When you get married they take both of your incomes into consideration with your financial aid. If only one of you works, lets say like you work and she does not, they consider your income into her financial aid. (This has just happened to me and my husband, he works and I don’t but they still consider his income into my financial aid). I am not encouraging you to not marry or to wait and marry, but I do know that unless you are married with kids or elderly parents or siblings in your home in your care, they are pretty tough on just a couple. I am sorry if this was not the answer you were hoping for but it is from my experience, less than 2 months ago.

P.S. My husband makes around 40,000 and I only got 6,000 from financial aid towards my 24,000 tuition per year. We had to take out a private loan to subsidize my tuition.

When you get married, you will use you and your spouse’s information only…not your parents’. You will also be independent students (married) with 2 in the household, 2 in college with a $30K income from work. Both of you will be eligible for financial aid given this information. But there’s a catch….

You cannot file your FAFSA until AFTER you get married to use you and your wife’s income only. If you file first and get married second, we will use your parent’s data and we will not change. If the only reason you are independent is because you are married, then we will not make you independent either.

I advise young couples all the time, plan that wedding before the FAFSA file date and file your FAFSA AFTER the nuptials.

Good luck…on both counts 🙂

(The person above me has excellent points about when to file the FAFSA- take her advice)

I would also recommend fiddling around with one of the EFC on- line calculators. Put in your situation in both ways… and see what gives you the lowest EFC number… Any EFC below 4110 would give her at least a partial PELL grant, any number above that would be loan only financial aid. You might find it isn’t going to make much a difference either way. Or it could be huge if her parents don’t make much and have a lot of members in their family (don’t forget to include her in their household when calc her EFC as unmarried).

get married after you both graduate