Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Brad Baldridge.
Here's a summary of the interview from the Money Making Conversations Masterclass featuring Brad Baldrige, a certified financial planner and college funding expert:
🎯 Purpose of the Interview
To educate families on how to effectively plan, save, and pay for college without jeopardizing their financial stability or retirement. The conversation aims to demystify college funding options and emphasize the importance of early and strategic financial planning.
🗝️ Key Takeaways 1. College Planning Is Complex but Manageable
- College costs vary widely and are often misunderstood.
- Families must understand need-based aid, merit scholarships, loans, and military options.
- Planning should begin early—ideally in freshman or sophomore year of high school.
2. Loans Are Tools, Not Solutions
- Loans aren't inherently bad but must be used wisely.
- Misuse leads to long-term financial strain, especially if retirement savings are sacrificed.
3. Tailored Strategies Are Crucial
- What works for one family may not work for another.
- Financial planning must consider income, assets, student strengths, and school fit.
4. Late-Stage College Planning
- Focuses on detailed preparation as college approaches.
- Includes testing strategies, school selection, and financial aid optimization.
5. Transparency in College Costs
- Published tuition is often misleading.
- Net price calculators and resources like Brad’s website help reveal actual costs.
6. Balance Between College and Retirement
- Families must weigh college expenses against long-term goals.
- Sacrificing retirement for college can lead to financial hardship.
💬 Notable Quotes
- “It’s time to stop reading other people’s success stories and start living your own.” – Rashawn McDonald
- “Loans are just one tool in the toolbox.” – Brad Baldrige
- “You need to come up with your own strategies that will work better for you.” – Brad Baldrige
- “College planning is a process. Start wherever you are and work at it.” – Brad Baldrige
- “Understand the impact on other areas if you're going to spend a lot on college.” – Brad Baldrige
🌐 Resources Mentioned
- Brad Baldrige’s website: TamingTheHighCostOfCollege.com
- Podcast: Taming the High Cost of College (available on Spotify and other platforms)
- #BEST
- #STRAW
- #SHMS
Support the show: https://www.steveharveyfm.com/
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Money Making Conversation Masterclass. I am the host
with Sean McDonald. You know, the interviews and information this
show provides are for everyone. Please listen, Please take their advice. Please,
you know google information I give you, do your research.
The information I give you is information that I believe
will make your life a lot better, because it's time
(00:22):
to stop reading other people's success stories and start living
your own. Also on the show, I have Brad Ball Dridge.
Over the past ten year, Brad has directly helped hundreds
of family plan and pay for college. That's important when
the college season. Got to help these kids make it
to their educational goals and got to have that money
has to provided in depth college plans, resulting and increased
(00:43):
financial aid scholarships, identification of right schools at the right price,
and better loans. He teaches families the best ways to plan, save,
and pay for college so they can make their children's
college dreams come true without wiping out their finances or
their retirement. Please walking the Money Making Conversation Masterclass. Brad Boultris,
How are you doing, Brat?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I'm doing great? How are you pretty good?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Brad? You know I always call my guests prior to
the show, just to hear if you're the voice and
let him know that you know, this is a very
upbeat show about information that I want to share with
my guests. How long have you been doing this, Brat.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I've been doing this about twenty years now.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And we'll push you in this direction because you are
a certified financial planner, correct.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's correct. Yeah, So college planning is kind of a
subset of general financial planning, which is what cfps do,
and I just got involved in it, and the more
I got involved, the more questions I heard, the more
I realized that this was an area that just isn't
being covered by for most families as far as their
normal planning, and there's a big need for it. So
(01:49):
I've been giving presentations at high schools and just have
a had a very good response. So I just again,
it's kind of snowball. The more I worked at it,
the more I more information I put out there, the
more people aim to be and had more questions.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, you know, it's really interesting because you know, help
me out with the education of what scholarships are, what
is financial planning, what is financial aid? Because those are
different fields of education. That you can the finances that
you can get to pay for in education. Correct, But
how do you as a financial planner for the for
(02:21):
the for college education, how do you work amongst these
different fields when a person or parent comes to you.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Right, Yeah, So it's kind of a specialized area because
you need to have a really good understanding of how
financial aid works, both the need based aid, which is
the FASTA and all that process, as well as scholarships
and merit scholarships and merit aid and that's would be
athletics and high academic achievers and that type of thing.
And then all that has to roll together with the
(02:51):
families finances. And you know, for most families, college is
going to cost something. But depending on where you stand,
it could be five or ten or twenty thousand dollars
or it could be fifty or sixty or seventy thousand
dollars for each year. So you know, doing it well
makes sense for most families.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
You know, sometimes every year you read about I got
one hundred scholarships, I got fifty scholarship. I've been enrolled
in over two hundred schools. And when you sit down
and you talk to do you talk to the schools
directly or do you do virtual counseling or how does
your system work? Brand right?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So generally you can think of it as I'm the
coach that's working with parents, right, so I help parents
understand need based aid and merit aid and talk them
through what they can do to make things better, whether
they should save or invest or choose the right loans
or reposition assets. Help them figure out what schools might
(03:50):
be a good fit for their student. Again, oftentimes, because
college is so challenging, people are shocked to learn that
there's very similar schools with very different price tags, just
depending on how your family fits into the the overall
mix for that particular school.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Go to ask you this because I got to ask
these questions because you know, do you bring in because
you know there are a lot of military options to
pay for school, do you bring that into your financial
planning as an option or you can stick with the
merit and the need base.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, military does come up where it's a good fit,
and again that's kind of a family decision. You know,
military is and option athletics for you know, some athletes,
but the reality is for a lot of people, you know,
five or ten percent might be athletes a few percent,
might use the military a few percent. And that's the challenge,
right There's all these different ideas and programs out there,
(04:43):
and only a couple of them are going to be
right for any particular family. And I think that's the
big caution where you know, families will say, well, my
brother in law did it, and this is what he did.
