The Free Application for Federal Student Aid for 2025-26 will be available for all students and contributors on or before Dec. 1, the Education Department says.

Typically, students have access to the coming academic year’s form in October, but this year’s delayed release follows a “phased rollout” meant to address reported issues from the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle. Last year’s new, simplified form was plagued with problems at the outset, some of which are still outstanding.

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Although the extended testing period for the 2025-26 FAFSA is important, another delayed start “creates a compressed timeline for students and families to submit their financial information, which can lead to missed opportunities for aid,” Beth Maglione, interim president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement.

1. Set up a studentaid.gov account: Before the new form opens, students and their parents (if the student is a dependent) can set up a username and password, commonly called the FSA ID, to access and complete the FAFSA electronically. 
2. Gather personal information: Students should have their Social Security number on hand (as should parents, if the student is a dependent, or student spouses, if applicable). However, if a student spouse, parent or stepparent does not have an SSN, they can still register for an FSA ID. The form may also ask for your driver’s license or state identification number. Non-citizens should have their Alien Registration number handy.
3. Federal tax information: Applicants will need tax information from the prior-prior tax year. In this case, that means students should have 2023 tax returns for the 2025-26 FAFSA.
4. Financial records: The FAFSA requires records of the student’s (and the parents’, if applicable) bank accounts, stocks, bonds, real estate (not including the family home) and other investments. Any records of untaxed income, such as child support or government benefits, should be documented as well.
5. List of schools: Finally, FAFSA applicants should have a list of schools the student is applying to or attending, which will need to be listed on the FAFSA application.

For many students, financial aid is crucial when it comes to covering the cost of college.

Higher education already costs more than most families can afford, and college costs are still rising. Tuition and fees plus room and board for a four-year private college averaged $58,600 in the 2024-25 school year, up from $56,390 a year earlier. At four-year, in-state public colleges, it was $24,920, up from $24,080, the College Board found.

The FAFSA serves as the gateway to all federal aid money, including federal student loans, work-study and especially grants — which have become the most crucial kind of assistance because they typically do not need to be repaid.

Submitting a FAFSA is also one of the best predictors of whether a high school senior will go on to college, according to the National College Attainment Network. Seniors who complete the FAFSA are 84% more likely to enroll in college directly after high school, according to an NCAN study of 2013 data. 

After last year’s FAFSA complications, it became clear how much financial aid weighed heavily on decisions about college. 

In part because of issues with the new form, the number of new first-year college students sank 5% this fall compared with last year, according to an analysis of early data by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

The declines in first-year student enrollment were most significant at four-year colleges that serve low-income students, the report also found.

At four-year colleges where large shares of students receive Pell Grants, first-year student enrollment dropped more than 10%.

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Progress in the fight to tame pandemic-era inflation appears to have stalled out in October, despite lower prices at the gasoline pump and a moderation in other consumer staples such as groceries.

Meanwhile, economists think policies such as import tariffs floated by President-elect Donald Trump would likely — if enacted — exacerbate the inflation rate, which hasn’t yet declined to policymakers’ long-term target.

The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, was up 2.6% in October versus a year ago — an increase from 2.4% in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The reading was in line with economists’ expectations.

While that October uptick may seem like a setback, consumers can take solace that broad price pressures are continuing to ease, economists and policymakers said.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday said economic data points to inflation “continuing to come down on a bumpy path.”

“One or two really good data months or bad data months aren’t going to really change the pattern at this point,” Powell said during a press conference.

Stephen Brown, deputy chief North American economist at Capital Economics, echoed that sentiment: “The overall [inflation] trend is positive,” he said.

In fact, the pickup in the annual inflation rate is at least partly due to a statistical quirk: The monthly inflation rate in October 2023 was unusually low, making the October 2024 reading look relatively high by comparison, economists said.   

Inflation has pulled back significantly from its pandemic-era peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

However, there are still some trouble spots.

Auto insurance prices, for example, are up 14% since October 2023, according to CPI data.

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Vehicle insurance premiums face “upward pressure” largely due to a lag effect from earlier inflationary dynamics, Brown said.

For example, new and used vehicle prices began to surge in 2021 amid a shortage of semiconductor chips used to manufacture cars; because of that sticker shock, insurers’ cost to replace vehicles after a car accident is much higher, Brown said. Insurers also typically need approval from regulators to raise consumer premiums, a process that takes time, he said.

“Lagged impacts” are affecting other categories, too, making for overall slow progress on reining in inflation, Brown said.

