Business Innovators Radio - Lance Morgan – College Funding Secrets – Mark Stephen Pooler

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Lance Morgan is a college funding strategist and founder of College Funding Secrets, where he helps high-income families reduce the cost of college by $100K+ through a unique blend of financial aid planning, real estate investing, and tax-saving strategies.A father of five, Lance’s journey began with a personal mission to afford college without compromising his family’s financial future. What started as a search for answers turned into a career shift from IT to finance, and a discovery that traditional savings plans often hurt more than they help.Today, Lance empowers families to legally reposition assets, unlock hidden financial aid, and pay for college without sacrificing retirement. Website: https://collegecostsecrets.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/collegefundingeducation/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lance-morgan-college-funding-secrets/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lance_CollegeFundingSecretsSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/lance-morgan-college-funding-secrets-mark-stephen-pooler

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Welcome to Brilliant Business TV, conversations with leading experts in business. I am your host, Mark Stephen Pula. Let me just take the graphic off the screen. I forgot to do that part today. We are streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're also on the 360 TV network going out to Apple, Fire, Android, Roku and many more. We're also on business innovators radio network.

We're also on USA Global Radio and Television Network. We're also on MSPNewsglobal.com. I think that's all of the platforms, lots of great, great shows going out there. We have an incredible guest today, Lance Morgan, who helps families for college students to save money. Let's bring in our incredible guest, the incredible Lance Morgan. Welcome to Brilliant Business TV, Lance. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. The pleasure's all ours.

I'm really looking forward to a conversation with you, Lance, because I know for students, especially college, can be so, so expensive, can't it? And it can really get them into debt and things like that as well. So I think the topic is really, really important to get covered. So you are the founder of college funding secrets. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So I started college funding secrets about 10 years ago when my oldest two kids started to get closer to college. And I was in the financial services industry. and I was quickly learning that a lot of the strategies that I had been taught weren't going to help me with college funding or helping to get free money for college. In fact, a lot of what I was doing and what I was teaching my clients to do

was hurting me from getting free money for college. And so when I started to look at ways to reduce the cost to college and get free money for college for my own kids, I really started to get obsessed with this topic. And it led me down this rabbit hole of ways to get free money for college. for high-income families that normally wouldn't qualify for financial aid. And I have five kids. So I've got a lot of reasons for learning all of these strategies myself. Oh, yes, you're going to save lots of money there with five lands. And where in the world do you,

do you help people with these strategies? Because obviously, different countries have different systems. So I'm just wondering that. Yeah, so it's mostly in the US, US schools. However, some of our students do go to school overseas, and there are some things that we can do to help with study abroad programs and things. But for the most part, we help families that are inside the US. Perfect. So I know you help to reduce the cost of college by around $100,000 plus, which that's a significant amount. So just share a little bit about that. Yeah, so our average family saves anywhere from 100,000 to over 200,000 or more, and a lot of it comes down to the way that we help families reduce the cost to college is to help them reduce

all of the three costs of college. So I talk about how there are three costs of college. The first cost of college is the out-of-pocket cost. And of course, we want to help them reduce that by getting scholarships and financial aid and all the free money. The second way that people or the second cost of college is going to be the financing cost. So most families can't just pay cash for college anymore. And so they're going to take out loans. And we want to help families to reduce, you know, the cost of financing college. And the third is what I call the secret cost to college.

And it's called the cost of missing out on what your money could have earned for you in retirement. So we call that the opportunity. cost of helping your kids pay for college. So of course, we want to minimize the impact on your retirement by helping you to avoid even the opportunity cost of paying for college. And so there are a lot of different ways that we can help families reduce the cost to college. And so yes, even if they're going to a local state school, we can still save them several hundred thousand dollars sometimes on how it impacts even their retirement. So it's quite expensive, isn't it? like putting them in college and things like that.

Yes. A lot of families are really worried about how this is going to have an impact on their retirement. They're worried about not being able to send the kids to the school of their choice. They're worried about not being able to even afford the loan payments. If you can't afford the cost of a house, then you just don't buy the house. And so a lot of these families are looking at the cost of college. and it's the cost of a house almost, you know, and they can't even afford the loan payments anymore. So it's become a really big problem.

And I know you talk about real estate investing as well. Share a little bit about that, Lance. So our mission is to help all families to send any student to the school of their choice without having a negative impact on their retirement. And particularly high-income families are not going to, going to qualify for any financial aid. And so we actually use real estate tax strategies to have families invest in real estate and get free money for college. And the way that works is that a family can buy a investment property and operate it as a short-term rental property and qualify for what they

call bonus depreciation. With bonus depreciation, they get to significantly reduce their income, giving them more free money for college. So a family that makes $300,000 a year or more is traditionally not going to get any free money for college. They're not going to qualify for any financial even at the top tier private schools. But if that family takes some of their money and invests in real estate and qualifies for the bonus depreciation, they can, can actually reduce their income and now qualify for financial aid. So we use real estate investing to also create cash flow that will help them to pay back those loan payments in addition to getting that free money from the schools. That sounds interesting, Lance. And what kind of real estate?

