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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. 🔗
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Free Money: AOTC Claiming Strategies
Once upon a time, the American Opportunity Tax Credit was a pretty simple proposition: Families could get a $2,500 annual tax credit for $4,000 of out-of-pocket college tuition expenses for their dependent student, as long as their income was below the IRS threshold for the credit.
What do I do with Form 1098-T?
Form 1098-T is a tuition statement that colleges and universities are required to provide. The 1098-T shows “payments received for qualified tuition and related expenses” and scholarships received, provided they either came from the college or were disbursed directly to the college.
Want to make big $$ this summer?
The Census is hiring and in the current low-unemployment job market, the Census Bureau has increased wages in the hopes of attracting enough workers.
Retirement Contributions and College
One question I get most often is how to balance saving for retirement and college. That’s impossible to have a one-size fits all answer, so here’s more to help you understand how retirement savings impact college.
Community College as a Pathway to a Four-Year Degree
Community colleges are often promoted as a great way for students to start on the path to a four-year degree: they’re lower cost than four-year colleges and it’s more likely the student can live at home to save additional money.
What is Work Study?
Many financial aid awards include work study. Typically work study is awarded in a dollar amount per academic term, for example $1,000 per quarter. Which leaves a lot of people wondering what it means and how you get it.
Budgeting for Books and Supplies
When comparing the two schools my son is considering, we noticed an interesting data point: one school estimated books and supplies to cost $800 annually; the other $1,146.
Student Loans and Mortgages
There’s been a great deal of press in recent years about the impact student loans have on the larger economy, especially home purchasing.
Trends in Education Borrowing
The Federal Reserve Board of Governor’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of US Households has a wealth of data on student loans, including a breakdown of borrowing by age range, forms of debt, and payment status by school type. Some interesting points:
AOTC And New Tax Law
One of the big changes to the tax bill was making our young adult children less valuable to their parents from a tax perspective. The dependent exemption is gone and the child tax credit for 18- to 23-year-old dependents is only $500.
Estimating Post-Graduation Loan Burden
Most teenagers struggle to have the foresight into the burden that student loans will cause. Help your student estimate that burden and the pros and cons of those impacts.
Pell Grants
Despite the fact that Pell Grants are one of the largest federal gift aid programs, with over $28 billion going to students with high financial need in the 2017-2018 school year, the program is limited. Learn more.
Athletes and Grades
For scholarship purposes, college sports fall into two categories: “headcount” and “equivalency.” Headcount sports are typically the big-money sports: D1 football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics and volleyball, and a few others. In these sports, there is a set number of scholarships per team, and every scholarship athlete will receive a full ride– though not all athletes on the roster will be scholarship athletes.
Scholarships and Why You Still Need to Save
According to the College Board, about 2/3 of college students receive some form of scholarship or grant. And the NCAA doles out more than $2.9 billion in scholarships annually.
Technically, you can use student loans to pay for any qualified education expense. Practically speaking, because of how they work it tends to be a little more limited.