welcome back to out of the rough I’m with Brian Safdar Brian’s half dory is the founder and expert when it comes to college planning and he owns a company called plonk college planning experts and we talked in previously about deadlines let’s talk about the planning side of your college future of your financial pain for college sure let’s talk about what are some things you can do maybe as a junior or maybe as a parent that’s got children growing you know getting ready to go or you’re on your own and trying to prepare for let’s talk about the CSS sure CSS profile very very few families know what the CSS profile is CSS stands for college scholarship system it’s administered by college board comm the same company non-profit company that administers your AC t– SAT scores so you have to go on to
college board comm and fill out a CSS profile if your qualifying to qualify for financial aid at a private school for example USC requires a FAFSA which is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid but they also require the CSS profile to qualify for additional financial aid outside of the federal grants so we never want to stop at the federal level to get money because there’s a lot more money in the institutional level especially at USC and in order to qualify for that you have to fill out the CSS profile and the key difference between the FAFSA and the CSS is that they have different deadlines so parents think the deadlines are March 1st because they hear FAFSA is March 1st CSS is different it could be January it could be February it could be March you have to make sure you look at the colleges website to find out what financial aid forms are required and what the deadlines are yeah because there’s so many deadlines we talked about you know the Cal grants Pell grants the Stafford loans they’re all this it’s you know so much to take in that’s why planning is so critical but when
it comes to planning I know my sister was talking about this one time when she had two children in college at one time both the private schools and she talked about the expected financial contribution that that universities and the government requires or expects you to make sure the EFC expected Family Contribution is something that the government or the institution whether each forms that you fill out the FAFSA and the CSS or the school’s institutional form it will trigger your EFC based on your income your assets number of people in the household a number of students in college and there’s seventy-four factors that are used based on all the financial information you submit to the schools it will give you an expected Family Contribution which basically means how much the school or
the government thinks you can afford towards the total cost of that university now one of the most important things I want to make crystal clear is you want to do it right you want to you want to make sure you check the boxes right but when it comes to planning for this you can plan in certain ways one example might be if you’re self-employed right yeah very much like like planning on your taxes sure I mean you want to make sure you do things legally and ethically that’s the most important thing when I tell a family to plan when you’re planning on it especially if you’re self-employed you may have more deductions and more write offs that you can take that can bring your adjusted gross income lower we had a family that made about $80,000 a year wanted to go to a four-year university in California last year they started at Azusa Pacific University it’s a private school that cost 38,000 a year the family got about $20,000 $22,000 in total financial aid which brought their costs down cheaper than going to a state school and what we did was he had about eighty thousand dollars of income he had a lot of net operating operating losses so his accountant took a lot of the net operating losses and applied it at the base year for college which a family’s base year is when you start when you’re ending junior year in high school and starting senior year that’s your base year so we took a lot of losses and we brought that $80,000 income to around $70,000 of adjusted gross income and now the family is eligible for Cal Grant which gives the family eleven thousand seven hundred dollars per year for four years that was just one of the grand stuff yeah that’s a lot of money and when you think about it do they for example let’s say you made 90,000 a year do they give partial credit or
they are just kind of all or none yeah well for the cal-grant specially you have income asset and GPA requirements if your income is at 85 and Cal Grant says a family of four has a jeep has an income ceiling of for example 78240 over that or a dollar over that on your taxes you’re disqualified because you didn’t meet this so it’s not a partial like I made a little bit more they give you half the creditor what about and then some people people don’t realize some some ready to go to away to college is a lot of private universities are less expensive because of grants or endowments while private schools raise they typically raise especially in 2009 and 2010 which we had the toughest economic times the private schools raise over 80 billion dollars and private money that’s what the B what the eighty billion dollar billion dollars that’s a big number that the private schools have and parents can tap into this money and they don’t because they look at the sticker price and it says fifty thousand dollars a year and they steer away because anything we do when we shop for a car or a house we look at the sticker price the first thing you look at first thing right so and my parents were the same way we steered away from the private school because I didn’t think I can qualify they have the most amount of money and that’s why you have the passion for it I know talking with you yeah getting money for college was so important now unfortunately we’ve run out of time but I know that you do seminars you do workshops you consult people that you know really need to put this all together especially if you’re a first time
I have four children first time going at this it’s important to consult how can those watching this actually reach you website etc yeah our website is www.antakungfu.com free money regardless of your income or assets so we talked about the whole financial aid process more in detail I love it and there’s no cost for that no so whether they hire your services or not they get that information information is free and then a families would like to get more info then we have consultations for them to take home love it and it might mean the difference between getting in and knockin oh yeah thank you very much that was Brian’s half dollar Brian Safdar with college planning experts we’ll be right back
