Speaker 1: Hey everyone, today we're going to fill out the FAFSA form and I'm going to tell you basically everything you need to know about the seven different sections in the FAFSA form. And it is unnecessarily complicated in some sections, so I'll go into all of those nuances about how to report income and etc. So let's get straight into it. Quick caveat, I have a full video about financial aid and everything you need to know about every kind of financial aid from scholarships, institutional aid from private schools, and more. So that is definitely a must watch. And I have another one explaining the different kinds of student loans if you know you're going into student loans. This video is going to be mostly just about the FAFSA form and how you can maximize the chances of getting the federal aid from FAFSA. Quick refresher that FAFSA is the federal aid form that you're going to have to submit even if you don't think you qualify for federal aid, all your institutions are going to require this to see if you qualify for institutional aid, which is always usually if it's a private school way more than federal aid. But FAFSA includes the Pell Grants, which is $6,495 for the year. You don't have to pay that back. And that's usually offered to people with income under $50,000 for their household. But they also have the federal loans, which are need-based and not need-based loans that either the student or the parent can take out. So there's a lot of different kinds of loans. This is really what the form is meant to do. It's meant to understand how much your expected contribution is from your family. It's really important to remember that federal aid is never going to be as good as you think it's going to be, but you're going to get aid from the institution. It's also extremely important to submit this as soon as possible. I know it came out two days ago. It's $150 billion for everyone applying, which sounds like a lot, but it is first come first serve for a lot of that aid. So you're going to have to submit it as soon as possible. It shouldn't take you more than an hour. So let's get into all the materials you need about income statements and things like that that you're going to need before you start filling out the form, because filling the form out isn't that long of a process, but getting all of your bank statements, your parents' statements together takes the longest. The first thing you're going to need is your social security number. And if you're not a US citizen, you're going to have an alien registration number. You're also going to need all of your parents' income statements, which are W-2 forms that their employers give them. Or if they're self-employed, they're going to have forms for their income statements. So you're going to have to ask them for that, or they can log in and fill it out themselves. So you might only have to fill out your part of the application, which is the student application, but there is a section for parents that they can just log in and fill out themselves. So they would need to get their income statements together, tax returns, as well as any reportable income account. And reportable income is going to include brokerage accounts and any places they're making money that isn't related to their 401k, not their pension, and none of that. Because there are some accounts that are reportable and some that are not reportable. The biggest issue and the biggest mistake people make when it comes to FAFSA is reporting too much income. Because the more you report, the more money you're reporting for your household, the more you have, the less you're going to get in financial aid, whether it's federal or from your institution. Most retirement accounts aren't actually required to be reported. So those are non-reportable assets. So understanding what needs to be reported and what doesn't when it comes to income, additional income, all of the forms from your brokerage accounts, that's important to figure out. So all of the W-2s, tax returns, and understanding which accounts need to be reported is finished. The FAFSA isn't going to take you too long to complete. So that's really, really important to get together before you start going through the form. So if your parents are your legal guardians, you're going to be reported as a dependent. So all the income you have, your spouse, if that's applicable, as well as all of their income goes into the estimation for how much you're going to have to pay. So the more people you have who are going to be reporting income, the more your expected contribution might be. And if you are filing as an independent, if you're emancipated from your parents or something of that sort, then the only income you're going to have to report is your own. So that includes all of your income statements, brokerage accounts. I think most people do end up filing as dependent. So your parents are going to have to come in and fill out all of that information. And the last thing you're going to need for FAFSA is a FAFSA ID. So you're going to have to probably do that now. If you haven't already, get your ID and that's how you're going to log into your FAFSA. So just go to the website and create an account with your school email. And once you have all of that information, I know it's a lot, talk to your parents about the income statements, see if they can figure all of that out, log in on your behalf. And you would have to get all of your income statements together as well. If you had summer jobs, internships, something that's really important to remember as well when you're reporting income, if you only have one parent or if your parents are divorced, you only have to put one parent's income. Don't over report your income because the more money they think you have, the less you're going to get in aid. And I'm not a financial advisor or anything, but I'm just saying you want to make sure you minimize all of your reportable income assets if you're trying to get the most amount of aid possible. So yeah, look into all of that very, very carefully. Let's go straight into the first section in FAFSA. The first section in FAFSA is going to be the student information. This is where you add in all of your personal information, home phone number, address, driver's license if that's applicable. And then they just ask you more information about your parents' education and any prior convictions if there have been any. So it's a pretty standard section where I think you would have all the information if you just had your wallet with you. It's really important to know if you've taken any community college classes while in high school. Questions 26 to 28 ask you about your education level. So even if you have taken community college classes while in high school, your highest like level of education is still going to be high school. So don't over report your education status. Question 31 asks you about work study. So let's get into what work study is really quickly. So when you go to college, there are some jobs like campus jobs that are actually reserved for students who qualify for work study. You're going to get paid and that pay, it's almost like reserved for you. Like those kinds of jobs are reserved for people who want to do work study so that you're guaranteed, not always guaranteed, but it's easier for you to get a job to make income to supplement paying your tuition if that's required. You don't have to use the money to pay tuition. Like it's literally just a job, but