Speaker 1: Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt, and
Speaker 1: today we're asking the question is college for dummies. Did
Speaker 1: you ever purchased one of those books whatever for dummies
Speaker 1: like coding for Dummies, Driving for Dummies, Dating for Dummies
Speaker 1: in high school? Probably could have used it back in
Speaker 1: the day. Um, mom, I'm gonna swing by the books
Speaker 1: a million and pick up girls for Dummies. Uh No,
Speaker 1: this is we are going to talk about college during
Speaker 1: this episode, and with with fall basically right around the corner,
Speaker 1: we felt that this was a good time for us
Speaker 1: to revisit the topic of college and specifically if it's
Speaker 1: gonna make a lot of sense for folks. And I
Speaker 1: think there might be some folks who are listening and thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, thanks a lot of guys, But I'm a
Speaker 1: recent college grad where I'm a young professional. The fact is,
Speaker 1: I guarantee you know more high schoolers than we do.
Speaker 1: Uh And so I think this is worth listening to
Speaker 1: because you can help guide them through this critical time
Speaker 1: in their in their lives, or at least send them
Speaker 1: the link to this episode. Well, in the very least,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of interesting information. I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot has changed when it comes to the value
Speaker 1: proposition the college offers and it's just not as much
Speaker 1: of a slam dunk because it used to be uh
Speaker 1: years ago. So we're gonna kind of get into that
Speaker 1: in this episode. We're gonna kind of help you ask
Speaker 1: some questions, whether you're a parent or a high school student,
Speaker 1: or someone who knows one of those people about like
Speaker 1: maybe how to navigate the process of thinking through the
Speaker 1: value that higher education offers or doesn't offer for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're a parent, you also might be thinking, well,
Speaker 1: my kids are too young. I mean, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we are. Kids are pretty young. But the
Speaker 1: fact is this is something you should start thinking through now,
Speaker 1: because I don't think you get to a point to
Speaker 1: where you say, okay, it is now time for higher education,
Speaker 1: like higher age. Educating your kid is a process like
Speaker 1: that is what you are living. It's not an event.
Speaker 1: It's not appeared in time when you're now all at
Speaker 1: once going to make the right decision. It's not a
Speaker 1: singular event, I guess, is what I'm saying. And so
Speaker 1: I think there are steps that we can take now
Speaker 1: to start guiding our kids as they are learning things
Speaker 1: as we are shaping them to become adults. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it starts to help inform those conversations about Like literally
Speaker 1: the other day, my nine year old said, Dad, are
Speaker 1: you saving money from my college? And so it prompted
Speaker 1: this opportunity to say, like, yeah, I'm saving some but
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a high priority for me. I've
Speaker 1: got these other things that are a bigger priority. And
Speaker 1: college is kind of expensive. But the cool thing is
Speaker 1: there are other ways to pay for it if you
Speaker 1: want to go. And by the way, it might not
Speaker 1: even be the best move. We'll see kind of as
Speaker 1: we get closer to that time. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: conversation we're gonna be having with you, dear listeners before
Speaker 1: we get into it. Man, we you and I. We
Speaker 1: got to share a beer with the listener yesterday. He uh,
Speaker 1: his parents live here locally, he lives out west, but
Speaker 1: he was in town. Hit us up and we're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we actually are free to grab a beer.
Speaker 1: And it just reminded me of how great our job is.
Speaker 1: And I mean, who else basically gets to sit around
Speaker 1: read the things that are interested in all day, talk
Speaker 1: about it and record there's thoughts into a microphone, all
Speaker 1: while doing it with your best bud. We truly do have,
Speaker 1: I think the best job in the world, and we
Speaker 1: would not be able to have this job, this profession
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for all of you listeners out there.
Speaker 1: So in connecting with those listeners, whether it's some sort
Speaker 1: of listener event that we get to do, or you know,
Speaker 1: when we meet them randomly in public, or when somebody
Speaker 1: reaches out like like Andy did, where we get to
Speaker 1: have a beer just kind of one on one and chat.
