I just filled out a FAFSA Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) worksheet to see how our assets and income would affect everything. I was surprised that for my firstborn's start date of 2028, there are some money moves I might want to do in 2025.*
We're a family of 6, and this year's income (2nd year FIRED), will be $74K. We only spend $57K of that, but I need the extra because I'm still setting up a IRA ladder, while selling some stock for current expenses.
We have about $190K outside of IRA accounts, and maybe $10K in Savings/Checking.
Running everything as-is, we got an EFC of $16,000, with about half from our income and half from assets. That's good news because I "sort of budgeted" $120K for college. This would put as at about half of that.
If we moved the $190K we keep outside of IRA accounts, our EFC goes down to $6K, which I find really low. We could do that by spending this down on yearly expenses until then, or by taking it all and paying off the mortgage with it. I estimate we could do a $49K spend if we paid off the mortgage instead. I don't think we'd be able to keep our spending less than $29K, especially because we'd have to keep it up for the 11 years we'll have one kid or another in college.
*Because we have this money tied up in investments, I would want to do the moves in 2025, because they'll likely result in some heavy tax gains. Then 2026 can be a low-withdrawal year. I'll file those taxes in 2027, and they suggest you file the FAFSA in February of the year your child starts school, so I'd have to use 2026 taxes because 2027 taxes wouldn't be completed yet.