SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's Taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

She's a certified financial planner, the author of How to Pay for College, and the trusted voice families turn to when they realize they're about to spend the equivalent of a house on their kids' college education. Ann Garcia, better known as the college financial lady, has spent her career helping families fund college without destroying their retirement or burying their kid in debt. Today we're getting into the real money conversation most parents are afraid to have. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm Dr. Joe Sebestian. Families often ask me how to navigate the maze of college prep without wasting thousands of dollars and years of time. And the answer usually involves finding the people who have figured out the rules of the game that schools are telling you. And that's why I'm thrilled to have Anne Garcia here today. Anne is a certified financial planner, a wealth advisor at the Mather Group, the author of How to Pay for College. She's known publicly as the College Financial Lady. And she's the person families actually go to when they need to figure out how to afford an $80,000 to $90,000 a year tuition bill without sacrificing their own retirement. We're going to dive into how to actually read a financial aid award letter, what high-income families need to know about the college money squeeze, and why prestige at any price is one of the most damaging financial decisions families make. And how to have the honest college budget conversation with your teenager. And welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Absolutely. I've given them the 60-second highlight reel, or sorry, I'll give them the highlight reelbook. Give me the 60-second like highlight pitch. High what you do for families in terms of learning and education.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

And that seemed like a missed opportunity given that for most families, that's their biggest expense outside of retirement. And so I have focused in my in my practice on helping people balance those really tough budgeting decisions between living your best life now, funding your kids, funding your kids' dreams, and funding your kids' adult, a journey to adulthood. And like you said, not not not knocking your own retirement off the rails in in the process. I'm also a mom of twins who graduated debt-free from their first choice schools. So I've been through this all myself.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

It is crazy how the like we just accepted that $100,000 a year for a college is now like the norm at most top schools. Like it's just, yeah, your kids get a ground. I mean, $400,000 to go to the school. It's unbelievably how exponentially more money. In fact, like my undergrad was at a state school, division two, small state school, and like I think total debt I only paid for three years. I left with like 18,000. And now it's like 25,000 a year, like which is insane. It's the same school. So uh I guess take me back. Uh, you're a CFP, you do wealth management at a real firm. When did college family, like, did the conversation about family affordability start showing up with your students? Is that or your children? Is that where you had it originally, or how did you get into this?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Well, back in my very first job as an advisor, so I'm a career changer. I've worked in technology for many years before I became an advisor. And early in my career as an advisor, my boss came to me one day and said, one of my clients has questions about college, and I'm not really interested in finding out about it. So do you want to help them with that? And I thought several things at once. One is, I'm a parent, I need to know this for my own kids, so why not find it out for them? And the other was he probably isn't the only advisor who's not interested in talking about this. And this is a really important conversation for us to be having with people. And so this is something that I want to, that I want to dig deeply into. And I realized after that one conversation that this was something that families across the board were trying, we're trying to figure out and we're not getting good solid guidance about it. You know, the guidance from from college admissions counselors, from high school guidance counselors has always been, you know, look for reach schools, stretch yourself, extend yourself, you know, try to get into the best college that you can get that you can get into. And the thing is, the best college for you might not be the best college in the world of the high school guidance counselor or the college admissions counselor or the US News and World Report rankings. Um and and and there are so man so many great choices out there at literally every price point. And unfortunately, the ones we talk about are the ones that cost $100,000.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

And that's that's a hard conversation to have because you know, some kids can get into those dream schools, but then comes that secondary conversation about can we afford this? So you wrote the book, How to Pay for College. And there are a lot of books on this topic. What did you want to put on the page that wasn't already out there?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

I I felt like so much of the literature around this was either about how to apply for college and how to get into a top college or how to file the FAFSA. And to me, a financial plan for college needs to start before senior year of high school. So this is ideally something that you start when your child is young, at least thinking, at least thinking about it. Because it takes years to build up a body of savings that'll help support their choices to understand what choices you want them to have, what environments they're gonna thrive in. Um and and and to figure out what are what are reasonable expectations for for you and your child to have as you as you go through this this process. You don't have to shortchange your child's education in order to get them through school without debt. There are loads and loads of good choices, but you need to start thinking about that ideally before senior year of of high school.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Why the uh college financial lady? That brand name does a lot of work.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Um the the real story is I started I started writing this blog just as a New Year's resolution that I wanted to do more writing, and I called it the college lady. And a a couple months into it, I was interviewed in a New York Times story and they linked to my blog, and it turned out somebody else was the college lady. So I had to pivot quickly and I became the college financial lady.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Got it, got it. Okay, I love that. So you worked inside the system to kind of get where you are. You know, you actually built something within the bounds of actually helping families save. So just kind of like let's get to the actual playbook. Like set the stage. Most of our audience, a lot of families make $150,000 to $400,000 plus. They think or they believe they're too rich for need-based aid, but they're start, they're staring at an $80K a year sticker price. What's the real way for families to think about paying for college?

