[00:00:00] Intro: Every number on a balance sheet tells a story, late nights spent building something meaningful. The risks taken, the difficult conversations, the lessons learned along the way. But true wealth is not measured in dollars. It’s woven into the stories that we create, the experiences that shape us, and the memories that outlive us.
Welcome to the Living Beyond The Numbers Podcast with Jude Boudreaux. From the Planning Center, this show is not about spreadsheets and financial jargon. It’s about real conversations and powerful stories that help you align your money with your values, your dreams, and your legacy. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about how much you have, it’s about the life you want to live and the stories you leave behind.
Now onto the show.
[00:00:50] Jude Boudreaux: Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Living Beyond the Numbers podcast. I’m your host, Jude Boudreaux. I’m here with our director of positivity, Caleb Arringdale. Hello. [00:01:00] And we’ve got a special guest today. Uh, we’ve got Ron Lieber from the New York Times, a writer of many, uh, wonderful books.
One the opposite of spoiled that I use a lot with my clients and discussions and think about a lot with my 15 and 10-year-old. Um, but a more recent one about the price you pay for college, which will be soon, uh, escalating conversation in our household. But, uh, anyway, thanks so much, Ron. We’re excited to have you here to today.
[00:01:27] Ron Lieber: It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:29] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, of course. Well, yeah, I guess thinking about it, like, maybe just share just a little bit of background on kind of how you’ve come to be. I mean, you’ve been writing the Your Money column for the New York Times for a long time, and just this exploration of money and what it means for people I think is something we’ve always connected on.
So maybe share a little bit about that as, as a place for us to start.
[00:01:47] Ron Lieber: Yeah. So my origin story as, as a person who thinks about money for a living actually has. A lot to do, um, with my personal pain for college journey. So I grew up in
[00:02:00] Chicago. Uh, and my parents’ marriage and my dad’s career kind of went off the rails, uh, simultaneously when I was in middle school.
And it was about a decade till we were back, uh, anywhere close to where we had been, um, socioeconomically in terms of our household income. So that overlapped with me applying for college, and we did not have enough money, uh, to go to the places that, uh, for me to go to the places that I wanted to attend.
And luckily, uh, my school counselor at the time knew a guy. The guy you were supposed to see if you lived in the greater Chicagoland area and you did not have enough money for college and needed some counseling. So we call this guy up and he gives us these really weird instructions.
Uh, he wants us to show up at a particular address at Evanston, Illinois on a particular date, a particular time to go in through the side door of the building and to bring him $50 in cash.
And [00:03:00] so we’re suspicious, but we do as we’re told and we get to the address. And it turns out that he is the assistant director of financial aid at Northwestern University, and he’s got this epic side hustle where he sneaks families into his office after hours, takes cash on the barrel, and then he tells you all the secrets of the financial aid system.
This guy knew exactly what he was talking about. Uh, I got into Amherst College early decision. I got a great financial aid package, developed a what’s been a decades long, uh, relationship still with the financial aid director who gave us a little bit more money each year because we knew how to ask for it in the right way.
And the moral of the story for me was that. They’re all of these complex systems in the world that involve money and they are made to be hacked, right? Legally, you just need to know the right grownup to explain stuff to you. So it’s probably not a big surprise that, you know, I grew up to be the person questioning
the grownups.
And I guess now at 54, I’m the grownup myself.
[00:04:05] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, that’s right. Well, and you’ve got a daughter in college, so not only did you get to write about this experience, you got to live this whole process too.
[00:04:11] Ron Lieber: Indeed. Um, you know, it was, it was a journey for us. Uh, I wasn’t sure, uh, whether we were gonna end up in a situation, uh, where.
We might be facing now in the prospect of paying full price, uh, for a private college or university. Uh, but we did, and we are, and it’s a lot. And we saved and it was not enough. And uh, it is a struggle.
[00:04:37] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, it is. And um, one of my favorite notes as I was preparing for this, I think that.
You know, college, like many of these choices, it’s a family values decision wrapped in like a financial decision, you know, ’cause it’s about what’s important to you and your family and how do you, you know, when you know that that’s the case, you’re willing to make some trade offs in some other places to make something work.
And, [00:05:00] um, yeah. And so I think we’ve all got so much we can learn from, from you and your research and things as we, you know, as we dig deeper into this. So.
So I guess as we started thinking about this, like is there something that you think fundamentally is a starting point that families are getting wrong as you know, they start this process of exploring paying for college?
[00:05:19] Ron Lieber: Well, as with many money decisions, and let’s be clear about what this one is. This is a very particular kind of money question. It’s like a Venn diagram where you’ve got um, you know, sort of three bubbles. You’ve over here you’ve got something that is really expensive. And then over here you got a bubble that is, um, a product or service where pricing is opaque and unpredictable.
And then down at the bottom, the third bubble is. There are a whole bunch of really messy feelings involved. And so I love living at the intersection of those three things. I feel like that’s what I was put on the earth to do. [00:06:00] And you know, college is one of those things that’s kind of right there on the top of that list of things that, you know, um, are affected, uh, or, or in the category of that diagram.
And so it will probably not come as much of a surprise. To hear that, you know, one of the things I figured out right away in my reporting on this topic was that, um, most families are doing a terrible job of reckoning with the most, um, complex and potentially problematic emotions that, um, affect. Uh, the college shopping experience, and there are three of them really.
