 I'm also very happy to now introduce Trista Kaiser who is here from the Student Financial Planning Office at Columbia University. We'll take take us into the next session, which is about really the university's student financial services. Thank you so much, Stefan. Good morning everybody. My name is Trista and as Stefan mentioned, I'd have the pleasure of chatting with you today from Student Financial Services. We also have today with us one of my colleagues from Student Financial Planning, Mikayla Ann Gefford. I'm going to go ahead and introduce her very briefly. She works with our architecture students in Student Financial Planning, which is your financial aid office, and she's actually going to start off this portion of the session for us to talk a little bit about the financial aid and things. And after she has the opportunity to do that, I'm going to come back and share a little bit more related to the financial wellness component of things, kind of putting all the knowledge that we have into action so that we have a really nice successful time when we get started. Mikayla, please. Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Mikayla Ann Gefford from the Office of Student Financial Planning. My colleague, Maryon Concilio will be. Oh, okay, so she's just joined us. She will be supporting answering any questions you'll have in the chat. Well, it's a minute before 11, I guess everyone's here already. Well, let me just get started. I will share my screen in a second. Sorry, Maryon and Mikayla, we, you know, we're doing this sort of smooth transition from one from one session to the next. We can also wait, we can also wait a minute or two just to make sure that people who are joining just specifically for the session also have a chance to connect. Okay, sure. But I will maybe I'll bridge that by by we were speaking in the last hour about sort of the way that GSAP is that's a relatively small school right one of the smaller schools within a very large university. And so a lot of the student services that we provide through Sarah through Emily and myself and other offices at GSAP is really directly in support of students, but in many areas we work. We work hand in hand with our colleagues across the university. We're talking about the immunization requirements and university health, who really manages all of all of those aspects, and in a similar way we work very closely with the student financial services office and our colleagues and student financial planning on things that that will be discussed now such as such as advising and and loan processing. And also manages all of the payments tuition bills. Those are not managed directly by GSAP so it's, it will take it will take a while maybe to unpack the nuances and hopefully our incoming students don't need to worry about the details sort of the back of house too much. The first point of contact we're always very happy. Sarah and I are very happy to be a first point of contact for everyone, but we will often we will often redirect you depending on the situation that you're asking about or working through, we will direct you to some of our colleagues across the university who manage different aspects of the student experience. So with that, I'll use that as a sort of transition and introduction. Thanks, Michaela. Alright, let me share my screen. Okay, so today we're just going to have a bit of a session in regards to financial aid and resources. So this presentation will focus on mainly federal aid, private loans and any external scholarships that you may apply for while at your time on the university, we're not going to go specifically into any institutional scholarships in this section. Okay, so how we start off is with your total cost of attendance so your total cost of attendance is what we estimate with your at your time at the university, what you will expect to pay. So this may include direct costs, which will be tuition and any fees that you may have such as the university services fee, the health services fee technology fee, the document fee, of course fee and medical insurance. If you're an international student you are required to have medical insurance while at your time at Columbia. If you are a domestic students. You are not required to have university insurance, but you may have your own health insurance in that charge may be waived. If you have qualifying health insurance on your own. And we also will provide in your total cost of attendance indirect costs. So this is costs indirectly related to your education, you will not receive a bill specifically from Columbia 40 indirect costs with an asterisk being living expenses. If you decide to dorm on campus you will receive a charge in your bill in regards to that, but other indirect costs will include books and supplies transportation and personal expenses loan fees will get into that a bit later. So your total cost of attendance as compared to any personal expenses that you may have personal expenses will be the direct personal expense that you will have at your time at the university. Those are your actual costs so anything that you may have rents, entertainment personal expenses. Those are specific to your choices that you make while on campus, any geographical location so where you decide you want to dorm. Any personal choices that you may have. Meanwhile, your total cost of attendance is what we estimate those expenses will be so your personal expenses may differ from your total cost of attendance. So, when we give you your total cost of attendance that in regards to any institutional federal private loans you may take out, you may take out only the maximum up to your cost of attendance. This may include any federal aid and other resources that we have available to you so that will include any private loan scholarships employee reimbursements. If you're being sponsored by a third party payment plans and if you are a military student receiving military benefits that aid will be included military benefits also has a bit of an asterisk next to that as well. So we will begin with federal aid. In order to be eligible for federal aid you must be a US citizen or an eligible non citizen. There are other groups that are deemed eligible for federal aid. If you're unsure of your status you can always reach out to the Office of Student Financial Planning with any documentation that you may have and we can always review it and go over it to make sure that you can to determine your eligibility of right or not you will be eligible for federal aid or not. While filing your FAFSA, you should have your social security number on hand. You may also, you must also be enrolled as a regular student in at least a half time status, which most of you shouldn't have an issue with. Going towards an eligible degree program or a certificate program or a certificate program and you must also maintain satisfactory academic progress. So when it comes to federal student aid, as a graduate student, you're basically only eligible for the federal student loans and possibly work study. So this is different from any age you may have received as an undergraduate student if you filled out your FAFSA previously. So as a graduate student you're not eligible for any PEL or the SEOG grants, but rather it would just be the federal unsubsidized loan and the graduate plus loan and possibly work study. So, in order to complete the FAFSA application you'll log into studentaid.gov to complete the FAFSA. Either log in or start there. If you have not completed the FAFSA previously for students that are enrolling in the 23-24 academic year, you should complete a 23-24 FAFSA. For students that are beginning, that includes for students that are beginning this summer and you must have your 2021 income information on hand. So the application is currently available as of October 1, 2022. So if you have not filled out your FAFSA application already, you should do so as soon as possible. So in filing your FAFSA, you must have the information that's stated on the left side of the screen. So you should have our school code listed is 002707. You should have your social security number. Mind you, the social security number must and your name