financial aid and college loans

Better Financial Aid: How to Qualify

You’ve worked and reworked the budget and you just simply can not find where you can come up with extra money to help fund your son or daughter’s continuing education. Does that statement remind you of anyone you know? It is especially true at this time of year: your child has just graduated high school, he or she needs money to get into college or university or technical training, you need money in places where you didn’t even know there were places before, and it is all coming together, you feel, with a crash in just a few months. Where do you turn? There are some secrets that will help as you and your child fill out the FAFSA. These secrets might help you and your child qualify for more grant money as well as more federal aid.

You might look into reducing your adjusted gross income on your tax returns. This doesn’t mean that you give up your sources of income but that you do some things that will lower your immediate income yet provide for a better income later. These methods include putting the maximum amount you can into your IRAs and other retirement savings plan. You might consider consolidating your student loans so that you can deduct a larger amount of interest on your return. Consider other expenses such as moving expense, alimony you have paid out, health savings accounts or flex spending accounts, business expenses if you are self employed as well as the health insurance deduction you are allowed to take if you are self employed.

Since, these are legal but not very well known ways to reduce your income, you might consider working with a tax preparer in the couple of years leading up to the time your child enters college. The tax preparer can help you find various ways to reduce your gross income so that when the figures land on the FAFSA, your child will be eligible for more federal financial aid. And just think, these measures will also help in the future when you begin drawing on the retirement funds or IRAs – there will be more money that has earned interest giving you more to live on.

Of course, it would be best to simply have a college fund for you child that would fund all of their college expenses. However, we would probably be hard put to find very many families who were actually able to contribute enough money to a college fund on a consistent basis that there would be no need for financial aid. Therefore, we can make the best use of what we do have available by adjusting our gross income and allowing your child to get the benefit of that now while you to get the benefit of these measures later.

What is a FAFSA?

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is a financial aid eligibility form you need to fill out before entering college. This is required by the Federal Government before you are able to receive any federally funded monies to help you with college expenses. This form only accesses the individual needs of students; it is not a loan.

If you are planning to enter college this fall, the FAFSA must be submitted by June 30, 2008. If you are planning to enter in the Fall of 2009, you will need to look up the deadline for your state to let you know when to complete the form. Some states have a spring deadline while some have an early summer deadline. Some of the best kinds of governmental student loans, grants, or work-study aids that are given are given on a first come, first served based. Therefore you will want to have this form filled out and turned in as early as possible before you enter college.

The information that you have filled out will be processed by the Department of Education. After your FAFSA has been received, the government will send you a Student Aid Report (SAR). This report will allow you to make any corrections to your FAFSA that are necessary as well as the amount of federal aid that is available to you.

Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid does not atomically mean that you are on the list to receive any federal aid. For each type of federal aid that you want to pursue, you will need to fill out a separate application for that loan or grant. Specific federally funded monies are available through a Pell Grant, a Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, the Academic Competitiveness Grant, the National SMART Grant, as well a the Perkins Loan and the Stafford Federal Student Loan.

The FAFSA must be renewed every year that you are enrolled in the college or university you are attending. This is because financial situations change frequently and you may not be eligible for as much money as you were previously or you may be eligible for more money than you were previously. You will not have to fill the form out in its entirety every year but you will need to update it on a yearly basis.

Even if you feel that you will not be eligible for any of the federal money, you should still fill the form out. In this way, the college or university you are attending will be able to determine your eligibility for the grants, loans, or privately funded loans they may be able to offer. It never hurts to try!

Tidbits for grocery shopping corner cutting for students with student loan budgets

When you are a student who is looking to achieve a collage or university education, you have to learn how to “cut corners” on the expenses that you will be having, especially if you are currently enjoying the benefits of a student loan. One of such “corner cutting” are groceries.

Whether you are on a dorm room by yourself or with other people or sharing an apartment, you will need to make your own personal shopping for things such as toilet paper, shampoo, laundry soap and things like that.

Here are some pointers that might prove beneficial when dealing with corner cutting and grocery shopping.

• Do not check only price, check net weights, as well as ingredients. In cleaning products, this is particularly important since it is how you can determine whether a product has a bleach or ammonia base. In other cases, the price might seem lower, but the net weight is also lower, so it ends up costing more.

• Do not plunge into buying brand-free products, these products might seem cheaper but they lack the efficiency of the brand products, therefore, you will need twice as much to get the same result of a single use of a brand product. Of course, there are cases where they are actually good.