SPEAKER_02 7:35

I think it's the most important thing for families to understand is every student is eligible for scholarships. Every college offers scholarships, but not every college offers scholarships to every student. So if you don't want to be paying full price, you need to figure out what scholarships your kids are eligible for. And I know that so many families are like, oh, we're not going to qualify for need-based aid. The top schools are offering full tuition scholarships to students whose family incomes are $250,000 or lower. So that, you know, $250,000 income is about 95th percentile nationwide, which is to say 95% of American households are eligible for need-based financial aid at some college. Now, there is that other percentage who aren't, but those kids are eligible for merit scholarships. And so if you don't want to pay full price, you just need to find figure out what scholarships you're eligible for, and then apply to colleges that offer those scholarships. Now, the bad news is the Ivy Leagues don't offer merit scholarships. Stanford doesn't offer merit scholarships. Being eligible for merit scholarships elsewhere is kind of table stakes to get your application read at those at those schools. But there are plenty of great colleges that do offer those merit scholarships.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

And the financial aid award letters, they can be notoriously confusing. Some are you intentionally so. So, what do parents actually need to be looking for when they get one?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

So financial aid award letters should have several key pieces of information. One is the total list price, and then they should include all of your grant and scholarship money. So that's all your free money. Where they get confusing is when they start adding things like loans and work study into the picture. So you can see an award letter that subtracts scholarships, grants, loans, and work study and gives you a bottom line number that's actually $10,000 less than the real number, right? Because a loan or a work study award, that's just your money. They're just repackaging it as part of their part of their aid process. So that's one big piece of it. Another thing that my family found, so you know, splitting up what's the free money and what's and and and what oftentimes colleges will include parent plus loans in the aid award too. And I I've come across more than one family who didn't realize that they were taking out a parent plus loan every year. And then their child graduated and they owed, you know, $100,000 because all those payments are deferred while you're in school. So they never never saw anything until after graduation. You know, hadn't read the award letter in in enough detail. Um, there were getting to be some standards around award letters. Um, I think for the Department of Education is walking back from a lot of those um regulations now, unfortunately. But important things in award letters differentiate the free money from what's called self-help aid, which is your money repackaged as loans or or work study. And that'll help you figure out what your actual costs are. There's a couple of other pieces of award letters that that we all found really interesting with um with my kids when we went through the process. And those are all the other expenses besides tuition and fees. So room and board, you know, what what dorm and what meal plan are included in room and board? And are those the ones you would actually that you would actually choose? My son, for example, was deciding between two colleges, and it looked like one was about $4,000 a year more than the other, but it just turned out that one was using an expensive dorm and meal plan, and the other one was using a cheap dorm and meal plan. And then there's the books and incidentals and and stuff like that. The fact that one college tells you to budget $3,000 a year for books and the other tells you to budget $1,000 a year for books doesn't mean that you're gonna use more books at one school than the other. What it does mean is there's a huge range of prices that you'll pay for for things like that. Another thing that award letters are are are tough with is what your actual travel costs are gonna be. Now, you're in Pennsylvania, I'm in Oregon. If both of us had a kid going to Penn, my travel costs would be different from yours, but our award letters would say the same thing. So good idea to actually figure out what those what those costs are gonna be. One of the best resources that I have found for figuring out all those extra extra costs is to join the Facebook parents page of the schools that your kid is interested in, because those are people who are actually dealing with all this stuff right now, and they can be super, super helpful in telling you what things actually actually cost.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Most families think that for a merit scholarship, their kid has to have a 1500 SAT and a 4.0 to get it. What's the actual landscape look like?

