Get any two parents of college-bound teens together and the topic of financial aid is likely to come up. Every parent dreams of their son or daughter getting a free ride to college. It happens, but it takes some real determination and planning.

Mark Kantrowitz, the founder of FinAid, left that nationally recognized website last year to create a new online resource at Edvisors.com for parents and students to help them learn how to pay for college.

Topics covered

Here are some of the topics that you’ll find by spending time on Edvisors:

• Student Aid Secrets for Increasing Eligibility
• Eligibility Requirements for Financial Aid
• Federal College Grants
• How To Choose a Student Loan
• Finding and Applying for Scholarships
• Paying Back Parent and Student Federal Loans
• Military Student Aid

Free Guide to Filing the FAFSA

On the Edvisors’ website, you can also download a free copy of  Filing the FAFSA:  The Edvisors Guide to Completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid 2014-2015 Edition.

To download Filing the FAFSA you will have to provide information that will put you on Edvisors’ newsletter list, but you can always opt out if you prefer. As an alternative, you can also buy the 249-page paperback version on Amazon.

Education Tax Benefits

There is a section of the website that contains an excellent and informative explanation of federal education tax benefits. The section describes each tax benefit, and teaches you which are the optimal education tax benefits for your family:  Picking the Best Mix of Education Tax Credits and Benefits.

Asking for help

The site gives you an opportunity to post your financial aid questions in a section of the website entitled, Ask the Edvisors. You can also view previously asked questions and the answers provided by the site’s founder Mark Kantrowitz.

Spend some time navigating the site and discover valuable information regarding paying for your student’s college education.

Parents and students are always looking for ways to determine the cost of college. It’s even more important as costs keep rising and with increasing student debt loads, families need more help than ever when making a college decision and determining the true cost of college.

Enter CostofLearning.com

With CostofLearning.com, a user simply selects one or more colleges and a chart appears showing Expected Family Contribution on one axis and the net cost on the other. The free service requires no inputting of personal financial information or registration.

Jimmy Becker, CostofLearning.com CEO, says “We have developed the first universal net price calculator that allows families to compare college pricing in a way they have never been able to before. With CostofLearning.com, what used to be a slow, financially intrusive, and confusing process, is now fast, clear and simple. Most importantly, families get transparency into net pricing.”

How does it work?

CostofLearning.com aggregates multiple data sources and uses proprietary data analysis and modeling to ensure accurate results. Until now, these data sources have never been combined in such a visual and easy-to-use format.

“CostofLearning.com’s universal net price calculator reveals facts about schools that users may find surprising,” Rachel Okin, M. Ed, Founder of Okin College Match, and a college admission consultant. “Depending on a family’s financial status and state of residency, sometimes the college that a student expects to be the least expensive turns out not to be and vice versa.  The CostofLearning.com web app is a great tool to help families realize there are colleges they may not have thought they could afford that they actually can. I recommend it as part of the college search process.”

In addition, users can adjust for out-of-state vs. in-state tuitions as well as find more in-depth information such as endowment size, admissions statistics, test scores, graduation rates and more.

Every day parents complain about the high cost of college and the fact that even though they have saved, it’s not going to be enough to cover present day costs. When the kids enter high school, most parents begin to panic. The time has slipped away from them and they are faced with some difficult decisions. The thought of disappointing their kids seems unfathomable and the thought of telling their family and friends that they can’t afford to send their kids to college is even worse.

Consequently, we exhibit behavior that has devastating consequences for us and for our kids:

• We make unwise decisions related to student loans
• We neglect to tell our kids “no” when a college is beyond our ability to pay
• We don’t include our kids in the financial aspects of the decision in the beginning

I read a post by Lynn O’Shaughnessy on The College Solution blog entitled “We are Done Paying for College”– it made me stop and think: what are our priorities as parents? Lynn and her husband began planning when their kids were little. They scrimped and saved and prepared for the day when they would go to college. It required sacrifice and commitment. But they did it and can say that their kids graduated without any student loan debt. You owe it to yourself to read her post, even if your kids are already in high school. It’s a definite wakeup call for all parents of college-bound teens.

Step back and evaluate

What are your priorities? Is college important enough for you to make some sacrifices? This means financial sacrifices and sacrifices of your time.

Make a plan and stick to it

If paying for college means driving an older model car for a few years, do it. If you need to supplement your education savings by taking on a second job and insisting your kids work during high school, make it work. If your family has to forgo some vacations, a new home, or a eating out often, it’s worth the sacrifice. But whatever you decide, make a plan and stick to it.

Be creative and think outside the box

There are so many creative ways to attain a college degree. Your kid isn’t bound to the typical four-year University or attending four consecutive years in a row. It’s also not necessarily essential that they attend college right out of high school. Do whatever it takes to attain the degree without debt and causing the family financial hardship.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the college prep process. You should evaluate your priorities and ask yourself some tough questions. It may sting in the beginning but once you’ve examined your options, you’ll sleep easier and so will your kids.

