This annoys the hell out of me. "Retirement account" here is a tax deferred account like a 401k or an IRA, right? There are limits to how much you can put into accounts like these, and in today's world it can be difficult to adequately fund a comfortable retirement on these savings alone.

If you make a modest income but are careful about your spending, it's not unreasonable to have leftover after-tax money that you can invest in other ways. That doesn't mean it somehow ceases to be retirement money.

> where they could use it for things other than retirement

Retirement isn't some thing you just go to the store and buy. There's no clear split between buying goods and services that are "retirement things" and "non retirement things."

Some people retire by quitting their job once they reach some magic number in an account, and then hope that they die before their balance goes to zero. This is increasingly harder to do if you don't want to be working past 70.

The age threshold for withdrawal from some of these tax deferred accounts can be a significant hindrance if you plan to fund your retirement in other ways such as by buying a rental property. You don't want to be buying the property at 60, you want to have already bought it, done maintenance, allowed it to depreciate a bit, etc. so that you can actually make a reasonable profit by the time you're 60.

Many private schools (including UChicago) supplement FAFSA with CollegeBoard's CSS PROFILE, which is more encompassing and looks straight through retirement savings, business assets, trusts, and everything else. My dad is a CPA and it took him several days to fill it out. He said it was very clearly designed by experts who are very good at finding hidden assets.

Before someone turns that into an argument for state schools, remember that it's really only private schools which give any financial aid at all to middle-class kids.

The part that killed the FAFSA was a mutual fund that my parents committed to use only as a supplement to their retirement accounts. Based on the amount in the mutual fund (in combination with all the other factors), FAFSA estimated that my family could afford $40,000 a year on college, which was over half the household's yearly income and was patently ridiculous.