You Can Overcome Anything: Ep 296 - Building Trust with Prospects – Brad Baldridge - You Can Overcome Anything! Podcast Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you looking for more out of your life? Do
you need ideas and how to start new businesses and
how to move forward in your own personal life? Well,
guess what you have come to a right radio show
and you Can Overcome Anything podcast show. You will learning
here from many people from all walks of life who

(00:22):
are sharing their challenges, their stories, their habits and the
mind shifts they had to overcome to become who they
are today. On top, you will get a chance to
connect and see how you can overcome anything by networking
and learning about your next move through this radio show.
I present to.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
You our great speakers at You Can Overcome.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Anything Podcast Show with your host Caesar.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Is you know?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And welcome back to another episode of You Can Recommend
podcast show. It is your host Caesar Espinom and today
I have a special guest. He is one of the
nation's leading college financial experts. He teaches families the best
ways to plan safe and play for college, pay for
college so they can make their children's college streams come
true without wiping out their finance or their retirement. For

(01:23):
over twenty years, he has shared his expertise and insights
through his private practice as a blogger and a host
of the Timing the High Cost of College podcast and
as a presenter at numerous workshops and seminars. It is
my pleasure to introduce you to Brad Bellgridge. Hey, Brad,
how are you Hi. I'm doing well, awesome, awesome. So, Brad,

(01:47):
what can you tell me a little bit about more
about you? Tell me about your upbringing and where you're
originally from.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, so I was born in a log cabin.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, so I'm always lived in Wisconsin since I was
two years old, and we grew up in the royal
towns and rural Wisconsin, and then got my college degree
and moved to the big city. So now I'm in
the Milwaukee area and got family and three kids and

(02:22):
running a business on college planning. And I guess that's
kind of.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
My summary there, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
So, and again I like to go really deep into
this because part of part of what I believe is
when people are doing like things that you're doing right,
you're actually making an impact, You're making a difference. It
all started from from somewhere, started from from I believe
from you know, either your upbringing in or something happened
during those years, right, So we always have this idea

(02:50):
of when we're growing up is like when I when
I grew up, I want to beat this or I
want to beat that. What was that for you?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, So I think this is common as I kind
of had a hard left turn in my life, so
to speak, where you know, I went off to college
and earned an engineering degree and started working at a
corporation and realized that, you know, I.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Enjoyed the engineering side of it.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
The working at the corporation side wasn't so good where
I you know, didn't see idiye with the boss and
things like flex time and vacation and you know, all
those types of things, and got involved in rental, real
estate and personal finance, and then kind of switched over
to financial advising, you know, five years and you know,

(03:41):
I've probably an engineer a little under five years, and
that was a long time ago. So I got I
was investing in real estate, and I was doing all
kinds of things around personal finance, and then just earned
my CFP and switched careers. And I guess it's because
of you know, I've always felt, you know, I enjoy

(04:04):
solving problems and working with people and the engineering idea
of sitting in the corner and do your doing. Your
math was never important to me. It was more of
a work with people, and so it turned out to
be much better fit. So I think that's you know,
kind of my history as far as how I got to.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Where I am. And then as I got.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Involved in more college planning, I started to resonate with people.
So that's so I kind of focused in on that niche.
As I taught people more and more about how college worked,
the more they listened, So the more I talked, and yeah,
next thing, I know, there's you know, kind of a
specialty that kind of fell out of that a little

(04:48):
bit by accident. But then as I realized, you know,
I started focusing on it.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
More, right, Yeah, you know, and based on that, you know,
the fact that you're in that nature of being able
to help you know, not only students or people in general, right, parents,
families to not have and feel that they have this
financial burden, right, because that's obviously something huge, right, A
lot a lot of times, you know, when people get

(05:15):
enough of high school and are going to college, that's
the first thing that people are thinking, like, you know,
how much is it going to cost me? Or how
am I going to be able to take care of
those finances if you're not able to get student loans
and things like that.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
I would imagine though, before even getting into any of that,
you must have gone through some challenges in your life,
you know, just kind of bouncing back and forth or
trying to thread what was going to be your nature
or not. What were some of the major obstacles that
you overcame through through those moments in your life?

