<p>There is a limit annually on what your parents can contribute to a TSA retirement account. I believe it is $22,000 a year…or so, and that might include a catch up,amount which is allowed if your parents didn’t contribute the maximum all the time. </p>
<p>If your parents are putting money into other types of accounts and calling these “retirement” then yes…the schools do expect that this money could instead be used to fund your college costs. </p>
<p>In fact, many Profile schools actually ask for retirement account balances. It is speculated that this is done to see if folks are over funding retirement in an attempt to have less income available for college. If your parent is earning $90,000 a year, are you saying that this parent is contributing $45,000 to retirement? If so, that exceeds what is allowable in most cases annually, I believe.</p>
<p>ETA…the OP noted that Stanford and Princeton NPCs gave about the same amount…and Emory gave far less aid. This sounds about right to me. Stanford and Princeton have extremely generous need based aid policies awarding need based aid to families with incomes approaching $200,000. Emory does not have the same level of generous need based aid.</p>
<p>Your bigger issue is that on one of your other threads, you say your parents won’t pay more than $15,000. That means that Stanford and Princeton are not affordable for you either. You have a very lengthy list of colleges on another thread, and say you have run the net price calculator for all of them, and the net prices are high. </p>
<p>How do you propose to pay for these costs? </p>
<p>Even with a $90,000 parent income and no other assets, your FAFSA EFC could be just under $30,000 a year. Your parents will only pay half that amount.</p>
<p>You are fortunate to have a good instate option with excellent guaranteed merit aid for your stats (UA). I would strongly suggest that you look for schools where you have a fighting chance of getting merit aid.</p>
<p>That’s kind of a lot of cash on hand, imo ( or maybe I’m just used to being cash poor LOL) - but it probably doesn’t matter that much. I don’t know how much of that will get “tithed” at 5.6% by the calculators.</p>
<p>At any rate, I agree about looking for merit aid.</p>
<p>If the TOD account is owned by one or both of the parents, it would count as an asset. Retirement accounts are not TOD. it the account is owned by someone else who has named one of the parents as a beneficiary, it would not count at all as long as the owner is alive.</p>
<p>If any of the retirement contributions are mandatory contributions to an employer retirement fund, you do not report those. Only discretionary (voluntary, by choice) contributions are reported. That is what the folks at CSS Profile told me.</p>
<p>Celeste…that is true. Mandatory retirement contributions (e.g. For public employees…in other words…no choice) are not counted.</p>
<p>BUT this kiddo says his parents are contributing HALF of their income. There is NO mandatory retirement plan on the planet that requires an employee to contribute HALF of their income.</p>
<p>Yep, time to aim for those full-tuition scholarships. Tulane and Pitt have them (as well as Duke, JHU for engineering: 2 of them, WashU, Vandy, and probably U of C, though getting one of those from those places would be quite tough). Rice has some big merit as well, but not sure it’s full-tuition, and obviously tough to get.</p>
<p>Obviously, a full-tuition scholarship from 'Bama in your back pocket would be nice to have.</p>
<p>Should “employee sponsored health coverage” not be counted as untaxed income because it is not voluntary? The amount I put in “untaxed income” changes my EFC by several thousands of dollars. </p>
<p>If your parents contribute per pay period pre-tax for medical and dental insurance, don’t include those amounts in untaxed income and don’t add them to AGI. Health and dental insurance aren’t considered optional. Voluntary pre-tax contributions to 401ks, IRAs or other retirement programs should be added to AGI as they are considered optional. I wouldn’t include retirement contributions as untaxed income, I would add them to AGI. I don’t know if there is a different treatment between those two ways of including retirement contributions.</p>
<p>That doesn’t make sense. Why should items that are not in your AGI in your 1040 go in to AGI here? Maybe they should go to untaxed income instead?</p>
<p>Fafsa adds back voluntary pre-tax retirement contributions to available income. It asks for those amounts in a separate question and the formula adds them back in. Untaxed income is a different question and also gets added in to available income. For fafsa there is no difference in calculations. For profile and school’s own finaid forms and their own formulas there could be a difference in how pre-tax vs. untaxed income is treated. It could depend on the nature of the untaxed income. I don’t know for sure but for NPC purposes I just think it’s probably better to include those contributions in the regular income question unless the NPC specifically asks for retirement contributions in a separate question. It probably doesn’t make a difference either way.</p>
<p>Money contributed to a flexible spending account is use it or lose it money. It must be spent on medical or child care expenses. At the end of the year, you don’t get a nickel back if you don’t spend it all.</p>
<p>I don’t believe these are included as income, and it don’t believe they are added back in as income for financial aid purposes…but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>Money in dedicated retirement accounts is not counted- however, money that they put IN to the account, will be counted as available for tuition.
So say this year, 2014, they put $35,000 into their retirement account.
That money will be added back to available income.</p>