Remember filing out your FAFSA form for federal aid in college?

When I completed mine for the first time, it was complex and time consuming. Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, asks more than 153 questions depending on criteria for first-time applicants.

This high level of intimidation leaves many students feeling overwhelmed. Some choose to hire a private financial aid consultant to complete their FAFSA for a fee, others seek help from their college's financial aid office, but many students either choose to take out private loans when they are actually eligible for financial aid.

Then there's always the unfortunate event when a student is immersed with fear about financing their college education, and just decide not to bother.

In an effort to ease the FAFSA process, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced some plans to tackle this issue. Under this proposed plan, students will be able to skip irrelevant questions, and some families can use tax related information that was already given to the IRS.

This plan is the latest attempt to encourage more low- to middle-income students to apply for federal aid. I think that the less complex the FAFSA form is the better.

However, the current system provides good support. The online application guides students through every step and financial aid counselors offer some useful advice.

I can understand why some families may feel intimidated by going through a process in hopes of receiving aid in the end. I would argue that during bad economic times, the uncertainty of receiving enough federal aid will influence families to gather up all of their documents and apply.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's first family of personal finance, answer your questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

For many families, the college dream is turning into a financial nightmare. Your son or daughter gets accepted to a private university--great, right? Sure, until you start worrying about how to come up with enough money to cover that big tuition bill. Watch today's video as the Dolans have some surprising advice for a dad struggling to pay for his daughter's college education.

Dear Ken and Daria,

My daughter has a partial scholarship to a private college, but I'm not sure i can afford to pay the rest of the tuition. How should I handle this?

--Patrick

To learn more about the best ways to save for college, visit Dolans.com.

Judy Woodruff was previously the host of Frontline, which aired on PBS, and served as Chief Washington Correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. The co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, Woodruff continues to be one of the most respected journalists in America.

Her new documentary series, which airs Monday nights in June on PBS's NewsHour, is entitled Generation Next. The generation that has experienced it all: from the birth of the Information Age to 9/11, and now a severe global recession. Woodruff examines what life is like for the up and coming young Americans. Woodruff talks to WalletPop Radio about traveling the country, talking to inspiring young men and women about how they're starting their careers in this economy.

Back in February I wrote about the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a non-profit organization that was upset with Scholastic for the ever-increasing number of non-book gadgets being offered as part of its classroom-based book clubs.

Now the CFCFC has garnered the support of 1,262 teachers who are also perturbed by the commercialization of Scholastic's books clubs where Hannah Montana has replaced Laura Ingalls Wilder.

It's a phrase the millions of kids still locked in their classrooms for another few weeks certainly don't want to hear -- but it's already weighing heavy on the minds of retail executives.

Back to school.

The pre-September rush was front and center when teen-friendly mall staples Abercrombie and Fitch and Aeropostale reported earnings Tuesday.

Aeropostale, which was happy to disclose a first-quarter net sales increase of 21%, stressed a continued attention to accessories to help consumers reinvent their wardrobe at minimal cost. Over at Abercrombie, the picture was bleaker: the company lost $27 million in the first quarter and grudgingly acknowledged that it's finally going to lower prices.

Parents put less money into college savings plans during the past year, according to new data released this week, perhaps learning the lesson that it's best to take care of yourself first before saving for your child's college expenses.

Assets in college savings plans were an estimated $85.9 billion in the first quarter of 2009, down from $108.7 billion a year ago, or a 21% drop, according to data developed by the Financial Research Corp. and released this week by the College Savings Foundation, or CSF.

And the numbers get worse. Gross sales, or new dollars invested in 529 accounts, fell 37% in the past year, from $2 billion in the first quarter of 2008 to $1.25 billion in the first quarter of this year.

"We're not surprised by that given the market conditions and these trying times," said Kevin McMullen, chairman of CSF, in a telephone interview.

If you heard a long, anguished, agonized scream today, don't call the cops. You probably heard the collective sobbing of journalists around the nation. We already know print news is in trouble; newspapers have had trouble paying the bills since they rolled the dice and hoped that giving away their reporting for free online would eventually pay off. So far, after more than a decade, it hasn't.

Instead of selling its product, one website is selling an unpaid summer internship. You read that correctly. Forget applying; that's old-school. Today, any enterprising journalist with sufficient cash can bid on an internship at The Huffington Post, a website infamous among freelance journalists for its payscale of precisely zero dollars per word.

But at least the writers don't have to pay to be published. But CharityBuzz.com is giving away a HuffPo internship that, at the time of this writing, has attracted 10 bids, topping out at $13,000. Somebody out there has agreed to pay $13,000 for the privilege of working for free.

That adage "One hand giveth, the other taketh away" can apply to California's state and city government agencies, particularly the people in them who determine pay increases.

As the state plunges further into a double-billion-digit deficit and holds a special election next week for voters to determine, among other things, whether to increase state taxes, the outrages seem to come monthly. There's always some group of government workers getting big pay raises, while their peers see their salaries slashed, or are losing their jobs altogether.