must match what is currently on your social security card. So if you've had a change of name for whatever reason, you must update that with the Social Security Administration Office and obtain a new social security card or else that would lead into delays with your FAFSA processing. If you are a permanent resident, you must have a permanent resident number. This may be found on your permanent residence card for older students. It may be called an alien registration number as well. They are both the same. You will have your driver's license. You must have your 2021 tax return, any financial records for the asset section of the FAFSA. So if you have investments, cryptocurrency, that will also be recorded on your FAFSA application. And you must have your FSA ID in order to log in to complete the FAFSA application. And you can obtain that by either logging into the application if you have been a previous FAFSA filer before, or if you have not filed a FAFSA previously, you will also, you will create an account once you log into StudentAid.gov. So when it comes to federal aid, the first loan, once we receive your FAFSA, we will package you with the unsubsidized loan in order to obtain your subsidized loan. You must be at least in a half-time status. So for all students in the School of Architecture, that will be six credits. You must also continue to meet the satisfactory academic progress. So or SAP for short, that means that you are on course or on par to obtain your degree or certificate in a reasonable amount of time. Once you, once you have been packaged with the unsub, you can also complete the entrance counseling and master promissory note for the unsubsidized loan. Once those forms can be found on StudentAid.gov, you must log in with your FAFSA ID in order to complete that. Once you have graduated from the university, you will complete an exit counseling, which will go over your loan servicer and how exactly you will repay back your loan. If you also drop below full-time whilst at your time at the university, you must also complete the exit counseling or if you go on a health related leave of absence or any sort of leave of absence for an extended period of time, this must be completed. As a graduate student, you are eligible for up to 20,500 per the academic year. Some students may be eligible for more in the unsubsidized loan per year. That will depend on their enrollment status throughout the year. But the maximum amount that a student can receive in the unsubsidized loan for their lifetime as a student is $138,500 for most graduate or professional level students. With the unsubsidized loan, interest will accrue for the loan once that loan disperses onto your account and it will compound monthly until that loan is paid off. The interest rate for the loan is 6.54% for any loans that have been dispersed between July 1, 2022 and June 30 of 2023. That number is set to change, but we will get the interest rates for loans for loans being first dispersed after June, after July 1, 2023, sometime in July. And when we do originate the loan, there is a loan fee of 1.057% for loans. So that is that origination fee is deducted at the time of disbursement, or so for example, a loan of $10,250 say that you are enrolling for the fall semester and that is the amount of the unsubsidized loan that you want. That is the maximum amount you can receive for the fall semester. The loan fee of $108 will be deducted, resulting in a loan of $10,142 being dispersed onto your student account, and you can review that through SSOL. So the second federal loan that you'll be eligible for is the Graduate Plus loan. Using technical terms, both the Graduate Plus loan and the unsubsidized loans are both unsubsidized loans, which are loans that accrue interest whilst you are in school. One of the differences between these two loans is that with the Graduate Plus loan, there is no annual or lifetime aggregate borrowing limit so you can borrow as much of the Plus loan as you want to. However, for an academic year, the amount of the Plus loan cannot exceed your total cost of attendance for a term or for the academic year. In interest rates with the Plus loan, it is 7.54% for any loans that have been dispersed after July 1, 2022, 2021. The origination fee for Plus loans is 4.2 to 8% for any loans that have been dispersed after October 1, 2020. For example, if you decide to take out a Plus loan for $10,000, the loan fee of $422 will be deducted at the time of disbursement, leaving an amount of the loan of 9,578. When it comes to repayment of the loan, it is the gross amount of the loan that you will be repaying. So, for the previous examples, and if you're reviewing your total loans on student8.gov, you will see an amount of $10,000 for the Plus loan and $10,250 for the unsubsidized loans. In regards to Graduate Plus loan, some eligibility requirements are needed. So, when you decide that you want a Plus loan, the Department of Ed will run a credit check on you. Most students are deemed eligible for the Graduate Plus loan, as long as they do not have adverse credit or just really, really terrible credit. And for those students who have terrible credit or are denied a Plus loan, they will need to either do a credit appeal for the Plus loan, or they will need to apply for the loan using an endorser. So, say that you know that you don't have great credit and you would like to apply for the loan using an endorser. You must apply for the loan individually first, that loan must be denied, and then you will be able to have an endorser apply for the loan for you. So an endorser is someone who will, if you cannot pay back your Plus loan for whatever reason, the endorser must pay back the funds for the loan. In order to obtain the Graduate Plus loan, you will need to fill out a form on our website. If you have tried previously in order to obtain a Plus loan through studentaid.gov, you may receive an error message saying that Columbia University has not signed up for the Plus loan. The link to the form is just that we have not signed up for a student applying for the Plus loan through studentaid.gov. They must complete the form with the university. The link to the form is seen on the slide. You will complete the 2023-2024 Graduate Plus loan request form. There is a PDF copy and also a link available for that form. You must also complete the entrance counseling and the master promissory note for the Graduate Plus loan. Please note that the entrance counseling and the promissory note differs from the one for the unsubsidized loan. So in total, if you are completing both the unsubsidized loan and the Graduate Plus loan, you must complete a total of four separate forms for obtaining both of the loans. So shifting away from federal loans will move on to private loans. So if you are not eligible for any federal aid, there's a possibility that you can obtain a private loan. This is both for students that are domestic and for international students. Private loans generally require a credit check and for most students, they require a co-signer. For most loans, most private loans in the United States, they require for the holder to have a U.S. address and for the co-signer to also have a U.S. address as well. There are some exceptions to that rule. There are some private loan providers that will give out loans to international students and they do not need a co-signer. However, the interest rates for those loans, the repayment options may differ. The interest rates, the fees and the lending repayment terms are determined per lender. So if you do decide to take out a private loan, it is highly suggested that you run your research first to determine what is the best loan option for you before making a decision on whether or not you want to utilize a private loan or a federal loan. You can always contact the lender if you have any specific questions in regards to loan, the terms of the loan. So if you do decide to utilize a private loan, you do have a link. It's called Elm Select. This link provides some suggested lenders by the university in some loans that you can potentially take out while at your time here. The maximum amount of the private loan a student can