Taming the High Cost of College with Special Guest Brad Baldridge

Digital Audio Health by Cymotrax. All right, today's episode, we are going to talk about taming the high cost of college with my special guest, Brad Baldridge. You guys, we are doing an event on August 1st. It's another virtual, complimentary virtual event that is hosted by No Problem Parenting, and I'm going to be bringing on five experts in the college prep, college planning field.

So you're going to want to hit the show notes and click on that link. Get yourself registered. It is a free event happening on August 1st at 12 p.m. Central Time.

Mr. Baldridge is one of the panelists for that event. And in today's episode, he's going to help us figure out when to start planning, how early is too early and how late is too late. There's some great tips and resources.

His website is a wealth of information. After listening to today's episode, you're going to feel much more confident in your financial planning for your child's college future. Stay tuned. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Hey there, parents. Did you know there's a way to transform your kid's behavior?

That's right. I'm a parenting coach and strategist, and we're going to seek first to understand why your kids are behaving the way they are so we can really go deeper with your own behaviors and what is happening in your relationship with your kiddos from the inside out to take the actions and steps necessary to problem solve and transform your parenting so that you can become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. I promise you there is a solution for your parenting problems. Hey there, I'm Jackie Finneman and after 30 years and more than 50,000 hours of working with countless kids and families ranging from the severe behaviors that required out-of-home placement to the, ah, she just doesn't listen to me anymore behaviors. There is a solution.

When you, the parent, feel confident, when you don't feel the need to rescue your kids, and you aren't losing your cool and yelling all the time, your kid's behavior improves, and your kids trust you. They trust that no matter what they're going through, you are going to help them get through it. No Problem Parenting supports and teaches parents how to be the best leader and advocate for your child. If you feel like no matter how nice you are or how strict you are, your kiddos are still struggling, it's time to get off the struggle bus and become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Join me on this journey of behavioral strategies and resources so that you can feel empowered as a parent again and turn your everyday parenting problems into no problem. All right, welcome back No Problem Parents. Today we're joined by Brad Baldridge, one of the nation's leading college financial planning experts. Brad teaches families the best ways to plan, save, and pay for college so they can make their children's college dreams come true without wiping out their finances or their retirement.

For over 20 years, Brad has shared his expertise and insights through his private practice as a presenter at numerous workshops and seminars and as a blogger and host of the Taming the High Cost of College podcast. Today, Brad is joining us to talk about some of the best ways to financially plan for college and how to save on expenses. So Brad, thanks for being with us today. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Well, so let's just get right into it. If I'm a parent and I need to plan for college, how in the heck do I even get started? It just seems so overwhelming.

Yeah, well, I mean, Nike had it right, just do it. But of course, what do you do and how do you do it? I think that really depends on where you're starting from. College planning can be divided into two time phases.

We have early stage planning and late stage planning. So early stage planning is, you know, I've got a two-year-old, four-year-old. college is going to be someday, should we save some money for college? You know, what are we going to do about that type of thing? And then we have what I would call late stage planning, which is you go to high school, you know, typically junior, maybe senior or sophomore or whatever it might be. And you're saying, oh, college is here. We really have to figure it out.

And you may have done a great job early stage and have a big pile of money in order to pay for college, but you still have to do all the work. You still have to visit the colleges and your student needs to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and you've got to do college applications and financial aid applications and the bills are going to come and you're going to have to pay them and most families don't understand you know how need-based aid is going to affect them or how merit aid might be a piece of the puzzle you know there's the local state schools that are at a lower price I say reasonable price but a lot of people look at those numbers and say even that's not reasonable anymore. Right. And then there's the, you know, private schools that,

you know, the average state school is about 27,000. The average private school is about 57,000 right now, but the most expensive privates are well over 80,000 now. So it won't be long. And if you've got a high school sophomore, you could reasonably assume it'll be 90,000 at the most expensive schools or more. And that's yes. And that is per year. So, so that's what we're up against. And to be fair, I mean, all these numbers are not just tuition. It's what we would call the total cost of attendance. So it's tuition, room and board, book fees, beer and pizza, the whole cost of a typical college student. And again, hopefully that amount of money would cover just about everything. And, you know, there's money in there for laundry and cell phones and books and all the different pieces. But for a lot of families, it's a little overwhelming.

