Did we miss the boat with Financial Aid?

[thumper1]

@MMRose

We own a small business and have found that the NPCs are fairly accurate.

Also, I would think that if you own additional real estate and can calculate your equity in it, then adding the value of that equity to your assets and entering that number should work. @thumper1 , is there any reason why that wouldn’t work?

1. Re businesses. Some colleges add back in deductions allowed by the IRS but are not allowed for financial aid purposes. These are added back in as income. I’ve never seen anything from any college that specifically details how they do this. So…just beware, this can happen.

@MMRose perhaps your colleges didn’t have this in their formula…or maybe you didn’t have business deductions that would be added back in.

2. Second real estate…most colleges use a %age of your primary residence equity (there are some that use it all…). But for secondary real estate, colleges feel this is something you could sell. IOW, they aren’t going to grant you need based aid so you can own additional real estate. So NO simply adding the equity in both properties together likely won’t be accurate as colleges most likely will assess a higher amount of your second piece of real estate.