take out is up to their total cost of attendance or it can be another limit that is set by the lender. So if you decide to take out a private loan and you show to your lender that your total cost of attendance is $60,000 for the academic year, your lender may decide that that is the maximum amount of the loan you can take out for the academic year. So a common question that students ask is what's the difference between a graduate plus loan and the private loan or what is the benefit between the two? I would respond that it depends on what your situation is. So if you are an international student, you definitely will not be eligible for the graduate plus loan. So the private loan will be your best option. But if you are a domestic student, I would say that you can consider both the graduate plus loan and the private loan. Just do your research to figure out what the best option is for you. So graduate plus loans usually have a fixed interest rate. Meanwhile, with private loans, the interest rate can be variable, depending on the terms. So payment options can also differ between both the graduate plus loan and the private loan. You may be able to defer your payments when it comes to the plus loan for whatever reason. Say that you graduated but you have not found a job yet. You may be able to defer your loan payments or have your monthly loan payments reduced. The graduate plus loan, usually it takes a longer time to pay back the loan. So if you need more than 10 years in order to pay back your loan, then the graduate plus loan may be the better option for you as the private loan may require for you to pay back your loan within two to three years, depending on the terms of the loan. So, but both of these loans do require credit check. The slide shows the same information here. So again, when it comes to either taking out a graduate plus loan or private loan just always do your research and make sure that you decide what the best option is for you. You may also be eligible for federal work study so eligibility for federal work study depends on your income information that is placed on the FAFSA. You must be at least six credits in order to be eligible for work study. If you are deemed eligible to obtain work study, you must also meet satisfactory academic progress. And if you are eligible for work study, you may earn up to $4,000 per year. There are some programs in the School of Architecture that have a different maximum amount of $3,000 per academic year when it comes to work study. You must also check off on your FAFSA application. I believe it's question 19 on the FAFSA that you are interested in federal work study in order to be considered for work study. So work study is also on a first come first serve basis. So if you received your financial aid award package letter and work study is not listed on there, there is a potential that you can be deemed eligible for work study later on, but that will most likely be after the semester started. Last thing is that work study funds are paid directly to you to your bank account that is listed on file and it's not, you're not going to see it on your on your bill. Okay, so when it comes to processing times for all aid. Once the amount of time that it takes from you completing your FAFSA application to the time that it takes for loans to be dispersed onto your account. It also that depends on the time that you follow your FAFSA, but it may take up to two weeks in order for any federal direct loan request to be processed. It may take longer depending on the lender, but for in to generalize it may take up to two weeks for both federal and private loans to be dispersed onto your account for students that have completed their FAFSA already. Aid will be dispersed and for the fall semester aid will be dispersed about one week before classes begin. So communications will be sent out by the university to students if we are missing any documentation, or if there are any errors in processing we will always contact you to let you know any information that we need additional from you. So we always like to suggest to students sense processing of federal and private loans may take a while. It's highly crucial that you always have some savings leftover in case you have any emergency expenses or necessary expenses you need before classes start. This usually will happen with students at the beginning of the semester. We strongly recommend that students have at least one to two months of living expenses saved up, just in case there is any issues in processing with your loan or for whatever reason your loan takes longer than the two weeks in order to process, because we say this because at the beginning of the fall and the spring semesters refunds will take around two weeks to process because our refunds office is processing funds for all students of the university. So students may not receive their refund as quickly as they anticipate. So that's why it's always very crucial to have funds saved up and plus letting you know living in New York is not cheap. You need, you definitely definitely need money saved up for for living expenses, just letting you know, like, right off the bat. So to go into refunds. Refunds will typically not occur until after the start of the term. So that's why it's crucial to have fun saved up. If you are missing any documentation or if you're selected for federal verification, and you haven't completed it yet, and school has started then that will definitely delay payment of your refund. If you decide to utilize say both the federal unsubsidized loan and the graduate plus loan or if you're taking out a private loans for over your total tuition and fees, and you are deemed eligible for refund, then the refund process will occur where first the funds will pay into your student account and will go towards any direct tuition and fees, then stay around two weeks later, you should receive either by check or by direct deposit direct deposit is faster with any excess funds. So, if you do have any questions in regards to refunds, then you can always contact the student service center. They are having issues with putting in your banking information through SSOL or Virgil as is now called. When it comes to federal repayment options. There are several different federal repayment options that are available to you this will be mentioned more when it comes to your exit counseling and once you graduate the school. But in general, repayment options repayment of your loan begins six months after you graduate or withdraw from the university or drop or drop below a half time status. There are various options reveal available such as the ferment of the loan or forbearance, which is a temporary postponement of the loan based on your individual circumstances. Payment repayment option or an income driven repayment options or pay as you go pay as you earn repayment options so the standard is the standard amount of payment that you're supposed to pay back to the lender. As compared to an income driven repayment options which those the payment per month that you are required to pay back maybe lower based on the amount of income that you receive. If you donate that gov there is a repayment calculator so you can always estimate the amount of your monthly payments when it comes to returning your loan. Okay, so not everyone wants to take out a federal or private loan because in this day and age. It's ridiculous, but there are always external scholarship options available to you. There are scholarship options available to students who are international. I know a common thing we get is students that are international that are looking for scholarship options and they have a hard time finding options for them because the options are geared towards students that currently reside in the United States. So, these links contain some information in regards to research opportunities and international scholarships. So you can always cruise through this at your leisure. So here is our contact information we are located in True 10 Kent Hall when if you do decide to visit us please enter through the side with the wheelchair ramp. You will come to our office there will be signs that contain information