own a 2 family house, FinAid consequences living there or not? Advice please.

[sylvan8798]

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@notrichenough

I guess I am not understanding your point, because this doesn’t make sense to me.</p>

<p>If you have $500 you can spend, and you haven’t spent it by the day you fill out the FA forms, you have $500 in assets to report. It doesn’t matter if it is in your savings account or cash in your pocket.

Ok, I see what you are saying there, although I’m not down with the argument that the $500 fridge isn’t one of your assets. And certainly, for many of the other items which we are supposed to depreciate, they would not be considered your personal property. The negative then would be that it is still counted as “income”. Nonetheless, my response to your original statement:

Depreciation is the big one as this is considered a “phantom” expense in that it doesn’t represent money you actually spent.

is still that some depreciation items do represent money you actually spent. Whether the school wishes to include them or not doesn’t change that.

*Just because you are using the fridge in a rental property doesn’t mean it is no longer personal property, it just means you can depreciate it. *

But you wouldn’t count up all the appliances, furniture, carpets, etc. that you are depreciating, and then subtract the value of them from the value of the apartments they are being used in on the argument that those items are your personal property, would you? I’m not really getting that.</p>