July 31, 2024 • 56 mins
How would you like a completely paid-for college?! That sounds like an absurd pipe dream, but our guest today did it herself. In fact, she would receive a cash check each semester for any additional expenses she might’ve incurred as well! ALSO, scholarships paid for six months studying abroad in Spain – she’s not messing around! We’re joined by Jocelyn Pearson, the founder of The Scholarship System, which is an online resource that offers training sessions and online courses to teach folks how to find, apply for, and win valuable scholarships that can allow you to graduate debt free. To date, The Scholarship System has helped families secure over $13 million in scholarships by teaching them how to find the scholarships that are winnable (including specific search terms), to avoid the more scammy types of scholarships, utilizing AI to help you snag free money, how you can even create your own scholarship just by asking, the optimal timing for highschool students to begin applying for scholarships, and much more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Hout of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking scholarships to graduate debt free with
Joscelyn Pearson. Yeah, so, how.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Would you like a paid for college? Pay for college
that you didn't actually pay for? It sounds like an
absurd pipe dream, but our guest today she did it herself.
In fact, she would actually receive a cash check each
semester for any additional expenses that she might have incurred
as well. Also, she had six months in Spain paid
(00:48):
for as well. So we're talking to a professional here.
We're joined by Joscelyn Pearson. She's the founder of the
Scholarship System, which is an online resource that offers training
sessions and online courses to teach folks how to find,
how to apply for and then win these valuable scholarships
that can allow you to certainly to graduate debt free.
(01:09):
And in fact, the Scholarship System has helped families secure
over thirteen million dollars in scholarships, which is a ton
of money. We're going to explain how it is that
listeners out there can do the same. Joscelyn's going to
share all of our secrets with us today, jil Jocelyn,
thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
On the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Oh of course, Shawson, We're super excited to first question
we have to ask you. We ask everyone who comes on,
is what do you like to suplore? John? What's your
craft beer equivalent? Matt and I were spending potentially too much,
some would say on craft beer. What's that in your
life that people would look and be like, whoa, you
spent a lot of money, But hey, guess what, you're
still being smart. You're investing in saving for the future.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Oh man. Okay. So we lived in the Caribbean for
five years and we still live. We live in Charleston,
South Carolina, so still coastal where beach people. My splurge
is quality bathing suits. And I know that sounds ridiculous,
but they really make such a difference. And I just
(02:06):
got a cheap one for our daughter and she sat
on the side of the pool and immediately saw like
the picks and stuff, and I was like, see, this
is this is why.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Wait, so you said your daughter, how old is she?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
She's two and a half.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Okay, so this is a baby's bathing suit and you're
about to get her on the expensive bathingsuit train as well.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
You know what I saw actually a name brand for
a baby and it was one hundred dollars and I
was like, Okay, I cannot do this because she's going
to grow out of it in like a month, like
at least for me, hopefully I won't grow out of it.
So but they last forever when they're quality. So that's
my sporte.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
You say that in Joel and I there's this. I
want to say it's probably an Amazon brand.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's is it? Mamjic, Mamjoel?
That's it? And I've had mine, which is a great
brand name. It's like some Chinese brand exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
For like five years now, not too long ago. Came
back from the beach. I'm still rocking that bathing suit
every other day. But we also might not beat you
up as much as josson. We probably don't put it
through the wear and tear. If I lived at the beach,
I would maybe I'd have one hundred dollars yus.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I think you would, because we're about pality goods that
last longer for sure, true.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So I look at it as an investment.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Don't trick yourself into thinking that it's not gonna that's
gonna go up in value. But Jocelyn, thank you for
sharing that. But we would love to hear your debt
free higher education story because from what I understand, uh,
you weren't an A plus student necessarily, but you still
graduated with zero debt when it comes to student lens.
(03:37):
How did you go about doing that? Can you sort
of share your history, share your story with us?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Absolutely? Yeah, it was funny. Actually I didn't even care
really about my background or anything for getting into college
or anything, probably until junior year. So for those that
have students that are not even really thinking about it
years ahead, I guess that should be some good news.
(04:03):
But yeah, my SAT score was below average. Grades were good,
but I wasn't necessarily competitive, and you know, I was
in a few things that I was passionate about, but
that was about it. And then I had part time jobs.
I was not saving the world. I didn't have a
million hours of community service or anything like that, and
I for sure was no athlete. But what happened was
(04:26):
a friend's mom said to me She said, if you
can make applying to scholarships.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Your job, you can get paid for four years. And
I thought, well, that sounds awesome. I'll do one year
of work for four years of pay. Not quite how
it worked out, but it got me started. And the
thing was, at first I thought.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I was doing the right thing, but I was finding
the quick scholarships, you know, the ones that I could
just knock out while watching Gray's Anatomy, and I thought
that I would that would just cover college and a year.
Junior year kind of goes by. I don't win a penny,
and my inbox is just flooded with spam at this point,
and then I finally find a local one. It was
(05:11):
only five hundred dollars, but I won it, and so
then I started thinking, Okay, so these I did not win.
This one I did, and I started kind of tweaking
what to do. And by senior year I started seeing
the money roll in. But I wasn't one of those
kids where I got ten million dollars in offers from universities.
(05:32):
My university only offered I think it was like four
thousand a year or something like that. And so I
actually did it by getting all of these smaller dollar
scholarships that added up to a free ride. So by
the end of senior year, I had enough to cover
freshman year, and some of them renewed, so then freshman
year in college, I got a little bit more to
cover whatever the gap was for sophomore and I did
(05:52):
that each year, including study abroad. I even applied for
some extra money for that and got it, so I
got extra money for living in Spain. And so I
like to call this kind of the average kid's way
of paying for college. And so those incremental small dollar
wins along with other strategies, you know, ways to save
(06:13):
money here, cut costs there, negotiate with the college. So
it's a combination. But scholarships that was the bulk of it.
But it was really these small ones that added up
to a free ride plus some So you guys said
that earlier, But I literally received an over check every
semester to cover other expenses, which was great. And I
(06:34):
did do a part time job anyway, I'm just a
busy body. And then because of that, I was able
to save money. So actually, when I graduated college, I
had a down payment for a house and closed on
my first property two months out of college.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Okay, so over achiever status.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Justly, it really set us, like it set me up
for a very different future because I didn't have to
dig myself out of a hole, right so yeah, yeah,
and I was able to put money away rather than
having to put it all towards debt payments or towards
trying to survive in college.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So the job that you got, instead of using that
to help pay for some of the cost of college,
the scholarship money's covering that, so you can start banking
that stuff and setting yourself for a fantastic financial future.
By the time you graduate, like you're ready to begin
full fledged adulthood, buying a home. And let's be honest, too,
that's about the only time in life you're going to
(07:29):
find someone else to cover the bill for you to
take a trip abroad, right, Like, can you talk to
us like about how that I'm guessing no one's offering
to pay for your trip to Spain these days, Josin.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
You know what, I always joked that my best paid
time in my life was when I was in college.
Like the hourly rate was probably one hundred and two
hundred dollars an hour, something like that no, no one's
begging to send me to Spain right now, but do
you know what it's and actually through the scholarship system.
So we've now been doing this for a decade, which
is unbelievable. We're releasing a new addition of the book
(08:00):
just it. We're really celebrating this, which is crazy. But
we've been giving out scholarships, so we're actually on the
other side of it. But you see, you see the why. Right.
Of course they weren't thinking let's just let this girl
go have fun in Spain. But it's more we're investing
in the future, and we know by giving this money
to this student, hopefully they're going to do something with
(08:24):
it and it'll come full circle, right then maybe they'll
contribute to a scholarship, or maybe they'll hire an intern,
or maybe they'll let someone shadow them. So it really
has this kind of full circle view of why people
are giving the money. And actually that helps applicants because
when you keep that in mind and you're trying to
sell yourself to them, that is actually something to keep
(08:45):
in the back of your mind of what are they
looking for?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You mentioned applying for some different scholarships while you're sitting
on the couch watching TV crazy anatomy.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That's like the equivalent of the Bear these days for people.
So it's like fifteen years ago the Bay. Yeah, that's
what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You're looking at over a decade ago, which kind of
hammers own my point, like it's got to be easier
to find some of these different scholarships these days, as
opposed to like, I know, there was the internet you
ten fifteen years ago, but talk to me about that.
Just the difference in some of the technology and the
availability and how easily accessible I guess it is to
find different scholarships these days.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Ooh yeah, that's actually I don't think I've ever had
anyone ask me that. That's a great question, because especially
with AI, it's changing things, of course, and actually in
this book Revision, we just did a whole chapter on
AI for that reason. But the one thing that actually
technology has made it a little bit more difficult is
because people learned, oh well, if I add a scholarship
(09:44):
to my website, it helps my seo, or oh let
me put a scholarship out there just so that people
market for us. So we're going to put it as
a drawing. So you have to get as many shares
and likes as possible in order for your entry to
be considered. That's something that we have to really point
out to students. If it's based on luck like that,
(10:04):
that's not we're worth our time. We don't want it
to be based on luck. That's one of our first
signs of okay this is And that's what I was doing.
I was doing what I call sweepstake or drawing scholarships.
That's why I was able to do them while I
was watching TV because I didn't have to focus. I
didn't have to write a well thought out essay, I
(10:24):
didn't have to collect transcripts, recommendation letters, the works. And
sure they were faster upfront, but long term, I had
submitted maybe thirty of those and didn't receive a penny.
But then I put a couple hours into a solid
essay and I finally won five hundred dollars. So those
sweep steak ones have definitely picked up with technology because
(10:47):
it's so much easier to reach people through social media
and people can put stuff out on sites, so you
have to be leary, and there's also a lot of
good intentions behind some sites where they say, okay, just
submit one applic and then you can just send it
to all these different scholarships. But let's think about every
other teenager applying to scholarships. It's probably the ones they're
(11:08):
going to apply to as well, right, It's exactly although
it actually in the end is not because they're not.
The chances of winning are so slim because there's so
many submissions. So actually we do more work upfront and
do it kind of a little bit of an old
school way. We call it the scholarship systems Google method,
(11:30):
where we use Google to find the ones that are
not on these new search engines and in these AI
created softwares, so that we're only competing against the pool
that was willing to do the work, and so we
find scholarships. Actually one specifically, we've had our students win
it every year for the last few years because they
(11:52):
get so few applications. And I like to think our
members always submit better quality applications as well, but said
they really only get a few apps and so the
competition is just way less than these where you can
just oh, submit one application to one hundred different scholarships.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So yeah, technologies. It's changing things, but I'm finding actually
the the original strategy is actually an advantage at this point.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, mean that makes sense because, like you said, folks
are I mean, basically what you're saying, folks are unwilling
to do the legwork they're they're they're unwilling to do.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
They want the easy button.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They want to go to the site that propagates and
sends their application to.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
All these other sites. It's so easy. It's easy to
get the crab apple off the bottom tree. But if
you get at the ladder and you get the one
on the like, it's just it's at the juice impeach
like that's a little a little higher up. Yeah, exactly.
Matten knows from experience. He's got a little peach tree
and sting. Let's let's talk about specifically student loans. O,
So I want to talk I have so many more
questions we do on scholarship specifically, but I feel like
(12:56):
maybe from a broad perspective, part of the goal of
getting scholars is to avoid student loans. And we all
know what's going on with student loan debt in this country.
The headline number the number of Americans millions and millions
and millions of Americans just inundated with student loan debt,
having a hard time, especially if they don't graduate paying
(13:16):
off that student loan debt. You want to make student
loans completely abnormal? Why is that your mission? Jocelyn?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Okay, So, if you guys don't mind, I would love
to read you something because this actually just came in
right before we hopped on this recording and all that'd
be awesome to So a woman one of our moms posted,
she said, I just want to thank you for this
program for providing a plan to get a debt free degree.
