Transcript
CFPB FinEx Webinar for June 2024
Presenters: Leslie Jones and Lyn Haralson, Office of Financial Education, CFPB
Facilitators:  Joshua Shapiro and Ken McDonnell, CFPB

 
>>Joshua Shapiro:  Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining. My name is Josh Shapiro from the Bureau Events Management Team. Before we begin, just going to go over some quick logistics.
 
If you need some closed captioning, please click the CC button at the bottom left of the Webex window. If you're having any audio or technical difficulties, please chat the host or the co-host, and we can help you determine how to fix your audio or video. There will be time at the end of this webinar for questions, so please do use the chat feature throughout the webinar to ask your questions. It will be monitored. 
 
And now I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Kenneth McDonnell, who is with the Office of Financial Education, to officially kick off today's events. Ken?
 
>> Ken McDonnell:  Thank you, Josh. Thank you all for attending today's webinar. We're going to be looking at resources for youth for the back-to-school season, and we have two speakers here with us from the Office of Financial Education that manage our Youth Financial Education Program, Leslie Jones and Lyn Haralson. Also, one other thing, we are in the FinEx program looking to find new ways that we can better engage with you all, so we're going to be sending out a survey instrument in about a couple of weeks and wanting to get your input and opinions on how we can better engage with all of you going forward. So please be on the lookout for that. 
 
And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Leslie. Leslie? 
 
[No audible response.]
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  You're currently muted, Leslie.
  
 >>Lyn Haralson:  I'll take over. This is Lyn.
 
>>Leslie Jones:  I'm Leslie Jones.
 
>>Ms. Haralson:  So good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for allowing us on the youth team to share our resources and research today with you. As Ken said, I'm Lyn Haralson. I am a Financial Education Program analyst. Leslie Jones is our Youth Financial Education analyst. So you'll see a bunch of her product development and all the cool things she does here at the Bureau. And we are in the Office of Financial Education.
 
Next slide, please. So this is our traditional disclaimer. If you've been on a webinar before, you've seen it. It essentially says the presentation is being made by members of the CFPB staff on behalf of the Bureau, and it does not constitute any legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of CFPB, and our opinions are our own.
 
Next slide, please. So next, we're going to talk about CFPB research into youth and financial technology. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau conducted research about young people's use of and attitudes towards financial technology, or as we call it, "fintech." The research included focus groups to learn about young people's experiences using fintech and then the benefits and risks they associate with it, as well as a national survey to learn about young people's attitudes towards fintech and factors that influence their decision to use these apps and services.

These methods also explored how technology, social media, friends, family, and school play a part in influencing a young people'sÑperson's knowledge and attitudes towards personal finance. 
 
Next slide. So now we'll do a little overview of the uses. Our focus group ages range from 13 to 19, with the majority of our focus group being age 15. Many focus group participants first using fintech coincided with when they opened their first bank account or got their first job. Most frequently, this was around age 15. The participants felt like using the apps helped them to learn about finance, manage their money, and as we all know teens love to do, feel independent. There was a shared sentiment that using fintech too early in youth could lead young people to being a little too carefree with their money, so they did caveat that with that caution. 
 
Next slide. So then we wanted to know, well, what do you use and why? And why do you use that? What went into that decision? So next, we'll look at what youth considered when determining whether to use an app. Most respondents identified the cost of the app as the most important factor when choosing whether to use a mobile fintech app. This was followed closely by how easy the app was to use, how much their personal information the app uses or shares. And so those were the three categories that really scored high in determining whether they use the app.
 
Next slide. So now let's delve into the benefits and risks. So we wanted to figure out if the young people understood what benefits and the risk of each of these apps were that they had chosen to use, and some of the benefits they cited included convenience and accessibility, instantaneous transactions, notifications and reminders, protection services, and social environment. Examples they gave us included paying back a friend for a lunch or an event ticket. Social environment, they indicated it was kind of fun to see what their friends and family were spending money on, and then notifications and reminders just to keep them on track.
 
