"Reducing" income with retirement contributions, etc

<p>Thanks, @IxnayBob, Will do. I think that is part of what has taken us so long to seek advice, mistrust.
Thanks for the link info. I will check it out. </p>

<p>If any of your retirement contributions are mandatory, you do NOT report those on CSSProfile. I confirmed this with them by e-mail as I felt the instructions did not explain it well. </p>

<p>shoboemom, I have heard that if you own your own business, you might want to consider gifting your child a scholarship from your business to help reduce your taxes. But I have no idea how to go about it or what it is called, but it may be something to ask a financial advisor about. I’d love to hear what your advisor has to say. I was wondering the same things as you, I’m glad you asked.</p>

<p>If you gift your child a scholarship, it’s a gift of money - and that is untaxed income for the child … which hurts the following year, as it raises the child’s portion of the EFC … or if you decide you want to insist it is a scholarship, it has to be reported to the aid office as such in the year it is given to the child. Either way, it counts. But if you have enough money to be worried about all of this, you usually have too much money to get much free aid, anyway (or at least, that is what I have noted).</p>

<p>My son’s university specifically has a form that requires parents to certify how much they put into IRAs, flexible spending accounts, etc. during the year. If it is an usually high amount, they will count it as income.</p>