Bloomberg’s Carol Massar reports on the rising level of student debt in the United States and its impact on the economy. Student loan debt has topped $1 trillion, higher than automotive and credit card debt.

Take for example The Client List, a TV show starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a single mom working as a masseuse that is “forced” to give happy endings to her clients – aka get paid for sex.

Sure, this is a very real experience for some single moms and it could be a testament to the lengths a mother can go for her children. But come on, can’t the TV industry portray these women as capable of finding a job that doesn’t involve prostitution out of desperation?

The point of this post is not to berate mothers who do sell their bodies for something, but to point out that this is not the only option available to single mothers.

The truth of the matter is that there are many options available for the needy. SNAP for food, Medicaid/CHIP for family healthcare, FAFSA for education, TANF for needy families – all these are viable options for single mothers. For more info, this article lists down some of the free assistance programs initiated by the federal government.

And then there is the age-old method of just gritting your teeth, tightening your budget and soldiering on even in the hardest of financial times.

The Client List is just a TV show and it does not explicitly say that ALL single moms sell themselves for cash. But could we not have at least one TV show that stars them doing something else to provide for themselves and for their families? Like, I don’t know, getting federal aid while seeking a community college degree and then earning a decent paycheck at the end of the day?

It is an acronym for Free Application for Federal Student Aid and every post secondary student is highly encouraged to complete one. It has the widest database of all available means of earning a post-secondary degree. It has access to 9 federal aid and more than 600 state aid programs.

Aside from that, most colleges and universities link their scholarship or grant programs with FAFSA. A FAFSA is completed and submitted annually and has a detailed record of a students’ financial capability of earning a college diploma.

Without a FAFSA, a college student can never earn the chance to be eligible to many if not most available financial grants, scholarships and federal aid that exist. It should be understood that this is not just for the needy, or the bright ones or the poor ones, it is for every college student who wants to seek a better opportunity while pursuing a degree in higher education.

What are asked in a FAFSA?

A FAFSA application consists of almost 130 questions all directed the students’ assets, income and dependency. The answers to these questions will eventually determine your Expected Family Contribution or EFC.

The Expected Family Contribution is a major expression of how you can afford to pay for your college tuition and other expenses. The lesser the EFC, the greater will your need be for a financial aid.

College education need not be elusive or exclusive, with a FAFSA account you will be able to complete your dream of a higher education. The US government as well as private institutions recognizes the need to extend help to its citizens and that is what FAFSA is all about. It’s a Free Application for Federal Student Aid and it is the first step in getting aid for college.

Their agenda: familiarizing attendees with a program to help single moms transition from homelessness and temporary housing to permanent housing.

The housing coordinator, Sabrina Hough, explains that the two-year program is geared for single moms who find themselves homeless. These moms will then be given the chance to empower themselves by finding resources related to work, housing, education and even transportation.

One of the most significant resources being discussed here is multi-family homes that can accommodate around four to five families each – a program that could be expanded if the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Department picks up on the idea and grants the group extra funding.

Group coordinator Tim Emmert explains. “Basically, the voucher program would work by qualifying people who are currently receiving services, from say mental health or a domestic violence agency, and they can receive the vouchers for up to five years.”

The HUD considers this program something similar to permanent housing as it offers low-cost but long-term housing assistance to financially-challenged single moms. How so? The vouchers allow the moms to pay a mere one-third of what they would normally have to pay for regular housing. The HUD is particularly drawn to this program as no new housing has to be built while existing houses are filled up and taken care of in the process. After all, nothing kills the value of a piece of a neighborhood quite like vacant houses.

Still, the program is not for everyone. Some may have a hard time accepting the fact that they will have to share many household items and duties with other people. This is why some recipients of the program back out early despite the benefits involved.

But then again, beggars can’t be choosers – especially when your child is crying in your arms and there is no roof over your head.

By Dawn Lee

Types of Aid

Federal aid is broken up into three categories: grants, work-study and student loans.

First up are the Federal Grants. These are monetary donations to students with varying needs and abilities, from those promising students with financially challenged backgrounds to those with an inherent gift for math and science. Students that are given grants don’t need to pay back the money to the government, which is always a plus point in anyone’s book.

Next up is the Federal Work-Study Program. This program assists students in finding on or off-campus work to finance their own education. It entails a bit more effort on the part of the student, yes, but at least the student will be able to graduate free from any financial worries. The jobs also provide an opportunity for the students to build networks and start sharpening work skills as well.

And we finally move on to the Federal Student Loans. These loans come in two flavors: subsidized and unsubsidized. Subsidized federal loans handle the interest rates of students still studying, while a student will be responsible for paying all necessary amounts of money in unsubsidized federal loans. These loans have typically low interest rates, though, so it is still a good idea to go first to the government before private lenders.

