Services

Our mission is to help you pay as little as possible for college.

How do we do that?

Colleges love the fact that they do not have to be transparent. In any given year, there will be hundreds of different prices that the students at a particular school are paying. Colleges give varying amounts of financial aid. Some of it may be need-based, some of it may be merit aid. It is up to you to make sure you get the aid you are entitled to. That’s where we come in.

It’s also important to know that colleges are not all the same. Some colleges are very generous, and some are not. Your smart student may get lots of merit aid at one school and zero at another. We make sure you know what different schools are likely to offer you before it is too late.

Our cost-conscious approach focuses on your family’s specific situation. Every family is different. Your plan will reflect that.

Some of the items we cover include:

• Financial Aid Planning Calendar
• Sticker Price vs. Net Price Calculations
• Finding Merit Aid and Need-based Aid
• Maximizing Aid with Multiple Children
• College Selection Strategies for the Most Aid
• Understanding and Reducing Your EFC
• Education Tax Benefits
• 529 Plans
• How Grandparents can best help paying for college
• Understanding student loans
• Financial Aid Package Analysis
• FAFSA and CSS Profile assistance
• Private scholarship searching
• How divorce and separation impact what you pay

We offer two ways to work together.

Free College Money Report

It only takes about five minutes to get your plan started. It’s a fully online, automated process. We’ll ask you a few key pieces of information, and then email you a detailed report of what your top colleges will cost. It is totally free, and there is no obligation.

If you are interested in working together, we will start to fine tune your plan with more specific information about your family’s situation. We can run what-if scenarios about decisions that can impact your net cost, and we will guide you through the confusing financial aid forms. When your award letters arrive, we will help you decipher them to make sure they are what you are entitled to. You will have online access to detailed reports on our parent portal, and you can add colleges to your list at any time, and get instant results.

The Scholarship Companion

For years, College Funding Group, LLC has hosted a free online database of local, private scholarships. It started with a few dozen listings and has grown to over 500. Students and families from all over the region have used the CFG ScholarBank to win scholarships!

We also offer curated national scholarship searches, because searching can take up tons of your valuable time. Many parents have their students do the searching, but they are busy with schoolwork and applications and just don’t have the time or patience. And if you look for one of the national search engines to come to your aid, plan on sharing a huge amount of personal information with them, information that will be sold and resold to who knows whom.

We have developed an automated process that will keep your private information private, and give you a shorter, curated list of possible scholarships that will make for more efficient, faster searches.

If you are interested, we offer a Free Sample of what our search looks like. Just click on the link above to get started.