 What's happening, guys? It's Shane here. Welcome back to the channel. And today I brought on a very special guest. We are going to be talking about financial aid and getting your education paid for. So I brought on the world's foremost experts in financial aid, the FASTA guru, Tina Steele. So thank you so much for coming on the channel, Tina. Thanks so much for having me, Shane. I'm super excited to talk with all of you today. Yeah, Tina has a really massive following on Facebook. And she's starting to get a pretty big following here on YouTube as well. So definitely check out her YouTube channel. I'll link that in the description below. But yeah, Tina, I wanted to get you on the channel so we could pick your brain about financial aid stuff, because as my followers know, I'm all about getting the most out of college with the least amount of time, effort, and money. So that's kind of what this channel started off with, is kind of teaching people how to get the most out of college with the least amount of time, effort, and money. And you are probably the world's foremost expert on the money part of that. So one thing I wanted to start off right off the bat is some people might be thinking, oh, FASTA, I don't need to apply for that. I'm not going to take out any loans for college. That is one of the most common misconceptions about FASTA. You want to apply for FASTA if you're going to college in the United States, no matter what. It doesn't matter if you're not taking any loans out. It doesn't matter if you're low income or you're the highest income. You want to apply for FASTA, no matter what, because it's automatically going to apply for a bunch of scholarships and grants for you. And you're very likely going to land some of those just right off the bat at the schools that you apply to. So that's one thing I wanted to mention right off the bat. And did you want to add anything to that, by the way, Tina? Yeah, I just think it's so important. I mean, for a couple of reasons other than institutional scholarships that are out there, I recommend that every single student appeal their financial aid offer. 80% of students who file a financial aid appeal will receive additional aid in the form of free money. But in order to do that, you have to get a financial aid offer, which means you have to fill out a FASTA form. And then something might happen during the year where a student decides they need to borrow a loan that they didn't plan on borrowing. So if that FASTA is not on file, they can't do that. So I would just like to kind of add that. Got it. That is a great point. And that is something I think I'll probably ask you about a little bit later on in more detail. But right off the bat, what are the different types of financial aid? So there's a lot of different types of financial aid out there. The first and the most common is federal and state financial aid that students are applying for when they fill out a FASTA form. It comes in the form of grants, which are free based on income, federal work study, which allows students to get a job working on campus and earn a paycheck for the work that they do, and federal student loans, low interest loans that don't have to be paid back until after graduation. And that students apply for by filling out the FASTA form. There's also institutional scholarships, which are free, and it really depends on the college in terms of how much institutional scholarship money they have to offer. Sometimes colleges will require what's called the CSS profile, which is a supplemental financial aid form that they use in order to determine how much of that scholarship money to award. And then another type of financial aid, which often gets overlooked, and I see a lot of students leaving the money money on the table for, are outside scholarships. There are literally thousands and thousands of scholarships out there that students can be applying for, which are separate than the FAFSA, but they don't take the time and effort to do that. So those are the three different types. There's also private education loans, which I typically try to tell students to stay away from, unless it's absolutely necessary. So I'm not a big promoter of those. How does somebody go about applying for financial aid? Somebody's like 17, 18, or maybe they're watching this. They're the parents of somebody who has decided that they're going to go to college. How do they even go about applying for student aid? So the first thing that they need to do is fill out what's called the free application for federal student aid, the FAFSA form, which they can find at FAFSA.gov. Every student that wants to access money to help them pay for college needs to fill this out every single year. And if the student's under 24 years old, so I have a lot of students in high school, high school seniors that I'm working with, they're going to be dependent on their parents information. So the student and parent will need to fill out the FAFSA form. Once they hit 24, they're considered independent and they can actually fill out the FAFSA on their own with just their own information and their spouses if they're married. One little caveat to that, if a student is under 24 years old and they have a child that they're supporting or they're married or they're a veteran of the armed forces or they were homeless within the last year or they were in foster care or emancipated, then they do not need parent information on the FAFSA form. Got it. And is financial aid available for any career out there that anybody would want to get into? So not every career. Financial aid is offered at institutions that are eligible for Title IV funds. But there are a lot of like two-year colleges out there that offer shorter term training programs like certificates and two-year degrees where students can actually access financial aid. And then in addition to the four year, the two and four year colleges, there's something known as proprietary schools, which tend to be shorter term training programs where students are earning like a certificate program. You know, things that come to mind are like medical coding and billing, things like that, even