When freshman year was paid for, I thought, Okay, this
won't be so bad if we have to borrow a
(13:43):
little in the future. Well, second year was done with
scholarships and a payment plan that she could handle on
her own with a campus job at the gym. Well,
now we are heading into final year, not even a
payment plan will be needed. This works, Stick to it.
It's so worth it. Find your niche and remember small
scholarships add up and cover the costs. This is the
best thing I've ever done, and I literally have goosebumps reading.
(14:08):
So we like screenshot these and every Monday we celebrate them,
and that is why we do what we do. I mean,
it is to see this. And we've had students where
they're like, I never thought I could go to this school.
I never thought that this would even be in my future.
I have had students where they didn't think they could
go to college because they just thought, well, I have
to cover it myself or you know. And their parents
(14:31):
find this and they're like, Okay, we can't pay for college,
but we could pay for this. Why don't we make
this our effort and they get a whole new future.
So for me, that is what keeps us going. People sharing.
We literally have wins every week that we celebrate. But
that said, as far as avoiding student loan debt, I
(14:51):
have seen the consequences. So during the eight nine crisis,
my father lost his job and along with so many people, right,
and that was really eye opening to me to see
them struggle and panic and not sure you know, where
(15:15):
was money going to come in and all this stuff.
And then on top of that, actually that year we
also watched Financial Peace University and Dave Ramsey was talking
about the debt, snowball and all this stuff, and it
just scared me so badly from debt, and that moment
on I said, I never I don't ever want to
(15:35):
be in debt. I don't want to be in a
situation where if the economy crashes, I have no control
over my situation in that moment, especially if these debt payments,
you know, they're not going to stop asking for their money.
And so I just became really really debt averse, very
dead averse at a young age. And a part of
it was growing up through that crash, you know, and
(15:57):
so that started it. And then having all the opportunities
that I've had because of not having it, and then
seeing friends that are you know, now a decade out
of college and still paying on debt and trying to
start families, and just it. Every experience that I see
with them and versus are us gives me even more
(16:20):
of a passion to help people avoid the student loan debt.
So there's a lot that goes into it, But the
initial the initial thing was actually I had a real
deep fear of ever being in debt. I've never paid
interest outside of a mortgage.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
A personal aversion to it early on. Yeah, we've also
just normalize it and it doesn't need to be normal.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, and we talk about that. Actually, we call our
families hashtag rebel families, and we say you have to
rebel against the norm, because they say the norm is
white picket fence. Borrow the money. Everyone just does it,
you know, student loan bills, they're just part of the
par for the course, and we say no. And that's
(17:02):
why so whenever people have their wins, they say, you know,
we're a hashtag rebel family. We've done it. And I
love it because I'm like, yeah, we want to be rebels.
We want a different outcome than the norm, and that
means we have to be a little rebellious.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
The normal family doesn't sleep as well at night either,
by the way. Yeah, well so, and that when that
you shared, something that.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Stood out to me was the fact that her daughter
maybe has a job at the campus gym.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's something that you mentioned as well, that you have
a job.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
How much of it do you think has to do
with the fact that so many parents and so many
students are maybe unwilling to even consider that because in
their minds, that's not a part of what their college
experience should involve.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I feel like that there's.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Almost like and I hate even using this term because
it feels so overused. But there is like.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
An entitlement that a lot of students who are enrolled.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
At universities that they're looking for a certain kind of experience.
How much of that do you think comes into play?
Speaker 3 (17:58):
I do think that's part of it. I think that's
also what we're trying to grab when we said hashtag
rebel families like.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
We are going. It's a nice.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Way to say you're going to do things differently, including
maximizing college. I do think that's part of it. And
sometimes I feel like I actually have to give parents
permission to say no or to create boundaries with their student.
Sometimes parents they think, well I didn't get this experience,
(18:27):
and so I want my kid to And so they
take money out of their retirement accounts or say, oh,
don't worry about getting a part time job. I'll send
you this monthly budget. And we tell them you can
borrow for college, you cannot borrow for retirement. Please do
not put yourself in a financial situation that you cannot
undo because of a college experience. Right, And so this
(18:52):
is something that we stress with parents, and that includes
pushing our children to have a part time job which
we share actually is to tally if it's twenty hours
or less, they tend to do better, They tend to
have better GPAs they get involved. It forces some structure
for students. So actually, I would almost say the experience
ends up better by having a little part time job.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But yeah, there is some much more skin in the game.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah, but there is something to say about the type
of families we work with, and they're the ones that
want to get their elbows a little dirty, you know.
So we haven't had an issue, we haven't had too
much pushback with that. But I do think that the
families that probably see this in like, oh, we can't
do this, they might have a little bit more of that.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, well, scrappiness is undervalued. You talk about the three
different kinds of fits that you're looking for when you're
talking to a student who wants to go to college, personal, academic,
and financial, and you basically say to check out the
financial fit first, because hey, if the other two are great,
but the financial fit isn't great, it's probably still not
a great school for you to end up at. And
we're not just talking about the sticker price. And Matt
(19:57):
and I We've talked to Ron Lieber from New York
Times about this. He written a lot about specifically the
sticker price of college versus what people actually pay. It
still just feels so opaque. So how do people figure
out whether or not the school they want to go to,
or let's say, instead of just the school their top
five schools, how do they figure out which ones are
a good financial fit or not.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I mean, we have a whole hour long lesson on that,
but I'm going to try to break it down. I mean,
the first thing is actually a lot of if we're
going to push the easy button, a lot of schools
have net price calculators on their website and it'll ask
about the student's information background, GPA, SADACT scores, and it'll
run it against money that they have, and so it'll say, okay,
(20:39):
your net price at this school is X, and like
you just said, it's very rarely the actual price what
we teach. So when you're focusing on financial fit first,
the reason that we want to do those because sometimes
you can uncover schools that you had no idea could
be affordable. For example, one of our students got to
(21:01):
go to Duke and graduated debt free. She's now it's
been four years, graduated completely debt free. They were not
even going to consider this school.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeh, I'm pretty sure that's not a cheap one. I
have heard of that school.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Respect when you're talking about affordable schools.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Exactly right. People think that they have to go to
a less than college whatever they define that as, in
order to find a financial fit. Sometimes it's not the case.
So in this case, or in a lot of universities cases,
what there is is something called cost of attendance. This
is what the total bill should be. This is supposed
to include all their fees and stuff, so beyond just tuition.
(21:39):
Then you have a number from FAFSA. It used to
be called Expected Family Contribution EFC. Now it's SAI Student
Aid Index. That's a whole other conversation, but it basically
says what your family can pay. When you subtract the
total cost, minds what your family can pay, it leaves
you a number, and this is your gap. Some schools
have a comit mint to meeting that gap. They say, okay,
(22:03):
we will cover one hundred percent of it. Some of
them even say we will make sure that it's one
hundred percent covered without any debt.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Wow, it's like a guarantee.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yes, And of course these are going to be more
competitive schools to get into. You've got to get in
because that's a great deal. So the reason they do
that is they really want to make sure they're getting
the top of the student pool and money's not an issue.
So that's why they're doing this. So say a student
gets a low number from fafs of right, and they
(22:33):
apply to a school that's sixty thousand a year, but
their FATS is only five thousand a year. That means
that that school has to guarantee them the other fifty
five thousand dollars. Well, we just took a sixty thousand
dollars school and made it cheaper than the community college.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, so incredible. Yes, I know how to speak of
a factor by the way, our grades and extracurriculars in
this because you mentioned at the top of the of
this interview, Hey, I wasn't some a plus student killer
SAT score, her grades, her grades were good, she wasn't
a good SAT taking. Yeah okay, but you also weren't
like eighteen clubs all that kind of stuff like that.
(23:09):
You're abnormally active in that way. So how much of
a factor. I mean, obviously, going to Duke, you gotta
have pretty good grades I think solid SAT score. But
then how much does that factor into what people are
able to qualify for financial aid wise?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
So it depends on your family's background. So if you
have financial need, then there's that side of it. If
you are competitive, then we would go to the merit
side of it. So actually this is where we kind
of figure out where does a student fall in. Are
they able to compete on that level, then okay, we
can go after the ones that have grades. But this
is another piece that goes into your original question about
(23:44):
find where do we find schools that offer us money
or how do we find out what our price is?
Say our student is a good student, but they're not
Harvard good, which would have been for sure me, then
maybe we look at a school where their average is
their average SATs or average acts are a little bit lower.
So you can see, that's all public data that we
(24:05):
can pull where we can actually look up these averages
and if we can find out if we're in the
top twentieth percentile of that school's average, then the chances
of us getting money are higher. So This is where
literally the same number from FAFSA can mean five different
offers at five different schools, completely different paintings, same with
(24:27):
our same grades can mean completely different things at five
different schools depending on their poll. So this is where
it gets crazy, and this is why it's such a
big market. Really, why there's so many people in this
space now. Really it comes down to if we can
cast our net wide and go to those net price calculators,
put in our data see if we can be eligible
(24:49):
either financial aid, merit or both, and find out what
our price is, then we can look at, okay, do
they have our major? And then we can look at well,
maybe I will love this school. That's where we're uncovering
schools that we didn't even realize are amazing and we
don't have to borrow a ton of debt.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I feel like you're taking the moneyball approach to figuring
out which college that some of these students should go to,
Billy Bean of Higher Education.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
That's Jocelyn. Well, you mentioned FAFSA.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
We're actually going to touch on that and just how
does that students and families out there can go about
finding I mean, you touched on it. A little bit,
but we really want to dive into that how students
can find these different scholarships.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Will get to all that and more right after the break.
We're back from the break, still talking with Jocelyn Pearson
about gain scholarships, graduating debt free, and it's beyond scholarships.
We've talked about specifically ways that you can find to
(25:49):
get the school to pony up and pay for a
big portion of your education. Joscelyn, we want to talk
a lot more about scholarships in just a second, but
we were just covering the FAFSA and the FAFSA obviously
man fell flat on its face this year, and I
can't image even imagine what it was like as a
parent or a student filling out the FATA and then
(26:09):
seeing all these schools basically had to say, Okay, we
have to come up with our own system this year
to figure out financial aid. Right. How big of a
whiff was that and how has that impacted students in
their quest to find money to help pay for school.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Yeah, it was well, we were all preparing for it.
Everyone in the space of college and higher ed was
just holding their breath, just waiting because we knew it
was going to be a disaster. And also, I don't
know if you knew this, but they launched it on
I think it was like New Year's Eve. I was like,
can you please let these people enjoy their holiday?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And not really they should have done it on Christmas Day.
I think that would have been better, right, maybe yeah,
maybe Christmas Eve?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
So you were staying up until midnight exactly, no other
important things to do.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Oh my goodness. We were telling all our families just
ignore it for a couple of weeks because it's going
to be a mess. And it was. But that said,
it definitely delayed, delayed the financial aid packages at places.
People couldn't make decisions like they wanted to. But I
actually think it worked out for some families because they
(27:10):
had no clue what was going to happen, so they
hit the scholarships harder. So we have had some huge
wins over the last six months seven months. Families just
had time and space to and actually motivation. I think
that's the bigger thing. That makes sense to get money
(27:30):
from other sources because they had no clue what they
were looking at. So I feel like there has just
been a huge energy and it could also just be
we're getting so good at what we do. I don't know,
but something this year the energy behind the money that
these families are applying for and bringing in. But I
feel like part of it really lit a fire under
(27:52):
some of these families to find ways to pay the
bill because they just didn't know what that financial situation
was going to look like.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Makes sense, There's a lot of uncertainty there, Jocelyn. Let's
talk about private scholarships, like I'm thinking of maybe the
ones that have somebody's name associated with it. Maybe there's
so and so memorial scholarship, Yeah, or like I think
you maybe even mentioned the first one you received was
like a local one there for you. But where should
folks look right Like, we're not talking about the different
packages at a university that a university is going to
(28:21):
to dole out in order to attract a student or
an applicant, or talking about some of these additional ways
that you can fund your college. How should folks go
about finding those different scholarships?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Absolutely so, this is my bread and butter. This is
the stuff that I love because, like I said, my
university only gave me so much. I had to find
it from these private sources, and a lot of students do. Especially.