But on the flip side, don't give up because if you go to a typical college campus, it's full of students. So most families in the end do figure it out and get to the finish line. The question is, how stressful is it and how efficient was it? And did you do the best you possibly could?

There's a great analogy around college where at college, you don't really know what the person sitting next to you is. It's just like the airline, right? When you get on the plane, you may have done a great job and used frequent flyer miles and did all kinds of things and got a great price on your flight for a vacation. The person sitting next to you might have said, I need to be in Boston tomorrow. Here's my credit card, make it happen. And they just paid whatever it took because they had to be there. And it can be the same thing that's happening at colleges where some families do it well and they plan well and their overall cost is much less than the person that didn't plan well. And they just said, I guess we'll sign up for the big loans and pay whatever it takes. And that's, you know, that's what we did. When kids are little, you're thinking,

oh, we've got time for that because there's all these other things we need to pay for daycare and school activities. And we want to take them on trips or do all this fun stuff when they're young. And like, we put it off, put it off, put it off. And then all of a sudden it does hit, like we have not saved enough or saved in the right place. You know, so talk a little bit about that. It's not just about what you save. It's also where you save it. Oh, absolutely. So there's a lot of decisions around, well, should I put it in something very conservative or should I take risk and maybe invest in some form of market? So that's one big decision. And then I think for a lot of families too, it is the cashflow thing of, well, I could save two or $300 a month now, but while I have babies and I have a long time to save and it'll compound and grow,

but I have daycare right now. And I, you know, there was a time when my daycare bill was more than 2000 and this was 15, 20 years ago. So I can't imagine what it's like today. So it can be crazy expensive. So you say, oh, we'll, we'll save when the daycare is over. But, but most parents don't realize is when daycare over something else starts. Right. And you know, it's could be the sports or it could be the private schools or it could be all different things that you potentially you know start spending on so for a lot of families it really is building it into the budget in some form because I work with a lot of families and in the late stage process that's where I tend to work with families that's my specialty and I can talk to a family earning 250,000 and they'll tell me, well, they can't possibly afford to spend any money on college. I mean,

every dollar coming in has already earmarked for something. And then I can talk to a family right next that earns $150,000 and they're saying the same thing. Now, if I told them about the other family, they'd be like, what do you mean? They earn $100,000 a year more than we do.

They should easily be able to pay for college. But the reality is most families, as your income climbs, your ability to spend it climbs and often faster than even your income climbs. So it's bigger garage theory. I don't care how big your garage is. It's always full because you don't even think about throwing something out until the garage is full. So it's the same with your income.

You'll learn how to spend it if you don't learn how to save it. And education, although a lot of people say it's important, when you look at where their money's going, it's going everywhere, but their key goals, which are typically education and retirement. And then when you look at where the money's going, it's everywhere except education and retirement. So understanding the process and building the discipline, I think is one step. And I think for a lot of families, again, building it into the budget and then deciding how much to spend. And that's the other challenge is the way the system has worked is they've been raising prices for the last 20 years pretty steadily. So the colleges raised the prices, the students still showed up. So they raised prices again, and the students still showed up. So why wouldn't they raise prices?

Yeah. Right. I mean, that's the way most things are priced as well. Whatever the public will, is willing to pay for it is what we'll charge. And if we can make a business out of that, great. If we can't make a business out of that, well, we'll go bankrupt. But most colleges, you know, have made a go of it. And the way financial aid works, what tends to happen is people that can afford to pay $30,000 end up paying $30,000. And people that can afford to pay $10,000, pay $10,000 because you'll get some need-based aid. So it's painful at every income level where, again, a family earning $50,000 will get substantially more aid than a family earning $250,000. But a net cost of $10,000 if you earn $50,000 is painful. And then the family earning $250,000, a net cost of $45,000 is painful.

