January is the beginning of the season for completing your FAFSA, Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and the sooner you apply the better. Remember that continuing students need to fill out a new FAFSA every single year.
The newest feature to the FAFSA, the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, is available starting on Februar 1, 2015. It is normally available from the IRS two weeks after you file. It automatically pulls your tax information directly into the FAFSA, helping reduce errors and speed up the time it takes to complete the FAFSA. The FAFSA currently boasts and average completion time of 21 minutes - this is far different than the hours it would take on the paper version.
Federal Student Aid recently pubished two great blogs that can help point to misconceptions and mistakes when approaching the FAFSA: