More Money Podcast - 047 How Not to Get into Major Student Debt - Brad Baldridge, College Funding Consultant

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

I talk with Brad Baldridge, college funding consultant and blogger and podcast host of Taming the High Cost of College. It's almost impossible to get a good job without higher education these days, but many people are getting into more debt than they can handle by going to college unprepared. Brad shares his tips on how to be smart with your money, how far in advance you should plan for the costs of college, how you can get free money to pay for tuition and how you can save even more come tax time. Long episode description: We all know that gone are the days when you can graduate with a high school diploma and get a good paying job. If you don’t further your education after high school, your opportunities are very limited when it comes to career advancement. Then again, that doesn’t mean you should go to university and resign yourself to a post-grad life with $50,000 in student loans hanging over your head. To set yourself up for a successful career, you need to get a higher education, either at technical college or university, and you need to be smart with your money at the same time. That’s what college funding consultant Brad Baldridgeshares as my guest on this podcast episode, and he has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to helping parents and their kids figure out a plan to afford post-secondary education. Brad shares a number of great tips in this episode, but to summarize just a few of them, here are the 5 most important things to you can do to avoid getting into heaps of student debt and save money on tuition: If you can, start saving for post-secondary education as soon as possible. If you’re a parent, start putting money away when your kids are still kids. If you’re a student and plan on putting yourself through school, get a part-time job as soon as you can work and be very diligent with saving every dollar you can (it worked for me!). Don’t assume you aren’t eligible for financial aid. It really does depend on a number of circumstances, so don’t assume but find out for sure if you are or aren’t eligible. Give yourself a year to apply for scholarships, and be strategic. Don’t just apply to every scholarship under the sun. Pick the ones that suit you the best and put your effort into a really stellar application. You may be surprised by the result! You may not think you can afford a “name brand” or ivy league school, but you might be wrong. A lot of these schools offer substantial financial aid and you might be able to get a huge discount on tuition. Tax time is a great time, because that’s when you can take advantage of a number of tax credits and get some of your money back. Not only are there tax credits for tuition, but student loan interest is also tax deductible. Helpful Resources & Books Is College Worth It? by William J. Bennett Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope My Favourite Taming the High Cost of College Podcast Episodes 3 Ways to Make the Most of Your College Visit with Kathryn Clowes How to Get Started in College Planning. Key Areas to Focus on First Understanding Student Loans with Jordan Goodman Follow Brad on Social Follow Brad on Twitter Like Brad on Facebook Subscribe to Taming the High Cost of College podcast Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/47 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Mo Money Podcast with your host, Jessica Morehouse. Hello and welcome to episode 47 of the Mo Money Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited for this episode because we are talking about education, post-secondary education. We all know that gone are the times where you can just graduate high school and get a good job. You cannot do that anymore. Sorry, that just does not exist. You have to further your education either by going to a technical school, university, college, whatever. And even still, it's not very easy to get a job, am I right? But no matter what, we still have to go to school. And so today I'm talking to Brad Baldrige. He's a financial planner at Baldrige College Solutions,

and his whole thing is teaching parents about how they can make smart decisions when it comes to paying for their children's education, finding ways that they can save when it comes to tax credits or grants, scholarships, everything like that. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about ways to save and how to be smart with your money so you don't graduate with $50,000 in debt. It's an epidemic and something needs to change. And before the rules change, it's best to just do what you can do to prevent getting into debt for higher education. So I hope you enjoy this episode right now. Thank you, Brad, for joining me on the show today. I'm excited to talk to you because post-secondary and finance is something that's really close to my heart, actually. All right. Well, it's great to be here.

Yeah. So let's kind of start from your background and how you got into this. You have your own business helping people figure out strategies and just really smart ways to plan for post-secondary college, university. How did you get into that line of work and start your own business? Yeah. So I started as a financial planner. So, and I've been, you know, I guess working in financial planning since 94. And what you learn as a financial planner when you, you know, you study the CFP and other things is kind of the math of saving for college. In other words, if you have a two-year-old and you save 400 and some dollars a month, then you're going to have this big pot of money when the kid is 18 and life will be good. The challenge, of course, is that occasionally I'd run into a client who would

say things like, well, I've got a 17-year-old. And then when you do the math, it just doesn't work. If you need to save $4,626 a month to get where you're going. And most parents look at you and say, well, that ain't going to happen so but then I realized that there are lots of families out there that didn't have a big pot of money to pay for college yet they were making it happen somehow yeah I started studying what was going on and realized that there's financial aid there's all kinds of unique things I got some training from some other advisors that were doing some specific college planning. And I launched a second business where I help families figure out how to pay for college. And my focus generally is late stage college planning.