But unless your family and your student and your income
and all your statistics are just like your brother in law,
there's a good chance that what worked for him may
not work for you, and you're going to have to
come up with your own strategies that will work better
(05:06):
for you.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And that's really the key because I was a need
base when I was in college. I you know, my family,
my father was a truck driver, and I hit that
economic level where I was able to apply for financial
aid and that enabled me to actually go through college
and I didn't have to get a college loan. Now
because the big shout out now is that these college
(05:28):
loans and trying to get governance subsidies where they don't
have to pay these loans back. And I'm just as
I walked through this conversation with you, Brad and Brad
is one of the nation's leading college financial experts. He
teaches families the best ways to plans, safe and pay
for college so they can make their children's college plans
come true. Now you hear the word loan, you hear
(05:51):
the word need base, you hear the word merit, walk
us through. Is getting a loan of thing for fund
your education?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
No? I mean getting a loan in general is not bad.
It's not good either. It's just one tool in the toolbox,
and I think where people misuse the tool, that's when
things get bad. Right, If you only have a hammer
and you've got screws that you're trying to deal with,
it's just not a good fit. And it's kind of
the same thing when it comes to college. You know,
sometimes the loan is the only tool available, so that's
(06:25):
the one you use, and it gets people in trouble.
Other times loans are very appropriate. So it really depends
on you know your particular situation, and you know how
much earnings you may have to pay them back and
all that type of thing.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But like you said, something really interesting, you said, Rashan,
you know you would think that the same school would
have the same financial commitment and they don't. So if
you have a student out there and you and they
trying to go the route of a loan, knowing they
have to pay that loan back, do you play a
role in the decision making with the parent to say, hey, look,
this is what's going to happen. I would recommend this
(07:02):
school over here. Excellent graduate, excellent reputation within the business community.
How does your relationship work with the parents, because in
the end, you're trying to make sure that they the child,
get your proper education. The parents are not so not
like mortgaging their retirement, and there's an opportunity for this
(07:24):
kid to live a life that their parents may not have.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Led, right exactly. And I think it's if you know,
look at what it looks like at the end, right,
you know, that's an important thing to realize that. You know,
as an example, at the very end of the process,
at the end of your senior year, you know, a
family might say, Okay, we applied to these five schools, right,
you know, this one we didn't get accepted at. This
is the local state school. It's going to cost us
(07:49):
about twenty five thousand. Here's a couple of private schools
one's twenty seven, one's twenty nine thousand, and then here's
another private school that's, you know, fifty seven thousand. A
lot of families would say, you fifty seven versus twenty seven,
you know, maybe we'll skip that expensive one, but not always.
Sometimes people say that, you know, the most expensive one
is the one we like, and we're willing to pay it.
There's no right or wrong here. Just like when we
(08:11):
buy a car, not everybody pays the same price. But
if there's lower priced options available, you know, you certainly
want to consider them. And I think that's where many
families make a mistake, is when they apply, all their
choices end up being expensive choices, and they didn't even
realize that there was lower cost options available because they
(08:32):
it's very opaque. You know, colleges have the price that
they publish, but there's also the price you pay, and
that could be very different if you get a lot
of aid. You know, as an example, Stanford is eighty
some thousand dollars, but they've had some press releases out
there saying that for families whose income is under one
hundred thousand, you know, their cost will essentially be zero.
They'll pay all of tuition and all of room and board,
(08:55):
so the student can go almost free. Now if that's
the case, you know, it doesn't really matter that they
list at eighty five thousand. What you pay is what matters.
And conversely, if your income is really high at Stanford,
they don't offer any meridate at all. So if you
don't show any need, then you're going to pay full
price almost no matter what because of the way the
(09:16):
system works. So for some families, you know, Stanford could
be free. For other families, it could be eighty five thousand.
And it's really understanding where you fit into that, because
I've had families coming to me and say, it doesn't
make sense the school didn't offer any meridate, and it's like, okay,
well that school never offers meridate, so it's not like
they're picking on you. They don't give it to anybody.
