Welcome to Had of Money.

I'm Joel and I am Matt and today we're talking FAFSA hacks to curb college costs with the FAFSA Guru.

That's right.

We are excited to be discussing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid today, also known as the FAFSA because other than the cost of a hospital visit, nothing has skyrocketed in price like college tuition and fees over the past twenty years.

So you think your house or your new car is crazy expensive, Nope, you just wait until your kids start looking at colleges.

And that's why we're excited to be joined by Tina Steel, who is known as the FAFSA Guru.

Tina is an expert when it comes to financial aide decades of experience, and that's whether she was working directly for public and private universities, whether she was leading a statewide initiative and Maine helping disadvantage students to pursue college, or just creating incredibly valuable videos for her YouTube channel.

We're going to be discussing all things fast SAT today.

So Tina, thank you for coming on to How to Money podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Guys, I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I know, we're excited to chat with you as well.

Tina.

Lots of cover on the show.

But the first question we have to ask you that we ask anybody who comes on the show is what your craft beer equivalent is?

And that's because Matt and I we like to drink fancy craft beers while also saving and investing wisely for the future.

What's that for you?

What's your kind of splurge while you're also handling your money properly.

Oh gosh, I'm a Christmas fanatic.

I am over the top with Christmas everything, Christmas decorations, gifts, gifts.

For the delivery drivers.

We have a big family gathering on Christmas Eve of twenty to twenty.

Five people and we get matching T shirt.

Yeah, yeah, matching tea.

I love it.

Wait, you do matching T shirts every year or is it like you?

Yeah?

I usually do something different every year.

Last year was matching T shirts.

This year I'm trying to figure out what it's going to be.

But there's usually some kind of theme and everybody gets a gift.

So I just love it.

Awes.

So you do Christmas the way a lot of people do Disney basically.

Yes, absolutely, that is a great way to compare it.

For sure, that's awesome.

It's always fun to kind of hear what it is that folks like to splurge on.

And honestly, though, I'm not going to say that your splurge in this case is wacky because we you know, we put out some we'll put out some some Christmas decoration.

But uh, it's unique, which I love.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But Tina, can can you give us, I guess, just a general overview as to why it is the FACA is so important.

Let's kind of just ease folks into the whole conversation and just talk about the merits of the FATA.

Sure.

Yeah, So the FAST is important first and foremost so that students can access federal and state financial aid and some institutional aid depending on the college, in order to help them pay for their education.

So a lot of people.

You know, when they think about FAFSA, they might think they might not even realize the importance of it, or they don't understand financial aid, or maybe on the other side of that, they think they might not qualify for enough financial aid.

So I tell everybody, every single person that plans on going to college should fill out a FAFSA, unless, of course, they have like several hundred thousand dollars sitting in an account you're marked specifically for college.

Okay, all right, so we're gonna ask a ton of follow up questions, some of which will probably sound a little dumb because you're the FASA guru.

So for you, these are going to be like knock them out of the ballpark sort of questions.

But for most people, because it's one of those infrequent things, right, it's not like you're sending a kid off to college every year for thirty years or something like that, Like, and you get used to it and you figure it out, it feels brand new.

I think for most people every single time.

It's like for the infrequent traveler, the trying to get to the airport, how do I time it?

And when do I get there?

And how does security work?

Again, that's how a lot of people feel if you only travel every five years.

So like, okay, do you have to know which colleges you're applying to before you fill out the film?

No?

No, So you need to have at least one college listed on the FAFT so when you fill it out and submit it, and you're ideally you're filling out the FAFSA, probably simultaneously as you're applying for admission for college, or even before, so you do not have to know.

You can log back in at any time and add college colleges to the FAFSA once it's submitted, but just for that first initial submission, you need to have at least one listed.

Nice and it doesn't really matter which one you select.

I'm sure that assuming most people choose whatever popular state school that they know there's a maybe a high chance of their kid getting into Harbor, or can you do that or can you choose like the most elite, It truly doesn't matter, and you can do up to twenty.

You can this year.

Starting with a twenty four to twenty five year, it's going to be twenty.

It's always been ten, so yeah, you can go up to twenty, but some students apply for even more.

So you just submit it to the twenty colleges and then log back in once it's processed, delete some colleges and add some more if you have.

More than twenty nice makes sense.

It's kind of like if you're going to go out to eat.

It's like, well, I don't know exactly where we're going to go, but step one we got to get in the car and just start heading out of the neighborhood.

Yeah, yes, for sure.

Okay, Well, so talk to us then about some of the recent FAFSA changes.

Let's talk about the FATA Simplification Act.

And like, one of the changes they made had to do with the actual form that you that you pull out in the past.

It was kind of lengthy, it was kind of tedious talk about some of the changes they made there.

Sure, it's always been very tedious.

So one of the big reasons for FAFSA simplification is to make it easier to fill out.

Currently there's one hundred and eight questions on the FAFSA.

With this new simplification process, it's going down to just thirty eight questions, which is really going to be significant in a time saver.

There's a lot of.

Things, a lot of changes happening.

You know, they're expanding pelgrant eligibility.

