THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 52

Yes. I remember going through it. Very confusing. Oh, man. Look, I’ve been helping people with counseling, student loan counseling.

I went through it with my son. Go through it every year. It is not the easiest process. I don’t miss it, but it has to be done, unless you’re rich, of course. And of course, it used to be January where you’d file because things changed, right?

But then they realized that because of the tax return timing, October would be better to get it because you already have your taxes filed for the previous year. It makes it a little bit easier to transfer the money. Right. Yes. We did it in January.

So October, yeah, consider yourselves lucky if you didn’t have to do it in January. Yep. It helps with the income verification. It makes things just a little bit easier and a very arduous process. Sure.

And taxes, student loans, I mean, who wants to deal with all of that? At the same time frame? Right, right. Ever. While you’re all setting your New Year goals that you’ll never eat again ever, right?

While you join the gym and you’re paying. And then you’re paying that monthly payment. Yeah. And then you realize six weeks down the road that you forgot to cancel it. Six pack of abs goes right back to six pack of beer.

And then there’s that pumpkin beer coming up in the fall. Oh, gosh. There you go. You did it. You did it.

All right. So I think what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll welcome our guest that’s going to help us to learn about the FAFSA process and the aid process in college. Perfect. All right. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection.

Guest introduction and background

We’ll be right back. Are the rise in prices for gas and other expenses crushing your budget? Cambridge’s typical clients save 140 per month while paying down their credit card debt at much lower interest rates. Call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection.

I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, and it’s my honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, Kinzer Consolmo. She is the assistant director of Springfield College. Welcome to The Cambridge Connection, Kinzer. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here, and hopefully I’ll be able to provide some helpful information to those folks that are either starting the process with financial aid or continuing or whatever stage you may be in.

But I think the best way to get started is just to kind of give you a clue as to what you’re going to need before you begin filing the FAFSA. That sounds great. You have these pieces. Yeah. And if you could just, before we dive in, because I know once we get in there we’re never coming back, if you could just take a minute to tell our listeners about your career and your position and what you do and how you help people.

Of course. I forgot to do that. So, yes, I am the assistant director of financial aid at Springfield College. I have been here for quite a long time. I help students and families figure out how to pay for college, certainly help them with the FAFSA.

I carry a caseload of, oh, I don’t know, a few hundred students. And I also process all of the loans that go through the college here. So I kind of do a little bit of everything. So what you’re saying is you’re busy. Yeah.

A little bit. There’s never a dull time anymore in financial aid. Once upon a time there used to be, you know, a quiet time. Not anymore and certainly not in this economy. So it’s always a challenge, but something I like to do.

FAFSA basics and required documents

And interestingly enough, the headlines these days. Last week we had our guest Betsy Mayotte to talk about public service loan forgiveness, the whole new loan forgiveness from the Biden administration, because now there’s confusion and it doesn’t seem like enough effort is put to help people in the front that are ready to go through this process. And if I’ve done it, Tina Marie’s done it, I’ve counseled people on student loan debt and doing it myself, it still is quite convoluted. So let’s take step one. It used to be in January where you’d file your FAFSA.

They moved it back to October several years ago. So now October is the month where you want to get into this process. And again, when we talk to people, it’s always don’t procrastinate. Get this process done, because if there are things that need to be fixed, obviously you have time. The longer you wait, it’s my understanding that funds dry up and then there’s other problems that you may have to deal with.

So let’s start with the basics. What’s the basics for a family that has a senior or a junior in college that’s really looking at this and trying to get into the process of figuring out what kind of financial aid they’re going to get? So the first thing, yeah, absolutely. You can start the FAFSA on October 1st, and those go-getters certainly do begin on October 1st. So the first thing you want to do is you want to secure what’s called an FSA ID.

So that’s your Federal Student Aid ID. And anyone who completes a FAFSA is going to need that in order to sign it. It’s an electronic signature, and there’s a website you go out onto and you actually apply for it. And so the parent needs to do it, as well as the student. You each have your own secure one, and you want to make sure you keep it somewhere safe.

handy where you’re not gonna lose it. gov? It is, yes. Perfect. I believe it is.

Yes, it is. Second thing, you know, basic information. You’re gonna want to, you know, obviously have your social security number, your driver’s license number, and the federal income tax return for the year, and the way the FAFSA works is it uses the prior, prior year. So for 22-23, we’re using 2020 income tax returns. Wow.