(09:37):
So look for schools where meridiate is appropriate. If you
have a student that's you know, that's what you need
to do to make it work. Other families, it's like,
let's find schools that are very generous on the need
based side, because in our situation, need based aid is
what's going to help us. And then there's always the
lower cost you know, state schools, and again might I
(09:59):
say local US the average state schools twenty seven thousand
per year all in that, you know, again relative to
the fifty thousand and seventy five thousand dollars schools, it
looks like a good deal.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Right. I can assure you that, Brad, that I was
a need base. I was way under one hundred thousand
dollars my family. So you know that, that's that's where
we get. You know, the thing about it when I'm when,
I'm when I wanted to bring you in the show,
and I'm very happy because you're breaking down. There's a
place you can go, a person you can talk to
(10:33):
that can really you know, we through all these decisions
or these books and all this that's really what your
brain is all about, kind of like breaking through all
the confusion of bringing clarity to better options. Correct.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Absolutely, Yeah. There's all kinds of programs and every time
the government says, okay, we're going to build a new
program because we found a problem. We're going to help
you know, these people in this situation. Well, now there's
one more program that you have to figure out if
you qualify for or not. And because over the years
they've added need based aid and merit aid, and the
fastest common changed and they're different loans, and now there's
(11:11):
a and the states get involved. States also offer aid
in various ways. By the time you mix it all together,
most families are like, wow, this is really confusing. Do
I look at these programs or those programs and how
does it all come together? I mean, that's the bad
news is it's confusing and challenging. The good news is
if you look at a typical college campus, there's lots
(11:32):
of students there, so most families in the end eventually
figure it out. The real challenges do they figure it
out as best as they could when you know, are
they paying the lowest number they could? And I think
for a lot of families they're not, because they made
mistakes and they ended up just taking loans, you know,
to cover up the fact that they didn't plan well.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And that's where I too, and I'd have to catch
twenty two that we are talking about in this interview
is that you know, these when I brought a whole
matter of law owns, you know, why why should I
pay that off? Why should I get That's the decision
they made. And that's what I'm saying is that you
have to sit down. What I consider you to be
an expert in the college financial planning world. How does
(12:14):
one to get in touch with you? Are or do
you have a website to be able to communicate with
these needs? And my interview is not over. I just
want to get this information out all right now before.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
The Yeah, so all my information is at our website,
Taming the High Cost of College dot com. So there's
all kinds of free resources as well as I phone
numbers and anything else that you might need, so you
can reach out there for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Cool. I'm talking to Brad. Brad Baldridge for twenty years,
he has shared his expertise and insights to his private
practice as a blogger. We talk about that blogger Taming
the High Cost of College podcast when we get back,
but also late stage college planning. He explained that to
me prior to the interview because I had never heard
of that and when he spoke to me, when he
(12:57):
explained it to me, it made a lot of sense.
We'll be right back with more money making Conversation master
class with Brad Baldridge. Over the past ten years, he's
helped hundreds of families plan and pay for college.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more
Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making
Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
At the beginning of my interview, Brad, you know, I
was really just letting everybody know it's all about the money.
It's all about the dollars, you know. That's why I
wanted people to understand that you are a certified financial
planner and you've shifted gears and basically a certified financial
college education planner. I guess I can add that as
a title, correct.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yes, I mean that's what I do. There's no official
title for that, or no official I'm gonna give.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
It to you, Brad.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I'm gonna give it to you. If you don't mind,
I'm gonna get it to you.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I don't mind.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
And with that being said, we would. We was talking
about late stage college planning. What exactly is that?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Right? So late stages where people really need to start
focusing in on the very specifics of college. You know,
early stages, you know, grade school, high school, or before
high school, grade school, kindergarten, even before school starts, or hey,
we're pregnant, maybe we should be saving for college, right,
you know that's and that's all well and good, But
(14:26):
you're not visiting colleges, you're not planning your testing strategies,
you're not doing a lot of the very minute work
you know early. All that starts late stage, So late
stages when you start switching from okay, whether I've saved
a bunch of money, whether I've saved zero at all.
College is coming, and it's coming quickly? What do I
need to do to be ready? And I think for
a lot of families, the first thing is you need
(14:47):
to start earlier than what we used to. When I
went to college, it wasn't unusual to wait till your
senior year before you even thought much about college. Now,
I encourage families to really start thinking about it sophomore year,
maybe even freshman year of high school, so that you
have some time to plan and prepare. And again, it's
not necessarily the student that's doing it. Batterly, it's the parents,
(15:09):
because the parents have pieces to do no matter what
school or whatever. So they need to understand how need
based aid is going to work and how marit aid works,
and if you've been saving and investing money, are you
doing enough and how much you need and how are
you going to be fair if you've got multiple kids
and all these things that you can work on, even
if your student's not quite ready to be visiting and
doing their part yet. And if you can spread that
(15:32):
out a little bit, it takes a lot of the
pressure off because one of the things I hear over
and over again is I'm so confused, I'm so overwhelmed,
and we have to get all this figured out in
the next six months because we're up against deadlines. And
for a lot of families, if you can start earlier
so that you can slow the process down, you can
enjoy it a little bit more. It's not such a rush,
(15:53):
and you can get a little more thorough and understand,
you know what you're dealing with, and it helps you
plan and ultimately, I think with a little more time
and effort, you come up with a plan that ultimately
saves you money.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
And I think that's important because you know it. You know,
of course, you know, when I was growing up, college
was a lot cheaper, but it still was expensive and
you still have to plan for these things. And if
I'm a parent and I need to plan for college.
How do I get started?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Brand right? So I think the first thing is to
really just kind of jump in and realize that college
planning is a process. You start, you know, not really
understanding much of anything, and either you read a book
or you know, listen to my podcast or you whatever
it is. You just start, you know, start wherever you
are and start working at it, and as you learn more,
you kind of gain some experience. But and again, you know,
(16:46):
as an example, I give presentations at some of the
local high schools, and one of the high schools, I've
been giving presentations for the last ten years or so,
and I'll have participants come at me and they'll say,
you know, I've got a senior and it's like, well,
you know, all this is great information, but I feel
like I was too late. You know, why weren't you
here last year the year before? And it's like I was,
(17:07):
I was here the last ten years.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But a lot of parents don't pay attention. They don't
you know, they're not thinking about college. They're still trying
to figure out how do we do high school? Right?
