Q: We have a daughter in high school and are beginning to apply for financial aid so she can go to college. Will the fact that we have about $125,000 in equity in our home affect her ability to get the most student aid possible?

The answer depends largely on which college or university your daughter hopes to attend. While some schools don’t expect parents to use their home equity to help pay for tuition and additional college costs, other institutions will indeed reduce the amount of financial aid they’ll offer if the family home is worth much more than Mom and Dad paid for it.

Unfortunately, there’s no list available that shows which colleges consider home equity when calculating their financial-aid packages and which schools do not. But the majority of public schools, including most state universities, do not consider the parents’ equity when making their financial-aid offers.

It’s a different story at hundreds of private schools across the nation, such as Duke and Dartmouth, as well as at a handful of top-flight public schools, including the respected University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These institutions not only ask for details about the parents’ home equity, but often expect the folks to tap some of it to help pay college bills.

The admissions or financial aid office at the college your daughter hopes to attend can tell you whether the equity in your home will be included as part of its financial aid calculations.

If the school will indeed consider your equity when doling out aid, make sure to ask about any exceptions or exemptions that can help to obtain the best aid package possible. For example, some schools will overlook a large amount of built-up equity if one or more of the student’s parents suffers a long-term disability, is retired or has lost a job and can’t find a new one.

It might even be a wise idea to tap your home equity and use the proceeds to make large contributions to a tax-advantaged retirement account before you fill out the financial-aid packets for your children. Though many schools now expect parents to use part of their home equity to pay for tuition, most of them won’t expect you to raid your own retirement nest egg to meet college costs.

Q: We have a new 30-year mortgage for $150,000 with a fixed interest rate of 6 percent and monthly payments of $899. If we add an extra $100 each month directly to the principal of the loan, how much faster would we pay off the mortgage, and how much interest would we save?

You will pay $173,757 in mortgage-interest charges over the next 30 years if you simply keep the repayment schedule that the bank provided. If you instead add a $100 “principal only” payment each month, you will retire the debt in 23 years and three months, while also reducing your total finance charges to $128,171.

In other words, adding $100 each month will allow you to pay the loan off six years and nine months sooner and save you $45,586 in mortgage-interest charges.