## Why financial aid is misunderstood [00:00] All right, welcome everyone back to another financial aid secrets training. My name is Coach David. I'm going to be helping you and kind of helping you guys understand what the EFC, SAI, whatever you want to call it is right now. I say whatever they want to call it because well, they keep changing the names, right? Uh so, uh we're going to be talking a little bit about what you know. It is July 23rd. It's just after five o'clock. We got started, right? My voice is a little bit out because for the last three days I have been in backto backto backto back financial aid consultations. Um I've been telling people about what I can do for them. Uh what I've been able to save other families in their situation. Uh or if I haven't been able to help them, I also tell them, hey, here are some tips and tricks. I know I can't necessarily help you save extra money. So, uh you know, here's what you can do. Right now, again, we always ask, you know, you know, families to put their students grade in the chat so that we can help figure out kind of like what are the areas and what grade levels we should be talking to. Now, I see a lot of different grades here, right? I see rising 11th graders, I see rising 12th graders, I see 10th graders, I see seventh graders, right? I see everyone here, right? There's never a time that is bad to start. the earlier you understand the process, the earlier you can get help, the earlier that you can sign up with us if you if that if that's kind of the route that you choose in order so that we can kind of be next to you as you're going through this process. Okay, now for today talking a little bit about the agenda, right? And my voice is really bad right now and I'm going to try to get through this, but my voice might squeak. It might do some weird things. I might have to cough. So, I'm sorry in advance, right? But today we're going to be talking about the EFC or what is now called the SAI, right? And I'll explain what those terms mean later, right? What do they mean? Why you should be careful? And I'll also talk about how colleges trick you, right? And also, I'm going to kind of give you guys a little bit of insight to really understand your situation. Now, a little bit about me if you guys don't know who I am. I think I know most of the people in here, right? I've either seen you on Facebook, I've seen you in our coaching programs, right, in Discord, right? So, ## What is SAI and how does it compare to EFC [02:00] welcome and I'm glad that you guys are here today. All right, but just a little bit about me. I'm a former law school and college admissions reader, right? I'm also one of the head coaches in our coaching program. Right? I'm a former lawyer turned college admissions expert. Right? And I actually have been doing financial aid for just as long. We're actually one year less. Right? So I'm on my 15th year of doing financial aid. I'm on my 16th year of doing college admissions. Okay. Now, I always like to start our kind of uh trainings with a little bit of news. And the reason why I want to give a little bit of news is because I want you guys to understand that I'm always constantly looking into what's going on with financial aid and the world that we live in today. Okay. Now, the topic I'm going to bring up today is a little bit of a heavy topic for a lot of families, right? And it has to do with financial aid and immigration. Okay. Now, unfortunately, the world of kind of like immigration and the world of financial aid have kind of collided, right? And where they have collided is in the area of filling out different financial aid forms. Okay. Now there are families where you know students are US citizens, parents might not be right. They might not have an immigration status in the United States, right? Um but uh what has been happening is that there has been this fear of you know uh being targeted by immigration authorities if you fill out forms and you basically state that you are kind of an undocumented status, right? But even with this fear, uh the bigger concern for a lot of parents and a lot of families has been can I afford to send my student to college? I want to give them the best of everything. Right? Now, luckily in California, right, there are protections and there's also a parallel document to the FAFSA called the CADAA, right? And so this document is a separate type of FAFSA like corollary, right? And because of the way that California is set up, right? uh it actually prohibits information sharing with immigration officials. So, if your family is in a situation where the student is a citizen applying for financial aid and you you guys are worried if you're in California, don't need to worry as much, right? Um but if you're in a different state, I don't know what that means for you. If you have a specific state in mind, please let me know. I'll try to help figure things out for you. Okay? Um but there's also kind of families that are mixed status as well. Maybe one parent is a is a kind of a you know a a green card holder or a US citizen but the other is not right um or maybe they are unmarried whatever the situation is there's a lot of complicated situations right um but there is a lot of fear around financial aid right now because again you're filling out federal