We've had some students where they say, I want to
go to the school. I don't care about financial fit.
This is a school. And it's like, okay, then you
have to find this money from outside sources. And the
(28:55):
beautiful thing about this is they can be money can
be offered from anyone. There are Elks clubs, rotary clubs, ptas, ptsays.
I've seen construction companies, grocery stores, credit unions, banks, doctor's offices,
lawyer's offices, you name it. There are people funding scholarships,
which is awesome. And I've even had students ask their employer, hey,
(29:18):
do you offer scholarship and the employers like, hm, I
never thought about that, Maybe I will, and they do
and the student gets money.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
The first one to see that scholarship. I love that.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, they literally created a scholarship. I've had a student
go to their department at their at their college and said, hey,
do you guys do any kind of outside scholarships besides
part of the admissions, And they're like, if you build
this spreadsheet, we'll give you some money. And they just
created this thousand dollars scholarship for this.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Kid, also just being a little bit of a squeaky wheel, right.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Oh yeah, right, So but as far as finding them, Okay,
this is going to sound so super super simple, but
people overlook this. Okay, this is our Google method. We're
going to go to Google and we are literally going
to search very specifically. Say, for example, we want to
become an engineer, I would search engineering Association scholarships. Now
(30:12):
why association, Because what I'm going to look for is
I'm actually going to find websites of the providers of
the scholarships. So your first results will be Fastweb, dot com,
scholarships dot com, these big search engines that we talked
about earlier. You can go to those. Save those for last, though.
What I want to do is keep scrolling down to
(30:34):
Engineers of America dot org or something like that, and
then you'll see in the UURL it probably says slash scholarship.
When I click on that, it takes me directly to
a scholarship. Most likely it's legitimate because it's an association organization.
I already know, Hey, I want to be an engineer. Okay,
so I'm right there. I've probably met their criteria in
(30:55):
many ways. Now I just need to look at deadline.
Did it happen yet? Well, if you're following our tips,
then you're ahead of the game and you're doing this
ahead of the time. If not, maybe you missed the deadline,
but you can apply next year. Okay, let's save it
with a reminder for next year. So we're gonna do
this search and I open up you know, five to
ten results from this search, and I just slowly work
(31:18):
my way through them. And what I'm doing is I'm
finding scholarships that are not on those search engines, that
are less competitive because of that, but also are legitimate.
I know that I can trust them. We had a
student actually get a trip out to Hawaii because he
won one this exact way. It was an engineering scholarship.
So that's one of the big searches.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Is are you saying that basically, because everyone goes to
fast Web and Skali, anything is posted there is going
to be inundated with applicants, and because of that, you
gotta find you gotta go to the second page of Google,
which is where no one ever goes.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Pretty much, Yeah, pretty much. I mean I don't want
to go black and white like and just say don't
use those but we have a lot inside that we
update every single semester. But we always tell them that
just use those last first. Do these searches. We have
a whole list of different phrases that you can brainstorm.
Do all those Google searches, find what you find, and
(32:14):
then you can go to those search engines. So they're
not all junk on there. It's just that you're not
going to find the ones that we are finding it
as well.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Okay, so you're multiple times you said that they're likely
going to be legitimate because they're associated with an association, right,
like some sort of group.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
But talk about that, right.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Because I think there's a chance that some folks might
find themselves and they're like, oh, they're saying they got
there's a five thousand dollars scholarship here as long as
I provide them with my social security.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, what are some of the red.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Flags I guess folks should look out for when they're
looking for some of this free money on the internet.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yes, and I can give you a few more searches.
We can come back to that beyond association. But regardless
of any scholarship, never ever ever give a social security
The only exception to this okay, and I please take
this everyone. Note this is only if we've already won
the money, and that is your student ID. I know
(33:13):
that sounds so crazy that universities would use a social
as a student ID, but they some do nowadays. I
like to think they're getting smarter and they now give
students a random number instead. But unless it is to
literally send your student account number, and that is what
it is, never ever social. You should not pay to
(33:33):
apply for scholarship. Okay. This is different than paying, say
for the scholarship system that is an educational based course
teaching you how to do this. It's also different than
joining a club that you get benefits from other than
just applying for their scholarship. But if it literally says,
hey pay fifty dollars to apply for this scholarship, there
(33:55):
was always one that came up. It was on Italian
something related to Italian citizenship. No, we don't pay to
apply to a scholarship. Okay, there has to be some
other perk to joining that organization. So no social Security number.
We don't want to pay to play. And if it's
if we here enter to win or weekly drawing, monthly drawing,
(34:17):
any kind of wording around sweepstakes that is based on
luck that's out of our control. Those are not the
ones we want to focus on. And then as far
as what they say, also a trigger word where it's
a red flag is easy. So if they say oh, no,
essay scholarship or easy scholarship right there, you know that
it's probably more a sweepstake based one. So those are
(34:39):
our kind of red flags where we say, okay, these
are not the ones we want to focus on. We
want to go another way.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
So Johnson, I'm kind of lazy. I would love like, hey,
two hours, get the ten thousand dollars scholarship, call it
a day boom. How nice? I mean, that would be
so nice, right if the world worked like that and
one scholarship was going to do you. But you've kind
of hinted at the a few times. But a bunch
of smaller scholarships is really what's going to get you
across the finish line. So yeah, I don't know. Micro
(35:08):
scholarships are worth the effort, yes, And how small can
these scholarships get? How many do we need to be
applying to I mean, what's it look like? And how
much effort do they require?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Before, if you don't mind. The other scholarship is actually
local community foundations that you can search, so just like
if you're in Orlando, it'd be Orlando Foundation Scholarship. And
this actually ties into what you're asking here, because a
lot of times foundations, local foundations will have dozens of scholarships,
anywhere from five hundred to one thousand to two thousand dollars.
(35:40):
And what's great about that is actually if you get
those as a senior in high school, a lot of
times you can reapply as a college student. So it's
not necessarily automatically renewable, but as an alumni excuse me,
as an alumni, you get access to it, so you
can keep on applying. But since you are a previous
and your chances of winning get higher and higher because
(36:02):
they know, okay, you're still doing it, you're doing great,
We're going to keep giving you money. So that's an
example where one organization, the scholarship might be five hundred dollars,
but maybe it turns into more money in the future years.
I had one like that where each year they gave
me a little bit more, a little bit more in.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
The fact that yeah, it's five hundred bucks but times four, like, yeah,
it's a lot of money up.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah. I would say my biggest win was four thousand
a year. So anywhere from five hundred to four thousand
dollars per school year was the range that I was
really working in.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Okay, so you mentioned you kind of circle back around
when it came to like the Google method. You mentioned
the association was searching for like whatever town that you're
living in, like searching so like you said, Orlando, so
Orlando Foundation scholarship. That's one of the other tactics. Are
there any other keywords that folks should be looking for
as they're trying to get really practical and sort of
nitty gritty with their Google searches.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yeah, And some people with that, they'll say, oh, well,
we live in a small town. You can go to
nearby towns and a lot of times it'll be a
county or region. So we can kind of cast them
at a little wider I just used I don't know
where our lamp came from, but another search could actually.
So you've got let's see, we've got major associations. We
(37:20):
have the community foundations, and then another one is actually
passions and this is hilarious. So we had one student
who loved horses, and I literally googled scholarships for horse
lovers but again simple but not easy. We scrolled down
and we found it was like young horse Riders dot
(37:42):
org or something like that, and I'm like, okay, this
clearly is aligned and slash Scholarships was the url we
clicked on there and there were six that she could
apply for. That's awesome, I know, so even passions that
could be another one. Scholarships for public speakers, or scholarships
for students, for students who video game. You can get
(38:05):
so creative with this. I mean, and you know I will.
I'm gonna throw in an AI tip here. Okay, we
are actually going through our scholarship winners right now. We're
choosing them today. Some of them have used AI to
write essays. Of course we check that and they are
disqualified immediately. But a way that we can use AI
(38:27):
is actually we can even ask AI, hey, can you
find me a list of scholarships for horse lovers? And
that I have tested. You have to be careful, you
have to, you know, use our discretion that we're teaching. Okay,
doesn't say easy sweepstakes drawings. You know, we have to
know to spot the scams, but at least it can
(38:48):
give us a quick list and we can go to
each website and see what we come up with. The
one thing I did find was I was trying to
get it. I said I wanted like twenty, and it
only had eleven, and it just started to repeat the
same list for twelve through twenty, And had I not
paid attention, I would have thought I actually had twenty.
It didn't even say like, oh, so there's limitations here,
(39:10):
but this could actually be a fun way that we
can use this exact Google method, but we can actually
use chat GPT for example, and give them a prompt
to do the same.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So you mentioned that for folks applying for your scholarship,
sorry you used chat GPT, You're out. You don't qualify
for this for the scholarship anymore. Lots of scholarships require
a written essay. Is that the case for most of
the folks who are doing the deciding, Like, oh, hey,
you used some sort of artificial intelligence to write this,
(39:40):
You're not under consideration anymore. Do you have any tips
on that front? And then like, I don't know what
makes people stand out? As a scholarship applicant in general.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, and you know what we spoke of, like the
red flags of what we don't want to see on
scholarships to apply, But the green flags are those essays.
If they are taking the time to read submissions and
they're asking you questions, what do you want to be
and why? What are your future goals and plans? Why
this college? Why do you need money? Those are things
(40:09):
that we can improve. That's where we can compete and
make ourselves more competitive. We can always tell a better story,
we can sell ourselves better. So that's actually these essays
while they are work's there. That's a good thing. The
problem with AI is it's not personal. It doesn't know
you your personal story. And writing a scholarship essay is
(40:32):
different than writing a research paper. A research paper, you
can make it just factual and you can follow the
stereotypical intro main points closing, but a scholarship essay requires
more creativity. You want it memorable, you want it to
tell a story. You want the judge to get a
feel of who the student is. Because going back to
(40:54):
the beginning, when I said why are people giving these
money this money, it's because they want to invest in
someone that they know is going to take this money
and do something with it, maybe they create a scholarship
or something in the future. These essays are what show
scholarship committees that and if we're using AI, that's just
not going to be in the essay. You might get
(41:15):
a professional sounding essay, it won't be personal, it won't
be memorable. So do I think other committees are doing
the same as us where they're throwing them out. Absolutely.
What we do is we wait until we choose a winner,
and we run it through quickly and we make sure
that they're not But I will tell you what, in
the last couple weeks, we've had multiple where our team
(41:35):
we are proofreading and we've said, this sounds like it
might be AI, went and ran it, and sure enough
it was. So there's even like a tone to it
where and we see a lot of essays, So maybe
that's why we can pick it out so well. But
you can tell I've told our parents this because we
(41:56):
speak to parents more so, and then they're kind of
funneling this to their are students. But the parents and guardians,
we've said, you need to find out and make sure
that your student's not using AI for this.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
It feels like the easy button, but ultimately it's you're
signing up for a plan for more rejection. And the
whole key here is to get these scholarships, get the money,
graduate from college debt free. On that note, we have
a few more questions we want to get to with you.
