I filled out my FASFA (financial aid) and I tried to enter everything correctly but I might have made mistakes?

I filled out my financial aid information but I'm not sure if I filled everything out correctly. I'm 21 years old and unemployed, my mom owns a daycare and it's pretty successful, and my father works for a big company as a mechanic. Well my EFC came out to ZERO. COULD THIS BE CORRECT??? If I did fill anything out by mistake could I get in trouble?

Filing out the fafsa when a parent or the student is self employed gives weird results and sometimes its a bit tricky. A business can generate quite a bit of income, but because of all the write offs and expenses small businesses can count on the tax return (it doesn't hurt having a good accountant either), the amount of income a person actually counts on the fafsa can sometimes be very small or even none at all.

For example: I did one one time for a student who's parents were self employed truck drivers. They actually made quite a bit of money when looking at the cash flow, but if you read the fafsa correctly and list the specific line numbers they want from the tax form, business expenses are deducted (diesel fuel, semi truck trailer payments, etc.) before entering it on the fafsa.

So, the worse thing that will happen is you will get selected for verification. (Meaning they found discrepancies in what you reported vs what the IRS says you make) and they will ask you to turn in a copy of your parents income tax return to resolve this issue. If you made a mistake the financial aid office will correct it based on the folks signed income tax return you provided.

Hope it helps.

Without knowing everything about your household circumstances, there's no way to say for certain, but it would seem UNLIKELY that the income that you have described would lead to an EFC score of zero.

Keep in mind that the EFC is determined by how many people live in your household, whether other members of your household attend college, whether other members of your household are disabled, whether your parents have significant income tax deductions, or have paid a larger than usual percentage of their income towards taxes, and a whole lot more, so it's not JUST income.

But still - unless you left out some really weird detail about your family in your question, it is pretty hard to figure out how you'd wind up with an EFC of zero.

Applicants are always free to make corrections to information that they provided on the FAFSA application -- that's not the same as an information "update", a situation where the applicant wants to reflect something that has changed. Your ability to update your application is very limited - but your ability to CORRECT your application is not.

If you intend to make corrections to your FAFSA, your application will need to be reprocessed by the Department of Education - and you'll have to get on that quickly, because your school may not be allowed to disburse funds until the corrected information has been received.

If you go back to the fafsa site, and log in, using the PIN that you received when you first registered, you will be able to make changes to your FAFSA submission. If you look under the big "3" along the right hand side of the page, you'll see the heading "Make Corrections to a Processed FAFSA". Click there, and enter your PIN when requested, and you'll be able to review the answers that you provided previously, and make changes - then submit them for reprocessing.

If you look over the whole form and you're still not seeing where your numbers might have been entered incorrectly, or on the wrong line, you might want to give the FAFSA help line a call at 1-800-4-FED-AID. They might be able to walk you through - I'm sure they know where the most common errors are made, and they can help focus your attention in the right place.

Don't worry about getting in trouble - as long as you did not mean to intentionally defraud the federal aid program, you have nothing to worry about. People make mistakes all the time. Go back, take another look, and change anything that needs to be changed. Don't delay, because that might slow down the reprocessing and cause hassles in getting your aid disbursed on time.

Good luck, I hope this helped reassure you!