Next slide, please. Now let's talk a little bit about the risks. Some of the risks they cited included security of fundsÑyeah, we knowÑdata breaches, unhelpful customer service and, unexpected fees to transfer money. Youth shared that they feel privacy and security are important, certainly. But they simply have accepted breaches are part of life and even cited in one case that they have a fear every day of opening their bank account app and their money being gone. So while they know privacy is important, they don't have a real strong feeling that they're going to have that privacy and protection. 
 
Next slide, please. So all of the youth in the focus group had previous experience using payment apps. The most common use the participants cited was sending money and receiving money to and from friends and family, such as splitting checks at a restaurant or paying their parents for bills. Several focus group participants identified experiences of accidentally sending money to the wrong person through a payment app. When we probed to see if they knew how to resolve this error, they said they would contact the person first to see if they would send it back. If not, some said they might call the company but mostly said they don't expect that to help as most are chat bots or the help lines aren't even answered. None indicated they knew to file a complaint with a regulatory agency or other entity.

Next slide, please. So in our survey, of course, as a financial educator provider ourselves, we asked our survey participants where they go for financial information, and of course, we know our parents and family members are our first teachers. And that that kind of showed in this in their responses. Sixty-seven percent identified parents or family members were the most common source of financial advisor information. Other sources cited by 40 percent or more of the participants included Google or web searches; social media, such as TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter; and then the friends, of course. Peer learning is, certainly, and checking in with your peers to see what they're doing and see if they think it's okay. Individual meetings with experts, like financial or advisors or coaches, a couple of them had met with financial advisors or coaches through their parents. And then YouTube.
 
Next slide, please. Well, we heard parents and family were the primary source of financial information. We also wanted to know about their experience with financial education in school. There was an overwhelming feeling that personal finance courses should definitely be a requirement in high school. Some participants noted that the burden of teaching financial literacy should fall upon both parents and schools and generally seem to believe that parents should instill healthy financial habits while schools should actually teach more about specific financial concepts. 
 
And with that, I'll turn it over to Leslie.
 
>>Ms. Jones:  All right. So as of December 2023, 25 states have a requirement for students to take andÑto take a class and financial literacy education in order to graduate. So some of the requests of the students that Lyn was talking about in our previous survey are getting through to the states, and they're making this change. Ten states have fully implemented those requirements. Fifteen states are still working on it. It's in progress.
 
What we wanted to do is try to encourage you today to learn more about trying to discover whether financial literacy education was a graduation requirement because of where you live. Now, I've mentioned that there are states that have the requirements, but there are some, also, local school systems that have made that a choice. And you can check to see if that's available in the in the school district in which you are working in or in which you live. 
 
So I'd like to show you that right now. All right. So I'm going to travel to this website live right now. So give me just one moment to go there. Here we are. So now we're on the live website, and it's a map. I would love to know if any of you want to share where you live and a school that's in your community so that I can use the search tool and show you how it how it works.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  AlsoÑ
 
[Simultaneous speaking.]
  
>>Ms. Jones:  [In progress]ÑTexas if I can find it? Why am I having trouble finding Texas? There it is. Texas. And I'm going to click. You can see that Texas doesn't have aÑit's not a state that that has a guarantee right now that's fully implemented. So I'm going to click for a school-by-school status, and when I click that and I get to Texas, I'm now going to type inÑI think it was Somerville. I think it's Somerville. Yep, Somerville High School. Okay. So I'll click on it, and what it's able to tell us isÑfrom this website, it's calledÑit's got a bronze rating. Bronze, gold, silver or the rating. And what it says is there is a course that is required, a course that's available called Financial Mathematics that has some financial literacy embedded in it. But it is not a personal finance course per se. It's going to go over a variety of things. 
 
So I'm going to go back, and let's see. We'll go back over to the dashboard. And I saw somebody had Maryland here. So I'm going to click for a school-by-school status. and in Maryland, I'm going to search forÑwhat was the school that was listed or the location? I'm seeing Randallstown and silver rating, and it says that the course catalog has a personal finance course that is either a standalone semester elective course or it's one choice among multiple that can fill a graduation requirement. They have a course called Introduction to Career Research and Development and also a course called Personal Finance and Economics Literacy. So this course has better information, but what it doesn't have is a requirement that the student must take it, I believe, is what we're being told. But this is a nice tool to be able to use to check out your school system in your location and find out if financial literacy education being required. 
 