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, I think that you know, again being young and
then doing financial planning and asking people to trust you
and all that. I mean, that's always been a challenge
in the financial planning industry is people want to work
with the gray haired guy, not the new guy, especially
if they're a little more mature. So that, you know,

(06:09):
I think that's a challenge in general of you know,
you need to have the experience. In order to get
the experience, you have to find people to work with.
And that circular challenge that a lot of a lot
of industries and a lot a lot of people are
dealing with is who's going to talk with this twenty
seven year old about their life savings and that type

(06:31):
of thing. So I've always you know, one of my superpowers.
I think is taking complex topics and kind of simplifying
them down into something that most people can understand. And
I always use the example of a doctor, right, and
you can go to the doctor and you know, you say, well,
you know, I've got this problem, and he says, oh, yeah,

(06:52):
based on what's going on that you have high blood pressure.
So we're gonna prescribe some medicines. And he's like, here's
the FDA report for twenty three medicines. Why don't you
read them all and tell me which, you know, which
medicine you'd like to take? And the most people will
be no, thanks, doc, why don't you read them all
and tell me which one I should take? Because I

(07:13):
could read that stuff, but I wouldn't get it. And
what I'm you know, what I found is that a
lot of people are busy, especially when you have high
school kids trying to figure it all out.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
But yeah, there's a lot of very.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Technical stuff that you need to understand around need based
aid and merit aid and all the different pieces, but
there's also some very general decisions around well, how are
we going to be fair among the kids? Should we
spend you know what X amount of money on college

(07:49):
that seems like too much, or maybe we should spend more,
or we really love this school, but it's crazy expensive.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
What are we going to do?

Speaker 2 (07:56):
And there's you know, there's big life changing decisions potentially,
you know. I always tell people most of the people
I work with have two goals educate the kids and retire,
or maybe it's the other order number ones retire. Number
two is educate the kids. And you know, college planning

(08:17):
is retirement planning and retirement planning is college planning because
if you can do either one of them a little better,
then you have more money for the other. But I
think a lot of people as we move into college
and trying to figure out how we're going to do that.
You know, I think the challenge there is how, you know,
what are we willing to sacrifice? And most people say

(08:41):
they're not not wanting to sacrifice retirement, but when you
actually look at what's going on, but sometimes they are.
They just don't realize what they're what they're doing and
how what the long term ramifications are.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, somebody was to come to you and say, hey,
I need some you know, college for my advice, Like
what is the first step or how how do they
like what will be like, I'm here, right, I'm coming
to you and say, hey, look, I'm trying to get
my kid through college. Where did I start? What do
I need to do? How can you help me? How
can you guide me?

Speaker 3 (09:13):
What?

Speaker 1 (09:14):
What do you tell those tell those parents?

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Right?

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Well, I mean I think the first step is to
really understand where they are.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
So one obvious way to divide things is what I
would call early stage and late stage. So early stages
you've got young kids, or hey, we're pregnant, or you know,
and again, college is coming potentially, but you're not visiting colleges,
you're not actually in the thick of it. And yet
you're saying college is going to be part of our future.

(09:43):
We just need to kind of make that into the plan.
Should we save some money for college? If so, how much?
You know, are we going to be responsible for college
or are we going to have the kids paid for
their own which generally is a challenge these days. So yes,
parents are going to have to help most likely. And
then we have the late stage. Right now, you've got

(10:04):
a high school sophomore, junior, senior, and you literally are
trying to figure it all out. So you're visiting colleges,
you're trying to understand need based daid and merit aid.
You're all the applications, the students trying to figure out
what they want to be when they grow up. All
of it is all kind of there. And even if
you did a great job when you had the two

(10:25):
year old and you saved a whole bunch of money
and now you've got a big pot of money for
a college, that doesn't mean you're done. You still have
to do the late stage planning of how do I
use this money efficiently? You know, just because I have it.
For most families anyway, just because you have the money
doesn't mean you want to spend it foolishly. And a
lot of times when you don't know what you don't know,

(10:46):
and very similar schools can be at very different prices
depending on your situation.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
So that's the first step is if you're.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Early stage, yes you should, you know, factor in college.
And really the bottom line about early stages, if you
think you're going to spend money on college, well then
you just need to spend less money on other things.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
So if you're going to if.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Your goal is to pay all of college for all
the kids, no matter where they want to go, and
it's going to be expensive, then by definition, you're going
to live in a smaller house, or you're going to
drive lesser cars than you would if you chose not
to pay for college. I mean, that's just the reality, right.
What I see happen, though, is we get to a

