We are finally pleased to announce that our new SMB College Life Planning Guide is complete. Our 26 page planning guide is loaded with information that will help students to plan for their college education. Included in our planning guide is all the content from the planning section of our website. We have also added new content to add more information to help students. There is also a savings section in our planning guide which offers savings on specific items that students will need going into their first year of college. This planning guide is perfect for high school juniors and seniors as it will help guide you along the right path of planning your college education so that you can save and succeed throughout your college life.

You can read more about our planning guide at www.smbcollegelife.com/Planning.php?info=planningguide. Here you will find all the specifics of our planning guide, the contents, and our overall goals with the release of this guide. You will also find that we offer special discounts to school advisers and counselors who plan to customize their order or place a large quantity order. This planning guide is a perfect value for any student who is looking to further their education through college. It is also perfect for schools who are looking to increase the number of students who attend college after graduation. School counselors are always out numbered by students and have to spend time throughout the year talking to each individual student about their future plans. Sometimes counselors just don’t have the time to talk to each and every student, so what options do those students have who never see the guidance counselor?? Our solution is simple;

Counselors and schools can offer the SMB College Life Planning Guide to all their juniors and seniors so that every student will have the knowledge they need to further their education. If questions arise the counselor can further guide students in the proper direction. This solution will eliminate the need for counselors to explain the entire planning process to ever student so that they can focus more on the specific needs of each individual student.

Other college planning guides are loaded with useless information and can cost $40 or more while our guide is simple, direct and efficient in delivering only the information that you need to succeed. Don’t waste time and money when you can turn to our guide to help you plan, save, and succeed in college. For a small investment you will be well on your way to a successful college future. Check it out! It’s really worth the price.

Summer is the perfect time to search for financial aid to pay for college. Graduating seniors, and soon-to-be seniors should spend a good amount of time this summer searching for scholarships, grants and other forms of financial aid to pay for college.  Utilizing the time off from school to search for financial aid can be very rewarding as you find the means to pay for some or all of your college expenses.  Be sure to visit the following pages at the website for more information beginning your searches this summer:

• Financial Aid
  www.smbcollegelife.com/Planning.php?info=financialaid
  
  
• Scholarships
  www.smbcollegelife.com/Planning.php?info=scholarships
• Grants
  www.smbcollegelife.com/Planning.php?info=grants

Review these pages and you will be well on your way to finding the funding you need for college. If you are a graduating senior and have completed the FAFSA from for 2008-2009 then you can expect to receive the results of your financial aid eligibility within the next few months if you have not already received them.  If you have not filled out the 2008-2009 FAFSA form then you will need to complete it before the June 30th deadline.

Be sure to also utilize our recommended resources on each of the above pages for additional information on the specific topic.  We’ve recommended these resources because we feel they will also help you to plan, save and succeed in your college life. We believe that having more resources is much better than having none and that more resources will make your college life easier than ours was.  With the right resources and proper planning, your college education can be inexpensive and fairly easy to obtain.

Congratulations! You have been accepted to college. The question is: Now what do you do? The next step towards successfully planning your college education is to figure out how you are going to pay for it. A college education is the most valuable investment you will ever make but you want to make sure that you invest smart. You don’t want to pay more than you have to for tuition, books, housing and other expenses. The first thing you need to do is get an idea of how much college will cost you per year and then you can execute a financial plan to pay for it. Use the SMB College Life Cost Calculator to estimate your college costs by identifying the most costly college expenses.

Once you have an estimate on how much your education will cost per year you can start to look for money to pay for college. At this point you should have filled out the FAFSA form and can plan on hearing back from them within a few months. If you haven’t filled out the FAFSA form this should be your first step towards financial your college education. You can check out our financial aid section for more information on filling out the FAFSA form. Since it may take a few months for the government to get back to you on your financial aid eligibility you should roughly estimate the amount you’ll receive. For middle class families a safe estimate is $2000.00 although this may vary depending on your parents’ financial status.

The next best way to pay for college is though scholarships. To search for scholarships we recommend that you sign up with a scholarship search database, where you will receive notifications for different scholarships that you qualify for. You’ll need to put some time and work into filling out the scholarship applications and writing scholarship essays but the time you spend here can save you thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars now and in the future. A lot of students skip this step because the don’t want to spend the time searching and applying for scholarships, which ends up being a very costly mistake. For more information on scholarships and resources that you can use visit our scholarship section.

You can also search for additional grants to help you pay for college. For more information on grants visit our college grants section.

The last thing that you should look into is student loans to pay for the rest of your college expenses. There are many different types of student loans that you should be aware of. You should also know when and how you will need to repay these student loans so that you can plan ahead for your financial future. Different types of student loans are discussed in our student loan section and payback information can be found through our loan consolidation section.

We hope this helps with your college planning over the next few months. Congratulations again on being accepted into college! This is a really big step in life that some people take for granted. Remember to stay on top of your college planning in order to succeed in your college life. Feel free to contact us if there is anything else we can help you with! Thanks for using SMB College Life!

A fellow writer has sent me this great article that will answer a lot of questions about the current student loan crisis. I know that the current economic status is depressing and it seems as though their may not be an answer for college this coming year but as college students we must push for a change! This is the most important year for change because of the presidential elections. I want to take this time to encourage all college students to make their voice heard by voting. College students make up a large portion of the voters in America but rarely go out to vote. Our future is left in the hands of the retired community, who actually make the effort to go out and vote. Make a difference this year as your financial future depends on it!

Here is the article, written by Tisha Kulak who is a writer at www.creditorweb.com, about the current economic crisis and how it will affect college students this year. Thanks Tisha for another great article!

