Unlock College Funding-Scholarship & FAFSA Essentials

All right, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Today I am so excited to share the stage with Mr. Brad Baldrige. Welcome. How are you doing this morning?

I'm doing quite well. Thank you.

Outstanding. So I will tell you, you're in for a treat. He is the FAFSA go-to, and I'm super excited for you guys to get your your questions answered before you even know that they're a question. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started, and I again want to welcome you. This will be recorded, so in case you're trying to take a zillion notes, just know that we've got you. The more you communicate in the chat, the better off we can answer your specific questions. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started. And we will be somewhere around an hour, but not more than that. So you have an idea of what does that look like. All right, so we, we found out there's a lot that we want to learn. So for me, I think it's important that everybody really thinks about their role in this process, right? You're the parent, you're the aunt, the uncle, the grandparent, whomever you are that cares about this young person, you're the hero. You're spending your morning figuring out how do you help your child get into college, complete the necessary documents to receive big money. And that's what I want to talk about today. I also want to let you guys know that I just released my second bestselling book. It is on Amazon for 99 cents. Until the end of next week because that's my launch gift. Um, the College Admissions Plan Simplified is everything to get in. I touch on scholarships, but my first book did that more, which is the one I'm holding over here, How to Send Your Student to College Without Losing Your Mind or Your Money. So I've got you getting in, I've got you with scholarship opportunity, and now we're going to bring it alive for you so you can hear it in first person. So before I do, I think it's important that you understand who you're listening to. My name is Shellee Howard, and I am the founder and CEO of College Ready. We are all about supporting families to help them to pick the right academic, social, and financial fit college so they can have a career without debt. That is the goal. These are my whys. All of these young people are the reason why I've done this for the last 17 years, and it all started with this young man right here. This was taken at his Harvard graduation, and he was my why. He went to Harvard 4 years, graduated debt-free, went on to University of San Diego Medical School, got out of there with $30,000 total loans. And now he's an orthopedic surgeon at UCLA, and he has $30,000 in total. He will be able to pay that back his first year as a doctor practicing. My second, um, and she— her dream was to go to University of Alabama. She went there, had the time of her life, graduated debt-free with a nursing degree. Now she is an emergency room pediatric nurse. My third just graduated in 3 years and he graduated debt-free, um, from, uh, SFSU. And my fourth is graduating in June, completely debt-free from the Czech Republic of Prague. And so I have pretty much done it from the Ivies to the, the Big Ten to, uh, the local school and European. So it can be done, parents, and I'm going to continue to encourage you. That don't stop. These are the reason why our students last year earned $9.2 million in scholarships. All right, we're gonna jump right in. So today's topic, we're gonna talk about how you're gonna pay for college, how you're gonna get scholarships, how you're gonna cover the gap. But here's the reality. The student needs to have positioning and a standout strategy to get accepted with money. I'm not saying to get accepted because there are students who will have a GPA and a test score and they'll get accepted, but it may not be their dream school. With positioning and strategy, which is what we specialize in, that's where they get the big money. Number 2, which Mr. Brad's going to be talking about, is the SAI, FAFSA, CSS Profile. How do we drive down the cost of college? Then, if the merit and the forms get you almost there, there's also the independent scholarships, perhaps the need-based scholarships, and oops, and also the institutional merit scholarships. So I'm going to save you all a ton of frustration. The best way to get into college and graduate debt-free is to pick the right colleges. You'll hear, hear me talk about that again. Also, test scores equal money. Community service equals money. Leadership equals money. Extracurriculars equal money. Letters of recommendation and essays. There is so much money. It really just is about you tapping in. So imagine what it would be like to see your student's face when they get accepted to their dream school. And your face when you see that nice award letter. So today what we're going to talk about is it's no longer just a GPA and a test score to, to really have this opportunity. That student really needs to stand out to get accepted. They need positioning and they need a standout strategy. Knowledge is the key to all of this, but do not Google it because you will find yourself in panic. So we're going to dive in. The current problem is college admissions can be overwhelming, and when— and with all the information, quite overload. The financial obstacles, scarce resources, and fierce competition, all of that is what you're going to read on social media. Don't buy into it, parents. There is so much money available. And our students are getting into all the colleges. So this past year we had a student apply to every University of California school.

Why?