Speaker 1: That was man, that's so much fun. That's one of
Speaker 1: the best parts is kind of the community or even
Speaker 1: if it just just the emails, the Facebook group, like,
Speaker 1: the different ways that you're able to engage with the
Speaker 1: folks that are part of the community is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a huge part of the joy I derived from
Speaker 1: doing this. It ranks up there for me as well,
Speaker 1: but it certainly I think those social interactions rank higher
Speaker 1: for you than they did for me. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm any less thankful, uh, And it makes me
Speaker 1: think just how we wouldn't have this show without all
Speaker 1: the listeners out there. Literally you let's need to this
Speaker 1: podcast is what helps to pay our bills, so a
Speaker 1: huge thank you for that. It also helps us to
Speaker 1: pay for the craft beer that you and I get
Speaker 1: to enjoy most of the episodes. We we don't drink
Speaker 1: every episode, if you're wondering, Our Friday flights are a
Speaker 1: bit shorter and so we avoid cracking open a cold
Speaker 1: one then. But every Monday, every Wednesday we're drinking a
Speaker 1: craft beer, and today we're enjoying a food or beer
Speaker 1: by Southern Brewing. I'm really looking forward to sharing our
Speaker 1: thoughts on this one at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what food er is, that's
Speaker 1: a funky kind of word. We'll talk about that at
Speaker 1: the end to um. But Matt, let's let's get out too.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's tackle this question. Is college for dummies?
Speaker 1: For dummies? We talked a lot about the middle class
Speaker 1: last week, which was I thought a really fun episode
Speaker 1: and going to college it's kind of been the bedrock
Speaker 1: right of creating this modern American middle class that we've
Speaker 1: had for the past decades. But I guess the question
Speaker 1: is is college is it's still the predominant path forward
Speaker 1: to being in the middle class in the future. That
Speaker 1: is some thing that we want to tackle that question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it makes me think about the reality that, for
Speaker 1: the longest time, Matt, most parents have basically no problem
Speaker 1: with their kids playing football. Right. It was an organized
Speaker 1: sport that allowed kids, kids to develop their athletic prowess,
Speaker 1: to develop friendships, to become more disciplined, Bill's teamwork. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's mostly a good thing. Even some
Speaker 1: kids get scholarships to go to the colleges of their choice.
Speaker 1: Kids who are there's a lot of benefits, particularly good
Speaker 1: at football. Then yeah, I could go to a big
Speaker 1: school and get their college paid for. But but here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Yeah, the value proposition of your kid playing
Speaker 1: football has changed quite a bit in recent years, right,
Speaker 1: as we've learned more about CT, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: what it stood for, but it stands for chronic traumatic
Speaker 1: and it's a philopathy. I think you're saying, Well, it's
Speaker 1: the more we know about c T now, the more
Speaker 1: it's called into question whether or not it makes sense
Speaker 1: for your kid to participate in let's say, Pop Warner
Speaker 1: Football League. Right, and so we've seen something like a
Speaker 1: thirty five percent fewer kids playing the sport now than
Speaker 1: played ten to fifteen years ago. It's it's just there's
Speaker 1: a dramatic change in perception, and understandably so. And we
Speaker 1: think that actually higher education and recent things happening in
Speaker 1: that space has revealed some striking similarities where where you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to think twice before you send your kid
Speaker 1: out on the football field at the young age of ten, eleven, twelve.
Speaker 1: You might want to think twice if you are a
Speaker 1: high school student or a parent of high school student
Speaker 1: before you just, without thinking send your kid to you know,
Speaker 1: their local public university or to some sort of private
Speaker 1: school the town of state. That's right, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: And we're certainly not encouraging a widespread revolt against higher education,
Speaker 1: but it's understandable that folks want to know if the
Speaker 1: value proposition is still there when it comes to getting
Speaker 1: a degree. Right, it's college actually still worth it? Uh,
Speaker 1: It's it's clearly not the slam dunk path that it
Speaker 1: used to be thanks to a variety of reasons that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today. The first one has
Speaker 1: been well documented and is most definitely the number one
Speaker 1: reason to reconsider taking that path. Student loans they are
Speaker 1: at insane levels right now and Uh, there's problem people there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, dude. Uh, and they're now equal to more
Speaker 1: than one point seven trillion dollars overall. Uh, that debt
Speaker 1: it spread across forty five million folks, and there are
Speaker 1: quite a few among that number who feel that birden
Speaker 1: more acutely, you know, it's a it's it feels like
Speaker 1: a like a millstone around their neck, right, preventing them
Speaker 1: from from all sorts of formally normal young adult activities
Speaker 1: like just simply being able to invest, but even getting married,
Speaker 1: starting a family, buying a home because they already have
Speaker 1: a mortgage payment, that is, their student loans that they're
Speaker 1: paying off. Still, any one percent of adults with student
Speaker 1: loans say that they've delayed some of these life milestones
Speaker 1: because of their debts. So it's having a real tangible
Speaker 1: impact on what our lives look like to me. And
Speaker 1: even in the past ten, twelve, fifteen years, like we've
Speaker 1: seen kind of the amount, the average amount of debt
Speaker 1: that a normal student comes out of school with just skyrocket,
Speaker 1: which can and should change your perspective on whether or
Speaker 1: not it makes sense to go in that direction. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: student loans are obviously one of the number one problems.