So that's the bad news. The good news is colleges have been raising prices and students have stopped coming due to the pandemic and other reasons. So the net cost of college isn't going up like it used to. Now, a lot of colleges are still raising their price, but they're also raising the scholarships that they have to offer in order to attract students.

So the net price isn't going up nearly as fast as it used to. So if you're working with a financial advisor and they're still projecting 6% inflation, on college and they, you know, they're saying, well, for your six-year-old, it's going to be, you know, $475,000 a year or some crazy, it's like, it's, you know, again, that's not reality. It probably is going to be different. We just don't know how it's going to be different.

Right, right. What are some of the top strategies that you're going to recommend for people to save or to pay for college? Right. So college is paid for most of the time with a combination of things.

So, you know, the common categories would be scholarships, whether they're from the college themselves or outside entities, saving and investing that the parents are doing. Current cash flow, the student can take on some loans and the parents can take on some loans. Then there's tax planning where you can get tax breaks for college. So when you start adding it all up, it's like, well, if we do this instead of that, that'll save us, you know, a couple thousand in interest.

If we do this instead of that, you know, that will save us a couple thousand in taxes. And then we're still going to have a bill to pay, but we've got some savings. So we can cover half of it out of savings and we can put in 500 a month currently out of current cash flow. We used to be putting 500 a month into the college savings.

Now we'll just send it right to the college because we're here. But usually you can couple it together. What I enjoy about college planning is that you can often really do interesting things and make it even better by making sure you get all the tax breaks that you can and making sure that you leverage all the investment opportunities and negotiating with the school and making sure that you get the most need-based and merit-based aid.

Another challenge at the late stage when families are picking schools is it's very opaque what the net cost of college is. Every college puts out there that we're $75,000, we're $60,000, we're $42,000. But that's not exactly what you're going to pay, right? Exactly.

What they don't tell you is, will we give you $20,000 off or $50,000 off? Because that makes a big difference, right? If you're going to go to a $75,000 a year school, but they're going to give you $50,000 off, well, guess what? It's going to cost the same as the state school.

So I have a lot of families say things like, well, we can't afford private schools. Well, there's a lot of private schools out there that you probably can't afford. Now, can you get accepted to them is a different question. Again, another great example Stanford just put out a press release not long ago saying any family earning under $100,000.

Their costs will be zero. They will cover 100% of the tuition and they will cover 100% of room and board. So, again, I think just about anybody can afford zero. That's the catch. That's my, that's my, yeah.

There is no catch other than your student has to be a strong enough student to get accepted to Stanford, which is, again, rock star status for a typical student. So there are, you know, again, families out there where it will be a good deal to go to Stanford. And they're also generous for families earning $200,000 and $300,000 and $400,000. But it's not going to be zero.

It's going to be something less than the 85,000 list, but still relatively painful. So I think that's the understanding that families need to come into this with is it's going to be a process that you really need to understand or have someone help you. I mean, those are the options, right? It's another great example is if you said, well, I'm going to teach my student how to play the piano or excuse me, my student came to me and would like to play the piano.

Well, we've got some options, right? We could learn how to play the piano and then teach them. But most of us are like, no, I don't think I want to learn the piano just for the fact that we're going to teach my student. Well, you know, we all think of that little old lady that with the ruler that stands over the piano and teaches your kid.

But there's probably other options, right? You can go, there's internet based learning around most instruments and music. There's all, you know, so there's different choices, right? You could do that through the school.

You could find a local club or something. So there's different ways to do that. And it's the same thing with college, right? Is you can do it yourself.

I'm building some courses and we've got free resources on our website for people that want to try and do it themselves. But we also will help people through the process. There's a lot of us out there that prefer to DIY things to save money. And so we're thinking, well, if I just figured this out myself and I, you know, I searched the internet and I asked a few people and I did like, I can figure it out myself.