Okay. So I'm going to go back. We've covered that topic, and I want to goÑ
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Leslie, before you go back. Hold on. 
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Sorry. Yes. 
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Can you share the link?
 
>>Ms. Jones:  I can share the link in the chat.
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Okay. Thank you. 
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Okay, yeah. It's showing on the screen, I believe, right now too, isn't it? 
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  There's something in front of it. It's obscured.
 
>>Ms. Jones:  I'm going to click hide this, and there it should show. Is it now showing? 
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Yes.
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Wonderful. All right. So now let me keep going here. So the other thing we're going to talk about is our report that we published in April of 2024 on video games and virtual world sand some of our concerns about that.
 
All right. So given how large an industry video gaming is and is expected to be, CFPB wants consumers to be aware of trends and risks that are online and in the game marketplace. So we think on monitoring the use of virtual currencies in games and virtual world because virtual worlds are allowing people to store and exchange valuable assets. Those of you that already play already know this. For people who don't currently play or play often might not beÑmight not be as familiar with it. But there are very limited consumer protections as you are participating in these exchanges as you're buying, selling, and trading your assets. And also, we wanted to make people aware of the fact that there areÑthat you're providing quite a bit of data to these gaming companies as you play. 
 
One of the things we wanted to point out were micro transaction, and a micro transactions is an in-game purchase. So the games include the option to make real-life financial transactions, not fake ones that are just gaming ones, but real actual financial transactions for things thatÑfor items that can improve your performance in the game, such as extra lives or more powerful weapons, items that allow the player to advance through the game more quickly, like earlier access to new levels or the ability to develop resources more quickly, and aesthetic items that don't improve the performance in the game, but you get a new skin, a new avatar. You can make yourself look better according to how you want to look. And so those assets are quite often in-game-only assets. So you've made a purchase that then if you don't like it, you can't return it because it was just in that game, or you can't transfer it to something else because it is part ofÑpart of just that game. And so we just wanted people to be aware of the fact that when you're putting money into this, you're putting money only into that. It's not something that you can easily sell to somebody else, or you've not acquired something tangible, I guess, is probably the best way of putting it. 
 
And then the other piece we wanted to mention here is that there are account vulnerabilities. Both the FTC and the CFPB have received complaints about hacking attempts, account theft, scams, unauthorized transactions, and people losing access to their in-game currency or virtual world. And also third-party websites are collecting that data from you, and sometimes they're sharing that information. Sometimes the information includes your banking information if you've been making in-game purchases. We're currently monitoring this market and looking for ways to protect consumers from frauds and scams. But of course, as a young person may be first being introduced to financial activity and financial literacy through the video games they're playing, it may be helpful for younger children if a parent serves as a facilitator, observer, commentator while they're playing those games. So being able to monitor, at least for the younger kids, might be of help during the summer and as the year goes on to have them ask you questions ahead of time.

All right. Let's go on. Actually, I'm going to pause because it looks like there's some questions about the dashboard. You do not have to sign up for a teacher account unless you want access to the educational tools and the lesson plans and stuff. If all you're looking for is the dashboard, if all you want to do is to see what community resources are available to help you share the word about the importance of financial literacy, all of that information is available to you for no login and no cost at the NextGen website. If you wanted to create an account and get access to lesson plans and the accounts that the students can then use to log in and do the activities, that is a completely separate thing. That is for you to decide. We were just trying to share the publicly available information. But you do not have to create a teacher account to check the dashboard to see if you haveÑto see if your local school districtsÑwhat financial literacy courses and requirements are available in your local area. Okay. Hopefully that answers the questions that are coming in the chat there. 
 
