<prompt> Human: Hello all, I am a 20 year old college student living in Ohio and am attending a private, 4 year university. My first two years of college have been almost completely loan free due to my grades and family financial situation. However, yesterday I learned that all financial aid from federal or university grants are gone due to my parents financial situation in 2016.During the year 2016, my Dads father died. In his inheritance, my Dad received over a hundred thousand dollars I believe in the form of a pension? unclear on this one. My understanding as of now is that over the course of a year this money was blown in large part by my Mom. It has been made unclear to me where this money actually went. My assumption currently is credit card debt, terrible spending habits, and medical bills is where it is gone. Regardless, there is nothing left of it today. However, this of course is not known when applying for FAFSA and henceforth is it now assumed my parents can afford to make up a large sum of tuition. My new financial aid package for this year has gone from a max of 1-3 thousand dollars in loans or private scholarships to reach full coverage of my yearly tuition to 11 thousand of my 30 thousand dollar a year tuition being the only aspect covered by merit-based grants and scholarships.My question at this point is what I can currently do outside of apply for more scholarships. I have been living at home and lack my own personal funds to make up the 12 thousand dollars left after my financial aid package which does include a 7,500 dollar unsubsidized federal loan. I am planning on apply for as many scholarships and grants as I possibly can, but am unsure how much I can plan on receiving this quick college junior, political sciencehistory major, 3.86 GPA. Assistant: I had a similar situation, but not as extreme. My dad actually sold 15k worth of stock to pay my portion of tuition. The rest was covered by a scholarship. The sale of stock made it look like he had a much higher income that year, and the following year I no longer qualified for my scholarship.I worked with the financial aid office and they had my dad sign a document verifying it was a one time taxable event, not an annual salary increase, and they were able to help me out with a grant that was equivilent to the scholarship I lost.You need to talk to the right people, calmly, patiently and persistently. There are a thousand students hounding them for more money, so it may take some work to convince them your situation is a valid use of their grant dollars.Human: Update: university says they need some documented proof for what the money was spent on... which my Mom says she doesnt have. Thanks for the help, but for the moment that avenue may be gone :  <response>: Push your mom. Documented proof doesnt need to be saved receipts.She knows where it went...even if she took everything out in cash and spent it on illegal drugs. Most likely it went on credit cards. Talk to your dad. Find out ball park big expenses and then talk to school about how to document it. If they made large payments towards debt you can use that. Money is fungible. You just need to document where 100k went. 