Financial Aid Calculator/Comparer for Six Schools

[abujabal]

Hello!

This community has really facilitated my application process in a big way, so I thought I'd make an attempt at giving back with a basic Financial Aid Calculator. Given that it's nearly March, I suppose tis the season.

This calculator allows you to input the specific financial aid information that you have for six different schools, input custom salary/future forecasting data for each school, and compare the results. It also models in the Tax Bomb, and personal savings amounts. For posterity, this calculator was designed in January of 2018 using current student loan repayment information.

Here's the link:

Link to Google Sheets Calculator

Make a copy from the File menu to edit and play around with your own numbers. Please use the instructions provided on the calculator for questions. I will be active here as well to answer questions as necessary. I consider this sheet in active beta, so requests for further information/modification are not only possible, but encouraged.

Caveats
- THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. THIS IS MERELY A TOOL. Use at your own risk.
- It is important that you not take my sample numbers as canon. Please use the litany of publicly available financial planning resources to understand what an appropriate debt:savings and debt:loan ratio may be. /r/personalfinance is an invaluable place to start.
-This whole thing is a starting point. If you're using this to understand what your grocery budget will be after your second year at XYZ Law Firm if you go to the University of ABC, then you will need to build that functionality in yourself.

Cheers to all - I hope you find this useful, and that your Decision Spring brings good tidings!

[principalagent]

There goes my productivity at work today :p

Thanks for doing this!

[Stranger]

There goes my productivity at work today :p

Thanks for doing this!

I skipped the gym to play with this.

[BlondeAmbiti0n]

This is so useful; thank you for making it!

[Experiment626]

Thank you for sharing my friend. I am making this a sticky post for easy reference to ensure it does not get lost and can be used by future generations of 0L family to help their decision process.

[principalagent]

One suggestion. Could we do Personal Savings in 10 years instead of at repayment? It doesn't offer a great comparison as it currently stands.

[abujabal]

One suggestion. Could we do Personal Savings in 10 years instead of at repayment? It doesn't offer a great comparison as it currently stands.

That's definitely a better approach. I'll make that change now

EDIT: It's a bit difficult, as it turns out. The easy 2 second change is just summing up what's there in the 10 years, but obviously if you pay your loans off in Year 6, it doesn't calculate that your savings rate will probably increase/you'll keep saving for four years. I'll take another stab at it after work, but for now it only calculates your "tracked" savings rate, that is, how much money you'll save while indebted in a 10 year window.

I'm pretty sure I can fix it up afterwards, but that may be hubris, so stay tuned I suppose!

[SH22]

Thank you! Exactly what I need to start doing.

[emkay625]

This is really great!

[Meelo]

This is awesome but I'm gonna need you to ELI5 this answer to my question: How does the spreadsheet account for post-tax income?

[edit]: also real quick - there isn't a formula in the individual school spreadsheets for AL11 - it's just the 165000 number rather than linking back to the Master Control spreadsheet. Super tiny easy fix, but just incase for anyone who doesn't know how to work their excels!

[abujabal]

This is awesome but I'm gonna need you to ELI5 this answer to my question: How does the spreadsheet account for post-tax income?

It doesn't! Everything is pre-tax, or based on whatever post tax numbers you put in.

[edit]: also real quick - there isn't a formula in the individual school spreadsheets for AL11 - it's just the 165000 number rather than linking back to the Master Control spreadsheet. Super tiny easy fix, but just incase for anyone who doesn't know how to work their excels!

Great catch, fixed!

[Meelo]

This is awesome but I'm gonna need you to ELI5 this answer to my question: How does the spreadsheet account for post-tax income?

It doesn't! Everything is pre-tax, or based on whatever post tax numbers you put in.

I'm not so excel or financially savvy to figure out the best way to do this, but I think it would be a good idea to include in the Instructions page to calculate with post-tax numbers. There's a bunch of calculators online that'll help you break down post-tax estimates.

[abujabal]

Hi All:

I'm deeply sorry about this, but I've just discovered an error in my math on the accrued interest payments. An improperly anchored cell meant that accrued interest amounts were shown to be higher than they actually were. For example, if you took out $0 in student loans for your 1L year, the calculator would improperly display an accrued interest amount based on your 2L loan amounts. By my estimate, this would have displayed a roughly 2-5% higher total COA amount than actually should have been assumed.

This has now been fixed. I deeply apologize to anyone who's used this calculator to make financial decisions - I sincerely hope that upon recalculation nothing major seems to have changed.

Please let me know if you have any questions, or if there's anything else I can fix

[inthetrenches21]

Why is the T6 tuition defaulted to 30k?

[abujabal]

Why is the T6 tuition defaulted to 30k?