Responsible Borrowing Worksheet Essay

Many students borrow federal student loans to pay for college. The goal of this assignment is to help you learn how to borrow responsibly, which may mean that you do not borrow at all or that you borrow only what you truly need. To borrow responsibly, you must understand your options and establish a financial plan for your entire program. With that plan in place, you can then focus on your classes and making connections with instructors and other students. Step 1 Watch the â€Å"Responsible Borrowing (Financial Aid)† video on the orientation website located here: http://www.phoenix.edu/student-orientation.html. Respond to the following questions: What is financial aid? Financial Aid is any grant or scholarship, loan, or paid employment offered to help a student meet his/her college expenses. Such aid is usually provided by various sources such as federal and state agencies, colleges, high schools, foundations, and corporations. How do grants differ from loans? Grants are money you don’t have to repay and are usually based on your financial need while loans are money you borrow that you must pay back, usually with interest costs. The major grants are Cal Grants, federal Pell Grants and some smaller federal grants What effect does class attendance have on funding availability? Students must attend school continuously, with no attendance breaks greater than 14 days, to retain disbursed federal financial aid funds. A leave of absence must be requested and approved if a student requires more than 14 days away from class. Step 2 Navigate to the Personal Finance category of the GEN/127 PhoenixConnect Community. Explore the resources provided and some of the discussions shared by the community members. Respond to the following questions: What did you find about student loan repayment plans? I found out that there are interests rates that cling to the loan and also you should pay close attention to the money you burrow in unsubsidized and subsidized loans because you will have to pay that back and also may sure you keep up with how much your borrowing and the dates that you will have to start repaying, you don’t want them to go into default. Why is having an educational financial plan important? You will need this so you can map out how much needs to be funded for your course and class, its very vital you pay attention to this because you could end up not having enough, thesethings you want to plan out and make sure of so you wont have any bumps or faults along the way. Step 3 Access the Financial Plan at www.phoenix.edu/financialplan. Enter your program and respond to the questions. Explore the information about options for payment, reducing cost, and military students (if applicable). If you have already completed the plan as part of the enrollment process, you can use those results for this step. Based on this plan, what is your estimated monthly payment when you enter repayment? My estimated monthly repayment fee is $56 a month. As a result of completing the plan, what changes can you make to reduce the amount you may borrow? Why? I can check for the cost of the classes so I wont borrow so much, just what I need to pay the cost of each class that way I wont over draw.