SPEAKER_02 12:56

You just have to be a good student relative to the student body at the school that you're applying to or have some other characteristic that's desirable to them. So not all not all colleges enroll strictly 4.0 students. My son had about, I don't think he had a 3.5 GPA, and he got a big merit scholarship at the college that he went to. A great resource for figuring out whether you're likely to be eligible for merit aid as a scholarships is college data, which is just collegedata.com. You can go in there and see, first of all, does the college offer merit scholarships? And secondly, what are the 75th percentile GPAs and test scores of students at that school? If you're in that category, you're likely to get, and the school offers merit awards, then you're likely to get a pretty good one.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

So in that college data, that's based off of, I assume the common data sets.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Yeah, it's common data set.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Gotcha. Cool. Okay. And uh so basically just being in that 75th percentile, which we would consider potentially either target or safety school, depending on where we're where we're going. Most of those kids, if they're if they're aligned, they're gonna get some kind of uh award package.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yeah, if the school, if the school offers them, there's chances are good that that you will. The other thing that's helpful in college data is it tells you what percentage of students are getting merit scholarships. Right. And so if 25% of them get it, probably you need to be 75th percentile. If 50% get them, you need to be 50 50th percentile if and there are some schools where 99% of students get a scholarship.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

What about uh you talked about the how generous institutions are some some ones that families actually never consider, you know, without or with naming names. What's the pattern? Like how do families find them? Because, you know, a couple advertisements I see in the SAT prep space, some some schools in the South for a 14, 15 RST, you're giving full full rides. Let's like parents aren't concerned though.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Yeah. I mean, the unfortunate thing is we have this totally decentralized and fragmented system where there isn't one, you know, one pure source of of all this information. For students who are eligible for need-based aid, you know, the most generous schools tend to be the most exclusive ones. And the reason for that is if they accept you, they want you to accept them. And so they're gonna make you an offer that you that you can't refuse. And I know when when we went through this process, my daughter applied to um a lot of private schools. And it seemed like if you ranked the schools, the financial aid packages went along with those rankings. The highest ranked school gave her the best package. And as we went, as we went down the list, um, they oftentimes became slightly less slightly. But yeah, there are schools that offer full ride scholarships for national merit students, national merit scholars for people who get over X on their SATs. I think a really good way to find schools that give really generous scholarships is look at where the look at the private schools and the out-of-state schools that kids from your high school attend in large numbers. And usually the reason that they do that is that there are lots of scholarships there. So, for example, we're in Oregon, lots of kids go to Gonzaga. Why do they go to Gonzaga? Well, because 98% of students who go to Gonzaga get a scholarship.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Interesting. How about OU?

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Well, yeah, and I mean that's a great example. So my son applied to University of Oregon and University of Arizona, and Arizona ended up being cheaper for him because he was eligible for a merit scholarship there and he wasn't eligible for one in Oregon.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, my uh my secretary, uh, her son, Brilliant, got basically a full ride to Alabama. And my uh my good friend, his daughter got a really good aid to UK versus like Penn State and Pitt didn't offer that much and locally. So um 529 plans. Um, you said families with ones are under optimizing it. What's the most common mistake?

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Waiting too long to start. Um you know 529 is like your retirement account, only you only have 18 years to fund it. On average, families don't start funding it until their kids seven years old. And there's good reasons for that, right? When you have kids at home before they've started school and you're paying for daycare and diapers and you know, everything that they outgrow every 15 minutes that needs to be replaced. Yeah, you don't have a lot of money. But you know, a great trick for families of young kids, even if you don't have two nickels to rub together because it's all going somewhere else, open your 529 and share the gifting link with people who are generous with your kid and get started funding it, funding it that way. You you may be surprised at um at the amounts of money that you can that you can accumulate. And as soon as you can, set up your own automatic contribution into the account. I mean, one of the beauty of 529s is you can often set up, you know, most plans will accept very low automated contributions, you know, five, $10 a month. As soon as you get that started, a good practice is every year on your child's birthday, figure out how you're gonna bump that number up a little bit. Even if it's five or $10 a month every year, doing that every year for the 18 years of your child's life will probably give you another $15,000 to $20,000 once college starts. And um, you know, more savings gives you more choices.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