But remember time, the time it takes, and you can't possibly know all the latest updates, which I think you're going to share some of those with us today too, right? On what's available to you. And even if you have a really good accountant that might know some of the tax breaks that you qualify for, again, your accountant is probably not niched in specifically on college. So while it does cost to seek outside support on this from somebody like you, you're able to show them how much you can save them, which then again, in the long run, is well worth it.

Absolutely. Right. I mean, I will tell people if I'm not a good fit, if I can't save more than I cost. But most of the time I can, again, because it's such a complex system these days.

and now as an example in an effort to make things better the government just changed all the rules on the FAFSA again so they are rolling out a new FAFSA coming this fall for so juniors that are going to be going to college essentially a year from now year and a half from now they're the guinea pigs they're the first class that has to use this new form and they've already told us as an example that it's not going to be available on time in October it's likely to come sometime in December. Okay, so before I have you continue on that, for those parents who are listening who don't have kids ready for college yet and have no idea what a FAFSA is, let's break it down for them. Oh, good point. So a FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

So it's the form we fill out and send into the Department of Education in order to determine how much federal aid we're eligible for. And then a lot of other agencies kind of tack themselves onto that form. So a lot of the state agencies that hand out state aid will say, hey, just send us a copy of your FAFSA. And you do that electronically. So they get a copy of your FAFSA, they use it to figure out if you qualify for state aid. And then a lot of colleges will use it to figure out if you qualify for aid at that particular college as well. So it's the main form that most families need to fill out. I think the biggest challenge that you need to understand is it looks back two years. So again, the example of a junior right now that's filling out the FAFSA, they're going to fill it out this coming fall and they're going to use 2022 taxes, which means if you did your planning and said, man, I wish I would have done something different on my taxes. Well, it's too late already. So for planning around the FAFSA, you need to really start freshman and early sophomore year so that you can, with the new rules, as an example, if your income, your AGI is under a level and it's about $60,000 for a family of four with one parent. So just to pick a random example here. So if your income is $62,000 AGI, then you do the math to figure out what you're eligible for. If you can get below that $60,000 line, whatever it is, and it's not

exactly $60,000. It's $61,250 or something like that. Well, once you're below that line, you automatically get a maximum Pell grant, and a maximum Pell right now is $7,395, and you automatically become eligible for more aid. So that's one of the goals of this change was for the government to make it predictable as far as how much aid from the federal government you can get. So they've essentially now created a system that says, how much did you earn in the year in question? And if it's below this number, you get a maximum Pell. And if it's below that number, you get a minimum Pell. Now that number that we're talking about is dependent on how many parents. So if there's two parents versus one parent, it's slightly different. And the number of dependents that are in the family. So the larger families, those numbers will be bigger.

So the government offers two forms of grants, a Pell Grant and a supplemental grant. And the Pell Grant is by far the biggest program. And it's between zero and essentially $7,400 right now. Every year they declare a new number.

So over the next couple of years, it will probably be a bigger number. But in addition to that, then the states often offer grants as well. And then the colleges themselves will offer scholarships or grants based on need or based on merit. So between that combination, you can start seeing that there's opportunities at some schools versus other schools where you might get merit aid or you might get need aid from some schools.

You might get Pell Grant or state grants for various reasons at various places. some states offer grants that are need-based, some offer grants or scholarships that are based on grades or other criteria where the student can earn them, so to speak. So as you're moving through this process, it's possible to kind of predict how things are going to go, but it takes some work. And, you know, you can say, oh, well, these are the six schools we're going to apply to, and this one's likely to be about this much money, and this one's likely to be like this, and this one's likely to be like that. And then if you do that work and you say, well, these two are likely to be 75,000 each. You can say, well, either you tell the student that if our predictions are accurate and they're going to be expensive, then you can't go,