There’s fear, right? Fear of falling down the social class ladder. Uh, you know, if you make the, the wrong mistake or that your kid will not achieve, uh, what you have, however it is that you define, achieve, um, guilt, right? Guilt that you have not earned enough, that you have not saved enough. Um, guilt that you may have the ability to pay or, or borrow, but lack the willingness to, to do so.
Uh, guilt that you. Cannot, no matter how hard you try, um, explain to your kid, um, why you stand, where you stand and why you’re willing to spend and not willing to spend, um, uh, what you are.
Um, and maybe, and especially guilt that you are not going. To be doing for your kid, what your parents were able to do for you.
So that screws people up in all sorts of ways, right? So number one, fear. Number two, guilt. Number three, snobbery or elitism, right? Private is better than public name. Brand is better than non name brand. You know, people. Um, define name brand, uh, in all sorts of ways that are not particularly scientific and themselves, uh, decidedly emotional.
So if you’re not reckoning, honestly, like rigorously honestly, and testing your spouse if you have one or your [00:08:00] ex, if you’ve got one of those, or you know, your financial advisor or your friends or fellow parents and your kid on those three feelings, um, then you’re in real danger of making a mistake.
[00:08:12] Jude Boudreaux: It’s, um, it’s fraught with so many things as I see this with, you know, our daughter, you know, she’s a freshman in high school right now, so thinking about this a lot more than I certainly was as a freshman, which I think is a mostly a positive thing.
A little bit of pressure that goes with that too, but mostly is a good thing. She’s aware that this is out there. Uh, but there is, yeah, there’s definitely this aspect of comparison too, right? Because it’s not just her, it’s her. And for peers and where are they going and how do we fit within that? And yeah, it’s so many emotional, you know, traps that you can fall into if you’re not aware that they’re out there.
[00:08:47] Caleb Arringdale: Yeah, and I really like that idea of, of guilt because I think a lot of our clients are a higher net worth for sure. But because they’re higher net worth, a lot of the, like the subsidies or the other things that are available to lower income people are not available to them,
but they’re also not ultra high net worth. And so there’s some of that guilt of, Hey, I, I earn more money than I thought maybe I ever would earn, and yet still I find myself limited or I find myself trying to figure out how I can make these financing decisions for my family.
[00:09:13] Ron Lieber: Exactly right. You know, if you’re earning, let’s call it $400,000 a year.
Right. Cue the chorus of really tiny violins for those people. Exactly. I mean, they have it so tough and yet. And yet, right, if your kid is able to get themselves into one of the highly rejected universities, um, that does not offer any discounts, um, for the affluent in the form of merit aid or merit scholarships, and you’re looking at 90 to a hundred thousand dollars a year.
It is not reasonable to expect, um, somebody who only recently has arrived at $400,000 a year in household income to have earned that much along the way, let alone saved as much, let alone, saved as much for [00:10:00] college on top of a mortgage payment on top of reasonable retirement expenses on top of. Health hiccups that may have come along the way, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?
So again, cry them a river, um, but they may not be able to do it or willing to borrow to do it, and that is defensible.
Um, but you don’t. Want to be figuring that out in April of your kids’ senior year in high school, and have to explain to them why you allowed them to apply to expensive schools. Um, and then when they finally got in, after having run the gauntlet, you are telling them that they cannot go, don’t want to end up there.
[00:10:44] Jude Boudreaux: It’s a tough setup for a, for a family. And I, I wanna highlight one thing you mentioned there about these Rejective schools. ’cause I think they like to paint themselves as selective, but that’s the, you know, that’s on their side of the thing. So I, I think it’s a much more illustrative thing when you’re like, no, they reject almost everybody that
applies.
It’s a very different perspective when you start from that place.
[00:11:04] Ron Lieber: I mean, they don’t particularly like that coin engine. It’s not mine. It’s a guy named Akil Bellow who is, you know, active in the testing field and is a, um, college counselor himself. But it’s just facts, right? I live in the world of facts for living in the New York Times and they reject way more people than they accept.
So they’re rejected. I mean, that just. Is what it is. And I think it’s important also, um, money aside, just for like a, a, a psychological framing perspective and, and like a realism perspective. So like chances are much better that you’re not gonna get into these places than you are. There’s no explaining, um, in many instances why you don’t.
And it is best not to place, um, too much, uh, sort of personal stake, um, in the outcome, uh, at some of these places.
[00:11:52] Jude Boudreaux: Because it’s, I don’t wanna say it’s random, but when you look at it, it’s often hard to tell the difference between one candidate with a profile that gets in and one who doesn’t.
[00:12:01] Caleb Arringdale: This is true.
Yeah. I actually do have one additional question there, and I think it’s really important for a lot of our clients, because you mentioned that 400,000, you know. $400,000 range for income Based on that, let’s say they have assets between that, you know, two to 10, two to $15 million, what should they expect to pay? Like what are the realistic fact-based numbers for that?
[00:12:24] Ron Lieber: Sure. So there are two ways to think about what the final price tag will be. The first is a strictly needs-based analysis. So in general. What you are going to be asked to pay depends on what you earn and what you have. And there are two formulas that are determinative.
Um, anybody who wants financial aid from the federal government, so that’s any kind of student loan. Um, a work study job on campus where the schools. Pay you, but the, [00:13:00] some of the money comes from the federal government or a Pell Grant for low income people, you’ve gotta fill out the fafsa. And so almost everybody does that.
