If you already had a PIN, your personal information has been verified with SSA. If you link that PIN to your FSA ID then you don’t have to wait for SSA verification.
I think @kelsmom mentioned before that a PIN can expire, but I think that happens if it hasn’t been used in several years.
But someone who is doing FAFSA for first time and is setting up a new FSA ID has to wait until SSA verifies identity.
What I described about the secure code that was sent in our email was for the optional verification of email address. That has nothing to do with SSA verification.
Parents only need a username and ID IF parent information is required on the FAFSA. We parents have this…got it last spring…but it turns out that this year, our info is NOT required by DD’s school…woohoo!!! She is 28 and independent finally for financial aid purposes.
I got the same email as @suzy100. That’s why when my D was home during Christmas break we both signed up for our FSA ID. Since I wasn’t allowed to set it up for her and wanted to be available to help if she ran into problems.
We both provided our existing PIN and had no problems.
On the first FAFSA we filed last year, we just had to provide parent AGI, income earned from work, tax paid and 401k contributions. Parent assets were under asset protection allowance amount so we didn’t have to provide detailed bank balances. For student we reported income (did not have to file a tax return) and assets.
This year we had to report parent AGI, income earned from work, tax paid, 401k contributions and education credit (this was not the entire amount of AOTC, just the nonrefundable part). Our parent assets were still under APA so we just answered no to the question if parent assets were over that amount.
My D had income from work and taxable scholarships so we had to provide AGI, income from working, tax paid and amount of taxable scholarships included in AGI. Also her assets.
After our tax returns processed we linked the tax returns to the FAFSA with the IRS data retrieval tool and resubmitted FAFSA.
Here’s a good one! DD completed her FAFSA today…she couldn’t remember her password…but apparently it’s linked to her email. She signed in using the email…changed the password (which she this time wrote down in a safe place) and poof…completed the form…and submitted!