Pelgrant is the free grant the government offer for families under a certain amount of money.

Typically that's been you know, families or students who make less than fifty thousand dollars a year.

That's being expanded to sixty thousand dollars a year for the for twenty four to twenty five.

There's also another really big change happening.

You know, if you're familiar with the FAFSA or financial aid, you've heard of the expected Family Contribution or EFC.

This is the number that the government comes up with when they perform their federal methodology and process the FAFSA.

This is the technically the amount of money that a student is expected to contribute.

Towards their education for the year.

They are changing the EFC to what's going to be called the Student Aid Index or the SAI.

And the reason for this is because there's been a lot of confusion.

When families get this EFC, they think that that's the exact amount of money that they have to pay for the year, and that is not necessarily the case.

In a lot of cases, it could be more, and in some cases it could be less.

So they'll really try to alleviate some confusion around that.

And then one really big change happening that's that's not the best change is going is for families who have multiple children in college, they're no longer going to get the same financial benefit that they always have.

Yeah, that seemed like a big downer.

That's a bummer for so Joel's triple Yeah, Joel's got three kids.

I've got four kids.

There is a good chance there's going to be a decent amount of overlap as those kids are going to be in college.

Could you explain I guess how it how it used to work, and then now given the changes, what that means.

Sure, So I'm going to talk about the EFC because that's what it's been all along.

So normally, when you have more than one child in college, that EFC gets divided equally among the number of children in college.

So you know, if you have a twenty thousand dollars EFC, but two kids in college, each student would have a ten thousand dollars EFC.

So the lower that number, the more financial aid that the student's going to get.

So that's where that's not going to happen the student.

The student.

If you have two or three students in college and your EFC is twenty thousand, it's going to be twenty thousand dollars for each student.

For each yeah, rather than the entire household.

Yeah, So it is it is a bummer.

It's one of those changes that I'm not thrilled about.

However, it's going to be very, very important that families who have more than one child in college actually appeal their financial aid offers.

Yeah, so I was going to say that doesn't that EFC or now the Student Aid Index, when that number gets spit out, that doesn't necessarily that's not your bill, that's not what you pay, right Like, that's tell us how that number relates to what you end up paying.

Though.

Sure, so when the when you get that number, what the college does is they take their total cost of attendance, So their cost of attendance would be tuition, fees, room and board, books and supplies, the all in cost.

So let's say the college is sixty thousand dollars a year.

It's a private college.

They're going to take your EFC and let's say, for example, it's thirty thousand dollars just for a number.

They subtract the EA from the cost of attendance to come up with a student's financial need.

So in this scenario, the student's financial need would be thirty thousand dollars.

Then they try to package the.

Student with as much need based aid as possible to meet that financial need.

So it's a really big part of the equation.

You know, the.

Higher that number, the lower need based financial aid the student qualifies for or the less.

Yeah, and again a massive bummer for us.

You have multiple kids, and you've got a bunch of kids too, I do.

Yeah.

Sure, you were very excited to hear that.

We were joking before we started that, Tina, that you started your service basically as a personal endeavor to save as much money on college.

Yeah.

Six kids total, Like, that'll do it, right, Yeah.

Six kids, and you know I our youngest one is a high school senior right now, so she's the last of them.

I mean, I have had the benefit of having multiple children in college and kind of also, you know, being on the other side of this, knowing you know what to do and how to really maximize financial aid.

But it's still like expensive.

College is astronomically expensive.

Did I see that there's a change when it came to a child who or a scholar, a future student who's applying to a school that comes from a divorced home.

How does that work out as far as who has to fill out the FASA.

Yep, that's another big change.

So currently, when you fill out the FASA this and you have a divorced or separated parent situation, as long as the parents are living in separate household in a separate household, only one parent needs to fill out the FASA on behalf of the student and all along that's been the parent with whom the child resided with most within the last year.

Going forward with a twenty four to twenty five year, it's going to be the parent who provides more than half of that child support, whether or not that is the custodial parent.

So that's a really big change happening to the FASA.

However, it is going to be a very gray area because you know, it's going to be hard to really prove what you know, which parent actually more than half support.

But that's the guideline.

So it seems like it's more about money.

It's more about income and in financial support as opposed to how many nights that they're spending at that particular house.

Yes, exactly, all right, talk to us about the timing delay.

So not only are we getting an updated FAFSA this year, right, we're getting the fewer questions, hopefully the easier to fill out FASA.

But why are we talking December right?

Why are we talking months delayed?

What's going on there is that is it literally just the process of creating and it takes time to release the updated version.

It is because there's so many changes being made.

They did intend to have this all completed by October first, but it's just been delayed just because of all the hoops they're jumping through in the changes that are being made.

They just could not get it finalized in time.

So there's a lot happening.

The FASA is getting a major overhaul, probably the biggest overhaul that it's ever received in its history.

So that's fine.

Well, so, speaking of timing, you say, and we've touched on this before on the show before, but it's important to go ahead and fill the FACA out sooner rather than later.

Can you explain to listeners why that's the case.

Yeah, So with the FACA, it's kind of like the early bird gets the worm.

The earlier you get that filled out, the more financial aid you can have access to.

