<p>Using the CSS Profile, for parental assets, are cash assets equivalent to mortgage debt/ and home equity?</p>
<p>Suppose I were to use cash assets to pay down mortgage.</p>
<p>This would mean that for finaid there'd be less of that cash asset, but it would also increase my equity and lower my mortgage indebtedness.</p>
<p>So am I wrong in thinking it would all be a wash when one asset goes down and the other goes up proportionally?</p>
<p>I'll do a what if on my kid's (reasonably accurate) NPC, but wondering if someone knows the answer off hand. This is a full-need/need blind school that made its finaid award purely on the basis of the CSS Profile alone.</p>
<p>Since schools that use PROFILE often expect unless stated otherwise, for parents to tap resources such as home equity to pay college expenses, I expect it would be a wash.
The only way you would come out ahead is if you put that money in a dedicated retirement account.
It would be seen as available income for the year that you moved the money, but next year it would be protected.</p>
<p>You should ask the school how they treat home equity. Some Profile schools disregard it entirely. And for those that do take it into consideration, they may or may not treat it differently than a cash asset. I have found school FinAid offices to generally be very responsive to a query such as this.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with what emeraldkity4 says about putting a cash asset into a retirement fund. If that asset was not income during the year in question, than placing it in a tax-advantaged retirement account (IRS, 401(k), etc.) will not be seen as available income for the year that you moved the money, and you will have reduced your reportable assets.</p>
<p>I thought only earned income could be placed in a retirement account.</p>
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<p>Generally, you must have earned income in the year that you make a contribution to a retirement account, but you don’t have to make the contribution with the exact same dollars that you earned that year.</p>