Who’s interested in aid? And then a couple hundred schools, mostly private, mostly expensive, make you fill out a different form, uh, which is called the CSS profile form. So in general, uh, at the most expensive schools, people who earn more than 300, $350,000 will not qualify for any need-based state. Um, if you have a.
Like a sibling, uh, let alone two or a parent, uh, in college at the same time that you are or there are certain other really extenuating circumstances. Um, if your household income is a little higher, you, you may actually qualify.
Um, so that’s. Need-based aid. And, um, one of the things that gets messy, um, when you’re dealing with that second form, the CSS profile, is that schools have all sorts of different ways of assessing your home equity and deciding what, if anything, uh, you need to contribute from that.
Um, the schools are terrible at telling people ahead of time. How home equity fits into the formula. And it is absolutely, uh, well within your rights, uh, to ask the school about it directly if they are not making it clear in their FAQ on their website. ’cause that can make a five figure swing, um, per year if you happen to be lucky enough to be, you know, coastal and, you know, have owned your place for 20 or 25 years.
So that’s the need-based side. Sure. Then there’s, um, merit aid and merit scholarships and ET all but. 30 or so schools, uh, in America. Um. There are discounts in the form of merit aid and merit scholarships that have little, if anything, to do with what you earn or what you have, and have a lot to do, um, with how good of a student you are.
[00:15:00] Something interesting about your extracurricular activity, um, or some or another institutional need in that given year that they are almost certainly not going to tell you about. Right? So you don’t know whether. Um, you know, the school wants way more kids from Texas and they’re gonna throw money at the Texans.
You don’t know whether the orchestra has been depleted and this is the perfect year to be, um, a bassoon virtuoso. Um, you know, and, and there are a whole bunch of other factors that, that go into, uh, how this is awarded, but it is absolutely the case, um, that, you know, families with seven figure net worths, um, are getting.
Six figure discounts over four years, uh, through the merit aid, uh, and merit scholarship process. And it’s, um, not really predictable. Um, and the formulas are often, although not always, a black box and, um, most otherwise sophisticated parents, uh,
you know, walk in the front door of this process, uh, having no idea that merit aid exists or if they do know, um, not knowing how the process works and it’s messy.
[00:16:10] Caleb Arringdale: Sure. To sort of transition to a more of the values conversation we were having, we talked to a lot of clients who have been very successful, right? And that they’ve done excellent in their careers. They have more income than they ever expected to, and so they have children and they’re worried about their children, right?
How do they give them opportunities without spoiling them? How do they give them these opportunities that they perhaps never had while not just putting them on an escalator to, to something?
[00:16:35] Ron Lieber: Yeah. So, gosh, I mean, where to start with that? I mean, I, you know, one way I think that’s helpful to to frame it is that, you know, the process of, of thinking about college is a value question, right?
What does a particular school deliver, which is its own, you know, long conversation. And then there’s a values question, right? What is it that your
family actually stands for and what. Does that have to do with this process? So, you know, there are a couple ways, uh, I like to think about this. Um, one, uh, and these come from real examples.
Um, one comes from a professional academic, uh, who I met. When I was working on my college book, uh, so somebody I went to college with myself who’d heard what I was up to and, you know, wanted to get the download, I think as a preview so he would know what I was saying, um, about the industry so he could plan for it at his own institution.
Mm-hmm. And. He at the time was the parent of a junior in high school and a freshman in high school, and I was pretty sure he was gonna be one of these, you know, 300 to $400,000 earning families, you know, they were gonna have some difficult decisions to make.
[00:17:48] Jude Boudreaux: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:49] Ron Lieber: And he sort of takes this all in and he sort of leans back as his chair and he says to me, well, Ron, what else are we gonna do with the money?[00:18:00]
That is not a rhetorical question, right? I don’t have to explain that to a financial planner. Um, but I do have to explain it to people who are out there checking out this conversation and are not necessarily primed, uh, to ask themselves hard questions. What else are you going to do with the money? Are you going to retire three years earlier in lieu of letting your kid go to a hundred thousand dollars per year school?
Are you going to have a second home? Are you gonna travel more? Are you gonna be way more charitable than you could be otherwise? I make no value judgements about anybody whose values cause them not to wanna spend $400,000 per kid. But I absolutely make value judgments about people who do not have the conversation with themselves ahead of time.
And if advisors are not forcing that conversation, they are committing malpractice. Uh, that’s how strongly I feel about it.
Number two, the other values component here is. What exactly are you going to ask your kid to contribute to this process? Is it enough that they work their tail off and were polite and considerate and appropriately generous, you know, throughout, um, their high school career such that you should ask nothing of them financially or otherwise during this process?
Or is there something more. That you wish to ask of them, even if you can write the check out of current income without thinking about it. So again, no value judgment really for me about where you come out on that question. Although I tend to think every kid should have to contribute something somehow.
Um, but again. If you’re not having that [00:20:00] conversation with yourself and also making it crystal clear to your kid maybe as early as freshman year in high school, you know, if you’re gonna expect, um, something significant from them, then you’re probably doing it wrong. So again, right. Ask yourself the hard questions.
I know this feels like homework or, you know, may even feel like kind of didactic or dictatorial, but. This is a lot of money and it’s really important. Right. And there and there’s a lot of feelings involved. So we gotta have a process. It can’t just be something that we like hash out in the spring of their senior year.