forms and people are afraid that it will lead to immigration kind of um actions okay um so I wanted to bring that up for you guys right just so that you guys are in the know right but let's kind of continue on right with the training. I'll try to kind of keep you guys updated as much as possible. I'll try to be as objective as possible, even though that there's sometimes where I kind of throw my opinions in there and I'm sorry about that, but I I feel the way I feel. There's nothing I can do, okay? But stay tuned, right? I'll try to kind of keep you guys updated on everything that's happening, right? But before we get into the training, there's one quick message that I want to put out there in the world. Now, a lot of our families are coming to us. I do see that there's a lot of rising seniors in there. My question to you is, have you started with your applications? Right? For the large majority of people that are not getting outside help, the answer is no. Right? But our students have been working for the last 3 months on their applications, their essays, different parts and elements so that they can be ready once the applications actually do open. Okay? Now, here is the new thing, right? Up until last week, I was talking about possible like spots available for our summer kind of boot camps. Those are completely gone. We are we literally don't have one seat available, right? But we have various options to help the class of 2026. We have our essay essentials program. We have our application advantage program. And we have our submit strong program. Three different levels of packages to allow students to utilize Eagle Lock so that we can make sure that your student is turning things in on time, making sure that they're getting the right essays in ## How the formula really works based on income [06:00] with the right content and the right kind of message so that your students can get into college. Okay. So, if you are interested in talking to us about kind of your class of 2026 senior and they haven't started on anything, this is perfect for you. Okay. Now, again, essays essentials is kind of like our kind of our um you know, most kind of hands-off package, right? And when I mean hands-off, it's like the or it's not I guess hands-off isn't really the right word. It is kind of like our lower tier package, right? Uh the students uh you know have a longer turnaround time on essays, right? um in application advantage is faster and in submit strong it is even faster right so it depends on how much help your student needs if your student needs help on a couple things maybe essay advantage or essay essentials works for you but if your student needs help on 27 essays right you might need want to go with that submit strong but if you guys do have questions uh about the programs I'll have a link later a phone number that you can text so that you can learn about a little bit more okay now let's get into today's discussion and it is about EFC or SAI and for a A lot of families, you guys are probably thinking, "This guy keeps saying these threeletter abbreviations, and I have no idea what he's talking about." So, let's get into it first. Okay, so the old term is actually EFC. Now, what that meant was expected family contribution. Okay, what your family is expected to contribute to the college expenses of your student. Okay, I thought that that term worked fine, but all of a sudden with the change in the FAFSA two years ago, they decided to call it something else and now it's called the SAI, the student aid index, right? It's exactly the same thing, right? They like to put shiny names on new things, right? Um like shiny new names there and think that it's something new, but it's not. It's exactly the same, right? They're just confusing more people because expected family contribution made complete sense to 99% of people. Now they changed it to student aid index and no one knows what it actually means. But I'm here to tell you it is exactly the same as it was before. Okay. Now how do we get to your EFC or SAI? Right? How is it calculated? Right? The SAI takes into account a multitude of factors. Right? And I'm reading literally off the website. Right? It takes into account your family income, assets, family size, number of uh family members in college, and other financial information. This is what they say they use to calculate the SAI. How hard can the formula be? Why can't they just tell us it's family income divided by two plus this plus that divided by three, whatever it is? They can tell us what the formula is, but because they want to stay mysterious and they don't want it to kind of like basically tell people how to save more money, right? They are not telling us what the formula is. It is not available for public consumption, unfortunately. Right? In reality, I think what it's saying is they're looking at a bunch of stuff, right? Figuring it out along as they go and then figuring out how much pain your family can endure when it comes to pay college expenses. Okay? They don't tell us. And if they don't tell us, well, then how are we able to know if it's fair or not across the board? Right? That's my biggest gripe with the Department of Education, with the FAFSA, with the SAI. Okay. Now, this is what I have seen, right? So, for families that are between the $100 