Today, in order for a student to attend college, they will often need the help of parents, part-time jobs, college student loans or a combination of all of these. Looking at the options that best suit your financial needs is the way to go. However, just knowing were to start, because of all the many options, can be a bit confusing? Let me help you out with this one.

In my opinion, there are two great places to start. Both of them are the best options for anyone. It does not matter which one you start with out of the two, just that you do start with either of them. The two options I am referring to are your college’s financial aid office advisor or the free online FASFA application. This is were everyone should start. It will so simplify your life. All those horror stories from friends and family about financing there education will never exist for you because you started at the right place.

If you do happen to visit the financial aid advisor of your school they will first point you towards the FASFA application as well. So, you can see why these are the only two options to start with. The financial aid advisor will help you file the application and advise you on the information you need to gather to complete the FASFA and be able to give you an over view of what you may actually qualify for. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk into someone’s office give them all the pertinent information and be able to walk out knowing what you need to do next? Easy huh? Yes it really can be that easy.

You may ask, well why would I start with Federal Financial aid over a private student loan. This is easy as well. With the Federal Financial Aid Programs you have the opportunity to obtain not just one federally backed loan but possibly several. You may also qualify for a grant that you will not have to pay back. This would be free money people. With a federal financial aid loan the interest rates are fixed and set very low. Currently some programs are as low as 6% and are scheduled to drop even lower. You will not find that with a private or alternative college student loan.

You may also have the good fortune of qualifying for a subsidized Stafford college student loan. The subsidized Stafford loan means the federal government is going to pay back all the interest. When you start to pay your loan back you will only pay the principle as the interest will have already been paid off. Can you get that with a private or alternative college student loan? I do not think so.

As you may be seeing a pattern so far, a federal financial aid program college student loan or grant will ultimately be less expensive for you. When you start to pay your college student loans back, they will be affordable and will not cause havoc with your finances. A private or alternative college student loan payment will be much harder to meat. That is not to say your federal financial aid program college student loans will pay for everything, they may not. But you will be confident you have gotten the best priced college student loans you can to begin with.