7 Essential FAFSA Secrets to Secure Financial Aid for College

hey hey hey what's going on I'm ctis Simmons and one of the biggest questions that parents and students ask me is

cantis how can I find money for college well in this video I'm going to show you 7.25 things that you want to consider

when completing and filling out FAFSA FAFSA is the free applicational federal student aid and in this video I'm G show

you about 7.25 different secrets secrets that you want to consider when completing the financial aid now let me

share this equation with you because not only is financial aid important but being able to pay the bit College

tuition bill and this is the equation that I recommend everyone use when paying the bit College tuition bill all

right so it it goes like this so here's the equation make sure I got the right here

we go GM plus om plus

ym is how we're going to pay for college all right and in this video I'm G to spend some time talking about the GM

okay what's the GM the GM is the government's money okay it's the government's money now we're going to

talk all about financial aid and how to get access to federal funds and then the second way to pay for col is the OM in

the form of other people's money right others money now others money come in two forms

it comes in the forms of scholarships and it comes in the form of student loans now I talk a lot about

scholarships uh one of my bestselling books scholarship Seekers revealed how to locate land and lock down College

funding if you want more information about that hey uh down below you'll see your resource to be able to get uh my

bestselling book on scholarships and the third way that we want to pay for college is

using your money all right your money so if we can't if you don't have the resources for your

money then it's important to utilize other people's money and if you don't have other people's money in the form of

scholarships then it's important that we take advantage of the government's money and in this video I want to show you

show you exactly how to get access to the government's money all right now if we want to get access to the

government's money through something called FAFSA okay FAFSA stands for the free application of federal student aid

all right anytime when we're looking at federal aid FAA is the number one goto because now this is going to put you in

a situation where the federal government is going to be able to communicate to you and let you know how

to get access to some federal funds that are out there you know right now today uh one of the big reasons students don't

go to college and the reason students drop out of college is because of money so let me sh share with you uh these

7.25 things that you want to consider when completing FAFSA all right let me give you these uh

um call them FAFSA Secrets all right let me give you these FAFSA Secrets here's secret number one and by the way uh down

below as well too uh I go more in depth in a free College funding Workshop all about FAFSA all about scholarships and

all about how to use your money uh to plan to save and invest your money and if you want to attend U that free

Workshop hey click the link down below it's my free College funding Workshop uh we do these like every other week and I

want you and your family to be able to jump on uh click the link down below to get access to that all right so here's

FAFSA secret number one FAFSA secret number one is that FAFSA opens between October 1st and December 1st okay now

that's a big big secret right and the reason I share this is because a lot of times people are sort of in l land on

what to do and when it opens now a few years ago FAFSA they the application normally open

up right on October 1st over the last few years they've been having some transition some upgrades some

improvements to it and now it's been pushed further back to like December December 1st all right if you go to

their website student a.gov and maybe I'll pull that up for you here uh student a.gov student a.gov

where it it will give you the let you know exactly when it opens but if you go to student a.gov let me find it

here there we go student aid.gov if you go to this website it'll always have um all the most current information

about FAFSA all right student a.gov studentaid.gov the first thing you want to realize is that it opens between

uh October 1st and December 1st now when we consider FAFSA we must consider FAFSA in three cases all

right School deadlines State deadlines and federal deadlines all right so now when we're

looking at the school deadlines you know the different schools that you're applying to the different schools that

you're considering what are their deadlines when do they open and when do they close all right State deadlines

when do they open when do they close Federal deadlines when do they open and when do they close and in this season

look between October 1st and December 1st for when FAFSA should open all right let me give you secret number two Let me

give you secret number two secret number two is this if we know the opening dates guess what we need to know the closing

dates all right BSA closes June 30th June 30th so if you are a high school senior or a parent of a high school

senior and your student is going through their senior year then guess what we want to

open up uh October to December we want to make sure that things are completed

before June 30th and normally that's the June 30th before your student is going into their freshman year but again we

want to make sure that we understand the deadlines for the school for the

state and the federal so even though the federal aid may be the deadline is junee 30th you want to make sure that you take

the time to really go look at uh the school deadline the state deadline as well as the federal deadlines where this

is concerned okay so that's secret number two that's secret number two here's secret number three complete faps

are early just in case you need to appeal yeah complete faps are early just in case you need to appeal you say