Like, no, it’s too important. It costs too much money. Um, you know, it, there just needs to be more that goes into it.
[00:20:40] Caleb Arringdale: Yeah. We do talk a lot about you can have anything you want, but not everything you want. So make these choices. The other kind of question along those lines. A lot of people today look at college as an experience, right?
Not just as an investment and how do you help, or I guess, what do you think about that? Or how do you help parents have that
conversation with kids who might be wanting to go to college for the experience, whereas parents who might be thinking, Hey, yeah, this is one of our biggest expenses of all time. This should be an investment. How? How do you manage that one?
[00:21:11] Ron Lieber: I love that question because, you know, we live and have for decades really, um, you know, in something called the experience economy where, um. Product makers and in particular service providers are very carefully engaging in design, thinking around what the structure and delivery and look and feel of a particular thing is going to be.
Now, colleges were, were late to this, um, and many of them still haven’t. Put their heads around it, but the sort of second and third tier ones that are striving often successfully to kind of climb the ladder of, you know, status or brand or, or US news ranking. They understand [00:22:00] this innately. Um, and they are very much trying to get in your kids’ heads with particular aspects of, of, you know, how this works. Right.
Um. It also plays out on social media in a fascinating way. I mean, we saw this, um, during the pandemic when all these kids in the north were, you know, sort of shut up in their rooms, uh, away from high school, away from college. Uh, and they were all spending way more time on social media than they had the previous year.
And well, once you know it, uh. The colleges and universities in the south were open, they were open sooner, there was more partying going on. The weather was nice. Um, and pretty soon there was this kind of like epic shift in applications and, you know, people crossing the Mason Dixon line to go to college.
Um, and so, you know, the, the experience element of this, um, matters. Um, there are, uh, there’s a sociologist. That [00:23:00] sort of studied this phenomenon. She was early to it. Um, and she, you know, was writing in particular about how middle income and, um, working class students made the decision about, you know, whether to attend their state university instead of, you know, a local branch that they could commute to.
And the title of her book was paying for the Party. That was quite literally, um, what was going on with some of these students who ended up in debt, um, often did not fit in or sometimes did not fit in and ended up dropping out with no degree, but a whole lot of debt, which is the worst possible outcome.
And so, um, I have no problem whatsoever again. You know, with, um, people who want their kids to have a damn good time for four years or the five that it sometimes takes, um, at larger state institutions, but. I do think you, again, you know, need to be super honest amongst yourselves. Um, you know, kind of [00:24:00] intrafamily with what it is that you are actually paying for and why, um, and how much, you know, the experience or the party, um, should be a component of that.
And if it is a not small component, what other expectations, um, do you have for your kid? Uh, other than, um, you know, just having a blast for four years.
[00:24:23] Jude Boudreaux: Well, and I’ll say here. As somebody in the south, uh, you know, we certainly lived through and saw some of that. Uh, you know, I, um, my wife from Chicago, you know, came to tour two lane and left a snowstorm and got here and, you know, March and it’s beautiful outside. And like, it’s not the only part of that decision, but you gotta say it makes a difference when you’re, when you’re looking into things and thinking about what your life is gonna be like. It, uh, it has a like, Hey, let me get out of the winter for a while and see what this is like.
[00:24:54] Ron Lieber: And the North lost her permanently.
[00:24:56] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah. No, but I think kind of think it had from high school that [00:25:00] she got tired of having snow on her birthday in April. And so, um, yeah. So it’s, uh, it’s been a persistent thing, although, you know, it’s October and it’s still in the eighties here, so like, you know, if there were ever a chance, like now is the, now is the opportunity. Catch you in September, October. You, the summer gets long down here for sure. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I mean, so we’ve talked about all these financial aspects and now we kind of go into then making this decision. Are there things that you see as important factors for clients and families to think of when they’re evaluating these different aid packages? Like it’s so hard to compare one to another. So what are some factors you think fact, you know, play in or ways for the family to think about this decision?
[00:25:42] Ron Lieber: You know, I think. At the end of the process, it’s important to keep in mind, um, some of what, you know, you ought to be framing this through from the beginning, right?
Which is being honest with, with yourself about, you know, whether you’re shopping for the learning, right? Like, what are you actually gonna stuff in your brain, [00:26:00] the kinship. Um, you know, the friends or the mentors, um, you’ll find along the way the people who are gonna pick you up and carry you through life and trying to kind of calculate the odds of, of those good connections actually happening.
Um, are you paying for a credential? Right? Something that is, is going to be meaningful in, um, industries that can provide a relatively stable living or in, um, super. Elitist industries that may only hire or hire more people, um, from certain schools that might be more expensive than others.
And then, yeah, are you, are you paying for the party? Like how much does you know, football and, uh, Greek life and um, you know, acapella singing or, you know, whatever else, um, gets you most excited. Uh, how much of that is gonna make a difference as well?
So, you know, you kind of, kind of keep that in mind. And then I think just, you know, kind of technically, um. You have to remember that [00:27:00] when you’re comparing, um, apples with oranges, with lemons, at the very least, you’ve gotta keep the kind of baseline, um, price quote, um, uh, in mind, right? So it’s like you’re, you’re looking at the net price, right? There’s the list price minus the. Institutional aid, like the actual scholarship money coming from the school, whether it’s need based or merit based, right?