High school is new, and you know, so they're not
thinking about college yet, and because they're not thinking about it,
they don't notice the bulletins that talk about the presentations
and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You know, if you.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Start thinking about it, you'll notice all that stuff and
then you can start participating in it.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
You know, it's really because life is a lot of drama.
You know, you worry about your children, you have social
media issues. You know, it's so many things that life is.
You know, the economy. You're just coming out of COVID,
and so you know, you parents your child at home,
where you go see your child at school. So it's
a lot of things that are going on as a parent.
(17:53):
And I just wanted to slow down the moment on
my show that people here, you've got to listen. That's
all he's saying. These options out here, they didn't just
pop up last week. He, like you said, he's been
in an environment where he's been there ten years and
people were walking up to him like he just started yesterday.
Because they would not listen. They were not looking at
the signs on the wall, They were not planning beyond
(18:16):
a month. Because a lot of people kind of keep
the clock on thirty days bread or ninety days. They
don't look at a year or two years down the line.
And when you're dealing with your child, you want to
hear what your child dreams are. And when you hear
what your child's dreams are, you need to start looking
at the options or whether you can of how you
are going to participate in making your child's dream come true.
(18:37):
That's what you're saying, correct.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Right, absolutely. I think there's all you know, there's kind
of a big picture stuff of just understanding how it
all works, and then you get into the weeds of well,
if I do this, you know that loan is better
than this loan, or if I do if I do this,
I'll get a little more aid. Or if my student
applies to these scholarships, we have a shot at you know,
changing the overall price by finding the right scholarship. So
(19:00):
there's lots of things you can do. It's part of
it is figuring out, well, which ones are the best
things to do and which ones will have the most impact.
And again it's a kind of a case by case basis.
If you've got a strong athlete, sports might be appropriate.
If you don't have a strong athlete, you have to
look somewhere else. If you have a strong academic that
might be your thing.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Right now, you said your website earlier, brand and getting
phone calls in so he said it too fast? He
said it too fans. Can you slow doubt and restate
your website as to how we can reach out to you?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Right? So the website is taming the high cost of
college dot com. So just like it sounds, taming the
high cost of college dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
And that's a podcast as well. Correct.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
There's also a podcast available wherever podcasts are sold, so
you can look that up as well. It's on Spotify,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And it's really when we're talking about parents and recommending
for savings and paying for college, what are some of
the biggest prizes for many parents is that the price
of college isn't what they see on school websites. Like
you said earlier that about Stanford. Where can you find
the real cost of what a college education is for
(20:14):
your child?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Right? So, I do have a free resource. It's on
my website, is one of the resources, and it has
the net price of colleges by state and then so
the net price would be that you know, the list
price minus whatever age you typically receive. So We've got
some numbers there, you know, showing if your income is this,
(20:37):
you know, this is the average price. If your income
is higher, this is the average price. So it's all
broken out and it's a great place to start. But
all this stuff is averages, and that's one of the
big cautions is the average Is this the you know,
the average family has two point two kids, Well, show
me a point two kid out there. It's you know,
averages only go so far. What you really need to
(20:58):
do is understand how it's going to work for you.
So start with the averages, learn how it works, and
then from there you can literally figure out what the
cost will be based on your situation, not based on
an average situation.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
As we close out the interview, Brad, how can families
balance paying for college and saving for retirement?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, I think that is one of the biggest challenges,
and I think it's important that you just kind of
keep all your goals in mind when you're making those
college decisions, because if you need to be saving, you know,
let's say five hundred or one thousand per months in
order to make retirement happen. And now you just discovered
that college is going to be another thousand a month. Well,
(21:40):
you can't take a thousand that was for retirement. You
got to take a thousand from somewhere else. And I
think for a lot of families, in the spur of
the moment, they'll delay retirement, they'll do things or that
you won't even just think about, but to just say, well,
we'll sign up, we'll figure it out later. And you know,
that's kind of the colus. That's a mistake.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
To figure out later part is what you're trying to
get us to stop doing, because later will come to
you quicker than you think, and when it comes to you,
you don't have answers for the later.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Correct exactly. Just like you know, when our kids were young,
it seems just like last week, and all of a sudden,
here we are in high school and it's going to
go just as fast as you know. High school is
going to go very quickly, and then college is here,
and so forth and so on. And I think that's
where again, making a reasonable plan. I'm not saying you
shouldn't spend a lot of money on college. I'm not.
What I'm saying is, if you're going to spend a
(22:28):
lot of money on college, understand the impact on other areas.
You know, I always give the example, you know, if
you choose to give up your lake home so you
can spend crazy amounts of money on college, that's one decision, r.
But if you're going to delay your retirement un till
you're seventy five because you've spent too much on college,
that's a completely different decision. And I'm not saying the
wrong decisions, but at least be aware that that's the consequences.