So if you have a W-2 income or a 1099 income, the government has what they have referred to as the short-term rental loophole. You might hear about it on the internet where they talk about, you know, the short-term rental loophole. Basically, you buy a property that you operate as a short-term rental property. So think Airbnb, BRBO, right? And so as long as you rent out the property for an average of seven days or less, it falls under the same category as like a hotel or a motel. And it's considered an active income that allows you to reduce your W2 or 1099 income. So particularly we're helping families get into short-term rental properties,

whether it's investing in a short-term rental property or having us help you find a short-term rental property, we can help families by creating some done for you options and done with you options to help them get into the short-term rental game. And now they'll also get cash flow from that real estate that can also help pay back any college loans they needed to take out. That just sounds like a win-win to me. It sounds like a really, really good strategy. They might even want to carry on doing that when they stop doing the education part to just bringing the money apart from the real estate. Lans, let's take a quick break. Let's come back in about 40 seconds. Feeling held back? Dreaming bigger? Mark Stephen Pooler and

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com contactmark. Me. Unlock your potential today. No, Lance. You talk a little bit about tax as well, which is a big one for everyone and tax saving. Share a little bit about that for us. Okay, so obviously everyone. wants to reduce taxes, but what people don't understand is that tax savings equals college savings.

In addition to just saving money on taxes, even if you don't save any money on college, obviously everyone wants to reduce their taxes. But when it comes to helping your kids pay for college, by reducing your taxable income and reducing your taxes, you're also double-dipping by taking advantage of college savings as well, because by getting tax savings, you're also going to qualify for some financial aid if you reduce your income. So what we help families to do is reduce their taxes. And we call that tax scholarships. It's free money, right? So we get them tax scholarships that help them to save money on taxes, but then also qualify for financial aid. For example, I mentioned that short-term rental loophole. We can use real estate to offset your taxable income and get,

you know, some tax savings. We also have programs like a solar leasing program, a commercial solar leasing program where you can actually get the last three years of taxes that you've paid back to go towards your solar leasing business. And then you can lease this solar equipment to businesses that actually qualifies for the same bonus depreciation that you can get from the real estate. So you can actually start a solar leasing business and qualify for that bonus depreciation on all of your solar equipment. And so there's ways to use solar. There's also like a tiny home program where the government is encouraging these tiny homes that they take into the oil fields, where the oil workers can live that are working in the oil fields. And so,

there's a tiny home program that you can invest in and get five and a half times your investment in tax savings back. So lots of different ones, equipment leasing companies that you can get into. A lot of ways that you can benefit from government programs that they are encouraging people to get into. So there's a lot of businesses that they encourage you to get into and they'll even go as far as giving you money back that you've already paid in taxes to help get some of these businesses. has started, which is crazy. But it also means lots of tax savings moving forward as well. And of course, college savings on top of that. So there must be like a few different kind of people that you would love to reach out to you. So who's the ideal person that you can really

support who may be watching today that you'd love? Because you seem to offer a few different strategies. So just share the different kinds of people you'd love and who you can support. Yeah, so we look for high income families that don't qualify for financial aid, and we help them with real estate and tax strategies to reduce their income and help them qualify for financial aid. So we are financial aid experts when it comes to navigating that process, filling out the financial aid forms, kind of navigating that free money for college, right? we can also help to appeal the offers that you get from the schools. And again, we use real estate and tax strategies to qualify for that free money from the schools.

But it also means cash flow and appreciation and all the other benefits that comes from real estate as well. It's just a win-win. I'd encourage everyone to go to collegefunding secrets.com slash mark. that's college funding secrets.com slash mark. Collegefunding secrets.com slash mark. Now, Lance, is there anything that we haven't covered today that you'd like to share? The only other tip that I would like to share is that don't think that because you make a good income that you're not going to qualify for financial aid. And one of the biggest mistakes that families make is that they don't think that it's worth the time to fill out the financial aid forms or try to qualify for any financial aid because they just assume that they make too much money.

There are two ways to get free money for school. And one is through the merits of the student. The student needs to get good grades, needs to have a good test score, maybe needs to do something that makes them stand out on an. application or on their essays, you know, so the student is responsible for getting what you would call your traditional, you know, merit-based scholarships. However, the families are responsible for what we call financial positioning. Financial positioning is where you position your finances in a way that you can actually qualify for financial aid. There's a lot of money to, you know, be a, there's a lot of money available out there. We just want to help families maximize all that free money so that we can

offset the expensive cost to college. I would say to anyone if you want to save money on those college funds, definitely get in touch with Lance. Lance, thank you so much for being my guest today on Brilliant Business TV. I've really enjoyed having a conversation with you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. The pleasure's been all ours. Thank you everyone for joining us for Brilliant's Business TV conversations with leading experts. Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters, visit us online at businessinnovators.com today.