<p>I just found an envelope with forgotten education paper bonds for the kids. It is a couple thousand $ in small denominations. Completely forgot about them for years and they are not matured yet. They were not included in assets on FAFSA. They were bought by grandparents back in a day when SSN were not required for them and have kids names/nicknames on the face, some have my name. They will not be on 2013 tax return since we are not selling them. What should I do now? Not filed CSS yet.</p>
<p>a.Do Not report them on CSS and update on both FAFSA and CSS after taxes are filed. I am not sure assets field is updateable or is it only income/taxes? It is my first time filing.</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>b.Do Not worry about them because assets value fluctuates greatly anyway due to stock market moves, it is a small amount and we are not eligible for federal aid anyway. </p>
<p>Most CSS schools on sons list are unaffordable for us unless he gets close to full ride (a possibility) and in state schools we will be full pay.</p>
<p>When you ask such a question here on the board, the answer is going to be to do the right thing regardless of the possible adverse consequences in getting financial aid. So your last statement is totally irrelevant.</p>
<p>What you should do is to redo the FAFSA including those assets which will change your EFC by about 5.6% of the market value of those bonds in your name if it is over your asset protection allowance. The ones in your students names will increase the EFC by 20% of the market value. You don’t have to report the ones in the other kids’ names for FAFSA purposes.</p>
<p>For CSS PROFILE, you then have to report those assets as you did on the corrected FAFSA, and how they handle the amounts is up to the individual schools PROFILE will also ask for the value of the bonds in the siblings names and will add that to family assets. </p>
<p>That is the right thing to do. You leave off an asset, whether it is in a shoebox under your bed, or an account you overlooked, you are supposed to report it and it’s supposed to be included in the PROFILE too. It is no less an asset just because you forgot about it.</p>
<p>You called them education paper bonds. Are these US Savings Bonds?</p>
<p>If so and the bonds are in the kid’s names and you are the custodian then they are student assets. Any in your name only would be a parent asset. CSS is clumsy to update so I would include them before you submit it. For FAFSA you should update the student and parent investment asset amounts now since this was an actual omission the first time.</p>
<p>You can use the Savings Bond calculator here to get their current value:</p>
<p>[Individual</a> - Savings Bond Calculator](<a href=“http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/tools/tools_savingsbondcalc.htm]Individual”>Savings Bond Calculator — TreasuryDirect)</p>
<p>or on the left at the link is a link to the Savings Bond Wizard.</p>
<p>How are they assets if they have not matured and have not been redeemed?</p>
<p>How are they assets if they have not matured and have not been redeemed?</p>
<p>Same way a CD or whole life policy is an asset, even if they haven’t matured yet. By definition, it is an asset. It has a cash value.</p>
<p>They are EE series bonds.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, my last statement was just to say that we are not expecting federal aid and it does not make sense to me to spend time on amending forms for this reason.
Month to month the assets value will vary within that amount small amount since most of it is in stocks.</p>
<p>If you are hoping for financial aid from a college, they require FAFSA to be filed. It is highly likely that if you get financial aid from a college the aid will include self help with things like the subsidized Stafford loans, Work study and maybe even Perkins and SEOG in the mix. These are all federal funds. Also PLUS and any number of other loans are backed by the federal government and a FAFSA is required for them, and yes, you can be asked to verify that info even when you have ZERO financial need ( we were, just for unsub loans and PLUS). </p>
<p>Also the PROFILE will have to jive with the FAFSA, so if the loans are listed on PROFILE and not on FAFSA, that could be a flag. Some schools do a a cross check. </p>
<p>If the money is in the student’s name, the result can have far reaching consequences as some schools willl take that amount and apportion it over all four years, as well as including the siblings assets. The 20% of students’ assets toward EFC is just the FAFSA percentage. Some PROFLIE schools take more than that. The same with the 5.6% over allowance figure of the parental/sibling assets. </p>
<p>It appears that the amounts are not that big, but, yes, they are supposed to be reported, and yes, they have a value. Yes, assets vary, month to month, and when it comes to checking account balances even from day to day. That’s why it’s advised to pick a day when you file the FAFSA when the accounts are at a low balance and you don’t have earmarked funds in there. It doesn’t matter if you have the insurance proceeds to fix your wrecked car in the account. You are not supposed to subtract them out. You can’t ear mark-- only exceptions are those brought to the attention of financial aid officer and given professional judgements to be excluded. If audited, the request is for your account balances and asseta to be listed as of the day you filled out he FAFSA. So it’s a very unlucky thing if your stock values plummet the day after you report a high market value. Too bad, they won’t adjust. You get the adjustment nextyear. I think the value should be on 12/31 instead of an arbitrary day, but no one cares about my opinion. </p>
<p>So you will very likely be getting federal aid in the financial aid package. That’s all some of us get if the need is small. Work study and Subsidized student loans.</p>
<p>Do the right thing. Include them on profile and update the FAFSA. Assets are supposed to be a snapshot as of the day you file the form. You omitted something so add the bonds’ value to the asset amounts. You are signing that you have honestly and completely provided the financial info when you submit the forms.</p>
<p>It is fraud to exclude them.</p>
<p>If you didn’t want to hear the right answer, why did you ask the question?</p>
<p>Thank you all for valuable advice. This is my first filing and I need to get it right. </p>
<p>However I don’t understand how the FAFSA and CSS will “jive” if they will be submitted on different dates and assets amounts will not match.</p>
<p>You are correct that the amounts will not match, but if you are audited for either and one asset shows up on one and not the other, it is mismatch. The chances that it happens is small but if you want to get technical, a problem with the FAFSA can be more serious because it’s the feds and if they can get very nasty about mistakes like this. PROFILE Is private and is often not subject to as intense scrutiny and federal penalities are not an issue here. Your eligibility for federal funds express by EFC will likely be different from what your institutional expected contribuiton will be. Usually, the FAFSA EFC is smaller, so there is no issue. But you will very likely be getting federal aid of sorts, and so your FAFSA audits should be squeaky clean. </p>
<p>How much of a difference these bonds will make is not likely to be that much if they do not have large face amounts. You really don’t want to start a young adult off with an erroneous federal application for aid–bear in mind, the FAFSA is really his/hers, not yours despite your filling it out and signing your part of it. The ultimate responsibility for it is on the kid, and who knows where your student will end up looking for work and what audits can be pulled up? I think the chances of this coming up are miniscule, frankly, but why start the kid off on the wrong foot? If you leave out an asset because you over looked it, you gotta report it and redo with the info. How much is not the issue. What if the bonds were worth double, or five times or ten times or 100 times the amount? Where does one draw the line here? It’s not the amount but the principle and you are starting out launching a kid into the world on his own. Give him a clean slate.</p>