Attention Parents Of College Bound High School Students:
Attention Parents of College Bound High School Students:
Discover the SECRETS About College Financial Aid & Admissions...After the big Beautiful Bill!
Enter Your Info Below
To Register for
Our LIVE Training:

Event Details:

  • Date: Thursday, September 25th, 2025
  • Time: 11AM-12PM Eastern Time
  • Place: Zoom (you will get a link to attend live when you register)

Presented By:

Gary Heldt, CPA

---

Seth Greene, Founder

  • Amazon Best-Selling Author
  • Nationally Recognized College Financial Aid & Admissions Expert
  • Seth Greene has been a college financial aid planner for over 26 years specializing in solving the college planning problem for families. 
  • ​He is based in Williamsville, NY and is the founder of www.HowToFindMoneyForCollege.com

In This Training You Will Learn:

  • How do All the Recent Changes affect YOUR child's chances?
  • Will the amount of financial aid available be restricted now?
  • How to lower your “ out- of- pocket” costs and get the maximum amount of money from each school...
  • How to pick colleges that will give you the best financial aid packages...
  • How to increase your college- related tax deductions and tax credits...
  • How to overcome the 5 biggest admissions mistakes that can prevent your child from getting in. 
  • And much more!

College Financial Aid Blog Articles

College Costs No One Thinks About

Most families often underestimate or overlook what it costs for their student to attend college. 

Most families will rely entirely on college websites, where the published total cost of attending is shown. 

However, other costs are overlooked once the student gets to the ivy-covered walls of their selected college or university.

According to an article from The Washington Post, “The average undergrads spend $765 every year eating off campus, even if their parents have already shelled out for a meal plan. A bus pass to get to an off-campus job or internship can be $50 a month or more. Dorm insurance or renter’s insurance might cost a couple of hundred dollars per year.”
According to Consumer Reports, “Laundry isn’t free. You might pay fees for joining a club or storing personal items over the summer. Concerts, sporting events, and movie nights add up too.”

Unforeseen or unbudgeted additional college costs could very easily break a family’s college budget.

According to Edvisors, a website that provides information on planning and paying for college, “Unforeseen college costs can add up to an additional $250 to $500 every month. For the unprepared, the extra expenses can be a major financial strain. Sixty-four percent of college students have run out of money before the end of the semester at least once.

Unanticipated costs were to blame for drained bank accounts in half of those cases.”

Here is a list of unforeseen college cost that most families overlook:

  • • Application fees paid to various colleges can total hundreds of dollars
  • • Taking the SAT (including the essay test) costs $57 - ACT fees are similar
  • • Advanced Placement exam costs $93 on average
  • • Fees for the college fitness center - often the fees aren’t optional
  • • Fees for health insurance - often the fees aren’t optional
  • • Dorm room refrigerator rental
  • • TV cable fees
  • • Charges for a visit to the college’s student health center
  • • Charges to print a paper for class
  • • Charges for the cap and gown to wear to college graduation
  • • Charges for using a credit card
  • • Once you graduate, you could pay extra charges for copies of your
  • transcripts for graduate school applications
  • • Additional cost of joining a fraternity or sorority - including formal events, gifts for
  • sorority or fraternity sister or brother, and clothing, etc.
  • • Annual dues, fines for infractions (like skipping a required meeting)
  • • Fees for social events, and purchases of T-shirts and other college gear
  • • Cost of transportation – travel to and back to college
  • • If a student owns a car, they will have to pay campus parking fees
  • • Students that don’t have a car on campus may incur bus pass fees or Uber fares
  • • Lab fees and instructional materials
  • • Music or performing arts majors might have to pay extra for practice room time
  • • Spring breaks to Florida or other warm locations

Adding up all the additional college costs that are overlooked could cost the family several thousands of dollars over their students stay in college. Therefore, putting together a cash flow and tax plan to cover college costs is so important.

Free College Financial Aid Experiment:
A Warning To US Policymakers

There is an ongoing push for free tuition in the United States. It is being promoted as a way to help low-middle-income households, students of color, and other minorities attend college.

