Can you please help out a beginner. Any advice appreciated!

[Atomsk]

Since you will be taking the courses mentioned in dfrecore's excellent post above, you should also create an account with ACE so that you can have these classes put on your transcript.
https://www2.acenet.edu/credit/?fuseacti...ATION.main

Once you have created an account and signed in, you go to My Courses, then Add New Course to put classes on your transcript.

Also, since you are considering taking the post-2014 GED, scores above 175 on any component of the test will get you college credit (3 hours of College Algebra, 1 hour of Humanities, 3 hours of Physical Science, and 3 hours of Social Science). If you think you will achieve those sorts of scores on the GED, it might be worth taking for up to ten hours of college credit. Otherwise, I don't think the GED would supercede the high school diploma you already have.

Yeah that sounds like it would be extremely helpful. So apply for FASFA, get my GED, make any ACE account so that the courses get added to my transcript, take some free and some of the courses mentioned above. Enroll into either COC or TESU. Apply for financial aid and use that to fund the CLEP test. Does that sound about right?