What should I do? My credit union has on their website my current balance and my available balance. Which one do I use for my FAFSA application?
Wait I’m sorry, but what is this regarding? Maybe someone else will chime in but I never recalled FAFSA asking your checkings/savings amount. It just asks for income and obvs dependents from what I recall.
Yes, it does. One of the last questions on the fafsa application.
Yes, it does ask for current amount.
Unless you’re talking about a difference of thousands of dollars, it won’t really matter. I would use current balance.
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Thank you for helping me.
Do I list the available balance or the total balance?
Without telling me the balances themselves, what’s the difference between available and total?
One has the amount in total and the other is the amount I have available to me.
I meant the dollar amount of the difference.
For instance, one of my banks holds back $10, so my total might be $200, but the amount available will be $190. If that’s the sort of difference, you should use the total amount but it won’t really matter which you use because a difference that small is not going to make a difference in the FAFSA result.
On the other hand, sometimes you might have a transaction in the middle of being processed. In that event, you might have a total amount of $2000, but the amount available might say $880 because you have a $1120 transaction pending. In this case, I would use the amount available, because you don’t want to count the pending transaction funds as part of your account because it’s already spent and marked for deduction.
So I use the total amount not the available amount?
That depends.
Do you have a pending transaction? Or is the difference in amounts due to your bank ensuring you maintain a minimum balance?
if you’re in doubt, use the total amount.
I don’t have a pending transaction. On the available balance the savings is $0 but the current balance savings is $5.
Enter $5.
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That does not make sense. The current balance is $5 but the available balance is 0.
If those are the actual numbers, you may not be allowed to take the balance of your account below $5, or down to zero. On FAFSA you enter the current balance as of the date you are filling out the form.
Do you have a parent who can help you with FAFSA? Have your parents entered their information?
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That is the balance of just my saving account that I don’t really use.
You still need to report the current balance in your savings account, even if you don’t use the account.
I will put in my checking and savings account current balance. But there is a current balance and a available balance.
You said there are no pending transactions, so if you closed out your account today you would receive $5, correct? If so, put $5 on FAFSA.
I would have more than that. But the savings account was the minimum balance you have to have to open the account.