All right. So I want to talk about the updated FAFSA. For those of you that heard about the things going on but haven't participated in it, knowing what some of these updates are might help you. So I just wanted to go over some of them. I definitely don't have a lot of in-depth information, but I do have some information and alerts that could help you. 
 
All right. And especially planning for the fall, this is really about planning for the fall. How do you help the students that you are working with, the young people you're working with, and their families get ready for when the FAFSA application process opens in the fall? Well, you can make sure that they create a StudentAid.gov account. They're going to need that, their federal student aid ID number and information login.
 
What happens now with the new version is people are called "applicants," so the children are called "applicants." The people who are planning to go to college are called "applicants." But the people in their circle that are going to be providing financial assistance to them or that help support them are called "contributors." It could be a spouse. It could be a family member, quite often is a parent. But those are their contributors. They're also going to have to create a StudentAid.gov account and get an ID number. So it's very critical that they both do it. 
 
But here's what's really important, that the contributors no longer need a Social Security number. So that is an improvement, I think, to the previous system. So contributors no longer need a Social Security number in order to provide information, and I will go over the other warning here, which is some tips for filling this out.
 
Applicants should complete their section first. But other people, when they complete it, they needÑexcuse me. When they're completing their information and putting in their contributor's information, they need to have their exact contributor's information. So don't guess at a birth date. Don't guess at a phone number. Don't guess at a Social Security number if you have it. Have the contributor's exact information, because when the contributor goes in to put their information into the applicant's form, all of that information will be cross-checked. If anything is miscommunicated and anything doesn't match, then it's going to go into a queue of applications that need review and need double checking. And it's just going to slow the process down. So make sure all of that information exactly matches, and it starts from when the applicant puts their information into the form. Yeah. If in doubt, don't guess. Ask, ask, ask.
 
Once an applicant's contributor completes their section to an application, it will be able to be signed and submitted for review. But what that means is that the applicant, once the applicant has filled out all the information and they have the contributor fill out all the information, the applicant has to go back to their application and sign and send it in. So it's multiple times that they're getting in there. They're having to wait for people. Again, different than the past and it's helpful if you're aware of these adjustments so that you can guide somebody through it and get them ready for it. Mistakes can absolutely be fixed, but again, as I said before, can delay processing.
 
And so if you're looking for updated information, because I'm justÑI'm being able to give you obviously some superficial pieces here, please visit StudentAid.gov for any updated information. And as for now, when will the applications open for 2025, 2026, we're not sure yet. Hopefully, it will be in October. That is, of course, when it is opened traditionally in the past for the last, like, probably about three or four years, and hopefully, they'll be returning to that. 
 
All right. Now, aside from this, I want to talk about what the CFPB has in terms of a tool that also helps with the financial aid process. So we talked about starting to plan early, starting to plan now for the fall, some tips for filling out the FAFSA form. I'd like now to talk about reviewing your financial aid offer, and that'll be what happens next spring.
  
When they're reviewing their financial aid offer letter, our tool called Your Financial Path to Graduation is a tool that is interactive. You take your financial aid offer letter. You key in the information in it into our tool, and it's going to help you identify: Is your funding going to cover your costs? What are theÑwhat loans might you need, and can you afford them? Is the school worth it for you, and what does repayment look like? 
 
And I have exciting news, and that is the fact that this tool is being updated for the fall. So we're making it a little bit shorter and more concise. So if you have used it before, please come back in the fall or keep your ear out for when it does get updated and come back and take a look at it, because it'sÑthe tool will be updated and, like I said, shorter, hopefully a little bit easier to complete. 
 
All right. Hopefully, we have shown you some ways to get ready for the financial aid process for next year and planning for college, and now we're going to talk a little bit about our youth financial education resources. 
 
Lyn, I think I'm turning this back over to you to start.
 
>>Ms. Haralson:  That's correct. Thank you, Leslie. Now, as Leslie said, we'll cover the resources we have to help parents, educators, and community groups support youth financial education.
 
Next slide. First, we'll look at Our Youth Financial Education webpage. Our Youth Financial Education webpage is the gateway to the tools and resources to understand best practices in financial education for young people to evaluate financial education curricula, to explore relevant research, and find tools and resources for educators. 
 