to $200,000 category, this is what I have seen be the general rule of thumb. Okay? So in California, right, with families that are between $100 and $200,000, you basically take your income, you roughly you you take out basically $5,000 a month, right? Uh for living expenses, right? So roughly, you know, $60,000 a year, right? And then uh you know um basically what happens after that uh is well, what am I doing? I'm confused. Right? So let's just take that like a middle number, right? Divide it by two, right? um or subtract $60,000, right? And then basically divide by two and that is what your SAI turns out to be. Right? Now, ## What FAFSA doesn’t want you to know [10:00] roughly speaking, an SAI for a family in this situation between $100 and $200,000, right? I'll just take the middle point and say 150, right? They take about $60,000 out uh for living expenses. So, that brings you from 150 to 90, right? Basically, from there, right, if you divide your income by three, that is what your SAI is. So the SAI for this particular family 150, they take out their expenses. And again, I understand that the expenses can be lower or higher, but they take out their expenses and you divide by three. That's what your SAI is. Right now, I'm going to go through my past um like my my past clients and take a look at what the evaluations are for the higher ones, right? I haven't really done this because it's all in my brain, right? Um, but I want to be able to show you guys what the kind of like different equations are for like the different kind of like uh income ranges. So, I'll do like 100 to 200, 200 to 300, 300 to 400, 400, 500, so on and so forth, right? And then I'll it'll hopefully that'll be a little bit clearer as to kind of what your state student aid index is, right? But what we want to talk about here is well ways to lower your SAI, right? Now, there are some very easy things that you guys have thought about and that you guys probably already know about to bring down your kind of AGI or adjusted gross income, right? Line 11 on your tax return, right? There's a couple ways, right? And let's talk about some of them, right? The first way is to kind of contribute to your retirement, right? So, if you're contribute contributing to kind of like your 401k, these are different areas, right? Uh that brings over that that brings down your adjusted gross income, right? You might shift funds to minimize cash, right? So, a lot of people they like pay off debts, right? With the cash sitting in their savings accounts, this and that. Realistically, do you need to do that? I think that's just a very theoretical thing, right? Realistically, if I if I told you to go to the bank and take out and let's say you had $50,000 and I told you to take out $4,990 in cash and then stick it under your mattress. Well, no one now knows where that $4,990 or $49,900 is anymore. All they know is that there is $100 in your bank account. Okay? So, do we necessarily need to do that? Obviously, paying down your debts is a good thing, right? But if you need to have cash on hand, I totally understand as well. Right now, this next one is really important, right? For our younger students, right? I saw even young as as young as seventh grade in here today, right? Grandparent held 529s. Okay, I've said this a lot. I kind of haven't been talking about it recently because, well, I've said it so much that I think I'm like, your ears are bleeding, right? But grandparent held 529s are a loophole created by the government for us to exploit. Okay? So if you if you're thinking about kind of starting to save money for your younger student, right? They might be even younger than seventh grade, right? Then you should think about opening one under the grandparents name because grandparent held 529s are not used for the purposes of financial aid, right? They're not counted, but parent held 529s are. Okay? There's other things. Lowering lowering or ## Grandparent 529s and student-owned assets [13:00] getting rid of any money or assets in your student's name, right? Again, this is something that I've talked about multiple times, right? I know that there's parents that are thinking about the future. They add the student onto the deed of the house, right? But if there if it's like mom, dad, and then two two of the kids on the deed to the house, well, that means that your student now owns 25% of this property, right? And if the equity in the property is, let's say, is, I don't know, $400,000, then this student now has an asset worth $100,000. The reason why that is a problem is that on the FAFSA, oh my gosh, my voice, right? Student held assets are taxed or basically seen as reachable up to 20%. So, they will basically think, okay, well, we can take $20,000. They have $100,000 there. We can take $20,000 of it for college expenses. Do we want that to happen? No. Right. So, we want to make sure that we we kind of get rid of those before the critical year, right? The critical year is two years before your student graduates. If your student is graduating in 2026, sorry, you've already missed the window, right? You need to do it for 20 you need you need to have done it for 2024, right? If you're a class of 2027, there's still things you can do now because the tax return year they'll be looking at is the 2025 tax