To see how to determine whether a brand-free product is actually good or not can only be done upon experience, but being a student with a student loan budget it is highly unlikely that you have the financial buoyancy that allows you to risk or loose the price of the product. If you want to know if they are any good, ask your parents or your family members to see if they had tried them and what results did they get.

• If the product does not perish or decomposes, consider buying the family size. Of course, consider that if you buy the family size product you will not be able to change the fragrance or any other special characteristics until the product has gone. On the other hand, you will need to crunch some numbers, sometimes buying the family size product will only “save” you cents instead of whole dollars; in such cases, there is no point in doing the trip all the way to the price market to seek these sizes.

• If your needs are low and buying a full size product (even if it is the smallest presentation) is still too much for you and your budget, get together with some friends or their families and go shopping together. Your pitching in with the tab will allow you to make an input or two on what they are buying and you will learn in turn also.

Tidbits on microwave ovens for the student with a student loan budget

When you are cooking for yourself on the microwave there is a whole lot of information that might come on the instruction booklet and cooking guide of your microwave oven, if, that is, you are lucky enough to have a new one.

For the vast majority, their own microwave ovens came out from the generous donations of family members who were just as well going to toss their microwave ovens to the trash, since they have a new one. In other cases, their microwave oven came from Salvation Army or Second Hand stores or from “sharing” programs scheduled and organized even by internet businesses or any other form of company.

In these cases, there is no luck in having an instruction booklet and even less a chance for a cooking guide. Some resourceful students will write the manufacturing company and ask them for a replacement for these important papers on their microwave ovens. Yet some will not since they already have a microwave oven at home and the functions are basically the same, there is little to no point –at least to them- to waste time and money requesting instruction booklets and cooking guides.

Here are some guidelines in terms of the managing on the microwave cooking scheme.

• You can make hot cakes, though it is cooked, it will not look the same or taste the same, but it can also make up for a small personal cake.

• If you are frying things on your microwave, always use a protective lid and remember to take out the excess oil if you are frying bacon, sausage or any other greasy food.

• If you are boiling water, keep the edge of the water at least ¼” down of the rim of the recipient in which you are boiling the water.

• Despite what any manufacturer states, always try and use glass cookware on your microwave, avoid metal and resins, especially if you are making your own popcorn.

• Clean your oven at least once a week, but deodorize it as often as you can, especially after cooking stew or any other spiced food, just boiling one cup of water will suffice.

• The best way to create gourmet masterpieces in the microwave oven is to practice, there are things that you did not think you could do and things that you think you can do but you really cannot, but the only way you can truly know is to try to do them.

What is an Independent Student?

When you fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, you will be determining your eligibility for federally funded student aid. In order to find out if you meet those eligibility requirements, the form will ask about your financial background as well as the financial background of your parents. If you have relied on your parents up until now to provide your daily means of support, you will probably be a dependent student. However, there are some guidelines that are laid out by the DOE that will help determine your dependency status as a student.

If you are just entering college and you were born before 1984, you are an independent student. Most students enter college immediately after graduation from high school. However, if you did not do that but elected to work or travel some during those first years out of high school, you are probably supporting yourself. Therefore you would not be classified as dependent on your parents for their financial support.

If you’ve already completed college and are entering graduate school, you will not be considered a dependent student. Also, if you are married on the day you apply for the FAFSA, you are an independent student. If you have children or other dependents that receive at least half of their support from you, you can also claim independent status as a college student.

Children who have been in foster care or who have been wards of the court through age 18 are given independent status as are those students whose parents have died, according to FAFSA guidelines as well. If you are a veteran or currently a member of the armed forces personnel, you are also considered to be an independent student.

Because of the possibility of the family being able to help out with your college education, the FAFSA also requires financial information on the parents of the student if none of the above mentioned guidelines apply. This may be a little disconcerting for the parents, but without filling out the FAFSA, college or university training may cost you and your student more in out-of-pocket expenses than is really necessary.

Obtaining a college education takes a lot of work once you are in school. However, to come out on top, your education will begin even as you research ways to fund your education. This financial research will provide the best in financial benefits to you and your family.

Tidbits in food budgeting for students with student loan budgets

When you do not have to sit at the dinning table to eat with the rest of the family because you are at college or the university making the most out of the student loan that you have, it is not difficult or rare to see that manners are lost and that leniency settles in almost never to leave.

