Let's Fill Out the 2024 FAFSA (and fix problems for parents without SSN)

hello my people welcome to the score Channel today I'm going to show you how to fill out the FAFSA remember that the FAFSA is the form for financial aid in the United States it is available to anybody who is a US citizen or has permanent residency in the United States the FAFSA form has changed considerably this year and the main difference with the new form is that it's now connected to like the IRS records so if you have a Social Security number it should just like pull all of your data and I'm going to fill out the FAFSA today and we're going to find out if that is true go to student a.gov and there is a link to start a FAFSA form you want to start a new form if you have not done this already I'm going in completely blind and completely cold I need to create an account because I've never done this before get started all right personal information if you're a permanent resident uh in the United States and you come from another country make sure that your name looks exactly like it does on your green card because that's how your social security number would have been set up and so you want to make sure that everything coincides perfectly with what the United States has on file right so I'm just going to put my info in here I'm going to blur out some things here because I don't want you seeing them all so all right we'll talk about this a little bit later but if you have parents who are not US citizens and you're going to need their information they will also have to do this exact same process they also need to create their own account and they will need to mark this box to acknowledge that they do not have a Social Security number but you as the applicant definitely need to have a Social Security number like if you don't um there's really few situations where you wouldn't if you're a US citizen or permanent resident so make sure you put your social security number in here correctly because that is what is going to pull data from the US systems so I'm we'll hit continue and here you can create a username I'm probably just going to go ahead and uh call this amum because why not oh it's already in use well then let's call it amum 2024 that should work all right now we'll make a little password here okay your mailing address doesn't really matter because it's only used to physically mail things to you if you choose that option later on and really we'll just choose the email option so don't worry about your address if you're having trouble getting a foreign address in there you could like use a Us address of somebody that you know or you know if you have any family members in the United States that would work fine too if you are living in the states and you want things sent to you physically you can do that but generally speaking email is better it's faster just choose email optional Communications you don't have to mark any of these language preference you can choose um okay Challenge questions are going to be used to retrieve your account in the event that you you know like lose your password or whatever I don't even know how to say elementary school because I went to so many different ones um I didn't go to senior prom that's a good one that's actually really good security question right there first person you ever kissed I like it um yeah sup Jessica hopefully Anna's not watching cuz she'd be surprised at that answer all right and then double check everything here double check everything on this thing make sure you do it exactly right and then we got to agree to terms and conditions condition there's a typo there don't worry about it two-step verification and so I'm going to hit verify my email it says I need a secure code let's go take a look and see if I have that code so that went straight to my email that was like instant so far so good okay so now I can log in it says I can continue my backup code is this this would be like if your email got hacked and you forgot your password you would need to use this backup code here so just keep that in mind that is important you should Mark that you have stored this somewhere safe save that somewhere everything is ready to go I can now go ahead and log into my account pretty easy so should be just all the stuff that's already been saved in here okay and it's going to ask me for my verification code so we're going to send that and submit okay read before continuing your access in the federal government it's a crime to lie on this form okay sure don't worry we'll be fine I'm not doing anything illegal um yeah America doesn't doesn't like it when you lie on official government forms perjury is how they get people all right so we're cool agree to the terms and conditions again all right okay if you're a student you're going to Mark student if you're a parent you're going to Mark parent pretty simple so far I'm I'm going to be a student for the sake of this illustration and I'm going to use my real data and we'll see what comes up here I'm curious to see how this works for an American all right uh you can watch a video if you want I became a legal resident of Michigan and this doesn't have to be an exact science I mean I was a kid it was like now that I think about it was like 1997 or something like that that I became a resident of Michigan uh as a US citizen with a social security number it is going to come up here and tell you that it's going to pull your tax return information now your 2022 tax return is sent in 2023 okay so keep this in mind if you're filling out the 2024 form your parents will need to provide tax information from 2022 and this is because we don't have to file 2023 taxes until April okay so I haven't done my 2023 taxes yet I'm going to need to do that soon that's until April 15th in most years so this is always going to pull data from another year before you're going to get data from 2022 and so any tax information that your family has to provide if you have non-citizen parents they need to provide tax information from 2022 in other words just take the first year of the form and minus two years you as a student in another country with a blue passport probably have never filled out a tax return and technically you're not required to until you're 18 so it's going to be totally normal if it doesn't find any information on you or if it doesn't have any tax return data what we need to do is say okay basically all right just approve this it's going to pull data from the IRS which is your personal information so they need your permission because this is America and the government can't touch your data without permission unless you're a terrorist okay personal circumstance we're going to ask some questions to see if you are eligible so if you're a student uh probably single never married that's probably going to be your case that's my case as well at my age I cannot qualify for undergraduate Aid and so just for the purposes of illustration I'm going to treat my application as if I was doing a master's because a postgraduate students can actually get financial aid in the United States which is pretty