year. Okay, let me get a drink of water. Okay, let's keep going. Right now, this next part, a lot of people ask me like, "Oh, well, how do we bring down our SAI?" Right? And I say, "Well, you can reduce your income, right?" And they say, "Oh, what can you do?" And I'm like, "I can tell you, but most families cannot do this, right?" And the reason is this. Okay, I'll tell you what the example is. There are qualified annuities that you can buy to bring down and those are pre-tax dollars, right? pre-tax dollars used to buy a qualified annuity can drastically reduce the amount of income that you have, right? But let's take a situation, right? Let's say that your family makes $250,000 a year, right? Technically speaking, you could get down to zero if you bought a $250,000 annuity, right? Um and basically threw all of your income for 2025 into it. Your income would be at zero, right? The question is, is that feasible? Right? For a lot of families, they might think they might think yes, but you also have to think about cash flow, right? Do you have enough cash flow to make it through the entire year without touching anything, without pulling out money from out of retirement for without pulling out money out of investments. Okay? Usually the answer is no. Okay? And that's why this doesn't necessarily work for people. Now, if you are in a position to do that, right? Maybe you found a huge nugget of gold that you're selling piece by piece, right, at the pawn shop, right? Um, then we can definitely talk about it. But generally, like reducing your income if you're a W2 employee, right, is very, very difficult. Now, if you own a business or a 1099, this is the year that you want to be very aggressive with deductions. You also want to try to if you need to ## Strategic deductions and timing large expenses [16:00] buy equipment or things like that, you want to do that so you can increase your expenses and kind of lower your overall income. Okay? And then there's other life changes that happen if you if that might bring down your SAI as well, right? There might be a divorce or a separation, right? When it comes to remarage, you might want to rethink remarrying at a certain time because once you do remarry, then your remarried partner's income will also be part of the equation. Right? You might also want to think about inheritances that are coming in, right? Now, usually if you get an inheritance, well, I mean, it's a great thing, right? you're getting money but at the same time right inheritances and kind of like cash value things do show up on your tax return right so if there's a way to push it out right that might be something that you're thinking about doing as well right and then another huge life change that a lot of parents are going through early retirement right hey I am getting out of the rat race right so I am going to be sitting on a beach drinking my my ties right I think that sounds really great right about now right we're right in the thick of the summer with college admissions right um but early retirement so if your income is now really nothing, right? You're getting social security, you're doing this, you're doing that, right? Whatever it ends up being, right? Your income is going to change drastically, right? And it's probably and for a lot of families, it might go lower, right? So that could also bring down your SAI as well. Okay? But those are some different ways that you can do that. But I'm going to kind of throw a word of caution out there. You need to be careful, right? And you need to be careful in understanding what the SAI actually means. Okay? The student aid index, right? formerly known as the expected family contribution. Whatever you want to call it, whichever name, right? It's a misnomer, right? This is not the total cost you're going to pay, right? I'm going to show you why in an example with a real school with a real cost of attendance, right? So, you need to understand the SAI or EFC is just what you're going to pay out of pocket, like literally from your checkbook, right? From your checking account, from your savings account each and every ## Why your real out-of-pocket cost is more than your SAI [18:00] year, right? it does entail more than that. Okay, so let me go into an example to explain. Okay, let's look at Stanford. We looked at Stanford's uh kind of like cost of attendance kind of a couple weeks ago. So it should look familiar, right? But the total cost of attendance, right, over the over the course of a year is 90 thou $98,513. That is what they're expecting you to kind of spend over the course of a year. Okay, so let's take a look at how this looks, right? We'll kind of use the person from before, right? their SAI is around $30,000, right? The total cost is around $98,000. So if you if your SAI is $30,000, that's what you're going to pay out of pocket, right, from your checking account a draft payment, right? Then your total cost per year is brought down to $68,513. Okay? Now, most students are also offered loans and most of the times they're actually better loans than what you can find out on the market for students at least. So, $5,500 in loans. That brings your total like after kind of you you your payment cost down to $63,13. Now, this is what most families think that Stanford is going to pay for. Okay? But hold your horses, right? Don't get your hopes up because this is what actually happens. Okay? Sorry, I had to put like a little gift in there and I like this hot dog one, right? But what you're thinking right now is completely wrong. It is not the case. What will actually happen is this, right? In theory, that is what's supposed to happen, right? But this is what will happen. 