Here's your money briefing from Monday, December 4th. I'm J. R. Whelan for the Wall Street Journal.

For many college students and their families, financial aid can be the key to a higher education.

But this year they'll face a new set of challenges, a revamped application form,

and a new timeline for learning how much aid they've received.

Families may not find out about their awards until March or later,

because most schools aren't going to get this information until later in January, and then they have to run it through their own systems.

Our personal finance reporter, O'ian Eddodoyan will help us navigate the new financial aid application

process after the break. Hi, I'm Andy Surr where Barron's Editor at Large.

On my new podcast at Barron's, I'm bringing you inside the C suite for insights from today's top leaders in business, technology, finance, entertainment,

and economics.

Our guests will offer their unique insight into their companies and industries and the challenges

and experience that made them the leaders

they are today.

Listen to new episodes of AtBarrans every Thursday.

Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Families will be able to apply for college financial aid starting on December 31st when the free application for federal

student aid or FAFSA becomes available. Wall Street Journal Personal

Finance reporter Oian Addadoyan joins me. So Olean we're hearing that this year's FAFSA will be

simplified. What will be simpler? The Education Department has trimmed down this

form by more than 50%. So where it used to be a hundred questions it's now gone down to about 36 or even

less for some families. Oh that could be a time saver for sure they've also

made it a lot easier to connect your IRS tax forms to the application. That way

that information from the IRS could fill in a lot of those blanks.

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