FAP882: Cutting college costs, free stuff challenge, saving money

Click here to download the MP3 file
Weekly Financial Aid News Roundup
+ No gift cards this holiday season!
+ State of the student loan industry
+ How to cut college costs up to 50%
+ Part 2 of reducing college costs
+ Next week I release a public beta of our Scholarship Search Secrets eBook version 5!
Scholarship Update
+ Tonight is the drawing for the Student Loan Network $10,000 scholarship!
Mail Bag
+ How much should you put on the FC for the CSS profile?
Public Service Announcement
+ VOTE on Tuesday, …

Daily Aid 32: FAFSA EFC and the CSS Profile – How Much You Can Pay For College
Student Financial Aid News
From Inside Higher Ed:
At Shenandoah University, there have been a few senior-level administrators who have decided to forgo their raises altogether, placing the money in an emergency fund that is being used to help existing students who are struggling to afford to stay enrolled.
Commentary
I applaud anyone who is willing to take a pay cut – and forgoing a raise when inflation is eating away at the bottom line is effectively a …

Daily Aid 32: FAFSA EFC and the CSS Profile – How Much You Can Pay For College
Student Financial Aid News
From Inside Higher Ed:
At Shenandoah University, there have been a few senior-level administrators who have decided to forgo their raises altogether, placing the money in an emergency fund that is being used to help existing students who are struggling to afford to stay enrolled.
Commentary
I applaud anyone who is willing to take a pay cut – and forgoing a raise when inflation is eating away at the bottom line is effectively a …

Daily Aid 31: How to cut your cost of college education in half
Student Financial Aid News
From all over the place – lenders are curtailing credit cards by increasing credit requirements and reducing available credit, including student credit cards. Defaults have been rising across the board on all forms of lending, but credit cards have been hit especially hard since the housing bubble burst. If you’re thinking about getting a credit card, you’ll want to do that sooner rather than later.
From NASFAA and USA Today:
“For months, the Wall Street credit crisis …

Daily Aid 31: How to cut your cost of college education in half
Student Financial Aid News
From all over the place – lenders are curtailing credit cards by increasing credit requirements and reducing available credit, including student credit cards. Defaults have been rising across the board on all forms of lending, but credit cards have been hit especially hard since the housing bubble burst. If you’re thinking about getting a credit card, you’ll want to do that sooner rather than later.
From NASFAA and USA Today:
“For months, the Wall Street credit crisis …

Daily Aid 30: State of the student loan industry
Student Financial Aid News
From NASFAA and the Chronicle:
“This year’s growth in the Education Department’s direct-lending system could be replicated in 2009, possibly leaving the now-dominant bank-based system as the minority supplier of federal student-loan money by next fall, according to findings from a new survey of colleges,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. “The Web-based poll of 416 college financial-aid directors last week by Student Lending Analytics found that 6 percent of those currently using the bank-based system plan to switch to …

Daily Aid 30: State of the student loan industry
Student Financial Aid News
From NASFAA and the Chronicle:
“This year’s growth in the Education Department’s direct-lending system could be replicated in 2009, possibly leaving the now-dominant bank-based system as the minority supplier of federal student-loan money by next fall, according to findings from a new survey of colleges,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. “The Web-based poll of 416 college financial-aid directors last week by Student Lending Analytics found that 6 percent of those currently using the bank-based system plan to switch to …

This holiday season, you may be tempted to use gift cards as a convenient way to buy a present for someone who’s notoriously tough to buy for.
Don’t do it. Give cash instead.
Here’s why – it has nothing to do with etiquette or propriety and everything to do with the mechanism of gift cards.
Gift cards feel like cash to consumers. They have a preset dollar amount and you use them to buy things.
The catch is this – gift cards are not cash. Gift cards are actually a form of debt issued …

FAP881: Credit crisis, Sallie Mae, FAFSA updates
Click here to download the MP3 file
Weekly Financial Aid News Roundup
From the Chronicle:
Moody’s Investors Service has placed two colleges that invested in Commonfund’s short-term fund on a watch list for credit-rating downgrades and has issued a negative ratings outlook for a third. The colleges — Franklin Pierce University, Simmons College, and Suffolk University — are among 1,000 institutions that had their short-term accounts frozen by Wachovia Bank, the account manager, in late September. As of October 21, such colleges were able to get access …

Daily Aid 29: The credit crisis hits college campuses
Student Financial Aid News
From NASFAA and the AP:
“The credit crunch has officially arrived on campus,” the Associated Press reports. “In a new survey, private colleges report their students are finding it significantly harder to secure the private loans they need to pay tuition bills. More alarmingly, nearly half of colleges say some students have been forced to take time off or go part-time as a result. The survey, released Tuesday by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, confirms anecdotal evidence …