And uh how do you think how or I guess how how how do you think how early should families start thinking about this like really seriously? Is there a too late moment? Because we get a lot of families in 10th, 11th, and sometimes 12th grade. So but for a financial plan, like when should families start thinking about this? And is what is that too late moment?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Well, I'd say it's never too early. It's also never too late. To me, financial planning for college is equal parts financial planning and parenting. Right. So the financial planning piece is the saving and the budgeting and the figuring out what you can afford. The parenting is helping your kid understand what you're trying to accomplish with a college education, what the resources are that are available to them and helping guide them to good choices that mean that they get the most out of their education. Um, you know, that they don't graduate drowning in debt, such that their only choice is to come home and live in your basement because they can't afford rent, but you know, that they're in a position to go out and and make the most of their degree and uh and of their future. Um, you know, for the for the financial piece of it, you know, the early simple thing to do is start saving as early as you can in whatever amounts, whatever amounts that you can. The parenting piece, it's you know, it's important to be age appropriate. When you're a parent of a high schooler, it's important that you be talking with your kids about what your expectations and what your budget are. And doing so from the perspective of goals as opposed to constraints. A goals-based conversation is it's really important for us that you have the opportunity to go to college and that you're able to graduate debt-free. And we've been saving diligently so that you can do that. We know that we can get you through our state schools with our budget, and we know that you can find other options in that same price range and we'll support you in finding them. That's a lot more empowering to your kid than we can only afford in-state. So don't look any further than that.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

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SPEAKER_01 21:12

Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so like let's get into the bigger conversation because there's some stuff you've been pretty vocal about that I think every parent needs to hear. Like you said, the prestige at any price is one of the worst financial decisions Americans' families make. It's a pretty heavy claim. A lot of parents listen to that and maybe recoil. Uh, I'll give you some context because I don't disagree with that. I think there's I call them paper chases. Like there's a lot of brand name chasers that they don't realize. Like, I we have we have a scraping tool uh that does the common data sets for the top 250 schools. That's the top 10% of schools in the nation. And they're all real they're amazing schools. But we're talking now like the 1%, like the heart of the Ivy Leagues. Those things like that. So c talk to me about, like walk me through what you mean by that.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah. Well, I I think we have a tendency to equate cost and exclusivity with quality. And that's not always, that's not always the case. I'll tell a personal story. I have twins. One went to one of those 1% schools, and one went to a public school that you can kind of sign up and go to. They both, coming out of school, graduated with jobs, almost identical jobs. One was in computer science and one was in finance. So obviously their job responsibilities were different, but early career rotational programs at Fortune 500 companies, same salary, same everything else. When the time came for them to find their second job, the one who went to the public school found a great next job within minutes of starting to look. The one that went to the one percenter school is struggling to find a next job. So, so there's, you know, totally different pathways, similar original outcomes, and then very different, um, very different next outcomes that really had nothing to do with the schools that they chose. But there was a study done a few years ago called the Gallup Purdue Index, where they interviewed adults who were successful in life and tried to trace that back to their college experiences and figure out what it was about their college experiences that led to that success. And what they found is it had nothing to do with the exclusivity of the college they went to. It had nothing to do with public versus private, it had nothing to do with urban versus rural, small versus large, anything like that. And really what it came down to was six specific experiences that they had as college students. Um, those were things like participating in extracurriculars, feeling, finding mentors, having opportunities to apply classroom learning outside of the classroom. And those are all things that are available at a huge range of colleges, not just the top 10%, the top 5%, the top 1%. Um success comes in a lot of different flavors. And and, you know, and there there have been plenty of surveys too to about outcomes of students who apply to Ivy League schools and don't get in versus the ones who do go to Ivy League schools. And the outcomes tend to be quite, quite similar. Your kid is gonna do great because they're a great kid. College will help them become the adult version of themselves, but that's not what's gonna make them a good person. Their intellect, their values, their judgment are are what will carry them through in the world.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah, I think more families need to hear that. It doesn't land as as much with some families, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Well, I think too, you know, we've been trained to do anything for our kids. And and and we've let so much of the college narrative be driven by the Harvards and Stanfords of the world. And they educate a tiny fraction of our students. And in fact, if you do the math, the Ivy Leagues admit about 40,000 students every year, and about four million students graduate from high school every year. Now, those 40,000 students, some of them are going to be international students, some are going to be student athletes, some are gonna be, you know, really good flute players. So even being a one percenter as a high school student doesn't guarantee you an admission. You know, maybe it gets you a 50% shot at admission at one of those schools. So I, you know, I feel like we can save our kids a lot of heartache by focusing bigger picture on who's the adult we're trying to create versus where are they going to spend the next four years. I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. So she has she has a son who she's she's always told him you can go wherever you want, we'll pay for whatever college is so important to us, you know, we'll we'll pay for it, pick what you want. And he chose a very exclusive school and really just didn't find his people there and wasn't happy and was kind of struggling. And he came home, you know, he was home over spring break and he and he said, you know, mom, can we talk? And the first thing he said was, I don't want to disappoint you. I hope you're not disappointed in me, but I want to transfer. And that just kind of broke my heart because it feels like, in many ways, we're the ones giving those messages to our kids. And we're the ones who are setting them up to think there's that there's really one ticket, that that there's a short list of colleges who are gatekeepers to a better life. And there isn't.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Do you think that's the that's the bigger issue is the parents are kind of living vicariously through their stud their their kids? And that the second part of it being that they the way they look at it is that the school is the guarantee for success versus the kid actually being awesome and like doing the work.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's kind of sad, isn't it? Right? Have some confidence in your kid. They're gonna be okay because of who they are.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