Speaker 1: One of the number one reasons to reconsider college and
Speaker 1: and to ask the question if it's if it's a
Speaker 1: dumb move or not well, and another one is is just, yeah,
Speaker 1: the higher cost of college in general, because we've been
Speaker 1: talking about inflation quite a bit, and you know, prices
Speaker 1: at the grocery store have gone up quite a bit
Speaker 1: in the past twelve eighteen months. You know, use cars,
Speaker 1: new cars, all that stuff. Those things have taken off
Speaker 1: like a rocket in terms of price in just the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. But when you actually zoom out,
Speaker 1: there's certain segments of our economy where inflation has been
Speaker 1: impacting us severely for not just the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: but for the past couple of decades. Uh. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: the college, the staring cost of college takes the cake,
Speaker 1: even beating out right the awful increases that we've seen
Speaker 1: even in our health care system. Um. And there's just
Speaker 1: so many reasons for that, but easy access to those
Speaker 1: student loans that are widely available from the federal government
Speaker 1: is at least a part of that reason. And being
Speaker 1: able to easily borrow more and more money it means
Speaker 1: that colleges can hire more administrators they can build nicer buildings,
Speaker 1: they can inflate their costs more than they would otherwise
Speaker 1: be able to if there wasn't easy money for teenagers
Speaker 1: to get in order to go get that higher education. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's not that those additional dollars are significantly increasing
Speaker 1: the quality of the education either. We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1: They're they're not. And plus, you can't shake these student loans.
Speaker 1: You can't. When you pay more for college and you
Speaker 1: take on more debt to get that degree, that debt
Speaker 1: sticks with you through thick and thin, even if you
Speaker 1: file for bankruptcy. It's like this financial tar that sticks
Speaker 1: to you for for basically the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: You can't shake them. That's definitely a hindrance to higher
Speaker 1: education or college specifically making sense, But false assumptions are
Speaker 1: another problem in the space U. The popular mantra has
Speaker 1: consistently been that if you just go to college, if
Speaker 1: you just go there, you get a degree, it's gonna
Speaker 1: lead to a higher paying job. It's like this is
Speaker 1: something that one plus one equals to right. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like this is a guaranteed fact that well you
Speaker 1: have it doesn't matter how hard you work or what
Speaker 1: you do. Just as long as you just go get
Speaker 1: that degree, you're gonna be fine. And I do think
Speaker 1: that that that used to be like overwhelmingly true, and
Speaker 1: and it was a part of the American dream. But
Speaker 1: a college degree back in the seventies and the eighties
Speaker 1: it looks quite a bit different than getting one today,
Speaker 1: right in two on multiple levels. Given the absurd increase
Speaker 1: in costs for the average high school graduate and the
Speaker 1: now more faulty promise of high paying jobs upon graduation,
Speaker 1: a rethink of that widely held belief is in order.
Speaker 1: The stats from Pew Research show that something like four
Speaker 1: and ten graduates between the ages of twenty seven are
Speaker 1: under employed, where they're actually making less than the degree
Speaker 1: would suggest that they should be making. And so folks
Speaker 1: are not making the kind of salaries that they're expecting. Uh.
Speaker 1: And younger college graduates also, understandably, they tend to ascribe
Speaker 1: less value to their college degree than older college graduates.