Jocelyn will get to those right after this.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
All right, we are back from the break and again
talking with Jocelyn Pearson of the Scholarship System. And Jocelyn,
there are a lot of listeners that we have who
I'm guessing they've got younger kids, right, which means they're
not sending their kids off to college anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Say, we're in that boat. Yeah, our kids are getting
in sixth grade.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
We're not really thinking about scholarships closer though, Yeah, we're
not thinking about scholarships. You are thinking about, I don't know, values,
maybe saving some money, sending some money aside. But do
you think families should start preparing now, like as you
start thinking through these different scholarships, how to find them,
even if their kids are babies, even if they're in diapers.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
We've had families ask us my child is you know,
ten years old. Is it too early to join the
scholarship system Sadly I would say yes. I'd say okay,
they were a little too early. Honestly, if I could,
I would say, sophomore year, junior year, no later in
high school. We need to hit this hard, don't you know?
Wait until senior year. That's so.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
So that's the sweet spot.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
That's the sweet spot. Really, junior year, that's when we
can submit applications. We can win money. We've got experience
under our belts to write essays, and it gives us
time to get the materials ready and then it makes
senior year so much easier. But that said, I got
more and more money every single year while I was
in college. So it also we've had families where they
(43:56):
didn't find us until they're student graduating from high school,
then found us and they said, oh no, wait a minute,
but you're saying we can still apply. Yes. And the
one family specifically that I'm thinking of, by the end
of her freshman year she had over fifteen thousand dollars
and she didn't even start until literally the week after
she graduated from high school.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
So it's never too late. But that said, we do
want to start early. If we can, it just increases
our time and our chances. As far as the younger children,
what can we be doing? I love you. What you
just mentioned values? Okay, that's something we talk a lot
about in our essay writing method. How can you choose
(44:35):
what are your values? What stories? What experiences in your
life have given you those or align with those? And
how are you going to take that into your future?
Because that is an amazing story. Usually, so as a parent,
we can think of, well, how can we help our children?
(44:55):
Are our children that are relying on us for experiences?
How can we help them figure out their values? Or
how can we help them have experiences that they can
talk about. So if our child is playing video games
all day, what are they going to be able to
write about? Not much unless maybe they're super competitive and
(45:16):
actually very high up in a league and we've now
taken trips around it, and okay, that's a different story.
That's the exception. But when we're thinking about this, what
can we do ahead of the game, it's can we
get them to shadow someone for a day? Can we
get them to take one of their passions? One example,
(45:36):
one boy loved magic tricks and after this same discussion,
they found out that he could go to Ronald McDonald
house and do magic tricks for the children and the
families there, and that was a volunteer opportunity. He didn't care,
he was just doing magic tricks, but he was bringing
all this joy. And then what an awesome story to
(45:57):
talk about.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
A unique essay right there, right like his ability to
tap into that like you're not going to get that
with chigbt.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I do exactly exactly, and or even having these discussions
with them of well, what do you think you value most?
And one thing with parents is try to let them
come up with it. We tend to pigeonhole our children
and define them. And as someone who was told I
was never athletic my entire life, and then I got
(46:27):
into sports in my twenties and I was like, wait
a minute, I'm not that terrible. I can tell you that.
You know, sometimes our families kind of have us defined incorrectly.
So what I prefer is you can actually google values
list and just have your your child go through it
(46:48):
and choose their top ten and then narrow down to
five and then narrow down to three. And that can
give them the freedom to and it might be actually
a really awesome learning experience for a parent, like WHOA,
I didn't care. I didn't know you cared about community service.
Why don't we go and volunteer at this place? So
(47:11):
that can be some fun ways that we can start
building up our student and just giving them stuff that
they can talk about in the essays long term. And
if you noticed, one of the things I did not
say was get your student involved in a million things.
That is actually the opposite of what we teach. We
say it is better to be deeper involved, deeply involved
in a few things, rather than surface level involved in
(47:33):
a million things. We don't need our kids and everything
under the sun. But if they've got something they're passionate about,
along with a few a couple other things, maybe a
part time job and maybe they babysit, or maybe they
help an elderly neighbor, you know a few things that
they can speak to that can be gold if we
have it to find in something we can really sell.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
That sounds like a relief for parents and kids alike,
because you know, over commitment is a real problem in
our culture these days. Okay, when you ask a personal
finance expert Jocelyn about saving for college, there's usually just
like this complete knee jerk five twenty nine plan suggestion. Unfortunately,
five twenty nine plans have gotten better more flexible in
recent years, and that money can be transitioned into roth
(48:17):
Higer eight dollars for your kid at some point in
the future. But in your opinion, do you think that
you know the fact that people can use scholarships to
pay for college, that it's much more accessible than people
have been led to believe. Should that cause parents to
reduce potentially what they are planning on contributing to five
twenty nine plans and maybe just kind of lessen that
(48:37):
burden on their minds of what they need to be
socking away for their kids, you know, higher education future.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
No, because you can actually there is an exception to
five twenty nine plan rules. So I love that now
it could be rolled into a retirement account, so really
there's no risk at all. If we can give that
money and put it into it, why not. But that said,
there is also an exception where if a student gets scholarships,
you can actually take that money out without that ten
(49:05):
percent penalty. You have to and check with your CPA,
make sure you know I'm not a CPA, but you do,
I think, have to pay the gains tax on it,
but you do not have to pay the penalty of
using the money on a non college related expense. So actually,
by getting scholarships, you can free up five twenty nine money.
(49:25):
So I would never we actually tell families, you know,
if you are even right up to the timeline of
going to school, if you're putting away money, why not,
And especially if you're living in a place where you
can get a tax deduction for it, If you're in
a state that incentivizes the five twenty nine plans, we're
all about them. And I'm not sure if you guys
(49:45):
have heard of the grandparent loophole. But now the FACA
does not ask about grandparent owned five twenty nine plans,
so this is actually an advantage. If it's in a
grandparent's name, it won't count against the student when applying
for financial aid, so that also is a plus, and
so putting money into that is even better. So either way,
(50:07):
I wouldn't say put the brakes on it, but also
not a reason not to do scholarships. In fact, scholarships
can make a five nine plan even more flexible.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
I love it. Very cool.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah, so, and that's something that you can start doing.
You don't have to wait until their junior year. You
can start doing that when in fact they're two years old.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
And make sure that you are also.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Putting some money in that fight twenty nine account, Jocelyn,
not just scouraging on the fancy bathing suit for your daughter.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
But this has been incredibly casing. Jocelyn's doing both.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's a both and you sound like
the kind of person both and kind of but Jocelyn,
this has been awesome. I just love the insights and
the tips that you're able to discuss.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
With us today.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Where can folks learn more about the scholarship system as
well as the ten year anniversary of the book chair
where listeners can learn more about both of those.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yes, I'm so excited to release the second edition of
this book. It is just so much better than I
ever could even imagined. So to learn more about that,
specifically the scholarship system dot com slash book of VIP.
So we'll give a little bit of a freebie if
they go there, and then they'll get kind of the
first sneak peek access to the book. When that comes
out but just the Scholarship System dot com. We've got
(51:18):
so many free resources out there for families, YouTube videos,
We're on Instagram, social media. But also if you go
to the Scholarship System dot com, we have a free
webinar and it's one hour long. I recommend parents, guardians
sitting there with your students and watching it, and it
just gives you the foundation of scholarships for free, and
it can give you kind of an idea of is
(51:40):
this something we can do? And I hope that after
listening to this the answers.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yes, awesome, Jocelyn, this is great. Thank you so much
for taking the time to join us today.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I loved it all right, man, that was such a
good conversation. It was Jocelyn. I love learning new stuff,
and I feel like I learned something. Yeah, Like I mean,
we've talked about.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Going to step free degrees and ways to pay less
for college, and this isn't this isn't uncharted.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Territory, I guess for us. But I love how it is.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
That Jocelyn and the Scholarship System specifically how they're going
about it.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
She's the pro. She did it for herself. She's not
doing it for like hundreds of other people has done
for over the past decades. So yeah, what was your
big takeaway from this conversation, dude?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
I was really digging her Google method and specifically searching
some of those terms. Right, So, whatever your your major
is going to be. Her example was engineering, but just
Google in that instance, engineering association scholarships or focus on
your your community, they're locally or passions the example that
she gave when it came to horse lovers or Young
(52:40):
Horse Writers of America or whatever it might be. But
it just takes going out there finding some of these
obscure scholarships that you have a better chance of getting
and avoiding the one specifically that make it sound too easy,
where it's a little too good to be true, the
sweepstakes versions this is right like where it's a lot
those aren't gonna be the ones that pay out most likely.
(53:03):
And just with a little bit of information, with the
tips that she was able to provide, I think a
lot of folks are going to be able to apply
for and then win a bunch of these different scholarships.
The practical advice and tips that she was able to
give there, I was really digging. Well, you're touching on here,
and she didn't use this specific term, but it made
me think of elbow grease, and like it is that willingness.
It's the same thing in real estate, to be able
(53:24):
to get your hands dirty, to see past that's what
you gotta do, maybe the ugly facade. It sounds really
nice to be able to apply for fifteen scholarships in
rapid succession while you're watching your favorite show, but that's
not going to give you the highest ROI it makes
you feel better in the moment because you're like, I
apply for fifteen scholarships. Look what I just accomplished. But
if it doesn't lead to any dollars.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Then it was wasted to just wasted your time, Yeah,
even if it was relatively little effort. So if you
actually want the system to pay off, like that's my
big takeaway is to use that elbow grease, some effort
and some time and look past maybe that low hanging fruit,
get the ladder out, get the better stuff. And it's amazing,
I think, especially when you think about what a high
school graduate or a junior or senior in high school, Matt,
(54:05):
what are they able to make hourly wage? Wise, not much,
not a ton. I mean this could pay off from
an hourly rate perspective, especially those scholarships that are potentially
going to renew year after year after year. So I
love this. I think there's a ton of wisdom here.
And yeah, how nice to graduate and be able to
buy a home instead of having the student loan debt
hanging over your head for the next fifteen twenty years. Absolutely,
(54:27):
but all right the beer. Did we mention it at
the beginning of the episode? We didn't, Okay, well.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
We enjoyed an M forty three ipa. This is by
New Orthodox and not just any old M forty three.
This is the M forty three Tart Strawberry, which is
I know it's one of your favorites. I love this, Vivie,
you kick it off. Not everyone agrees with me on
this one, like your wife. My wife does not agree.
She likes regular in forty three. A lot does not
like the tart strawberry. To me, this is like a
(54:54):
money beer. I love it because the IPA, but it's
also like a.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Little bit of free yeah, a little bit of that
fruit action going on at the same time. I think
this is a perfectly constructed beer, and it's also one
of those flavors you don't get that profile very often
in beer, so I dig it.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
I think I could handle maybe a strawberry sour. I
am with Emily because I am actually not a huge
fan of this beer. It's got this, it's got this
weird It's funny that it's his tart because what it
reminds me of is like a sweet tart, or like
what's the candy that comes in a long clear role
with like their tiny little.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Discs sweethearts, pez not pears, spreeze.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Maybe that's it, Okay, you know I'm talking about there's
like twelve or fifteen of them in there, and they're
all stacked up and they got different fruit flavor. This
kind of reminds me of that. It's kind of got
this dry, chalky sweetness that doesn't quite taste legit in
my opinion, which is why I think if it was
a sour to me, that seems a little more authentic
or it's not terrible, it's just yeah, it's also not
(55:50):
my favorite.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
It's regular.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
I'm forty three, or if you're looking, if you're looking
to step it up, I'm pretty sure we've had Boss
tweed on the show before.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
But that might be the best beer they make. Those
are fun Life nominal, so good. Yeah yeah, this free
makes awesome stuff.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Don't be turned off by the tart strawberry if that's
not your thing. New Orthodox still makes some awesome stuff
for sure.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
And you know, best friends can agree to disagree and
we can disagree. Yeah, all right, that's gonna do it
for this one. We'll put links in the show notes
to some of the things that Jason mentioned, including that
free webinar. So oh yeah, you can find that up
on our website at howtomoney dot com. That's right, buddy,
So until next time, best friends Out, Best Friends Out.