As the offers of admission arrive, the financial aid award letters will follow. If you’re a novice to the award letters, as most first time college parents are, they can be confusing and vague. Added to the confusion is that every award letter is different, making it hard to easily compare them side by side.

Thankfully, there are tools available and information to help you look at these letters for what they are: the college’s pitch for your student to accept their offer of admission. You are in control of this process and you hold the cards. It’s your decision to accept or reject their offer based on the amount of aid they are willing to give your student. Money, in this situation, is everything.

If a college wants your student to attend, they will back it up with money. No money, means their offer is probably based on filling a quota and them expecting you will decline to attend. And you should. Who wants to attend a college that doesn’t place value in your student?

But before you accept, reject, or negotiate with the college, you need to understand the award letter and its components.

Want to know more? Read an article I wrote for TeenLife:

How to Break Down the Financial Aid Award Letter

Financial aid can be confusing for parents and students. From scholarships, to loans, to 529 funding, it can be an overwhelming process.

Student financial aid comes in all shapes and sizes – and one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to paying for college. With many different student loans to choose from, finding the optimal path to college funding can be tricky. eStudent Loans created this graphic to help those who need more than just scholarships and grants to fund their education and fund it in a way that will help save you money.

So, if you’re one of the thousands of students that are not sure where to start, relax. Simply use their financial aid flowchart to help you explore nearly every possible option available to help you cover the costs of earning your college degree. At the same time, they also show you the order in which you should pursue each funding source.

Financial Aid Flowchart: A Guide for Students Paying for College from eStudentLoan

Download the interactive Financial Aid Flowchart

-photo courtesy of Zinch

For seniors, the New Year brings those long-awaited college decisions: deferred, accepted, rejected, and wait listed. One knowledgeable college counselor once told me, “I don’t like to call these letters of acceptance. I use the term—offers of admission.”

As a parent, I like that distinction. This alternative wording makes it easier to stomach those not-so-pleasant responses and help your college-bound teen work through the gamut of emotions that come when decisions arrive.

Your student may be the one receiving these communications from the colleges, but you feel every emotion they do from failure to excitement and everything in between. But unless you understand what each term means, it’s hard to know how to help your student (and yourself) with appropriate responses and proper action.

When the letters from the colleges (or online notifications) arrive, your student will receive one of four responses: deferred, wait-listed, rejected (declined admission) or accepted (offered admission). Once you understand these terms, you can determine what your response should be and how you need to take action.

Read more from Zinch: You’ve Heard from the Colleges–Now What?

The FAFSA, based upon my 12 years of experience in working with college-bound high school students and their families, is a document that elicits terror and confusion. However, it really doesn’t have to be this way. I tell parents that the FAFSA really is simply an admission ticket to be considered for a wide range of college, state, and federal financial aid. In fact, parents can’t even qualify for any federal loans unless they fill out the FAFSA. If you don’t fill out the FAFSA, from a purely federal loan perspective, you don’t exist as a financial aid applicant to the federal government or the colleges.

The FAFSA website, surprisingly, is an excellent resource for most commonly-asked questions about how to complete the form. The form itself is remarkably user-friendly; if you fill it out electronically, which is how most families do it nowadays, the system will actually alert you to any potential errors when you’re entering information.

Rather than focus upon the mechanical aspects about the FAFSA, let me highlight two key general tips on the twin 500-pound gorillas of the federal loan world: subsidized and unsubsidized loans. These are the federal student loans that are frequently obtained via the FAFSA.

Subsidized student loans

Obviously a student would prefer a scholarship as opposed to a loan, but if you’re going to need a loan – and chances are you’re almost certainly going to have to borrow some money – then subsidized federal loans are the way to go. Interest rates are currently 3.86%, and the best part about these loans is that you don’t know owe any money or any interest until six months after you graduate (or fall below half-time status). And when I say graduate, I mean from your final degree program. Let’s say, for example, that you pursue a bachelors, Masters, and law degree without any breaks. You would only be responsible to repay the subsidized student loan six months after graduation from law school – even if you got your only subsidized student loan as a freshman in college. Even if you are able to fully pay for your college education, if you are offered a subsidized student loan why in the world would you not take it? It’s interest-free until your six-month grace period after graduation is over, in which case you can simply repay the loan in full, without penalty. In the meantime, your family would be able to invest that money in ways that (hopefully) generate income while the student is in college. If you truly do need the money, it’s nice to know that no interest is accumulating in the background while you are pursuing your studies.

In short, I can honestly think of no logical reason why a student wouldn’t accept the maximum in subsidized student loan funding for a given academic year.

Unsubsidized student loan

As the name implies, there are no taxpayer dollars going to pay off the interest while the student is in school. However, the student will not be expected to pay interest on the loan during his or her college, graduate, or professional education. Nonetheless, lurking in the background is the fact that unsubsidized loans are generating interest, and that they will have to be repaid six months after the student graduates (or falls below half-time status).

