<p>for the student’s income, fafsa asks for the adjusted gross income from the 1040. If that’s a negative number (because of capital losses in this market!) do you put the negative number, or just 0? fafsa says to enter whole numbers.</p>
<p>You put the negative number. I couldn’t get it to accept and save, so I called the FAFSA help line (the man who answered my call was VERY nice). He instructed me to enter it with a “-” (he said not to use “( )” or “< >”) and try to save three or four times… then he said to enter the number followed by a “-” and try to save three or four times… then go back to entering it with a leading negative sign three or four times… and it finally worked.</p>