So list price minus scholarship. Equals net price. Like, don’t think about work study jobs. Don’t think about, you know, the loans that they’re telling you to take and what they refer to as an award letter. It’s amazing that they have the chutzpah and an award letter to tell you, take, tell you to take out debt, right? When, when in what universe is debt and award? I mean, gimme a freaking break.
So right list price, time, scholarship equals net price, right? So you start by comparing those, um. You know, and then you have to go back to the list of what you’re shopping for and think really carefully and, and revisit some of the schools that you know, if it’s financially and logistically possible, um, you know, to sort of really bear down on, uh, how they deliver on learning kinship, uh, credential and, you know, having a damn good time.
[00:28:21] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah. And so that, that aid, you know, that award letter things, you know, they’re cha. Is that, you know, is that like a fixed thing or is that more movable than people might realize?
[00:28:32] Ron Lieber: That is not the final answer. And increasingly in the last several years, colleges have come to expect that people are going to ask for more.
And just briefly, um, you know, there’s kind of two different ways this go, right? The need based financial aid based on. What you earn and what you have that comes from the financial aid office. And if you’re making an appeal for a better deal over there, um, generally you’re gonna be most successful if you can persuade that office that your underlying financial circumstances have changed. From the data you originally submitted to them, that’s gonna kind of give you best job over there.
Um, over here, uh, with the merit data, the merit scholarships, that comes from the admissions office. So your appeal on merit, um, kind of goes there. And these colleges, in most instances. You know, build some, give in the budget. They expect people to come back to them for more and they don’t always say yes, but, um, often they do and they’re especially likely to do so if they are coming up short that spring, right? So they’re checking every day, like how many people are ringing the bell and putting down a deposit. And if they’re behind, they will often start throwing more money around, um, sometimes unsolicited, um, to try to get to the number of heads and beds. Um. Where they need to be and so often, um. You know, your your best appeal strategy, and this is not negotiation by the way, don’t use the n word. Uh, these schools, um, don’t want to feel any more like used car salespeople than they already do, right?
So your appeal to the admissions office on merit aid, um, is gonna consist of two things, if this works, number one. Are there any academic or other accomplishments that you can point to, uh, since you applied, um, that make you even more of a great fit for this institution and deserving of a bigger discount? That’s number one.
Number two. Have comparable schools, and you’ll wanna think really hard about which ones are comparable, comparable schools that the school that you’re most interested in, um, competes with. Have they offered you a net price that is lower? Because in most instances. The school will, will wanna match that, and it’s a reasonable ask. Um, some people will go so far as to say, you are my, you are my first choice institution. Um, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to pull this off at $25,000, you know, more over four years. Mm-hmm. If you, um, can’t kind of equalize the, the price that I’ve been offered and. I’d just like to know, did we do something wrong here in the application? Like did we make a mistake that caused this, this differing outcome? Because if so, this would be a great time for us to, to correct it or, or have a conversation, right? And that opens the door and then you cross your fingers.
[00:31:41] Jude Boudreaux: That’s such a great framing, and I often feel like it’s kind of like the guy at the dance. Like, if you don’t ask, like you’re never gonna, nobody’s gonna dance with you. So sometimes you just have to ask, you’re pretty much gonna be in the same spot if, uh, if not, if they say no. So you, you just gotta take a shot.
[00:31:56] Ron Lieber: I actually think it’s better than the person at the dance.
Um, because if you walk across the room and make the ask and the person you wanna dance with turns you down. That’s like a little humiliating in the short term. And, and maybe the medium term too. Maybe people are talking about the next day, but with this, nobody knows that you’re making the ask. Uh, so there is no humiliation, um, in getting no for an answer. There is only upside.
[00:32:25] Caleb Arringdale: I love that idea that it’s not a negotiation. You just, you’re addressing your issue. Say, Hey, did I do something wrong? I think that’s a great way to open that door without feeling super awkward about it. I like that.
[00:32:36] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah.
All right. So, got a college decision. We’ve in there as families are, you know, we made this choice. We’ve, we’re all excited about it. Now, what’s, um, what should families do once that choice is made, kind of help make this work well and avoid buyer’s remorse.
[00:32:54] Ron Lieber: Yeah, so there is, um, you know, there are all sorts of ways and sort of strategies to think about in terms of, you know, actually milking every ounce of value, um, out of a particular institution.
Um, there’s a guy named, um, Harlan Cone on, uh. On TikTok and Instagram, who’s, you know, really terrific on undergraduate strategies, uh, he’s worth a follow, and he’s written one or two books on the topic. Yeah. So, you know, much is gonna depend on, again, like what you were shopping for, right? So if you’re shopping for a great education, um, one of the ways, um, one of the, the ways to increase your odds of, you know, really stuffing your brain to its maximum is to get into some smaller classes where you’ll be forced to participate more. You’re more likely to be noticed, um, by instructors and professors who can kind of take you under, um, their wing and introduce you to other classes that you might not have considered.
Um, same thing is true with any academic advisor. Um. You know, you wanna make those connections, you wanna go to the office hours, you, you want to be known.
Um, so that’s, you know, the academic side, uh, the kinship side, same thing. Right? Um, which clubs are you joining? Uh, are you forcing yourself, uh, to go out? Are you putting yourselves into situations where, um, you have the highest, uh, opportunity of bumping into people who you know, might be your soulmates? Um.