So what about an ROI? Because you just talked about your two kids. Where does it make sense to spend $300,000 on a college education? And where, where doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 27:23

So, you know, my personal, you know, if I'm if I'm gonna get on my soapbox, I'm gonna say the reason college costs so much is because too many people are willing to pay that much. You know, if we all decided we weren't gonna pay $100,000 a year for college, college wouldn't cost $100,000 a year. But if you're in charge at Stanford and you're like, well, let's see, last year we turned away 20,000 people who are willing to pay this much, let's charge a little more. You know, they have they have no incentive not to charge that much. And it and at those schools, typically 50% or more of the student body is paying full price. Where those schools make a big difference are kids from less privileged backgrounds who get access to better support resources and better networks for for career advancement. And of course, if you want to be on the Supreme Court, it's really important to have gone to an Ivy League.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Yeah. But I think if you look around, does she have another name? Nicole and Barrel went to their name, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Uh yeah, I think one there, yeah. But that's pretty exclusive too.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yes, yeah, you're right. You're right. So okay. So yeah, basically Supreme Court Dreams, Ivy League right up there. Uh I gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

But if you look at Fortune 500 CEOs, the school that created the most of them is Texas AM.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 28:39

It's not Harvard, it's not Stanford.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

So the college pricing system itself, you said it's intentionally opaque. Like what's actually broken about how American college price themselves?

SPEAKER_02 28:57

You know, they have complete freedom to, it's the ultimate free market product, right? Because they can charge whatever they want, they can discount as much as they want to fill their classes, and they can, you know, the more the more exclusive schools can load up their endowments with with tons and tons of money. I mean, I'll be honest, one of my kids went to one of those schools. And when you saw how they were running the school, you're like, yeah, it would be hard to, it would be hard to educate my child this way for much less than than than what it costs. You know, eight-person classes taught by full professors, um, you know, tons and tons of of support resources. My son, on the other hand, you know, he was at a private school where all his classes were large. The same, all the same resources were there. It was just kind of more incumbent on him to go and find them. But, you know, the the hard thing about our pricing model is it's like air travel, right? You don't want to ask the person sitting in the airplane seat next to you what they're paying, because it's probably different from what you're paying. And and colleges is the same way. You know, everyone pays based on what the college decides they're able to pay. And and unfortunately for us, we as parents and as students treat it like a love affair and the schools treat it like a business. Where they have a business model of filling classrooms and filling dorm rooms.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Yeah. And the uh the interesting thing is like families are making what you call, well, I I would agree with you, is probably one of the most damaging financial mistakes and that they are sacrificing their retirement to help pay for college. And it's very common apparently. So what why do parents make that trade? And like what? Because they've had the discipline enough to say about retirement. They're like, let's do this. Walk me through how that happens and how do you give families not to do that?