Qualifications

There are a certain set of criteria that you need to meet if you want to be eligible for most kinds of federal aid. These include:

• Being a U.S. citizen/eligible noncitizen with a legit Social Security Number
• A visible financial need
• Completed high school education
• Qualified to participate in postsecondary (aka undergrad or graduate) education
• Pass certain tests or standards

Do note that these are general criteria for most people to be eligible for federal aid. Each specific program has its own unique requirements for eligibility, so read up on the specific aid you want to acquire.

Application

Some people, however, are more confused on how to gain access to federal aid. But fret not! Here are some practical steps you can take to secure federal aid:

• Consult your school counselor on available programs – preferably one that specializes in financing. This is the first step you can take, and your counselor can address your questions and concerns in real-time.
• Visit http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ and scope out your options between January and July, but it is advisable you finish these ASAP to the Federal FAFSA Deadline which is June 30 each year. You will be given a Student Aid Report afterwards. Review this to see where you stand as a potential aid recipient.
• Contact the financial aid office of the school or schools you might be eligible to attend. They will give you more details on the aid you have qualified for.

These are the basic steps to acquire student aid, so start from here and work on what you need to do next.

Recently, noted retirement specialist Phil Cannella, founder of First Senior Financial Group and host of The Crash Proof Retirement Show™, interviewed Special Agent Brian Herrick regarding Phil Cannella complaints, who supervises the Philadelphia cyber-crime squad. Here are some highlights from that interview.

Phil Cannella: Give me some idea what your job consists of? What are the major areas that you focus on in combating cyber crime?

Herrick in response to Phil Cannella complaints: Cyber crime breaks down to five main areas. There’s computer intrusions, which people know more so as hacking matters—and that’s hacking both by criminal actors here in the US but also state- sponsored hacking by another country. There are over roughly 100 countries that have intelligence- gathering programs against the U.S. We also have our online sexual exploitation of children program, our intellectual-property theft program, our identity-theft program, and internet fraud.

Phil Cannella: How is it that someone can go online anonymously and violate criminal laws, yet we’re not able to get search engines to give up names when those crimes are being committed?

Herrick answering Phil Cannella complaint: The anonymity of the Internet is one of the biggest challenges for law enforcement. In 2011 it’s estimated there will be 2 billion people on the Internet, so with this increase in population online, you’ve also had an increase in the criminal element. And what you see is, the Internet emboldens them to do things they would never do in person. Take a computer hacker who without a second thought hacks into a bank’s website or database and either corrupts the data or steals the data to resell it or try to get away with a large-scale theft. That same individual is very unlikely to do reconnaissance on a physical branch of a bank, get a gun, walk in with a note, pass it to a teller, demand money, and run outside the bank and try to make a getaway.

Phil Cannella: From your perspective, the crime is the same. If you’re stealing, you’re stealing.

Herrick: Absolutely. And related to Phil Cannella, whether you walk into a retail store and you rip off a stack of CDs or you’re participating in online piracy and you are downloading illegal copies of movies that come out, you’re still committing the exact same crime of theft, whether it’s done electronically or not. On the topic of Phil Cannella, So some of the challenges that we have are just what you’re talking about with anonymity: Who is committing this crime, how are they doing it? What kind of technical resources are they using? And we see more and more that criminals are in fact using fairly sophisticated means to try and hide their identity. If a criminal wants to hack into a bank or trade child porno or send an extortion letter, they’re probably not going to go sit in their basement and send it from their home computer…

Phil Cannella: Regardless of anonymity, you have subpoena power?

Herrick: In response to Phil Cannella complaints, we have the power of a grand jury subpoena but one of the challenges for us in cyber is that there are many services that don’t respond to subpoena power because they’re outside the reach of US law. There are things called anonymizers and proxy services that someone in the US can go through in another country and then bounce that traffic back here to the US and it makes it a lot harder for Federal law enforcement or US based law enforcement to try and find the true identity of that individual.

Phil Cannella: What could be done on cyber attacks that are being perpetrated on firms like ours? Would they even be a priority?

Herrick: One of my biggest challenges as a squad supervisor is managing priorities. The way we typically allocate resources is based on loss. Some websites, if they have an outage for an hour [that] can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Phil Cannella: We spent thousands on marketing and we started getting cancellations. Equated to each of these financial leads, that comes out to $1000 a person. That’s just the loss in actual dollars spent to attract that customer. In projected business from that customer, it’s a whole other number.

Herrick: Responding to Phil Cannella,Cyber-defamation a burgeoning area and we see it happening a lot in the social networking side, we see it happening to businesses just like you’re suggesting, where someone might put up a competing website or a disparaging website on somebody. Unfortunately with those types of cases a lot of times the civil side of things kind of kick in more so than the criminal side.

Phil Cannella: What’s the outlook for older Americans who shop or do other business online?