Welcome to Hout of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking scholarships to graduate debt free with
Joscelyn Pearson. Yeah, so, how.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Would you like a paid for college? Pay for college
that you didn't actually pay for? It sounds like an
absurd pipe dream, but our guest today she did it herself.
In fact, she would actually receive a cash check each
semester for any additional expenses that she might have incurred
as well. Also, she had six months in Spain paid
(00:48):
for as well. So we're talking to a professional here.
We're joined by Joscelyn Pearson. She's the founder of the
Scholarship System, which is an online resource that offers training
sessions and online courses to teach folks how to find,
how to apply for and then win these valuable scholarships
that can allow you to certainly to graduate debt free.
(01:09):
And in fact, the Scholarship System has helped families secure
over thirteen million dollars in scholarships, which is a ton
of money. We're going to explain how it is that
listeners out there can do the same. Joscelyn's going to
share all of our secrets with us today, jil Jocelyn,
thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
On the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Oh of course, Shawson, We're super excited to first question
we have to ask you. We ask everyone who comes on,
is what do you like to suplore? John? What's your
craft beer equivalent? Matt and I were spending potentially too much,
some would say on craft beer. What's that in your
life that people would look and be like, whoa, you
spent a lot of money, But hey, guess what, you're
still being smart. You're investing in saving for the future.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Oh man. Okay. So we lived in the Caribbean for
five years and we still live. We live in Charleston,
South Carolina, so still coastal where beach people. My splurge
is quality bathing suits. And I know that sounds ridiculous,
but they really make such a difference. And I just
(02:06):
got a cheap one for our daughter and she sat
on the side of the pool and immediately saw like
the picks and stuff, and I was like, see, this
is this is why.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Wait, so you said your daughter, how old is she?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
She's two and a half.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Okay, so this is a baby's bathing suit and you're
about to get her on the expensive bathingsuit train as well.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
You know what I saw actually a name brand for
a baby and it was one hundred dollars and I
was like, Okay, I cannot do this because she's going
to grow out of it in like a month, like
at least for me, hopefully I won't grow out of it.
So but they last forever when they're quality. So that's
my sporte.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
You say that in Joel and I there's this. I
want to say it's probably an Amazon brand.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's is it? Mamjic, Mamjoel?
That's it? And I've had mine, which is a great
brand name. It's like some Chinese brand exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
For like five years now, not too long ago. Came
back from the beach. I'm still rocking that bathing suit
every other day. But we also might not beat you
up as much as josson. We probably don't put it
through the wear and tear. If I lived at the beach,
I would maybe I'd have one hundred dollars yus.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I think you would, because we're about pality goods that
last longer for sure, true.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So I look at it as an investment.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Don't trick yourself into thinking that it's not gonna that's
gonna go up in value. But Jocelyn, thank you for
sharing that. But we would love to hear your debt
free higher education story because from what I understand, uh,
you weren't an A plus student necessarily, but you still
graduated with zero debt when it comes to student lens.
(03:37):
How did you go about doing that? Can you sort
of share your history, share your story with us?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Absolutely? Yeah, it was funny. Actually I didn't even care
really about my background or anything for getting into college
or anything, probably until junior year. So for those that
have students that are not even really thinking about it
years ahead, I guess that should be some good news.
(04:03):
But yeah, my SAT score was below average. Grades were good,
but I wasn't necessarily competitive, and you know, I was
in a few things that I was passionate about, but
that was about it. And then I had part time jobs.
I was not saving the world. I didn't have a
million hours of community service or anything like that, and
I for sure was no athlete. But what happened was
(04:26):
a friend's mom said to me She said, if you
can make applying to scholarships.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Your job, you can get paid for four years. And
I thought, well, that sounds awesome. I'll do one year
of work for four years of pay. Not quite how
it worked out, but it got me started. And the
thing was, at first I thought.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I was doing the right thing, but I was finding
the quick scholarships, you know, the ones that I could
just knock out while watching Gray's Anatomy, and I thought
that I would that would just cover college and a year.
Junior year kind of goes by. I don't win a penny,
and my inbox is just flooded with spam at this point,
and then I finally find a local one. It was
(05:11):
only five hundred dollars, but I won it, and so
then I started thinking, Okay, so these I did not win.
This one I did, and I started kind of tweaking
what to do. And by senior year I started seeing
the money roll in. But I wasn't one of those
kids where I got ten million dollars in offers from universities.
(05:32):
My university only offered I think it was like four
thousand a year or something like that. And so I
actually did it by getting all of these smaller dollar
scholarships that added up to a free ride. So by
the end of senior year, I had enough to cover
freshman year, and some of them renewed, so then freshman
year in college, I got a little bit more to
cover whatever the gap was for sophomore and I did
(05:52):
that each year, including study abroad. I even applied for
some extra money for that and got it, so I
got extra money for living in Spain. And so I
like to call this kind of the average kid's way
of paying for college. And so those incremental small dollar
wins along with other strategies, you know, ways to save
(06:13):
money here, cut costs there, negotiate with the college. So
it's a combination. But scholarships that was the bulk of it.
But it was really these small ones that added up
to a free ride plus some So you guys said
that earlier, But I literally received an over check every
semester to cover other expenses, which was great. And I
(06:34):
did do a part time job anyway, I'm just a
busy body. And then because of that, I was able
to save money. So actually, when I graduated college, I
had a down payment for a house and closed on
my first property two months out of college.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Okay, so over achiever status.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Justly, it really set us, like it set me up
for a very different future because I didn't have to
dig myself out of a hole, right so yeah, yeah,
and I was able to put money away rather than
having to put it all towards debt payments or towards
trying to survive in college.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So the job that you got, instead of using that
to help pay for some of the cost of college,
the scholarship money's covering that, so you can start banking
that stuff and setting yourself for a fantastic financial future.
By the time you graduate, like you're ready to begin
full fledged adulthood, buying a home. And let's be honest, too,
that's about the only time in life you're going to
(07:29):
find someone else to cover the bill for you to
take a trip abroad, right, Like, can you talk to
us like about how that I'm guessing no one's offering
to pay for your trip to Spain these days, Josin.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
You know what, I always joked that my best paid
time in my life was when I was in college.
Like the hourly rate was probably one hundred and two
hundred dollars an hour, something like that no, no one's
begging to send me to Spain right now, but do
you know what it's and actually through the scholarship system.
So we've now been doing this for a decade, which
is unbelievable. We're releasing a new addition of the book
(08:00):
just it. We're really celebrating this, which is crazy. But
we've been giving out scholarships, so we're actually on the
other side of it. But you see, you see the why. Right.
Of course they weren't thinking let's just let this girl
go have fun in Spain. But it's more we're investing
in the future, and we know by giving this money
to this student, hopefully they're going to do something with
(08:24):
it and it'll come full circle, right then maybe they'll
contribute to a scholarship, or maybe they'll hire an intern,
or maybe they'll let someone shadow them. So it really
has this kind of full circle view of why people
are giving the money. And actually that helps applicants because
when you keep that in mind and you're trying to
sell yourself to them, that is actually something to keep
(08:45):
in the back of your mind of what are they
looking for?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You mentioned applying for some different scholarships while you're sitting
on the couch watching TV crazy anatomy.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That's like the equivalent of the Bear these days for people.
So it's like fifteen years ago the Bay. Yeah, that's
what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You're looking at over a decade ago, which kind of
hammers own my point, like it's got to be easier
to find some of these different scholarships these days, as
opposed to like, I know, there was the internet you
ten fifteen years ago, but talk to me about that.
Just the difference in some of the technology and the
availability and how easily accessible I guess it is to
find different scholarships these days.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Ooh yeah, that's actually I don't think I've ever had
anyone ask me that. That's a great question, because especially
with AI, it's changing things, of course, and actually in
this book Revision, we just did a whole chapter on
AI for that reason. But the one thing that actually
technology has made it a little bit more difficult is
because people learned, oh well, if I add a scholarship
(09:44):
to my website, it helps my seo, or oh let
me put a scholarship out there just so that people
market for us. So we're going to put it as
a drawing. So you have to get as many shares
and likes as possible in order for your entry to
be considered. That's something that we have to really point
out to students. If it's based on luck like that,
(10:04):
that's not we're worth our time. We don't want it
to be based on luck. That's one of our first
signs of okay this is And that's what I was doing.
I was doing what I call sweepstake or drawing scholarships.
That's why I was able to do them while I
was watching TV because I didn't have to focus. I
didn't have to write a well thought out essay, I
(10:24):
didn't have to collect transcripts, recommendation letters, the works. And
sure they were faster upfront, but long term, I had
submitted maybe thirty of those and didn't receive a penny.
But then I put a couple hours into a solid
essay and I finally won five hundred dollars. So those
sweep steak ones have definitely picked up with technology because
(10:47):
it's so much easier to reach people through social media
and people can put stuff out on sites, so you
have to be leary, and there's also a lot of
good intentions behind some sites where they say, okay, just
submit one applic and then you can just send it
to all these different scholarships. But let's think about every
other teenager applying to scholarships. It's probably the ones they're
(11:08):
going to apply to as well, right, It's exactly although
it actually in the end is not because they're not.
The chances of winning are so slim because there's so
many submissions. So actually we do more work upfront and
do it kind of a little bit of an old
school way. We call it the scholarship systems Google method,
(11:30):
where we use Google to find the ones that are
not on these new search engines and in these AI
created softwares, so that we're only competing against the pool
that was willing to do the work, and so we
find scholarships. Actually one specifically, we've had our students win
it every year for the last few years because they
(11:52):
get so few applications. And I like to think our
members always submit better quality applications as well, but said
they really only get a few apps and so the
competition is just way less than these where you can
just oh, submit one application to one hundred different scholarships.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So yeah, technologies. It's changing things, but I'm finding actually
the the original strategy is actually an advantage at this point.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, mean that makes sense because, like you said, folks
are I mean, basically what you're saying, folks are unwilling
to do the legwork they're they're they're unwilling to do.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
They want the easy button.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They want to go to the site that propagates and
sends their application to.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
All these other sites. It's so easy. It's easy to
get the crab apple off the bottom tree. But if
you get at the ladder and you get the one
on the like, it's just it's at the juice impeach
like that's a little a little higher up. Yeah, exactly.
Matten knows from experience. He's got a little peach tree
and sting. Let's let's talk about specifically student loans. O,
So I want to talk I have so many more
questions we do on scholarship specifically, but I feel like
(12:56):
maybe from a broad perspective, part of the goal of
getting scholars is to avoid student loans. And we all
know what's going on with student loan debt in this country.
The headline number the number of Americans millions and millions
and millions of Americans just inundated with student loan debt,
having a hard time, especially if they don't graduate paying
(13:16):
off that student loan debt. You want to make student
loans completely abnormal? Why is that your mission? Jocelyn?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Okay, So, if you guys don't mind, I would love
to read you something because this actually just came in
right before we hopped on this recording and all that'd
be awesome to So a woman one of our moms posted,
she said, I just want to thank you for this
program for providing a plan to get a debt free degree.
When freshman year was paid for, I thought, Okay, this
won't be so bad if we have to borrow a
(13:43):
little in the future. Well, second year was done with
scholarships and a payment plan that she could handle on
her own with a campus job at the gym. Well,
now we are heading into final year, not even a
payment plan will be needed. This works, Stick to it.