Candace what is an appeal well an appeal is when you as a parent or student you complete FAFSA that's the free

application of federal student aid and you feel like the numbers did not come back in favor of what may be going on in

your household right or you feel like hey I submitted FAFSA submitted you know money to the federal um my application

to the federal government but I don't think this is right or you feel like well we don't make enough

money we don't make any money why do they say that we can't get any financial aid well

if you fall into that situation by completing FAFSA early it gives you the opportunity now

to go in to appeal FAFSA okay it gives you the opportunity to go into appeal FAFSA that means hey you can talk to

somebody uh they're at the federal the federal financial aid office and then now you can be able to give Clarity and

uh specify where you feel like there are some challenges and be able to appeal that okay so secret number three there

is to complete FAFSA early just in case you need to appeal here's secret number four complete FAFSA every single

year regardless yeah complete FAFSA every single year now if you are a high school student or high school senior

going into college or or a parent of a high school senior going into college you want to complete FSA okay okay if

you are a freshman student in college currently you want to complete FAA before your sophomore year if you're a

sophomore student you want to apply for the junior year if you're a junior student you want to apply for the senior

year if you're a senior year you want to make sure that you apply for that FAFSA every single year in which you need the

money you want to make sure that you apply for fafs why because things

change yeah like your financial your financial needs right now wherever may be they may differ next

year even if you make a million dollars a day my encouragement is for you to complete FAFSA every single year even if

you don't think that they were going to give you any money complete FAFSA because I've seen so many families

during the year they may have a loss in their family mother die father die may have a job

loss right you may lose a source of income a business may go under you know a few years ago in the um in 2020 a lot

of things change right and guess what that impact a lot of people's Financial finances and their financial status so

what I want you to do is regardless of what's going on your household complete FAFSA every single year every single

year that you're in college make sure you are completing FAFSA all right here is FAFSA secret number five FAFSA secret

number five FAFSA will also assist with student loans if needed yes FAFSA will assist with student loans if needed now

here's what I mean by this when you complete FAFSA the federal government is going to let you know what federal aid

is out there available for you and how much is um can be appropriated to you and your family now

if you realize that hey based on this school they're giving us some financial aid however there's some money that we

still need Federal by completing the FAFSA it's going to also give you leads and

access to federal student loans okay now there are some private student loans out there that have different rates and

interest rates and different things like that but there are also some federal student loans and when you complete faf

it now puts you in a situation to be able to get access to information on federal student loans of course student

loans are other people's money that you have to pay back okay but you want to complete FAFSA not only that you know

I've even seen that in in certain colleges when they notice that you don't complete

FAFSA they almost assume they don't need the money even for scholarships like if

you're sub and we talk more about that in uh scholarship Seekers revealed but if you

are applying for a scholarship and they look to see that you haven't completed FAFSA guess

what uh they may lean to giving it to somebody else same thing in the actually on the college right when you complete

FASA at a particular college and the college the college's financial aid department is now looking to try to help

bring you more money money and they realize wow you didn't complete FAFSA they typically lean towards giving that

to somebody else okay so secret number five FAFSA will assist with student loans if needed okay so make sure you

complete FAA all right here's secret number six here's Secrets number six you only need a few key pieces of

information on hand to fill out the FAFSA yeah you only need a few key pieces of information now let me go

ahead and give you these four pieces of information um that you need okay here the four the four key pieces of

information that you need all right number one you need

Student income you need

parents income you need

Student assets and you need parent

assets okay in my College funding Workshop I go more in depth on how and different strategies that you can use to

maximize uh your Federal Aid return but when you understand parents income parents assets

and you understand students income students assets there's some strategies that you can now put together because

these are the four most important simple things that FAFSA needs when applying for fa um for financial aid okay so you

want to make sure that uh these key pieces of information are in place you can locate them and then you're going to

use those to complete FS all right number seven number seven you can list up to 20 schools now on the FAFSA

application yeah 20 schools now I think at one time it used to be 10 but here's the beauty of this when you complete

