So the other day the wife and I were discussing whether we want to have children, which is a fairly common discussion for us. The talk went towards the financial impact of having kids. I'm not saying that's a major factor in our decision, but it's not meaningless either.
My wife brought up the cost of college and that she'd want to be able to cover college for them. I've been thinking about this and had what I hope is a great, if slightly amoral, idea. Hoping to get some feedback on this idea, as I feel like I may be missing something.
There are 62 colleges in the US that claim to fully meet financial aid. (
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2012/02/16/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need).
This is defined as fully bridging the gap between the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and the cost of attending. Some use subsidized loans to do this, but many are fully "no loan" and grant-based.
The trick, then, is to minimize the "Expected Family Contribution" that's calculated. As far as I can tell this is based on:
1. Income, which would be very small for me, since I'll be retired and will only have dividends to worry about.
2. parental and children's assets. Since this is 19 years from now, I oughta be able to convert all my assets to my Roth IRA (which doesn't count in the calcs) by then, converting back only what I need to spend every year.
This would mean my assets would be minimal and my income would be minimal, thus our EFC would be minimal as well. So if we managed to get our child to go to one of those schools (which, granted, are nearly all very, very good schools), we'd basically get it for free. Right?