Can i use fafsa money for a car

View the discussion thread. Skip to main content. Tags college students financial aid Public transportation Pell Grant Student debt free community college. A must-read political newsletter that breaks news and catches you up on what is happening. Most Popular - Easy to read, daily digest of the news from The Hill and around the world. The Hill's must read political newsletter that breaks news and catches you up on what happened in the morning and what to look for after lunch.

Delivered to your inbox every weekday evening, our politics and policy newsletters are a daily digest of today's news and what's expected to break tomorrow. National Security. Agency Insider. Don't miss a brief. Sign up for our daily email. If you're a student who absolutely needs to buy a car while in school and financing it is the only way, get a car loan instead of using student loans.

The interest rates will be lower, and the loan term will be much shorter [source: Ritchie ]. Granted, you'll need to start making monthly payments right away, and that's hard for a lot of students to manage, so the impulse to roll the car into the student loans and not worry about it for four years is understandable.

However, interest likely at a high rate will be accruing during those four years, after which the car in question will be at least four years old and will have lost much of its value — even though you'll be just starting to pay for it at a higher cost than it was originally worth. By the time the student loans are paid off, that car will probably be a distant memory. Financing an education over the course of a decade — or longer — is one thing.

Financing a car is another. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. By Mark Kantrowitz March 29, You cannot use student loans to buy a car. The transportation allowance is likely to be much lower than the cost of a taxi, Uber or Lyft.

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