(22:50):
And I've seen that happen all too often of you know,
parents having a lot of debt because they were willing
to help their students, you know, at any price. So
the parents took on a ton of debt. Now they're
trying to figure out how retirement works while they're still
trying to pay back student loans, and it just doesn't
work for someth Wow. So that's you know, that's the
big caution of well, you're in for some families loans
(23:10):
that are required to make it happen. But then you
also need to have a kind of a heart to
heart with a student about well, who's going to pay
back the loans and how is this all going to
come together?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Absolutely, Hey, Brad, it's really thank you for coming on
the show. I definitely win the middle of a college
season or fall in spring, so I definitely want to
continue this conversation because I think people need to hear.
Like you said, they they've they've a lot of people
didn't hear this interview, and so it's necessary that we
keep selling the information, telling the story of how education
(23:42):
is affordable. You just got to know the right path.
As we close out, give give out your website slowly
one more time, Brad.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yes, so it's taming the high Cost of college dot com.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Thank you, Brad, and we'll talk soon. Okay, Yes, this
has been another edition of Money Making Conversation master as
posted by me Rushawn McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today and thank you for listening to
audience now. If you want to listen to any episode
I want to be a guest on the show, visit
Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money Making Conversation.
(24:16):
Join us next week and remember to always leave with
your gifts. Keep winning
Welcome to Money Making Conversation Masterclass. I am the host
with Sean McDonald. You know, the interviews and information this
show provides are for everyone. Please listen, Please take their advice. Please,
you know google information I give you, do your research.
The information I give you is information that I believe
will make your life a lot better, because it's time
(00:22):
to stop reading other people's success stories and start living
your own. Also on the show, I have Brad Ball Dridge.
Over the past ten year, Brad has directly helped hundreds
of family plan and pay for college. That's important when
the college season. Got to help these kids make it
to their educational goals and got to have that money
has to provided in depth college plans, resulting and increased
(00:43):
financial aid scholarships, identification of right schools at the right price,
and better loans. He teaches families the best ways to plan, save,
and pay for college so they can make their children's
college dreams come true without wiping out their finances or
their retirement. Please walking the Money Making Conversation Masterclass. Brad Boultris,
How are you doing, Brat?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I'm doing great? How are you pretty good?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Brad? You know I always call my guests prior to
the show, just to hear if you're the voice and
let him know that you know, this is a very
upbeat show about information that I want to share with
my guests. How long have you been doing this, Brat.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I've been doing this about twenty years now.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And we'll push you in this direction because you are
a certified financial planner, correct.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's correct. Yeah, So college planning is kind of a
subset of general financial planning, which is what cfps do,
and I just got involved in it, and the more
I got involved, the more questions I heard, the more
I realized that this was an area that just isn't
being covered by for most families as far as their
normal planning, and there's a big need for it. So
(01:49):
I've been giving presentations at high schools and just have
a had a very good response. So I just again,
it's kind of snowball. The more I worked at it,
the more I more information I put out there, the
more people aim to be and had more questions.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, you know, it's really interesting because you know, help
me out with the education of what scholarships are, what
is financial planning, what is financial aid? Because those are
different fields of education. That you can the finances that
you can get to pay for in education. Correct, But
how do you as a financial planner for the for
(02:21):
the for college education, how do you work amongst these
different fields when a person or parent comes to you.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Right, Yeah, So it's kind of a specialized area because
you need to have a really good understanding of how
financial aid works, both the need based aid, which is
the FASTA and all that process, as well as scholarships
and merit scholarships and merit aid and that's would be
athletics and high academic achievers and that type of thing.
And then all that has to roll together with the
(02:51):
families finances. And you know, for most families, college is
going to cost something. But depending on where you stand,
it could be five or ten or twenty thousand dollars
or it could be fifty or sixty or seventy thousand
dollars for each year. So you know, doing it well
makes sense for most families.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
You know, sometimes every year you read about I got
one hundred scholarships, I got fifty scholarship. I've been enrolled
in over two hundred schools. And when you sit down
and you talk to do you talk to the schools
directly or do you do virtual counseling or how does
your system work? Brand right?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So generally you can think of it as I'm the
coach that's working with parents, right, so I help parents
understand need based aid and merit aid and talk them
through what they can do to make things better, whether
they should save or invest or choose the right loans
or reposition assets. Help them figure out what schools might
(03:50):
be a good fit for their student. Again, oftentimes, because
college is so challenging, people are shocked to learn that
there's very similar schools with very different price tags, just
depending on how your family fits into the the overall
mix for that particular school.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Go to ask you this because I got to ask
these questions because you know, do you bring in because
you know there are a lot of military options to
pay for school, do you bring that into your financial
planning as an option or you can stick with the
merit and the need base.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, military does come up where it's a good fit,
and again that's kind of a family decision. You know,
military is and option athletics for you know, some athletes,
but the reality is for a lot of people, you know,
five or ten percent might be athletes a few percent,
might use the military a few percent. And that's the challenge,
right There's all these different ideas and programs out there,
(04:43):
and only a couple of them are going to be
right for any particular family. And I think that's the
big caution where you know, families will say, well, my
brother in law did it, and this is what he did.
But unless your family and your student and your income
and all your statistics are just like your brother in law,
there's a good chance that what worked for him may
not work for you, and you're going to have to
come up with your own strategies that will work better
(05:06):
for you.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And that's really the key because I was a need
base when I was in college. I you know, my family,
my father was a truck driver, and I hit that
economic level where I was able to apply for financial
aid and that enabled me to actually go through college
and I didn't have to get a college loan. Now
because the big shout out now is that these college
(05:28):
loans and trying to get governance subsidies where they don't
have to pay these loans back. And I'm just as
I walked through this conversation with you, Brad and Brad
is one of the nation's leading college financial experts. He
teaches families the best ways to plans, safe and pay
for college so they can make their children's college plans
come true. Now you hear the word loan, you hear
(05:51):
the word need base, you hear the word merit, walk
us through. Is getting a loan of thing for fund
your education?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
No? I mean getting a loan in general is not bad.