And then as far as the, you know, credentials concerned, um, are you making connections, uh, with alumni, uh, as you begin to think about what you might want to do after school? Um, using the school’s networks, um, you know, through the career counseling office. Finding people who have volunteered to be helpful to current undergraduates.
Um, so you know, that’s something that, uh, you might consider there. And then as far as the good time goes, um, you don’t necessarily have to. Join a fraternity or a sorority, um, in order to guarantee fund, and that’s, um, not for everybody. Um, in fact, that’s the opposite of fund for plenty of people.
Um, but, you know, understand, uh, what really makes you happy. And or experiment to find that and then insert yourself deliberately as often as possible, you know, into the clubs or into the parties or into the situations. Um, you know, that will bring you the most joy and the most fun.
[00:35:43] Jude Boudreaux: Fantastic. And to bridge a little bit of the price pay for college and the opposite of spoiled, any thoughts on.
You know, ongoing, you know, allowance or financial support as the student is at college. Uh, you know, what would you like to share or hope people know, uh, as they’re [00:36:00] having that conversation?
[00:36:01] Ron Lieber: Uh, it’s trache, um, and. I could tell you what we are doing personally, which is, you know, that we made a decision and, you know, we told, um, our, our child who is in college right now, uh, a year or two ahead of time, that, um, the way we were gonna do it was that, um, you know, she’s responsible for a little bit of tuition, but she’s also responsible for all of her.
Personal expenses that are wants and not needs, uh, while she is an undergraduate, including during the summer. So, uh, there is no allowance. Um, she spends whatever she wants to spend. She saves, uh, whatever she wants to save, although we encourage her to, you know, start putting money away for later. Um, and that part of it, you know, the going out, the lunches, the dinners, um.
You know, clothing that she wants as opposed to clothing that she needs, that’s all on her and she can spend as much or as little as she wants to and we don’t track it.
[00:37:03] Jude Boudreaux: Fantastic. I think that’s such a great, uh, my primary advice for clients and children is like, you gotta find safe ways for them to fail.
And that feels like a good one there. ’cause there’s, yeah, it, it, it’s a lot of learning that comes from being the 20th and you don’t have any money and you know, if, you know that money’s coming on the first, but, you know, a lot of, uh, creativity and things come into play between there, those, those 10 days to make it, uh, you know, give some lifelong learning lessons within it.
[00:37:33] Ron Lieber: Yeah, and the way she did it is that, um, she found a job 30 minutes from campus that’s only once a week that pays three or four times the hourly wage that campus jobs pay, uh, doing something completely legal and actually morally upstanding. Um, and, uh, and you know, that’s how she swings it, um, and felt like a pretty creative solution to us.
[00:37:57] Jude Boudreaux: No, that’s great. You get away from the supply of lots of college students who just need a job and the rates change. Right. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yep. So as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation, is there like a really, like one thing, if you had families take one thing away from this or a thought process, what would you have that be?
[00:38:17] Ron Lieber: I mean, I think what I would say is, um, study up, because the thing that I had not bargained for when I started going down this road reporting wise was just how sophisticated. Um, the forces are that are sort of lined up against families in this process.
And, you know, the emotions aside, um, you know, I hate to be oppositional, but people need to be aware of the fact that there are a handful of really sophisticated consulting firms that sit behind the scenes. Um, whispering in the college’s ears, um, telling them [00:39:00] precisely how, and then helping them, uh, to suck up. Every possible bit of data, financial and otherwise about you and your family and your teenager up to and including tracking them very carefully in terms of how they interact, both on their phones and, um, you know, on, on the web generally through cookies and also sorts of other means comparing them to other kids from their school, from their area, from their socioeconomic group, um, and.
Putting all that information into various algorithms that tell the school or try to predict, um, exactly what your family would be willing to pay, but not a dollar less. Um, and. Uh, so, you know, people think of higher education as this sort of, you know, tweedy pipe, smoking, corduroy jacket, elbow patch, uh, you [00:40:00] know, opaque tights in the winter, you know, uh, uh, people leaning back in their chairs and, you know, being all sort of kind and pleasant and there is a lot of that, right?
And I’m, I’m not. Disparaging the people who do this work, um, they are incredible people, uh, and well-meaning ones, um, for the most part. But this is a brutally competitive industry, right outside of, you know, a couple of dozen highly rejective institutions. And even among those, they are kind of fighting tooth and nail, uh, to fill their seats.
More often than you think they are fighting with dollars. Um, and your job is to be a customer of below average profitability, uh, to these institutions. And the only way you can get there is by studying up on how they work.
[00:40:50] Caleb Arringdale: Yeah. I agreed that it’s important to remember that these are are a business, right? And they’re a business that can do very important things, but ultimately they are a business and in the job of making money.
[00:41:01] Jude Boudreaux: It seems to me there’s been a shift too within the colleges of, uh, kind of almost enforcing, almost becoming real estate companies more than, or as much as education companies.
Tulane here in New Orleans now requires students to live on campus for three years, and they’ve gone through this process of building a lot of residential facilities to make that happen. In a way it’s, I feel like it’s just a mental shift. Like, well, people are comfortable paying rent, but they’re less comfortable paying tuition, so maybe we’ll just discount one number, inflate the other one.
And if you’re coming from New York, it doesn’t feel so bad to pay that much in rent. And, uh, we’re, you know, kind of happier as a family with that overall transaction. Is that, am I off base with that, or is that something you’re seeing too?