The free college philosophy consistently promotes equity, access, and financial support for families that cannot afford higher education costs. In addition, many of our politicians are supporting free tuition agendas based on the free tuition model of European nations’ success.

The following report by the American Enterprise Institution will give you an insight into how successful the European free tuition model has fared over the last 25 years.

The report evaluates the free tuition program of Ireland. However, the same problems, based on the report, are common in other European countries.

Here is the conclusion in the American Enterprise Institution's report.

Lessons for the US Advocates for free college in the US often point to international cases as evidence of the policy’s success. But the international experience with free college is diverse, complex, and hardly free of trade-offs. Ireland’s 25-year experience with the policy offers lessons for US policymakers that are often overlooked by those who point to international examples to make the case for free college.

While one virtue of free college is that it is supposed to reduce enrollment disparities by family income, Ireland has experienced only limited success on this front. That is because free college largely replaced existing grant aid for low-income students, much like it could in the US.

And the policy did not remove other barriers to access, such as test score requirements, selective admissions policies, and unaffordable non-tuition costs for rent and food for many students.

Meanwhile, the policy appears to have provided windfall benefits to students from more affluent families who had the resources to pay tuition—and the test scores to attend the most elite institutions—but now qualify for free tuition.
Adopting a similar policy in the US could repeat those outcomes if policymakers do not work to counteract them with a separate set of policies.

For example, Ireland shows that without changes in other policies, free college may not change enrollment disparities. It may even make them worse.

Policymakers may also need to emphasize mentoring and counseling services for low-income and first-generation students to help them through college—even if tuition is free.

Without these policies, the free-college thrust is likely to fail. Put another way, the Irish experience demonstrates that to be successful with respect to equity, a free-college regimen requires substantial additional resources and policies to counteract the regressive effects of free college that favor better-off students.

The Irish experience over a quarter century also shows that free college can actually work against the goal of increasing resources in the higher education system.

A successful free-college program requires large additional governmental expenditures, to not only replace the revenues from fees that students otherwise would have paid but also ensure that overall resources are sufficient to pay for a quality education for a large share of the population.

But when budget pressures arise, policymakers can still cut funding for universities even if tuition is free.

That is exactly what happened in Ireland. Historically, colleges and universities in the US have raised tuition to offset such cuts. In Ireland, that is not an option. And institutions have endured long periods in which per-student resources declined sharply, year after year. Many in the country say this has reduced educational quality.

It also makes it much harder for institutions to offer the types of mentoring and support services that have been shown to help low-income and first-generation students through college.

These are indeed the very services Irish institutions cut when their budgets were under pressure.

Ireland illustrates that the free-college agenda is not a panacea for the problems that America faces in its higher education system. Rather, Ireland demonstrates that a country can still struggle with many of the same higher education challenges as the US, despite having free tuition and low fees set by the government.

Moreover, the Irish experience teaches us that without adequate funding and interventions to counteract the regressive effects of free college, the policy risks making equity and quality issues in the US higher education system worse rather than better.

Here Are The Key Points From The Report:

  • Ireland enacted free college in the 1990s but still faces challenges related to equity, access, and financing in its higher-education system.
  • ​Students from low-income and less-educated families remain underrepresented at universities, particularly at selective institutions and in high-paying degree programs.
  • ​Ireland’s high college attainment rate has been driven more by highly educated immigrants than by free college.
  • Free college has exacerbated funding constraints in the Irish higher-education system, resulting in rising student fees and concerns about educational quality.
The information you just read could happen if a free tuition program is adopted in the United States. 

So, before we conclude this publication, ask yourself this question. “Is providing free tuition a way to deliver equity, access, and financial support for families that cannot afford higher education costs, or is it another way for our Federal government to take more control of our lives?


$247 Billion In College Student Loan Debt Is Held By
Adults 50 Years Of Age And Over

As of the present, there is over $1.5 trillion of college student loan debt. However, what is not being reported, is $247 billion of college student loan debt is being held by individuals over the age of 50.

