Ep. 2 - FAFSA Form Season - FAFSA Myths Debunked & What You Need to Know

In the second episode of the Send Your Kids to College Podcast, we breakdown what you need to know during what we call "Form Season." Know what you need to know about FAFSA, NYS TAP,  and the CSS Profile. Learn how our organization can take the stress off your hands and get you set up for success.

We touch on a BIG part of The College Money Talk, and the discussion that MUST occur first, before any college planning decisions are made.

Remember to subscribe, and you can learn more at sendyourkidstocollege.org, and remember, you can always talk to Jeff Boron, Certified College Planning Specialist at (716) 689-7477!

A small $79 donation to the WNY Young Achiever's Scholarship can get you started and take all the form questions off your hands! Call to Learn More!

FAFSA | NYS TAP | Excelsior Scholarship | CSS Profile 

Transcript

hello folks and welcome back to the send your kids to college podcast we're here with jeff boron certified college planning expert it's the second episode uh if you haven't listened to the first one go back there's a lot of stuff about the scholarship which we'll get back into next time of the year we just wanted to talk about today about fafsa and get back into the college money talk because every time of the year the college money talk comes up but it depends on what time of the year and right now we're in what's known in your world as forms season season starts october 1st every year and what's funny is when you look at college forums most people have heard of the fafsa and there's a lot of myths about there which we'll talk about there's also if you live in new york state and going to an air state school there's also new york state tap there is new york state excelsior scholarship if you qualify for that and then for about 350 colleges across the u.s unfortunately many of them in the northeast there's an additional format for some of these mostly private schools called the css profile and most parents most students have never heard of that but it is a requirement at many schools yeah and as we talked the the college money talk is sort of an ongoing process and we're going to break that down a lot here on the podcast because there's so much that goes into it and having done this for so many years you start to see things happen uh cyclically i would say over the years based on our discussions so you know restate for the viewer what that what that college money talk is so the college money talk is probably the most important aspect of college planning and the relationship between the parent and their student so if you look at what happens with college the student and many times has done their part you know they've got great grades in high school they prepared well for the sat or act and and they're a good academically qualified student now we start looking at colleges and without looking at price many times but we're going some of these colleges because they're good schools and the college money talk hasn't happened what should happen first is that discussion between the parents and the student first of all how much are the parents going to help contribute towards college if anything if they're able to where is that money coming from so maybe parents will dedicate a portion of their income or their salaries to help pay for college you know 500 or thousand dollars a month whatever that might be maybe they've got some savings 529 plans other types of savings and they're going to use that but really what's the breakdown what is the total amount that the parents can help the student with again if anything and then for the student really understanding what colleges you're looking at what type of merit money you're going to have how much you have to contribute to college and then the dreaded subject of how much would you take out in loans but it really revolves around having a plan before you start getting emotionally attached to different colleges and one one kind of player in this game you know that you mentioned to me before was the you know the school guidance counselor and you know talk a little bit about what what role they play because obviously you know the heart's probably always in the right place for the student but you know touch on that a little bit because obviously they are a big part of this process and parents may lean on them typically but you know how does how do they work into the mix so the counselors many times will advise students to look at schools which are you know they'll easily be accepted at and then some reach colleges uh some stretch colleges and some very expensive colleges remember the co the counselor is not responsible for the financial position of the student or the parents or how to pay for it they're looking at schools which are great name schools but just might not be in the budget so it's almost like you know jeremy i said you're gonna go off for your first car you're 16 years old you know a great car to go test drive would be that porsche 911 you know maybe that's a great car they're absolutely right but they don't get into nor can they get into discussion of how are we going to pay for this and and you know that unfortunately you know we talked about how you've seen over the years sometimes you know when when it comes full circle and that student does decide you know i'm going to take out loans they go get that education from that dream school and then they come out of it with a bill that they probably weren't considering and then oftentimes that resentment comes back to the parents right because they'll look remember we're dealing with teenagers at this point going to college and they many of them don't have a great grasp and understanding of money they think i'm going to go to college i'm going to get this very high paying job who cares if i take out loans the reality is you really want to be cautious about taking out loans and getting into debt and what i've seen after the fact for students and parents that haven't worked with me originally is they come out and they've got three to four times more debt than their first year salary and the numbers just don't work that student typically has to move back home with mom and dad there's a little bit of resentment you know i would have never taken out these loans i've hear the student if i would have known that i would have had this kind of monthly payment and i just can't afford it yeah and it's unfortunate but that's what we're here for that's what this podcast is here for is to hopefully help the people of of western new york understand the value of of of what send your kids to college can can do for you one huge thing that they can do for you is help out with one of the biggest first steps which if you have a younger child or you've had you know a kid through college before you probably heard of the term fafsa but you know we wanted to talk a little bit about fafsa today because it's it's the time of the year but also we want to break down a few myths um one of which a big one is you know i pulled these these common myths from um the internet but these are sort of some high level things that a lot of parents ask or or or misconstrue rather the fafsa being only for federal student aid is a is a common myth um can you talk on a little bit about that because if i don't know what i'm doing where do i start so we start out with a lot of parents say i make too much money to bother with this and you couldn't be further from the truth the first thing is if we take a typical household and they've got an adjusted gross income let's save 150 000 a year they will come out with a number called your expected family contribution which will qualify them for financial aid at virtually every private school we're looking at may not be the sunnis but then again some of the other money that's available for the suny students like tapper excelsior you need to file a fafsa first the other thing that