Brian: I see it affecting mostly older adults in the area of cyber-frauds or cyber-scams. Roughly 40% of the complaints that come into the Philly FBI office on a daily basis involve some kind of internet fraud or some kind of scam that will typically target older Americans that are looking to try and get access to their retirement incomes—whether that’s an e-mail scam where it says your identity has been compromised, your credentials to this website have been compromised, click on this link here, or whether it’s some Ponzi scheme perpetrated through the use of the Internet or e-mail. We see a lot of people who receive notification that they’ve won something. The FBI hosts a website which is lookstoogoodtobetrue dot com and we have [listed] dozens and dozens of common fraud schemes that people can take a look at: auction fraud, some kind of financial fraud, work-from-home fraud, things involving identify theft. Pharmacy fraud as well. Certainly older Americans on a fixed income or Medicare looking to find low-cost access to pharmaceuticals may be attracted to websites that appear to sell pharmaceuticals at unreasonably low costs. The concerns there is the possibility of counterfeit pharmaceuticals coming from foreign countries, pharmaceuticals being given out without prescriptions, so a lot of that info we have featured up on that website, lookstoogoodtobetrue dot com. Go to the website, take a look.

Phil Cannella: What warning would you have for those who hide behind websites and commit cyber crimes?

Brian: In the end, the FBI motto is, we always get our man or woman. There’s a lot of use of the Internet to perpetrate either fraud or scams but the technology of the U.S. government will come down to bear on those individuals doing that. Many of the cases that we work involve traffic that’s going back overseas and I think a lot of people think it’s a safe haven if they’re hosting their operations in other countries: “I’m beyond the long arm of the law of the U.S. and if I’m doing that from over here in Eastern Europe I’m not going to be caught.” That’s just not true. We have tremendous cooperation and great liaison with our foreign partners in other countries. I think the outlook is good for us. It certainly is a growing crime problem. The FBI is growing too to match suit with that, and growing our cyber-capabilities and number of agents who are investigating these types of crimes.

For more of the Phil Cannella interview Special Agent Brian Herrick regarding Phil Cannella, who supervises the Philadelphia cyber-crime squad.

Here are a couple of tips to help you minimize the risk of falling prey to fraudsters as you navigate your refinancing options:

• Always deal first with your lender before going to anyone else. Ask them about how to go about making the most of HARP to refinance your mortgage.
• Be especially wary when the person you’re talking to does not want you to contact your lender, lawyer or credit counselor.
• Do not pay upfront fees when they “promise” services and have yet to deliver any real results in the first place. This is especially true when they require payment in cash, cashier’s check or wire transfer.
• Never, EVER sign over the deed to your house to anyone. Do not let yourself be pressured into signing any document that you do not fully understand as well.
• Check the Better Business Bureau if the entity you are working with is indeed authentic. If you spot a scam, then this is the place to report the incident as well.

This is a good rule of thumb if you are mulling the prospect of investing money instead of paying off your debt. On one hand, you’ve got the opportunity to make a little extra money that you can use around the house or to pay off the existing debt. On the other hand, you won’t end up losing your house and car should your investments fall through.

The “risk” part is something you have to be especially mindful of. Most safe investments don’t see returns greater than interest rates, while investments have a higher tendency of going sour when there are more rewards promised at the end of it all.

This means that you must ensure that you have enough money flowing into your account to handle your existing debt when you push through with your investment portfolio. Banking too heavily on the success of your investments and leaving your other assets wide open can get you in serious trouble when something goes wrong.

Oh, and one last thing: don’t forget inflation. Your money will be worth less now than ten years in the future, so make sure you factor that into your calculations when checking whether to invest more or pay off more debt.

So if you’re doing good right now and want to give yourself a little extra edge should the unthinkable happen to you, then you may want to slap on some job loss insurance on your mortgage plans.

The policies for job loss insurance vary, but you can expect around $1,500 a month for six months on average. You might not even know you’re signed up for the insurance already, as some insurance packages include job loss insurance in the mix as well.

Do take note, however, that this particular insurance doesn’t give you a free pass to just bum around.

The policies do not cover the whole mortgage payment and usually implement effective dates to deter people who expect to lose their jobs soon. You also need to keep enough cash on hand to pay for the mortgages for a month or two after losing a job, as the payments from job loss insurance providers takes some time to be processed and verified.

All in all, however, it is a good idea for those looking to give themselves a little breathing space should they find themselves unemployed.

The first thing you need to do to secure an auto loan while filing for bankruptcy is to determine the kind of bankruptcy you’re filing.

If you’re filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy where you liquidate your assets to pay off your debts, then you will want to run through a means test. Passing through the means test will get you a 341 meeting of creditors, which in turn will help you in your application for a bad credit auto loan.

If you’re filing a Chapter 13 bankruptcy where a court-appointed trustee sets up a payment schedule for you, then you will have to ask the trustee to petition the court to allow you to incur additional debt. If the petition is green-lit, then you will be allowed by the court to borrow up to a certain amount at a certain maximum interest. You’ll need this court order to secure an auto loan on bad credit.