There are certain pools and let's say, pockets of money that colleges have to offer, and like once that money runs out, it runs out.

So the earlier you get that FACA in the better.

That's really what it comes down to.

And there's also state deadlines for the FACA in order for students to be considered for state grants.

Every state has their own deadline, so it's crucial that you look up and see what your state's deadline is and get it submitted before then.

Gotcha?

Is there ever the case where there's more money of it, like where it's the opposite, like something comes off comes along and all of a sudden there's additional funding or something like that?

Is that a typically?

Okay?

The early bird gets warm?

Nice?

Yeah, I mean lower income families who make less than sixty thousand, they're gonna be okay regardless, like with a pel grant money, because that's federal money that's always there.

But that state grant money, you know, if they don't fill out the FASA before that deadline, they can miss out on it.

Okay.

How onerous is it to actually fill out the FASTA.

It's obviously it's going to be easier this year once it gets released shortly, But how bad is it?

I think people build it up in their minds and this is probably why a lot of people avoid it.

They're like that thing.

No, I don't like.

I don't want to bludgeon myself in the face, So why would I fill out the FASA?

Like how bad?

How long is actually going to take people to do?

So?

Right now with one hundred and eight questions, it takes a good hour or more going down to thirty eight.

I anticipate families are going to be able to get through this in less than thirty minutes.

And there's going to be an automatic transfer of data that's happening from the IRS kind of pre populating information, so it's going to be quick and easy.

Yeah.

Is that the DRT, the.

IRS Data Retrieval Tool?

Yeah, so it's like pulling in stuff that you would have otherwise had to manually enter in yourself.

Yeah, like go and look at each tax line and put that information in.

And that's been on the FASA for a few years, but they're streamlining it more this year, so it's going to be like an automatic and even smoother process.

And I was reading about that, it made me think of like a credit card autofill on when I'm in the browser.

Yeah, it's just like auto populates, and it just makes it so easy definitely.

Yeah, just as reminder for folks as well.

This isn't something you just do one time as you are applying to school.

I think sometimes if you think, oh, okay, I'm applying to schools, Oh okay, I'm filling out the FACA, it's easy to remember to do that.

I guess maybe that first year.

But do you ever run into situations where families forget in subsequent years to actually fill out the FASA.

Yes, And it's so important, you know, to make sure you're filling that out every single year.

You know, because you can miss deadlines.

You can miss like your state grant deadline and miss out on money that you might have otherwise received.

So just set a reminder on your phone whatever you need to do.

But yeah, fill it out every single year early.

All right, talk to us about like the children of the elite, like Jeff Bezos's kids and stuff like that, Like, does should Jeff Bezos fill out the FASA?

Because I like, if we're talking about the FASA as being mostly about financial aid eligibility, why would someone who's making bank has a lot of financial assets, why would they still take the time, even the now reduced time frame that we're talking about do they still need to actually go through this laborious or right that so laborious process.

So here's that's a great question.

There are some scholarships that use the FACA in order to determine whether or not students are going to receive the scholarship.

They're few and far between, but really, honestly, the big reason for any like high income families to fill out the FASA would be if they want the student to be able to take a direct student loan in their own name, you know, to help you know, have some skin in the game and help them pay for college.

Because in order for a student to borrow a federal direct loan in their own name, a FASA has to be filled out along with a federal parent plus loan.

So let's say a parent, even though they have the money and the means, they want to borrow a loan to pay for their child's education, in order to take this parent loan, they'd have to fill out.

A FACA form.

So those would really be you know, the only reasons I would recommence a very wealthy family fill out the fast or.

The psychological mindset game, right, right, But middle and upper all middle.

And upper middle income families should definitely fill out a FACA because very at the very least, if they don't qualify for any need based financial aid like in scholarships or grants other than merit, then they can appeal their financial aid offers and ask for more money.

You know, eighty percent of students who appeal their financial aid offers we'll receive additional aid, and a lot of families aren't aware of that.

Nice.

Well, we are going to talk a little bit more about appealing some of those aid aid packages.

We're going to talk more about the numbers and what goes into determining the kind of financial aid that you're gonna get, and we'll get to all of that with Tina right after this.

All right, we're back.

We're talking with Tina Steel.

We're talking about filling out the FACA.

She's the FASA guru.

I know, Joel that why do you think we have her on Matt, Like?

Who else can we talk to about this?

Tina?

I guess I'm curious, Like, while you're filling out the FATAT form, is is there any way to screw it up or to optimize your chances maybe, let's say, of receiving financial aid from universities.

Is there something that when you're actually answering the questions that you can do to either detract or impact your ability, uh, you know, to get the kind of aid you're looking for.

Joel wants to know if it's okay to.

Lie, right, Yeah, I know, it's really you know, honestly, the biggest mistakes I see in this area, there's a couple.

One is when families are divorced or separated and they filed a joint joint tax return for the year prior they put have the tax information sent over with both there and their spouse's income, which could really impact the amount of financial aid they get because they only need one parent's income on the FACA.

So that's a really really big one.

And just to note on that if that parent filling out the FACA is remarried, then they do take into consideration the step parents incoming, which.

