“This is an asset that you will need to report unless you sell it or give it away. You are asking colleges to give you need based aid so that you can hold onto $250,000 in home equity? That’s just not how it works.” - Thumper 1
So I didn’t say I was asking colleges to give me anything. I am trying to discern/reconcile what an advisor conveyed to us with what we’ve read - and heard (obviously here) online.
Clearly, we’d like to get college tuition assistance if it’s available. How on earth in this day and age can someone who makes over $110K be considered so well-off that they can afford to pay, what is it, 40%-50% of their income to pay for college?? We just don’t have the savings or income to afford that.
Of course that’s another topic and not something anyone here can practically speak to.
But if one wants to delve further into “how it works”, it seems we could have sold the rental house, and used the proceeds to a) increase our equity in our primary home or b) invest it into a retirement fund. Either way, that equity or that retirement investment would not have been, as I understand it, considered an asset…?
But for the sake of trying to improve our retirement position, we felt the rental house has a higher appreciation ceiling than our current home and that the real estate market appreciation where we live is likely to be “safer” and grow more than any retirement funds are likely to over the next 10+ years.
So why does inquiring if an LLC for the rental home might help “protect” our retirement investment seem to be viewed as something questionable v.s. putting the equity into an actual retirement fund or our personal home? Aren’t they, ultimately, doing the same thing? Shouldn’t they, in theory, be viewed the same way?