Filling Out Your FAFSA
Here is a quick video tutorial to get you started on filling out your FAFSA. Filling out the FAFSA is a real pain!!! It is probably worse that filling out your taxes.
Depending on who you are, student or parent, you may be asked for all kinds of information about your finances and assets and assets of people in your family including children. If you can, gather as much information as possible, including everything you’d use for your taxes, plus bank statements and mortgage information. These guys are not shy about asking for everything!
But just remember that it is probably going to be worth the effort because it is required by about every school in the USA if you even remotely stand a chance of getting financial aid or a merit scholarship. Yes. You or your kid could get a merit based scholarship but the school still uses FAFSA to process it (somehow).
Once you start filling out the FAFSA you can save your work and come back later. You can also start filling out the FAFSA with incomplete information, say if your taxes are not completed yet. There is a chance to update you form when you get exact tax return data of any new information.
Keep all your FAFSA information together where you can find it again next year. You have to fill out the FAFSA EVERY SINGLE YEAR you or your kids is in college receiving financial aid. One good thing is that your information carries over to the next year’s form, some of it anyway.