in regards to how to sign in. When you do visit us. You will see some kiosk with iPads. Please sign in using the iPad. There are some offices that do not in our department in our office space that do not utilize the Envoy app using the iPad but general services. So you can utilize the Envoy app. So once you do sign in you'll sign in with your name your email and one of my colleagues or myself will always be available to answer any questions that you may have. Another option within our office is the Office of Military and Veteran Affairs. I am in both of these offices if you need to speak with me in regards to any federal aid. And if you are a dependent of a veteran student or if you are a veteran student yourself can always contact me and my colleague Anne Marie in that office. Again, once you come in you will sign in in the iPad. It will be the Office of Military and Veteran Affairs and myself or my colleague will always come and ask it and answer any questions you may have. Our contact information is also there. We are available Monday through Fridays from 9am to 5pm. And you can always email us. We will try to get back to you as soon as possible in regards to any questions that you may have in regards to any federal aid, private loans or veterans aid. Okay, so that is the end of my part. Before I pass it over to Trista, I'll leave it open for any questions that you may have that haven't been answered yet. A quick question. Is there, so does the university or is there a loan that family like students with families get for childcare or for subsidized accommodation at the school? So the loans that we give out to students, well, the university, we don't have like any institutional loans, but the loans that the amount of the loan that is given out to you is based off of your total cost of attendance. So we expect that you will have tuition and fees, living expenses like room and board, food, transportation, any personal expenses. So if you are taking out a federal or private loan and you need the funds for that sort of thing, you will receive those funds, those excess funds in a refund. So to understand them, the childcare is considered as living expenses. Okay, so if you have specific childcare expenses, that for whatever reason, like if you take out your total amount of the loan, what we can also do for you is review your budget. So we can only do that if you're taking out the maximum amount of the loan already. So what is the maximum amount of the loan? The maximum amount is up to your total cost of attendance. So I'm going to use a general number for students that are most students are in the School of Architecture, their total cost of attendance, the amount of their budget that we have for 2324 is around $110,000. Okay, $110,000, I apologize for that. So if you've taken out all of the amount of the loan and then say that you need extra funds for childcare, what we can do is review your budget and we can potentially increase it due to your childcare expenses. So you would need to provide documentation that will show how much you pay in childcare. And based on the documentation that you submit, if you're eligible for a budget increase, we can increase your budget and then you can take out more of the federal or more of a private loan in order to cover your childcare expenses. And the eligibility is depending on what? The eligibility. So it depends on what exactly is submitted into your form. So it will be the date of, it will be the date of that these expenses occur that we will just make sure that that that your expenses are deemed like worthy of a budget increase. But if that is an option that you want to pursue, first submit to us any documentation that you will have and we will go through it, and we'll always be in contact with you if we have any questions, or if we need any additional information for you. And what about the subsidized accommodation for, is there any particular scheme for families or No, so each graduate student is eligible up to 20,500 is not like it's not dependent is not dependent on whether or not you have a family or whatnot. It's that's just the amount of the loan that graduate students are eligible for for it. Okay, sorry for the accommodation you mean right. I mean for for the loan itself. You're seeking subsidized housing because you have a family. That's something that you might have to talk about with the housing department to see if they offer something like that. To the best of my knowledge there is on on and off campus housing that's available for people with families, but it's pretty, you know, standard rates so you would be being charged rents once per month. Now if you need. I'm sorry, you said you weren't international student. I am. No, I'm not international. You're a domestic student so then that's what Michaela is referencing that you can utilize the unsubsidized graduate loan for 20,500, and then you can utilize the graduate plus loan to cover any remaining expenses. And because the graduate plus loan goes up to your cost of attendance, you should have enough money that you're receiving as a credit or as a refunds so that you can then pay your housing that you're, you know, if you're being paid bills housing through the university, then you'll receive that charge once per month and you can take the money that you received in the beginning of the semester to go ahead each month and pay your balance. Whereas, I really can't speak to subsidized housing in terms of more like a more affordable housing situation. You know, because you have a family I don't know that that's an option, but of course it does definitely doesn't hurt to discuss that with the housing department. Okay, and that is a, is it part of the SFS email address if we sent an email there. That's the best one but I can I'll locate that email address and I can drop it in the chat. Thank you so much. No problem. I think we have time for one more question and perhaps Mary and Michaela can answer the additional questions through the chat so that we can welcome Trista to start off her presentation. One more question. If I claim as independent but didn't have 2022 tax return. How can I apply for FAFSA. Okay, so your fast application is dependent on your 2021 tax return. If you didn't file tax return, a tax return in 2021 you will indicate on the FAFSA that you did not follow tax return. Thank you Michaela and Marion and they will be here to answer any additional questions in the chat. And I'd like to welcome Trista Kaiser right now to present the second part of this presentation. Hi Trista Sarah. Hi Sarah and good morning good afternoon good evening to everybody depending on where you are. Every time I say that I think about the movie the Truman show I can't get it out of my head. My name is Trista as has been mentioned a few times and I'm one of those employees that works in the central offices of the university so as far as our role here today, I'm kind of here to compliment some of what Michaela shared with you already and using the information that's there to really get prepared for school from the concept of you know just preparing your finances. As I said, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. If you have questions first and foremost please feel free to put them into the chat. If you see me looking to the side it's just because I'm trying to be mindful of what questions are coming through so we can take them as they go on. If I miss anything, I will absolutely be happy to take it as we go. For now though, let's talk a little bit about kind of our finances in a different way we're going to talk a little bit about financial well being right and when we think about financial well being or financial wellness. It's more or less a state of being where you have control over your day to day and month to month finances, you have the capacity to absorb a financial shock. You're on track to meet your financial goals, and you have the financial freedom to make the choices that allow you to enjoy life. So, when we think about our finances certainly you know as we're talking about preparing for school and even as we start to think about this term conversation, we often think about finances