It is important for any student to be able to battle and counteract against such laziness. One of the options is to force him or herself to sit at a specific area of the dorm room or the shared apartment and eat; another option is to prepare the meal in such a way that it might seem a dish that is cooked at any of the many surrounding restaurants.

This might be a difficult task especially for those students who are located at single room dorm rooms, especially considering that in such cases, the need for silverware and chinaware might impede or make it difficult for the student to set the table with all adequacy.

Still, there is no reason why the student will not be able to décor his or her plate with parsley or cilantro to make it presentable and attractive to the eye. In terms of the ingredients, the student that is cooking for him or herself can easily obtain gourmet ingredients such as smoked ham, truffles, bacon, champignons and the like in a very easy and by the piece manner, so that he or she can prepare enough food just for one without having to have leftover food for several days.

Regardless of this, it is important that the student is able to handle his or her way with a microwave oven since this is the most secure, efficient and cost reducing kitchen appliance that the student can have in his or her dorm room.

Learning to handle and to operate a microwave will require some effort and trial and error on behalf of the student. Once he or she has mastered at least the basic skills of the microwave oven, he or she will be able to significantly reduce the food related expenses that he or she has to make in order to keep adjusted to the student loan monthly budget.

Therefore, it is going to be important for the student with a student loan to be able to know where can he or she buy single ingredients by the piece instead of the bulky presentations that most convenient stores have available for their customers.

How to calculate how much ingredients do you need when cooking for yourself and still clinging to your student loan monthly budget

One of the most important things is for you to have a storage place where you can keep the ingredients and the uncooked as well as the leftover cooked food, being in a dorm room regardless of the size, or even sharing an apartment means that you could use a refrigerator of a small size or at least a frigo-bar. These can be even second hand, all you need to make sure is that it does not work with CFC or any other environmental polluting substance and that the door shuts hermetically.

The other thing that you need to have is a microwave, since it is here where you will be cooking all your meals. New generation microwave ovens have multifunction, which means that they can microwave, bake, and roast just as easy as pressing a button, so the options and menus available are almost endless.

But what is indeed truth is that you need to do an estimate on how much food do you need to prepare yourself a meal? Of course, you can make the traditional steak-and-eggs just for you but eating that all year long can be boring, and it certainly will do little to your own esteem. The answer is to read recipes that are calculated for two, dividing the ingredients in half will allow you to calculate and prepare the meal just for yourself; in addition, when you have company you will know what to do –because you did it in advance- simply by multiplying what you already do by two.

This will certainly amaze your company. The best way to know if a recipe is calculated for two people or more is to read the entire recipe, as a thumb rule published recipes state how many portions or serving they yield. There are some other recipes that don’t provide such measures in their published versions, but common sense can guide you through them; after all, it is highly unlikely that 2 pounds of meat, are adequate for two people.

If you are not following a recipe and feel like venturing in the wonderful world of cuisine, then you need to consider how much will you be eating on any given meal. For example, if you are attempting to cook a stew, then you need to figure how much of each ingredient will you be having. Of course, you can buy small amounts of meat and even eggs you can buy by the piece, depending on the store where you will be buying them; but you cannot buy half a tomato, that is why having a refrigerator or at least a mini-bar will come in handy.

Nurturing your body while adjusting to a tight budget of a student loan money grant

When you are a student and you are looking to save as much money as possible in all the expenses that you make on your stay at your chosen campus either at college or the university, you need to take into consideration meal time. Being a child back on your family home there is a distinct probability that take out was only used on special occasions or on the weekends, allowing those days for your mother or father to rest from cooking; but now, as a young adult on your first independent years the temptation to succumb to this type of food is great.

So much so, that almost a quarter of the students that enter the different college and universities nationwide will aim to eat as much fast food as possible. Of course, in most cases, they will go back on track or slowly diminish their consumption in an effort to maintain their weight in order to keep themselves attractive for the opposite sex.

Regardless of where you are having your boarding facilities at campus, and regardless if you are in college or the university. A good option that will allow you to save as much money as possible for other activities such as leisure and even parties is to cook your own food.

One of the top things that you need to have or understand when cooking your own food is to make the adequate calculations. So that you will not have leftovers that will sit for a long period of time in the refrigerator or that you will be forced to eat because you do not have any other means to storage food to prevent spoiling.

