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📌 Before You File the FAFSA

The new Simplified FAFSA is here! Here’s a quick video with some tips that will help you get through it with a minimum of chaos and maximum of financial aid. 🔗

Most recent posts

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Student Loan Interest Rates for the 2024-25 School Year
Student Loan Interest Rates for the 2024-25 School Year
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Waitlisted?
Waitlisted?

Did you get waitlisted at your top choice college? Here’s what you need to know about that.

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Required Reading Alert: Borrowing to Attend Your Top Choice College
Required Reading Alert: Borrowing to Attend Your Top Choice College

Thinking it’s worth taking out student loans to go to your first choice college instead of your second choice? Here’s what older Millennials have to say about their student loans.

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How Do You Choose a College?
How Do You Choose a College?
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Got Work-Study?
Got Work-Study?

Work study falls under the self-help column of financial aid. If your aid award includes work-study, you should understand what it is.

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Appealing a Financial Aid Award
Appealing a Financial Aid Award

About 3/4 of families who appeal their financial aid award receive additional aid. Yet less than half appeal. Here’s how to get more money from the colleges you’re considering.

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Highlights

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Comparing Financial Aid Awards

We’re almost there: acceptance letters are arriving and the May 1 decision day is right around the corner. For most families, how much schools cost is part of the decision making process.

New Year’s Resolutions

Happy 2023! Last year I made a New Year’s Resolution and kept it. That makes me a self-appointed expert on New Year’s resolutions. Here are some resolutions for parents planning for college— and my expert advice on how to keep your resolutions.

FAFSA Basics: Parent Assets

Parent assets seem to be the area that most families and planners focus on, despite the fact that they typically have the smallest impact on the formula of each of the components. Strategies and tactics to minimize parent assets abound, but for most families these result more in nibbling around the edges than actually making a significant dent in SAI.

Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid

The College Board’s annual Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid report was released recently. Among the headline findings: college tuition prices increased at extremely low rates for the second year in a row, reflecting both a combination of continued impacts of the pandemic and enrollment pressures from demographic trends.

FAFSA and CSS Profile FAQs for Divorced and Single Parents

Filing the FAFSA raises tons of questions for divorced parents. Here are some answers.

FAFSA Resources

Happy FAFSA Day! Are you completing the FAFSA for the first time this year? While you’re waiting for the site to load, here are some resources that will help you get through it with a minimum of chaos and maximum of financial aid.

New (School) Year’s Resolutions

I think Oregon is one of the last places in the US that starts school after Labor Day so my apologies if you’re no longer in back-to-school mode. Here are some resolutions your family might make for the coming school year. And, here’s hoping they don’t get broken as quickly as the typical New Year’s diet-and-exercise resolutions!

FAFSA 2022-23 EFC Formula Guide

The FAFSA becomes available onOctober 1, but you can download the EFC Formula Guide to see how the sausage gets made in advance. Here are some suggestions for how to use this data.

Categories

The FAFSA & CSS Profile

Featured
It’s Graduation Time!
FAFSA Simplification: What You Need to Know 2

Saving for College

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It’s Graduation Time!
529 Plans: How to get Money Out
How Much Should You Save for College?
7 More Uses for 529 Funds
I Bonds for College Savings
Choosing a 529 Plan

Paying for College

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Got Work-Study?
Appealing a Financial Aid Award
Education Tax Credits: The AOTC and LLC
What Do You Do With Form 1098-T and 1099-Q?
Thinking of Transferring? Think Fast
It’s Graduation Time!
 

Student Loans

Featured
Required Reading Alert: Borrowing to Attend Your Top Choice College
It’s Graduation Time!
Student Loan Interest Rates for the 2023-24 School Year
Who is on the hook for student loans?
Student Loans: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Taking out a Student Loan

Application Process

Featured
Appealing a Financial Aid Award
Comparing Financial Aid Awards
It’s Graduation Time!
Colleges Still Have Openings!
Year-End Checklist
Net Price Calculators

Miscellaneous

All blog posts

Ann Garcia Ann Garcia

College Students and Stimulus Payments - 1st or 2

With a new round of stimulus payments coming under the new stimulus deal, many families of college students are hearing that they should declare their college students independent so that they can claim the stimulus payments.

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Ann Garcia Ann Garcia

CARES Act College Funding: Cash for Students

Following up on yesterday’s post. How does a student get cash from his school’s emergency student aid grant under the CARES Act? It depends on the school, and most have not formalized their policies yet.

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Ann Garcia Ann Garcia

College Students and Stimulus Payments

Parents of college students have likely heard that those students– if claimed as dependents on their parents’ 2019 taxes– are not eligible for the $1,200 stimulus payment.

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Ann Garcia Ann Garcia

What Can You Learn From a Crisis?

You know the saying, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want?” 2020 is setting itself up to be a year full of experience.

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Ann Garcia Ann Garcia

What Now? What’s Next?

If you have college students like mine, you’re probably figuring out how to move them home. If they’re seniors, they’re probably wondering about whether they’ll have graduation, how they’ll get job interviews, even how they could get started on a career.

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