is a little cold right it's very kind of black and white. You know it's a, it's a statistical kind of thing. And for some of us numbers aren't always the most fun thing in the world, however, our finances are so closely tied to so many other dimensions of our well being, including those that we define a university spiritual emotional intellectual career relational physical, and then of course financial, which is where we come in. We want to make sure that we think of our finances holistically within our well being as well right because we want to make sure that we're in a place where we're building successful opportunities right and we want to be prepared for what could potentially come down the pike as it does. Now, in order to get to a place where we have that sense of financial freedom we then have to kind of think well, how do I do that, we need to set a skills right and that's where financial literacy comes in. We're just basically knowing when and how to find reliable information to make a financial decision, knowing how to process financial information to make a sound financial decisions so not just knowing stuff but knowing how to apply it. And then knowing how to execute financial decisions, adapting is necessary to stay on track, which is really important right. We know that things can change over time so we don't ever want to put ourselves in a position where we're thinking statically we need to be aware of the chance that things will need to be flexible. Now, looking at these two things next to each other we have financial wellness which is having having having financial literacy which is knowing knowing knowing how do we bridge that gap. That's what we're seeing at the bottom of this slide so in addition to that knowledge component and financial literacy there's also an action component, the ability to put your financial knowledge to use. One of the ways that we seek to help you do this at the university. The next slide is through some of the tools that we offer to you so as a student at the university and that means after you've ultimately accepted, you're deciding that you're coming and as Stefan noted to earlier in the session. For those of us that were here at that point you have your university network idea your uni and you're able to log in and check your email. You will have access to the financial literacy is no cost financial. The university's financial literacy no cost platform. I grad excuse me that didn't want to come out. Again, this is a platform that's loaded with different types of financial literacy and education content to help support you in one understanding your finances while you're at school and preparing for it but to throughout your lifetime. It's got information like articles quizzes. Start your guides for a whole bunch of different topics webinars and some of my favorite things that just came out with your mindfulness tools, all designed to help you better understand the information you need to be successful as far as your financial endeavors go. You have access to this as I mentioned as soon as you have the opportunity to log in to your university email, and you'll be able to create your free account by going to Columbia I grad calm. A lot of what we talked about in the presentation today is coming directly from I grad so if we can chat about it you can know it by going into I grad I like to do that so that you know you have access to these resources as well. There's also a few things in here that aren't explicitly tied to I grad and don't have any cost associated with them so you have those tools available to you to. I always like to talk a little bit about budgeting in our sessions, especially when we're talking about preparing for school right. If we think about some of what Michaela shared earlier the idea that we want to have a month to two months worth of expenses saved as far as our finances go and ready to go because you know disbursement for our federal student aid and private student loans. And most of our funding typically won't happen until we get really close to the start of the term that we're starting school in and refunds take a little bit longer after that. I'm pretty sure we're prepared for some of the costs that we may experience in the time that we're waiting for those things to happen right so we talk about it in that context, and also because it's this wonderful opportunity to really practice something that we're going to need throughout our lifetimes right. This is concept of self efficacy budgeting by itself it's not fun right nobody wants to do it. Certainly don't love doing it but at the same time, I really really enjoy what happens when I do right you put the effort into it, and it can be a really meaningful practice that helps you get towards your goals. The idea here is that this is a cycle right we're going to do it more than once this is just one iteration of how we will do this. And by doing that we do two things one, we have this practice and we start progressing towards the sense of self advocacy once we see we can do it, we know we can do it. Our goals for today include understanding needs and wants, knowing your income and expenses, defining and prioritizing your goals, developing and assessing a spending plan and then how we stick to it, and apply it a little bit more directly as a student. So the first piece of this then is understanding our needs and wants and respectively what our goals are right when we think about needs. They're pretty easy to understanding concept right they're just basic things that are necessary for survival. Now, what happens, unfortunately is we are not all the same people and all of those words can be understood subjectively right basic is subjective necessary is subjective survival depending on where we are in life is subjective right so we need to make sure that we understand what's important to us in that context. There's kind of many different things, including you know your values your beliefs the way that you interpret the information that you have financially as a result of those things, and then how you enact behavior in response to your finances right. But the other side of that coin is if we don't find that we need it after kind of assessing you know individual expenses and deciding whether or not it's important to us and if it's going to be defined as a need given our current circumstances. So once we do that we can see things that don't fall in that bucket and reframe them right those that are wants things that we desire to make our lives more satisfying, but do not need today. And what that allows us to do if we think about it that way is turn any want that we have into a goal something we can plan for a good example of that could certainly be planning for those expenses before school one to two months in advance right. That certainly could be a goal if you want to have a certain amount of money set aside for that. We're actually going to see a little bit more practical examples on how you might come up with that too. As far as goals go there are several different time periods in which you might experience a goal. For example short term is anything a week to six months which again that one to two month saving amount is a really good example of that. And the other thing I'd like to reiterate is when we think about goals in general we don't want want to just kind of say I have a goal therefore I will go and achieve it. We need them to be something that we can actually metric and understand right they have to be specific measurable achievable relevant something that's important to us not other people and then time bound it has some type of deadline attached to it right. These are important because we need all of this information to fully understand our goals right if I say I want to save one to two months of expenses. I need to know exactly how much those expenses are that would be specific I need to know how much time I have to accomplish that that's where measurable comes in. Is it realistic to get to the amount that I want time frame I've given myself is where achievable comes in. And deadline of course the most important part of a deadline because it can potentially change is the promise