Because her sister did not get into several of them and she wanted to prove that she could get into all of them. So she did every UC school. That's a lot of work. I don't recommend doing it like that, but it just goes to show that it is possible, and having the knowledge like you're going to learn today and the guidance is the key to success. So here's something I want you to think of that's very important. You could learn to do your own taxes, or you pay a CPA. You could sell your own home, or you hire an expert. You could, you know, do this on your own, And I did it 33 hours a week for 4 years on top of my full-time career. Not the best situation, but it is possible. So, oops, sorry, jumped one. So what matters more to you? I love this question because parents, can you put in the chat, are you most interested in getting accepted? Put accepted. Or are you most interested in the grants, the scholarships, or financial. You can just put in affordability because what I find most of the time is parents raise their hand for affordability. But if they don't get in, it really doesn't matter. So we need to touch on both. So your family will have the best chance. So college is a business, right? And it's important that you look at it like a business. Look at it like if you were going to buy a car, would you pay sticker price? Probably not. Buying a home outside of California, probably wouldn't pay that sticker price. So it's really important for you to look at this as a straight business. So I want to help you understand that college is a business and you can negotiate. All right, what affects college admission? This is so important, right? This is how they're going to get in, and then we'll work— we'll work into Brad's part about the money. Number 1, admissions has changed. Even 4 years ago, my son applied in 2012, my daughter 2016, and on and on and on. Every 4 years admissions changes. So if you're going, oh, I did it on my own, it's no big deal, I want to help you understand that now there are universities that you'll have 0 essays up to 18 essays per one school. Very different as a parent. So their grades, super important. They need to have the best grades they can achieve. It is better for them to take rigor and get an A- than take all the easy classes and get all A's. Number 3, weighted. The GPA at some schools will be weighted, at other, other schools it will not. I'm happy to dive in deeper if you have questions about that later. The SAT and the ACT score. If you want money, testing is not optional. If you want to go to your dream school, testing is not optional. So just know colleges can change from optional to not optional required in 24 hours. They do not need to give you any kind of warning. Class rank at most schools— I'm talking to a lot of 7th and 8th graders right now who are deciding what is the best high school. Think about where is your child going to graduate in the top 5% of their high school class. Extracurriculars, how they spend their time. Colleges are going to ask on the Common App. Your student will have to list 10 activities, honors, and awards. On the UC app, University of California, UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego, 20. Okay, if that doesn't like— I don't know what does. Well, when we talk about the cost of college, of course, The other thing is your student needs to be unique. If they're doing what every— all of their friends are doing and everybody's at the same clubs, and how will they stand out? They need to have their own positioning and strategy. Essays, very important. This is the icing on the cake. Remember, they have to do these extracurriculars, honors, and awards. Whoops, jumping ahead again. Ah, um, and so we want to make sure that they can write essays about them, not my mom made me do XYZ. That's not going to be a good essay. So we need them to be able to own it. Number 9, interests, special skills, passions. I'm going to talk about that next. Letters of recommendation, critical. Critical if your child is at a large school. The next one, diversity and leadership. These are the things— it's not diversity as in ethnicity, it's diversity of maybe you are on the West Coast and you want to go to the East Coast. There's lots of ways you might apply to a school that needs more students in their business program so they don't have to let those teachers go. Not all of this is about the student. A lot of it's about what's at the school. And then college interviews. If they're doing their extracurriculars well, they're unique, and their essays are awesome, the college interview is going to go amazing. I want to share with you now what helps a student stand out. It's a 2-minute video.

This is a special group of girls that all of us pray for America. We have people in California, New York. We have to pray for all of us. I'm Leyla. I'm Henry. My name is Mila. My name is Rex. I have led my group to have reached our fundraising goal of $7,500. And this year we have sent over 300 copies of our different medical-related booklets, which are all written and illustrated by a— What our group's goal for this project was, was to raise funds in order to buy all of the soccer equipment that they could ever need to play safely and happily. Outless young female students face challenges attending school regularly because they lack access to menstrual products. Each pad we sew, each educational booklet we make, and each fundraising—

Shellee, the video is not working properly.

—towards restoring not only their hope but my hope for an empowered— In the future, I hope to expand our project to the greatest magnitude it can possibly be. Together we can create a world where no— we can't see the video— health and her education.

I hope that is not working.

Help these kids in Uganda with more than just soccer. I hope to be able to spread Empower Education all over the world.