[00:41:42] Ron Lieber: Uh, it is often the case that. Room and board is more profitable for the institutions, um, than providing the actual education.
You know, and it gets messy at a place like Tulane because there’s all sorts of cross-subsidization that goes on. You know, you got the football team over here and the hospital over there, and there’s the business school and you know, it’s like a lot of stuff. It’s much cleaner at a, um, undergraduate, only small liberal arts college.
Uh, but yes. Right to look at that, you’re like, you’re right to wonder. And you know, it’s very helpful for an institution to be able to say, you know, we’ve frozen tuition, you know, for 12 straight years. Or, you know, on an inflation adjusted basis, our tuition hasn’t gone up at all. Or like the net price hasn’t gone up at all, which may be the case on average.
It’s not gonna be the case for everyone and it may not be the case, um, for the most affluent families, and it’s certainly not the case for affluent families at the high, highly rejected schools. So it is absolutely possible, um, to pay $400,000 over four years and, you know, tens of thousands, maybe not hundreds, but tens of thousands of people, um.
Are signing up to do that each year and many of them have financial advisors. Um, and so, you know, this is something you gotta take into account.
[00:43:09] Caleb Arringdale: I know we’re kind of coming up, coming up on time, but. As I’m hearing all of this, something that comes to me is decision paralysis, right? There is so much information, so much studying you can do.
We realize there’s so many forces are array against you. How do you get past decision paralysis? Then how do you actually make that decision and, and feel good about it, even though it’s going to be an perfect decision?
[00:43:32] Ron Lieber: Yeah, I mean, I do believe that you should spread it out over years. College counselors hate me, um, for saying it, uh, because they.
Realistically, like don’t have the resources even at the, the ones at private schools, um, to hold your hand for four years. Um, but you know, you’re not being responsible, uh, as a parent or certainly as a financial advisor advising the parent. If you don’t start [00:44:00] thinking about the money side of this before high school even starts, and then, you know, something that I sort of knew intellectually but did not really understand until I went through the process is that the logistics of this are just truly messy, right?
Like in order to be a pretty well informed. Um, consumer, ideally, you’re going to visit a bunch of these places before you decide where to apply and when you do visit, ideally you’re going there when school is actually in session, but in order to go when their school is in session. You may have to go also when your high school is in session and the overlapping days of when your high school is out of session and the college you wanna visit is in session for us. Turned out to be, you know, maybe 13 days over two years where it was possible, um, for my daughter not to skip school. And for her to see, uh, you know, class in session and go to actual classes and be at these schools when other students were there. Um, and then we had to figure out, right, like how could we, you know, put itineraries together And it was complicated and it was expensive and we were lucky enough to be able to, you know, cash in a bunch of miles and points and, you know, put some cash on the table to, to do it.
Um, we were. Lucky that, you know, one parent or the other was, you know, able to go on most of those days. Um, you know, but it’s not easy. And so, you know, if you do it over a not short period of time, it’ll feel a little less stressful. And then of course, you know, at the end of the process, um. If you’re applying to a whole bunch of schools and you don’t get in early with a clear first choice, um, some of the decisions will be made for you, right? And you might be down to, you know, only, only three schools that are financially realistic, um, and, um, ones that you actually like. And [00:46:00] so at, at a certain point, you know, a bunch of stuff just gets taken off the table, um, either by you or by the institution itself, which may help.
[00:46:10] Jude Boudreaux: Great. Well, um. So many great things here as we start to wrap up. But I do have a few rapid fire questions that um, we like to go through with everybody. And the most important of those is what is your favorite animal?
[00:46:22] Ron Lieber: I’m gonna have to go with corgis just ’cause that’s my younger daughter’s favorite dog. Um, and you know, we’re trying to get our head around like, in what universe? Um, would taking care of a puppy not completely put us over the edge logistically? Um, we’re still working on that.
[00:46:39] Jude Boudreaux: I’m reminded of our CEO’s father, as is saying that if you go looking for trouble, you’re probably gonna find it. And so if you go start looking for Corgi puppies, like you’re probably gonna end up with one. So just step carefully. Um, how about the best money you’ve ever spent?
[00:46:54] Ron Lieber: I mean, the best money that I spend other than on our kids’ education, which, you know, I don’t regret a dollar of, although I’m not sure my wife would completely agree with that. You know, you’re constantly learning things about your spouse and, you know, your shared, um, financial journey.
Um, that was something that I, I learned about my wife just a couple days ago. Um, that there are some things that she regrets, which I thought was interesting. Um. But you, uh, you’ll know the answer to this question because we’ve done some of this together. The, the best money that I feel like I spend is on, um, seeing as much live music as possible, as close to the stage as I can get.
[00:47:34] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah. I had a feeling that was gonna be your answer. Mm-hmm. Um, how about, um, favorite place you’ve ever visited?
[00:47:42] Ron Lieber: Oh, well, I mean, we’re going back to Hawaii for the fourth time in, you know, 10 or 15 years in, um, uh, in February. So, you know, that’s gotta be high up there. Um, we took our honeymoon to Australia, which blew my mind. I’m dying to get back there and, um, hopefully to New Zealand as well. Um. You know, I’ve gotta put in for my hometown of Chicago. I was just there last week and was reminded yet again of just what a terrific place is and a place it is.