If you've got a 17-year-old or you are a 17-year-old and you're trying to figure it all out, whether it's loans or financial aid, need-based aid, merit aid, picking the right school, saving and investing, tax planning for mom and dad. There's all kinds of things that can help defer the cost. And what I realize is most families were doing one or two things well and probably three or four things wrong. And with good planning, if you put it all together, it can make a pretty substantial

difference. And I bet that's kind of like most parents out there. I mean, especially for mine, you know, I am the middle of three daughters and we didn't have a college fund at all. We, you know, my parents got married young and they were broke. They said they didn't have any money when they just started out and started a family really young to like start saving for our education. And so when it came down to, you know, I'm 17 graduating high school, that's when I'm like, oh, now what? Oh, crap. So I think you, you know, really educating parents and their children on this is fantastic. Right. Right. Absolutely.

And it worked well, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Again, if you're a current parent of a 17-year-old and you say, well, when I went to college, when you went to college, it was very different. Very different. Even like 10 years ago, like I talked to my older sister who's only three years older than me, but the cost of her tuition was so much lower than mine. And it was just a three year gap. It's insane. Yes, absolutely. And it used to be, and that's, and I think that's where a lot of families kind

of roll into this and saying, well, we'll worry about college when college gets here. And that worked 10 and 20 years ago when students can, you know, with a good summer job and a little bit of a student loan, they could make it work. It just doesn't work that way anymore. Most students aren't going to get a summer job and make 20 or 30 or 40,000 like college costs these days. Exactly. Like for, you know, in my experience, I worked two years in high school, saved up all that money, didn't spend a dime. And I mean, I didn't really need to, I still lived with my parents, obviously. I still lived with my parents throughout my degree. And I worked about like 20 to 30 hours a week at a part-time job. And then I still had to get a student loan in my last year of $5,000.

But I also took five years to do my degree because I could honestly, I don't think I could have afforded to do a four-year degree. I had to do kind of an extra year just to, you know, spread that money around. So yeah, it's not as easy. And I kind of tend to think, you know, if I eventually have a family, obviously I want my kids to work and, you know, get that experience and also, you know, not kind of, you know, I don't want to bankroll them and just pay for their school and they did not worry about everything. I think it's really important for students to work if they can in high school and university, but I know they won't be able to fund their, you know, tuition.

Like I can't even imagine what the costs will be at that point. Right. I mean, right now the statistics are, you know, the average public school is 24,000, 25,000. Average private school is about 42,000. Per year. Per year. And that's total cost of attendance. So that's tuition, room and board, books, fees. You know, what a typical college student spends in a year.

That's insane. So I just can't imagine the people that, you know, they really don't have any other option but to get a student loan and they end up going to a private university. I mean, they're going to be spending the next 20 years paying that off. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I've seen families graduating, you know, where the young couple where they both have 50, 60, $80,000 in student loan and are just starting out and don't have that great of paying jobs. And I've seen, you know, like a pharmacist or doctors where they have hundreds of thousands of debt.

I mean, the flip side of that, of course, is they have a strong income so they can, you know, more likely pay the debt. But it's still, you know, a bigger challenge for most kids now. And I guess what I, you know, and why is college so expensive? Well, because it's worth it and the colleges raise their prices and people still come. And do you find that because more and more people are going to post-secondary, that's part of the reason. Like it's almost, I mean, in my view as a millennial, if you want a decent paying job and a career, you have to go to, you have to get a degree. So that's going to be part of it. Yeah, no, I think there's a challenge right now because there's not a lot of employer out there you know take a i don't know some of our local employers a harley

davidson or a ge medical or for a lot of their especially their white collar type work they're going to say you must have a degree yeah and they realize that your degree is probably not taught you anything about an mri machine or a motorcycle nope but they put that in there because now there's a lot of high school graduates that don't know how to read. So it's a bar that they can put in. They don't get sued if they say that. Yeah. So they raise the bar for everyone, realizing that they're still going to do some on the job training. But as long as they get enough qualified applicants, there's no reason for them not to do that. Yeah. And also in my experience, it's one thing to go to university and get that degree. But for me to actually get a job, I mean, I didn't know what I wanted to do after university.