that you're actually going to finish right it's the concept of having a deadline and saying it's important enough to me to make sure I'm tracking toward it. It can always change if necessary but you want to start by having one. Now as I alluded to, in order to do this effectively right we can't really think about goals until we understand what resources we have to accomplish them, we have to understand our income and expenses right. And to do that we want to think about a period in which we want to evaluate the amount of our income and expenses, if we have not done that before right, or if things are going to be changing. Yeah, if we're going to be kind of let's say maybe leaving school, and you know kind of transitioning, excuse me leaving a job and then transitioning to school for example that's a big difference or even just going from undergraduate graduate just understanding your expenses in a new capacity can be really challenging so you might be reevaluating for that reason. But within that context, you want to pick a time period to evaluate that makes sense for you whether it's two weeks a month certainly could be a semester as you go down the line. So for students the idea of kind of getting funding all at once at the beginning of a term and then needing to have it last for four to five months over a period can be really challenging. And make sure you're looking for anything exceptional that happens that you wouldn't usually experience during that timeframe, it being almost April now the US tax deadlines coming up. So tax money owed or refunds is a good example of things that don't happen all the time. We need to be aware of them but they're not part of our typical expenses right. And from there, once you have that information you're going to track simply just what happened money in money out over the period of time that you allotted for. Now the tool that you're seeing here on the screen is I grads a daily income and expense diary, and this is one option that you have for doing this type of tracking. In this instance, this is a tool that's available to you now it's free. You don't need to have an I grad account just yet to go and get it. But the idea is kind of what you're seeing at the bottom right hand side of the screen it's just a spreadsheet that you open up and has day 123456 all the way through the days of the month. And respectively there's columns for several different types of expenses within larger kind of categories so home expenses we can see there's things like utilities TV and internet groceries we have things like health and wellness are savings. And it also allows you to put the income components in as well right whether you're working and have income or if you're looking at other types of support like student loans, you'd list that. And the idea is if on day one you get paid that's exactly what you put on the first of the month of day two you're going to go buy coffee you put that in the expense column in the appropriate place. And as you go through this on and on and on. In this case it's for 31 days. At the end of it you get something like we see on the left hand side of the screen it's this aggregate of what actually happened over that period of time right. For me, I'm pretty visual so I tend to like looking at the pie chart that's in the middle of the screen it's easy to look at right in this example we can see there's a big bunch over there that's all one color just that blue that's there. So, if I'm looking at this I see that something throughout this period of time was the predominant amount of my expenses right what was it in this case you know it's a little hard to see on the screen. For this person it's housing right it's their home expenses in this area as Michaela alluded to that's not all that strange it can be costly to live in this area so that might not be too concerning as long as you know you find your meeting your other expenses. So I'm pretty much out of that. If this is let's say debt that would be very concerning if it was over 50% of what we had right that means we need to start looking and making some changes on the other side of that. This could also just be kind of fun money that we have available right money that we didn't really allocate to anything but it's there and we have it and maybe we did or didn't spend it on something wonderful just because it's there and we could. So that's what that money be doing for us, let's say we have a goal like saving a certain amount you have before school, then this might be somewhere we can make some adjustments right so the idea here is to just better understand where your money is actually going. And the other component of it is you can start to see on the daily side of things the ebbs and flows of your finances as well right things that could potentially set you off track or things that can be really meaningful in understanding the way you engage with your finances. And that will then have information about what our current expenses are will also have an idea what our goals are and if we can potentially achieve them. The next piece of this is to move away from that word budget and then go a little closer to the concept of a spending plan right and what that spending plan does it represents your current resources, your current expenses, and the direction your money will take and the goals you hope to achieve right so we think back to financial well being earlier in the conversation that sense of being able to make choices about the freedom that we want within the context of our finances. This is why we talk about spending plans because it also gets that sense of warm fuzzy future goodness, if you want to think of it that way. So, to do that, we're going to be kind of echoing what we did in the know know our income and expenses side of things but we're going to incorporate that future component by estimating projected expenses and income as realistically and comprehensively as possible and there's a couple different tools that are out there to help you do that. So over quite a bit in just a moment, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics has information on occupational earnings so what you might potentially earn in a given area based on the type of job you are pursuing. They also have information about consumer price index which isn't dollar for dollar cost on things rather it's a percentage based adjustment on what they call a basket of goods which is just certain types of really common consumer expenses. One of the ways that can be really helpful is you can kind of see how things are trending over time right has expenses have certain expenses gone up and do I need to then make adjustments as a result. Move.org kind of has a little bit more on the actual dollar for dollar side of things as far as utility expenses go and I grad has a plethora of things that you can use as soon as you get set up with the university to help better understand the amount of money that you have and what it could be looking like in the future. So here, you're going to start taking the information that you have and develop your spending plan making sure that you're meeting those immediate needs that you have first, and then prioritizing the goals that you have and I've identified for yourself as well. There's a couple different platforms that exist for doing that and for managing your expenses right and again you can use whatever makes the most sense for you. I grad has a lot of great tools to do that, including the one that I already showed you on the screen a few moments ago that daily income expense diary also linked on that screen they have another version of it that's designed to work over a year so it takes the monthly concept, instead of being daily and puts it into a month and you can analyze over a year which can be really helpful. They also have an in platform tool that's got some dynamic stuff attached to it that you can use to kind of see your expenses over time. So that's listed here as well. So there's things like you know the apps that you can get on the phone. Some people prefer to use things like spreadsheets it's really just about what works for you. If you see that you're struggling in this