And you know, there are all these like weirdos, um, you know, grew up on the coast and get to adulthood and have never been there and like, what the hell talk about snobbery and elitism. Get away from the coasts and like pull the ripcord, uh, you know, on the transcon flight and visit the Midwest for Pete’s sake. And if it isn’t Chicago, make it Milwaukee or Minneapolis, which is spectacular. Um, go to the Midwest please
[00:48:44] Caleb Arringdale: as someone from the Midwest. Totally agree. I mean, the coast are amazing. Love California, love New York, but Chicago, me welcome, Minneapolis are all great cities. Totally agree.
[00:48:54] Ron Lieber: Yeah. It’s like all these people who fancy themselves sophisticates and like I’ve never set foot in any of those cities. Come on. Right. You haven’t actually seen the world. Gimme a break.
[00:49:05] Jude Boudreaux: There’s so many great things. I’ll say just from, you know, getting up to the start of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, the. You know, getting a lake cabin in Wisconsin, I have this theory that Wisconsin and Louisiana are the same place. They’re the same people. Um, and you know, like accordion based local music. You have people love these dining out, the drinking copious amounts of beer, but having huge family get togethers and everybody’s part of the family. So you can all, everybody can come and everybody will have a good time fry fish. Yeah. Like, you know, they’re fishing just in different formats. Like it’s, um, they’re the same people just in different weather.
[00:49:41] Ron Lieber: That’s a New York Times travel story waiting to happen, and I just may steal it.
[00:49:45] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, perfect. My mother-in-law is the second oldest of 10 from Central Wisconsin, and so, uh, we go up there every year for Thanksgiving. It’s this huge family get together and it’s wonderful. Um, but yeah, there’s so many great things about Wisconsin. I can, you know, it’s, it’s more than Chicago’s backyard, as some Chicagoans might say.
Um, all right, well, last one, I think. Best advice. Best advice that you ever received.
[00:50:07] Ron Lieber: The best advice I ever received was more like an observation that turned into a kind of order. Um, a couple of guys Midwesterners, both, um, who were sizing me up when I was applying for a job at the Wall Street Journal in 2002. Looked at all the stuff that I’d written. And said to me, Lieber, we have a problem here. You don’t know what you actually are. And I thought, that’s kind of existential, but you know, try me, right? And they said, your beat is beating the system. So. As soon as they explained that to me, all of these doors and windows started flying open in my head and pretty soon, sure enough, I got hired at the Wall Street Journal and I was writing stories about how to return your wedding gifts for cash and stuff like that. And pretty soon we realized that was also personal finance. And so, you know, they literally invented me over there. I’m not sure I ever would’ve figured it out had it not been for them.
[00:51:07] Jude Boudreaux: So great. Yeah. Sometimes you just need somebody to hold up a, a mirror and tilt it a, you know, bend it a slight way so that you can see yourself in a different perspective. Yep. Well, thanks Ron. This was really a wonderful conversation. I know we went a little longer than we normally do with these, but I think it’s such valuable information for our clients and all the listeners who will be out there.
Um, so I know we wanna mention, you know, obviously the price you pay for college was the book that led to a lot of this research journey for you. So grab a copy of that. And then for those of you who are really digging into this, uh, the website is merit aid course.com. And maybe share a little bit with us just about what, what’s on there, what can people expect?
[00:51:46] Ron Lieber: Sure the course was Born of Reader Demand. People who had read the price of P for college and wanted to know way more about this merit aid and merit scholarships and how they worked. And it, it should not have come as a surprise because I learned after writing the book, and then since then when I built the course, there are people who have, you know, put this advice to work and gotten another a hundred or $150,000 lopped off. Um, the original price they got from the school of their choice. So that feels really good that I’ve delivered that kind of value.
Um, the course itself just goes into great detail about, um, how the school set up their systems, and in particular, how to make an educated guess about. What sort of discount you might be offered, and then of course, a whole bunch of advice about, you know, what to do with the initial offers and how to make a reasoned and reasonable appeal, um, without behaving like a jerk.
[00:52:44] Jude Boudreaux: Oh, that’s fantastic. And you know, it’s a small investment in, uh, one of the more expensive things people will are going to purchase effectively. Um, so I think it, you know, a little bit of time, a little bit of money goes a long way in, in that process. So, um, so it’s merit aid course.com and we’ll put that link to in the show notes. So, um, wonderful. Well thanks so much Ron, for spending so much time with us today. We really appreciate it.
[00:53:06] Ron Lieber: My pleasure. Uh, I’m really glad to do it.
[00:53:10] Jude Boudreaux: All right. Well thanks everybody. Hope you enjoy us. Uh, join us for the next episode of The Living Beyond the Numbers podcast. Please comment, like, subscribe, and we’ll get back to you with any questions that you might have.
Um, so you can reach us. I’m jude@theplanningcenter.com
. Caleb is caleb@theplanningcenter.com
. And Ron, do you wanna give away for listeners to get in touch with you if they have questions?
[00:53:30] Ron Lieber: Yes, I’m easy to find Ron lieber.com.
[00:53:33] Jude Boudreaux: Fantastic. All right, well, thanks so much everybody. Hope y’all have a wonderful rest of your day.
[00:53:39] Outro: Thanks for tuning in to the Living Beyond the Numbers podcast. If today’s episode resonated with you, be sure to follow us so you never miss a conversation. For more resources and to learn how we can help you align your wealth with your life’s purpose, visit us@theplanningcenter.com
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