It's so worth it. Find your niche and remember small
scholarships add up and cover the costs. This is the
best thing I've ever done, and I literally have goosebumps reading.
(14:08):
So we like screenshot these and every Monday we celebrate them,
and that is why we do what we do. I mean,
it is to see this. And we've had students where
they're like, I never thought I could go to this school.
I never thought that this would even be in my future.
I have had students where they didn't think they could
go to college because they just thought, well, I have
to cover it myself or you know. And their parents
(14:31):
find this and they're like, Okay, we can't pay for college,
but we could pay for this. Why don't we make
this our effort and they get a whole new future.
So for me, that is what keeps us going. People sharing.
We literally have wins every week that we celebrate. But
that said, as far as avoiding student loan debt, I
(14:51):
have seen the consequences. So during the eight nine crisis,
my father lost his job and along with so many people, right,
and that was really eye opening to me to see
them struggle and panic and not sure you know, where
(15:15):
was money going to come in and all this stuff.
And then on top of that, actually that year we
also watched Financial Peace University and Dave Ramsey was talking
about the debt, snowball and all this stuff, and it
just scared me so badly from debt, and that moment
on I said, I never I don't ever want to
(15:35):
be in debt. I don't want to be in a
situation where if the economy crashes, I have no control
over my situation in that moment, especially if these debt payments,
you know, they're not going to stop asking for their money.
And so I just became really really debt averse, very
dead averse at a young age. And a part of
it was growing up through that crash, you know, and
(15:57):
so that started it. And then having all the opportunities
that I've had because of not having it, and then
seeing friends that are you know, now a decade out
of college and still paying on debt and trying to
start families, and just it. Every experience that I see
with them and versus are us gives me even more
(16:20):
of a passion to help people avoid the student loan debt.
So there's a lot that goes into it, But the
initial the initial thing was actually I had a real
deep fear of ever being in debt. I've never paid
interest outside of a mortgage.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
A personal aversion to it early on. Yeah, we've also
just normalize it and it doesn't need to be normal.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, and we talk about that. Actually, we call our
families hashtag rebel families, and we say you have to
rebel against the norm, because they say the norm is
white picket fence. Borrow the money. Everyone just does it,
you know, student loan bills, they're just part of the
par for the course, and we say no. And that's
(17:02):
why so whenever people have their wins, they say, you know,
we're a hashtag rebel family. We've done it. And I
love it because I'm like, yeah, we want to be rebels.
We want a different outcome than the norm, and that
means we have to be a little rebellious.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
The normal family doesn't sleep as well at night either,
by the way. Yeah, well so, and that when that
you shared, something that.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Stood out to me was the fact that her daughter
maybe has a job at the campus gym.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's something that you mentioned as well, that you have
a job.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
How much of it do you think has to do
with the fact that so many parents and so many
students are maybe unwilling to even consider that because in
their minds, that's not a part of what their college
experience should involve.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I feel like that there's.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Almost like and I hate even using this term because
it feels so overused. But there is like.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
An entitlement that a lot of students who are enrolled.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
At universities that they're looking for a certain kind of experience.
How much of that do you think comes into play?
Speaker 3 (17:58):
I do think that's part of it. I think that's
also what we're trying to grab when we said hashtag
rebel families like.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
We are going. It's a nice.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Way to say you're going to do things differently, including
maximizing college. I do think that's part of it. And
sometimes I feel like I actually have to give parents
permission to say no or to create boundaries with their student.
Sometimes parents they think, well I didn't get this experience,
(18:27):
and so I want my kid to And so they
take money out of their retirement accounts or say, oh,
don't worry about getting a part time job. I'll send
you this monthly budget. And we tell them you can
borrow for college, you cannot borrow for retirement. Please do
not put yourself in a financial situation that you cannot
undo because of a college experience. Right, And so this
(18:52):
is something that we stress with parents, and that includes
pushing our children to have a part time job which
we share actually is to tally if it's twenty hours
or less, they tend to do better, They tend to
have better GPAs they get involved. It forces some structure
for students. So actually, I would almost say the experience
ends up better by having a little part time job.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But yeah, there is some much more skin in the game.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah, but there is something to say about the type
of families we work with, and they're the ones that
want to get their elbows a little dirty, you know.
So we haven't had an issue, we haven't had too
much pushback with that. But I do think that the
families that probably see this in like, oh, we can't
do this, they might have a little bit more of that.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, well, scrappiness is undervalued. You talk about the three
different kinds of fits that you're looking for when you're
talking to a student who wants to go to college, personal, academic,
and financial, and you basically say to check out the
financial fit first, because hey, if the other two are great,
but the financial fit isn't great, it's probably still not
a great school for you to end up at. And
we're not just talking about the sticker price. And Matt
(19:57):
and I We've talked to Ron Lieber from New York
Times about this. He written a lot about specifically the
sticker price of college versus what people actually pay. It
still just feels so opaque. So how do people figure
out whether or not the school they want to go to,
or let's say, instead of just the school their top
five schools, how do they figure out which ones are
a good financial fit or not.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I mean, we have a whole hour long lesson on that,
but I'm going to try to break it down. I mean,
the first thing is actually a lot of if we're
going to push the easy button, a lot of schools
have net price calculators on their website and it'll ask
about the student's information background, GPA, SADACT scores, and it'll
run it against money that they have, and so it'll say, okay,
(20:39):
your net price at this school is X, and like
you just said, it's very rarely the actual price what
we teach. So when you're focusing on financial fit first,
the reason that we want to do those because sometimes
you can uncover schools that you had no idea could
be affordable. For example, one of our students got to
(21:01):
go to Duke and graduated debt free. She's now it's
been four years, graduated completely debt free. They were not
even going to consider this school.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeh, I'm pretty sure that's not a cheap one. I
have heard of that school.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Respect when you're talking about affordable schools.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Exactly right. People think that they have to go to
a less than college whatever they define that as, in
order to find a financial fit. Sometimes it's not the case.
So in this case, or in a lot of universities cases,
what there is is something called cost of attendance. This
is what the total bill should be. This is supposed
to include all their fees and stuff, so beyond just tuition.
(21:39):
Then you have a number from FAFSA. It used to
be called Expected Family Contribution EFC. Now it's SAI Student
Aid Index. That's a whole other conversation, but it basically
says what your family can pay. When you subtract the
total cost, minds what your family can pay, it leaves
you a number, and this is your gap. Some schools
have a comit mint to meeting that gap. They say, okay,
(22:03):
we will cover one hundred percent of it. Some of
them even say we will make sure that it's one
hundred percent covered without any debt.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Wow, it's like a guarantee.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yes, And of course these are going to be more
competitive schools to get into. You've got to get in
because that's a great deal. So the reason they do
that is they really want to make sure they're getting
the top of the student pool and money's not an issue.
So that's why they're doing this. So say a student
gets a low number from fafs of right, and they
(22:33):
apply to a school that's sixty thousand a year, but
their FATS is only five thousand a year. That means
that that school has to guarantee them the other fifty
five thousand dollars. Well, we just took a sixty thousand
dollars school and made it cheaper than the community college.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, so incredible. Yes, I know how to speak of
a factor by the way, our grades and extracurriculars in
this because you mentioned at the top of the of
this interview, Hey, I wasn't some a plus student killer
SAT score, her grades, her grades were good, she wasn't
a good SAT taking. Yeah okay, but you also weren't
like eighteen clubs all that kind of stuff like that.
(23:09):
You're abnormally active in that way. So how much of
a factor. I mean, obviously, going to Duke, you gotta
have pretty good grades I think solid SAT score. But
then how much does that factor into what people are
able to qualify for financial aid wise?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
So it depends on your family's background. So if you
have financial need, then there's that side of it. If
you are competitive, then we would go to the merit
side of it. So actually this is where we kind
of figure out where does a student fall in. Are
they able to compete on that level, then okay, we
can go after the ones that have grades. But this
is another piece that goes into your original question about
(23:44):
find where do we find schools that offer us money
or how do we find out what our price is?
Say our student is a good student, but they're not
Harvard good, which would have been for sure me, then
maybe we look at a school where their average is
their average SATs or average acts are a little bit lower.
So you can see, that's all public data that we
(24:05):
can pull where we can actually look up these averages
and if we can find out if we're in the
top twentieth percentile of that school's average, then the chances
of us getting money are higher. So This is where
literally the same number from FAFSA can mean five different
offers at five different schools, completely different paintings, same with
(24:27):
our same grades can mean completely different things at five
different schools depending on their poll. So this is where
it gets crazy, and this is why it's such a
big market. Really, why there's so many people in this
space now. Really it comes down to if we can
cast our net wide and go to those net price calculators,
put in our data see if we can be eligible
(24:49):
either financial aid, merit or both, and find out what
our price is, then we can look at, okay, do
they have our major? And then we can look at well,
maybe I will love this school. That's where we're uncovering
schools that we didn't even realize are amazing and we
don't have to borrow a ton of debt.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I feel like you're taking the moneyball approach to figuring
out which college that some of these students should go to,
Billy Bean of Higher Education.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
That's Jocelyn. Well, you mentioned FAFSA.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
We're actually going to touch on that and just how
does that students and families out there can go about
finding I mean, you touched on it. A little bit,
but we really want to dive into that how students
can find these different scholarships.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Will get to all that and more right after the break.
We're back from the break, still talking with Jocelyn Pearson
about gain scholarships, graduating debt free, and it's beyond scholarships.
We've talked about specifically ways that you can find to
(25:49):
get the school to pony up and pay for a
big portion of your education. Joscelyn, we want to talk
a lot more about scholarships in just a second, but
we were just covering the FAFSA and the FAFSA obviously
man fell flat on its face this year, and I
can't image even imagine what it was like as a
parent or a student filling out the FATA and then
(26:09):
seeing all these schools basically had to say, Okay, we
have to come up with our own system this year
to figure out financial aid. Right. How big of a
whiff was that and how has that impacted students in
their quest to find money to help pay for school.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Yeah, it was well, we were all preparing for it.
Everyone in the space of college and higher ed was
just holding their breath, just waiting because we knew it
was going to be a disaster. And also, I don't
know if you knew this, but they launched it on
I think it was like New Year's Eve. I was like,
can you please let these people enjoy their holiday?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And not really they should have done it on Christmas Day.
I think that would have been better, right, maybe yeah,
maybe Christmas Eve?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
So you were staying up until midnight exactly, no other
important things to do.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Oh my goodness. We were telling all our families just
ignore it for a couple of weeks because it's going
to be a mess. And it was. But that said,
it definitely delayed, delayed the financial aid packages at places.
People couldn't make decisions like they wanted to. But I
actually think it worked out for some families because they
(27:10):
had no clue what was going to happen, so they
hit the scholarships harder. So we have had some huge
wins over the last six months seven months. Families just
had time and space to and actually motivation. I think
that's the bigger thing. That makes sense to get money
(27:30):
from other sources because they had no clue what they
were looking at. So I feel like there has just
been a huge energy and it could also just be
we're getting so good at what we do. I don't know,
but something this year the energy behind the money that
these families are applying for and bringing in. But I
feel like part of it really lit a fire under
(27:52):
some of these families to find ways to pay the
bill because they just didn't know what that financial situation
was going to look like.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Makes sense, There's a lot of uncertainty there, Jocelyn. Let's
talk about private scholarships, like I'm thinking of maybe the
ones that have somebody's name associated with it. Maybe there's
so and so memorial scholarship, Yeah, or like I think
you maybe even mentioned the first one you received was
like a local one there for you. But where should
folks look right Like, we're not talking about the different
packages at a university that a university is going to
(28:21):
to dole out in order to attract a student or
an applicant, or talking about some of these additional ways
that you can fund your college. How should folks go
about finding those different scholarships?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Absolutely so, this is my bread and butter. This is
the stuff that I love because, like I said, my
university only gave me so much. I had to find
it from these private sources, and a lot of students do. Especially.
