NGPF Blog

Answer: $2.3 billion The confluence of FAFSA season upon us (you could file beginning on October 1st) and our team working on an upcoming Question of the Day release is what led to the question that is the subject of this post.  From Quartz:  The US government awards federal, state, and institutional money every year to students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and meet certain household-income qualifications. But if students don’t...

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Donnesh: The first quality about this simulation that stands out is how it gives the user the opportunity to blend their real life choices and starting position, with hypotheticals, to know exactly how much future decisions will cost. I saw what my potential earnings would look like with the major I’ve applied for and saw how my GPA and school really affect how much debt I’ll need to withdraw. I played this game 4 times to see how different choices led to different outcomes. ...

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My parents, both alumni of Loyola Marymount University, graduated in the late 1980’s. This was a few years shy of when FAFSA was officially created. As the eldest child in my family, I was designated as their “guinea pig experiment” when it came to applying for financial aid and navigating the student loan process. As tuition for higher education has risen over 400% since the 1980’s, and I could sense my parents’ hesitation when they told me to reach for the stars...

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One of the frustrating insights from our recent research report, Who Has Access To Financial Education In America Today? was how infrequently "paying for college" (or some variant) was covered in a personal finance course. Yes, while scouring 11,000 websites and 18,000 course descriptions, college was far down the list of terms that were most frequently cited. Yet, when you consider both the gravity of the college decision (and it's long-term impact) as well as the timeliness of such information...

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I am excited to welcome Jenny Nicholson, Creative Director at McKinney, back to the NGPF podcast (here was our earlier discussion about the game Spent). I have gotten to know Jenny quite well over the past six months as we collaborated on a game called PAYBACK (check out the NY Times article about the game here). The goal of this online simulation is to immerse students into the college experience so they can hone their decision making skills to successfully navigate the...

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Here at NGPF we are constantly on the lookout for videos that your students will enjoy. We also get a lot of help from our friends too. Here are three that cover popular topics of student loans, health insurance and careers (hat tip to Jessica for posting on the NGPF internal Slack and for Danielle coming up with questions for career video): American's Student Debt Crisis: Jessie's Story (Consumer Reports, 13:37): Thanks to Charles Kafoglis for sharing this with us! What new facts about...

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Just back from vacation and reflecting on various conversations that arose in the course of my travels. As anyone who has listened to my podcasts knows, I like to ask lots of questions but in the conversations described below, finances were brought up without my prompting. Here's what I heard: A 67 year old cab driver lamented the fact that he was collecting his Social Security check which wasn't enough. As a result, he had this side hustle driving a cab. "If I had only socked some money away...

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I want to welcome Christian Sherrill to the NGPF team. He will be laser-focused on increasing access to financial education in classrooms across the United States. This is a story he wanted to share about why he is so passionate about financial education. ------------------------------- As the new NGPF documentary suggests, millennial college-educated professionals aren’t alone in having made costly investments in student loans. Lifelong educators with multiple degrees have ‘em...

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Answer: No real surprise here. They are abysmal at it. Here’s an explanation of this scatter plot (see below) from the recent Sallie Mae report on How America Pays for College: Separately, students seem not to be fully cognizant of how much they will repay. Students were asked to estimate their future monthly student loan payments based on the amount of loans they currently have. Similarly to 2008, a scatterplot of responses indicates little correlation between the amounts students...

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I had a great time talking with social entrepreneur, Ted Gonder, who co-founded Moneythink. Moneythink is a non-profit organization helping firstgen high school students navigate “to and through” college. Ted shares what he has learned since starting Moneythink out of his college dorm room at the University of Chicago and his personal odyssey to pursue the “road less traveled.” He discusses the thinking behind the new service delivery model for Moneythink and why the...

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Good bell ringer to get the conversation started about paying for college. Can start the class by asking your students how they think families will pay for college: What are the sources that families tap into? What are 3 most important categories? Once they have given their answers, you can move on to the chart below. Sallie Mae out with their tenth annual study showing how families are covering the cost of college. Lots of interesting graphs, charts, infographics that I will be sharing over...

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This month’s NGPF Favorites List comes from Sid Sharma – one of NGPF’s veteran “Power Interns” who has been with us for 3 years. Sadly, we will wish him well as he heads off to college this fall! We wanted Sid to reflect on his NGPF experience (he has literally “touched” every element in the NGPF curriculum) and highlight the resources that have enabled him to become the knowledgeable, action-oriented, process-innovator that he is today!...

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Interesting survey from Student Loan report demonstrates the biggest knowledge gaps that college seniors have about their student loans. Let’s be sure students leave our high school classrooms knowing these key concepts BEFORE they take out student loans (my comments in sub-bullets): 65% of respondents didn’t know that the standard repayment term on their student loans Why this is important: May choose longer repayment terms if they focus only on monthly payment 46% of...

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What if you were a student loan borrower struggling to make your monthly payment and saw this ad pop up on your computer screen one day: Or maybe this one:  When you called the customer service phone number, you hear assurances like… “Let me enroll you in a student loan forgiveness program and we will get your monthly payment reduced and even get your loan forgiven.” “We will get you pre-approved for Federal government programs that will forgive or eliminate your...

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As your seniors head off to college in the fall, you better arm them with the information they need to succeed financially during and after college. The biggest issue they will deal with in college: Student Loans. They will be required to go through an online “counseling” process which I would describe as “too little, too late” just before their loan is disbursed. I was trying to come up with a fun way (Ok, I might be stretching it here) to get them to review what in...

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