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is just that whole, you know, wanting to give our kids advantages that other kids don't have. And and one of the ways we do that is by placing them in a school that has limited access and that there's a only a small pool of kids who are, you know, who are who are gonna go there. It's not really all that different from hiring private coaches for your kids' sports things. And I and I feel like that's something that's changed really dramatically over the last, over the last 20 years. I mean, I grew up in California and I, you know, lived in an upper middle class community. And our parents all said, you know, if you can get into someplace better than the UCs, then we'll talk. But we all ended up going to going to the UCs. And they were, you know, they and the people who didn't go to the UCs either went to Cal State, went to a community college, or went to an Ivy League. And that was kind of, you know, those were the only private schools that that were considered on par, you know, on par with the UCs. And and no one really no one really questioned that. And now the family, you know, it's not unusual when I talk to families in California that they treat the UCs like a safety school.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Um which is wild because like UCLA is not a safety school. No.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

But what I encourage families to do is instead of thinking about the next four years, think of the adult you're trying to create. Think of your child at 25. Are they financially stable? Are they pursuing a career? Are they can in, you know, in or looking at grad school? You know, look a few years down the road. Are they thinking about buying a home? Are they looking at getting, you know, getting married, starting a family? Or are those things off of the table because they overdid it on college and they're still paying off their student loans? Because it's remarkable. You know, college is remarkable in terms of the outcomes that it produces and not just, you know, not just financially. College graduates earn an average of a million dollars more over their lifetime than than do people without degrees. Unemployment rate is about half for college graduates what it is for those without degrees. But college graduates live longer, they're healthier, there's less heart disease, less type 2 diabetes. College graduates vote more, they volunteer more, they're more likely to befriend their neighbor. I mean, there's there's all kinds of kinds of positives that come from a college degree, and that's a college degree, not a degree from a specific college. The people who don't get those benefits are the ones who take on too much student loans. And the outcomes for them are in many cases worse than for those who never pursued a college education in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Let me ask you this. Now, this is gonna go against both who you and I serve, but I'm an educator and I'm just like, is college still the best option for kids in this kind with with AI, with how disruptive it's coming into the field, is it the best option for kids looking at 10 or 20 years? And I'm gonna I'm gonna say first that if you have to pay full price compared to maybe a trade or going so like into that, like uh an apprenticeship program where you're going to be an electrical or electrician or HVAC specialist or something like that. And if you can use your strategies to get a significant decrease, is it worth it there?

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Yeah. It's you know, I was listening to a podcast with a labor economist, and he was being asked what degrees students should pursue. And he's like, I don't know. I feel like if the labor economist can't answer that question in in the AI world, I probably can't either. I will say, you know, our obviously we talk a lot about AI in in our profession, as as does everyone, um, and how we're using it. And our CEO was at a was at a CEO conference not too long ago, and um, and and one of one of the presentations was was about AI's impact on the on the um on the labor force. And he what he was talking about was he envisioned the normal um work, you know, employment pyramid is is um is a pyramid, right? Where you've got a lot of support staff. And as you go, as you go up the levels, there's less and less people. So it's like a, you know, it's it's a pyramid leading up, leading up to the top. And he was saying he sees that pyramid inverting where there's more higher level employees with a lot less support staff because that support work is being doing being done by AI. So that would argue that a college degree is likely to be more valuable because if you need those higher level skills, that critical thinking, um, to do those higher level jobs, you need to get there. Now, the big question mark is when you don't have all those support roles and lower level roles, how do you train people up to do the higher level work? Right. Because if our kids aren't learning those skills and aren't aren't learning, aren't understanding how the job gets done, they're not going to do a very good job of managing their little mini server farm doing all the tasks for them because they're not gonna understand what it is they're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Got it. So so there is that's still a pretty good return on that if we're if we're aligning with what the industries are shifting towards.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yeah, that doesn't mean that college at any cost is a good investment or any major at any cost is a good investment. I mean, my kid who's struggling to find a next job is a computer science major and this is somebody who did all the things she was told to do and the job market collapsed underneath her. But but I think there's always gonna be a value placed on the critical thinking skills that tend to come primarily from a college education. That's not to say that trades aren't worth pursuing. Um, and and I think one of one of the misperceptions that we have about the trades is that they're is that they're less academically rigorous. I mean, if you want to be an electrician, the amount of physics and chemistry that you need to be successful in that job is pretty remarkable. I say that as one of my good friend's son is going through that program right now, and the amount of homework that he's doing every night is rivals what a college kid does.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Yeah, it's a it's a tough program. The um I guess for and I don't imagine electricians getting replaced by AI toilet coders are for a parent of a junior in the middle of it like SAT, college list, whole thing, what should they be doing money is doing on the money side that they probably aren't?

