of savings potentially for families?

Oyin: This means that families can get more money for college and therefore keep more money in their wallets. Some families could save anywhere between $5,000 and more than $10,000 on the cost of college each year, depending on how much they make.

JR: But don't some colleges and universities use methods other than the FAFSA to determine financial aid? How will that change?

Oyin: So some colleges use the FAFSA, the federal formula, when they institute their own institutional aid. But other colleges, typically those that are wealthier or private use something called the CSS profile, which is their own form that they use to get a holistic picture of what a family's financial aid situation is like. So those colleges are less likely to make this change when it comes to retirement contributions. They're gonna factor them right back in.

JR: So it's a whole different formula from what we're talking about.

Oyin: Yes, exactly.

JR: What should people expect when they see the new FAFSA in December?

Oyin: The new FAFSA is going to be a lot shorter. Many questions about untaxed payments to tax deferred pension and retirement savings accounts have been removed, and the idea is that the education department wants to derive more direct information from tax documents and save families the time of grueling over this really intense and complicated form. The online application should take a couple minutes to complete where it used to take upwards of 30 minutes or more.

JR: Seems like this is part of broader efforts we talk about very often on the show to encourage people to put more money away for retirement.

Oyin: Yes, this is definitely gonna make putting money away for retirement, especially right now during open enrollment season, a lot more enticing.

JR: That's Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Oyin Adedoyin, and that's it for your money briefing. We'll be back tomorrow morning to discuss one of the most added policies during open enrollment season, disability insurance with WSJ's Julia Carpenter. This episode was produced by Ariana Osperu with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm JR Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 

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