How to calculate assets? How accurate should they be?

I am talking about stocks and mutual funds. Since I filled out FAFSA in February, the Dow has been up 8%. Should I revise my application?

No, assets are reported as of the day of the FAFSA submission. If you win the lottery the next day, you do not revise the application.

What if the FAFSA is estimated version? We haven’t filed our taxes yet. When we go back to update, should we update the assets as well? We don’t anticipate any aid.

It doesn’t matter. You do NOT change the assets when you update. You only change the items to reflect your 2015 completed taxes.

The only time you change the assets is if you made an error. For example, one time, we forgot to include a savings account…so,when we updated, we added that amount on.

But otherwise…assets do not get changed. They are what they are as if the date you initially submit your fafsa.

When your taxes are filed and processed, sign into the FAFSA and put the tax filing status as “already completed”, then answer a few questions and try to “link to IRS”, the data retrieval tool will then import your tax return information.

You don’t update the assets.