Really which is a bummer too.

So you might even want to play in your marriage according to when your kids are going off to school.

I know, right, No, it's true.

The other thing is, you know, reporting assets incorrectly.

That's probably where I see the biggest mistakes made, and that's what it comes down to is mistakes.

Because the FACA asked for concrete, you know, figures from your tax form.

There's really no way around getting around that.

There's a lot of information that families self report.

You know, how much money you have in your bank account, how much your investments are worth.

I mean your self reporting that information.

But there's two assets in particular that don't have to be reported on the FAFSA, which is the value of the primary home that you live in along with the value of your retirement accounts.

A lot of times families accidentally report that as an investment and they can really miss out.

On financial aid.

If that is something that someone does, are they able to go back and correct that and how does that work if you've made a mistake.

Yes, once you realize you made a mistake, the first thing you'd want to do is log back into the FAFSA and click on make a correction and just navigate to the section and do that and then make sure you resubmit it.

If it's late in the year and like the student has already received their financial aid offer, then it's going to be important that the family reach out directly to the financial aid office to let them know about the mistake after.

They make that at the particular college that they're gotcha so selfishly, Matt and I were.

Our main goal is to get how the money listeners to you save and invest more of their money, right, to sock more money away into tax advantage retirement accounts so that they have more they're building wealth and they have more money in those retirement years, I guess.

But one of the things that's true as well is that if you save more for retirement, you actually could potentially get a larger financial aid offer.

Is that right?

And is that truly just because you're reducing your previous year's adjusted gross income.

No, And actually that's a little bit of misinformation that's out there in a way, because what's happened.

All along is even though you don't.

Have to report the value of your retirement account, you have in the past had to report the contributions.

So if you take like a big chunk of money and you put it towards your retirement account, that's actually counted as untaxed income for the family for that year.

However, that's changing for the twenty four to twenty five years, so your question is going to be a little more accurate, they're not going to look at those contributions anymore.

So yes, sheltering that money in a retirement out or paying down your mortgage on your primary home is going to be the way to go.

And of course this is only for colleges that require the FAFSA, because the colleges that also require the CSS profile, which is a supplemental form, there are no assets that are protected.

Okay, yeah, so that's an entirely different form.

Is it a lot of private universities that a lot of.

The private universities, Yeah, so that you know, no, typically no public or state colleges require that.

So should people proactively be searching out the CSS filling that out just in case?

Or is that something where if you get accepted to one of these schools then and they request it, that's when you fill it out.

So the CSS opens the same typically October first like the FASA, So it's really important to know whether or not the college requires it when you go into the process because you want to get that done early, like in October.

So it's kind of just like the FAFSA, you'd be initiating it yourself.

You just you can do a simple Google search colleges that require the CSS profile and pull up an alphabetical list of all those colleges and then you want to get that filled out along with the FAFT SAG.

Gotcha.

Gotcha?

Okay, So to clarify, it sounds like with the new changes, by contributing to a pre tax retirement account, you are effectively lowering your AGI.

Is that the mechanism in which that could then allow you to receive more student aid?

Is that how that works?

Yeah, so you are lowering your AGI, which definitely goes into the goes into the equation, but they do also look at your the income earned from each parent in addition, so that they're going to look at like the wages, salaries and tips on W two's or the business income in addition to the AGI.

So it can help because the AGI definitely will be differently but I don't know that it helps quite as much as we would like it to, but it definitely can.

Gotcha.

That's good to note.

Okay, what about five twenty nine plans?

Because I feel like a lot of parents out there, maybe they're kind of they've got like two year old and they know they've heard about the five twenty nine Oh, and in fact, the five twenty nine plane got a little bit better, yeah, over the last couple of years, because if you don't use it for education, you can kind of roll that into a roth ira, and so they do look more attractive.

But I think there's a lot of folks who may not have really parsed through the details, I guess, and they're not totally sure how much that plan is going to offset the ability of that student to receive aid.

Can you kind of shed some light there for folks.

Yeah, So the value of a five to twenty nine plan is counted as a parent investment on the FACA, and the government expects that parents can contribute about five point sixty five percent of their total asset value towards their child's education for the year.

So five point sixty five percent of whatever assets you know they own are going to be factored into that EFC or what's going to be called the Student Aid Index next year.

So the five twenty nine is a great it is a great plan, And you know, the nice thing is, as long as it's a parent owned five twenty nine, the distributions are not going to count against the student in any way as untaxed income.

So it is a great way for parents to kind of start early investing for their child's education.

Gotcha.

And to clarify, that's total assets, not necessarily just the.

Final investments and assets that you have to report on the FAFSA, right.

So that's that's going in there, factoring in if you have investment, real estate, what you have in your taxable broken's account.

Like it's all going into one thing and it's like, all right, we expect you can pay five point six five percent.

Yeah, total, yep.

There's definitely more emphasis being placed on wealth the upcoming year versus income.

So anything that you have like that is going to impact you for sure.

Okay, all right, let's talk about income.

You mentioned that it does have a lot to do with how much financial lid is offered, even though wealth is taking a bigger front row seat.