or don't even apply so that you don't have to have that pull the rug out from under it. Because what I see a lot is in the end of the senior year, the student, you know, the parents were saying, you're a fantastic student. You can be whatever you want to be. You can go wherever you want to go. And then they see the price tag of 75,000 a year and they say, oh yeah well we didn't see we didn't know it was gonna be that crazy expensive so i guess you can't go or the parents sign on and take on a lot of debt to make it happen to make good on their promise um just not a great scenario so with some planning oftentimes there are there are alternatives that aren't as crazy that might you know again a very similar education at a much lower price you just have to be aware of which schools fit the bill and, you know, lay that out. So you pick the right ones. Or again, for some families, you know, if you're going to, I always say, if you're going to give up the lake home to pay crazy amounts for college, again, that's your choice, right?

I mean, it's giving up one thing for lifestyle for a different lifestyle. That's fine. But if you're going to blow up your retirement or mess up your financial future because you didn't plan college well, that's a completely different decision. Right. All hope is not lost. If you haven't done a good job planning or it snuck up on you and maybe in your head, you're thinking, well, we're just going to have them go to their local state college and, or a tech college and to start with their generals or something, we're just going to pay as we go. Even if you're in that mode right now, it is, it's, it'd be a great idea for parents to reach out to somebody like you, Brad, to just, you know, kind of say, hey, where, but what are our options? What can we do?

What's feasible and realistic? Yes, absolutely. So, you know, I work with the parents of seniors. Oftentimes, it's a little more damage control than planning because, you know, there's things we could have done or perhaps should have done, but again, can't cry over the spilled milk. It's what's done is done. It's more of what can we do from here going forward? And sometimes it's, well, we can improve things for the sophomore year and the junior year and beyond.

Or, again, if they have multiple kids, as most families, the oldest is the guinea pig. We didn't know what we were doing. We struggled our way through it. Now we understand it, and the next two or three have the benefit of our learning with the oldest.

So that's often a situation of, oh, I'll have parents where we do damage control with the oldest and do some serious planning for the next couple. So that works as well. So that would be, you know, so senior year, late junior year, there's time, you know, a little bit of time, early senior year of, well, let's just verify the school is appropriate because we might want to do a last minute adjustment, add a school or two or, you know, some of those types of things.

But if you're going to do the full planning, if you want to have an impact on your income, as an example, Well, again, that's back to sophomore year where you need to adjust your taxes early on so that when you get there, you're filling out the form with the best taxes you can, whatever that means. So some families, you work really hard at it. Other families, it's like, well, that's not part of the plan for us. It's not going to make a difference.

So we can move on from that and focus on some of the other pieces of the puzzle. more than half the people I work with never get any need-based aid at all. They still have to plan and pay for college. They just have one less tool in their toolbox.

So they have to focus more on the tax planning and the saving and investing and then negotiating with the schools and the picking the right schools and merit aid and scholarships because need-based aid is not part of their plan. Got it. Got it. Well, your website is a wealth of information.

I got to say attaining the high cost of college.com. You have a lot of financial planning resources. You have descriptions about, you know, financial aid. They can get a free report from there. What does it look like for a family to work with you? Just get kind of give us a summary of what the process of that. Right. So I have a financial advisor by training. So what we're doing is financial planning and, but it's focused on college, at least to start. Some of the people I work with do also need retirement planning and or they have an inheritance they're trying to deal with while college or all those types of things so we can handle that as well but for some it's just the college planning at least to start and it's a flat fee you know typically $2,250 or $2,750 right now obviously subject to change but and that fee covers you know a student from now until they're off to college typically. So where we're a good fit, you know, sophomore year,

it might cover two or three years where we might have four or five meetings where we, you know, cause college planning is a process. It's not a, you know, here's a plan, you know, 12 page document or something. Here's your plan. Go do it. It's more of a, well, this is what we, you know, let's visit some schools. Let's give some ideas for a lot of times this student, you know, you're visiting schools and the students are eliminating, you know, I don't like this, or I like this, or we're looking for more of that or less of that. And then based on that, you know, are the test scores appropriate to get into the schools they're looking at? And do we have to, you know, line that up? And then what happens if the ones they really like are really expensive? Do we have opportunities to get the cost down? Or do we have to find similar schools at a better price? So it's kind of a process that, you know, we do the best we can,

finding schools that are a good low net cost. And then from there, the next step is the plan. Well, how are we going to pay whatever the cost will be? Cause it's not unusual for, you know, upper middle income and upper incomes to have to pay 20, 30, 40, 50,000 per year for school net after we, you know, done the best we can to get the price down.

