 In this video, we are going to be discussing the really important question, how are you funding your education? Keep on watching. Hi guys, my name is Shachi and I'm a travel and visa coach. On this channel, you will find tons of useful videos on the US visa process. So make sure to check them out. This is the F1 visa series and this is the third video in this series. Now, we've already had two videos in this series. The first one was about the basics of F1 visa, everything that you need to know before you get started. And the second one was about real F1 visa interview experiences. These are the clients I've personally worked with. So if you haven't checked out these two videos, make sure that you check them out. Now, today's video, the third video is I think a really, really important one. This is all about funding, all about the financial side of F1 visa. Many times I see that F1 visas get rejected not because the funding was inadequate, but because it was presented in a way that it looked it was inadequate or it seemed insufficient. Now, you're going to take care of that in this video and once we are through with this, you're going to be more confident in how to prepare for your financials and also how to present them to the visa officer. So let's get started. So let's start with the first and the most important question. How much funds do I need? And this is also something which is asked very, very frequently. How much funds do I need to show and also in what form should it be? So to understand this, let's start from your I-20. Now, I-20 is the document that the university provides you once you have your admit, once you have your admission. Apart from mentioning the course details and, you know, the name of the program, the university and all these things, I-20 also has something very, very important and that is your financial section. So here's a sample I-20 for you and you can see that in the I-20, there is a table which is made on one side you have the expenses and on the other side you have the means of funding these expenses. So on the expense side usually is mentioned your tuition fees, your living expenses, any other expenses which are there and this gives you the total expense for your education for the first year. A good ballpark would be to make sure that the funding that you have is about 1.3 to 1.5 times of this total expense. So let's say that the total expense for the first year is about 32,000 US dollars, then the funding that you need to have in place should be in the range of about 42,000 US dollars to 50,000 US dollars. This is a good comfortable range and you can show this in your I-20 and also show the same for your visa interview. Now that we've talked about the expense side, let's move to the funding side and discuss what are the types of funding that you can use and the basic idea to keep in mind here is that whatever funding you show should be liquid, that means it should be funds which are easy to withdraw and use from the bank. In financial terms funds which are easy to liquidate. Now what are these liquid funds? Liquid funds are usually sanctioned loans, it can be FDs, it can be your cash in bank balance, it can be mutual funds. All these are financial instruments which are easy to withdraw, easy to withdraw funds from and use. Now the other hand this also raises the question of what are the types of funds that you should avoid showing in your funding and the basic ballpark here is avoid showing funds which are not easy to liquidate. So this includes bonds, similar investments like bonds, anything which is long-term, anything which has a lock-in period, property. Now all these investments are good as backup options but when you talk about your core source of funding, avoid all these things and just stick to the liquid options. This brings us to the second point when it comes to financials and this is to know your numbers. It's really really important that you are very well versed with all the numbers when it comes to your funding, both on the expense side as well as on the funding side. And for this you should know the numbers in both USD as well as INR. So be it your expenses that is your living expense, your tuition, your overall expenses and be it the funding, that the loans that you have, FDs you have, other savings that you have, make sure that you're extremely thorough with these numbers and know them both in USD as well as INR. A good way to prepare for this is to make a table for yourselves. So make two tables, the first one make it for the expense side. So list all the expenses that you have, list the numbers in USD in INR and also know the breakup in percentage terms. Because many times visa officers can ask what percentage of your total expense is your living expense or what percentage of your total funding is coming from these loans. So make sure that you prepare this percentage column as well. Similar to this expense table also prepare a funding table and for the funding table list all your sources of funding, sanctioned loans, FDs, other savings that you might have and again know these numbers in USD and INR and the percentage breakup. So keeping these two tables ready will help you be prepared for any number related questions which can be asked in the interview. Another thing to keep in mind is that often when you're asked about funding there are certain follow-up questions which can be asked. For example, let's say that you are saying that your father is funding your education or your parent is sponsoring you. Then there can be a bunch of follow-up questions such as what is your father's profession, what is his annual income, what was his savings last year and so on and so forth. So also make sure that you are prepared for any follow-up questions which can be asked with respect to your funding sources. So to prepare for this type of questions and many others you can book a consultation session with me. You can also take a mock interview session. Lot of students have been taking these sessions with me and they've found it really really helpful. So you too can benefit from this. The link for this is in the description box below. Do check it out. And this brings us to the third point when it comes to preparing your financials and that is document checklist. So it's really really important to have all the relevant proofs and documents ready when it comes to your financials. And when it comes to financial checklist, the most important documents are usually bank sanction letter, affidavit of support, bank statement, ITR returns and so on. So to make this process easy for you, we have a free financial document checklist. This document checklist is in the description box. There is a link you just need to click that, give your details and then at the end of it, you can download your free financial document checklist. So make sure that you get that checklist and prepare all the documents and keep it in order for your interview. So these are the three important points with respect to funding and preparing the financials for your F1 visa interview. And I'm pretty sure that once you have these three things covered, you will be in a much better state to explain the financials to the visa officer. So I really hope this video has helped you out. If you have any more questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. You can also DM me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is at Shachi.mull. We have an F1 prep course as well and this course will help you prepare and structure the answers for your visa interview. It has tons of sample answers, templates, you know, a lot of good things to help you get ready for the interview. So if you're interested in taking this course, check the link in the description box below. And like I mentioned earlier, you can also book a consultation session with me. It's a one-to-one session or even take a mock or a practice interview with me. So all these good things, all the details are in the description box. Make sure that you check them out. Before you end, I would also like to update everybody on the status of F1 visa interview. So we know that F1 visa interviews in the past few weeks have either been getting cancelled, they've been getting rescheduled and that's because of the current COVID situation. Embassies are again back to functioning at limited capacity. Some of them are even shut for a couple of weeks because of which all this is happening. So if your appointment has got postponed or cancelled, do not panic. It's completely normal. It's happening to all the other students as well. What you can do right now basically is to be a little bit more patient. Keep checking for available slots, available dates. Keep the location flexible. Do not stick to a particular location. Keep it flexible wherever you're getting an interview slot. Just go for it. And in the meantime, stay prepared. Make sure that your DS160 is filled accurately and currently. Make sure that you're prepared for the interview so that as soon as you get an interview slot, you can just jump in, give your interview and get your F1 visa. On this channel, of course, we will continue to bring you more and more useful resources for this. We will continue the F1 visa series. The next video on this series is going to be all about document checklist. So this video will help you be fully prepared for all the documents that you would need for your F1 visa interview. So make sure that you subscribe and press the bell icon so that you don't miss out on this video. That's all for this video. Thank you so much for watching. Stay safe. Take really good care of yourself. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.