8. Oops. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So these are the things that are going to help your child stand out. We will take questions in just a moment, but this is where most families get, um, on the wrong path to helping their child really embrace community service and leadership. So I'm going to go ahead and continue on with the presentation like I mentioned, and then we will come back and answer questions. So, um, hopefully that was inspiring and, um, you now have a better idea of what colleges are looking for. All right, so let's talk about Um, the 7 ways to decrease the cost of college, because at least 1 or 2 of you put this as you want to know. Number 1, the stronger the GPA, the more money the student will receive. The stronger the test scores. Did you know that the PSAT taken October of the junior year can earn your student a free UC education? Dual enrollment and AP classes. Dual enrollment classes are the quickest way because they're getting free college credit while in high school. That will help them get in and out of college for much less. Look for colleges with strong merit scholarships. It's all about show me the money, and there are some really generous colleges. As a matter of fact, there are 10 that are tuition-free. They're in my first book. Choose a college your student will graduate in 4 years. Right now, our California State schools are— hold on, somebody had a question. Oh, no one got to see the video. Shoot. Okay, I'm not sure what happened there, but I will do that at the end. Choose a school they will graduate in 4 years, which means You need to know what that looks like. At most California schools, they're capping the units at, uh, 16 units a semester, which means you cannot get out in 4 years unless you go to winter school and summer session. Look for out-of-state public colleges and international schools with special pricing. Look for private schools that meet 100% of what you need. Again, This is how you do it. So we're gonna keep going. US News and World Report is the go-to for many families. Unfortunately, most families don't realize that it is inflated numbers. It's not real. It's all about playing the game of wanting to be the highest ranked school. I could go deep into this for about an hour, but I don't have that much time. What you want to know about is the top secret person, and that's the strategic enrollment manager. This person is the one who has to balance how many business majors, how many liberal arts, how many music. I mean, it— they have to look at it as a business and have a college that will support all students and faculty. So I'm gonna talk briefly about a case study because I think it helps open up your mind to what colleges and how— what colleges want and how it works. So Marcus, he is a high school freshman, or was a high school freshman. His dream was UCLA. He had a 4.1 GPA, and he wanted to do engineering. So that is not easy. But our team of admissions officers, we interviewed the music department because he really wanted to play music in college. He originally started with wanting to play guitar until he found out at UCLA the bassoon section was light and he had a much better chance of getting accepted into the bassoon section. So he taught himself how to play the bassoon very well. Marcus got accepted and he got $24,000 in gift aid for each year. This is how it's all done. The next things, the essays. The essays are the story to be told right now with AI. Parents, be very careful. We have an AI checker here at College Ready that when your student submits their essay, we first run it through that checker. And a quarter of our seniors this year got in— I wouldn't say trouble— got recognized by their parents that maybe they were using AI. And better us than the university. So if we can figure it out, the universities can figure it out. So please, please, please do not write their essays and do not let them touch AI to help them write it. They will get thrown into the trash that quick. So here it goes. Here's the whole roadmap. Everybody wants to know, how do we do it? So first is your standout strategy. You want to analyze school algorithms. You want to know what the university needs and wants. How will your child stand out from the crown— crowd? Um, what will their strategy look like? Then you need to market the child. They don't know how to market themselves academically, socially, athletically, performance, artist. Um, it's so important. If your child wants free money, they cannot just be, you know, I'm okay and just an average student, or they text their application. I've seen them all. So help your child have a bold voice and be able to, um, speak very well about their accomplishments. We spend a lot of time helping our students just be able to talk about how amazing they are. Um, think— I tell my students all the time, think about how mom tells grandma And that's exactly what you need to do. Our counselors and our admissions officers, we're all strategic planners. We create a strategic plan. We talk about the right major for the right school. We have a strategic test strategy. We have Passion with Purpose, which I'll show you the video again at the end. I'm sorry it did not show extracurriculars with a strategy. Recommended strat— recommender strategy, essay strategy. We recommend applying to a strategic list of colleges, how to align the student's values with the school, how to make sure they're going to graduate in 4 years, and the highest-ranked school possible that they can get in and be successful at. Here's what else somebody asked. So amazing how I was able to put put these in for you. 8 ways to assure your child gets an affordable college degree. So number 1, take the most challenging classes. No, they do not need to take every AP period, but they do need to continue. If they got an A in a regular class, they need to get into the APs because colleges want to see, are they wanting to learn? Have a strategic testing plan— where to test, when to test, which test. I can't tell you how many times I get on a call where a student says, I'm taking the SAT, and I ask why, and they're like, I don't know. That's not a strategy. Okay, you want to make sure the student knows which test is best. Colleges don't care if it's an SAT or an ACT. They don't care. It's best for your student to have a plan, test prep well, and score well on the PSAT in October of their junior year. Take AP, honors, IB, dual enrollment, and get strong grades. Have a strategy or plan as to which colleges you will apply to. In other words, um, when I ask a student, why do you want to apply to UC Santa Barbara? And they say, have you seen the view? That's not the strategy. That is them wanting to go on vacation for 4 years. Plan your college search by using the proper tools. Do not Google it. It will absolutely overwhelm you, your child, and there's a lot of misinformation on there. Look for colleges with strong financial packages and a track record of graduating in 4 years. I can show you what it takes to get into any school based on who got in last year, and then leverage your financial awards. And Brad, well, I'll save that for you. So what can you do? The number one thing is you're going to assess your family finances. Then you're going to want to talk to Brad. No, after you assess your family finances, you're going to want to look at what is your student aid index. How do you lower it? Again, Brad's your go-to on that. Decide whether your student's desired college is a want or a need. Determine if the major they pick will pay for their wants and needs after they graduate. Uh, had a student 2 days ago who wanted to go to NYU, which is $98,000 a year, and she wanted to do botany. Probably not a good return on her investment. So we had some really great conversation, and now she's going to be a business major, open up mini nurseries. So sometimes they just need to, um, be guided. Note the graduation rate, so important, and the placement rate. Learn about acceptance rate at the different colleges they apply to and consider the size. Will your student be in a classroom, a theater classroom with 500 of their best friends taking biology, or will it be a 1 to 6 ratio in a small class? So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Brad And he is going to enlighten us with all of the amazing work that he does.