truck driving school, different computer certifications, you know, cosmetology school where students can actually access financial aid to pay for the program. So provided the school is eligible for Title IV funds, then you can apply for financial aid. Got it. And what can students do if they apply for financial aid and maybe they don't get enough scholarships, grants, and money? Do they have any options at that point? So there's two things which I briefly mentioned a couple of moments ago. The first is they should be applying for outside scholarships every single year consistently throughout the year. There are scholarships out there that are available for students ages 13 and older. So high school freshmen, sophomores, and juniors can be doing this all through high school and then senior year. That's the most important year. You want to, I recommend students apply for three to five scholarships each and every month if they're serious about, you know, really closing that financial aid gap. And then once they go off to college, they can continue actually applying for scholarships each year they're in school. So searching and applying for outside scholarships would be the first thing that they can do. The second I mentioned a few minutes ago is appealing their financial aid offers. As I said, 80% of students who file a financial aid appeal will receive additional aid in the form of free money. And there's a myth out there that in order to do this, students have to have special circumstances such as reduced income or something like that. And that's not the case. I would say probably 75% of the families I help with that process don't have any special circumstances. They are just humbly asking the financial aid office for additional money because the college is out of reach financially. There's a strategic way to write a letter and some specific things that should be included in a financial aid appeal. So those are the two things that I would recommend. Got it. Yeah. And just a second what you said there. I've worked with a bunch of different students who, you know, they go on these websites like Fastweb, for instance, and they apply for a bunch of these scholarships. And like you said, I mean, it might be $1,000 here, $1,500 there, but especially if you start applying early, if you're, you know, early on in high school, there's a lot of scholarships that only freshmen in high school can apply for. And then a lot that only sophomores can apply for. And I've seen a ton of different examples of people who do these, you know, writing competitions, the scholarships that you apply for, etc. And they just get all of their college paid for, like right off the bat. And one of the cool things, I don't know if this is technically what people are supposed to do, but sometimes they just straight up give you a check, right? So if you want to go buy a new MacBook, you want to buy a new nice computer, something like that, you can do that. I think that don't maybe, you know, maybe I shouldn't say, I don't know if you're technically No, you're right. You're right. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, for education related expenses, which can be a lot of things. So yeah, some, some, some scholarship organizations will just send a check to the student. You're yep, 100% correct about that. I may or may not have bought a MacBook in 2011, when I got a scholarship, possibly that lasted me almost 10 years. Yeah, yeah. So that may or may not have happened. But what about for part time students? Can part time students still apply for financial aid? Yeah, so as long as you're pursuing six credits a semester, which is typically two classes, you can apply for financial aid that will help you pay for college. So a lot of non traditional students will pursue, you know, school part time, maybe because they're raising families or they have full time jobs. But yes, absolutely. Got it. And then what would you say? Like, what are your favorite sources for applying for scholarships out there? Are there any particular ones that are kind of like the low hanging fruit, you know, you notice people get a lot of a lot of value out of? Sure. Yeah. You know, the first thing I want to say with scholarship searching, I think one of the biggest mistakes students make is they go for the ones that they're trying to get the biggest bang for their butt. So they're applying for the 10,000, 20,000, $30,000 scholarships that are going to have a lot of competition. The best scholarship students can be applying for tend to be around $3,000 or less because they're not as competitive. If students are applying for thought, you know, they receive $5, $2,000 scholarships, that's $10,000. So some of the best resources that I see are scholarships.com. That's a great website that I really like. There is a search directory feature at the top of the page that students can use to actually search for scholarships by category. Another one that I like is called MyScolly.com, and it's MySCHOLLY.com. That one does cost $7.99 a month to be a part of, but I highly recommend it. I've seen a lot of students that are accessing some really great scholarship resources and having a lot of luck receiving them from that website. Then if there's any high school seniors watching this, they want to check with their high school guidance office of their high school for local scholarships. There's a ton of local resources that students miss out on because they're not searching for them. And then lastly, your state's higher education agency. So every state has a Department of Education along with a state higher education agency of the state that you live in. So just Google whatever state you live in. I'm in Maine, for example, Maine State Higher Education Agency. Once you get to that website, type in scholarships and it will pull up a resource listing of scholarships for residents of that state. So those are probably the four best resources for scholarship searching. Got it. And one thing I think that scares a lot of students off is the fact that a lot of these scholarships, you do have to write short essays for usually they're like a page, maybe two