It's not good either. It's just one tool in the toolbox,
and I think where people misuse the tool, that's when
things get bad. Right, If you only have a hammer
and you've got screws that you're trying to deal with,
it's just not a good fit. And it's kind of
the same thing when it comes to college. You know,
sometimes the loan is the only tool available, so that's
(06:25):
the one you use, and it gets people in trouble.
Other times loans are very appropriate. So it really depends
on you know your particular situation, and you know how
much earnings you may have to pay them back and
all that type of thing.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But like you said, something really interesting, you said, Rashan,
you know you would think that the same school would
have the same financial commitment and they don't. So if
you have a student out there and you and they
trying to go the route of a loan, knowing they
have to pay that loan back, do you play a
role in the decision making with the parent to say, hey, look,
this is what's going to happen. I would recommend this
(07:02):
school over here. Excellent graduate, excellent reputation within the business community.
How does your relationship work with the parents, because in
the end, you're trying to make sure that they the child,
get your proper education. The parents are not so not
like mortgaging their retirement, and there's an opportunity for this
(07:24):
kid to live a life that their parents may not have.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Led, right exactly. And I think it's if you know,
look at what it looks like at the end, right,
you know, that's an important thing to realize that. You know,
as an example, at the very end of the process,
at the end of your senior year, you know, a
family might say, Okay, we applied to these five schools, right,
you know, this one we didn't get accepted at. This
is the local state school. It's going to cost us
(07:49):
about twenty five thousand. Here's a couple of private schools
one's twenty seven, one's twenty nine thousand, and then here's
another private school that's, you know, fifty seven thousand. A
lot of families would say, you fifty seven versus twenty seven,
you know, maybe we'll skip that expensive one, but not always.
Sometimes people say that, you know, the most expensive one
is the one we like, and we're willing to pay it.
There's no right or wrong here. Just like when we
(08:11):
buy a car, not everybody pays the same price. But
if there's lower priced options available, you know, you certainly
want to consider them. And I think that's where many
families make a mistake, is when they apply, all their
choices end up being expensive choices, and they didn't even
realize that there was lower cost options available because they
(08:32):
it's very opaque. You know, colleges have the price that
they publish, but there's also the price you pay, and
that could be very different if you get a lot
of aid. You know, as an example, Stanford is eighty
some thousand dollars, but they've had some press releases out
there saying that for families whose income is under one
hundred thousand, you know, their cost will essentially be zero.
They'll pay all of tuition and all of room and board,
(08:55):
so the student can go almost free. Now if that's
the case, you know, it doesn't really matter that they
list at eighty five thousand. What you pay is what matters.
And conversely, if your income is really high at Stanford,
they don't offer any meridate at all. So if you
don't show any need, then you're going to pay full
price almost no matter what because of the way the
(09:16):
system works. So for some families, you know, Stanford could
be free. For other families, it could be eighty five thousand.
And it's really understanding where you fit into that, because
I've had families coming to me and say, it doesn't
make sense the school didn't offer any meridate, and it's like, okay,
well that school never offers meridate, so it's not like
they're picking on you. They don't give it to anybody.
(09:37):
So look for schools where meridiate is appropriate. If you
have a student that's you know, that's what you need
to do to make it work. Other families, it's like,
let's find schools that are very generous on the need
based side, because in our situation, need based aid is
what's going to help us. And then there's always the
lower cost you know, state schools, and again might I
(09:59):
say local US the average state schools twenty seven thousand
per year all in that, you know, again relative to
the fifty thousand and seventy five thousand dollars schools, it
looks like a good deal.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Right. I can assure you that, Brad, that I was
a need base. I was way under one hundred thousand
dollars my family. So you know that, that's that's where
we get. You know, the thing about it when I'm when,
I'm when I wanted to bring you in the show,
and I'm very happy because you're breaking down. There's a
place you can go, a person you can talk to
(10:33):
that can really you know, we through all these decisions
or these books and all this that's really what your
brain is all about, kind of like breaking through all
the confusion of bringing clarity to better options. Correct.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Absolutely, Yeah. There's all kinds of programs and every time
the government says, okay, we're going to build a new
program because we found a problem. We're going to help
you know, these people in this situation. Well, now there's
one more program that you have to figure out if
you qualify for or not. And because over the years
they've added need based aid and merit aid, and the
fastest common changed and they're different loans, and now there's
(11:11):
a and the states get involved. States also offer aid
in various ways. By the time you mix it all together,
most families are like, wow, this is really confusing. Do
I look at these programs or those programs and how
does it all come together? I mean, that's the bad
news is it's confusing and challenging. The good news is
if you look at a typical college campus, there's lots
(11:32):
of students there, so most families in the end eventually
figure it out. The real challenges do they figure it
out as best as they could when you know, are
they paying the lowest number they could? And I think
for a lot of families they're not, because they made
mistakes and they ended up just taking loans, you know,
to cover up the fact that they didn't plan well.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And that's where I too, and I'd have to catch
twenty two that we are talking about in this interview
is that you know, these when I brought a whole
matter of law owns, you know, why why should I
pay that off? Why should I get That's the decision
they made. And that's what I'm saying is that you
have to sit down. What I consider you to be
an expert in the college financial planning world. How does
(12:14):
one to get in touch with you? Are or do
you have a website to be able to communicate with
these needs? And my interview is not over. I just
want to get this information out all right now before.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
The Yeah, so all my information is at our website,
Taming the High Cost of College dot com. So there's
all kinds of free resources as well as I phone
numbers and anything else that you might need, so you
can reach out there for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Cool. I'm talking to Brad. Brad Baldridge for twenty years,
he has shared his expertise and insights to his private
practice as a blogger. We talk about that blogger Taming
the High Cost of College podcast when we get back,
but also late stage college planning. He explained that to
me prior to the interview because I had never heard
of that and when he spoke to me, when he
(12:57):
explained it to me, it made a lot of sense.