So where's that money going to come from? And that's again, the process of taking money out of your various college savings or supplementing with loans, or maybe the student takes on some of the cost. Or how about the student gets a job for a little bit? What happened to that idea? Yeah, well, it's still part of the plan often. But when you and I went to school, I could earn what it took to go to college. I could take a loan, work hard in the summer, and I could, you know, I ran out of money in August and in April. But I was close to getting through college all on my own. That's just not realistic anymore. Show me a student that's going to earn 20, 25,000 in a summer. And he just, it's not possible anymore. Right. No. And that is a really good point because I think, you know, as parents, sometimes we get into that. We lecture our kids about, well, this is how I did it and this worked for me. So you need to do that. And it's like times have changed people. So even if you're, even if you have a kid that's really willing to work and go through college and they're very motivated, it's still not practical or feasible for them in this day and age to be able to pay their way through most colleges.

Right, exactly. And then there's another question too, is that most families are different than other families. So what works for your brother-in-law or whatever may not work for you because he might have a student that's stronger or weaker, or they might have a higher need than you do. So you need to compare yourself to a like family, which is nearly impossible for most families because you don't know what like means.

What are we talking about? Well, it's things like income and grades and types of schools you're looking at and all that stuff. And again, that's not the kind of advice you're going to get at the typical parent meeting of some sort, you know, whether you're at the soccer game and talking to other parents. They're going to say, oh, this is what we did.

We went out and we won a bunch of scholarships. Well, what does that really mean? Did they get scholarships from the college themselves because your student was strong? academically or strong athletically, or was it need-based? Yeah, it's so unique. I'm not giving you the whole picture. Right. It's always good to get ideas or learn. You can learn things from that, but it's not like a guarantee either. So you really got to do your homework. And I just, I love the resource that you have because I'm one of those parents that I want my kid, first of all, to learn themselves. I want them to be a part of the process every step of the way, if not taking it over and meeting. So because it's his future, not mine. And yeah, I can help out and I have to help out. There's certain things that I need to do as a parent, signing certain, you know,

paperwork or things like that. But ultimately it's, it's the students. You'd really need them to be in the know of what this is financially costing. If you've, you know, they're going to take out, you know, a hundred thousand dollars worth of loans and the, the, at the end of their college career, they're starting pay for the role that they went to college for is, you know, $50,000 a year. We may have, we need to have a conversation. Right. Absolutely. And I think that's important too, is there's, you know, college planning and other thing to get your head around is there's things that students do. There's things that parents do and that there's things that you do together, right? Hopefully the student is writing the essays and hopefully the student is deciding what they want to be when they grow up. It shouldn't be mom and dad assigning them a career or writing their applications for them. But mom and dad need to work really hard on financial aid and that kind of stuff. Most students are not going to understand that.

It's challenging for a typical parent that already is familiar, at least with taxes and tax forms and how that works. Students haven't even, don't even experience with that yet typically. So it's way overwhelming for them. And then together you're going to visit, decide how testing is going to go. Is it going to be once and done? Are we going to skip testing, go optional the whole way? Are we going to take it two or three times and put up the best scores we can? And there's reasons you would pick one over the other based on your school list and your abilities of your student. And, you know, so it's a complex interactive process where it's not going to be hammered out on one Sunday afternoon. It's going to be, well, let's do a little bit on this and a little bit on that. And then we're going to move the ball forward. And then we're going to do this,