98,513 minus your SAI of $30,000 minus the $5,500 in loans. The remaining amount that you need to pay is $63,13, right? You minus another $30,000 from there and $33,13. This is what the school is going to give to you, right? What you're actually paying is $60,000, right? plus the loans that you have to pay back later, right? So, you're going to be paying $60,000 per year, right? You might be asking, ## Understanding the role of loans in “aid” packages [20:00] where did that extra $30,000 come from? Right? This is where parent loans right now. I say, don't panic. It's only $120,000 in loans. I hope everyone here knows that I'm joking. Okay? Your student cannot take out loans to pay for college. The maximum loan amount that a student can take, an undergraduate student can take is $27,000. That's it. Doesn't matter if they're going to a UC, doesn't matter if they're going to a private school. Okay? So, parents, if this is roughly looking like your situation, you are going to be taking out $120,000 in loans to send your kid to Stanford if this is your situation. Okay? Now, I understand no one likes loans. You have to pay interest on them. You have to pay them off forever, right? I get it, right? That's why we're here. We want to try and put you in a position that you don't have to do that, right? For a family in a similar situation, we were actually able to save them $55,000 in free money. Okay? So, $55,000. That means your total cost of attendance at at where kind of like at Stanford would be somewhere around $43,000, right? The SAI was about what? $30,000. So, that left a $13,000 gap, right? But again, we had $5,500 in loans, right? So that that kind of brings it down to around $8,000. Instead of paying an extra like $30,000, the family paid an extra $8,000. Something more manageable, right? But that's only because we were able to get them $55,000 in free money. Okay? So we instead of getting, you know, like $33,000 from Stanford, we were able to basically 1.5 1.6x it. Okay. and get them 55 instead. Okay. Now, I understand parents, you do not want to take loans, right? It is at 9.08% and the interest rate is only going to tick up every single year, right? One of the things that I have told parents starting this last year as the interest rates have risen so much is you should be shopping around. If you are going to take a loan and that is the option that your family is going to take, you need to shop it around at the different companies, right? There's a lot of different companies out there that do educational loans, right? parent plus loans, right? The one negative piece about that is that when it's a private loan versus a a federal loan, there are less protections. Okay? So, realistically, if a private loan, educational loan holder doesn't get payment and you're in default now, they're coming after you, right? The federal government, not so much. Okay? But again, that's one of the reasons why we got into this like student debt fiasco as well, right? So, that's that's something that we definitely don't want to do, right? But um you know they're come like if if it's a private company they're coming after your assets right they're they're coming after other things right it's not just like the government where they garnish a portion of your wages right uh they might come after the house the car this and that so on and so forth so again tread cautiously with loans right but if they are a necessary evil then obviously we'll have to take them okay now quick tech takeaways right oops I don't know why this page is blank but here's the thing don't trust the essay AI. Generally speaking, when a school says that your SAI or the FAFSA says your SAI is a certain thing, you need to add 2530, $35,000 to that because most schools, what they're doing is they're adding on the parent loans. Okay? Now, one of the pieces that I've talked about forever is that colleges don't care whether it's free money or a loan. They see every single piece of that as financial aid. A loan and free money to them are exactly the same thing. So, if they if going to, you know, Stanford costs, you know, roughly $100,000 and they give you a $100,000, the ability to take a $100,000 loan, they have provided you with a 100% financial aid, okay? And they're happy about it because that's something that they can report on their next year like shareholder report and on like on different like websites like College Board and this and that, right? That's why you always see on the websites 97% of our students receive ## What schools report vs. what you actually pay [24:00] financial aid. If they're not talking about free money, they are talking about loans. Okay? So, you have to take that with a grain of salt, right? And once you get your packages, you have to understand what free money you are getting. Okay? Now, how can we help? We can help, but we can only help people that help themselves. Okay? So, you need to sign up for a consultation. You