If you have children, at some point you've probably wondered how you were going to pay for college. If you were able to start saving about the time your child was born, you are way ahead of the curve. Most of us wait until our children are in high school before we get too concerned with college finances.
There are the obvious choices for financial aid. The federally funded scholarships are probably the best known. But before we get to those, here are a couple of options that probably won't pay for the entire bill, but may be able to make a dent.
Upromise.com is fairly new, although it's been around about 5 years now. The premise is fairly simple. You register your card(s) and certain purchases provide you with a cash back bonus to your Upromise account. This isn't going to give you a large account, but you can start when you have a newborn and build the account over the 18 years before your child heads off for college. What makes this nice is that you can enlist the help of friends and family to sign up themselves with their contributions going into your account. With only a couple of people working this, at the very least you can earn enough to pay for several semesters of textbooks.
Fast Web and Scholarships are just two among several websites that help you find all kinds of scholarships. Some of these scholarships may be well known, but many are never heard of. Both of these websites help you find scholarships that appeal to your interests. When you sign up on their website, you fill out the form with information about your interests. Then the website will send you a notice when a new scholarship becomes available. Many are $500 - $1,000. Some are much more. Obviously the more scholarships you apply for, the better your chances to win a scholarship. Also keep in mind that if you are applying for a fairly obscure scholarship, your chance of winning it goes up because fewer people have applied.
A federal scholarship can be applied for through FAFSA. Finaid can also provide additional information on how to apply for scholarships, loans, and grants. You should always check the school where you plan to attend as well. They may offer scholarships available only to those who attend. Often a generous donor, maybe a graduate from a particular school of study, will set up an endowment fund to benefit those who attend that particular school of study.
Most of the time, our success at finding financial aid is only limited by our efforts to search for it. There are numerous sources of aid both from the government and from private sources. For the most part, there is no reason why you can't take advantage of more than one source of financial aid. Apply for as many as possible and start as early as possible. Time and effort should be on your side in this search.
Delicious
Digg
Google
Yahoo