And what’s the reason for that? That’s what the government, you know, wants everybody to use for the FAFSA. And that opens up a whole nother can of worms because, you know, certainly, and especially since COVID, people’s situations have changed, you know, dramatically in some cases. So you go ahead and regardless of what you think you should do, you have to complete the FAFSA with 2020 income information. Is it possible that if you are in some kind of a hardship, if things have changed and your income is drastically reduced, can you contact the Department of Education and show them your current income and why that needs to be looked at in a different way?

Or does it have to be the 2020 return? You have to complete the FAFSA with the 2020 return. However, what you can do is you can reach out to the individual colleges that you’re applying to and provide your information, your updated information to the particular colleges. Like you could send me a letter saying, you know, the income information on the FAFSA is not indicative of what my family is experiencing now. And then I would reach out to the family and ask what type of information, you know, that I need in order to get a more clear picture as to what’s going on today.

This is why it’s so important having you on this show. You’re on the other side of that and just basic common thought or common sense would think that the people that you have to work with, because you’re not necessarily going to the college yet, right? You’re just going through a process to try to find out what kind of aid you have available and what kind of loans from the federal government are available to fund your education. So just that piece alone, I bet there’s just a ton of people that have no idea that contacting your office if they’re trying to go to Springfield College to make that case and try to get more valid information. I mean, that alone is just an incredible point.

That’s fabulous information. Indeed. I wouldn’t even have thought of that. Exactly. Exactly.

Yes. Because by all means, just like if you’re going through the process and somebody’s lost, you know, a job or, you know, something of that effect, we need to know about that too. So in many ways, you’re giving us your, you know, your deep down information that, you know, everything that you tell us is strictly confidential. It’s not going anywhere, you know, so you can rest assured about that. So you will deal with many families that aren’t actually or necessarily going to go to Springfield College to find the information out also as well as the ones that are going to go and need to get funded?

That’s correct. Wow. So as long as they apply, they can contact you? For FAFSA. Right.

And they have to list the colleges that they want to look at. And then once they’ve done that, do they get on your radar then once they put, I want to go to Springfield College? Once they make application to the school, yes. Wow. And then we get their FAFSA.

Then we are charged with reviewing every student’s eligibility that applies to the college. And the only way an individual is going to know if anything can be modified is by contacting you directly, correct? Correct. That’s correct. Okay.

So in the process, and again, not giving out, you would never give out personal information, but when the family goes through the process, it’s looking at the income. If there’s a married couple, it’s the married couple’s income. If it’s a single parent, obviously it would be the single parent’s income. And then there are various other questions that have to be answered. Is that correct?

That’s correct. And that’s basically what school you’re going to? Yes. Were you more towards the family side of it, or what was your next question? I’m sorry.

Yeah, no, I’m just trying to see the information that’s relevant other than income. It’s got to be just your basics. Are you residing with the parents? I mean, I’m sure they ask a bunch of questions just to try to make sure they understand what the family dynamic looks like. Exactly.

And this is where it can get convoluted depending on the situation. It can get convoluted depending upon the family dynamics, right? So, if you have a family that is a combined family, so to speak, you have a mom or a dad that’s remarried, we need both sets of information to provide that eligibility for financial aid. So, if mom has remarried and now has a new spouse, it’s not the biological dad of the child who’s applying, and that’s a big question when it comes to applying for financial aid. So, that income information is also required.

Would the father himself also have to sign the application? That would be contingent upon the college that they’re attending. Some colleges do collect both biological parents’ information. Okay. gov, there are resources there, too, that you can ask general basic questions.

But not to make assumptions from college to college, university to university. Some of the information that they put in that standard may just have a different translation at each college or university, and that’s the kind of stuff that you would ask the Department of Education. But once it gets to your level, you’ve already got those facts. If there’s anything missing, I’m sure the family finds out, we still need you to answer this question or provide this document or your tax return or whatever that is. But then once it gets to your level, then I’m sure the university, in conjunction with the federal government, Department of Education, have policies that you work through.

That’s correct, yes. And we kind of dissect the FAFSA to find out that information. You know, it asks the parent’s marital status. We’ll figure that out in conjunction with the tax return as to what information we’re looking for in that case. So again, not a cut and dry process, and we’re coming up on a hard break.

So I think what we can do here is take a quick break. I need to get my head examined talking about this because you know so much and there’s so much information. We want to make sure we’re asking the right questions. So we’ll take a quick break here, and then we’ll come back and continue this dialogue. All right, quick break.