We'll be right back with more money making Conversation master
class with Brad Baldridge. Over the past ten years, he's
helped hundreds of families plan and pay for college.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more
Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making
Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
At the beginning of my interview, Brad, you know, I
was really just letting everybody know it's all about the money.
It's all about the dollars, you know. That's why I
wanted people to understand that you are a certified financial
planner and you've shifted gears and basically a certified financial
college education planner. I guess I can add that as
a title, correct.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yes, I mean that's what I do. There's no official
title for that, or no official I'm gonna give.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
It to you, Brad.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I'm gonna give it to you. If you don't mind,
I'm gonna get it to you.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I don't mind.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
And with that being said, we would. We was talking
about late stage college planning. What exactly is that?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Right? So late stages where people really need to start
focusing in on the very specifics of college. You know,
early stages, you know, grade school, high school, or before
high school, grade school, kindergarten, even before school starts, or hey,
we're pregnant, maybe we should be saving for college, right,
you know that's and that's all well and good, But
(14:26):
you're not visiting colleges, you're not planning your testing strategies,
you're not doing a lot of the very minute work
you know early. All that starts late stage, So late
stages when you start switching from okay, whether I've saved
a bunch of money, whether I've saved zero at all.
College is coming, and it's coming quickly? What do I
need to do to be ready? And I think for
a lot of families, the first thing is you need
(14:47):
to start earlier than what we used to. When I
went to college, it wasn't unusual to wait till your
senior year before you even thought much about college. Now,
I encourage families to really start thinking about it sophomore year,
maybe even freshman year of high school, so that you
have some time to plan and prepare. And again, it's
not necessarily the student that's doing it. Batterly, it's the parents,
(15:09):
because the parents have pieces to do no matter what
school or whatever. So they need to understand how need
based aid is going to work and how marit aid works,
and if you've been saving and investing money, are you
doing enough and how much you need and how are
you going to be fair if you've got multiple kids
and all these things that you can work on, even
if your student's not quite ready to be visiting and
doing their part yet. And if you can spread that
(15:32):
out a little bit, it takes a lot of the
pressure off because one of the things I hear over
and over again is I'm so confused, I'm so overwhelmed,
and we have to get all this figured out in
the next six months because we're up against deadlines. And
for a lot of families, if you can start earlier
so that you can slow the process down, you can
enjoy it a little bit more. It's not such a rush,
(15:53):
and you can get a little more thorough and understand,
you know what you're dealing with, and it helps you
plan and ultimately, I think with a little more time
and effort, you come up with a plan that ultimately
saves you money.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
And I think that's important because you know it. You know,
of course, you know, when I was growing up, college
was a lot cheaper, but it still was expensive and
you still have to plan for these things. And if
I'm a parent and I need to plan for college.
How do I get started?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Brand right? So I think the first thing is to
really just kind of jump in and realize that college
planning is a process. You start, you know, not really
understanding much of anything, and either you read a book
or you know, listen to my podcast or you whatever
it is. You just start, you know, start wherever you
are and start working at it, and as you learn more,
you kind of gain some experience. But and again, you know,
(16:46):
as an example, I give presentations at some of the
local high schools, and one of the high schools, I've
been giving presentations for the last ten years or so,
and I'll have participants come at me and they'll say,
you know, I've got a senior and it's like, well,
you know, all this is great information, but I feel
like I was too late. You know, why weren't you
here last year the year before? And it's like I was,
(17:07):
I was here the last ten years.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But a lot of parents don't pay attention. They don't
you know, they're not thinking about college. They're still trying
to figure out how do we do high school? Right?
High school is new, and you know, so they're not
thinking about college yet, and because they're not thinking about it,
they don't notice the bulletins that talk about the presentations
and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You know, if you.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Start thinking about it, you'll notice all that stuff and
then you can start participating in it.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
You know, it's really because life is a lot of drama.
You know, you worry about your children, you have social
media issues. You know, it's so many things that life is.
You know, the economy. You're just coming out of COVID,
and so you know, you parents your child at home,
where you go see your child at school. So it's
a lot of things that are going on as a parent.
(17:53):
And I just wanted to slow down the moment on
my show that people here, you've got to listen. That's
all he's saying. These options out here, they didn't just
pop up last week. He, like you said, he's been
in an environment where he's been there ten years and
people were walking up to him like he just started yesterday.