But for Mary Coumple's finally jointly and you briefly mentioned this number earlier, sixty thousand dollars AGI, that seems to be kind of a line of demarcation, the line of the sand.

Any advice maybe on how folks should pre plan if they're close to that mark.

Let's say somebody makes their annual salaries sixty eight thousand dollars a year, and you know that that sixty thousand AGI mark triggers additional benefits from a college financial aid perspective.

Are there kind of some tweaks they need to make, some ways they need to be thinking about kind of maneuvering their income into that bracket.

Yeah, I mean what the sixty thousand mark is.

What that means is like an automatic zero EFC or SAI.

So having a zero for that number means the student is going to qualify for like the maximum amount of financial aid.

So that's not to say if they make sixty eight thousand or seventy four thousand that the student is not going to get any need base A.

What's going to happen is, you know, after sixty thousand up until there's not really an actual cutoff because a number of things are taken into consideration.

But let's just say around eighty seventy five to eighty thousand, that free grant money the government offers than the state grant money is going to be pro rated based on that income, So they may still qualify for some but yeah, the closer to that sixty thousand dollars mark.

Families can keep it the better.

Now, if they make sixty thousand but they have a half a million dollars in assets or investments, it's kind of a moot point because that's really going to drive up that EFC or student aid index.

So yeah, and there's a question when you fill out the fast stuff you make less than sixty thousand, and you fill out a simple tax return with no schedules, there's a question that asks if you want to skip questions about your assets.

However, if you fill.

Out any schedules with your taxes, it doesn't allow you to skip the asset question, which means then you have to go in and report the investments.

So that's where it can get some families also interesting.

So what Joel really needs to do then when his daughter goes off to school is he needs to well, first I need to fire him or drop him down to like a forty thousand dollars salary, what you're planning on doing anyway, And then he needs to not claim any deductions and not file any schedules so that he's able to skip.

You know, the big one is real estate.

Like when you own real estate other than your home, you have to fill out certain schedules.

So yeah, it's still there.

Yeah you can't.

Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, let's talk about it.

Get around a Joel.

Sorry, Yeah, it's what I think.

There's ways you can play play to your advantage, but there's no way to necessarily gain the system, right and right?

Yeah, right, but that's probably what people want, is right.

But that's that's where you know, strategy comes in.

When like we talked, we mentioned appealing financial aid offers and then scholarships, which I know we'll.

Probably get into.

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about aid offers because you know what, if the school we want to go to doesn't make it compelling financial aid offer you you mentioned the appeal, is that the main recourse and you used the that you said eighty percent success right for financially, Yeah.

For the students.

From what I've seen, seventy five to eighty percent are successful in getting some additional aid.

I've seen it range anywhere from three thousand dollars all the way up to thirty thousand dollars.

Wow.

Okay, so there's a couple of substantial.

Yeah, so there's a couple of pieces of information.

There's one thing that families can do that can help them get additional aid, and that is they can report what's called special circumstances.

So, for example, the facts the twenty four to twenty five fasts is going to be based on twenty two income.

Maybe that a parent or a student lost a job in twenty three, so their twenty three income is going to be a lot less, or maybe their twenty two income was inflated due to like a one time source of income such as a retirement distribution or a capital gain, or maybe they're significant medical or dental expenses.

Those are all things that are considered special circumstances that students in families can actually report directly to the college financial aid offices.

They're going to have them fill out a form and then they can actually recalculate the financial aid offer based on this new information.

So that's a big one for any families that fall into that category.

And then for families that don't, who just get this offer that you know is not enough, they can write a financial aid appeal letter usually within a couple of weeks of receiving that offer, and humbly ask the financial aid office for additional aid.

They can use other financial aid offers they receive from other colleges that are better, and it really just comes.

Down to the college.

Some colleges have a very clear policy and they will not accept financial aid appeals unless a student has special circumstances, whereas other colleges will accept financial aid appeals regardless.

So it depends, gotcha, gotcha?

Yeah, So it's not like you can it's it's really hard to compare apples to apples because of the way that these different colleges that their estimates work right, and even when it comes to the FASA, like, there are different calculators online, but it seems like that those aren't all that accurate compared to maybe the calculator of a specific school.

Is that accurate, right?

Yeah, the net price calculators on the college websites are the way to go, and those aren't always accurate either.

But the more in depth the net calculator is, the more questions.

That they ask, the more accurate they typically tend to be.

That makes sense.

And you I think you even have like classes where you teach people how to write a good appeal letter and you basically say that the worst they can say is no.

So if maybe you waste thirty minutes an hour of your time writing a good appeal letter.

But the worst they say is no, so okay, cool, But the best they can ask in scenario thirty thousand dollars.

I mean you got that back there, right, So the strategies then to maybe write the most effective appeal letter.

So really, you know, there's a term a lot of other professionals, professionals excuse me, in the field, you'll see them use the term negotiate.

I see her clear from that term.

You know, when you're appealing to a financial lated director, you want to come across as humble.

There are a lot of circumstances and families that aren't necessarily reflected on the FASTA.