Divorced parents and FAFSA process

This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back. Before it starts controlling you. And we’re back. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie and our special guest, Kinzer Consalmo, who is the assistant director at Springfield College, talking about a very important process, which is the FAFSA process, which starts in October.

So any families that are going to be sending their children to college, the sooner you get this process done, the better. And again, Kinzer can’t thank you enough for joining us because this is a convoluted process and any advice that you’re helping us with will help many families try to narrow some things down and make it a little bit easier. You are very welcome. Okay. So we talked about, you got to go create an FSA ID, then you’ve got to complete the FAFSA process and it’s, it’s a stage process, so you just have to follow each stage along and we talked about income, but it gets a little dicey when there’s a divorced situation.

So can you walk us through, if a family has parents that are divorced, how does that change the process? So again, I can’t preface this enough by stating you should ask the individual college what their procedure is, but here what we do is we take the custodial parents’ information and that holds true even when you’re completing the FAFSA. The FAFSA should be completed by the custodial parent. So it’s whoever’s living in that household, that’s the information that you’re using on the FAFSA. Okay.

Let me just ask, to clarify that, what if it’s joint custody and shared time? That’s where it gets kind of... Here we are. Yeah, if it’s, you know, there’s, there’s got to be somebody who provides 51% of the support. Got it.

Okay. Okay. So even if there’s got to be. Even if it’s court ordered shared custody. It’s most likely if there’s child support involved, that’s probably not as much as the custodial parent is spending.

So that’s easy to qualify that they’re becoming the custodial parent. But to your point, and I want to make sure that we bring this to light, you made a very key point, don’t assume that this is all the same process for every college, right? Call the financial aid office. That’s absolutely correct. And tell them what the situation is.

They’ll help you dig into the information and get what they need to get you the best situation that you can. That’s absolutely correct. Yes. We’re here to help, not to hinder. Okay.

So custodial parent, if they’re divorced, and then that comes again to in the FAFSA process, it’s going to be that custodial parents income. Now let’s, let’s do the two scenarios. If it’s just the custodial parent and the divorced partner versus the custodial parent remarried and the divorced partner, does that change anything? Other than the fact that if the custodial parent is the one that remarried, we now need the new step parents information as well. Okay.

And just to be clear, if they weren’t remarried, all they’re asking for is the tax return of the custodial parent. That’s correct. Okay. That’s the, see, I would think that’s, that’s interesting. I, I, that’s great.

And from that is again, I would think that you would think that if they weren’t remarried, they would want both parents incomes to try to figure that out. Cause I think in a lot of, and again, this is an assumption. Um, I think a lot of times when people get divorced, that college comes into the, the divorce decree of who’s going to be responsible for funding the child’s education. Um, so I’m wondering how that comes in, but that’s a dialogue for another day and probably with bankruptcy, divorce and bankruptcy attorneys. A whole new show, Gordon.

Yeah. A whole new show. Okay. So, um, yes. And, and it, and again, it does go back to the individual college because they may require both parents information.

Okay. For our listeners, this is the Cambridge Connection here with Kendra Consolmo. And again, big takeaway from this show is don’t assume anything, fill the FAFSA process out. If you have questions about what you’re eligible for, call this, the, the school that you’re trying to attend as a student aid office to ask some questions and get some answers. Is that right?

Independent student status questions

Absolutely. Okay. So what else, now that we’re, you know, getting pretty secure on the basics of the FAFSA from your seat, from your position, what’s some advice, pros and cons that you can throw out there from what you’ve learned dealing with families that are trying to get their children or even individuals that are trying to go to school? Well, the next one is, um, you know, I don’t claim my student on my tax return any longer. They really don’t live with me.

They have their own apartment. Um, they should be considered independent. And that is typically a hard no. Um, there’s a section on the FAFSA where the student needs, it’s step three for the student, they need to answer yes to at least one of about 10 questions. If they cannot, they’re not considered an independent student.

Yeah. You know, I’ve overheard conversations of people with their strategy, like they’re going to move the child in with grandma or something to try to figure out how they’re not living with us. So it doesn’t include, uh, you know, their income. But I think years ago it used to be where you might get away with something like that, but they’ve tightened that up. And I will even tell you, we had a friend that was separated from his parents completely, no question about it, and still had to go through quite the arduous process to establish and prove that he was emancipated and that he needed to be treated as an individual.