I went to a university and got a degree in filmmaking because I wanted to be a filmmaker and realized that's not really the best path for me. And so I had to go back to school. And that's another kind of reality that I think a lot of us are millennials are realizing. And, you know, my younger sister is in her last semester of university. And yeah, she's gonna have a bit of a tough time, I think, realize, you know, she's also doing an arts degree. I mean, it's tough, you need to get a good job, You have to get a degree, and then you may even have to go back to school. Yeah, absolutely. I was at a presentation recently, and they talked about how most graduates today can't really think of it like, again, it was 10 or 20 years ago where I've got my education, and now I'm done.

It's like, well, I've got my education for now. I'll go to work for a while, but I'll probably need to come back for education. And some colleges now are starting to propose or think about what education might look like in the future. And Stanford did a study, I think it was, and they mentioned that they might set up a system or they could set up a system where once you're accepted, you get six years of education. And maybe it's a two years and then back to work. Or maybe it's a four-year degree and then you work for a while and come back for a master's. And you can kind of divide it up however you want.

And just over your lifetime, you're welcome to come back for six years once you've been accepted. And there's, you know, there'd be a lot less of the rules and regulations about, well, a four-year degree, you start here, you go for four years, then you graduate. It might be two years and then work in between and internships and a much more complicated system. Yeah. A more flexible system, I guess, might be a better word. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that might be something that happens. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. So let's kind of get into what are some of the things that you see parents or their children doing that are kind of holding them back to? What are they kind of doing wrong? What are some of the most common mistakes that people are doing wrong that aren't going to doing

them any favors that may, you know, put them into debt or not prepare them for the financial aspects of post-secondary education. Right. I think some of the big mistakes out there would be, for example, not understanding need-based aid. I've had a lot of families tell me that they're going to qualify for aid, and when we do the math, they don't. Or conversely, I've had a lot of families say,

well, there's no way we're going to get aid, and they, in fact, will qualify. So I think how need-based aid is calculated and how it works for most families, you really need to understand it for your particular situation. It's basing it on what your brother-in-law did or the family down the street. Chances are your situation is different enough that you really need to figure it out for yourself. Because like I said, I've seen families earning $75,000 a year

not qualify for need-based aid. And I've seen families earning $300,000 a year qualify. How is that possible? Well, it's not entirely based just on how much did you earn. It's also based on how many students the parents are supporting, the price of the schools you're considering, other assets and resources that go into the calculation. Okay.

And then other awards like need-based scholarships and so forth would also be part of the puzzle. So it's not as simple. Now, granted, if you're going to the low-cost local state university and there's only one student, you're less likely to qualify for aid than if mom and dad have three kids and they're going to the expensive private schools. Interesting. But where that line is, is different for everyone. So you really need to understand what you're getting into and work that through. And by this financial aid that you're talking about, you're talking about, you're not talking about a loan.

You're talking about like a bursary or a grant or something like that? Yeah. So I would say that as far as what's awarded, it's grants and scholarships, which would be money that's not paid back. It would also potentially be loans. It could be work-study. It could be low-interest loans or deferred loans. So there's all the kinds. A financial aid package includes lots of different pieces. And then many families just take the whole package, but you don't have to in most cases.

In most cases, you can say, well, I'll take this grant and this grant, obviously, because it's free money, and I'll take the scholarship. But as far as the work, I'm going to take work elsewhere, so I don't want that job. And I'm not interested in this loan this year. Maybe I'll take it next year. But I guess figuring out what's available to you and understanding the process, because college is getting so expensive, most people are going to use some form of aid to make it all work. Absolutely. I mean, for myself, I think the big reason I was able to afford a university right off the bat, not just working, was I got a scholarship for my first year that paid my first year's tuition. So that was very helpful. That was a big weight off

my shoulders. And I don't know if I... It it would have been tricky I would have had to get a larger loan and more loans if I if that weren't possible and I'm glad I did my research because there's a lot of people that I know that were in my you know high school grade that probably could have gotten grants or scholarships but they just didn't take the time to really look into it and it's free money it was free thousands of dollars of free money. Right. Yeah. And that's another area. For a lot of families, it's a challenge again, because if you think back to how busy you were your senior year, a lot of families talk about scholarships, but when it's all done, they don't actually do anything about scholarships. Because quite honestly, there's a lot of parents out there. And if you're a parent, you know, please avoid this, this cliche, but where you essentially tell your student, you know what, you're in charge of scholarships, go, you know, go find a bunch of scholarships

