<p>I was accepted to UCLA as a transfer and was chosen to have my financial info checked, probably because i am low income. under assets, do I need to list my savings accounts?? and does it need to be in full? to get more financial aid, should i transfer that money out into my checking account? I really need as much aid as i can get</p>
<p>Yes, you absolutely were required to list your savings account balances, and any cash you had stuffing your mattress…as of the date of your initial filing of the FAFSA and Profile (if required by your school). And yes, the full amount in those accounts was required.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter which account you have the money in. Or if it’s in your shoes. You have to report it.</p>
<p>This asset reporting is as if the date of your Initial submission of the FAFSA…not now…the date you filed. You do not change the asset amount unless you made an error on that initial filing date. So if you did NOT report your bank balances, you would need to report the balances as of the date of your initial FAFSA filing.</p>
<p>Did you include your account balances when you filed your FAFSA?</p>
<p>Under assets, you need to list your assets. Not some of them, not the ones you feel like listing, but all of them. Put the money in whatever account you like - savings or checking. All your accounts need to be listed.</p>
<p>Or, if you prefer, you could simply not to list them. That would be fraud. The consequences range from having your degree rescinded to criminal prosecution . . . because, yes, fraud is a crime. Oh yeah, and you’d also have to pay back the financial aid you received.</p>
<p>And FYI, you also need to list all of your parent’s accounts in full, and their income in full, and your income in full.</p>
<p>Read the questions V-E-R-Y carefully when you fill in the answers… Do you need to verify bank account balances and other assets as of the day you filled out FAFSA or do the questions pertain to assets as of a current date? If you have money in the account that you got from work study, school loans, scholarships make sure you make that very clear. You can only claim those balances if you never let the account go below what you deposited from those sources. Make sure you get documentation. </p>
<p>The way it works is that a student’s EFC made up in part by 20% of the student’s assets as of the day FAFSA was completed. So that is the what the schools usually want to see are those numbers.</p>
<p>The only funds you can “earmark” on that date are as I explained above, any financial aid type money. Even if you have other money “parked” in your account that day, it counts even a not yet cashed check. </p>
<p>That’s where I am confused. I have some money in a savings account that came from a student loan and that was the excess. I also have money from the pell grant in a savings account. Is this part of my assets?? They want it as of the date of the fafsa filing, but I dont know if I have the exact information available. Do they want the fafsa info of the original date too??</p>
<p>When you file FAFSA, you need to list all of your assets as of the date you file it. Your savings accounts and your checking acouuts–balances as of that day. BUT…If you got student loan money, PELL money and you deposited that money into those accounts, as long as you did not dip below that deposit amount, you don’t have to report that amount. </p>
<p>Example: You have a bank account. You deposit $1000 of Pell/loan money into the account on a certain date. As long as the balance from that date until the date you filed the FAFSA never fell under $1000, you don’t have to report that $1000. The instant you let the account fall under $1000, then that is your new protected amount. If you let the account got to $200, but you put back $800, you can only claim $200 of that PELL on that FAFSA date. You can’t replace the amounts taken out when attributed to fin aid. </p>
<p>So you get an account balance of your account as of that date you filed FAFSA. If that amount contained PELL money, you subtract that out and you report the non PELL part. If it’s all PELL money, you put a zero. You explain that it is all PELL procedes that you deposited on whatever date, and that it was never touched. But that has to be true. If you spent and then replaced, that’s a no-no. The only protected amount is the lowest amount in the account since you got put your PELL money in there, and the date your filed the FAFSA. If necessary, you need to prove all of this. </p>
<p>The school has the FAFSA as of the date you filed. They are verifying that the numbers on there are correct. You may have to contact your bank and get proof of what you put down as assets. You may have to provide a paper trail of the check you got from your school, deposited into the account, and that your account did not go below that deposit amount up to the date of FAFSA filing. </p>
<p>Ok thank you. Hopefully I can figure that out. Also, if I have $7000 in a savings account, I did report that to the FAFSA, but this was money from my student loan and I ahven’t touched it in years. Is that eligible to not be reported, or do I need to report it since I moved it to a savings account?</p>
<p>If it is all proceeds from a student loan, it should not be reported. If it is 20% gets hit directly onto your EFC. For $7K, that is $1400 right there. So if every bit of that $7K is intact, just moved from one account to another, then it is not a reportable asset. You need to be ready to prove this, however. But if you reported that as a balance the day you filed FAFSA, you need to correct that and explain that this is all untouched proceeds from a student loan that just got moved over to another account. You must be able to provide a paper trail for this or you get hit by the 20% student contribution rate.</p>
<p>Ok, so for example, on the date I filed FAFSA, 1/22/2014. Processed 1/23/2014.</p>
<p>I had in my checking account: $6298.76
Pell grant totals for the semester: $2023</p>
<p>My account has never been below that, so I report 4275.76, and cite that I had $2023 in pell grants correct?</p>
<p>My savings account had $5031.93 the date I reported it. This money came from excess left overs from a student loan. How do I report this? Do I include it in an asset or ignore it? </p>
<p>I understand @cptofthehouse I will not report my personal savings, and if they ask I will let them know what happened, correct? </p>
<p>Yes for the checking account. For the savings account it’s 0.</p>
<p>You say you haven’t touched this money in “years”? How many years? The money was supposed to pay for college costs. </p>
<p>^Thumper1, I got jobs and paid for CC using that. CC is much cheaper than UC Berk. I left Berk for personal and financial reasons. I moved the extra money and had myself live off my paychecks to save the money from the loan for when I transfer and would need it more. 
Just my being frugal. If you don’t agree, oh well?</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse Thanks so much for all your help! This process is more confusing than I thought it would be</p>
<p>If you are audited, they will scrutinzie the paper trail of that money. It can’t disappear and resurface. Once you’ve spent it, it cannot be replenished and labeled as being from the aid source. </p>
<p>Few people keep the money intact like that, so it will raise questions. But if you did, then you do not have to include those funds. </p>
<p>I stuck a major scholarship into a bond many years ago when I was a freshman and forgot about it for many years thereafter. THose were the days when one could stack awards and they did not reduce need. I could have used the money many times over in the years in between but truly forgot about the bond, and it was only by chance I came upon it again. Could have lost it forever.</p>