process don't assume that it's that you're not good at it. Try another tool right look at another approach on this is again it's a practice and it sounds so trivial when we think about finances, but it is right we can't get good at unless we do it more than once so going through this process is going to make your life a lot easier in the context of setting up your good financial habits over time, but also in preparing for your education. And then lastly, arguably the hardest stick to it right you're spending plan truly and honestly as a promise it's that it's what you say you're going to do. It's a promise to yourself. In order to see how you know you're you're engaging and making progress towards that promise and actually tracking, you need to evaluate it every once in a while right, and then understand what is or isn't working and what might potentially set you off track. And to do that you're just asking questions right how well did you stick to this plan. Did you struggle. Did you not struggle. If so where, and were you successful right what did we learn from one area that we can apply to another there shouldn't just be a negative experience and or at all a negative experience positive right we are learning things as we go through this process. And the benefit of doing that is we start to gain a little bit more control over our finances right. Certainly when we're getting ready for school there's a lot of questions right now we're looking at life transitions that can be a little bit make us a little nervous right. One of the things we can do is be prepared, and that gives us this opportunity to control some of the things that could be the most concerning for us you know those things that might have financial consequences. And part of this I really do like to focus on is that self reflection is so so crucial. Largely because we can't assume that what we're tracking on today is going to be what's right for us tomorrow right the only way we can do that is by looking at the information available to us. So we want to look at it often, not every day of course that's certainly not comfortable, but whatever timeframe makes the most sense for you, and then reflect on it and see what needs to change be flexible in the process. Now just to touch on it very quickly these are some of the tools that are available in iGrad to help you do that. The first of which is there your money personality tool so if you're the type of person that doesn't have a great familiarity with the way that your behaviors and your personality may influence financial decision making for you. This can be a really great tool to better understand what it gives a it's a basically a personality based assessment where you ask a couple of really simple questions and at the end of it. And I still a lovely about 40 page booklet that tells you all of these interesting things about the way your personality may influence how you engage with finances. Having done this myself, I can tell you it's it felt very accurate to me. This is actually a snapshot of my example here on the screen, and you'll notice that they give you more than just, you know, this is what it is for you it's this is what it is and this is how this could be a strength for you. This is what it is and this is how you might see yourself finding challenges right in my case they indicated that you know for the challenge side of things that I might be a little bit more susceptible to tricky advertising or impulse shopping. Very true. It was like looking in a mirror when I took this but they didn't just leave it there. They also then said what could you do with that information one of the recommendations slow down take a beat before you buy. You can then use that and apply it to the way that you live your life for me it was during the pandemic the number of brown boxes that were accumulating. Realized I was just buying because it was easy to buy and have things shipped at that point right so I was able to catch that and put a plan in place to try and stop myself. In addition to that they also have some really interesting mindfulness things that you can utilize and again finances and mindfulness don't always feel super friendly with each other. I like using some of those tools in conjunction with the budgeting tools that we went over right the idea being let's say we're looking at our daily income and expenses and we track them over time. If we've been journaling throughout that time we can use the information from our financial journal and put it next to that tracking mechanism and go, Wow, that was not such a great time of the month for me and then look over there and see that maybe our expenses went up or down in a way we hadn't expected right that can help you identify some of the things that may be going on with your finances as well. With that being said how do we then apply this to today right the things that we're hoping to accomplish in the next month to two months as we prepare for school right. We want to be proactive that's the biggest thing that I can say in this presentation that you take away, we want to make sure we're looking at this ahead of time. The best way to limit the amount of money that you're paying for school certainly when it comes into the context of loans and debt is to only borrow what you need right. We're really tempting to borrow more than you need in loans, certainly if you know it's being offered to you. We'll talk a little bit about cost of attendance again in the moment which Michaela did a nice job of sharing with us on as well. Here we want to make sure we're looking at what is accurate for us right use the tools that we've talked about today to determine how much additional assistance we might need in a loan in order to actually fund ourselves appropriately. We want to make sure we're looking for those non repayable alternatives first, like the scholarship resources that were chatted about earlier on, we actually have some really nice scholarship resources here as well. And then from there, I also want to make sure I reiterate that it's important that you are looking at trusted resources right you don't ever want to look at an opportunity where we're looking at scholarships. For example, if you have to pay to apply it's probably not trustworthy don't look there, but to help you on that front. There are some really great tools as well and we'll see one of them in just a moment. Now, a few other things to consider your cost of attendance as Michaela mentioned is information that can be really helpful in planning our school expenses right. Basically, if we know that that's information that alludes to the amount school costs that means that can be helpful in accurately projecting what school should cost so that's a really great way to start that process. If you have options at the university to help you minimize your borrowing. For example, there is a no cost payment plan, except minus an enrollment fee, but it's no interest or anything like that. And if you have the capability to do that, that's money that you then may not have to borrow if you were previously thinking you would. And of course look again at your resources right certainly in your budget if there's anything you might be able to change to really accomplish the goal that's more important because we're prioritizing our goals or education might be the priority right now, as opposed to some of the other expenses we have where we need to account for that right. So again, how do we start then putting that all in practice right as Michaela did a really good job explaining before our cost of attendance is a representation of school related financial obligations for the period of time that you're in school. And it's based on those average reasonable costs for the area, and it's directly related to attending school right where your actual expenses that stuff that we see as we evaluate a little different. Those are your actual financial obligations based on all those individual things that are attached to you, including things that may not include school related expenses so good example. Most subscription plans right the video services that we have and things like that, not a school expense, but does