Another Student is On His Way to Graduating DEBT-FREE!

Another student is on his way to graduating college DEBT-FREE!

Are you going to be the next person on her way to graduating college DEBT-FREE?

www.debtfreecollegegrad.com

Testimony from A DebtFreeCollegeGrad.com Graduate

By: Shanice Miller, founder of DebtFreeCollegeGrad.com

I met Floyd Clark in April 2013. He told me that his son, Tavion Clark, was considering joining the military because he didn't have any money to go to college and didn't want to put the burden on him [his father]. Floyd really hoped that his son wouldn't join the military so he asked for my advice. I revealed to Floyd and his son some of my scholarship and grant secrets. Now, it's September 2013 and Tavion Clark is attending Old Dominion University in Virginia. All of his college expenses are covered and he is even receiving refund checks back from the college. I'm so glad that Tavion really followed my instructions and took his scholarship search seriously. In less than 5 months, Tavion went from having no money for college to having more than enough.

Are Refund Checks Real?

By: Shanice Miller, founder of DebtFreeCollegeGrad.com

After one of my last posts, I've been getting a lot of questions about college refund checks. One of the most common questions that I received was, "Can you really get refund checks back from the college? Is that really true?" The answer is yes.

What do you think happens when you get more money than it costs to attend college? It's just like when you overpay a bill. Or like when you purchase something that costs $5 and you only have a $20 bill. The store does not get to keep the difference. You get the change back. The same applies when you go to college and get more money than what it costs to attend. You get the change back. With college, the "change" that you would get from that $20 bill is in the form of a refund check.

The college will give you refund checks when you get more money than what it costs to attend college. No, I don't mean have your grandparents or parents make a bigger payment than what you need, of course that will work too, but that defeats the purpose. You get more money than what the college costs by winning scholarships.

FAFSA Tip: Should You Put Assets In Your Child’s Name?

BIGGEST FAFSA MISTAKE

Stocks, bonds, real estate investments, money in checking and savings accounts, and other assets are very valuable to have. I am a huge advocate of parents teaching their children early on about these things. It is even better if the children learn how to and actually invest in these assets themselves.

However, it is NOT a good thing when it comes to filling out the FAFSA and other financial aid forms for college.

 

Assets that are in the student’s name will get penalized heavily when it comes to the FAFSA and other financial aid forms. When it comes to financial aid from the FAFSA form, 20% of the student’s assets will be counted in the FAFSA’s financial aid calculations as opposed to only 5.64% of the parent’s assets being counted in the financial aid calculations on the FAFSA form. This is a difference of nearly 14%.
Also, parents can “protect” some of their assets. This means that the FAFSA form will not count a percentage of the assets at all when trying to determine the amount of financial aid that the student will qualify for.

Overall, putting assets in the students name versus the parent’s name could be the difference between your child qualifying for some financial aid through the FAFSA form and not qualifying for any financial aid.

Money Saving Tip for Your Master's Degree

By: Shanice Miller, founder of DebtFreeCollegeGrad.com

Have you ever thought about getting your Master's degree?

If you have, you have probably started looking at the fees associated with it. A Master's degree can be

pretty expensive for only two years worth of education. For example, if you want to get a Master's degree at Harvard University, you can expect to pay $40,000 per year for only tuition--- this doesn't include room and board or other fees. Usually it takes 2 years (sometimes more) to complete your Master's degree so you are looking at $80,000 total at the very least. That will be a lot of money, especially if you already have a student loan tab from your undergraduate degree.

To help decrease the costs associated with obtaining a Master's degree, I am going to share with you a money saving tip for your Master's degree.

One money saving tip for people that are thinking about getting a Master's degree is to get the Master's degree overseas. Usually the Master's degree programs overseas only take 1 year to complete. That means even if the tuition is still the same, you would only have to pay $40,000 versus $80,000 for your Master's degree in the United States so you already saving 50% of the cost. However, tuition is not the same. In addition to the overseas Master's degrees taking less time to complete, they are also cheaper.

Although going overseas to get a Master's degree will be cheaper and quicker, you might want to check with your potential employers first to make sure that they will accept it.

Student Loan Forgiveness Programs: Do You Qualify?

With all of the concern and discussions on the debt crisis, can you believe that there are actually student loan forgiveness programs?

According to a recent study, over 33 million workers can qualify for student loan forgiveness.

If you work in a school, hospital, city hall, or join the military, you can be eligible for the student loan forgiveness program. Teachers, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, and even health care workers can qualify for these student loan forgiveness programs. Clerks at state department of motor vehicle offices, secretaries at city halls, and accountants that work at non-profit art groups can also qualify.