happens is fafsas are typically needed for many merit scholarships that the colleges award you won't be considered for those merit scholarships unless you file the fafsa for that particular school finally what i tell parents with extremely high incomes or high net worth clients colleges want a percentage of full pay clients so what i mean by that is let's say their income is five hundred thousand dollars a year they're not going to be a needs-based client but they're a highly desirable client for that college and what the colleges will typically do is come up with some type of an award let's call it a presidential scholarship or whatever it might be to attract those parents which is tuition discounting because they want to get you as the parent the high net worth parent as opposed to you going somewhere else with your money that's really interesting and that that was another big one was you know that i make too much or my parents make too much the bottom line jeremy is every single student going to college should file these forms it's absolutely necessary and one that i didn't you know kind of think of one the student having to wait until they're accepted to a school and the fact that this isn't just one year this is something that you have to do every single year so we start october 1st many times the students at that point are working on what schools they're applying to they won't get accepted until early in the spring of the following year so you want to get that in what happens a lot to us is we get calls we get emails at the school as a school it's very easy to add a school later if your son or daughter decides to apply to a different school or another school or additional schools we can add that but the base information stays the same but get it done get it in that's the message so it's something you obviously have to do if anybody is going to go to school it's it's something you have to do and i'm sure it can get frustrating for for the the parent or student what do you find is this something you find more that parents struggle with students try and maybe they don't have the parents to get involved or how does it look and and who how does that look for from your angle in terms of what can what can you do for them well you know a lot of people make some common mistakes of i'll have my tax preparer the person that does my income taxes do this or it doesn't look that hard i'll do it myself what they don't know is if i put this in this box it drives the following result and you want to take a look at understanding the whole system and then if there's adjustments that can be made prior to filing the fafsa make those adjustments if you're a needs-based candidate and you can get your expected family contribution down by certain moves take a look at making those moves you have to first understand are you a needs-eligible client or are you a non-needs eligible client and there are different strategies for each one but understanding how the numbers that you put on that form will affect the financial aid decisions is probably the first thing and most people don't understand that and obviously you know being a non-profit people might not understand how a non-profit works um but being a non-profit where where does this money go if i were to come to send your kids to college and and have you guys fill out my forms small charge but but what does that money go towards so we charge 79 which is for a comprehensive package of the fafsa the new york state tap and excels here so you get three forms for 79 very very cost effective for the parents to do we use that money to fund our annual scholarship the young achiever scholarship right now we're in the process of interviewing candidates for the 2021 award and it goes to a good cause so we we dedicate our time you pay 79 which is actually a contribution towards the scholarship fund and we will make sure the forms are filed correctly and timely and you get the full package back you understand what was submitted and we do it every year for people yeah and and as we've sort of shown on the social media and on the blog at senderkids2college.org oftentimes when you work with send your kids to college some of that money looks a lot better you know we've looked at some of the case summaries and things like that so it's not only just the forms but you know what are a couple other things that might happen if if someone were to to turn to turn to you guys well one of the things that we'll do is you know the forms is kind of a last step we like to do the planning in advance and actually help maybe steer to some colleges which will be much more cost effective for the student we preach return on investment and as i'm interviewing these student students it's really easy i say is college and investment and they always agree yes of course it's an investments investment of time and investment of money before you'd make any investment let's say you're going to go buy a business or an apartment building to rent out you want to know what that return is so the return is going to be your salary when you come out of college and then you have to do some math is the return on that investment does that do those numbers work am i spending 250 000 to get a 30 000 a year job or am i spending two hundred fifty thousand dollars to get a three hundred thousand dollar your job and you've gotta just do the math there's there's no right or wrong college or career it's just the two have to sync up so we do a entire planning process we help the parents understand what they can afford to help pay for college by looking at their comprehensive financial picture and then we work backward college is one milestone but by the time most parents have their last student graduate from college they've got a very short window until they want to hit the next milestone which is retirement we want to make sure that they're not robbing from retirement or forcing their children to take out excessive student loans in order to do their college career yeah and as you can see anybody out there around western new york it's clear that that working with someone like jeff can be beneficial not only to help you know get through the frustration but also help your student become a great adult um you know because this is obviously such an important part you know this a lot of people probably think all right i got the kid into college now i'm done but i think it's pretty clear you know that that that's not the last step is there anything else you wanted to add today jeff regarding uh fafsa or the college money talk well you know our fafsa calendar fills up pretty fast so i would uh give us a call get on the calendar it's very quick uh you stop and provide some information we do some of them via zoom calls or email um i generally like to talk to people it takes about a half hour meeting and then you get a package in the mail back of all your completed forms all the documentation and everything you need for backup and all your login ids and login credentials so it's a pretty quick process we've been doing it for years i'm so old that i started doing them when they were on paper hey that should be reason enough for people out there to come to you because you know there's nobody else around western new york that can do it like this no like i tell people they say well my neighbor put his kid through college well first of all we don't know if your neighbor did it correctly and second of all you know i'm the neighbor that's put thousands of kids through college so i've seen it all we work with a number of colleges the same colleges every year we know how they play and uh we can give some good advice and good help and it goes to a good cause for a scholarship awesome thank you very much jeff i appreciate your time today thanks jeremy and thank you folks of western new york stay tuned to the next episode you can find us at send your kids to college.org and remember to follow and like on facebook and instagram