some of this and some of that, and then we'll move the ball forward. And then eventually you'll get there. So when a family hires you, it's not like, okay, we're going to meet for, you know, six weeks or three months or once a week, whatever. It's a package kind of deal. And you may have five sessions or you may have three or you may have, you know, eight. And it just kind of depends on your situation. So it's really unique to the family. Right. And often if it's, you know, two meetings, the sophomore year, two meetings, the junior year and three meetings, the senior year, if we start that early, or it could be summer before senior year. We started really late. So then it's three meetings in the summer before the senior year and two meetings fall of the senior year to do all the stuff that we could have done sophomore, junior year and get it all done as fast as we can go. And then a year, and then after that, for most families, this is a little bit of,

this is the school we've selected. So here's kind of the final payment, how we're going to do it, how we're going to pay the bills and some of that stuff. Yeah. So do you stay on with them throughout that, that kiddos college career, or are you pretty much wrapped up once you've got the.

Right. Once they're off to college freshman year, that's when we kind of sign off. No, I'm happy to continue to help. And if some, you know, when people call me with quick questions, I just answer them. But if someone was going to come back and say, well, now they want to change schools and we have to do this all over again.

I'm happy to help there too. Again, it'd just be some sort of fee involved. I can't, Last question I'll ask you really quick, too. We're typically talking about this when our kids are juniors or seniors in high school.

But there are people who take a gap year, right? And they're not ready for college. And then, you know, they're 19 or 20 and they're like, OK, now I know what I want to do. It's not too late. No, certainly not. So, I mean, there's certainly in some countries, as an example, So, you know, it was Switzerland or whatever it is, you require military service.

So you automatically take a gap year. There's obviously some religions where they encourage gap years and that type of thing. So it's becoming very normal. It's not that everybody should do it.

But it is something that many do and colleges respect it and they understand it. The caution that most advisors will give is if your student takes a year off to play video games in the basement, that's probably not a good look for most colleges. That's not what they want to see. But if you're taking the time off and working or exploring the world or traveling or, again, some of the retreats and other things that people do because of their religion or their, you know, all that stuff is just fine.

And then there's the occasional student that, you know, I had a student get accepted to some pretty prestigious schools and she said, COVID's going on. I don't think I want to show up during COVID. I'm going to defer my enrollment for a year and hopefully it'll be better next year. and it worked out pretty well for her and in the meantime she found work at a lot of the national parks it was what she did so she worked at two or three national parks and she didn't make a ton of money but she made enough to cover expenses and gave her something to do when she was in the outdoors where she felt reasonably safe around well it looks good on your application too right exactly everybody you know needs to look into what makes sense for them i mean there's all these different, you know, the athletic decisions for some, the study abroad decisions, the internship and co-op opportunities, you know, all these bigger chunks of things that,

again, it's not right for everybody, but for people that where it's a good fit, it's just fantastic. Right. Well, awesome. I am going to refer people back to your website, tamingthehighcostofcollege.com. You have a podcast by the same name, Taming the High Cost of College podcast.

And you have workshops, you have courses people can sign up and register for. So just so much information on your website. I think it's worth a look, parents. Again, whether you're just starting out, beginning to think about college, or you're like, oh, crap, it's coming.

What do we do? We're, you know, we missed the boat or, you know, you're walking on eggshells here now, like, okay, is this even in the cards for a kid? I really think it's it pays to to make a phone call to you Brad and just just ask some questions and see if you guys are a good fit for each other and if you can help yes as we mentioned at the very beginning just do it and start earlier than later if you got nothing from this whole podcast which hopefully you didn't but at least understand that you need to start earlier than what we did in the past and what most people are thinking about so you know junior year absolutely at the latest.

Software year is not going to hurt. Right. Yeah. Just bite the bullet and get it.

Make the call and be prepared. I always say step two, no problem parenting, prepare for the worst. And so if you're thinking college is the worst on your pocketbook, it doesn't have to be that scary. We can make it way more comfortable.

So, well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Brad. All right. Thank you for having me. All right, parents, that's it for today.

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