<p>If you have up until now given your daughter an allowance, or otherwise given her spending money, and now wish to have her use her own money for those expenses, that’s great. If you still want to be able to help her with college costs two years from now, that is great two. The two don’t have to be connected.</p>
<p>The money she is earning at her job is hers, and it should be in her name. There will already be a record that she earned that money. FAFSA does have an asset protection allowance, so some of her money is protected. If she manages to save more than that good for her - she is helping put herself through college. As it is, they will only take 20% of those savings, which is not unreasonable.</p>
<p>Put her name on the checking account, not yours. It’s NOT your money. If she doesn’t want any assets when she files her FAFSA, then she can spend the money down. But that isn’t YOUR decision, it’s HERS. If she wants to spend it on college, she can put it into a 529 account to stretch its value. You’re worried she will need it for non-qualified expenses, but you can just as easily pay for those as you can pay toward her tuition. If She isn’t going to have qualified expenses to use that 529 money, why are we even having this discussion? The whole point of hiding/shifting assets is to reduce those qualified expenses.</p>