(11:33):
family with a seventeen year old that's trying to figure
it all out. And let's say they earned two hundred
thousand dollars and they essentially say, you know, everything's really tight.
By the time we pay the mortgage and deal with
all the kids stuff and everything else, there's not money
left over for college. How are we going to make
that work? And then, of course, the next family that

(11:53):
earns one hundred and fifty thousand looks at that family
that ends two hundred thousand and says, well, that's crazy.
They have an extra dollars a year to pay for college.
How can they not do you know, be able to
pay for it? But the reality is as our income grows,
so does their lifestyle most of the time, right, And
if college isn't baked into the into the plan a

(12:14):
little bit, then college is going to be expensive and
painful at just about any income level. I mean until
you're the brain surgeon earning millions, right, and then you
just write checks and college is no big deal. But
for most families between you know, zero and three hundred thousand,
college is going to be expensive and is going to
be painful.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
For most.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
I mean some some families do a great job saving
and and you know, spread it out the pain and
it works really well. But there are also the ones
that say things like, well, I drove a crappy car
my whole life so that I could save for college.
And now you know, now I'm happy because I can
help pay for college.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
That it's not a big deal.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
But a lot of families, again, with daycare and sports
and all the stuff going on, kids are expensive. And
if you think kids are going to become less expensive
as they grow up, they aren't, right. You go from
daycare to sports, to schools to you know, so forth
and so on, and it's always easy to find ways
to spend your money on the kids or on life

(13:22):
in general.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
But then when you get to what I would.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Call aid state, well, now you actually have the opportunity
to do some planning and really focus in on how
to pay for college. And make it work and tie
it in with retirement if you need to, or other goals.
You know, sometimes it's we're trying to figure out, you know,

(13:49):
some of the setbacks like divorce or inheritance or you know,
small business owners and that type of thing where not
only do you have the normal college stuff, but you've
got this extral of complexity of well, who's going to
be on the fast in a divorce situation or you know,
often in a divorce situation, the money is even more
challenging because you go from one household to two at

(14:13):
a time when you're also trying to pay for college
or figure out college, and it could be a lot
more challenging because there used to be one mortgage, now
there's two. There used to be you know, one expense,
now there's too in many categories. That's the downside. The
good news is that you might qualify for more aid

(14:35):
depending on you know, how how the divorce happened and
how the financial aid forms work out in a particular situation.
So sometimes in those tougher situations, there's a little bit
of lemonade out of those lemons in that Yes, you know,
divorces and some of those things that you know financially

(14:57):
are often not great.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
But the small silver.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Lining as well, because the income was only one parent,
now you'll get you'll do better on aid, usually not
better enough that you know. I've had families say something like, hey,
I've got a plan, let's get divorced.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
That will help us pay for college.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
No, it won't, right, but again, if you're if you're
in the thick of it anyway, then take advantage of it.
But it's not a strategy that that would work. You know,
you're going to end up costing you.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
It's it's kind of like we're saying, well, I'm just
not going to earn the income so that way I
get more aid. It's like, yeah, you give up a
thousand dollars of income and you get two hundred dollars
of aid, and you save one hundred dollars in taxes.
You're still seven hundred dollars behind. So you're better off
earning the money. It's just if we can plan how
to earn the money and do it as efficient as possible,

(15:49):
then maybe we can make that better.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Now, from the early stage, right, people that either you
know areither have kids or they have young kids, you
actually building a financial plan, or as a matter of
just having a conversation and say, hey, you know, you've
got to just get to apron where you're able to
save or live below your means or whatever that might be,
or you actually building a financial plan from whatever age

(16:14):
you know, the great kids might be, whether they're newborns,
all the way through college.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Right, yeah, I mean, so.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
We're not really building a college plan at that level.
We're more building a overall financial plan, got it, which
again would include college, but it also includes whatever else
is going on.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
But and again, if you can be a little more
efficient than the types of insurance that you buy, a
little more efficient on vacations or cars or well, there's
all kinds of financial decisions where you know, sometimes we
just do it poorly. And you know, as an example,
if you're capable of putting money into your four OW

(16:57):
and K and making sure you get the match, and
you do that from day one, you know, that's a
lot of money that over your earning career can make
a big difference. A lot of us don't do that
starting at nineteen or twenty three or whenever it is
we go get our first real job because our salary

(17:17):
is not real high, and we're not willing to give
up a little bit, so we go five or ten
years and skip it.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
Well, if just that one decision.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Can cost you a little bit, and in the end,
if you can just do everything, like I said, a
little more efficient, that's you know, that's what's important. And
then families need to decide, you know, when and how
much are we going to save for college? So there's
you know, I as an example, if you had a
kid going off to college today, if you save two

(17:51):
hundred dollars a month and you've got a reasonable way
to return, you'd have about a third of your state's
school rules covered, maybe a little bit more depending on
what state you live in and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
And then the students, what would you put that two
hundred dollars? Like, obviously not an ireular saving. Would it
be a ACD, a life insurance that gives you living benefits,
you know, like infant banking? Like where would you put
those two hundred bucks?