All right, thank you. Let me get my—

And as promised, parents, I will play that video again so you can see the work that our students are doing. Um, just know that that is something that will give you a good glimpse. All right. All right.

So, assuming you can see my slides now. Looks great. All right. So how do we get financial aid to work for you? A bunch of disclosures. So I'm a financial planner, so I work with families, you know, on all aspects of financial planning. And I have a college funding specialty, which means I understand the need-based aid and merit aid and negotiating with schools. But I mostly work with parents. So when we start talking about essays and what do you want to be when you grow up? And I don't do any of that. 95% of the work I do, I'm coaching parents. And occasionally I'll meet a student to talk to them about how a loan works or something like that. But I help families on the parent side of things. So what is late-stage college planning? Well, that's what we're up against right now. So late-stage college planning is the college finances, and we're going to spend our time, you know, my time on that. But there's the other things that we've just talked about. You need to get accepted. You need to understand scholarships and athletics and testing, and you need to understand the whole package.. And that I think is for most families a bigger challenge in that there's a lot more to it than will I get need-based aid or not. So what are we up against? The average public school is $28,000. The average private school is now $60,000. So here's our first solution, right? We decided to support you for the rest of your life. It's cheaper than sending you to college. So as we're working through this, you know, get a quote on remodeling the basement and that may give you a baseline price. Okay, so how does it really work? Well, it's the net price that matters. So it's the cost minus the free money that Shellee helps you get, or that you qualify for based on need-based aid, brings you to your net price. What does that look like? Well, if we took at the average private school and the average public school and we applied the average free money, the private school goes from $60,000 to $36,000 and public school from $30,000 to $20,000. So all of a sudden it looks a little bit better. And again, these are all big numbers. And, you know, for most families, college is going to be a little bit painful and somehow it's going to be a lot of work, a lot of effort. We pay for college with time, money, and stress. So the average grant aid per student is up to $11,000. That's the good news. The bad news is you're not average. You're going to be above average, below average. So let's dig into that a little bit. So here in my fine state of Wisconsin, we've got two state schools. Madison's our flagship. That's UW that most people are familiar with. But there's a lot of satellite schools like Whitewater, etc. Our flagship is the most expensive at $27,000, and a lot of the satellites are between 19 and 23, 24. We apply the same ideas of bringing it down to the net cost. You can see that they're very comparable. Madison is a little more generous on average. But if we look at some of the private schools out there, 60 and 80 down to 33 and 17. So a lot of people say, I can't afford Stanford, it's $80,000, $90,000 a year. Well, you probably can afford Stanford because they're crazy generous. I think the bigger challenge is how are you going to actually get accepted to Stanford? That's the challenge for most families. And Santa Clara, Tulane, they don't have as strong of aid, so their net prices stay relatively high. Again, and this is all on average. So that was what we're talking about. We don't— net price matters. But here's additional information so we can parse this a different way. We're going back to Whitewater and Madison again. And if your income is over $110,000, now all of a sudden your average cost is still almost full price. And that is very typical of an in-state state school where they start with a low price to begin with, and then there's just not a lot of extra aid above and beyond that. You know, if you're going to your local state school and if you don't know why you're not going to pay full price, you probably will pay full price. There are programs in most states, but you need to understand, you know, what they are and how they work. And in a lot of states, especially when your income is, you know, $100,000 plus, you end up paying full price. And again, it's a reasonable full price compared to many private schools, but it is a relatively large number. But if your income is between $30,000 and $48,000, all of a sudden it looks a lot different. Well, why is that? Well, that's need-based aid at work. That is the bottom line. So whatever we can do around need-based aid, can make a pretty dramatic difference.

All right.