need to ask questions either here in our trainings or on Facebook, on Discord, wherever you are. Okay? Again, I've had so many consultations that I'm at this point where I'm like, you know what? this is what I can save for you. Are you game? Right? And I always I I always kind of lay it out straight for the families, right? If I can if I I can save them, you know, $5 to $8,000, I tell them. If I can send save them$10 to $15,000, I tell them, right? And then at the end, I tell them I tell them about our money back guarantee and how there's no risk, right? Um but some are like still wary. I'm not sure why, right? If you guys can explain it to me, that'd be great, right? Um but um I can only help people that are willing to like help themselves, right? Now, I I do understand that our program is not cheap. And it's not cheap because we are going to be saving some families close to a quarter million dollars over the course of four years. Okay. Um but I do have something for those that are here live, right? Um to hopefully get you a little bit more intrigued, right? So, um before I do that, I do want to kind of, you know, kind of do some results here, right? I share these all the time and I I share because I want you guys to see real results. So, this family made $350,000. I was able to save them $35,000 from Chapman, from Forom, from University of San Diego. This family got $42,000 a year and they make over $400,000 a year. Right? And this family, they make just over $200,000 a year and I was able to save them around $32,000 a year at a UC. Okay? So, right, if you do have questions, please ask them. Right? If you do have questions about our uh programs for class of 2026, you can use this QR code, this phone number, and text us. Okay? So, make sure to to use these codes, right? Um text money uh or college, right, depending on what you're interested in, to 949-7750865. The QR codes are also up there. At this point, I'm going to pause the recording for a second because this is a only live audience kind of uh special, okay? Uh, so for those that are watching the recording, I'm sorry you're not here. Unfortunately, you don't get to participate. Okay, but we'll be right back. So, we are back from that special offer, right? Again, sorry to you guys watching the recording, right? Um, but I do want to answer some questions. So, if you guys do have questions, please put them in the Q&A, put them in the chat. I will answer them for you. Again, reach out to us. There's a QR code right here. Um, there is a phone number that you can text, okay? Um, so please make sure to do that. I'm also going to make it even easier by by doing this. I'm going to put the link to the financial aid consultation into the chat. Right? You ## When and how to appeal your financial aid [27:00] have no excuse not to. If you have a rising senior and you haven't talked to me and you're part of your and you're part of our coaching program, have you not been seeing our emails? Right? And if you're not part of our coaching program, well, okay, you should sign up ASAP. for our families. In the next two to three weeks, we will be starting with the financial aid process, getting all the information together that we need. Okay. So, please do not delay, right? Make sure you sign up for that um there. Okay. All right. So, we have some questions here and it says, "Can you walk us through the SAI calculation for some of the other incomes?" Yeah. So, like I said, uh I just did it for that first one. I'm going to be honest with you guys. I ran out of time, right? Because I I want to give you guys figures based on real examples, right? So, I went through kind of like some of my family like I'd probably say about eight of my families that are in that income range and then that's why I'm giving you that particular formula. I ran out of time because I was on so many financial aid calls and they were running over because there were so many questions that they wanted to ask me. So, I got a little push back today. I wasn't able to put all the information in. But yes, I will do that for the rest of the income brackets as well. Okay. Uh we have another question and it says if one is on disability, right, how does that or like how does that affect income? Right. So, just so I get a little clarification, right? Um, there's different types of money you can be getting from disability. Are you talking about social security disability? If you can give me a little bit of clarification. Yes. No. Maybe. So state. Okay. So generally speaking, it will be considered untaxed income, right? Because they don't tax you on it, right? Um it depend and I wish I can give you a more clear answer, but how that will affect your your financial aid will depend on where you're applying. Okay. Now, when it comes to schools that will just require FAFSA, technically it's not supposed to be used as income, right? If you're applying to private schools, even your untaxed income or and again, I'm not saying I'm saying this generally, right? It's like generally speaking, private schools that use like the CSS profile, all these other things, they will kind of consider your untaxed income as income, right? So, the answer is kind of and kind of not, right? So, it depends on where you're applying, unfortunately. Okay. All right. Great