Economic Crisis Cuts into College Funding

As family continue to struggle with the growing concerns of the economy, the money once save for college funds are now being used to keep the family afloat. More and more students need more financial assistance than ever and it is not going to be easy this time around. By February, the financial crisis of the mortgage market had gone beyond being an issue solely for homeowners. The crisis had spread to areas once considered to be stable, including the bonds for student loans. Here’s why:

Loan Crisis Lowdown

Local and state governments acquire money for public or semi-public programs from what is called the market for auction-rate securities. These securities typically offered a very low interest rate to government borrowers. It also allowed banks and other lenders access to cash investments, through bond auctions. They could sell their investments on a weekly basis and get the money back, essentially allowing them to earn a higher return than if their money were placed in a bank. Every investment was insured by a bond insurer, who guarantees such debts. However, the bond insurers also provide insurance to other debts, including dub-prime mortgages. As a result, banks no longer believe the bond insurers will be able to guarantee the student loans as well as they have in the past.

Lenders Are Suffering Too

Additional strain on student loan companies is the incidents of default. Lenders are taking huge losses in recent financial quarters. Realistically, the debt collectors brought in to collect on the defaulted loans are the one industry who stands to gain anything from this financial crisis. Subsequently, the auctions for the loans have become virtually abandoned, as the investments are now considered too risky. Interest rates are being raised, and adding to the damage, the federal government had cut it subsidies in 2007. States and their universities have started to cut or cancel their own student loan programs. Private lenders are taking their companies out of the lending business. State programs once supported by the government have begun canceling their federal student loan programs.

Making Promises

Through all of this, students are stilling being told not to worry. They are being directed by government officials to apply for the direct loan program through the Department of Education. The Department of Education has been making an effort to reassure future borrowers that there will, in fact, be enough money. However, the evidence is strong that the student loan industry is not as strong as it once was and students will be faced with many issues, including increased interest rates on loans or worse, no funds available at all for loans.

Students Hit Hard

Students are coping in different ways depending on their own personal situation. Some hit hard by the lack of financial assistance are leaving four-year universities and opting for a community college. Those less fortunate have had to abandon the idea of higher education all-together. Student who have forged ahead to complete school are now facing higher than usual debt situations. This, in turn, causes another major concern because high paying jobs are getting harder to come by, leaving students in a bigger bind.

How to Deal

Students will soon begin applying for financial assistance in the coming months. Planning to fund college may take a lot more effort than in recent years. Students still eligible to receive college scholarships from high schools and community organizations should consider researching as many as possible. Carefully weighing the pros and cons of starting at a community college and transferring later may be an option for many. It would also be worthwhile to take time and research scholarships and grants that are available on a national level. Parents and students alike may be surprised to learn of the variety of funding offered through philanthropists and companies that will help pay for college.

Tisha Kulak is a writer for Creditorweb.com, where she writes about credit card offers, student credit cards and college finances.

A big question comes to mind early this morning as the search continues for credible scholarship information to provide to you on SMB College Life. In my previous post I offered the 2008-09 Student Financial Aid packet which is a publication from the US Department of Education. My relationship with the US Department of Education is fairly new when it comes to finding credible information to provide to you, but has been a long, and very expensive relationship when it comes to money provided by them for my college education. The thing that really perplexed me when researching the US Department of Education is that they will provide exceptional information about tax credits, government grants,receiving student loans, managing college finances and so much more, but I have yet to find any scholarship information provided by them. The big question that comes to mind as I sort through pages of information provided by the US Department of Education is why they don’t give any information about scholarships. Searching through their database I cannot seem to find anything about scholarships provided to students to help them pay for college.

You can see for yourself by going to their Web site and clicking on Apply For Scholarships & Loans under the Find & Pay For College section. In this section they provide links to receiving government student loans for college as well as information about paying for these loans, financing college through federal student loans, federal student consolidation information for student loans, but nothing about scholarships.

What really puzzles me is that this is THE government paid and controlled agency for United States Education, yet they do not provide information about receiving free money for college. Instead they direct you through links which take you to information about receiving loans through them, paying for your loans, and consolidation your loans through government consolidation programs. All of these things are making the government MORE money!

There are two logical explanations that I can think of which could be reasons for this lack of information. One reason is that there are too many scholarships available that they do not have enough time to dedicate to organizing and providing them on one of the most used college resources ON THE INTERNET (currently ranked #3,788 out of hundreds of million, if not billions of websites on the internet today).

From this idea comes my second justification for the US Department of Education not providing scholarship information in their college information database. Could it be because they want to make as much money as possible from college students by making us think that government loans are the only way to finance our college educations? Why else would they only provide information on every possible way for students to finance college, in which the government profits from?

One would think that they US Department of Education would capitalize on their internet rankings and help millions of student reduce their debt substantially by providing information about receiving free money through scholarships to finance college. I guess by doing this it would reduce their ability to profit from the millions of college students who use federal student loans to pay for college.

Through SMB College Life I want to offer as much useful information as possible that will benefit college students financially. The idea of SMB College Life is that the average financial debt for college students is ridiculously high and we will focus our efforts on finding information to help college students reduce this debt. There are few resources available which offer free information that will financially benefit millions of college students. We hope to fill the need of information about grants, scholarships, and other forms of free money, as well as savings on your college life needs through our corporate sponsorships and partnerships. We need to help each other save money, because it seems as though the ones who are trusted to do so aren’t delivering the most beneficial results that they could. So who is left to turn to??

Thanks for using SMB College Life!

SMB College Life Blog