So this is a simulator that I put together, and this is all hypothetical. This is a kind of a, you know, we've got our in-state flagship school, our in-state public schools, our out-of-state public schools, the various types of elite privates like Harvard and Yale and top privates like Rice and Case Western and then regional privates that, you know, there's 10 in every major city that most of us have never heard of, as well as all the different public. So based on an income of $220,000 and a GPA of 3.8, that's what your prices look like. Shellee Howard said grades matter. Well, what happens when your grades go up? Well, your prices go down. Now, if you're at a very high income with great grades, you know, sometimes the discounts— again, a national private, if we go back to full price, the national private that was $70,000 is now $40,000 based on grades. But if we can include, well, what if we can get our income or at least our reported income lower, we can work on financial aid. You can see some of these schools, you know, can get very reasonable. And this is the important point that Shellee made, is which of these categories of schools are going to work for you based on your situation. You know, if you have a very strong student, or if you have a reasonably strong student, or you have an average student, right? If you have an average student, a lot of these choices are not even available to you. Or a below-average student, right? You just— you're not even getting accepted to these schools, so it doesn't matter how the pricing works. So this is what we're up against.

All right.

So that's the problem, right? The biggest problem is what is my net cost? We've talked a lot about averages and all that type of thing, but how do we figure it out specifically for ourselves? And that, I think, is the biggest challenge. And there's two steps to this process. First, you need to understand how the system works—need-based aid and merit aid—and you need to use the tools that are available and get involved. And it's going to be a process for most families, you know. If you look at the bigger picture, it's cost of attendance minus your free money is your net price. For a lot of families, the net price is $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000. And if you've got savings and the student can work and the parents can work and cash flow and loans, and there's all kinds of ways to pay for school. So there's a two-step process: get a reasonable price based on the free money, net cost, and then figure out how to pay that net cost. And generally, the higher your income, all things being equal, the higher your, your net price might be.

So let's talk a little bit more about financial aid.