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah. You know, tests are back in vogue, especially for merit awards. So, you know, so one thing to do on the money side, you know, if you're debating between do I, do I hire the soccer coach to get my kid onto varsity, or do I hire the SAT prep coach, hire the SAT prep coach because that's gonna have a higher return on investment. But seriously looking at the at the money piece of it, as a parent of a junior, you're in a really good place to say, this is what my budget looks like. You know, take your 529, divide it by four. That's the amount of money that can come out of savings every year. Sure, you got another year to to fund it, but that's kind of your your baseline number. Look at your household budget. What do you have left over that could go towards paying out of cash flow? You know, most families use a combination of savings, spending from their cash flow, and student loans to pay for college. So look at what those numbers add up to and have a frank talk with your with your kid about what their budget looks like. Because if you're not having that conversation with them, they're talking with their friends about what their friends are interested in and what their older brothers and sisters are are applying to and where they're going. And so your kid is creating expectations on their own that you need to get in front of.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

So what's uh if you got to give one piece of advice to a parent of a high schooler today, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 39:10

One piece of advice. Um I would say your kid's gonna be great because you raised them well and because they're a great person. And your job in getting them through college is finding the place that's gonna help them become the best adult that they can be.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Love it. Um we're gonna move into the lightning round here. We'll just shift gears and kind of give you some rapid fire questions. First thing that comes to mind. Does that sound good? All right. All right. What's the most overrated metric in college emissions for its affordability? Sorry? What's the most overrated metric in college emissions for affordability?

SPEAKER_02 39:52

Um in admissions, I'd say it's the acceptance rate. Um, it says nothing about the quality, nothing about the quality of the school. Um affordability, it's the list price because most people aren't paying that.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

How about something that's the most underrated?

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Most underrated, I would say the most underrated tool out there is a net price calculator. Um, that's a tool that colleges have on their website that will allow you to see what students like you actually pay to attend that school.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

What's one thing parents overthink about paying for college?

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Assets on the FAFSA. Um it's important to file the FAFSA. Assets are a teeny tiny part of it. Your income is most of it. Um and yeah, and don't try to gift everything to your brother so that it doesn't show up on the FAFSA.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

How about one thing parents underthink?

SPEAKER_02 40:52

I think parents underthink the range of options that are available to their kid. You know, there are so many choices out there and and so many good ways to get to get through a degree. You know, we tend to think Ivy Leagues, in-state schools, but there's there's a huge range of other choices out there. I would say the other thing that parents underthink is the value of your kid making friends at their college. Because your people are what keep you there. It's not the pretty buildings, it's not anything like that. It's going back to see your friends year after year after year.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

How about one book or resource? Every parent should read on this topic besides yours.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Oh, besides mine?

unknown 41:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

You can promote it at the end. We'll we'll put it up there.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

Um my gosh, there are a lot of good ones. I I love Ron Lieber's work. Um price you pay for college is great.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

And uh what's the best question every family should ask a college financial aid officer?

SPEAKER_02 41:57

How do I renew my financial aid every year? And um if a parent Besides, can you give me more?

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Uh if a parent could do one thing after listening to this, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Get a vision in your head of your kid at 25 and anchor yourself to that.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

All right, and this has been excellent, very useful for people who want to learn more about you, what you do, what you offer. Well, explain it to them. Like where first off, where should they find you and and what do you offer families?

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Yeah, so my website is how to payforcollege.com, and I have tons and tons of free resources and content there. My book is How to Pay for College, and it's available from Amazon and other booksellers. And that has a very step-by-step process to come up with the financial plan for college. And then I do one-on-one consults and as well as comprehensive wealth management engagements. And you can find me at themathergroup.com for that.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

All right. Anne, thank you. I really appreciate you sharing the playbook with us today. For everyone listening, you know, remember the sticker price isn't the price. The brand name isn't worth your retirement, and the honest money conversation now will save you from a financial disaster later. So, foundational first, every time. We're gonna put the link to Ann's book and how to payforcollege.com in the show notes and the YouTube description. And we want to thank you all for tuning in to the Supported Learning Podcast. We'll see you next time. And thank you.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Thanks for joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.