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Right?

Speaker 2 (18:18):
So, if there's college savings plans of various sorts and
depending in your state, that might make sense from a
tax perspective or other things, or you might just put
it into an investment, you know, a stock or bonds
or mutual funds or that type of thing, and where

(18:38):
it's kind of separated from your other finances and it's
kind of dedicated to college. What's good about that is
once you put it in the college bucket, it often
it's very sticky. It stays there because you've in your
mind it's not your money anymore. It's for college and
you're not going to raid it. But you could just

(19:00):
put it in a general investment and saying, well, this
is our investment, so that when we get to seventeen,
we have one hundred thousand dollars in a general investment
and if we need it for college, we'll take it.
If we don't need it for college, we can use
it for something else. But it's not dedicated to college.
So there's pros and cons to making those decisions, and
sometimes you do both, right, put half of it into

(19:21):
college dedicated college money, and half of it into some
other investment. Because you know, there's a there's been a
lot of disruption, you know, certainly in the music industry
and in the publishing industry and newspapers and that kind
of stuff. Theoretically, education is also potentially going to get

(19:43):
disrupted by technology and that type of thing. And it
hasn't happened quite yet, but it could. And we're seeing
a lot of differences. You know, so college may be
different if you had a two year old today. You know,
college could be drastically different when you get there. And
some parents are you know, have concerns about, well, if
I put all this money away for college and then
what if they don't go to college? Then what well

(20:05):
then there might be some penalties or other reasons that
we would have, you know, be unhappy with that decision.
So then how do we you know, work that out
in order to find that balance where And again, so
some you know, if that's your feeling that while I
don't necessarily want to dedicate it, well, then you can

(20:26):
just build build your net worth, build your assets so
that you have some flexibility when you get there. But
I think that's the key, right is to realize that
when we get to college, if it's similar the way
it is today, you know, we're going to need to
one hundred thousand dollars for our student to go to

(20:46):
a state school, maybe a little more to go something
else for the four years.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Well, if that's our target.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
If that one hundred thousand is in dedicated college, fine,
If that's one hundred thousand dollars and home equity and
we're going to borrow that out, that might work. If
that one hundred thousand is in some investments that we
can liquid eate, and I've seen families like use real
estate say well, our goal is to have this property
paid off by the time college starts, and then all

(21:14):
the rent can go directly to college.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Does that work? Probably? You know, And it's not the
only way, of course, so there's lots of different, you know,
ways to do it.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
But if you're.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Actually just consciously figuring it out, that's this key step.
A lot of people kind of ignore it and then
it sneaks up.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
On Yeah, in terms of you know, from your perspective
of your experience, I mean, are there a lot of
I guess families that the parents specifically, like, what is
the percentage of actually parents paying for their kids college
versus a kid getting there, you know, paying for the
college to do their own means, whether it's working student

(21:56):
and things like that. Is there a big proportion on that?

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:01):
So I think the reality is parents that can afford
to help. If you have higher incomes, you're going to
almost have to help because of the way that the
system works.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
So I mean talk a little bit about numbers.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
So the average private or public school, the average state
school is about twenty seven thousand dollars, and that's the
total cost so as tuition, room and board, books, fees, beer,
and pizza. It's the whole cost of a typical college student.
And you know, so it's about you know, eleven thousand tuition,
eleven thousand room and board, and five thousand other expenses.