Need-based aid is based on your income and your assets, both the parent and the student. And then we have the merit aid that Shellee Howard— so we're not going to spend much time on that, but that's the academics, the talents, the geography, all the other reasons a college may want you and therefore provide some aid. There's 3 types of families out there when it comes to financial aid. Type 1 families are going to get large amounts of need-based aid and they want to, you know, not mess that up. Type 2 families are going to get some need-based aid, but they're going to have to do some good planning to increase it and/or still have a net price to pay. And then there's Type 3 families who are just not going to qualify for need-based aid no matter what they do. Their income may be high. They may have a lot of assets. There are just reasons that lots of families aren't going to qualify. And, you know, about half the people I work with never qualify for any need-based aid, but they still send their kids to college. So what do they do? Well, now we need to look at other strategies like taxes and merit aid and athletics and cash flow and investing and all the other ways beyond need-based aid. And then, of course, the merit aid that we've talked about and Shellee's talked about. So we have this thing called the SAI, or Student Aid Index. Used to be called the EFC. So parents that were involved in your own college 10 and 20 years ago, we had this concept called EFC. They changed the rules. It's now SAI, but it essentially functions about the same. So how does the SAI work? Well, Very similar math here. It's cost of attendance. That's tuition, room and board, books, fees, beer and pizza. The whole cost of a typical college student for one year minus your index equals your need. So you need to show a need in order to qualify for need-based aid. A lot of needs in that sentence. So financial aid is based on need. If you don't show a need, you're not going to get need-based aid. So we need to get this student aid index as low as we reasonably can. Now, on top of everything we've just talked about, we've got the FAFSA and the CSS Profile. So there's two different forms that we're going to potentially need to submit at about 300 colleges. So the CSS Profile is an additional form. It's much more complicated than the FAFSA. And it's required at about 300 colleges and it's all the top colleges, mostly private colleges as well. So the Stanfords and Harvards and Ivy League and University of Chicago and NYU and Rice and Case Western. And, you know, again, most of the schools that you've heard of that are pretty prestigious are going to require the CSS Profile. The reason being is they offer a lot of aid.. And if they're going to give a $20,000 or $30,000 or $50,000 scholarship, they want to have a better understanding of who they're giving it to. So the FAFSA pulls a lot of information directly from your taxes. So it's getting easier and easier, but it also doesn't provide much of a snapshot for the family. So the CSS Profile, I believe, is going to get more and more popular and be used by more and more colleges. As the federal system gets a little bit simpler and not as useful for the colleges themselves. So we've mentioned the top 4 need-based aid factors are the student income and assets and the parents' income and assets. And typically, if a student's rolling, you know, as an 18-year-old or 19-year-old rolling out of high school and going directly to college, their income and their assets are essentially zero. So really it boils down to parent income and parent assets. So where does this come from? Well, they take the income, as I mentioned, directly from your taxes, but they actually take prior, prior year taxes and they look at your AGI, which is your adjusted gross income. And a way to think about your adjusted gross income is it's all your income. So it's your wages, but it's also your interest that you may have received, your dividends and capital gains and If you own a business, if you own rental property, all those different types of income are all coming in, maybe withdrawals from your IRAs or other challenges. Maybe, you know, again, I've had parents that are retired where they literally are taking legitimate withdrawals from their retirement. And I've had seen situations as well where people are foolishly tapping their retirement and blowing up their financial aid. The student's income is assessed more heavily than parents, but the student income has kind of a free pass. So the first $11,000 or so that is of a student's income. So the typical summer jobs or, you know, babysitting or all that kind of stuff generally is not going to have an impact. It's the situations where the student is, you know, has a successful YouTube business or is really making money. Or sometimes what we see is the parents are shifting income to the student in order to save taxes. And that, of course, could blow up when it comes to, to aid. So if you have a high school senior right now, you would have applied for financial aid last fall and you'd use 2023 taxes. So if you have a sophomore, that's going to be the class of 2027. You're going to fill out financial aid in the fall of 2026 using 2025 taxes. So it's important to realize that this tax year, the one that you're currently in, has an impact all the way down to the sophomore year. And certainly 2025 would be the sophomore year of college for the juniors, and 2025 will be the junior year for the seniors. So the next 4 tax years, because we apply each year, it's important to understand that those are the years that the colleges are going to see. And then many families have multiple children. So, you know, sounds like Shellee Howard has been doing financial aid for the last 20 years.. And, you know, so that's kind of the way that works, right? So, but we have this new concept now that a lot of people aren't aware of. I call this the magic Pell numbers. You can actually get the minimum and maximum Pell based on your AGI, depending on your family size. So if your family has 2 parents and 3 children, your magic Pell number is $61,000 in 2023, $64,000 in 2024, and $65,888 in 2025. So for seniors that are, you know, off to college very shortly, we looked back to 2023 and if your income was below that, then you have this kind of you win. The magic Pell number is coming to your rescue and you automatically get a maximum Pell. You get a zero SAI and you qualify for lots of need-based aid. If you hit the minimum Pell, then you get a little bit of a kind of a consolation prize. So that same family, if their income is below $103,000, they get a consolation prize of about Pell, which is about $750. And if your income is above those numbers, then you're probably not going to get any sort of Pell generally. And as you can see, the numbers get bigger the larger your family is. Then we have assets. Well, what are assets? Well, those are your savings accounts and college savings. College savings and all that kind of thing. And for the assets, it's the day you sign the form. So if you have a junior right now, you're not going to sign the form until this coming fall. It's going to be based on taxes that are already done. So you probably won't be able to do much about the taxes because it's going to be based on last year's taxes. But there's still lots you could potentially do with assets because you have from now until you sign the form to rearrange your assets if it makes sense or make changes. Now, not all assets are assessed. So the assets that do not count are things that are retirement related. So pension, profit sharing, 401s, IRAs, all that stuff is out. What does count is anything that's not retirement related. So if you have stocks or bonds, if you have money in the bank, if you have college savings plans, if you have businesses or rental real estate. Another area that does not count is your primary residence. So the home you live in is not counted. On the flip side, they don't really care about that big mortgage that you have either. So if you have a big mortgage and big mortgage payments, they don't care. It doesn't show up on the FAFSA. Unfortunately, so a lot of families get a little upset by that, but that's the way it works. And of course, student assets are also assessed more heavily than parent assets. But for a lot of families, you know, you can, you know, push the student assets to the parents and just try not to have students build up money in their own