pages typically. And what I tell those people is typically it's going to be the same like five to 10 prompts over and over again. And once you've written an essay, you can maybe make a few little changes to it and then just submit it to the other scholarship or essay competition that you're applying for. So after you've done the hard work of writing those first five to 10, you know, one to two page essays, it's pretty much smooth sailing from there. And yeah, I've seen people have tons of success with those like 500 to $3,000 scholarships. I mean, it's just it's really easy to make money. I had one student add up the amount of time that he spent applying for the scholarships and then dividing like dividing the amount of money he made by that time. And he was making around the same amount as a doctor, essentially. You know, the other thing they can do is really chunk down their time. You know, I recommend an hour and a half each week on searching for scholarships. How many hours do we all spend on our phones? You know, take 30 minutes, you know, three times a week and focus on applying for a scholarship. Absolutely. It's super easy to do. It's basically free money for people because there's just not that many people doing it. And the one website you mentioned with the paywall, I would say that's probably even a better opportunity because a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm not going to pay for it. Well, that's just a barrier to entry for you. Yeah. Pay for it. It's going to make things even, you know, quite a bit easier for you, probably. Right. So what about somebody who has divorced or separated parents? I know that can be a little bit complicated. So what is your advice to people who are in that situation? This is where I probably see some of the most mistakes being made on the FAFSA. So if your parents are divorced or separated, only one parent needs to fill out the FAFSA form. And this would be the parent with whom the child resided with most within the last year. If the child was 50-50 with both parents, then it would be the parent who provided more than half of the child's support. So a lot of times students think or parents think because they filed a joint tax return in the prior year, even though they're separated and not living in the same household, that they have to fill out the FAFSA together. But that's not the case. Basically, what I would recommend is not using the IRS data retrieval tool, because you don't want to pull in that joint tax return. You want to enter the information manually and just pull out your income to enter on the FAFSA form. And then the other thing I'd like to add, if that parent is remarried, then they do have to put their current spouse's information on the FAFSA form, which stinks, I know, when it's a set parent, but it's just kind of the way that it goes. But yeah, only one parent needs to fill out the FAFSA form. It's not the case for any student that might be applying to colleges that require the CSS profile. Most colleges will require a custodial and a non-custodial profile form from both parents, even if they're divorced or separated. So something to kind of keep in mind. Got it. And then what about if a student is maybe not financially connected to their parents, like they're emancipated or they're just not financially connected? I guess that would be like independent. That's what they'd put on their FAFSA form. So what about those people? Well, that can be a little bit tricky. If there's a situation where they are like legally emancipated, then they can automatically be considered independent on the FAFSA and not provide parent information. Otherwise, if it's like in a strange situation or they're just not living at home and they're fully self-supporting, the only way around not reporting parents' information would be to contact the financial aid office directly and talk to them about their options. Sometimes financial aid offices can do what's called professional judgment and push those students through as independent. But usually in order for that to happen, there has to be an extreme situation going on in the home, such as documented abuse or estrangement for different reasons and things like that. It's not like a shoe-in. It can be a little bit more challenging to kind of be considered independent when you're dependent. Got it. And then I found you because I recommend the career explorer test to so many people. And then at the end of the test year, you were actually on that page. And then I was looking through your content and you had a lot of awesome stories and stuff on your page of people that you've helped get college paid for. So that's really awesome that you're doing that, helping them navigate just this crazy financial aid system that we have in the U.S. with college. It definitely takes a lot of expertise because I know that stuff changes all the time too. Like I have trouble staying on top of it. So if people want to find you, I know you also offer a free training as well. If people want to find you, I'm guessing I'll probably have a link which I'll put down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. And we don't have the link set up right now, but we'll set up a link to where it goes to the free training. Is there any other places that they could find you? Yes. So they can go to my website, thefafsaguru.com. All of my information about the programs and services that I provide are there. I also offer a free initial 10-minute consult call for anybody that I've never worked with before. And then YouTube is a great place to have a lot of videos there with free information. People can find me there. Got it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on again, Tina. I'm sure a lot of people will probably have questions and they can put them down in the comments below. I know if you have time, maybe if you read the comments, you could go down there and answer them. If not, I'll try to get to them as well. But yeah, if you have any questions, definitely leave them down below and we'll try to get to them. And yeah, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, Shane. I appreciate it.