(22:39):
And those numbers fluctuate. You know, New York and California
that some of their schools are much more expensive, certainly
the ones in the big cities and the North Dakota
and some of the plain states might be a little less.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Iowa might be a little less.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
And it just depends on your state how much you know,
the state government helps pay except but that's kind of
what we're up against.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Now.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
If your family earns, you know, one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars or one hundred thousand or more, you're not
likely to get a lot of aid. So you're going
to pay full price at your state school. And that's
a great exercise for people that do in laid stage
planning is figure out what would it cost to go
to the flagship school, you know, University UVA or University

(23:28):
of Michigan or University of Illinois. And a lot of
times the top school is a little more expensive than
the rest of the schools, not always, but what would
that cost, because that's usually going to be the price
to beat. So let's say it's twenty seven thousand, but
the actual bill is going to be twenty two thousand,
and then there's another five thousand for books and travel

(23:49):
and cell phones and dates and laundry and all that,
and a lot of that stuff is already paid for anyway,
so it's not really an added expense. It's just already
being covered some other way. So if you're going to
need to come up with actual bills of twenty two thousand,
well the student can only borrow fifty five hundred, typically

(24:10):
in their own name, and if you're not going to
get any other aid, that means the parents would have
to come up with the rest. Now, often students can
earn let's say another five thousand working summers and weekends,
and you know, so in round numbers, the students could
for ten thousand, so then the parents would have to cover.

(24:30):
In that twenty seven thousand example, the parents would have
to cover seventeen. So that's the higher incomes, you know,
one hundred and fifty, hundred thousand and up. If your
income's more like, you know, forty thousand, well then you
qualify for federal aid and state aid and some of
those other things, and maybe you get ten thousand dollars
in grants. So now school instead of costing the parents

(24:55):
fifteen twenty thousand, may cost the parents five or six
or eight thousand, But of course five or six or
eight thousand when you're only earning forty thousand is painful,
and when you're earning one hundred and fifty twenty thousand
is painful. And then it can go up from there. Right,
that's kind of the low cost option. And then many parents,

(25:15):
many families would choose private schools of some sort and
consider doing other options. And now all of a sudden,
you could spend forty thousand or fifty or eighty thousand
per year on school. And again I'm not saying you should,
but you could.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
There's many schools that.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Are approaching ninety thousand per year.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Now, yeah, and then I have here in my notes
that you mentioned that the students can attend a private
college for about the same price as if they want
to go to a public university.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
How is that so right?

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay, so we just talked about obviously, the state school
average twenty seventh, though the average private school is about
fifty seven thousand, so it costs about thirty thousand more.
But the average aid package at a private school is
also about twenty thousand more than the aid package at
the state school. So some private schools, you know, let's

(26:15):
say they total cost is sixty five instead of twenty five,
so they're forty thousand more. But in some instances you
may get an additional twenty thirty forty thousand dollars of aid,
which brings your net cost down to being very competitive
with the public schools. So I've seen situations where we
can go to this public school for twenty six, or

(26:36):
we can go to that public school for twenty three,
but we could also go to this private school for
twenty six and that private school for twenty two. And
then of course maybe's couple of the private schools just
aren't they running we can go to that public school
that one's forty or that private school that one's forty eight,
and that one over here is seventy eight. And then
families have to decide. And most of the time the

(26:59):
seventy eight thousand and is when you've got other low
cost options might get crossed off the list. But I
have seen situations where families are saying, you know, a
couple of them are twenty five thousand, a couple of
them are thirty thousand, and one of them is thirty
five thousand, and which is you know, again, the Murphy's
law would say, well, the one we like best, of course,

(27:20):
is the most expensive one with the thirty five thousand,
and then you have to decide, well, is it worth
spending an extra five or ten thousand or a college
And sometimes the answer is yes, And then families go
ahead and do it. Just like we all don't drive
the cheapest cars we can find. We find the cars
that we need to meet our needs. Whether you know,

(27:41):
I have three kids, so I needed a minivan when
the kids were young, and they cost more than the
typical car. But that's the way it is, right, that's
the cost of having kids. Same thing around college of
you know, these colleges are more expensive, but they're also
a better fit for whatever reason. So we're going to
go go ahead and stretch a little and spend a

(28:02):
little bit more.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, so tell me parents come to you, like, tell
me about your services or how you're able to how
you help parents that come to you. How does that work?

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Right?

