<p>It’s generally considered private information and posting/asking about it on a public forum is somewhat inappropriate for several reasons:</p>
<p>1) Your parents might not want their situation and financial circumstances known even if this forum and the internet is generally considered “anonymous”</p>
<p>2) Privacy on the internet is becoming a thing of the past, IP addresses are routinely logged and backups usually made that are semi-permanently stored. Add to that, search engines like Google and archivers like the Internet Archive will often cache, index, and store pages for years at a time, information you post will be available for a very long time. What’s to say that you (or a website, or a hacker) won’t accidentally divulge your personal information in the future? </p>
<p>Case in point, Netflix released “anonymized” DVD rental records of customers with names and personal info redacted. But since the general location of subscribers are still shown, it was easy to identify people based on their tastes and such and some were even outed against their will in the media. </p>
<p>3) I’d hazard a guess that many people on this forum won’t know how to calculate or even estimate how your FA will change because they don’t know the exactly formula and most won’t even know the general formula all that well. </p>
<p>Therefore, it can be inferred (somewhat validly, IMHO) that those who would have an idea of an estimate draw their approximation from personal experience. Therefore, should there be responders to your inquiry that demonstrates somewhat detailed (or even general) knowledge then it is likely that other readers can infer the present/past financial/personal circumstances of those responders from the numbers you posted thus constituting a risk of breach of privacy to others who might have liked to help you. In the worst case, those other users might have already identified themselves in past instances on this or other forums. </p>
<p>Those are just some of the obvious reasons for safeguarding privacy on the internet. Examples abound of people who think internet is completely anonymous and harmless and end up getting burned. pleaserobme.com is a good awareness campaign for that sort of thing.</p>
<p>In short, IMHO, etiquette and common sense should dictate that if you are not comfortable telling a crowd of strangers something, you should not post it in a public forum. At the very least, discuss intimate/personal/private matters through PM.</p>