Oh dear sweet little baby Black Jesus, I was NOT ready for this process. I vaguely remember completing the FAFSA form when I was preparing for college, but I must have blocked out all the traumatic portions of just how stressful the process of trying to apply for federal student aid is.
I think being a single, co-parenting mom made it a bit more stressful for me because it always begs the question of who will complete the form. The child can complete the form but, like many things when you’re a parent, you feel like you need to just do it yourself in order to ensure it’s done right the first time. When co-parenting, there’s that extra which one of you is that going to be? I thought it was going to be dad but my son had other ideas and it ended up being me on an already jam-packed Sunday afternoon.
With that figured out, here are all the places I still went wrong.
You need an FSA ID … early
That “you” is both the parent completing the form and the child applying. Totally fine, we went to the website to complete the information to obtain one for each of us except, the page kept crashing for my son. Mine crashed once, but I was able to get through to get the wonderful message that it would take a few days for them to verify my information with the Social Security Administration in order for me to receive my number. Whomp, whomp. You can still apply for the FAFSA while you’re waiting, so there’s that.
You need your taxes
This one wasn’t a biggie. I had my taxes done … it’s WELL past time, so yes, this part was done …, but they want everyone’s tax information. That means my children’s (if they had a job, and filed taxes, which they do not) and mine. What I didn’t realize in the beginning was because their father and I are not together, nor do we live together, both of our tax information was not required. I procrastinated on getting the FAFSA done my son’s first year because I was waiting around on their father to get his tax stuff together and definitely missed out on federal student aid.
You also don’t have to be the one to enter that information. I’ve filed electronically with TurboTax for as long as I can remember and was able to transfer my information over directly from their website. I cannot describe in enough words how much of a life saver that was.
You Need More Time Than You Think You Need
They say to allow for about an hour – we needed more. Between the FSA ID website crashing and me completing the wrong year’s form, le sigh, we ended up needing several hours to complete it the first time. When it came to completing the form with my daughter, I knew not to plan anything else during the time and, luckily, things went a lot smoother.
Something great that did come out of this whole adventure, other than potential money in the future, of course, I now have at least one child’s social security number memorized. Optimism.
If you have a child going to college, did you go through the process of applying for federal student aid? How was it for you? I’d love to know, so please, let me know in the comments and, as always, thank you for reading!