Speaker 2 (28:15):
So, most of the families I'm working with were doing
what I would call late stage planning, which is, again,
you've got ideally you want to start earlier. You know,
you get a high school sophomore, but we can help
if you've got a junior or senior. A lot of
times for the senior where it's more damage control because
it's really late in the game and usually there's some

(28:37):
issue that pops up that we need to try and
figure out. But if you're doing good planning and you
start a little bit earlier, we help families figure out,
you know, what types of schools are a good fit.
We help you understand, you know, what that net cost
will be, will help you work through the state schools,
you know, And again lots of families are saying, we
don't really want to go to the state school, or

(28:59):
we want to go to state school in some other state,
and then we have to pay the out of state
and you know, then that's all doable. It's just a
matter of understanding what your options are, but finding schools
that are a good cost, and then from there pay
that cost as efficient as possible.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
So you know the two steps.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
You know, here's the school that's seventy thousand, but after
ad NET it's twenty five. Here's another school that's NET
twenty eight, and here's a school that's NET forty three.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Well, we're gonna end up paying.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
For one of those schools, you know, one of those schools,
and then how do we actually pay that net amount,
whether that's mom and Dad's money or the student's money,
or loans or all the other things. So there's kind
of big picture strategy around our belief as parents is
we're going to pay for all of college, or our

(29:53):
belief as parents is it's a partnership between the parents
and the student, and the student's going to pay some
and the parents are going to pay some. And then
we get into the very specific if you do this,
you'll get a tax deduction. If you do that, we
will get more financial aid, right, need based d aid
is a calculation based on the parents' incoming assets and

(30:16):
the student's incoming assets and a number of other factors.
But for a lot of families it may make sense
to shift money from one pocket to another in order
to get more aid. For other families, it doesn't matter
what you do, you're just not going to get aid.
So shifting it around, you know, people will say things like, well,
if I have this money in the bank, they're going

(30:36):
to count it against me. It's like yes, and if
you move it it will make things better. For some families,
it's yes, they will count it against you, but if
you move it, it won't get any better because they're
also looking at your three hundred thousand dollars salary and
that alone disqualifies you. So it doesn't matter where your
money is. You can shift it around all day long,

(30:57):
but as long as you have at that high salary,
you're not going to get it aid no matter what
you do, so don't worry about where your money is.
In that case, you need to focus on other strategies
in order to help pay for college. And about half
the people I work with qualify for aid and about
half don't, So there's you know, you do different things
in a different order potentially depending on you know, where

(31:20):
your family lies in the overall spectrum. And you know,
so for most families, it all turns out a little
bit differently. I think that's one of the big challenges
out there is a lot of families say things like, well,
my brother in law, I did it this way and
it worked out.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Well.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
It's like, yeah, well, your brother in law has a
certain financial profile, and you're that student had a certain
academic profile, and so yeah, that those strategies would work
for that situation. But you're not in that situation. Your
student is different, your income is different, you're you're a
different state, whatever it might be. So most of the

(32:01):
time things will be a little bit different. And that's
where I think a lot of families struggle is how
do they get quality information and how do they you know,
do the big picture planning and then get into the
strategies and tactics of Okay, we need to move this money,
or we need to fill out the financial aid forms
a certain way, or we need to negotiate with the

(32:23):
school or you know, which of these opportunities will be
a good fit for us.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, no, for sure. So do you people that come
to you do you do it on a case by
case basis type of service is at a one time
fee or how those structure for people that might be
interested in learning more about you.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Right, So generally I charge a fee for a college
plan whatever that you know, and usually it focuses on,
you know, the students that are involved, but it would
include the whole family. So you know, you have a
family where you've got to in high school and to
in middle school. Well, the kids in high school, they
really are in the middle of it, right, they're figuring

(33:06):
out where what they want to be when they grow
up and that kind of stuff. But the plan wouldn't
have to include the younger kids because most parents aren't
willing to say, you know, sorry, Becky, we ran out
of money, so you can't go to college. You need to,
you know, figure out how you're going to be fair
for all the kids. So that's part of the planning
process is you want to include them all, but usually

(33:27):
it's the oldest that are in the middle of actually
doing the actual visits and all the all the real
technical stuff, with the understanding that you know, the younger
kids will get their turn and we need to incorporate
them as part of the plan. So it's a it's
a very fluid situation where we would work potentially for

(33:51):
a year or two on getting the older ones and
then repeated if we needed to with the next students.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
If people want to find out and connect with you
and look at all the things you have to offer work,
can they find you? Right?