Shelter inflation has throttled back painfully slowly, even as inflation in the national rental market has declined considerably, economists said.

“Market rents, newly signed leases, are experiencing very low inflation,” Powell said during the press conference.

Shelter inflation has taken a long time to adjust to that housing backdrop due to how federal statisticians compile the CPI index. In short, its slow adjustment up or down is by design.

“So that’s just a catch-up problem,” Powell said. “It’s not really reflecting current inflationary pressures.”

CPI shelter inflation heated up on a monthly basis in October, rising to 0.4% from 0.2% in September. Its annual inflation rate has declined to less than 5% from a peak of more than 8% in early 2023.

Shelter is “the continued major impediment to getting inflation all the way back,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.

The Federal Reserve has a long-term annual inflation target of around 2%.

Inflation for groceries cooled on a monthly basis, to 0.1% from September to October, down from 0.4% the prior month. Grocery prices are up about 1% since October 2023.

They’re “very, very tame,” Zandi said.

That’s despite various supply-and-demand idiosyncrasies that are raising prices for certain food items, he said. For example, avian flu, which is lethal for chickens and other birds, has negatively affected egg supply and led prices to swell 30% in the past year; similarly, a poor orange crop has pushed up orange prices 7% annually.

The price for a gallon of gasoline fell 1% during the month, according to CPI data. Prices are down more than 12% in the past year.

“Gasoline prices are way down,” Zandi said. Average prices could fall further, to below $3 a gallon, he said. They were at $3.05 a gallon, on average, as of Nov. 11, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“We could get more relief there because global oil prices are soft,” Zandi said.

That weakness may be in anticipation of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed policies around China, said Zandi. Those may include tariffs of at least 60% on goods imported from China, which has a huge appetite for oil. If Trump’s policies were to negatively affect the Chinese economy, they’d also likely dampen China’s oil demand.

Trump has proposed broader tariffs, of perhaps 10% or 20% on all goods imported to the U.S. Additionally, he has announced plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and enact a package of tax cuts.

If put in place, such policies would likely stoke U.S. inflation, economists said.

“While we believe that inflation remains on a disinflationary trajectory, we now see the risks as clearly tilted to the upside,” Bank of America economists wrote in a note Monday. “These risks stem from potential policy changes rather than economic fundamentals.”

Placing an import tax on goods would likely lead U.S. companies to raise prices for those goods, for example, economists said. Fewer immigrants in the labor pool may push businesses to raise wages to attract applicants and retain workers, while tax cuts could put more money in consumers’ pockets and boost their spending.

“Indeed, we see pro-growth fiscal policy, tariffs, and tighter immigration as potential sources of upside inflation risk over the coming years if they are implemented,” Bank of America economists wrote.

The annual inflation would likely be around 2.1% by the end of 2025 absent Trump’s policies, said Brown of Capital Economics. If enacted, that figure would likely be around 3%, he said, as a “ballpark estimate.”

“The return of inflation to the 2% target may prove short-lived,” Brown wrote in a research note Wednesday.

However, much depends on how, when and if those policies are enacted, economists said.

Amid the latest bitcoin rally, crypto investors face a looming deadline that could impact future taxes — and they must take action before Jan. 1, 2025.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS in July unveiled final tax reporting rules for digital asset brokers, with phased-in guidelines.

Starting in 2026, brokers will use Form 1099-DA to report gross proceeds from 2025 sales. In 2027, brokers will include “cost basis,” or the original purchase price for sales in 2026.

Basis is important because, generally, if you can’t prove your basis, the IRS considers it zero — which can inflate gains. Your profit is the sales price minus your basis.

The price of bitcoin jumped above $93,000 on Wednesday, notching a fresh record that added to the post-election rally.

“People don’t necessarily think of the tax consequences, especially when they see that we’re going up very rapidly,” said Matt Metras, an enrolled agent and owner of MDM Financial Services in Rochester, New York, where he specializes in digital assets.

In the meantime, investors must establish a “reasonable allocation” of basis by Jan. 1, 2025, according to the IRS revenue procedure released in July.

Investors should provide their broker with these details to avoid a “reporting nightmare” in the future, said Mukherjee, speaking at the American Institute of CPAs’ national tax conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

The new IRS reporting requirements come as the agency focuses on digital asset enforcement.

“These regulations are an important part of the larger effort on high-income individual tax compliance,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement in July. “We need to make sure digital assets are not used to hide taxable income, and these final regulations will improve detection of noncompliance in the high-risk space of digital assets.”