Individuals over the age of 50 that have student loan debts have more than tripled since 2003 according to a recent report by the Urban Institution.
We all know that student loan debt is one type of debt that cannot be dismissed in bankruptcy.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the federal government is withholding a portion of Social Security benefits from thousands of older Americans that are in default on their own college loans.

In a recent survey by the Urban Institute found that 3.5% of Americans over the age of 50 holds student loans that they took out for their own education and 8% hold loans for their children or grandchildren.

According to the survey, 55% of adults over the age of 50 are struggling with money issues as compared to only 33% of younger borrow. The survey also reported black adults over the age of 50 are three times more likely to have money issues than their white counterparts mainly due to their own student loan debts.

The chart on the next page from the urban institution analysis shows that blacks hold more personal student loans than their white or Hispanic peers. It also shows individuals making less than $20,000 a year hold more personal student loan debt than individuals making $100,000 a year plus. However, individuals making over $100,000 a year has approximately 13% of student loan debt taken out for their children or grandkids compared to only 5.5% for blacks.

The next chart will show the financial security among Americans age 50 and older with educational debt.
Another report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found individuals “60 and older is the fastest growing age segment with student debt, and nearly 40% of borrowers 65 and older are in default. Many individuals in this age group borrow the money in their own name, or they are cosigning for their children or grandchildren.”

No matter who obligate themselves with student loan debt, somewhere down the road it will affect an individual’s retirement as well as future borrowing needs such as, taking out a mortgage, car loans and other necessary debt obligations.

For More Information Or Help Contact:

60% Of Students Will Graduate From College
In 8 Years, Not 4 or 6 Years

In an article written in 2019 InsideHigherEd wrote, “According to the most recent report released in (2019), by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found, students who started at a community college or four-year institution in 2010, 60.4 percent graduated by 2018.”

Here are some other findings in the report.
  • Among students who started in four-year public institutions, black students had the lowest six-year completion rate (45.9 percent). The completion rate of Hispanic students was almost 10 percentage points higher than that of black students (55.0 percent). Over two-thirds of white and Asian students completed a degree within the same period (67.2 percent and 71.7 percent, respectively). Nationally, 62.4 percent of students finished a degree or certificate within six years.
  • ​Nationally, 54.8 percent of students who started in any type of college or university in Fall 2010 completed a degree or certificate within six years. When examined by race and ethnicity, Asian and white students had a much higher completion rate (63.2 percent and 62.0 percent, respectively) than Hispanic and black students (45.8 percent and 38.0 percent, respectively). These rates include students who graduated after a transfer. They also count both full time and part time students.
  • ​Among students who started in four-year public institutions, black men had the lowest completion rate (40.0 percent) and the highest stop-out rate (41.1 percent). Asian women had the highest completion rate (75.7 percent) and the lowest stop-out rate (11.2 percent).
  • ​The overall completion rate for students who started in two-year public institutions was higher for white and Asian students (45.1 percent and 43.8 percent, respectively) than Hispanic and black students (33 percent and 25.8 percent, respectively). Nationally, the rate was 39.2 percent, as the Research Center reported in December 2016.
  • ​The completion rate at four-year institutions for students who started at a community college (with or without receiving an associate degree first) was dramatically different for students of different racial and ethnic groups. While almost one in four Asian students and one in five white students had completed this transfer pathway by the end of the six-year study period, just one in 10 Hispanic students and about one in 12 black students did.
  • ​The completion gaps between racial groups tend to shrink as students grow older. Among traditional-age students, there was a 24-percentage point gap in the completion rates of black and white students (42.7 percent and 66.8 percent, respectively) and 17.5-percentage points gap between Hispanic and white students (49.3 percent and 66.8 percent, respectively). Among adult learners (those who started college at 25 or older), however, the gap was 12.3 percentage points (42.0 percent and 29.7 percent, respectively) between black and white students and just 9.1 percentage points between Hispanic and white students (42.0 percent and 32.9 percent, respectively).
There are several reasons why college completion takes so long. Here are a few reasons:
  • Selecting the wrong college to attend (academically, socially, and financially).
  • ​Lack of knowledge of how financial aid works.
  • ​Not College Ready (not prepared to do college level work.)
  • ​Transfers to a different college from the student’s first selection.
  • ​Student does not want to get into massive debt, therefore works more hours while attending college.
  • ​Lack of family support (financially.)
  • ​Lack of individual financial literacy (lack of how to handle personal finances.)
  • ​Not understanding how student loans work.
  • ​Lack of focus when it comes to career opportunities.
Student loan delinquency is at crisis levels for borrowers, most notably for students that are of color and low-income white students. However, statistics have shown over the last several years that the student loan crisis is now hitting students from the middle and high
middle-income ranges as well.

