FAP896: Credit cards, jobcast, mail bag, TONS of free stuff

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Weekly Financial Aid Roundup

Major changes to credit cards including student credit cards coming as soon as 90 days away.

The usual roundup of diminishing funds.

Also, W-2s and 1099s should be in, so get your taxes done and get your FAFSA filed.

Oh yeah, and new President of the United States.

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Jobcast

Doing something different with your resume.

News You Can Use

Go grab our old meditation episode if you missed it last year.

We also talked this week about economic stress and how to deal with it.

Mail Bag

Kim writes:

I have a question about my taxes and the affect on the FAFSA - Question 85.
I was laid off in May and am getting unemployment, so meet the dislocated worker definition. I earned $24,000 in my job, and I also received $16,000 in unemployment. There is no way I can get my AGI below $30,000, but if I take the Hope Credit off the front end, it would lower my AGI to $36,000 however I would lose about $1,200 in refunds.

I met with a tax advisor today, but am not sure which way to go. Counting my daughter’s tuition on the front of the 1040 will reduce the AGI, but not below $30,000 to qualify for zero EFC. How much difference will it make to the EFC if my AGI is $32,000, $36,000 or $40,000? With any of those as the AGI, would she qualify for a Pell Grant? Or am I better off to take the tuition as a deduction on the second page of the 1040, and get the refund?

Not being a tax expert, what I’d recommend is that you feed the two scenarios into the government’s official FAFSA forecaster. This will give you an estimated EFC based on the FAFSA data you provide and you can then judge if the difference in EFC merits the tax refund loss. My instinctive guess (and it’s a guess) is that the refund is worth more than the EFC change, but try out the forecaster and see what it says.

Free Stuff Friday

There’s a lot of valuable stuff in this week’s show. Just to be clear, everything in here is 100% legal - so when I mention a free audiobook or something, the offer is legit and not from some sketchy MP3 site in Lower East Dragonblight or wherever software pirates do their work.

+ Watch Lost plus other network television on your Mac or Apple TV live
+ Free Dark Chocolate Raspberry something or other from Quaker Oats
+ Free federal tax prep and filing from TaxAct
+ Free Dora potty training kit from Pampers
+ Free microwave popcorn from Orville
+ College Goal Sunday in a lot of places this weekend, including Massachusetts
+ No knead pizza dough for DIY pizza - and believe me, it’s tasty AND saves you money
+ 7 Habits of Highly Effective People audiobook for free!
+ Have I flogged our free eBooks enough?
+ Near Providence, Rhode Island? NewBCamp is February 8, and there are free tickets available. I’ll be speaking.
+ Speaking of conferences, check out the Pixelated Business Marketing Conference In a Box. It’s great speakers’ sessions for free.

Free Song of the Week

Black Lab, Ghost In Your Mind

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5 most recent Financial Aid Podcast posts

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Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Online degrees programs and directories at Edvisors.com
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit PrivateStudentLoans.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Send me your comments, questions, and feedback using this handy contact form!

Still on the road today, attending the last day of the MASFAA financial aid conference. Some insights from yesterday…

The state of Massachusetts so far has not cut budgets for financial aid for FY09, which is good news for Massachusetts students. That said, with the current economic pressures, that status is not guaranteed in the coming year. At the same time, Massachusetts colleges, especially public and community colleges, are reporting record enrollments. One community college leader reported that they were bursting at the seams, saying that enrollments were challenging their resources.

At a regional update, many financial aid administrators reported they are starting to receive more appeals for financial aid than normal in the last two weeks. Students are asking for more aid because of economic pressures on their families.

There were a ton of debt numbers with regard to college students in the financial literacy session. A few select ones:

- Over 60% of first year college students max out their first credit card within a year.
- Indebted adults between 18-24 pay on average 30 cents of every dollar earned on debt.
- Over 1/3 of college students graduate with $10K or more in credit card debt. Not student loans - credit card debt.
- Over 25% of college students regularly pay late fees on credit cards.

During a conversation about scholarships, one of my colleagues pointed out that 2008 scholarships and endowments were already funded at the end of 2007, which means that 2008 scholarships are largely unaffected by the economy. Not so for 2009 - so expect scholarship hunting to be a lot more competitive, with many more students chasing potentially fewer dollars. Be prepared for this by hunting now - add December 31 to your scholarship search queries to see if you can round up some last end-of-year scholarships now.

Finally, this coming year is going to be one in which you’ll need a good relationship with your financial aid officer. Between new latitude for professional judgements and new economic pressures, that relationship could mean quite a bit.

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5 most recent Financial Aid Podcast posts

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Did you enjoy this? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Online degrees programs and directories at Edvisors.com
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit PrivateStudentLoans.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Send me your comments, questions, and feedback using this handy contact form!

Daily Aid 40: The MASFAA Financial Aid Conference, Day 1

It’s been a fascinating and somewhat troubling time here at MASFAA, the Massachusetts Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Fascinating because I’ve picked up a ton of useful information about changes in financial aid, gotten great feedback on the Scholarship Search Secrets eBook and the FAFSA Guide eBook that we publish, changes in financial aid procedures, and other great tips from colleagues about how to handle certain situations.

A few changes I thought especially noteworthy:

- The FAFSA changes for this year that are significant, such as dislocated worker and homeless youth, have no official documentation for verification, which means that financial aid administrators and government officials are having to create forms for documentation.

- Professional judgement overrides for financial aid administrators have been made more flexible, including an unusual override that lets a student borrow up to the full amount of an unsubsidized Stafford loan without the FAFSA.

- Convicted sex offenders no longer qualify for the Pell Grant. However, there’s no process in place to document or verify who is or is not.