Speaker 1: And we believe that's because a degree it's less valuable
Speaker 1: today and it's less reliable than it used to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you when you see that that five year span
Speaker 1: after college, that something like people are not getting the
Speaker 1: value that they hoped or that their parents got from
Speaker 1: that degree. It's, of course it's going to shine more
Speaker 1: of a dark shadow on that false assumption right that
Speaker 1: most people held, which was going through college equals middle
Speaker 1: class equals higher paying job and niquals the house with
Speaker 1: the garage cars in the driveway data. So I believe this.
Speaker 1: I do. Also there's a part of me that also thinks, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's also a good chance that folks are just as young, right,
Speaker 1: And like when you're younger, I think oftentimes you don't
Speaker 1: give enough credit to the things outside of your control
Speaker 1: that might lead to your success. And so I think
Speaker 1: there's especially in your twenties, you think, Okay, the reason
Speaker 1: that I got this job or the reason that I
Speaker 1: got that promotion is due to my ingenuity. Well where
Speaker 1: did you learn that ingenuity? You know? And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times when you're younger, sometimes you cannot
Speaker 1: attribute some of your success to something like undergrad because
Speaker 1: I know that's legit how I felt as a graduate,
Speaker 1: as a you know, somebody in my twenties, I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: did I really need to go to college to have
Speaker 1: the job that I currently have now? Whereas now as
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit older, I'm thinking, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I could probably give a little more credit to
Speaker 1: the like the softer skills that I learned while in college.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: those first two years are typically hopefully your lowest earning
Speaker 1: years two out of college, so and hopefully you only
Speaker 1: get wiser from that point and hopefully your paychecks won't
Speaker 1: get fat. Right. But another downside, and we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the good, good things about college too in
Speaker 1: a second. But another another problem with higher education right
Speaker 1: now is that there's more college competition right more. It's
Speaker 1: a trend starting to change, actually, but more and more
Speaker 1: young folks have been pursuing higher education because they've been
Speaker 1: told that it's the best bet for success for their future.
Speaker 1: But for the first time, almost of of individuals over
Speaker 1: the age of have a college degree. That's up from
Speaker 1: in um and like I said, like the pandemic, it's
Speaker 1: actually kind of curbed the rise in college participation. And
Speaker 1: we'll see how long that trend lasts. Is that just
Speaker 1: like a blip, or is that something that's going to
Speaker 1: be a shift that's gonna you know, go into through
Speaker 1: the rest of this decade. But overall, we've been seeing
Speaker 1: more young people opting for a university education over the
Speaker 1: past twenty years. And and that's also just has this
Speaker 1: other impact of watering down maybe your ability to stand
Speaker 1: out from the crowd based on having a college degree,
Speaker 1: and and so that now much more expensive degree becomes
Speaker 1: even less impressive in a world where more of your
Speaker 1: peers also have them. That's right, your smarts are now
Speaker 1: they've been deluded, especially amongst all the smarts less concentrated,
Speaker 1: right um, and so yeah, the the while, while these
Speaker 1: problems they're still real. Right, While maybe your college degree
Speaker 1: costs more and it's not worth quite as much, and
Speaker 1: those student loans can be quite a burden. Uh, there
Speaker 1: there are still perks for going to college. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the flip side, Matt, and offer some thoughts on
Speaker 1: how to decipher the value of a potential college degree
Speaker 1: in the future. We'll get to our thoughts on that
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, we are back, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've covered some worthwhile information about the declining value that
Speaker 1: college degrees are providing folks. Now, but let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the data on how much a college education
Speaker 1: will actually enhance your earning prospects. The b l S,
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average college
Speaker 1: graduate will earn a million dollars more over their lifetime
Speaker 1: than their high school graduate equivalent. So the fact is, uh,
Speaker 1: that's what the stats show. There is data to back
Speaker 1: that up. It doesn't necessarily mean and that that's the
Speaker 1: rate at which things are going to be going moving forward,
Speaker 1: but that is what the past. That is what history
Speaker 1: has shown and what it's proven. Also, folks with a
Speaker 1: college degree more likely to own a home, and a
Speaker 1: massive amount of the new jobs that are being created
Speaker 1: today are are going to college educated folks, and reflecting
Speaker 1: that the unemployment rate, it's lower for people who have
Speaker 1: a college education. Basically, if we enter into a recession,
Speaker 1: individual with the college education, they're going to be impacted
Speaker 1: less severely. Uh so you've got more money, you've got
Speaker 1: more security, and more opportunity. All of these things sound
Speaker 1: like a lot of positives on the pro college side
Speaker 1: of the cure. Yeah, and again like we're kind of
Speaker 1: nuance dudes. Uh, we're not like hot take shock chalk
Speaker 1: style podcast hosts. And so the reality is that college
Speaker 1: does pay off for a bunch of people, or at
Speaker 1: least it has in the past. And it has in
Speaker 1: the past, but this episode is still titled Colleges for
Speaker 1: dummy or this college asking the question, and and for
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, it's not a dumb move, um,
Speaker 1: and that needs to be said. And we will kind
Speaker 1: of talk about how you can determine that in just
Speaker 1: a bit. But a decent chunk of college graduates will
Speaker 1: reap the rewards that you're talking about, Matt after just
Speaker 1: four years, right, um. And and so they will find
Speaker 1: that path still uh to the middle class through higher education.
