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<p>When FA forms ask for savings/assets, they ALWAYS state specifically what they want you to include. FAFSA does NOT include retirement funds as assets, nor does it include your primary home. The Profile includes your home equity in your assets; the amount of retirement funds are not considered as assets, but are asked for in another question. I have never seen any ambiguities about whether or not to report retirement savings in any FA forms; if you are asking whether or not to lie by excluding information, that’s another question and one you need to answer. I have never seen any school that uses the Profile state their policy on how they use the retirement fund numbers.</p>
<p>Remember, there are 2 parts to retirement funds: the total amount in retirement vehicles AND the amount of untaxed dollars you put into retirement funds during the year being reported. For the latter, if for instance, you had 5k in pretax dollars taken out of your paycheck, you would have to add that back into your income for FA purposes. Again, these add backs to your income are clearly described on FA forms.</p>