We've had some students where they say, I want to
go to the school. I don't care about financial fit.
This is a school. And it's like, okay, then you
have to find this money from outside sources. And the
(28:55):
beautiful thing about this is they can be money can
be offered from anyone. There are Elks clubs, rotary clubs, ptas, ptsays.
I've seen construction companies, grocery stores, credit unions, banks, doctor's offices,
lawyer's offices, you name it. There are people funding scholarships,
which is awesome. And I've even had students ask their employer, hey,
(29:18):
do you offer scholarship and the employers like, hm, I
never thought about that, Maybe I will, and they do
and the student gets money.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
The first one to see that scholarship. I love that.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, they literally created a scholarship. I've had a student
go to their department at their at their college and said, hey,
do you guys do any kind of outside scholarships besides
part of the admissions, And they're like, if you build
this spreadsheet, we'll give you some money. And they just
created this thousand dollars scholarship for this.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Kid, also just being a little bit of a squeaky wheel, right.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Oh yeah, right, So but as far as finding them, Okay,
this is going to sound so super super simple, but
people overlook this. Okay, this is our Google method. We're
going to go to Google and we are literally going
to search very specifically. Say, for example, we want to
become an engineer, I would search engineering Association scholarships. Now
(30:12):
why association, Because what I'm going to look for is
I'm actually going to find websites of the providers of
the scholarships. So your first results will be Fastweb, dot com,
scholarships dot com, these big search engines that we talked
about earlier. You can go to those. Save those for last, though.
What I want to do is keep scrolling down to
(30:34):
Engineers of America dot org or something like that, and
then you'll see in the UURL it probably says slash scholarship.
When I click on that, it takes me directly to
a scholarship. Most likely it's legitimate because it's an association organization.
I already know, Hey, I want to be an engineer. Okay,
so I'm right there. I've probably met their criteria in
(30:55):
many ways. Now I just need to look at deadline.
Did it happen yet? Well, if you're following our tips,
then you're ahead of the game and you're doing this
ahead of the time. If not, maybe you missed the deadline,
but you can apply next year. Okay, let's save it
with a reminder for next year. So we're gonna do
this search and I open up you know, five to
ten results from this search, and I just slowly work
(31:18):
my way through them. And what I'm doing is I'm
finding scholarships that are not on those search engines, that
are less competitive because of that, but also are legitimate.
I know that I can trust them. We had a
student actually get a trip out to Hawaii because he
won one this exact way. It was an engineering scholarship.
So that's one of the big searches.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Is are you saying that basically, because everyone goes to
fast Web and Skali, anything is posted there is going
to be inundated with applicants, and because of that, you
gotta find you gotta go to the second page of Google,
which is where no one ever goes.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Pretty much, Yeah, pretty much. I mean I don't want
to go black and white like and just say don't
use those but we have a lot inside that we
update every single semester. But we always tell them that
just use those last first. Do these searches. We have
a whole list of different phrases that you can brainstorm.
Do all those Google searches, find what you find, and
(32:14):
then you can go to those search engines. So they're
not all junk on there. It's just that you're not
going to find the ones that we are finding it
as well.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Okay, so you're multiple times you said that they're likely
going to be legitimate because they're associated with an association, right,
like some sort of group.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
But talk about that, right.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Because I think there's a chance that some folks might
find themselves and they're like, oh, they're saying they got
there's a five thousand dollars scholarship here as long as
I provide them with my social security.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, what are some of the red.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Flags I guess folks should look out for when they're
looking for some of this free money on the internet.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yes, and I can give you a few more searches.
We can come back to that beyond association. But regardless
of any scholarship, never ever ever give a social security
The only exception to this okay, and I please take
this everyone. Note this is only if we've already won
the money, and that is your student ID. I know
(33:13):
that sounds so crazy that universities would use a social
as a student ID, but they some do nowadays. I
like to think they're getting smarter and they now give
students a random number instead. But unless it is to
literally send your student account number, and that is what
it is, never ever social. You should not pay to
(33:33):
apply for scholarship. Okay. This is different than paying, say
for the scholarship system that is an educational based course
teaching you how to do this. It's also different than
joining a club that you get benefits from other than
just applying for their scholarship. But if it literally says,
hey pay fifty dollars to apply for this scholarship, there
(33:55):
was always one that came up. It was on Italian
something related to Italian citizenship. No, we don't pay to
apply to a scholarship. Okay, there has to be some
other perk to joining that organization. So no social Security number.
We don't want to pay to play. And if it's
if we here enter to win or weekly drawing, monthly drawing,
(34:17):
any kind of wording around sweepstakes that is based on
luck that's out of our control. Those are not the
ones we want to focus on. And then as far
as what they say, also a trigger word where it's
a red flag is easy. So if they say oh, no,
essay scholarship or easy scholarship right there, you know that
it's probably more a sweepstake based one. So those are
(34:39):
our kind of red flags where we say, okay, these
are not the ones we want to focus on. We
want to go another way.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
So Johnson, I'm kind of lazy. I would love like, hey,
two hours, get the ten thousand dollars scholarship, call it
a day boom. How nice? I mean, that would be
so nice, right if the world worked like that and
one scholarship was going to do you. But you've kind
of hinted at the a few times. But a bunch
of smaller scholarships is really what's going to get you
across the finish line. So yeah, I don't know. Micro
(35:08):
scholarships are worth the effort, yes, And how small can
these scholarships get? How many do we need to be
applying to I mean, what's it look like? And how
much effort do they require?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Before, if you don't mind. The other scholarship is actually
local community foundations that you can search, so just like
if you're in Orlando, it'd be Orlando Foundation Scholarship. And
this actually ties into what you're asking here, because a
lot of times foundations, local foundations will have dozens of scholarships,
anywhere from five hundred to one thousand to two thousand dollars.
(35:40):
And what's great about that is actually if you get
those as a senior in high school, a lot of
times you can reapply as a college student. So it's
not necessarily automatically renewable, but as an alumni excuse me,
as an alumni, you get access to it, so you
can keep on applying. But since you are a previous
and your chances of winning get higher and higher because
(36:02):
they know, okay, you're still doing it, you're doing great,
We're going to keep giving you money. So that's an
example where one organization, the scholarship might be five hundred dollars,
but maybe it turns into more money in the future years.
I had one like that where each year they gave
me a little bit more, a little bit more in.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
The fact that yeah, it's five hundred bucks but times four, like, yeah,
it's a lot of money up.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah. I would say my biggest win was four thousand
a year. So anywhere from five hundred to four thousand
dollars per school year was the range that I was
really working in.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Okay, so you mentioned you kind of circle back around
when it came to like the Google method. You mentioned
the association was searching for like whatever town that you're
living in, like searching so like you said, Orlando, so
Orlando Foundation scholarship. That's one of the other tactics. Are
there any other keywords that folks should be looking for
as they're trying to get really practical and sort of
nitty gritty with their Google searches.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yeah, And some people with that, they'll say, oh, well,
we live in a small town. You can go to
nearby towns and a lot of times it'll be a
county or region. So we can kind of cast them
at a little wider I just used I don't know
where our lamp came from, but another search could actually.
So you've got let's see, we've got major associations. We
(37:20):
have the community foundations, and then another one is actually
passions and this is hilarious. So we had one student
who loved horses, and I literally googled scholarships for horse
lovers but again simple but not easy. We scrolled down
and we found it was like young horse Riders dot
(37:42):
org or something like that, and I'm like, okay, this
clearly is aligned and slash Scholarships was the url we
clicked on there and there were six that she could
apply for. That's awesome, I know, so even passions that
could be another one. Scholarships for public speakers, or scholarships
for students, for students who video game. You can get
(38:05):
so creative with this. I mean, and you know I will.
I'm gonna throw in an AI tip here. Okay, we
are actually going through our scholarship winners right now. We're
choosing them today. Some of them have used AI to
write essays. Of course we check that and they are
disqualified immediately. But a way that we can use AI
(38:27):
is actually we can even ask AI, hey, can you
find me a list of scholarships for horse lovers? And
that I have tested. You have to be careful, you
have to, you know, use our discretion that we're teaching. Okay,
doesn't say easy sweepstakes drawings. You know, we have to
know to spot the scams, but at least it can
(38:48):
give us a quick list and we can go to
each website and see what we come up with. The
one thing I did find was I was trying to
get it. I said I wanted like twenty, and it
only had eleven, and it just started to repeat the
same list for twelve through twenty, And had I not
paid attention, I would have thought I actually had twenty.
It didn't even say like, oh, so there's limitations here,
(39:10):
but this could actually be a fun way that we
can use this exact Google method, but we can actually
use chat GPT for example, and give them a prompt
to do the same.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So you mentioned that for folks applying for your scholarship,
sorry you used chat GPT, You're out. You don't qualify
for this for the scholarship anymore. Lots of scholarships require
a written essay. Is that the case for most of
the folks who are doing the deciding, Like, oh, hey,
you used some sort of artificial intelligence to write this,
(39:40):
You're not under consideration anymore. Do you have any tips
on that front? And then like, I don't know what
makes people stand out? As a scholarship applicant in general.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, and you know what we spoke of, like the
red flags of what we don't want to see on
scholarships to apply, But the green flags are those essays.
If they are taking the time to read submissions and
they're asking you questions, what do you want to be
and why? What are your future goals and plans? Why
this college? Why do you need money? Those are things
(40:09):
that we can improve. That's where we can compete and
make ourselves more competitive. We can always tell a better story,
we can sell ourselves better. So that's actually these essays
while they are work's there. That's a good thing. The
problem with AI is it's not personal. It doesn't know
you your personal story. And writing a scholarship essay is
(40:32):
different than writing a research paper. A research paper, you
can make it just factual and you can follow the
stereotypical intro main points closing, but a scholarship essay requires
more creativity. You want it memorable, you want it to
tell a story. You want the judge to get a
feel of who the student is. Because going back to
(40:54):
the beginning, when I said why are people giving these
money this money, it's because they want to invest in
someone that they know is going to take this money
and do something with it, maybe they create a scholarship
or something in the future. These essays are what show
scholarship committees that and if we're using AI, that's just
not going to be in the essay. You might get
(41:15):
a professional sounding essay, it won't be personal, it won't
be memorable. So do I think other committees are doing
the same as us where they're throwing them out. Absolutely.
What we do is we wait until we choose a winner,
and we run it through quickly and we make sure
that they're not But I will tell you what, in
the last couple weeks, we've had multiple where our team
(41:35):
we are proofreading and we've said, this sounds like it
might be AI, went and ran it, and sure enough
it was. So there's even like a tone to it
where and we see a lot of essays, So maybe
that's why we can pick it out so well. But
you can tell I've told our parents this because we
(41:56):
speak to parents more so, and then they're kind of
funneling this to their are students. But the parents and guardians,
we've said, you need to find out and make sure
that your student's not using AI for this.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
It feels like the easy button, but ultimately it's you're
signing up for a plan for more rejection. And the
whole key here is to get these scholarships, get the money,
graduate from college debt free. On that note, we have
a few more questions we want to get to with you.
Jocelyn will get to those right after this.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
All right, we are back from the break and again
talking with Jocelyn Pearson of the Scholarship System. And Jocelyn,
there are a lot of listeners that we have who
I'm guessing they've got younger kids, right, which means they're
not sending their kids off to college anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Say, we're in that boat. Yeah, our kids are getting
in sixth grade.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
We're not really thinking about scholarships closer though, Yeah, we're
not thinking about scholarships. You are thinking about, I don't know, values,
maybe saving some money, sending some money aside. But do
you think families should start preparing now, like as you
start thinking through these different scholarships, how to find them,
even if their kids are babies, even if they're in diapers.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
We've had families ask us my child is you know,
ten years old. Is it too early to join the
scholarship system Sadly I would say yes. I'd say okay,
they were a little too early. Honestly, if I could,
I would say, sophomore year, junior year, no later in
high school. We need to hit this hard, don't you know?
