Financial Aid

How will a surplus or deficit affect me as a house member? Prior to their audit appointment, house members are expected to vote on what to do with any potential surplus or deficit. In the event of a surplus, members have the option to keep the surplus amount in their savings, pay it forward to the next audit appointment, return it to members, split the surplus between savings and members, or do something else as decided by the house. In the event of a deficit, houses can pay it from savings (if they have the means to do so), charge members, or split the cost between savings and house members. It is important to keep in mind that any surplus or deficit assessed to members of the house will only affect members who were living in the house during the months covered by the audit. This may include members who have since moved out, in which case the surplus or deficit amount assessed to them will be added to or subtracted from their Shares return check. It is important to keep in mind that paying consecutive deficits from savings can very quickly deplete your house’s account balance. If your house is running a deficit each audit, it may be time to update the budget and increase house charges to cover your expenses. I always recommend overbudgeting by a little to try to end up with a surplus rather than budgeting the bare minimum and potentially ending up with a deficit.

I hope this article has shed some light on the whole house audits thing for you, but if you still have questions or want to talk about anything finance, feel free to email me at treasurer@spartan.coop! And to my fantastic Finance Officers: I’ll see you in October for your house audit!

By Anna Parcells of Raft Hill

Hello co-opers of the SHC! I am here to spread some knowledge about the financial aid process that goes down ~within~ MSU, as I worked (am working) for the Office of Financial Aid (OFA) since this past May. Before we get started here there are some terms that I’m gonna throw around pretty often that I want y ’all to be familiar with. The first and most important part of the financial aid process is submitting your FAFSA!!! I truly do not think it is possible to overstate the importance of completing that, which you must re-submit EVERY YEAR! You can start the process at www.fafsa.gov which is available to complete for the next school year on October 1st! I highly recommend doing it as soon as possible in case you get selected for verification, which is a random process in which 1/3 students get selected by the feds to prove what they submitted on their FAFSA is true. This is done by submitting additional documentation through the new oh-so-delightful student portal at www.student.msu.edu. Pls make sure you are familiar with her before you get too far into your school year.

Next, introducing: EFC. This stands for Expected Family Contribution and is actually more of an index number than a price tag. So, from the information you submit on the FAFSA, your EFC is then calculated using income information, savings accounts, assets, etc. So whatever EFC your FAFSA spits out almost entirely defines how much financial aid you are eligible for at MSU. It sounds kinda crazy re-reading that sentence but I promise it is logical. EFC ranges from $0-$999,999. The highest we have seen in our office thus far is $552,000! Yeah, that’s a lot of money. So, in the eyes of the feds… that family has 552k available to contribute to educational expenses. They would only qualify for federal loans, which everyone who submits a FAFSA is offered. Students with