accounts. And then finally, child support is also considered an asset, even though it's an income. Flowing into the family, they count it as an asset, which is good for families that are in a divorce situation or separated. So let's look at a couple examples. So let's say you've got one parent, they have 3 dependents, and your gross income is $87,000. Well, we look up the min and max PALS, your magic numbers are $67,500 and $95,000. And you have $70,000 in assets. Well, we run the calculations to figure out what your SAI will be. And this first family who doesn't put anything in retirement, their $87,000 stays at $87,000 and they still have the $70,000 in assets. So their SAI is coming in at $9,000. So they essentially get the consolation prize. Now, if they planned ahead and said, oh, let's add money to retirement, well, that brings your taxes down if you do it properly where it's a deductible contribution. So now your $87,000 goes down to $68,000 for your AGI. Remember, our magic Pell number was $67,500, so we just missed it. So unfortunately, we, we get a small Pell. We get $4,900. But if we just cross the line by putting an extra $1,000 into retirement, then our PAL jumps up to $7,395, which is the maximum PAL, and our SAI is automatically zero. Now, if this family has assets, so they've got a $100,000 business or they have money stashed away for college or other things that they have to report, Well, then their SAI numbers are bigger, right? We start at 20 and kind of go down from there. If we just miss it, we're still at 11, so we don't get much of a Pell. But in this situation, that extra $1,000 makes a huge difference. Our SAI goes from $11,000 to zero. And if we said parent assets are $1 million, your SAI would be $45,000 or $50,000. But if your income is below $67,500, it's still zero. So families that have large assets— and I see this a lot with things like inheritances or situations like that where it's like all of a sudden things have changed. And a lot of times we can shift things around in order to keep your income low and still qualify for large amounts of need-based aid. Now, some of you are saying, well, that's interesting, but my income is not anywhere near those magic Pell numbers. Well, here's a situation, you know, where your income is $185,000 and we've got 2 parents and 4 children or 4 dependents at $185,000. If you don't put anything into retirement, or let's say you're putting it into Roth retirement or you're doing some— something that's not deductible, then your AGI stays at $185,000 and your SAI is $39,000. If we put $20,000 into retirement, then our SAI goes down to $30,000. And if we put in $40,000, then our SAI goes down to $22,000. Well, why does that matter? Well, again, cost of attendance minus your SAI equals your need. If you're going to that average state school at about $30,000, well, when you're these first two, you don't qualify for any need-based aid. Here you'll qualify for $8,000 of need-based aid. And if you're going to a school that's, you know, $100,000, which there isn't any yet, but we're getting close. So many schools are over $90,000 now. Obviously, the amount of need changes pretty dramatically just by adding to retirement. And there's a lot of other strategies that we can do around managing your income. So if you're a business owner especially, you may have control over what your salary will be. If you have rental property, you can choose to do repairs in the right year so that it brings your taxes down. All kinds of different strategies that you can use. So how do we receive aid? Well, we need to fill out the FAFSA and possibly CSS Profile. And there's a few colleges out there that also want to have their own institutional forms, or they want you to submit an actual copy of your taxes and your trust documents and all that type of stuff, whatever you might have. And then you also may have to do additional forms if you're a non-custodial parent. Or business owner, or if you have a farm. So there's additional paperwork potentially there as well. So we mentioned tools earlier. So one of the tools on my website is an SAI calculator. So you're able to literally type in all the data points, take stuff off your taxes, and enter the various numbers and your assets, and this will help you figure out your SAI and your ultimate financial need. But we actually are starting to build some pretty decent software now where we can literally put in your information and we can figure out what your SAI is, both on the federal method and the institutional method. So essentially it's how does it— how is it going to work for FAFSA and how is it going to work for CSS Profile? And then from there, once we know that, we can also understand your merit aid. So now we can literally find your price, both list price and net price, for whatever colleges you're considering based on your specific financial situation and academic situation, based on some of the automatic scholarships at some of these schools. Now, unfortunately, it's not perfect, and so there's still some follow-up that we need to do. But it's a great place to start when you say, well, let's search for schools where I might qualify for a merit scholarship, or let's search for schools that might meet my need, as Shellee Howard was mentioning. And of course, this is after the fact. We use this software kind of at the end, certainly working with Shellee Howard so that you can have better numbers to put into the software so that you get better answers. Is always an important step as well. So how is college planning going to work? Well, there's different responsibilities for different people in the family, right? So the parents have their own responsibilities, the student have their own responsibilities, and then there's things that you work on together typically. So the parents are most likely going to be involved in doing the financial aid, understanding need-based aid and merit aid and all the different things that are— they're going to have to fill out the FAFSA or be deeply involved with that. They're going to do any sort of calculations and understanding, or at least help the students. They're also going to help with the net price and the savings and investing and all those pieces of the puzzle. The student's job, well, hopefully they're going to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. Hopefully they, as Shellee mentioned, they do the admissions applications, they write the essays, they participate in the interviews, they make all those kinds of efforts, and they put up the best test scores they can, and they get involved in the extracurriculars that are appropriate and all that type of planning. And then what do you guys do together? Well, the school research, right? From the parent perspective, you want to talk about costs and good fit and financial aid. The student might say, Again, I want that view, or I want to be near the ski hill, or I'm looking for a particular major, or whatever it is that they're looking for. And with research, you can say, all right, let's find a school that's in our state, or not in our state, as the case may be, and also offers this or that. And then you'll be doing some visits, and the visits is a great opportunity for you for the kids and the parents to build relationships. Shellee mentioned college is negotiable, and there's truth to that. And who do you negotiate with? You negotiate with the people that you meet when you're on a college visit. At least I would recommend that. So while you're doing college visits, try and find out how the process works so that you know who you're going to call a year and a half from now when it's time to negotiate prices. And then, of course, there's the testing and the scholarships where, you know, parents are potentially going to have to pay for the testing and the test prep if appropriate, and they're going to have to help out with scholarships potentially. If your idea of chasing scholarships is, you know, every Saturday morning when your student comes down for breakfast, you say, hey, how are those scholarships coming? It's probably not going to work. Where most families have success in scholarships. It's a family project. The students involved, the parents are involved. Shellee mentioned when she was doing it, she spent a lot of time and effort, you know, assisting the students. And I think that process is what we're up against. All right. That's all I have. Any questions, I think, or Shellee, you can take over.