cool um so I will already have my first bachelor's degree and not pursuing a teaching certification in this case these are just some personal circumstances you can check these if they apply um if you're active duty military or a veteran uh if you're an orphan a ward of the Court meaning you're in like government care or foster care if you've been legally emancipated like I don't know your parent it's like you were Batman and your parents you know died in a horrible accident and now you're all alone but you're rich so you can be a legally emancipated minor Batman was a legally emancipated minor like he had so much wealth he could just take care of himself at a young age so that's him legal guardianship other than their parent like this would again be a court order like just because you live with grandpa doesn't mean this is true okay it has to be something that a court of law from the United States has said you are not living with your parents for whatever reason probably something unfortunate sorry if that's your case at any time on after July 1st was the student unaccompanied and either homeless or self-supporting and at the risk of being homeless I am not at the risk of being homeless I'm doing pretty good there I'm going to be an independent student now you watching this are probably going to be considered dependent students because you know you're still depending on your parents and due to your age and the fact that you're going to be applying for first year benefits here it's going to classify you as a dependent student which means it will ask you some questions about your parents because of my birthday it's not going to let me like add information about my parents because I'm beyond the age that is acceptable for financial aid but you know you're still going to see the whole process of what I as a student would have to put in and the information from your parents is very similar so they're going to ask a few different questions about your demographics here you can put whatever you want um I'm not Hispanic I I identify as white look I oh I get extra choices um none of these really reflect my actual Origins I'm just a US mut a mix of things so we'll just leave it at that um US citizen parents did they nope neither parent attended College I'm the first one in my family baby High School completion status high school diploma got that at the beginning of your school year you should have a high school diploma that would make sense otherwise how are you going to get into University now if you are an international student you're going to have to choose foreign country and you're going to have to put your city and your school name now when you do this it probably won't find your school automatically it may find like some American schools abroad but for the most part it's not going to find your school so you have to put in some information and hit search now the search will tell you probably that there is no high school that matches the information that's okay we're going to add the school manually and then we're going to put the same thing in here we're going to say foreign country and you can put your city and the name of your school and Mark that you attended a school outside of the US so they force you to try to search okay don't expect your school to come up if you're a US citizen living abroad now we're good so it'll ask me to confirm that and we'll say okey doie since a lot of you aren't going to have that data anyway because of the fact that you've never filed taxes I'm just going to go ahead and move forward with this so that you can see what I'm talking about all right so Federal benefits received at any time did anyone or anyone in their family receive benefits from any of these programs your answer as an international student is probably going to be no okay um now if you live in the United States you may have received some of these things if your parents are like retired you may have received some social security like there could be some situations where you've received some of these benefits and if you are a US citizen who lives in the United States definitely ask your parents if any of this is true but for me none of these apply and then did I file a 1040 or 1040nr this is what I fill out every year I do a 1040 every single year that details every single thing that I've earned both in Peru and in the United States and then I declare that and I have to pay some taxes uh a 1040 NR would be for someone who does not have a resident Visa okay but maybe has some income in the United States they don't have like a social security number they don't have permission to live and work in the United States but they do have part ownership of a business for example and that generates income or maybe they have like a an investment account somewhere in the USA and that generates income if your parents are not US citizens but they have generated income in the United States they are supposed to file a 1040nr if you're a US citizen living abroad and you've never filed taxes before you'll just say no now in my case I'm going to say yes because I did file a 2022 tax return I did file a 1040 family size uh before if you were registered as a dependent student and you added family details about your siblings and like about your parents then this would reflect a different number but this is true for me my student family size is one it's just me living here other dependents who live with a student other dependents would be other siblings essentially could also theoretically include other family members that your parents are taking care of like if Grandpa lives with you technically your parents could be claiming Grandpa as a dependent again this would apply if your parents filed US taxes if your parents file US taxes they claim a number of dependents and so they should make sure that that number is reflected here okay but in my case there's no dependence so it's just going to be zero how many will be in college okay I'm the one person I'm the one right if you have a brother or sister who's still a dependent but you know is currently in college then it could be two by in status again when you file taxes you choose whether you file as an individual or whether like if you have a husband or wife you file together or separately I just file single okay and again you as a student if you did file taxes it's probably this way right um so here's where I'm going to need to put in the income earned from work and this information would normally get pulled from my tax return if I wanted to be patient and let this thing do it um but I can go ahead and put in those numbers myself after adding up my total work this is like what I got tax exempt interest income I did not have any of that unused portions of IRA distributions did not have any of that uh no pension income didn't have any of that now adjusted gross income is actually going to be what my final result is after taking like deductions and that ended up being 3865 um my situation is very weird having lived in Peru I get to deduct something and I will put that later uh in income tax paid at the end