So is the cost of living where a family lives, or maybe extra expenses in the household related to a child who has disabilities, or maybe you're helping support elderly parents, or maybe you're just you know, on your income as a family of four, you don't have enough disposable income left over to pay you know this this money.

So you're really just asking them, you're kind of pulling anything in you can that might apply to you based on you know, your your financial situation, cost of living where you live, anything that you know would not be reflected in the FACA.

And also you know, adding a paragraph in there about why this college is the first choice college, how important it is to the student, what is it about this college?

What is the student going to bring to the table, you know, on campus?

And then you just ask nice and like I said, you know, the worst are going to say is no, So.

Make that subjective appeal why it is that you want to go there.

But then it almost sounds like you're not necess cce csarily saying to like gravel but maybe kiss the three.

Like yes, okay, yes, it makes the difference.

I used to work in the Financial aid office is reviewing the appeal letters, so it really can make a difference.

Right, Nice, I like you speak again.

This is why we're talking with you, Tina, that you've got just so much experience with lots of different institutions.

Okay, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, like do you recommend for folks to go ahead just choose the college that they go to based on the package they receive or do you take a good offer?

And then basically you're armed with that information and then if there's another school that you really want to go to.

Is it about presenting that information in a compelling way and seeing if you can get them to.

To juice their packages.

Yeah, what would you say there?

Yeah, the best thing to do is, you know, get all the financial aid offers back.

They're all going to provided you're applying like you know, regular decision, all of them Regular Decision or all of them early action, You're going to be getting these offers back all around the same time.

So compare and contrast.

There's always a top choice that students have, and it never fails that the top choice is always the most expensive financially and they get the least amount of financial aid.

So yes, you know, use the other offers and what your bottom line might be at those other colleges in terms of affordability in that humble financial aid appeal letter that you write with the hopes they're going to come back and at least, you know, make it so it's more affordable.

It really comes down to families and what their bottom line is, what they can afford and what they're willing, you know, to take on for debt.

Because that's that's another thing that I hate to see students get riddled with significant debt for sure.

Obviously it's become a massive problem in our society.

And so I guess you're saying you some of those data points.

Don't be afraid to say, Hey, actually in that appeal letter, maybe well this other school, great school, they've offered me this, but this is my number one choice and if you could, if you could somehow get close to that, that would really make it possible for me to go here.

Yeah, that's exactly what we did.

My step son did and that's you know how he got a much better offer at the college he really wanted to go to.

So it works and I help families with it all the time.

That's great.

I love it all right, Tina, We got a few more questions to get to with you, including what about grad students.

How does the FAFSA and you know, getting additional financial help for grad school?

How can we go about doing that.

We'll get to that and more right after this.

We are back from the break talking with the FAFSA guru.

We're talking with Tina and Tina.

So, I don't have any kids in college, so I'm definitely not even thinking about grad school or like getting even higher levels.

I am because my wife's in grad school right now.

That's right, Yeah, you are?

Is there is there like a is there a special FAFSA for grads if you're going to get your master's?

How does that work?

What are what are some of the different changes that we've seen regarding that.

It's the same theat for graduate students.

They just be filling it out as an independent student and not needing their parent information.

And the big thing with graduate students is financially it becomes more limited.

Graduate students typically are eligible to borrow up to twenty thousand, five hundred dollars a year and a federal direct student loan that's not based on credit.

It's a guaranteed the government offers it to them to help them pay for their education.

And they can also borrow graduate plus loans to help make up any additional costs like above and beyond that twenty thousand dollars a year mark.

But in terms of the free money, that's more limited.

Graduate students can apply for like graduate assistant ships through different academic departments at the college where they can do some work and actually receive money towards their tuition or off their tuition.

Or in the form of a paycheck.

And then of course there are a lot of scholarships out there that graduate students can apply for, but the FACA is really for that Federal direct loan for graduate students of that amount.

Okay, so if you need to take our loans, we are are We have been paying cash so far, hope to hope to continue to do that for my wife's graduate school education.

But yeah, scholarships.

It's honestly something I hadn't thought, Like, I remember applying for scholarships when I was going off to get my undergrad but I hadn't really thought about it.

For some reason.

It hadn't dawned on me until I was like thinking about it to think about our conversation with you, and I was like, wait a second, we could totally look up some scholarships for my wife's particular major, the direction she's heading in, and send out some applications, which we haven't done yet.

But now I'm gonna get going talk to me about scholarships because I guess in the other on the other side of the equation, they can sound nice, but it feels like you put in a lot of effort for this one off attempt, and maybe there's one scholarship available or five one thousand dollars scholarships available, and you don't really know how much competition you've got and stuff like that.

So it should we be filling out applications for scholarships and if so, is there kind of the best way to go about it?

I think it's worth it that this is where I see a lot of students leave money on the table.

You know, it is true, searching and applying for scholarships can be a bit tedious, especially because a lot of the applications require essays and things like that.

But the students who are doing it consistently throughout the year, like maybe they're applying for a few each and every month are the ones that are going to get the most bang for their buck.

And scholarships that are like three thousand dollars in less tend to be not as competitive as other scholarships, so those are always good ones to focus on.