Yes, absolutely. We do have some questions. So when you stop sharing, I can see— there we go. I got the chat. All right. So there were a couple questions that came in. I was trying to answer as we went. Here we go. Here's one. If a student gets into an elite private school and gets a full ride due to low family income, but income dramatically increases 2 to 3 times once they get in, How would that impact their future aid?

That would be bad, is the short answer, right?

I was thinking of a nicer way to say that, but yes, Brad, that's exactly what I was thinking, right?

So most, right, so there's a lot of different types of colleges out there that we did— obviously don't have time to get into, you know, this is a 4 or 5-hour topic all by itself, but But anyway, the various colleges, some that meet need or some that are generous, very— but they stipulate, you know, this is based on what we see and it will probably continue if things don't change. And they really don't want to talk about, well, what will happen if things change? So you really got to work with the college to talk with them and figure out, well, you know, and again, sometimes you already know what's coming, right? The first year was based on 2023 where my income was $70,000, but 2024 I was at $90,000, and 2025 I'm going to be at $130,000. Well, then you need to talk to the colleges because you already know that you have substantial raises and the rules are going to change. So you can talk with the colleges directly and get a feel for how that will go, or you can work on strategies to keep it low. Or both, right? So there's different strategies that you potentially would use. But I think that's a challenge. And a lot of the elite schools now, the schools that offer or use CSS Profile, they give you a break if you have two school— two students at the same time. Well, it's like, well, what happens when one of my students graduates and now I only have one? The rules change and the numbers change.. And you need to know that's coming because I've seen situations where the freshman year looked great because we had a senior in college and a freshman in college. And then the sophomore year is like, oh my God, what happened? It's like, well, your student graduated and it changed the math. And often, and it can be dramatic. So, you know, really understanding what's going on. And it's not a 1-year plan. It's a 4-year plan.. And when you have multiple children or you've got variable income, a lot of business owners have this problem as well, right? Is one year it's $100,000 and the next year we lost money, and the year after that we made up for it in spades and made $500,000. And what happens then? Well, more planning, right? Is there any other, any other questions? Yes, I just want to talk.

Touch on that very briefly and then we'll go to the next question. Um, I honestly did the FAFSA and CSS Profile for 9 years in a row. As you mentioned, I had— it was just kind of, they were all going through it and you have to have a strategy, parents. It's like you would plan for your retirement or hopefully plan for your retirement. You wouldn't just wake up when you're 80 and go, oh, what am I going to do? This is the same exact thing. And not all financial advisors are equal in this area. I brought Brad on because he specializes in this stuff. Like, we can talk about this. I lived it as a parent first before I even met Brad, and I got super fortunate that my, uh, network around me helped me to prepare for it. So planning is everything. Strategy is everything. Next question. When you refer— Brad, when you refer to income, do you mean household income and AGI specifically? Yes. Right.

So AGI is what we report on the— well, we don't do anything anymore. They go to your taxes and they just— you give them permission to take your taxes and they get your taxes and they typically use your AGI in the calculations. They also use income from work because for some minor calculations as well. So it does make a difference if you had $100,000 in wages versus $100,000 in interest income as an example. But yes, it's primarily your AGI is what your income number is based on, and then they will add in untaxed income. So if you have, you know, tax-free bonds, if you have withdrawals from a Roth IRA or an annuity that's tax-free, they'll actually find it and add it back in. So you need to be careful. It's not just your AGI, but yes, generally it's your AGI.

Okay. So at this point, I have to honor the time. It's 11 o'clock straight up. If you have additional questions, I put, um, our link in the chat. Uh, Brad can share his as well. We do these because we know how important this is to your financial success and your child's launch, right? It's so important to have a plan here, and it's complex. And so if you're now going, oh my gosh, you just made me more stressed out, it's because we brought something into your world that you were not aware of, and that is okay. But now that you're aware, please reach out to us so we can help you and help you navigate what that looks like. It's not one size fits all. It is complete strategy based on your numbers and your child's success. So, um, do we need to pay them? Um, yeah, these are all good questions. Unfortunately, I'm so sorry everybody, we could do this for hours upon hours. Brad, thank you so much for some amazing information. Brad just put in his chat or his, uh, link to speak with him further. Thank you all. We will be sharing this recording, so whoever signed up, this is coming your way. And then between our links, you now have access to the information. Anything else you want to say, Brad?

No. Again, all my information is at tamingthehighcostofcollege.com. Perfect. And you can— there's literally a phone number there if you want to reach out and call us, or there's ways to schedule appointments, get on our newsletter, you know, tap into our free resources, etc.

I love it. Thank you, family, so very much, and I hope you have a fantastic week. Bye for now.