Why would someone take out these loans you might ask?

Well, unsubsidized student loans are still generally a better product than private sector loans. The interest rates are, like the subsidized student loans at the time of this writing, at 3.86% — clearly a better interest rate than what most private banks offer.

There’s another reason why I’m a fan of both the unsubsidized and subsidized loans from Uncle Sam. Let’s say a student gets into trouble and has a hard time repaying the lender. Although the federal government will expect full repayment – and forget about declaring bankruptcy to extinguish federal, state or private student loans because it’s virtually impossible to do so – in my experience the federal government will work more closely and more fairly with a delinquent applicant than will a private bank.

So when in doubt, take the federal loans as opposed to a private loan. They are both great loan programs and are the two loans most undergraduates will be offered if they and their parents complete the FAFSA.

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About the Author

Today’s guest post is  from Jason Lum, the founder of ScholarEdge College Consulting.  Jason has won over $250,000 scholarships and graduated debt free.  Jason has helped students gain admission to some of the top universities in the country including Harvard, Yale and Stanford.  Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Photo courtesy of Zinch.com

Yes. It’s that time in the college prep process–FAFSA time! If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that you can’t ignore the FAFSA, there are good reasons to file, and who fills out the FAFSA. As far as I’m concerned, your application is not complete without this financial aid form.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) became publicly available January 1st. For those new to the process, it is an annual form that is completed by current and prospective college students to determine eligibility for federal financial aid.

While filing your FAFSA is considered the Step #1 for those in need of financial aid, it can often seem like an intimidating task to undertake.  One of the biggest hurdles to approaching this form is understanding what materials are needed beforehand to prepare for filing.

Taking a deeper look, Zinch gives a list of the absolute must-haves to file the FAFSA.

The most important advice I can give parents is: don’t ignore the FAFSA! Many parents are misinformed when it comes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). They believe that they make too much money to qualify for any kind of financial aid—and they decide not to file. That is the worst mistake you can make. I encourage every family of a college-bound senior complete the FAFSA (and complete it before February 1).

Why should you complete the FAFSA?

College is expensive and it’s a chance for you to grab yourself a piece of the financial aid pie.

Why should you complete it by February 1st?

The early bird gets the worm when it comes to financial aid. If you want your piece of the pie, you have to be the first in line. Once financial aid packages are disbursed, the money is gone and that means your student’s financial aid package will be composed of student loans only. If your form is filed and completed once the decision for admission is made it puts your student in a good position to receive some of those funds.

What can the FAFSA do for you and your college-bound teen?

There could be federal, state and college funds available. If you don’t complete the FAFSA, you won’t be able to get any of them. Even if your family income is high and you might not qualify for federal aid in the form of grants, your student might be eligible for state scholarships and merit-aid awards from the college. Additionally, any federally subsidized loans, including parent loans, require you to complete the FAFSA.

What should you do if you haven’t filed your taxes before FAFSA filing?

It’s simple. Use last year’s tax figures and update once you file. Don’t wait to file the FAFSA until after you file your taxes.

Why do some people tell you that you won’t qualify for financial aid?

The easy answer is they are misinformed. Remember there are all kinds of financial aid. While not everyone will qualify for federal grants, most students receive some form of financial aid. If you don’t apply your student will not be one of them.

With all the content on my blog, it’s easy to miss the posts that you want to see the most. In today’s post I’ve compiled a short list of my top five posts about financing college.

Mom-Approved Tips: Talking to your teens about financing college

As their parent, it’s up to you to make sure they don’t fall prey to debt that they cannot repay after grduation. Before they ever accept an offer of admission, you need to talk to them about financing college. In my Parents Countdown to College Crash Course I call it “the money talk”.

Financing college no matter what your income level

If you have kids, then chances are you’ve already thought about college affordability and how or if you’ll be able meet the expenses associated with higher education. But you shouldn’t allow the worry of college costs to consume your life.  There are many practical and successful ways to pay for college (without drowning in debt) no matter what your income level may be.

10 Ways to attend college for free (or almost free)

As students begin applying to colleges, and juniors begin narrowing down their college choices, consider that there are many options available that allow your student to attend college for free (or almost free), excluding expenses like books, fees, and possibly room and board. But free tuition is nothing to scoff at. Many of these colleges cost upwards of $100,000 for four years.

College savings plans

No matter where you are in the college prep process, saving, and knowing how and what to save can be difficult to understand. Depending on your situation and the amount of time you have to save, here are some excellent resources that will help you understand college savings plans.

Making college affordable

It’s a confusing process–figuring out how to pay for college. Not only is it stressful, but it’s overwhelming trying to understand all the ins and outs of everything to do with financing a college education. In two separate projects, two women are doing their part in making college affordable while graduating without debt or minimal debt.