Scholarship And Student Loan Scams

Over the last several years, college’s cost has increased more than inflation as well as family income thus forcing many families to look for alternative ways of paying for the cost of a college education. Students, as well as their parents, are borrowing more money to help pay for college expenses than ever before.

A recent report from the Federal Department of Education said, “The proportion of students borrowing to pursue college degrees was up in 2015-16 compared to eight years prior, according to federal data. The average amount borrowed increased by nearly $6,000 over the same period. Of students who completed their degree in the 2007-08 academic year, 65.6 percent took out student loans, borrowing $24,700 on average. Eight years later, 67.4 percent of students took out loans, borrowing an average of $30,500.”

With borrowing at an all-time high, families are driven to search for scholarships to help pay for the cost of a college education and keep borrowing down to a minimum. However, searching for scholarships could be a dangerous endeavor. There are many predatory companies that are offering scholarship funds that could be detrimental to the student as well as their parents.

Many of these scholarship search scams are promising scholarship funds to students once they have completed a lengthy and personal survey. Once registered, the student may receive spam emails that may contain U.S. Department of Education logos emblazoned across websites asking for an upfront fee to apply.

The latest data from the federal trade commission’s report said, “it received 725 consumer reports of problems related to scholarships and educational grants in 2018. This data is based only on consumer reports of issues, and therefore, do not reflect the actual number of fraudulent incidents.”

The Better Business Bureau has issued a warning there could be an increase in scholarship and student loan scam programs for the year 2019 and beyond.

Families that are looking for scholarship opportunities should be very cautious of suspicious websites and leery of official sounding emails notifying a student that they have won scholarship dollars.

John Breyault, vice president of public policy of the Federal Trade Commission, said, “The FTC has identified hundreds of complaints every year about these scholarship or educational grant scams. But what's just as interesting is how many students are complaining to them about fraud related to the student loan industry. So, it's unclear whether those student loan complaints are encompassing offerings that are scam scholarships as well, and those numbers are in the thousands."

There are more than 42 million Americans that owe a total of $1.5 trillion in college loan debt. According to the Federal Trade Commission, “Scammers are targeting borrowers with student loan debt relief schemes that can actually make things worse.”

In a case announced on July 11th, 2019 by the Federal Trade Commission said, “Today, the FTC alleges the operators of Mission Hills Federal and Federal Direct Group bilked borrowers out of more than $23 million. These companies lured people with false promises to pay down student loans and lower monthly payments. The companies also lied about taking over the servicing of the loans, which tricked people into submitting loan payments directly to them. In fact, the defendants diverted borrower payments to themselves.”

According to the FTC’s report, “Federal student loan identity theft reports in 2018 were up 119 percent over the previous year, and consumer reports of student loan problems with banks and lenders in 2018 numbered 29,346.”
Katherine Hutt, the spokeswoman for the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc, said, “Students are prime targets for scholarship and student loan scams. A combination of inexperience, vulnerability, and desperation as college costs increase and states cut funding for public institutions create a perfect storm. Students represented 9.4 percent of fraud reports submitted to the BBB Scam Tracker in 2018, and about 24 percent of students reported a loss when exposed to a scam, compared with only about 28 percent of non-students.”

The two biggest red flags of a scholarship scam are when students are notified, they have won scholarship funds that they have never applied for and wants the student to pay a fee to be eligible to receive the funds.

How To Avoid Scholarship Or Loan Scams

Here are a few things that students should know to avoid falling for a scholarship and loan scam.