FAFSA you can also let uh the Federal Aid on the application you can communicate to them the 20 like I don't

have all the fingers for like the 20 different schools I guess nobody has 20 fingers right but the 20 different

schools that you are interested in like you're seriously interested in now I believe that as you're shopping for a

college you should also be shopping for money they should go hand in hand right just like when you're looking for a car

right you want to see if a car is a great fit you want to see if the car fit your family but then you want to also

make sure that you can buy a car same thing for house is the house a great fit is it in a great location but then hey

do we have the financing to pay for the house the same thing is true where colleges are concerned and finding money

for college are concerned they go together and so now when you complete FAFSA you can put up to 20 different

schools on your application right now this is a game Cher because now when you seriously

think about the schools that you want to go to schools that uh will help prepare you for your future career schools that

will put you in a uh great place of knowledge and great place of community and be able to enhance your future put

those on the FAFSA application and then once you complete FAFSA FAFSA will be able to show you and give you what they

call a student aid report and now you can see how much money is available to you for each one of these colleges and

then now you have to make a decision based off of money you can see hey this college well federal aid gives me this

much money for this college however I need this amount left over and you can go through that through all 20 schools

to now be able to make a wise decision as far as which college you should go to all right so secret number seven you can

list up to 20 schools on the FAFSA application and here is the 7.25 Secret you must provide tax data

transfer consent and approval so when you complete the fafs remember those four four pieces of

information students's income students assets parents income and parents Assets Now part of that and

the assets and the income is your tax data information and so when we say that you now have to provide consent you got

to provide consent and approval for a few different things so number one when you you know complete your taxes that's

now connected to the IRS we have to give approval and consent that the information the IRS can now transfer to

the FAFSA application so we got to give approval and consent on that then once the information is in IRS

connected to FAFSA and they're now connected now that the FAFSA has the IRS information guess what we have to get a

consent and approval that now this information can now be transferred to the college so the colleges can see

what's on the FAFSA and they'll also see what's connected there with the IRS and then right the colleges they now look at

it on their financial aid report to look to see if there any other scholarships and money that's there all

I'm simply saying now is that if you as a parent if you as a contributor are working and partnering with your student

on financial aid on the spous application you have to give consent so that it can be transferred over at one

time I think it was done automatically now you have to give consent and approval to be able to have that

transfer over okay have that transferred over all right so let me give you these uh 7.25 sequence again number one FAFSA

opens between October 1st December 1st make sure you go to student a.gov go to the website student a.gov th student

a.gov to make sure you have um the deadline when it pops up um f to close is June 30th closes June 30th now

you want to make sure you consider School deadline funds state deadlines as well as Federal deadlines

but make sure you take advantage of that open and close date number three complete FSA early just in case you need

to appeal listen do not wait till the last minute go ahead hit those deadlines get it in do the work and then now if

something pops up you can complete an appeal letter number four complete FAFSA every single year regardless of what's

going on in your household regardless in your family every single year number five FAFSA will also assist with student

loans and it's a probably put on here FAFSA will also assist with uh student scholarships right make sure that you

when you complete FAFSA it's going to also help you not end up in a student loan debt trap because faasa will

clearly tell you what's available out there with federal student loans and how much more you may need if you have to

take the student long route uh number six you only need a few key pieces of information on when completing FS again

federal student uh student index student income student assets parents income parents assets make sure now that you

have those information number seven you can now list up the 20 schools on the application at one time it was 10 now

you could be very strategic looking at the 20 schools that you're seriously interested in put those on application

and 7.25 uh thing there is to give consent so that your taxes and the uh

the information from the IRS that it can be approved to be transferred from the IRS to the FAFSA uh from the FAFSA

application all right listen hopefully you've enjoyed this video now listen I go more in depth in this in my free

College funding Workshop uh this is where I really take the time to break down the government's money how to find

other people's money in the form of scholarships and give you some strategies on how to use your money if

you want to attend that free Workshop click the link down below where I go more in depth on that also down below if

you want to get a copy of my bestselling uh College funding book scholarship Seekers reveal the road map to locate

land and lock down college funds now if you are seriously interested in going in college and want to De it with other

people's money listen click the link down below so you can get access to this and uh I want to be able to help you and

support you pay the bit College tuition bill hey remember this only one game in life counts and that is to play your

aame hey I'm ker Simmons hey check out the next video if you need more help and assistance on succeeding School talk to

you soon bye- bye