question. Right. I'm sure other people have very similar questions. Right now, until I get the next question, right? I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a tip. Right. This is a pro tip that a lot of people don't follow and they kind of shoot themselves in the foot. Right? And this is it. Right? The year that is important for your student again is two years before their graduation date. Okay? Example, they're graduating in 2026. the 2024 taxes are the correct year that they will be looking at, right? For that critical year, you don't want to add to your income by having capital gains taxes. So, mom and dad, don't dillydattle on your, you know, um on your stock account and accidentally press the wrong button and sell a huge a huge like, you know, you know, like a a huge portfolio of stock on accident, right? Um, if you're going to sell your home, make sure you're taking advantage of those those kind of, you know, uh, what's the what's number something number like exchange program, right? So that you can kind of do a like for-like exchange, right? Um, so that you don't have huge capital gains at the end of the year, right? And plan it out so that you do have enough time to move into a new place or invest in a new thing before you sell your home. Okay? You do not want to necessarily be in a situation where that is a problem. Okay? Capital gains hurt a lot of families because what if your income is only at, you know, let's say $80,000, but weirdly that year, right, you had a bunch of ## Tips for avoiding costly FAFSA mistakes [31:00] stock things that happened and you had, I don't know, $200,000 in capital gains. Right? Now you have a problem. Right? Uh we have another question. It says, "Do you handle appeals after decisions have been presented?" Tech, usually yes. Right? Um but there might be situations that are more urgent that you tell them about it sooner. Right? Um, I'll just give you an example. Let's say that both parents obvious like all of a sudden lose their lose their jobs, right? That's not something that you want to wait until kind of after you get your your kind of uh your package to tell the financial aid office about. You want them to take that into consideration right away because it's going to affect you a lot sooner. Okay. Uh, we have another question. It says, "How do you recommend timing the submission of FAFSA, CSS, ID do? Should you submit one first or all at the same time in the fall?" So for any person that is doing this process on their own and we are not doing it for them, my suggestion is that you turn in everything early as soon as you can. Okay? I don't want you guys to get caught in any kind of weird things, right? For families that are in our financial aid secrets program, right? We will strategically based on the information provided to us uh in your the paperwork you're turning to us and in your in your tax returns, we'll create a plan of when we're going to turn in things at various schools depending on what we're trying to do at each of the individual schools. Okay? But if you're doing it on your own, I would say yeah, get them get them all in uh as soon as you can. Okay? Uh does it need to be October 1st? No. Right. Um but maybe in the month of October and November, sure, that would be a great timing for you to have. There might be some schools where you need to turn in things early, right? Again, for our students, there are reasons why we even for early action, early decision, we don't turn in things early, right? But if you're doing this on your own, you don't want to take that chance, right? I've done this for the last 15 years. I know what I'm doing. Unfortunately, for families that are doing it for the first or second time or even their third time, the knowledge base isn't there to take that risk. Okay? So, keep that in mind. Okay. All right. Sounds good. So I don't see any further questions. Thank you guys for being like with uh me here today, right? Um you know uh we have been working with our students at our accelerators which are our summer boot camps. I've seen a lot of great progress, right? And I've talked to a lot of families. Just even on like last weekend, I talked to 12 families, right? Over the course of the weekend, right? Just on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday alone, just for this week, I've talked to another 15 families, right? My that's why my voice is shot, right? But even though my throat is bleeding, right, I will talk to you and tell you what I can do to help save your family money. Okay? All right. Perfect. Uh we have one final question. It says, "Do you fill out the forms and the applications? We we help you with every part of the puzzle. Okay? So, you don't need to worry if you're part of our program. Okay? All right. Sounds good. So, I will see you guys again next week, right? Um and if you guys do have any questions, make sure to reach out. Email, Discord, Facebook Messenger, uh comment, whatever it is, make sure that you guys reach out to us. Okay? I'm going to leave this up just for a second so you guys can get the QR codes and the phone number. And then I will close it down in a little bit. ## Planning your timeline for submission and strategy [34:00] Okay? All right. Hope everyone has a great night and I'll talk to you guys again soon. Bye-bye.