and win a bunch of money for college. That's your job. A typical 17 year old is going to say, okay, I understand this is my job, but I have no idea how to do my job. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to do it. So where I've seen scholarships be successful, it's a family affair. Mom and dad are involved. Hopefully they're not writing the essays or doing that type of thing, but they certainly can do some online research to find the scholarships or they can collect the envelopes and stamps for the old style scholarships that are still paper and they can keep things organized and proofread an essay or do whatever else needs to be done or take chores off the student for every Sunday afternoon so they can work on it, if that's what needs to be done.

But again, for a lot of times, I think families really need to understand. Now, the flip side of that is some families will work on it, and ultimately it's kind of a waste of time because they're not going to do it well. You know, the student's not motivated to do it. So you really need to come up with a good plan for what makes sense for your family. I've seen, you know, the wins I've seen out there. I've had a couple of families, you know, one in particular, they applied to 39 scholarships. They won seven of them for $39,000. Wow. That's worth it.

That sounds like a lot of work, though. Exactly. How long does it take to do 40 scholarship applications? It took them a better part of a year to work from when they started to when they finished. Now, granted, it was all worth it. That was a lot of money and a lot more than the student could have earned any other way. Yeah. Now, the flip side of that, like I said, is there's a lot of families that talk about it, but they never get around to doing it. And I think the right answer for many families is somewhere in between those two, where you find the five to eight scholarships that are really a good fit for your student.

Yeah. And you work really hard on those and then you say, OK, that's what we're going to do and that's it and we're done. And now we can, you know, with a clear conscience say we've done our scholarship bit and let's focus on tax planning or saving and investing or having the student work or all the other ways that you potentially could pay for college beyond scholarships. And that kind of makes me think too. I remember when I was in high school, I wanted to apply to a bunch of different universities, honestly, just to have the prestige of being able to say, oh, look where I got into. And my mom told me, you know, you have to pay to apply. It's not free. I mean, I think some colleges might be free, but most of them aren't. You have to pay a fee. You know, there's the cost of mail and all that kind of stuff. And so I ended

up, you know, just rethinking my plan because I knew I wasn't going to go to a school outside of my city. So I just applied to the ones that I knew that I would, you know, actually go to if I got in and that saved me a lot of money and time or whatever. And so I know that's something that you've kind of preached is choosing schools. Don't just kind of apply to wherever, but be strategic in what schools you apply for. Absolutely. And I think there's not only apply to the right schools, but know ahead of time what you're getting into. Again, another story. I have families every year in my office really late in the game, end of senior year, and they say things like, well, we applied to these five or six schools and the first three we were denied and this one we

were waitlisted. And the one school that we have left is really, really expensive. What are we going to do? And of course, the answer is you're going to write big checks or delay school for a year or find a school that'll take your application really, really late, which generally isn't the high-end schools, of course, or go to community college for a year and then try again next year. But whatever it is, it's not a good answer. The much better answer is do a better job a year ago when you put your list together and really understand what you're likely to pay at a school. And I think that's where I help a lot of families and I'm working on that, put that stuff

on my website as well, but how to figure out how much you're actually going to pay ahead of time so that you look down the list. And not only are they a good fit, you know, from a student, you know, socially and academically for the student, but they're also a good fit financially where if they are an expensive school and you can't afford the expensive price, are you likely to get a merit scholarship or some sort of need-based scholarship? And if you know that, then you know, you know, although the sticker price is $50,000, your likely cost is more like $25,000. Oh, well, then maybe that $25,000 at this private school is about the same as $25,000 at this public school.

Yeah. So that's something that's always kind of interested me is so we you know there's a lot of different universities but we don't have the same um we don't have like the ivy league thing that the u.s does so i know you know just from watching like movies and tv that's how i know about um the u.s university uh system but you know it's very prestigious and it could help your career if you do get into an ivy league school and you might have a harder time in your career if you don't get to one of these kind of name brand schools. Is this something that people – it's one of those things where do people want to go to these schools just for the name of it? And could sometimes it not be actually good for their career at all because they could get into a whack of debt because the school is too expensive

or it may not have anything to do with the career that they want. Yeah. So certainly there are situations where people pay for the name brand. It's no different than buying a purse, right? Yeah. If it's got the right name on it, it's going to cost $1,000 and it holds your stuff pretty much the same as any other purse. Yes. But you bought it because it had right name on it, it's going to cost $1,000 and it holds your stuff pretty much the same as any other purse. Yes.