So you said it yourself. Um, it’s pretty tight and very difficult, uh, to make that case. And I, I have actually seen that, um, with a friend trying to deal with that process. So, um, that’s again, great advice. You can’t get, you can’t make trickery here.

You can’t, um, try to fake what’s going on. You really got to step up with facts, uh, and most of them are pretty tied down to, until you get to what is the age, like 24 or 25, where then you can be considered on your own. 24, I believe. Yeah. There’s actually a birth date on here that, um, were you born before January 1st, 1999?

Got it. So if you say no, that’s it. Okay. Hard no. Hard no.

Scholarship scams and resources

We don’t like hard no’s, but we’ll, this in here, it sounds like that’s what it is. All right. So, um, as we run out of time here, let’s talk a little bit about how people, uh, what’s a con. Do you have any cons, um, that you’ve seen people do that you’d like to give some advice on to, to avoid? Um, you know, there are so many scams out there, you know, phishing emails.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Um, if anybody’s asking you to pay anything to do anything, please feel free to call a financial aid office and we will investigate it for you if we don’t already know about it. Um, but for the most part, applying for financial aid is a free process. Don’t ever get suckered into paying anybody to do anything for you because that right off the top is a scam. And let me, let me ask you a little bit more on that.

Um, even in our process as a family with my son going to school, we get so many scholarship mailings and emails and easy scholarships. No essays, no this, no that. And I’m always of the, and we spend a lot of time on this show on scams. We have a Steve Weissman from Scamicide come on at least a couple times a year to talk about all of these types of things. But is the scholarship process, uh, is there a lot of opportunity out there or they’re just some very streamlined, basic services that can help with There are certainly the search engines, you know, fast web.

There are a lot of search engines that will come up with scholarships. We have a scholarship section on our web page. So, again, I would thoroughly look at the college that you’re looking to attend and see if they don’t have something similar. There are a lot of like the Community Foundation of Western Mass. There are a lot of entities within different cities or counties that might be able to provide money out there.

But, again, I wouldn’t be paying money to apply to any scholarships. Yeah, and I think to break down what you just said, bottom line is if you’re going to apply for the FAFSA, go through the process. Call the student aid office and they’ll have resources to offer you to try to get the best help you can. When it comes to scholarships, go to your state government website. I’m sure there’s resources there in each state, the city or town that you live in.

Go to town hall, see if there’s any information that they can provide. But answering advertisements in these spaces typically is you’re going to pay for something you shouldn’t be paying for or it could even be something as bad as scam operations that are just trying to steal your money. And I’ve had that happen to students, so just don’t do it. That’s the bottom line. High school guidance offices, you know, some are really good out there and will help students.

You know, if you’re one of those, take advantage of them because you can come in with several thousand dollars, even if it’s for the first year, that’ll get you going. And from my experience, too, in helping people on the scam side, people that already have loans, you have to look out for that. And more importantly, the last thing that I think we can agree on is do not procrastinate this process. Get it started. Correct.

Get it in there. Start asking questions. Do research. Do homework. Don’t wait until May, June to try to finish this process and get your child ready for college in the fall.

That’s correct, because some states, if you do live in one that has a state scholarship program, they have their own deadlines. And you’re liable to be out, you know, a few thousand dollars there if you wait too long. All right. If anybody wants to find you at Springfield College, how can they get in touch to ask some questions if they’re considering going to your college? Well, we have an open house on Sunday all day, so they could call our admissions office and register for that.

Actually, I don’t even think you have to, but they would like that so they know that you’re coming. But they can shoot me an email at Springfield College. edu. Awesome. Listen, Kinzer, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show.

This is such important information for people. God bless you for the work that you do because people, you know, this is a very expensive venture, and getting advice that you’re providing here is just incredible. We thank you for joining the show. Thank you, Kinzer. Sure thing.

Closing thoughts and credits

All right. Time to wrap the show up. Obviously, we have 28 minutes each week, and it seems in topics like these we could be on for an hour, and maybe that will happen someday because it’s just such great information that we provided, Tina. Twenty-eight minutes is never enough time for the information that we are providing. But plenty of time to stick in my quote.

Oh, yes, of course. So for me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end. Michelle Obama.

Huge thank you to our producers, Alex, Leah, Lisa. They always help us make this show what it is. We always have great experts on the horizon, as you can see from the guests we had today, such important information. m. com and click on podcasts.

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