<p>My dad quit his job 4 years back. Since then he is earning $0. So, in a lot of fields I'll have to fill in 0. Such as "Income in the year 2013-2014": 0. Assets for siblings "0". Thousands of dollars in debt/loans.</p>
<p>He is living off the job's pension and retirement funds and planning to pay back some of the debt by using his retirement funds.</p>
<p>Will this prevent me from getting financial aid?</p>
<p>No. You are not the only one. it’s not weird at all. He retired early and is living off his pension and retirement funs like millions of Americans. What’s so weird about that? He does have to fill in his pension proceeds. A lot of people have zero assets for siblings. Debt and loans don’t matter, other than if they are direct mortgages or liens against specific asset that are listed like home mortgages that reduce the net market value of that asset.</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse Thanks! Does the expenses amount have to be exact? For example: "Yearly expenses in food: " Can I write approximate value or the exact amount that we spent last year?
Due to inflation, the prices keep changing and expenses keep changing, right?</p>
<p>PROFILE and FAFSA do not care what your expenses are or what you spent. They take less into consideration than the IRS does which does give you deductions for mortgage, charity, qualified plan contributions . With very few exceptions those forms do not care what you owe or what it takes for you to live. They just want to know how much money you are getting, and in your father’s case it would be what he is taking out of his retirement funds, and how much in assets he has. It would be crazy if expenses were entered because with the same income some people spend it on frivolous things and others on necessities that come up, good works, debts, needed projects. The colleges, for the most part don’t care. You have to ask for a professional judgement for exemption of important expenses such as medical ones (Like I know someone who paid a lot out of pocket for a bone marrow transplant) or earmarking of assets for the such. Those are not even taken into account on the forms and you have to write an appeal to each school </p>
<p>To fill out PROFILE, for the most part, what is needed is the tax form for the prior year and you can make changes on numbers that you already know are likely to be different this year, and a list of assets owned with values as of the date you file the form. Also a list of any income not on the tax form. When you fill out the FAFSA after 1/1/15 when it is released, those numbers on the FAFSA generally get verified on what is on the 1040 forms which then are cross checked with PROFILE and corrected/updated as necessary. If you are filling out a PROFILE now, you are using estimates since most people don’t know exactly what their income will be for 2014 and that is the important number for financial aid. Income. And if your father is drawing money out of a qualified retirement plan, he does have to pay taxes on it; those withdrawals, payments will be reported on the 1040 series to the IRS If he’s taking money out of plain old assets that are not really retirement funds, then he does not have to report that money to anyone; but those funds get treated as general assets and hit up at about 5% each year Qualified plan asset like IRAs, 401K , company pension account balances do not get assessed most of the time, though PROFILE does ask for the balance and gives them a lookover. </p>
<p>So bottom line, your expenses don’t matter and don’t get reported Just income. How you spend that income the colleges do not tend to care.</p>
<p>Ask him if he will tell you the amount of his (and your mom’s?) ‘AGI’ (adjusted gross income) from his (their) 2013 tax return.</p>
<p>How old is your dad (is he collecting Social Security)?</p>
<p>Um…is your dad collecting pension and retirement…or is he withdrawing money or borrowing money from those funds?</p>
<p>If he is COLLECTING retirement and pension, those are listed as income on the Profile someplace. They ARE his income.</p>
<p>If he is withdrawing money from a retirement account that was previously pretax, I believe that is also income someplace on the Profile.</p>
<p>I’m not sure your Profile should be filled with zeros. Please clarify.</p>
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He is living off the job’s pension and retirement funds and planning to pay back some of the debt by using his retirement funds.</p>
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<p>???</p>
<p>Your dad does NOT have ZERO income. He has money coming in from pension, etc. </p>
<p>As for paying off debt with retirement funds, if that means pulling money out of a 401k or similar, then that will also affect your numbers.</p>
<p>@thezealot </p>
<p>We see posts like this often. People do not have zero income if they have money coming in from sources other than a paid job. </p>
<p>and none of the financial aid forms I’ve ever seen ask about expenses like food or utilities. </p>