But you bought it because it had the name on it. And a lot of times you bought it and it's got the name on it and you want other people to know it has the name on it. Yeah. There's that kind of thing going on with college where people want to say, I graduated from here. Or even parents saying, my kid got accepted here. My kid's going to graduate from here. Or even parents saying, my kid got accepted here. My kid's going to graduate from there. Now, the flip side to that is sometimes if you want to be president, if you pay attention, you'll notice that a lot of the presidents come from pretty high-end, name-brand, expensive schools.

And if those are the types of aspirations, then go ahead and go for it. But another important thing to realize is, especially at the highest high-end schools, the Ivy League, they have a lot of aid and a lot of, so if you can't afford their high price, a lot of times a Harvard or Yale or some of the Ivy Leagues, their net cost will be less than your local state school. Oh, really? That's interesting. Now, they're extremely selective and your odds of getting accepted are very, very small.

But if you've got the chops and you're able to get accepted at a Harvard, don't shy away from the Ivy League. And when I say Ivy League, there's also probably 20 other schools that fall into that camp, Stanford and MIT and Caltech and University of Chicago. And then you maybe move down to Rice and a couple other. But schools at the very top, they've got some endowments, they've got aid. And for the right kids especially, the price could come through where you don't want to cross that one off the list just because it has a high sticker price because your net price might be substantially less.

And it might even be one thing I think is would it be worth it to go to a non-Ivy League school for your bachelor's degree but then go to one of those kind of name brand schools for your master's to actually really progress if you want to be a lawyer or a doctor or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that a lot. So especially if your career is going to require an advanced degree, if you're going on to be a doctor, right? Once you do your undergrad and you go to medical school, nobody's going to care where you did your undergrad. Yeah, exactly. They're barely going to care where you did your MD. When's the last time you walked up to your doctor and said, well, no, you can't treat

me because you went to Harvard. I don't like Harvard or whatever. You know, pick a school, right? It just doesn't happen that way. The reality of it is it might help you in your first job. It might help you in various ways. I think the much stronger thing is a good, strong alumni network is what potentially you're getting at some of these schools. Now, those strong alumni networks are available at a lot of places.

And some of the work that I've done is, in some podcast interviews, I've talked to a lot of people that say things like going to school on purpose and taking advantage of what's there. It doesn't matter what school you're at. Most people don't take advantage of the alumni office, the placement office, the student services offices that are available. All the various help and career advancement and all kinds of things

that not only can you take advantage of now, but further into your career. I mean, if you stay actively involved in the alumni networks and that kind of stuff. And some colleges foster that better than others, but most colleges have realized that that's a value that they can add. But you've got to plug into it. They try and keep track of where you are and keep you involved,

but if you don't play your part, they're not going to be able to hook you up as far as job opportunities, et cetera, if they don't even know where you are anymore. One other thing I wanted to touch on because you mentioned it briefly was one thing that you suggested, something to do with taxes. So what are some of the strategies that you have to help save people money when it comes to taxes? Right. So there's a lot of tax breaks that are associated with higher education. Again, because the government is trying to encourage us to save as an example. So they offer college savings plans where we get some tax breaks of various types.

They give you a tax break if you actually pay tuition. So you can get the opportunity credit. So it's a $2,500 credit if you pay $4,000 of tuition for one of your dependents. So if you're, you know, a lot of times it's parents paying for the student and that's how they get the credit. But if you're an independent student going back to school or something, you know, adult learner or whatever, you might be able to take the credit for yourself. There's student loan interest is deductible.

So there's lots of ways that you can kind of leverage your tax savings. And again, it's not going to pay the whole bill. But if you could save a couple thousand dollars in taxes a year. Yeah, it does make a difference. It makes a big difference, especially if you start talking about families where they've got three or four kids and they're going to be dealing with college. It sounds like your parents, as an example, have dealt with college for the last five or 10 or 15 years, depending on how spread out the kids were. But as you're in that situation, making sure you get all your tax breaks, you know, two or $3,000 a year times 15 years, that really adds up. Absolutely. Yeah. What, I'm curious, what other things that you do most commonly tell people to

do to get started? You know, today, obviously, starting early is probably the best thing that anyone can do. But, you know, for the kind of late starters like you deal with, what are some other things that you would suggest that they do to save money? Yeah. So, again, I try and divide the concept into early stage planning and late stage planning. So late stage planning is you have a high school student or you are a high school student and you're trying to figure it all out. So are we going to qualify for need-based aid or merit aid? Are we going to, you know, what schools are we going to visit?

