hey everyone I'm Tina otherwise known as the FAFSA guru and I'm excited to share three FAFSA secrets
with you today that can get you more financial aid before I do that I just want to give you a little
bit of background information about me I went into business for myself a couple of years ago as an
educational consultant after working in the field of higher education for over 20 years in the area
of admissions and financial aid and student advising and I saw a really big gap between
student and family needs for college planning help and what was actually out there available
for services most educational consultants charge quite a bit in fees and you have to sign up for
hefty packages to get any kind of guidance so what I wanted to do is offer more affordable
services for the average family that doesn't want to sign on for hundreds of dollars of services so
I created the FAFSA guru and what I do is one on one college planning guidance and FAFSA assistance
for students and families based on whatever their new needs are so this could be filling out a FAFSA
form could be completing a college application guiding them through the process whatever their
needs are I can help them with and they can kind of piece it together and work with me as they go
so they don't have to sign on for any expensive package so now that I told you a little bit about
me let's talk about the three secrets the first is in order to access the most financial aid it
is crucial that you fill out the FAFSA as early as possible the nude date for this year the 2018-2019
FAFSA is October 1st normally it's been January but this year they're doing October 1st that is
the earliest that you can file the FAFSA if you or your child are planning on starting college July
30th 2018 or after so with financial aid it's kind of like the early bird gets too long the
earlier you apply and fill out the FAFSA the more money you can get federal financial aid
tends to deplete as time goes on so that's secret number one secret number two if you are a parent
and you are helping your child fill out the FAFSA because they're going off to college and they have
money in their bank accounts they have assets money that maybe they've saved or they've been
given to help them pay for college you want to transfer the money from their account into your
account because FAFSA calculations expect that any asset students have they can contribute 20%
of that money towards their college education versus about five point six four percent of
parent assets so it would be wise to transfer money from their savings accounts into your
accounts to kind of protect a little bit more of that money and the nice thing for you parents in
terms of assets the home that you live in is not counted nor is retirement so they're not
going to look at either of those things as assets and then third the last secret for accessing more
financial aid is that you can actually appeal your award letter that the college gives to you not a
lot of people know this so let's say you or your student gets the financial aid award letter back
from the college and it's just not enough money to help pay for their needs you can actually write a
letter to the financial aid office appealing your financial aid award now typically this
is ideal if you have extenuating circumstances that are not reported on the FAFSA FAFSA just
asks a lot of basic financial information and they don't really dig deeper in terms of you know was
a parent or or the student laid off was there a big financial circumstance that happened in
the family that is not reported on the FAFSA so especially if you have extenuating circumstances
appealing that financial aid award letter is crucial you just simply just send a letter to
the financial aid office and offer any supporting documentation you can if there's been a change or
a reduction in income and if there has been then a lot most financial aid offices actually set aside
a certain pool of money specifically for people who appeal their financial aid awards so that's
the third secret I hope you find those helpful and I just want to share with you that I'm going
to be offering a webinar FAFSA webinar on Sunday October 1st at 7 p.m. October 1st remember is the
day that you can begin filling out the FAFSA so I'm going to be offering a webinar it's only 50
dollars and I'm going to sit down with you and go over the whole process of applying for an
FSA ID for yourself and your child that's the ID that you need to actually complete a FAFSA online
and then I'm going to go through the FAFSA with you step-by-step page by page and kind of guide
you through the process of filling it out so you can sit down with your taxes and at your computer
and you can actually fill it out during my webinar it's a great value I'm only charging fifty dollars
for this for the next week and then it jumps up to a hundred dollars so if you are interested
in signing up for that you can click the link below and additionally my contact information
is also below I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with students and families based on your needs
and you can get in touch with me and I'd be happy to set something up for you you can find
me on Facebook the FAFSA guru and I'm currently working on my website so thanks for listening
and I hope you found these secrets really helpful and hope to see a lot of you at my webinar Thanks