Next slide. Our Money as You Grow page at the CFPB is for parents. At the CFPB, we approach youth financial education based on a research-based model, based developmental model. It's called the Building Blocks of Youth Financial Capability. We do that through three avenues:  parents and caregiversÑas we heard, the kids prioritize that or say that that's their number one sourceÑeducators in our school systems. But we also support community organizations. We know that community organizations fill the gap that school systems often don't reach or emphasize or enhance what's taught in the school system. So the Money as You Grow webpage is designed to make it easy for parents and caregivers to find tools, activities, and information to talk to their children about money.

Next slide, please. And this is a sample activity to help parents, caregivers talk to a child about choosing the best cell phone plan for their family. You notice we say family and not for themselves. This activity can help a teen or a young adult understand, first, comparison shopping, which may help them make more informed buying decisions. The parent or caregiver will discuss their current cell phone plan, give the child a budget, and then work with them to research other options. Together they are looking for the plan that best fits the family's needs, wants, and current budget that has the overall lowest cost. And you can see where you can get that activity here at the bottom of the screen. 
 
Next slide, please. Next is our Money as You Grow Bookshelf. Here you see 21 books for which we have parent guides. Two books are also available in SpanishÑ"Tia Isa Wants a Car" and "Count on Pablo." One highlights the Native American culture, "Jingle Dancer," and one the Asian culture, "Sam and the Lucky Money." And many, I'm sure, remember from your childhood or from reading to the children in your family.

And now let'sÑnext slide, please. So what's in these parent guides? Leslie is holding up a copy of "Jingle Dancer." We created these parent guides for teaching financial concepts using the 21 common books I just showed you. In each parent guide, there is a synopsis of the story, some key ideas, something to think about, a section for parents and caregivers called "Before You Read," something to talk about after reading the book, and then some suggested age-appropriate things to help you do with the children to reinforce the learning.
 
And now we'll turn it back over to Leslie to share more about our educator resources. So the building blocks activity resource. So one of the things that you might want to do sometimes is shareÑor excuse meÑto locate trusted resources, safe resources, places where you can get information on various topics without having to worry about ads popping up or anything like that.
 
So what we have done is we've curated a list of sources that we've used to teach our lessons, our lesson plans from, and what they do is they're mostly government sites or a few nonprofit sites. But generally speaking, they are ad-free, and they just have the core information that you might be looking for on a given topic.

So this is a website that we recommend checking out, and we also have a financial education glossary for young people that has really age-appropriate terminology for things like investing or what theÑexcuse me. I'm trying to think of some of the other more challenging waysÑbudgeting, saving, just to be able to have appropriate terminology to use. Our glossary is one of the most visited sites on our youth pages, and so we think that you might enjoy it. And this activity list can also help you quickly find a source that you might not have known has some useful or interesting information on a topic that you'd like to cover with the young people that you work with.
 
All right. So Lyn had talked about our youth financial education, MAYG bookshelf. What I would like to share with you, too, are our Money Monster stories. Our Money Monsters are a group of creatures who are new to our universe learning about school, friendship, and financial literacy. The Money Monsters learn to save. They learn about careers. They learn to be good borrowers. They learn what things really cost, how to protect their things about giving. Those are all storybooks. Storybooks look like this, and they're nice, short, simple stories that all have lesson plans that go with them. 
 
And we also have Money Monsters Start Your Own Business, which is a chapter book for grades four through seven. These books, the Learn to Save storybooks areÑexcuse meÑthe Money Monsters Learn storybooks are for grades K through five. 
 
And then one of our favorite tools is the Money Monster activity book that we created for ages three to eight. Also, it's designed for early readers and non-readers, and it's coloring, word search, reflection, math, goal setting. It looks like this. So it comes as an 8.5x11, but it just has a lot of different activities in it that you can do. And at the very end, it's a key that you can use so that you can get through that word search if you're looking to do that. So this is something else that's available for order if you're looking to serve that population, the early readers, non-readers, age three to eight. 
 