they call it a work study job and it's pretty easy to get on campus, like working on campus somewhere. So yeah, I wouldn't see why you would click no, unless you know for sure you're not going to have any time, but it doesn't require you to do anything. It's a pretty basic question. So I mean, just say yes. The next section is student financial information. So this is really where you have to report all of your income. So over the years, if you've been working any summer jobs, you are going to get an income statement. So if you don't really know anything about this, but have worked jobs, ask your parents, they should have all of your income statements. If you've been working or you can ask your employer, but this is really where you put in all of your tax information for all of your reported income, whatever you've made. If you've actually worked for a company, but you weren't on payroll, like you weren't getting paid, you know, every two weeks they weren't taking taxes, et cetera. And you just kind of like did a job where you babysat someone and they gave you 15 bucks. Like you don't have to really report that. Not financial advice at all. Not an advisor. This is where if you do have a spouse, you're going to have to report all of your spousal income as well, because you're a joint household. They also ask you in question 35 for a schedule one form, if that's applicable. And that form is really just any additional income you've made other than your main job. So if you have brokerage accounts, et cetera, you might have to report that. So look into that as well. The next section is going to be your student status. And this is really important because this is what determines whether you apply for aid as a dependent or an independent. And I think most people, if you were in your family and you're not emancipated, you're going to be considered a dependent, which is what I was considered. It's expected almost like when you're a dependent that your parents are going to contribute to your education in some way or the other, whether they're taking out loans or whether you're taking out loans and they might help you or assist you in some way. Because when you're a dependent, your parents' income comes into play. They're going to use your parents' income to determine how much aid you're going to get, even if you're making $0. This entire section, questions 45 to 57, talk about your living situation, whether you're an independent or dependent, whether you're in the foster care system, which is word of state and things like that. So this is really where they figure out where you go in terms of qualifying you for aid. The next section is going to be parent information. So this is really where all of those income statements I talked about, which include W-2s the IRS tax returns, any additional income from brokerage accounts, all of these sources of income that are reportable sources of income come into play. So just to reiterate, you do not need to include any of your 401k, your IRA, or any retirement accounts in this. Pension plans are not included. This also does not include any small businesses owned by the family. It doesn't include equity in your home. This is really important to separate what you need to report and what you don't need to report because reporting too much, not a good thing. In this case, in question 69 to 73, they actually ask you about how many people, household occupants are attending college or going to attend college. If you have like any siblings include them, they are part of your household. If you have siblings that are younger than you, that's going to factor into how much aid you're going to get. If you have a sibling that's going to start college in the next 10 years, your parents are probably going to have to pay for that as well if your sibling doesn't have much income. So the next section is student household information. This is really where they ask you the questions like, is anyone going to go to college from that household in the future and things like that. So it's really, really important to make sure that everything is accurate there. Question 94 is how many people in you and your spouse's household will be college students in the next year. You count yourself as a college student, so you'd have to, you know, at least put one because you would be the college student, but all the parent household information is something they're going to submit in the previous step. So don't worry about that. And you would just put one if you are alone. If you have a spouse and you're both going to attend college, that would be two. It's very straightforward. I promise you in the online portal, everything makes sense and it's all chronological. So there's going to be all of these sections and there are like sections where you can just skip or have your parents plug in and fill that in for you. The last thing you're going to have to do is add in all the schools you want to send FAFSA information for. This is so, so, so important. Please make sure you have a list of every school code you're applying to, because if you don't send this form to some school, you might not qualify for the institutional aid for your freshman year, which is a lot of money. It could be so much money because FAFSA is what's used by the institution alongside their tax calculators to determine how much money you're going to get. I'm linking the list of school codes down below. Next section is just going to be questions 102 to 106, where you just say that everything you've written thus far is accurate. You sign and you send it. And it's really important to send it as soon as possible. Like I said, a lot of this aid is first come first serve, so if you know you're someone who might actually qualify for FAFSA aid, that is $6,500 off your tuition if you qualify for that, which is, you know, that's money. So you want to send this out as soon as possible. So that's pretty much everything I would say about FAFSA. It's really important to just make sure that all of the income reported is accurate. That's really the biggest thing. So when it comes to your income and your parents' income, you want to make sure that you're reporting only what needs to be reported and moving over assets to non-reported income if possible. So if you have a contribution for your IRA, which is a retirement account that you can roll money over to, that might be a good thing to do so that your reported income is lower and your non-reported income is higher because they don't see your non-reported income. It's also important to note that if anything changes with FAFSA, if you have to amend anything, or if your financial situation changes in the household between now and starting college, you can always let the institution know and file different amendments to get more aid. So this isn't the end-all be-all. This is just something that you're going to start building your foundation on. And if you do have any additional information to give the school, you can do that by just emailing their financial aid office. But yes, this is pretty much everything you need to know about FAFSA. Thank you so much for watching. If you made it this far, don't forget to smash that like button and subscribe to the channel down below. I post videos about everything you need to know about college and hopefully beyond. So thank you so much and I will see you at the next video. Good luck. Any questions you have, comment them down below. I'm happy to answer them. Thanks.