<p>Finished the taxes, and working on correcting (how long does it typically take before I can use IRS retrieval tool?).</p>
<p>My main question: It says, “On the day you submitted your FAFSA, what was your parents’ total current balance of cash, savings, and checking accounts?”</p>
<p>Similar wording for investments. We have made no significant investments, deposits, or withdrawals–so the numbers haven’t budged much in the few weeks since the original FAFSA was submitted.</p>
<p>Do you bother to correct these piddling amounts? The instructions do say, “on the day you submitted…” Which day?</p>
<p>I’d like to add to the question if I may. Our investment amounts are not so piddling because the market is up since we filed the preliminary FAFSA before finishing taxes. Since finishing our taxes, we now have to update the tax information, so do we have to update all savings and investment information too? And does it really matter if our EFC is well over the school cost? Our EFC nearly doubled from last year.</p>
<p>The assets cannot be “updated”. They remain the same from your initial submission date.</p>
<p>The only exception USED to be if you made an error…left out money, for example. Or incorrectly entered an asset amount (note…not changes…errors as of the date of that original submission).</p>
<p>Someone doing a FAFSA now will have to weigh in…are those fields even ABLE to be changed?</p>
<p>I think you can physically update the savings/investments if you actually made a real mistake like forgetting something the first time. However, as Iron Maiden says, you’re not supposed to update balances due to earnings or changes due to cash flow. The savings/investments are supposed to be a snapshot as of the day you first submitted fafsa.</p>
<p>They are able to be updated. I was updating the tax info last night and saw that I can type in the cash and investment fields. That’s why I asked. I thought I remembered last year that you couldn’t or weren’t supposed to.
I don’t recall seeing anything on FAFSA that said not to but then I never really read instructions. Does it say that?</p>
<p>These words are pasted from the Helps and Hints for that line item of the FAFSA:</p>
<p>Add the account balances of your (and if married, your spouse’s) cash, savings, and checking accounts as of the day you submit your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Enter the total of all accounts as the total current balance. If the total is negative, enter zero as the total current balance.</p>
<p>That’s why I asked, it’s not clear, although reading the tea leaves, my inclination is that “the day you submit” means the initial, not corrected, FAFSA submission.</p>
<p>It’s the INITIAL date of submission for assets. No “updating”. The only thing you can do to assets if FIX them to reflect the accurate numbers from your original date of submission…if you made an error.</p>
<p>For example, we submitted a FAFSA one time and goofed. We completely left out a small bank account when we did our original submission. We made that CORRECTION to reflect adding the balance of that account on the date of our original FAFSA submission.</p>
<p>When putting in real estate assets into the mix, does one use the assessed value or the market value of a property? Not talking about our primary residence here but another residence now owned by my sibling and me that my mother lives in. We pay the taxes. She is not, however, a dependent.</p>
<p>I believe it’s market value (not sure) but since you own it with someone else, you would put HALF of this.</p>
<p>Someone else will have to clarify…but I believe you put the value minus the outstanding mortgage if there is one…hopefully someone with more info about investment properties will weigh in.</p>
<p>If your mom pays rent to you…this would have to be factored in as well.</p>
<p>First of all, it is correct that assets are reported for the day you submitted the first FAFSA of the year ONLY. Don’t update. If you made a mistake, you can fix it … but if your fix lowers the amount, expect to be selected for verification (no guarantee, but a good bet).</p>
<p>In terms of the value of the residence, it is market value - mortgage = worth. If you own one-half the home, report one-half the worth.</p>