Speaker 2 (34:07):
So everything we do is at taming the high cost
of college dot com which is our website. We've got
a podcast there, We've got a number of free resources
of email, newsletter calculator to figure out need based aid,
scholarship guide for busy parents in order to help understand
how scholarships work.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
And then if you're.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Interested in talking, there are our phone numbers there. You
can schedule appointments through some links there and that type
of thing as well.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
So, Brad seems like you obvitually had something going on
for yourself and you have things for out. One of
the things that I'm interested annoying is what things do
you do on a day to day basis to kind
of keep you up and running in a positive set
of mind or even putting you in this state of
mind that you're in right now, what work have you
done for yourself too?

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Right?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
So I think I do a lot of reading around,
you know, sometimes for pleasure, but often I'm reading books
around you know, motivation and leadership and all those types
of things.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
And I find that.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Kind of spend a lot of time working in the
business and you know, doing the day to day planning,
but occasionally you got to spend some time thinking about, well,
bigger picture of why am I doing this and how
do I how can I do it better? And you know,
some of that type of thing. So I think, you know,
four hour work week, and there's a number of great books,

(35:36):
you know, all the way back to Stephen Covey all
the way through you know, some of the more modern
things that are coming out, and you know, sometimes it's
maybe not quite in the same field as I'm in,
because there's a lot a lot of times you can
take something from a different field and and move it
into financial planning, or take a financial planning idea and
move it into sales and marketing, or again there's a

(36:00):
little bit of crossover. So I find listening to podcasts
or reading books that aren't necessarily exactly what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Makes sense as well.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, besides ring, do you do anything else any other
habits that you that you have on a day to
day basis.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Not well, some that I've tried, but habits are tough
keeping them going.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So yeah, I mean I try and stay positive and yeah,
and you know, again, just try and get a little
bit of reading and a little bit of.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Back going, and then.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
I enjoy what I do, so that that helps as well.
Where I don't feel like I'm working most of the time,
I'm just you know, doing what I do, talking with
my clients and prospects and talking about something I love
to talk about, so it doesn't feel too much like
work for me.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
That's huge.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
As a matter of fact, I think that when you're
doing something that you're passionate about and you enjoy again,
like you said, it doesn't seem like work. So it's like,
you know, uh, just playtime, right and just having fun,
which allows for more of a healthier life for you
and allows you to be less stressed. When it comes

(37:13):
down to us. My last question for you is for
the people that are watching us or listening to us,
if they're going through any challenge, whatever challenge that might be,
what is one advice that you can give them so
they can start overcoming that challenge.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
I think most of the time it's not as bad
as you think it is. Where I mean, I work
with families all the time overcoming the college challenge, and
when you first run into it, it seems daunting and huge.
And I mean the reality of it is, if you
look at a college campus, it's full of students. So

(37:53):
most families figure it out somehow. M hm, how if
you know, So if you're up against something, whatever you're
up against, you know there's others that have probably solved it,
or if you get creative, there's probably a way to
solve it. But you know, take a deep breath and
really think it through and then get out there and
find some answers, find someone that can help. Yeah, and

(38:19):
you know, I think again, a lot of people get
bogged down and stressed out and kind of have a.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Defeated attitude before they've even.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Really looked into what the options are and what else,
you know, might be they might be able to consider.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah. I love that, definitely. I love that.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Well, Brad, thank you again for being here. Really appreciate
all your insight and definitely looking forward for this to
to help a lot of families that are going through
that and people that are trying to get into college.
So thank you for being here today.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, and for the first of you guys in me
a fair Please. Actually you shared this message because somebody
needs to hear this, and I'll see you guys the
next episode of you can recomment in podcast show.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Hi.

Speaker 4 (38:59):
I'm Caesar Aspino, real estate investor, business coach and consultant
and author of the book You Can Overcome Anything Even
when the World says No. My number is four two
four five zero one six zero four to six. In
my book, I talk about making the necessary changes to
shift your mind for prosperity and certainty. Pick up your
copy at Amazon. I also love helping families with their
real estate and can purchase your house fast and all cash.

(39:21):
Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. My number is
four two four five zero one six zero four six.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Thank you for having me today. I am so glad
you've tuned into this podcast. You can find me at
your favorite podcast platform where you can like, subscribe, comment
and share, and to learn more about myself my services.
You can find me at www dot Caesararspino dot com
or you can also find me at your social media.

(39:49):
Thanks for joining me and I am looking forward to
having you at the next episode and know you truly
can overcome anything.

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You Can Overcome Anything: Ep 296 - Building Trust with Prospects – Brad Baldridge

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}You Can Overcome Anything: Ep 296 - Building Trust with Prospects – Brad Baldridge