First, in late April, more than 120 staffers working at the state capitol were granted salary increases (two-thirds of the increases went to aides for Democrats, the majority party). As taxpayers screamed, the pay increases were rescinded a day later because they were becoming a "distraction."

Next, the Sacramento Bee took a look at salaries for the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District and found that 80% of its employees earned more than $100,000 last year in salary, incentives and overtime (the Fire Chief made $321,000), while 50 recently-retired employees will get six-figure pensions for life.

Dublin sociology student Shane Fitzgerald had the same theory about Wikipedia that many of us have: You can't trust it. So he set out to prove just how untrustworthy it is.

Immediately after hearing the breaking news of the death of film composer Maurice Jarre on March 28, Fitzgerald flew to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia in which facts are tended by whomever uses the site. Fitzgerald wasn't interested in vandalizing the Jarre biography page with outrageous information and lies. That would be too obvious. Instead, he invented a quote that sounded like Jarre might have said it:

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," read Fitzgerald's bogus Jarre quote. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

It's hard to get kids interested in learning about economics and the environment in the classroom, especially when textbooks have outdated information about it or none at all. That's why a 20-minute video called The Story of Stuff is becoming a sleeper hit in American classrooms.

It's a condensed explanation of where consumer goods come from, where they go when we're done with them, and how much havoc they wreak on the earth. It doesn't shed a flattering light on U.S. government or corporations (a school board in Missoula, Montana ruled against screening the video in classrooms after a parent complained it was too anti-capitalist).

How are teens getting ready for, like, the biggest night ever? Prom? During this, y'know, recession or whatever? The Miami Herald reports that South Florida high schoolers are trimming their budgets without sacrificing the importance of being trendy.

Education reporter Hannah Sampson spoke to one well-connected student, a class president, who took advantage of a Men's Wearhouse deal by referring enough friends to earn himself a free tux. Other teens are pooling their gas money and renting cars, not white stretch-limos with hot-tubs in the back. One thrifty senior even says she'll be reusing the shoes she wore to homecoming. (OMG, CALL THE FASHION POLICE, LOL!!!!) Seventeen editor-in-chief Ann Shoket tells the Herald that teenage girls who cut spending on nonessential items don't have to skimp as much on hair, makeup or a dress. "It's a real teaching moment for teens to talk about financial responsibility."

I admire the First Lady, and I am excited to see her give the keynote address for the first graduating seniors at the University of California at Merced on May 16. (I live 90 minutes north of Merced and was able to score a spot after doing some marketing writing for the school when it first opened four years ago).

But wow, she's an expensive lady to host. The Merced Sun-Star reports the school's commencement budget has ballooned from $100,000 to $700,000 to accommodate Obama on campus. It's not because Michelle has requested five-star digs for her Secret Service agents. Rather it's because UC Merced officials want to make a big splash.

According to spokesperson Tonya Luiz, "We have her first public address. It's our obligation to make Merced look good." The top cost is an estimated $300,000 for an audio/visual firm to broadcast the event on-site and provide a live feed for media outlets. It's doubtful they would be shelling out that kind of dough if the unpopular Governator was giving the address.

While we sometimes laugh at the idea of "curriculum" in preschool, it seems to be common in the U.S. and U.K. now for parents to expect their kids to learn at preschool, and not just about sharing and shapes. My four-year-old has already learned to write his name, recognize letters, and other basics at his six-hours-a-week preschool. At prices that generally average about $10 per hour in my city, I think parents expect more "school," less "pre-" these days.

But on the fringe of traditional education is the "unschooling" or "free school" movement, which has loose connections to the homeschool community, Waldorf, and other traditions that downplay the role of worksheets, tests and memorization in schools, instead choosing to let kids make their own way. And another, complementary (and far more mainstream) movement seeks to greatly increase the amount of time kids get to play outside, called the "Green Hour" or the cure for "Nature Deficit Disorder."

The combination of hard times and free resources has turned local libraries into community hotspots, as frugal citizens turn to them for free entertainment and free Web access. Despite this, in city after city, libraries are seeing their hours reduced in budget cutbacks.

Over the past few weeks, though, some of the world's greatest libraries have been expanding. They're just doing it online.

The grandest national archives of 19 countries, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia, have come together to create the World Digital Library, and when it was inaugurated in Paris on April 21, copies of some 1,200 priceless documents were placed online for anyone and everyone to reference. The site, which is funded by private and corporate donations (Microsoft and Google pitched in), is worth hours of absorption for any history nut: You can zoom in and move around on high-resolution images as quickly as if you're playing the world's geekiest video game.

I graduated from Penn State with a finance degree in 2002, just eight months after Sept. 11.

Jobs on Wall Street and in the financial industry were scarce...less so than now, but I remember it was no fun time to enter the workforce. So, fearing rejection I did what many of my scaredy-pants classmates chose to do: duck inside grad school and wait it out.

Now as college students finish up their degrees this month, it's like deja vu times ten. The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently mentions how companies plan to hire 22% fewer new college grads this year, citing The National Association of Colleges and Employers.