<p>They sure ask zillions of questions.</p>
<p>How truthful do I need to be?
For instance on 1040, they do not ask retirement fund or real estate owned besides the house I live in.
Do I need to be completely truthful on such questions?
I don't make a lot now but I used to when I had a highly stressful job working 12 hours a day so I accrued quite a bit of retirement fund.</p>
<p>Your replies would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Willful misrepresentation on your /your child’s financial aid forms could be grounds for penalties, fines, dismissal from school and payment of all financial aid you fraudulently received.</p>
<p>It’s also a felony. </p>
<p>“How truthful do I need to be?” [Shaking head]</p>
<p>You need to answer the questions that are asked.
However generally your dedicated retirement funds are safe, but money you put in recently will be added back to available funds.
Current income is weighted heavier than assets.</p>
<p>If you have a large retirement fund that is great!
While your kid is in school you won’t have to worry about contributing to it and you can focus on meeting your sons educational expenses.
However be aware that even though he is applying EA to several schools, he won’t get a firm offer of aid until this years taxes are finalized and numbers are confirmed.</p>
<p>How truthful do you have to be? I sure hope you are kidding. It is considered FRAUD to falsify information on the financial aid application forms. You will likely be asked to provide your 2013 tax returns…or do you plan on being less than truthful on those too?</p>
<p>You need to be VERY truthful on those financial aid applications. Colleges frown on dishonesty. If you are dishonest, you could lose any aid awarded to you as well as your offer of admission.</p>
<p>Be honest.</p>
<p>I don’t think lying on PROFILE which is not a federal form is a felony, and I don’t know exactly whether it is a felony to like on FAFSA which is a federal form and the consequences of that can be very severe. However, it is fraud, lying, cheating to leave out, falsify, and do sneaky intent things like having someone hold your money, to misrepresent your financial situation. </p>
<p>Most all PROFILE schools, unless you have a huge amount of qualified money, will not use the assets in your pension. BC has straight out said that they do look and sometimes use 401K and pension funds, but I’ve known quite a few kids who stilll got good aid packages even though there were substantial funds for retirment in the picture. The schools all want to know, just in case there are people out there with truly large retirement funds so that it would ridiculous to give their kids fin aid. Where the cut points are, however, who knows? And they change things each year, and things are different from school to school. </p>
<p>IF you are chosen for verification, it’s really rather easy to get your retirement accounts, so it’s not something like that cache you might have in a box in the ground in your back yard. Either way, you are being dishonest, if that means anything to you.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uhhh . . . fraud is a crime. Doesn’t matter whether or not the victim is a federal agency. And, so long as the amount obtained by fraudulent means is over “x" amount (varies from state to state), it’s a felony.</p>