Because they would not listen. They were not looking at
the signs on the wall, They were not planning beyond
(18:16):
a month. Because a lot of people kind of keep
the clock on thirty days bread or ninety days. They
don't look at a year or two years down the line.
And when you're dealing with your child, you want to
hear what your child dreams are. And when you hear
what your child's dreams are, you need to start looking
at the options or whether you can of how you
are going to participate in making your child's dream come true.
(18:37):
That's what you're saying, correct.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Right, absolutely. I think there's all you know, there's kind
of a big picture stuff of just understanding how it
all works, and then you get into the weeds of well,
if I do this, you know that loan is better
than this loan, or if I do if I do this,
I'll get a little more aid. Or if my student
applies to these scholarships, we have a shot at you know,
changing the overall price by finding the right scholarship. So
(19:00):
there's lots of things you can do. It's part of
it is figuring out, well, which ones are the best
things to do and which ones will have the most impact.
And again it's a kind of a case by case basis.
If you've got a strong athlete, sports might be appropriate.
If you don't have a strong athlete, you have to
look somewhere else. If you have a strong academic that
might be your thing.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Right now, you said your website earlier, brand and getting
phone calls in so he said it too fast? He
said it too fans. Can you slow doubt and restate
your website as to how we can reach out to you?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Right? So the website is taming the high cost of
college dot com. So just like it sounds, taming the
high cost of college dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
And that's a podcast as well. Correct.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
There's also a podcast available wherever podcasts are sold, so
you can look that up as well. It's on Spotify,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And it's really when we're talking about parents and recommending
for savings and paying for college, what are some of
the biggest prizes for many parents is that the price
of college isn't what they see on school websites. Like
you said earlier that about Stanford. Where can you find
the real cost of what a college education is for
(20:14):
your child?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Right? So, I do have a free resource. It's on
my website, is one of the resources, and it has
the net price of colleges by state and then so
the net price would be that you know, the list
price minus whatever age you typically receive. So We've got
some numbers there, you know, showing if your income is this,
(20:37):
you know, this is the average price. If your income
is higher, this is the average price. So it's all
broken out and it's a great place to start. But
all this stuff is averages, and that's one of the
big cautions is the average Is this the you know,
the average family has two point two kids, Well, show
me a point two kid out there. It's you know,
averages only go so far. What you really need to
(20:58):
do is understand how it's going to work for you.
So start with the averages, learn how it works, and
then from there you can literally figure out what the
cost will be based on your situation, not based on
an average situation.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
As we close out the interview, Brad, how can families
balance paying for college and saving for retirement?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, I think that is one of the biggest challenges,
and I think it's important that you just kind of
keep all your goals in mind when you're making those
college decisions, because if you need to be saving, you know,
let's say five hundred or one thousand per months in
order to make retirement happen. And now you just discovered
that college is going to be another thousand a month. Well,
(21:40):
you can't take a thousand that was for retirement. You
got to take a thousand from somewhere else. And I
think for a lot of families, in the spur of
the moment, they'll delay retirement, they'll do things or that
you won't even just think about, but to just say, well,
we'll sign up, we'll figure it out later. And you know,
that's kind of the colus. That's a mistake.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
To figure out later part is what you're trying to
get us to stop doing, because later will come to
you quicker than you think, and when it comes to you,
you don't have answers for the later.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Correct exactly. Just like you know, when our kids were young,
it seems just like last week, and all of a sudden,
here we are in high school and it's going to
go just as fast as you know. High school is
going to go very quickly, and then college is here,
and so forth and so on. And I think that's
where again, making a reasonable plan. I'm not saying you
shouldn't spend a lot of money on college. I'm not.
What I'm saying is, if you're going to spend a
(22:28):
lot of money on college, understand the impact on other areas.
You know, I always give the example, you know, if
you choose to give up your lake home so you
can spend crazy amounts of money on college, that's one decision, r.
But if you're going to delay your retirement un till
you're seventy five because you've spent too much on college,
that's a completely different decision. And I'm not saying the
wrong decisions, but at least be aware that that's the consequences.
(22:50):
And I've seen that happen all too often of you know,
parents having a lot of debt because they were willing
to help their students, you know, at any price. So
the parents took on a ton of debt. Now they're
trying to figure out how retirement works while they're still
trying to pay back student loans, and it just doesn't
work for someth Wow. So that's you know, that's the
big caution of well, you're in for some families loans
(23:10):
that are required to make it happen. But then you
also need to have a kind of a heart to
heart with a student about well, who's going to pay
back the loans and how is this all going to
come together?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Absolutely, Hey, Brad, it's really thank you for coming on
the show. I definitely win the middle of a college
season or fall in spring, so I definitely want to
continue this conversation because I think people need to hear.
Like you said, they they've they've a lot of people
didn't hear this interview, and so it's necessary that we
keep selling the information, telling the story of how education
(23:42):
is affordable. You just got to know the right path.
As we close out, give give out your website slowly
one more time, Brad.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yes, so it's taming the high Cost of college dot com.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Thank you, Brad, and we'll talk soon. Okay, Yes, this
has been another edition of Money Making Conversation master as
posted by me Rushawn McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today and thank you for listening to
audience now. If you want to listen to any episode
I want to be a guest on the show, visit
Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money Making Conversation.
(24:16):
Join us next week and remember to always leave with
your gifts. Keep winning
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Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
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