Students for whom financial aid is a priority will in many cases be better served by focusing on schools that use the FAFSA and not the CSS Profile. Likewise, a student whose first choice school uses the Profile and is out of reach financially would be well-served in the financial aid appeals process to find a competitive school that uses…
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Divorce
Recently I was a guest on the Hack Your Wealth podcast where we discussed all things financial aid. You can listen to the podcast here.
The FAFSA now uses income from your tax return only. But “income” isn’t just your wages or your Adjusted Gross Income. It’s all the income on your tax return, whether you pay taxes on it or not. Good news: starting with the 2024-25 school year, the FAFSA no longer considers income that isn’t on your tax return, such as payroll…
Students whose parents are divorced have some planning opportunities if the exes are willing to cooperate. The first step is of course to understand the planning areas. And the first step of that first step is to understand a key definition: “custodial parent.” Custodial parent is used in two primary places for college purposes, and in ways that are completely…
I write a lot about the FAFSA, but there’s a second financial aid form that’s also important: the CSS Profile. While all schools use the FAFSA to allocate federal funds such as Direct Student Loans, a subset of schools– primarily private schools– use the CSS Profile in their financial aid calculations. There are a few key differences between the two…