What are we going to do about our testing? There's all kinds of stuff you've got to work on once you hit sophomore, junior year until you're off to college. That's late stage planning. Early stage planning is you've got a two-year-old at home. So some of the millennials that, and your typical friends, they've got a two-year-old. They're starting to have those kids, yeah. And they're saying, okay, should we be saving for college? And I have a hard time answering that question. I don't know

if you should save and invest early so that you have a big pot of money for college. By what you do need to do, in my opinion, I guess, is to get on a good solid financial footing no matter what so that when college gets here, if you need to, you can say, well, I'm not going to save so much for retirement. But I did a good job in the last 15 years, so I've got a big retirement nest egg started. So if I slack off for five years while I deal with college, I can still retire. Or I've got extra money socked away. I've got a good emergency reserve. I've got extra assets. If I chose to use them for college, I could. If I don't want to use them for college, I don't have to. But just making sure that you're getting on a good, solid financial footing earlier, again, because college is very expensive, whether or not you're going to have to pay for it. And I think college is going to change.

I guess that's the biggest challenge I have. If you've got a two-year-old and you're going to save for college, there's a good chance in 15 years that college is going to look different. I don't know how or why or exactly what the details are going to be, but it's probably going to look different. I don't know how or why or exactly what the PTOs are going to be, but it's probably going to be different. It's probably going to be really different. Absolutely. And it's, I mean, it's already changed so much since, you know, from when my parents went to post-secondary to when I, so I can't imagine what it'll look like in another 30 years. Right. So, so I guess circling back to your question then as far as what people need to do, if

you're early stage, like I said, clean up your debt, live within your means, start saving so you have some reserves, figure out what's important. If college is going to be important to you and you want to, I've had a lot of parents that say, college is number one. We'll cancel vacations. We'll delay our retirement. We'll do whatever we need to do to make college happen. If that, you know, talk with your spouse, if that's the kind of mentality you have, we'll then start, you know, build your financial future based on that theory. If you're on the other hand, you're saying, well, we'll probably have to help. But right now we've got other focuses. Plan that way. And but then once you get there, then really, you know, work hard to understand what your options

are. It's, you know, again, just like planning for a vacation or something. Right. If I told you you get the next two weeks off and you can do whatever you want and I'll pay for it. You say, oh, boy, let's start planning. I want to go to Europe, I think. How am I going to get there? Oh, I'm going first class. What else can I think? Right?

You really plan it out to make, you know, you'd have a great time. Well, college is kind of the same thing. It's like, well, what do you want out of it? How do you want to make it happen? If you plan it, chances are it'll come in at a lower cost, just like your vacation. If you plan well and shop around for your airline tickets and know what you're getting into, and if you realize the train in Europe is cheaper this way instead of that way, the only way you know is to do the legwork.

Absolutely. That's kind of how college works. The only way you know for sure is to do the legwork. Maybe you'll go down a path and it'll be a dead end for you. But you won't know until you've kind of looked under a rock, so to speak. Exactly. So the key is to do your research and to have a plan. Those are great nuggets of wisdom. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.

I know that the listeners are going to get a lot out of all of your expert advice. All right. Well, thanks for having me. And that was episode 47 of the Mo Money Podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you really liked it and got a lot out of it. Make sure to check out the show notes for a bunch of resources that I'm going to include of Brad's because he just knows so freaking much about the post-secondary game, which I love. So make sure to check them out at jessicamorehouse.com slash 47. And also make sure to check out Brad's blog and podcast, both aptly named Taming the High Cost of College. You can, of course, check out his podcast on

iTunes, but I will include links to everything in the show notes at jessicamorehouse.com slash 47. And again, if you love this episode, which I hope you did, please leave me an iTunes review. I love reading them. I'll read them out loud on a future episode, and it just makes me feel really good inside. So please do that. Otherwise, I'll see you back here next Wednesday. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.