One of my friends that graduated with student loan debt signed up to become a teacher through a student loan forgiveness program. She had to work in an under-served area, committed to working there for a set amount of time, and took a pay cut, but to her it was worth it. At the end of her contract, she will be free of student loan debt.

Would you make that trade off--- taking a pay cut and working in an under-served area for a specified amount of time to rid yourself of your student loan debt? Leave a comment below with a "yes" or "no" and why you would or wouldn't.

By: Shanice Miller, founder of DebtFreeCollegeGrad.com

3 Exclusive Tricks to Graduating Debt Free

Everyone dreams of college, but no one thinks about how you will graduate debt free?

Graduating debt free is a BIG problem because high school students don't think about the costs associated with going to college. Although children and students don't take the cost of attending college into consideration and don't think about graduating debt free when they are first starting college, the parents NEED to. Students are graduating college with enormous amounts of debt. This debt is putting a hardship on children after they graduate, making moving out and purchasing their own homes or cars more and more difficult. These things wouldn't be difficult to obtain if the students would have graduated debt free. So I am going to share with you 3 of my exclusive tricks that I used that helped me graduate college 100% DEBT FREE!

Exclusive Trick to Graduating Debt Free #1: Scholarships

I cannot STRESS this trick enough. Scholarships were the difference between me owing money to the college each semester and me graduating debt free and getting money back from the college. Scholarships essentially helped me graduate debt free. Most people think scholarships are only for people with good grades. That is a BIG MYTH. Merit scholarships, or scholarships for people with good grades, is only ONE type of scholarship that is available for students to apply to to help them graduate debt free. There are a lot of merit scholarships that you can apply for and win, especially for students at the top of their class. However, you may not get the most merit scholarships from the top schools. Some schools may give you more merit aid than others based on how you rank and if they see you as a "desirable student." Colleges will compete to get the best students and they do this by giving the most merit aid (aka giving the student a full-ride scholarship so the student will graduate debt free). There are other types of scholarships besides merit that you can get. Usually these scholarships are based on community service performed, extracurricular activities that you are involved in, intended college major/ career, or any other hobby or interest that your child has. Scholarships played a big part in helping me graduate debt free.

For tips on winning and receiving scholarships for college so that you can graduate debt free visit: http://www.debtfreecollegegrad.com

Exclusive Trick to Graduating Debt Free #2: Community College

Community colleges can really help you graduate debt free. Community colleges usually get a stigma of being the place that students don't really want to go or think about when they are picking a college to attend. People think community colleges are for students who don't have good enough grades to get accepted into a 4 year university. They call it the "dumb school" or the "13th grade." That can be further from the truth. If you think you are going to get an easy "A," you're wrong. I went to a 4 year university my first semester, then decided to switch my major. When I spoke to my adviser about my new major, she couldn't offer me any advice besides "students that pick that major usually switch to a different college." So that's what I did, I switched. I applied to another university, but they were taking too long to get back to me. The beginning of the new semester was nearing and classes were filling up quickly. I didn't want to waste a semester not doing anything so I signed up at the community college. To my surprise, a lot of my professors at the community college were either doctors or the same professors that taught at the 4 year university that I wanted to attend. They definitely graded me the same that they would grade the other students in their courses at the 4 year schools.
Now that those stigmas and myths are out of the way, my exclusive trick to graduating debt free #2 is to go to a community college. Community colleges are very inexpensive to attend in comparison to in-state or out of state colleges and universities. If you start off at a community college first, you will save a lot of money on room and board (by commuting to school and staying at home with your parents) and on tuition costs (since tuition at community colleges are about half the price of in-state colleges). Saving this money can help you graduate debt free. After you spend your first 2 years there, getting the basic courses out of the way, you can transfer to your desired 4 year college.

Exclusive Trick to Graduating Debt Free #3: In-state Colleges

Attending a college that is in the same state as your residence is usually cheaper than attending a college that isn't in the same state as your residence. Saving money here can also help you graduate debt free. If you are planning to move to a different state when your child is in high school (maybe you are moving because there are better state schools in another state) you should check out the college's rules for being considered a resident of the state. Some colleges will ask if you have been a resident of the state for the past 12 months in order for you to qualify for in-state tuition.
I used these 3 tricks (along with a few others) to graduate college debt free. Let me know (in the comment box) some things that you would do to cut college costs so that you (or your child) can graduate debt free.

By: Shanice Miller, founder of debtfreecollegegrad.com