- There are a lot of ambiguities around the labor language for dislocated workers. For example, who is underemployed vs. unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has some measures, but do BLS/Department of Labor definitions apply to the Department of Education?

- For colleges that use institutional methodology for determining financial aid need, there will now be discrepancies between that method and federal methodology, which is what the Department of Education uses. Some of the items that the federal methodology eliminated, such as foreign income, are still used by institutional methodology, which means that some students will have different need levels depending on what college they apply to.

Because of the many regulatory and procedural changes in the upcoming year, the most important piece of advice I can give is that it’s vital, absolutely essential, that you have a good relationship with your school’s financial aid office. Do your level best to be on great terms, first-name basis, with your financial aid counselors and staff, because with all of the ambiguities and interpretations for the new changes, that relationship may determine how much help you get.

There are some other, smaller bits of information which will find their way into the FAFSA guide and other publications, blogs, and newsletters in the days and weeks to come, but these were some of the highlights from the event so far. Today is day 2, and lots more to study and learn.

As for troubling, in many private conversations with my colleagues, there’s been a great deal of concern about the economy and where things are headed. The general consensus is that financial aid in the year ahead will be asked to do more than ever with fewer resources than ever, and that’s a tall order in any environment, much less in the current economy. We’ll see what’s ahead, and as always, you’ll get the news first from the Student Loan Network and the Financial Aid Podcast.

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5 most recent Financial Aid Podcast posts

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Did you enjoy this? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Online degrees programs and directories at Edvisors.com
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit PrivateStudentLoans.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Send me your comments, questions, and feedback using this handy contact form!

I’m had the opportunity to share some materials at the Massachusetts Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators 2008 annual conference, and materials from my presentations are here for you to enjoy. If you attended one of my sessions, thank you so much for being a part of the sessions, and please give me feedback about how the session materials can be more useful to you, as well as how the Student Loan Network can better help you!

One question that came up after the sessions was whether or not you could share any of this or link to it - yes, absolutely. You don’t need permission to do that - please DO link to the eBook and share it with as many students as you want, put the link into presentations for financial aid nights, however you want to share it, please do.

I also want to say a special thanks to the Conference Committee and MASFAA leadership for the opportunity to share some of the stuff I’m doing with the Student Loan Network, and I hope to see you at an upcoming PD&T or financial aid event soon, like Massachusetts College Goal Sunday!

eBooks references

Scholarship Search Secrets eBook
2009-2010 FAFSA Line By Line Guide eBook

Scholarship Search Secrets slides

Scholarship Search Secrets Video

Social Networks and You slides

Social Networks and You video

Web Site Hot Seat/Web Site Live Demo slides

Web Site Hot Seat/Web Site Live Demo video

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5 most recent Financial Aid Podcast posts

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
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Did you enjoy this? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Online degrees programs and directories at Edvisors.com
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit PrivateStudentLoans.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Send me your comments, questions, and feedback using this handy contact form!

I presented at the Inbound Marketing Summit on the topic of Should Your Business Be Podcasting? Here’s the video:

Video streaming by Ustream

The slides are located here - use these rather than squint at the video!

Resources - Corporate

The Financial Aid Podcast
The Student Loan Network

Resources - Personal

Mitch Joel at PodCamp Toronto
PodCamp
Personal blog
Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast

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5 most recent Financial Aid Podcast posts

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Did you enjoy this? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Private student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Send me your comments, questions, and feedback using this handy contact form!

From the NASFAA national conference this past summer.

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5 most recent Financial Aid Podcast posts

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Did you enjoy this? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Private student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Send me your comments, questions, and feedback using this handy contact form!

From the NASFAA conference this past summer.

Did you enjoy today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Private student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog

+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

FAP845: Awaken Your Superhero from Podcasters Across Borders

Listen now:

I gave a brief, five minute talk about how podcasting is changing the world at Podcasters Across Borders 2008. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
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Direct MP3 file download: Click here to download the MP3

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Student credit card information at StudentPlatinum.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid discussion forums
+ Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

Many thanks to everyone I had a chance to meet at the NASFAA national conference! I’ve put together some resources for you from the conference that might be of help.

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The guest speaking I did with Dr. Steven Bryant was a short version of this session from EASFAA. Here’s the video in full:

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Slides from the session are here:

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I was asked to record and produce the The College Goal Sunday What’s Working Session video:

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Here’s the audio from the Retention of Underserved Students session.

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And finally, some fun - a musical slide show of the conference, featuring the music of Black Lab.

I’ll have more content from NASFAA as I produce it, so be sure to bookmark this page and share www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/nasfaa08 with others who want to get this material.

FAP839: Retention of Underserved Students and How Financial Aid Administrators Can Help

A session from this year’s NASFAA national conference.

Listen now:

A few dollars a month for medication may cause a low-income college student to drop out of school. An $8 transcript fee may prevent a student from transferring to a four-year institution. One-third of all first-year students who enroll at America’s colleges and universities will not return to the same institution next fall. On Point for College serves over 1,800 students in Syracuse, NY and works daily with the financial aid community to help them succeed. The presenters will share 27 retention program elements and 13 simple ideas that any campus can implement.

Moderator: Jeanna Keller, Program Manager, Lumina Foundation for Education

Presenters: Virginia Donohue, Executive Director, On Point for College

LaSonya Griggs, Assistant Director of Financial Aid, Ithaca College

Did you enjoy today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+
+
+

Direct MP3 file download: Click here to download the MP3

Reminders
+
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Open an FDIC-insured savings account today!
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Student credit card information at StudentPlatinum.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid discussion forums
+ Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.