You know, when you're focusing on those big twenty thirty, forty thousand dollars scholarships, so are a lot of other students.

So there's going to be a ton of competition.

But really, with scholarships, it's so important to just be consistent.

You know, do a lot of specific Google searching with like terms, you know, multiple terms, not just you know, like scholarships for high school students pursuing engineering or you know, scholarships for graduate students pursuing education.

And then maybe and add to that who live in you know, Portland, Maine.

So the more search terms you can put, themori'll kind of narrow down some good scholarship opportunities like locally, which which is always good.

I always recommend checking with your state higher education agency.

Every state has one of these.

Agencies, and a lot of students aren't aware of this, and they house scholarship information specifically for residents of their state.

So that's a really great place to look that a lot of people aren't aware of.

And then once you're admitted in college, make sure you check with the actual academic department that you're admitted into, because they have a whole resource listing of scholarships specifically for students at their college studying whatever it is you know that you're studying.

There's some great websites out there.

There's so many that you can actually get overwhelmed, but a couple of my favorites are Scholarships dot com.

They have a really great directory search directory feature where you can search the secifically based on certain criteria such as you know your grade level or academics or what you're studying or abilities.

And then myscholie dot com, m y scho l l y dot com.

They do charge like seven dollars and ninety nine cents a month, but it's really worth it.

I've seen students have a lot of success on both of these sides.

Yeah, it would seemed to me too that when you think about as a student, not that maybe you shouldn't have a high school job or something like that, but if you're thinking, oh, I'm probably going to get paid ten or eleven dollars an hour doing the high school job, and you factor it in and you think I'm going to spend forty hours which four hundred bucks that I would make and instead put that towards potentially getting these scholarships, your hourly rate could balloon by coming after scholarships instead of going and working the regular job.

It could really Yeah, I recommend an hour to an hour and a half a week.

So if you think about it, like five hours five hours a month searching and applying for scholarships.

You could easily apply for three to five.

Scholarships a month that way, and you know, if you're consistent.

I know it can be frustrating when you don't hear back, but it's just those students that apply for a handful of them, you're they're just not being they're not applying for enough.

You know, you just have to be in there.

Doing it regularly, very nice and yeah, it's definitely worth yeah.

Okay, yeah, your minimum wage job or there are certainly skills to be gained when you are working outside of the home and you've got a direct boss as opposed to I almost see scholarships is like this.

It's like an on ramp to entrepreneurship where it's just like I get to choose the jobs that I want.

And sure, I guess it's also up to you as to what the chances are of you actually winning one of some of those scholarships.

But there obviously is something additional to the dollars that you gain from working.

Out, Like the more proactive and go get or you are, you're gonna the more you're gonna crush your scholarships possibility.

Yeah, the potential to kill it when it comes to scholarship.

Absolutely, yeah, I've seen a number of students do that.

Very So do you have any other sort of like outside of the box.

Recommendations to help folks to avoid that ever increasing pile of student loans that are our nation's burdened with.

Where folks out there can kind of try to attempt to bring down the cost of college.

Oh yeah, so yeah, it's it's so tough.

You know.

Every college allows you to set up like a payment plan, which if you do owe a balance after financial aid, I always tell families make a monthly payment plan over ten months out of pocket the maximum that you can afford to really kind of you know, minimize.

That, you know, debt.

Also, students can begin applying for scholarships is I mean, they have scholarships for young students, but a lot of them start at the age of thirteen, So high school students every single year they're in high school can be applying for these scholarships, and then once they you know, they hit college, they can apply every year they're in college.

So just yeah, make that like apart, like I said, five hours of boo.

Okay, all right, question for you.

You have a current high school senior.

Your last one is is there anything you're doing that you haven't shared with us or in our audience yet that like we need.

To know about anything that I'm doing with.

Her, hold back give us the good stuff.

Oh gosh, Well, you know, I think we just have those really hard conversations in our house about what you know, what we're willing to spend, and what the bottom line is and and if you want this particular college and we get this financial aid, like you've got to have some skin in the game, like be applying for those scholarships, you know, and and that my daughter is definitely doing that.

Like I work with parents of high school seniors every single year in a group coaching program, and I this is I preach, I preach this, but the reality is, you know, high school seniors are so busy with everything else.

I think in my house that's that's really what we're doing.

The outside scholarships and then the financial aid appeal is a big strategy.

I love.

It's so important to have those those honest, straightforward conversations and sounds like you've had a you've had some.

Practice and uh not just a one off combo either, by the way, Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely, that's so important as opposed to it being this thing that feels like you're tiptoeing around and all of a sudden, oh surprise, No, this is going to be dead, that you're going to be saddled the way.

This isn't something that we're willing to take on.

These are conversations that have to start early.

And I love hearing that there are thirteen year olds who are.

Also eligible for scholarships as well.

I think that's yeah, Tina, thank you so much for talking with us.

We'll make sure to link to thefaftsagguru dot com.

At your website.

You offer one on one help with families who are looking for maybe some additional help as well.

Is that right?

I do.

I do consulting.

I also my signature program is my Financial Aid Academy, a group coaching program I run every single year for parents of high school seniors.