And now, the thing that those were built from were from our financial literacy activities. This database has over 130 activities. It's for K through 12, and it's for helping to teach our building blocks, helping people who are new to teaching financial literacy, have some fast and easy lesson plans. It's not a curriculum. So what happens is you just come in, you need a 15-minute lesson, you need a 45-minute lesson, you have a little more time, and you can do an 80-minute lesson. Then you can come and search or filter our database and look for activities that would work for your population. Do you want to teach about careers? Do you want to teach banking options? Do you want to teach about budgeting? There's just a variety of topics, and you can look through to find an activity that would work for the topic, the age range, and the time that you have. 
 
One example of one lesson we have is understanding prepaid cards. That is a very valuable topic to teach, and we also provide the detailed information that a teacher might need if you're going into a classroom and you're teaching a class because somebody's invited you in to speak. Well, a teacher would love it if you bring the first page of this, which is this page. If you bring that in to them, they can fill out the lesson plan and tell their supervisor exactly how this fit in with their objectives. The essential questions, the objectives, the student characteristics that we list here are all very helpful. We even list what's called the Bloom's taxonomy level, which for a teacher is likeÑyayÑbecause their supervisors always want to know that information, and that can help them out a lot. So this is some of the information that's available. You can quickly choose, and as you see on the bottom of the page in this slide, there's usually a download of a teacher guide. A teacher guide is between Ñis betweenÑusually between four to six pages in length. If it's longer than that, it probably has some embedded materials that you're going to need. But otherwise, the download is usually fast, easy to read, and sometimes there's a student worksheet or student handout. But that's usually about it. So they're fairly easy to implement.

And, oh, there's a PDF that isÑthat is a fillable PDF. So if you're doing it electronically, you can do it that way, or you can just print it and use it that way. 
 
And this looks like it's gotten a little askew, so I apologize. But one of the things I like to doÑI don't know how many people have ever been to a warehouse store. But, you know, you go to that warehouse store and you're going for that one or two items, but somehow when you get to the register, your cart is full of things. Well, that's like coming to our bulk publication site. We have a lot of really useful information, and I like things just here in the youth financial education items. We have our storybook, our chapter book, our activity book. We have classroom posters that you can order, and the posters are shipped like this. And then you can open them up, and you can put them on the wall and post them. There are, I think, 10 different posters, so they're good for all sorts of different activities. We have teaching guides. We have our research, our reports on our research, and of course, all of theÑnot all, but we have, like, 15 of the Money as You Grow parent guides also that can be downloaded. So there's just a variety of things. If you're looking for resources that you can take into the community with you or have electronically to share, please visit the bulk publication site. You can find things there. 
 
So I think that what we have left for you, other than answering some questions that you might have, is the fact that we are on social media. I've got to switch the Twitter out. And then we also have a K-12 email. So if you're interested in signing up for a K-12 email, you can either use that QR code, or we have the URL there at the bottom of this slide. And we send out probably about four to six newsletters a year highlighting different topics that come out that we think would be useful to you that are specifically K-12 or youth financial education focused. So if you would like to receive those newsletters, please make sure you sign up. 
 
And now I don't know if anybody has any questions that we haven't addressed, but this would be a great time to ask. 
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  So I do have one question. How were the books selected for the Bookshelf program?
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Bookshelf was selected by the University of Minnesota. I think it was Madison, and it was a team of people who looked at books with a variety of criteria, and I was not here at the time that those books were selected.
 
The other thing that we didÑbut to make sure that they were widely available at the time, and then I think it was updated about five years ago. And we tried to includeÑwe have two Spanish language titles, so we wanted to make sure that those were there. We also have the Chinese American family, the Native American family. We wanted to have variety in our books that way. But that is one of theÑo those are the books that we have, and we don't anticipate adding to that list at this point in time.
 
And somebody reminded me that our printed materials are available at no charge, and I should remind people about that. 
 
All right. Ken, what else? 
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  So the CFPB does not select the books. It is selected by a couple of the cooperative extensions in the universities.
 