Most recipes that you will find have the adequate measures to cook at least for two. All you need to do is to divide the measures into the same number of people that the recipe is designed for; as an example, if the stew is calculated to give 8 servings, then you need to divide all the ingredient measures into 8 sizes and use only one.

However, there will come times and there are recipes that will not allow you to cut down, for example, when cooking a cake. Measurements are basically the same and there are few people who could actually cook just a single serving cake; however, there are still tricks that anyone can use in order to cut down on the sizes and keep as little food as possible.

The problems that women can have

Men are not the only ones that are susceptible to loosing or diverting money on things that they should not purchase or spend on. Women have their own problems. “Vanity” purchases such as cosmetics, clothes, and accessories are the biggest and most noticed problem of the women who are students who need to have a student loan.

Very similar to the problem of men, women can lie, cheat, and even believe that they can “skim” a small amount of money from the payments that they have to make on their school related expenses. All this in order to be able to continue shopping and using expensive apparel to go to school, when in reality the most important thing is for them to study and to finish the professional education that they have been seeking.

Naturally, there are those female students that are not part of the “A” group but that still believe that they will find a “good husband” while attending school and this is the only reason that makes them ask their parents for the economical financing that will allow them to continue their education. This might seem inappropriate, but there is nothing wrong with such dreams and expectations; the problem lies when they are not forthright enough to let their parents know of their intentions.

Nonetheless, there are others who strive just like men to achieve success, fame, and fortune, to meet this end, they will do whatever it takes to become part of the “A” group and this means high couture, expensive accessories and jewelry. All of which will probably come out of the student loan that they should be using to pay for the school related expenses. And when the money has either gone or is not sufficient they are the ones at a higher risk of being seduced by illegal or inappropriate businesses such as exotic dancing and escorting.

Any job is worthy if it is legal; of course, but for most family and personal moral values being an escort or an exotic dancer because the girl has too much a “taste” or “favoritism” on purchasing expensive items is not ideal and it can cause a serious detriment on the very goal that she had. Fortunately, women have a higher tendency to talk to her elders; family members, friends, counselors and even teachers are the ones that she will approach seeking guidance and wisdom.

How to solve the problem of money diverting that the student makes?

If they are not able to rely on the maturity of their sons for whatever reason; then the parents need to take further measures.

One of the possible measures is to demand the student for a detailed list of his expenses on a monthly basis and ask him for receipts or proofs of purchase. This is a good idea if the parents are looking to pretend that the student actually is considering their long speeches. A man who is wooing an “A” group girl will not release the quest so easily and it is very likely that he will end up asking his friends or peers for additional proofs of purchase or receipts.

The choices and suggestions to deal with such problems are almost as endless as the problem itself and an intelligent man can find a way to divert each one of them, just as long as the money stays in his hands and he has the possibility to use it as he sees fit. Therefore, the ideal solution is for the parents to make him ask for the money that he requires for his monthly expenses; at this point there are three ways to handle the situation.

1. Going each month to pay for the student’s expenses at the same college, school, or university in which he is currently studying. This means that the parents will have a unique opportunity to make sure where is their son living, eating, and hanging out as well as verifying that his peer choice is the right one.

Sadly, this option might face a terrible fight-off from the side of the student. Being in college or university usually means that the student is off and away from the protective eyes, ears, arms, or “wings” of his parents and having them go each month to pay for the school related expenses is probably too humiliating in terms of peer perception.

2. Depositing each month just the sufficient amount of money that the student will need to pay for his school expenses, but this will allow him to go and do the payment himself. The risk lies in the fact that he might believe that he is self sufficient enough to handle himself and can “balance” the money that you, as his parents will send him, paying for his wooing expenses and still covering “the most” of the expenses that he has to cover in order to stay in school.

To make this option work, you, as parents need to be informed if there is any failure in the payment of the school related expenses. Shortage, overdue payments, or any other irregularity, however, once again, this action can present some resilience from the student that strongly believes that diverting “some” money is not that big of a deal.

3. This third option is to request the student’s expenses to be charged to a specific bank account. In this way, the student will not need to handle money only when he is required to go on a school trip or to purchase books.

This might be the best solution of them all since the money that the student can divert for wooing expeditions is the less possible, giving his parents the possibility to provide him with additional funding for his wooing expenses.