FAFSA, child's assets, EFC question

[langfam]

DD has about $4000 leftover from scholarship money and grants. Does this count as her assets? Will it affect her EFC? If so, should she just spend it by buying herself a car, for instance?

[Carmen_and_Company]

DD has about $4000 leftover from scholarship money and grants. Does this count as her assets? Will it affect her EFC? If so, should she just spend it by buying herself a car, for instance?

If placed in a personal account, I think the funds count. Can she take a summer course to zero out that money?

[LizzyBee]

When I had extra scholarship money, the school cut a check to me, but they told me the money had to be used for school-related expenses. Travel home on the weekends counted, so that's what I used part of it for. If scholarship money is used for non-school related expenses, it becomes taxable, or depending on the source, it might have to be repaid.

[Samuel]

A new laptop would also count as an educational expense, as would software. You might also be able to justify travel (i.e., abroad) related to education.

An educational scholarship used to buy a car could cause problems. Its not unheard for scholarship orgs to ask for an accounting of their funds, and they would probably ask for their money back .

[CathieC]

My son bought a nice new laptop with some of his surplus scholarship money. Better than mine (handed down from him :glare:). He commutes so things like gas and buying lunch on campus are perfectly acceptable uses of the money. When we filled out the FAFSA, we counted all of the $ in his checking account since he had already paid for books that semester. Not sure if we had to but since all of his scholarship $ is academic, not need based, he wouldn't be getting needs based $.