it fall into something you have to pay for. Yes, so we need to bridge the gap between these two things. So good news cost of attendance is again a way that we can start to do that right if we look to the right hand side of the screen we can see kind of the key items that we're supposed to include in our budget and again for planning some expenses. This can be really helpful in doing that we see housing utilities transportation food medical insurance telecommunications and recurring memberships listed there right not everything. There's certainly many things on the left. This is a snapshot of what you might see when you get your award offer award letter from student financial planning if you're planning on, you know, utilizing assistance through them. And you'll see there's a couple areas where there's a lot of overlap right we see medical insurance we have living expenses listed there we have personal expenses. So we can use the information from one in conjunction with what we did in our, you know, our evaluation and what we know our expenses to be to project how much we need in the future. Before I was going to share a fantastic scholarship resource and I am this is actually I grad scholarship search engine. There's a link to it on this particular slide, which this will be made available to you after the session as well. And we also have a nice little three minute or so walkthrough video that you can look at for how to use this tool, but it's really simple. So you can go to the website, which will be again it's linked on this slide. You can go ahead and either start searching for scholarship opportunities using their search box you can also choose to sort in a way that makes the most sense for you. You have the capability to save things and go back to it later but the best part of this is that you're looking in an area where I grad has done the work as far as vetting these opportunities for you. So it's something that they maintain regularly, and they have information and directly linked to where you can apply for that scholarship that you're interested in, just by clicking on the apply now option that's there. In addition to that, you also have the capability to really filter down your results as well. So for example, if you are a, whether you're an international student or domestic student, there are citizenship filters you can put in here as to whether or citizenship is a requirement that can help you narrow the field down a little bit. And there's also a way to choose the type of school that you're going to so as a graduate student going to a graduate school you can indicate that right. So that you're looking at those opportunities that may be most meaningful for you. Now, in addition to that a few other resources that have been touched on very briefly. And the reason I bring it up here is that one of the ways we want to try and minimize our debt is just by being aware of it, right. So if you think about things like student loans, certainly over time, we don't ever really see them their pieces of paper that get passed back and forth with information about what's happening on our behalf right, we don't see the money go anywhere which means it can feel a little bit different. It doesn't really work quite the same way credit cards work the same way for example, a lot of people will tend to buy things more than they really in thought they were going to not realizing how much they're spending. So it's really important, just make sure you're watching what you're borrowing if you're borrowing right and you can use that student need.gov website to do that if you have federal loans. In addition to that as Michaela mentioned they have their federal student loan simulator which can help you look at a couple of different things as far as what you're borrowing, you can look at different repayment strategies with your goals in mind. For example, you can choose a loan strategy that is, you know, for paying things back fastest, if you're struggling with loan payment, and you can simulate more borrowing right it'll take anything you have on the federal side of things. That's already there and you can choose to add more if you wish. Okay. In addition to that I grad also has their student loan snapshot and you can use that tool as an international or domestic student for international students you can manually add your borrowing if you are borrowing loans there and it can help you see kind of the repayment information associated with that. So if you have any estimates you always want to make sure you're going to your individual lender for that type of information for anything specific, but it could be helpful in the context of just a more generalized idea. And for a federal student loan buyer where you can actually take some of the information that's available from student.gov and then put it right into iGrad if it would be easier for you to look at there. My favorite thing about it is in the iGrad component it'll remind you every once in a while that maybe you want to put information in there prompts you to look at it right just something so you're aware. If you find yourself borrowing private loans, there isn't a central repository for where to unfortunately view all of that information beyond reviewing your credit report, which you can do annually at no cost at annual credit report. One thing I will say is even if you've applied for private loans and throughout your education you've used one specific lender over time, I would still highly recommend looking at that credit report for the information. Why mistakes can happen, there might be information and that that's not accurate or, you know, for, for people that are a little bit more disingenuous we, we could be concerned about fraud right or you know identity theft. The only way that you'll know that somebody might have borrowed something on your behalf at a lender you're unfamiliar with is by looking at that credit report so it's really important to look there, in addition to any opportunities the lender provides you directly. So just real quickly this is kind of to show you what iGrad looks like. This is meant to show you just how you navigate around platform. On the left hand side of the screen is kind of their main navigation menu, they have information there about recommendations as well as looking at your financial outlook. They have just recently implemented gamification into the platform which is really kind of cool they give you monthly tasks that you can work through, but of course you can always just search for content right. The main dashboard has this header at the top where if you go to the topic section it'll show you all these different topics that you could look at from A to Z as far as your finances go and also the different courses tools and other types of content that iGrad has available to you, as the example in this hub is right next to it. My personal favorite way of looking for things in iGrad is just to use the search bar. It's got a phenomenal search engine so you know you type in something like a loan and you'll get tons of results that you can kind of sort through and look there and then of course be more specific if you would like to do that. But with that being said I know I went a little bit over time I want to thank those of you that could stay. And also Michaela thank you so much for sharing the scholarship website for iGrad I appreciate it. With that being said though did anybody have any questions that they might care to ask at this point. All right, it's not something that you cannot ask later. You'll see my contact information is listed here on the screen I'm available at financial wellness at columbia.edu. Important to note, I am not in your financial aid office their student financial planning their contact information is here for you as well so financial aid related questions and financing questions are there. Anything that I can help with as far as you know just more financial literacy, financial wellness and understanding iGrad I'm happy to do that for you. Thank you for our quote on the screen will actually take you to a full walkthrough video of iGrad so you can get a little bit more familiar with it if you'd like to.