  • •Never provide your Social Security number or bank account information to a scholarship or loan program before making sure it’s a viable and reputable program. 
  • Never pay an upfront application fee and never provide credit card information.
  • Ask for a list of past award winners and if possible, contacts previous winners.
  • Ask the scholarship and loan program to communicate with you in writing. If the program will not communicate with you by written communication, it normally could be a red flag and the resource could be dealing in fraudulent activities.
 Reputable Scholarship Search Websites And Resources
The best resource for finding and applying for scholarships is in your local community. The best source to check on these resources is from your high school guidance counselor.

Here are a few reputable and free scholarship websites and resources:
  • Scholarships.com: tracks $19 billion in scholarships.
  • ​Fastweb.com: has 1.5 million scholarships in its database. 
  • ​Chegg.com: has 25,000 scholarships resources.
  • ​Cappex.com: has $11 billion in scholarships.
  • ​JLV College Counseling: offers information on various scholarships every Saturday.
  • ​The College Board: The College Board has info on colleges and more than $6 billion in scholarships.
  • College websites that you are interested in attending: scholarships and amounts will vary from college to college.

Conclusion

Now that you know what to look for when it comes to scholarship and loan scams let’s look at a few ideas that families can use to increase the potential of the student to receive scholarship funds.

  • GPA - Keep the student’s GPA above 3.0 (taking advanced courses when available) all the way through high school.
  • ​Get Involved - Student should get involved in extracurricular activities in and out of the high school environment.
  • ​Get Organized - Learning organizational skills will make studying and learning much easier.
  • ​Start Looking Early - Student should start looking at potential colleges as early as the sophomore year in high school. Things to consider are academic programs, social atmosphere, location, student body, etc. In other words, select colleges that are a right fit for the student.
  • ​• ACT/SAT - Scoring high on either of these two tests are essential when it comes to getting admitted to the student’s selected college, as well as positioning the student for scholarships.

Finally, never apply for scholarships or student loans that make the following statement:

"The scholarship or loan is guaranteed or your money back."


Privacy Policy 

How To Find Money For College operates the https://www.HowToFindMoneyForCollege.com website, which provides the SERVICE.

This page is used to inform website visitors regarding our policies with the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information if anyone decided to use our Service, the How To Find Money For College website.

If you choose to use our Service, then you agree to the collection and use of information in relation with this policy. The Personal Information that we collect are used for providing and improving the Service.

We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.
The terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms and Conditions, unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy.

Our Privacy Policy was created with the help of the Privacy Policy Template and the Privacy Policy Generator from Terms Feed plus the Refund Policy Template.

Information Collection and Use
For a better experience while using our Service, we may require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your name, phone number, and postal address. The information that we collect will be used to contact or identify you.

Log Data
We want to inform you that whenever you visit our Service, we collect information that your browser sends to us that is called Log Data. This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser version, pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics.

Cookies
Cookies are files with small amount of data that is commonly used an anonymous unique identifier. These are sent to your browser from the website that you visit and are stored on your computer’s hard drive.
Our website uses these “cookies” to collection information and to improve our Service. You have the option to either accept or refuse these cookies, and know when a cookie is being sent to your computer. If you choose to refuse our cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.


Service Providers
We may employ third-party companies and individuals due to the following reasons:
• To facilitate our Service;
• To provide the Service on our behalf;
• To perform Service-related services; or
• To assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.
We want to inform our Service users that these third parties have access to your Personal Information. The reason is to perform the tasks assigned to them on our behalf. However, they are obligated not to disclose or use the information for any other purpose.

Security
We value your trust in providing us your Personal Information, thus we are striving to use commercially acceptable means of protecting it. But remember that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable, and we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Links to Other Sites
Our Service may contain links to other sites. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that site. Note that these external sites are not operated by us. Therefore, we strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of these websites. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

Children’s Privacy
Our Services do not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 13. In the case we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we immediately delete this from our servers. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we will be able to do necessary actions.

Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Thus, we advise you to review this page periodically for any changes. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. These changes are effective immediately, after they are posted on this page.

Contact Us
If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us.