So a couple of the things for you and Lyn, a couple of kudos. We have Tony thinks the Money Monsters are awesome. And we have Mylene [phonetic], who is saying that she has been using CFPB resources for classrooms and with her community partners. They have tons of handouts as well, and they really like our stuff. So kudos to you two. 
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Thank you. Other questions?
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  Let's see. Can you drop the K-12 URL into the chat, please?
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Absolutely.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  And while you're doing that, we have a questionÑ
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Ken, this is Josh. We do have a couple of hands raised. I don't know if you want them to be allowed to come off mute or just have them put their question in the chat. 
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  Let them speak.
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Okay. Stephanie, I'm going to go ahead and unmute you. Stephanie, are you there?
 
[No audible response.]
 
>>Mr. Shapiro:  Okay. Maybe not. It looks like the other person lowered their hand. So I apologize. Continue. Sorry, Ken.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  So we have another question. How soon should parents get started with FAFSA? Before the end of the year or at the beginning of your child's yearÑor your child's senior year. Sorry. 
 
>>Ms. Jones:  You can create your student aid ID number any time after, like, eighth grade, eighth or ninth grade. The catch is that you're going to have to remember it and find it and, you know, store it someplace. But otherwise, you can create that ID any time then. So do it sooner rather than later, and the more of your information you probably can get into the system ahead of time means you don't have to go check it and look for it and things like that. So I would say sooner rather than later, just to get all of that information in. And then that final sending in the application obviously is done when you're able to down the road. But everybody should be able to get their accounts created and have that part of the process started.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  Yes. This session will be recorded. One of the things I also want to mention when we were asked about the cost, the resources that Leslie mentioned you can order are free, and shipping is free as well. So there's no charge to you at all.
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Don't share our mailing list with anyone. Don't send it to anybody. Don't sell it to anyone. I think that's also very helpful.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  And I'm not seeing any more questions. Okay. AndÑoh, wait a minute. We have a question here. How should federal loan borrowers plan for repayment with the save plan injunction in place? How will it affect Financial Path to Grads tool? 
 
>>Ms. Jones:  I don't believe that that is going to affect our grad path tool, the CFPB tool. I don't believe that's going to affect it at all. And in terms of the save plan injunction, man, I was just told something. I'm going to come off of the share becauseÑactually, am I sharing anything right now? 
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  Yes, you are.
  
>>Ms. Jones:  I'm sorry. This morning, I was told the good news. Oh, so for people who are parents plus borrowers, that they can still work on consolidating their loans. So that is a positive for them. But for everyone else, unfortunately, from what I understand, you're on hold for right now. And that is as much information as I can give you from what I know. Otherwise, I just strongly recommend going to the StudentAid.gov site and try to get more information from there.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  Thank you, Leslie. Just another kudos to you guys for doing such a wonderful job in your webinar, and thank yous. How do we enlistÑ
 
>>Ms. Haralson:  Ken, I saw one statement that they were good for homeschool as well, and I will say that we just ventured out to our first homeschool conference recently for HEAV, Homeschool Educator Association of Virginia. And people were very excited to receive the resources. So thank you for that shout-out.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  We have another question here. How do we enlist a CFPB employee to make a high school classroom presentation, perhaps teaming with a nonprofit organization?
 
>>Ms. Jones:  Well, if you're talking about a presentation that is virtual, then reaching out to us at our K-12 email address means that we can try to get back to you and see if there's something that can be scheduled.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  Excellent. Thank you. That's what Tony said. My experience, just ask. As a former boss said, the answer is always no if you don't ask.
 
>>Ms. Haralson:  I just put our email address in the chat.
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  And do we have any more questions for folks?
 
[No audible response.]
 
>>Mr. McDonnell:  If not, if you think of something later, Leslie had just put the email for her in the chat for her and Lyn. And if you think of it later, please feel free to reach out to Leslie and Lyn at the email address listed in the chat.

If not, I'd like to thank you all for attending and participating in our webinar. We greatly appreciate your time. Thank you.
 
[End of recorded session.] 
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