of the day I paid $597 in taxes I did not receive the Earned Income Credit and I did not pay into any of these plans I did not get any education credits from my taxes if you're not sure what these mean there are useful tips for you to help you figure these things out um schedule a is itemized deductions uh in the United States you can either take a standard deduction or you can use itemized deductions most people are going to take the standard deduction and won't do schedule a um schedule B is interest in ordinary dividends if you got some investment income this may be something you have to fill out I did have to fill out a schedule B for a whopping $9 last year schedule e is more of a general sort of area where like if you have income that doesn't fit into other categories it goes into Schedule E and household employment taxes if you had like domestic workers people help helping you around the house and you were basically paying them like you would also have taxes for them as if they were your employees um most people are not going to have most of these although maybe like B and D would probably be like the most common I definitely don't think any of you guys are farming so uh no schedule F again if you pulled your stuff directly from the IRS it would already know this I'm just going to say yes because I did in fact have a schedule B uh I had a schedule B so I'm going to Mark yes and as far as Schedule C goes let me take a look at that I did not receive any Grant scholarships reported as income to the IRS my foreign income exclusion was this much all right because I get to exclude my income earned abroad for the record if your parents are US citizens and they don't work in the United States they are still required to file their taxes every single year and this is one of the leading problems with the FAFSA if your parents are US citizens or permanent residents but they don't file their taxes every year like they are supposed to it will create problems with this system because it will not pull their data and you will have to provide foreign documents and honestly it makes it harder for you to get financial aid in those situations if your parents are US citizens talk to them about the need to file taxes every year there's no penalty for starting now if you didn't know you had to do that it's okay but you should correct that situation as a US citizen even when I don't earn anything in the United States I am required to report my earnings from Peru and what I do is take the foreign earned income exclusion which allows you to not pay taxes on a lot of money I think it's like a h hundred some thousand doll if you take that exclusion so essentially I don't need to pay any taxes on the income that I have from Peru so this 32,500 that I earned in this country is not going to get taxed but I am required to report that to the IRS and let them know that I'm going to take this exclusion so if your parents aren't doing that it's going to be a problem for you when you're asking for financial aid because from the US government's perspective if your parents are American citizens they are supposed to file taxes every year to the IRS and so when they put their social security number in and it sees they've never filed taxes it's probably going to make it harder for you to get financial aid because the you're not following the rules okay so it's important that your parents file these tax returns even if they don't earn any money in the United States and it's possible to not even pay any extra taxes on that but then understand that if they're not doing that your chances of getting financial aid are pretty much zero here if you were filing this as a student you didn't receive any child support okay unless somehow like you were married and you had a kid already and you're going to go to college and you've got a baby and like the other person's out of the picture and they're paying you child support like unless you the student receive this money directly in your name you put zero here you're now if you have divorced parents or your parents are separated one of them may be paying child support to the other and in that case when your parents fill out their form they would indicate that okay so understand this is strictly for me right now as a student your parents will get asked the same questions so make sure that whatever you fill out is appropriate for you as an individual cash savings checkings accounts this isn't your parents checking accounts this is you do you have any accounts in your name that have money in them and that you could put like you know a number for so like I'll just say you know this much money because I have that in about a US account if you as an individual have a business you would put something in here I do I'm going to like pull a number out of my ass here because I don't have an official valuation of my company so at this point I've completed the financial aspects and now it's going to ask me to select my colleges and I'm just going to invent like one off the top of my head let's just say uh Michigan I'm going to apply to the University of Michigan you can list more schools you can add more you can have up to 20 cuz the common app allows you to do 20 applications and so that's the rule that they've decided is 20 we'll just continue here so at this point I am done with my FAFSA okay I have done everything I've put in all my financial stuff my personal circumstances I've told them who I am and what colleges I want and all I got to do now is just go to the end here and do the signature part which is pretty easy I agree to the terms and sign and submit okay now uh it says I'm probably not eligible for a Federal pel grant that's probably due to my age and stuff this is a very it's a much simpler process for me as an independent student if I had Parents I would need to add them as contributors on the FAFSA and then they would have to complete all of the same information for themselves personally so that was actually pretty easy and honestly if I had given it a little bit of time to process my tax returns it probably would have been even easier because it would have just pulled that data straight from the IRS instead of me having to manually put it in from the forms that I filed in previous years if you are a US citizen living abroad you're going to need to include your parents on this and so when it registers you as a dependent student it's going to ask you some questions about your family members they need to go in and create their own accounts all right so we've covered what it looks like if you're an independent student or what your parents are going to see on the application because it's essentially the same information but what if you are a normal dependent student how do you add your parents to this thing in this case this is what I think will be the case for the vast majority of the people watching this video you're going to be a dependent student now this question right here ask about apply only for loans you want to say no because you could maybe miss out on some Aid you can still get a loan if you mark no so if your parents and again this is um asking about biological parents here if your parents are married to each other we would say yes and if not we will say no now notice What's Happening Here on the form if I say yes it's going to tell me to provide information for both parents and this form will not be complete until both of your parents fill it out if you mark no then they will ask some questions questions do your parents live together well if the answer is no then we start talking about child support now if one parent provides more financial support than the other we're going to say yes and then the next question becomes if they've remarried or not and we will say let's imagine no so this would be a scenario right here where let's say like okay your parents are not married they don't live together maybe you don't have really any contact with one of them right may be like Dad went to buy cigarettes and he still hasn't come back and like he doesn't send you a check every month or if it does it's very small it's not more financial support than the parent that you live with generally speaking the parent that you live with is always the one that provides more financial support because they're the one that puts a freaking roof over your head and pays the electricity and the water and the internet and all the other crap you need to survive so that one is going to almost always be the one unless the other one is inv involved and does provide a lot of financial support you're going to work yes on this third question if the parent you live with has remarried then you're going to provide information for the parent and the stepparent so again legally as as long as they're married and living together you need to provide information on both so essentially the question boils down to how many parents do you live with and it's going to ask us to provide information about those parents this is where it's very important to make sure this information is accurate and like perfect because to verify parents identity sometimes it's going to ask some security questions that it can use based on like public registry data and stuff if one of your parents is not a US citizen and doesn't have a Social Security number this is also where you would Mark that as well and you would need to put in their uh address and also you can put a foreign address here be advised this is where those security questions come into play uh that could also be a problem right now a lot of parents who don't have social security numbers are having difficulties filling out this form and I'm going to talk about what you can do to fix that later in this video but this is the only thing that really changes when you add parents on your form essentially it's going to tell you that you're done you you're once you fill out your parents information and invite them it's going to say okay congratulations wonderful now uh tell your parents to fill out the FAFSA and then they will fill out all the financial stuff that you saw in our previous section where I was showing you what it looks like as an independent student as an independent student you essentially fill out the same things that your parents would so you've seen that part you can show that to them if you need to like walk them through it if they have social security numbers give it a day or two it should automatically fill out things based on tax returns if they haven't done their tax returns uh then in that case not only are your parents breaking the law and your chances of getting financial aid are much lower but it's going to require you to manually fill out that information and it may cause some problems with your verification because they don't necessarily have any way to confirm that information through the system so again it's very important that everybody fill out their tax returns if they are US citizens one of the problems that I've seen a lot with American citizens who have non-american citizen parents if your parents don't have a Social Security number then it's going to ask for a series of questions to validate their identity the answers to those questions are based on what you the student have put in your form so as long as all of those questions are answered perfectly with no typos no differences everything should be fine but if they make a mistake on even just one of those questions they will not have access to the FAFSA it will tell them that instead they have to call a phone number and proceed to do an identity verification process and that's what this form is for I wanted to show this to you as well you must contact federal student aid information center fsic at this phone number right now it's very difficult to get a phone call with these people the FAFSA came out very late this year it's a new format there's a lot of confusion a lot of people are trying to call this number unfortunately if your parents are in this situation they need to keep calling they need to call every day they got to call all day every day until they get through because when you call and get through you'll be able to ask for a case number and that is important they will not validate your identity unless there is a case number attached to it so again this applies to the parents who don't have a Social Security number if your parents have a Social Security number none of this should be a problem for you if they don't have social security numbers and they don't get access to the form because of some mistake on one of those verification questions then this is what happens you'll have to fill out this form scan it and send it to this email address here this ID verification ed.gov this is the information that they ask for notice again that the case number is a required detail you print your name and then you sign this document at the bottom along with the date if your parents have a foreign passport they can use that to confirm their Identity or any other form of us ID like for example a US state driver's license if you're parents are living in the United States but don't have legal residency so they don't have a Social Security number this may be a viable option for you they'll be able to give you an ID and validate you and get your parents into the system so they can complete the FAFSA now once you've submitted your form you can check on its status uh it'll be in here when you go to my activity when you log into your page you'll see that I have my 202024 2025 FAFSA form in review it was submitted today um so if I click on this I'll be able to see a little bit more about the status and it says here that my form was started and that it was submitted now this will turn into a green check when it has been essentially processed by uh the financial student aid office okay um notice again we don't need to panic about the timing here because it will be shared with schools in the first half of March like faf is not going to process anything immediately right now anyway so again we still got some time to figure this stuff out once it's been processed universities will be able to reach out to you and help you figure out what your final financial aid package is