Enrollment is still open for seniors for the class of twenty twenty four because the facts is opening late, where I kind of guide families through the whole process and help them maximize or financial aid offers.

And then I have a membership program for parents of high school students to kind of get them ready for college.

I'm in some standalone digital.

Courses and the consulting and I offer a free ten minute consult call for anybody that I've never.

Worked with before.

Very cool.

Great, Tina, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me.

You guys, all.

Right, I feel like Tina knocked it out of the park when it came to answering all the face that questions we had.

Would you expect anything less?

No, if you call yourself the guru, I expect you better know your stuff.

That's right.

We covered a lots regarding the FATA.

Did you have a specific takeaway a big takeaway from today's episode?

Yeah?

I did, and she didn't say it exactly like this, but it's something you and I have talked about a lot on the show in the past, is don't be afraid to ask for a discount, and because like when you ask, truly so much of the time you're able to get one.

But so many people just haven't exercise that muscle.

They're kind of afraid to approach that conversation.

They're worried about the stank gy that they're going to get for somebody if they do end up if they make that request.

Most of the time you don't get the stink eye.

Maybe every once in a while.

Most of the time either you're gonna get told no, which who cares like walk away and be like all right, thank you anyway, or other times you might get quite a bit of money back.

And in the case of appealing a student aid offer, it can be thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

And so it's one of those things where it's kind of like that Geico commercial like fifteen minutes will save you whatever percent, fifteen minutes or thirty minutes of doing this appeal could save you thousands.

And so it's you're silly, You're really silly.

You're leaving money on the table if you don't.

Absolutely yeah, and be humble.

We love that too when you do make that request.

Which was so good because again having with her, having been on the receiving end of things, she has seen how this works.

And I think it's a part of what makes Tina so effective at what she does because she has been on the inside.

Yeah, and it's important to mention that there are humans reading them, right, These are not just number crunching AI bots.

These are human people with real emotions.

And so if you can if you can speak to that sense, like, hey love the school, blah blah blah, and this would mean so much to our family, And oh my goodness, what I have the color because the color matters to the end person who's actually doing the reading.

Because they're this is the difference between them letting you in.

And you've got an awesome story and you've made a just incredibly convincing argument as to why it is you want to go to that school or somebody else who just says, please reconsider, like who would you go with?

And when you are working for higher education institution like that, you want folks who are able to provide vibrants.

You're going to be looking to folks who are willing to lean in to push back a little bit, because those are the folks who get stuff done.

And I don't want to oversimplify it, but it could be something like that, right, And they're like, we've got an extra five grand, which one do we give it to?

And so yeah, write your letter accordingly, Matt, was your big takeaway from this combo though?

So mine's going to be five point six five percent, because that is the percentage of the parental assets that are taking into account when it comes to determining student aid.

Not necessarily, not specifically, because that money is set aside within a five to twenty nine account, but well, fact is, all of your assets are taken into account, and I think sometimes folks can have maybe this roadblock to setting some of that money aside because they think, well, every dollar a stick in there is a dollar that I'm not going to receive via student aid via financial aid.

Well that's not that's not the case.

That's not how it works.

And so I just want to put that out there because I think that can help to put a lot of folks at ease as to whether or not they see the amount that they've got saved in cash in the bank go up by ten thousand dollars, or whether or not they's you know, a five twenty nine account goes up, whether that goes up by ten thousand dollars.

Either way, you're looking at five point sixty five percent, and I think that number specifically can just.

Provide a lot of relief for some folks out there.

But let's introduce our beer.

You and I we enjoyed a Blue Crab Special Reserve.

Sounds like a very fancy beer.

This is another one by Other Half.

It's a double dry hopped Imperial IPA.

What are your thoughts, buddy?

All right, so my phrase to describe this one is creamy pineapple hot basket.

And I feel like it's pretty accurate, right, what do you think?

Pretty good?

I second all those descriptive Okay, all right, well yeah no, I just absolutely delicious IPA from you know, one of the breweries that makes some of the finest in the land.

So massively impressed with this one.

And I guess they have a regular Blue Crab, but this is the Special Reserve, and so this is like the fancy version of the original beer, which I'm sure is already delightful, so so good.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's got those those herbal elements from the hops, and you just get.

That with some of these dry hopped hazes.

Of course, this isn't a beer by Other Half that includes a name of a vegetable like they oftentimes do, but it's totally got those same vibes going on.

It is so fantastic and again a massive thanks to Jason for donating.

This plus all the other other half beers here to the podcast.

Appreciate you, Jason, thank you very much.

And Matt.

That's going to do it for this one.

And we'll put links to some of the resources that we mentioned during this podcast up on our website at howtomoney dot com.

That's right, fasaguru dot com, scholarships dot com.

Let's nice, scholarie.

Those were Those were Tina's two favorite sites for scholarships specifically.

Yeah, make sure to link to those all that stuff and more up there.

You can also sign up for the how to Money newsletter at how to money dot com slash newsletter.

If you haven't signed up for that yet, you uh, you should be ashamed of yourself and now you should be ashamed.

But you can write that ship right now, so please do all right, Matt, that's going to do it for this episode.

Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.