Wait until senior year. That's so.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
So that's the sweet spot.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
That's the sweet spot. Really, junior year, that's when we
can submit applications. We can win money. We've got experience
under our belts to write essays, and it gives us
time to get the materials ready and then it makes
senior year so much easier. But that said, I got
more and more money every single year while I was
in college. So it also we've had families where they
(43:56):
didn't find us until they're student graduating from high school,
then found us and they said, oh no, wait a minute,
but you're saying we can still apply. Yes. And the
one family specifically that I'm thinking of, by the end
of her freshman year she had over fifteen thousand dollars
and she didn't even start until literally the week after
she graduated from high school.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
So it's never too late. But that said, we do
want to start early. If we can, it just increases
our time and our chances. As far as the younger children,
what can we be doing? I love you. What you
just mentioned values? Okay, that's something we talk a lot
about in our essay writing method. How can you choose
(44:35):
what are your values? What stories? What experiences in your
life have given you those or align with those? And
how are you going to take that into your future?
Because that is an amazing story. Usually, so as a parent,
we can think of, well, how can we help our children?
(44:55):
Are our children that are relying on us for experiences?
How can we help them figure out their values? Or
how can we help them have experiences that they can
talk about. So if our child is playing video games
all day, what are they going to be able to
write about? Not much unless maybe they're super competitive and
(45:16):
actually very high up in a league and we've now
taken trips around it, and okay, that's a different story.
That's the exception. But when we're thinking about this, what
can we do ahead of the game, it's can we
get them to shadow someone for a day? Can we
get them to take one of their passions? One example,
(45:36):
one boy loved magic tricks and after this same discussion,
they found out that he could go to Ronald McDonald
house and do magic tricks for the children and the
families there, and that was a volunteer opportunity. He didn't care,
he was just doing magic tricks, but he was bringing
all this joy. And then what an awesome story to
(45:57):
talk about.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
A unique essay right there, right like his ability to
tap into that like you're not going to get that
with chigbt.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I do exactly exactly, and or even having these discussions
with them of well, what do you think you value most?
And one thing with parents is try to let them
come up with it. We tend to pigeonhole our children
and define them. And as someone who was told I
was never athletic my entire life, and then I got
(46:27):
into sports in my twenties and I was like, wait
a minute, I'm not that terrible. I can tell you that.
You know, sometimes our families kind of have us defined incorrectly.
So what I prefer is you can actually google values
list and just have your your child go through it
(46:48):
and choose their top ten and then narrow down to
five and then narrow down to three. And that can
give them the freedom to and it might be actually
a really awesome learning experience for a parent, like WHOA,
I didn't care. I didn't know you cared about community service.
Why don't we go and volunteer at this place? So
(47:11):
that can be some fun ways that we can start
building up our student and just giving them stuff that
they can talk about in the essays long term. And
if you noticed, one of the things I did not
say was get your student involved in a million things.
That is actually the opposite of what we teach. We
say it is better to be deeper involved, deeply involved
in a few things, rather than surface level involved in
(47:33):
a million things. We don't need our kids and everything
under the sun. But if they've got something they're passionate about,
along with a few a couple other things, maybe a
part time job and maybe they babysit, or maybe they
help an elderly neighbor, you know a few things that
they can speak to that can be gold if we
have it to find in something we can really sell.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
That sounds like a relief for parents and kids alike,
because you know, over commitment is a real problem in
our culture these days. Okay, when you ask a personal
finance expert Jocelyn about saving for college, there's usually just
like this complete knee jerk five twenty nine plan suggestion. Unfortunately,
five twenty nine plans have gotten better more flexible in
recent years, and that money can be transitioned into roth
(48:17):
Higer eight dollars for your kid at some point in
the future. But in your opinion, do you think that
you know the fact that people can use scholarships to
pay for college, that it's much more accessible than people
have been led to believe. Should that cause parents to
reduce potentially what they are planning on contributing to five
twenty nine plans and maybe just kind of lessen that
(48:37):
burden on their minds of what they need to be
socking away for their kids, you know, higher education future.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
No, because you can actually there is an exception to
five twenty nine plan rules. So I love that now
it could be rolled into a retirement account, so really
there's no risk at all. If we can give that
money and put it into it, why not. But that said,
there is also an exception where if a student gets scholarships,
you can actually take that money out without that ten
(49:05):
percent penalty. You have to and check with your CPA,
make sure you know I'm not a CPA, but you do,
I think, have to pay the gains tax on it,
but you do not have to pay the penalty of
using the money on a non college related expense. So actually,
by getting scholarships, you can free up five twenty nine money.
(49:25):
So I would never we actually tell families, you know,
if you are even right up to the timeline of
going to school, if you're putting away money, why not,
And especially if you're living in a place where you
can get a tax deduction for it, If you're in
a state that incentivizes the five twenty nine plans, we're
all about them. And I'm not sure if you guys
(49:45):
have heard of the grandparent loophole. But now the FACA
does not ask about grandparent owned five twenty nine plans,
so this is actually an advantage. If it's in a
grandparent's name, it won't count against the student when applying
for financial aid, so that also is a plus, and
so putting money into that is even better. So either way,
(50:07):
I wouldn't say put the brakes on it, but also
not a reason not to do scholarships. In fact, scholarships
can make a five nine plan even more flexible.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
I love it. Very cool.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah, so, and that's something that you can start doing.
You don't have to wait until their junior year. You
can start doing that when in fact they're two years old.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
And make sure that you are also.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Putting some money in that fight twenty nine account, Jocelyn,
not just scouraging on the fancy bathing suit for your daughter.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
But this has been incredibly casing. Jocelyn's doing both.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's a both and you sound like
the kind of person both and kind of but Jocelyn,
this has been awesome. I just love the insights and
the tips that you're able to discuss.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
With us today.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Where can folks learn more about the scholarship system as
well as the ten year anniversary of the book chair
where listeners can learn more about both of those.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yes, I'm so excited to release the second edition of
this book. It is just so much better than I
ever could even imagined. So to learn more about that,
specifically the scholarship system dot com slash book of VIP.
So we'll give a little bit of a freebie if
they go there, and then they'll get kind of the
first sneak peek access to the book. When that comes
out but just the Scholarship System dot com. We've got
(51:18):
so many free resources out there for families, YouTube videos,
We're on Instagram, social media. But also if you go
to the Scholarship System dot com, we have a free
webinar and it's one hour long. I recommend parents, guardians
sitting there with your students and watching it, and it
just gives you the foundation of scholarships for free, and
it can give you kind of an idea of is
(51:40):
this something we can do? And I hope that after
listening to this the answers.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yes, awesome, Jocelyn, this is great. Thank you so much
for taking the time to join us today.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I loved it all right, man, that was such a
good conversation. It was Jocelyn. I love learning new stuff,
and I feel like I learned something. Yeah, Like I mean,
we've talked about.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Going to step free degrees and ways to pay less
for college, and this isn't this isn't uncharted.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Territory, I guess for us. But I love how it is.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
That Jocelyn and the Scholarship System specifically how they're going
about it.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
She's the pro. She did it for herself. She's not
doing it for like hundreds of other people has done
for over the past decades. So yeah, what was your
big takeaway from this conversation, dude?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
I was really digging her Google method and specifically searching
some of those terms. Right, So, whatever your your major
is going to be. Her example was engineering, but just
Google in that instance, engineering association scholarships or focus on
your your community, they're locally or passions the example that
she gave when it came to horse lovers or Young
(52:40):
Horse Writers of America or whatever it might be. But
it just takes going out there finding some of these
obscure scholarships that you have a better chance of getting
and avoiding the one specifically that make it sound too easy,
where it's a little too good to be true, the
sweepstakes versions this is right like where it's a lot
those aren't gonna be the ones that pay out most likely.
(53:03):
And just with a little bit of information, with the
tips that she was able to provide, I think a
lot of folks are going to be able to apply
for and then win a bunch of these different scholarships.
The practical advice and tips that she was able to
give there, I was really digging. Well, you're touching on here,
and she didn't use this specific term, but it made
me think of elbow grease, and like it is that willingness.
It's the same thing in real estate, to be able
(53:24):
to get your hands dirty, to see past that's what
you gotta do, maybe the ugly facade. It sounds really
nice to be able to apply for fifteen scholarships in
rapid succession while you're watching your favorite show, but that's
not going to give you the highest ROI it makes
you feel better in the moment because you're like, I
apply for fifteen scholarships. Look what I just accomplished. But
if it doesn't lead to any dollars.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Then it was wasted to just wasted your time, Yeah,
even if it was relatively little effort. So if you
actually want the system to pay off, like that's my
big takeaway is to use that elbow grease, some effort
and some time and look past maybe that low hanging fruit,
get the ladder out, get the better stuff. And it's amazing,
I think, especially when you think about what a high
school graduate or a junior or senior in high school, Matt,
(54:05):
what are they able to make hourly wage? Wise, not much,
not a ton. I mean this could pay off from
an hourly rate perspective, especially those scholarships that are potentially
going to renew year after year after year. So I
love this. I think there's a ton of wisdom here.
And yeah, how nice to graduate and be able to
buy a home instead of having the student loan debt
hanging over your head for the next fifteen twenty years. Absolutely,
(54:27):
but all right the beer. Did we mention it at
the beginning of the episode? We didn't, Okay, well.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
We enjoyed an M forty three ipa. This is by
New Orthodox and not just any old M forty three.
This is the M forty three Tart Strawberry, which is
I know it's one of your favorites. I love this, Vivie,
you kick it off. Not everyone agrees with me on
this one, like your wife. My wife does not agree.
She likes regular in forty three. A lot does not
like the tart strawberry. To me, this is like a
(54:54):
money beer. I love it because the IPA, but it's
also like a.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Little bit of free yeah, a little bit of that
fruit action going on at the same time. I think
this is a perfectly constructed beer, and it's also one
of those flavors you don't get that profile very often
in beer, so I dig it.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
I think I could handle maybe a strawberry sour. I
am with Emily because I am actually not a huge
fan of this beer. It's got this, it's got this
weird It's funny that it's his tart because what it
reminds me of is like a sweet tart, or like
what's the candy that comes in a long clear role
with like their tiny little.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Discs sweethearts, pez not pears, spreeze.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Maybe that's it, Okay, you know I'm talking about there's
like twelve or fifteen of them in there, and they're
all stacked up and they got different fruit flavor. This
kind of reminds me of that. It's kind of got
this dry, chalky sweetness that doesn't quite taste legit in
my opinion, which is why I think if it was
a sour to me, that seems a little more authentic
or it's not terrible, it's just yeah, it's also not
(55:50):
my favorite.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
It's regular.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
I'm forty three, or if you're looking, if you're looking
to step it up, I'm pretty sure we've had Boss
tweed on the show before.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
But that might be the best beer they make. Those
are fun Life nominal, so good. Yeah yeah, this free
makes awesome stuff.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Don't be turned off by the tart strawberry if that's
not your thing. New Orthodox still makes some awesome stuff
for sure.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
And you know, best friends can agree to disagree and
we can disagree. Yeah, all right, that's gonna do it
for this one. We'll put links in the show notes
to some of the things that Jason mentioned, including that
free webinar. So oh yeah, you can find that up
on our website at howtomoney dot com. That's right, buddy,
So until next time, best friends Out, Best Friends Out.
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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