<p>I am having a hard time determining todays market value of mutual funds, stocks etc. How accurate do I have to be?</p>
<p>You know it is the value on the day you file FAFSA, right? Which will not be today.</p>
<p>Yes, thanks for the info swimcatsmom</p>
<p>Do you have online access to your bank and investment accounts? If so, you should be able to get the exact value of your accounts the day you file your FAFSA (and Profile if need be).</p>
<p>Pick a day and go for it! I usually make a screen shot of the accounts and stick it in my file. The difference between one day and the next probably won’t make all that much difference, but I pick a day when the market is down…make ME feel better.</p>
<p>Can I use the value from the ‘most recent’ statement, which was as of 30th September?</p>
<p>Why use the 30th of September…you will get another statement for December 31.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, but I don’t usually get the statements a couple of weeks later. I was planning to submit FAFSA and PROFILE before Jan 10th. Of course, I have access online. The asset values were considerably lower in Sept, so I was inclining to use the values in the paper statements. Would that be a problem?</p>
<p>It is supposed to be the value on the day you file FAFSA. Not the value from several months ago. You cannot just choose to use a past value from a day when the value was lower. We (meaning my husband) always calculate actual values on the day we (meaning me) am filling out FAFSA parent info and stick a note in our files showing how the numbers were were calculated.</p>
<p>swimcatsmom is right (as usual!)
It’s really not hard to figure out the value on the day you file FAFSA – virtually any stock, mutual fund, 401K or 403b fund, or 529 plan will list the daily value per share online. Just look at your most recent statement to see how many shares you own, then multiply by the value. Easy-peasy. Bank account info is also readily available online.</p>
<p>I doubt anyone is going to raise a stink if you used your last statement figures.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They might. At one school, we had to send in verification of our investment numbers.</p>
<p>^right…but not everyone has access to their daily account values. Banks have always used your latest paper statements…maybe things have changed…lol</p>
<p>Yes…to the above post…but your LATEST investment sheet will be Dec 31. Not Sept.</p>
<p>With the advent of the internet, it is possible to find out information for a given date. It’s not that difficult to do. Online access should be set up for investment accounts, and you should log in to find out the value on the day you submit the FAFSA. Print out the info you used to complete it. If investments are held as individual stocks, you can get the closing values for the day & use those. Again, print out the info you used to determine the value. As far as bank accounts are concerned, you can easily determine what was in the account on a given day … it’s not rocket science.</p>