Speaker 1: But we are concerned about a growing number of folks
Speaker 1: who opt to pursue a degree who aren't going to
Speaker 1: benefit from it in the same way. And that's the
Speaker 1: worst exactly. And stats from Pew. You know, we're we're
Speaker 1: referencing pe a lot last weekend this week, but we've
Speaker 1: been diving into the research and we have got to
Speaker 1: back with data and and and these stats that that
Speaker 1: you found showed that only sixty two of folks who
Speaker 1: start their college education end up with a degree after
Speaker 1: six years. So we always talk about like a four
Speaker 1: year education, but the reality is for a whole lot
Speaker 1: of folks it's more like a six plus year education
Speaker 1: or a uh never ending and I never actually got
Speaker 1: my degree sort of education, right, So, um, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks just don't end up getting a degree at all,
Speaker 1: which actually puts people in the worst possible position, loaded
Speaker 1: down with debt, without any real ability to earn more
Speaker 1: money based on the time that they've spent in class learning.
Speaker 1: So it's crucial to consider the opportunity cost that lies
Speaker 1: ahead of you if you decided to go to college,
Speaker 1: because instead of spending tens or or even hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars on an education, please don't write that
Speaker 1: may or may not pan out. Um, what what if
Speaker 1: you invested that money instead, or instead of dedicating four
Speaker 1: or six years of your your prime years grinding it
Speaker 1: out on campus, what if you throw yourself directly into
Speaker 1: an industry that you're curious about in order to learn
Speaker 1: to see if that fields for you. Basically, what we're
Speaker 1: trying to warn people against is the blind pursuits of
Speaker 1: academia without considering the alternatives, because by not doing so,
Speaker 1: by not thinking through that value proposition, by not being
Speaker 1: wary of the opportunity costs that many will pay in
Speaker 1: order to get that college degree. Um, it could lead
Speaker 1: you to a lot more debt, and you like to
Speaker 1: then you like to be in and and potentially wasted
Speaker 1: years that you could have been doing something more exciting
Speaker 1: or that you're more energized by. Exactly. Yes, it's not
Speaker 1: just a proposition where you are considering the numbers or
Speaker 1: the finances, but it's something where literally this is your time.
Speaker 1: This is years of your life that you might be
Speaker 1: hopefully not fretting away studying something that you're not even
Speaker 1: interested in. Well, usually those college years aren't hope hopefully
Speaker 1: they're not wasted. Hopefully they're hopefully that they're fun. There's
Speaker 1: part of building a network. I mean, college offers more
Speaker 1: things than just some sort of like a degree that
Speaker 1: you're handed at the end of it, like it's the
Speaker 1: only thing you're going to all those additional soft skills,
Speaker 1: networking people you get to meet, basically learning how to
Speaker 1: live life. But hopefully that's also something that you can
Speaker 1: do fairly cheaply somewhere else. Well, you're not paying thousands
Speaker 1: and tens of thousands, or like you said, even hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars to learn that lesson. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so that's it's definitely worth bringing that up because it's
Speaker 1: not just the money, it's also the time opportunity cost
Speaker 1: affects both of those arenas. Uh. And it's also important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that not all degrees are created equal,
Speaker 1: and so we want you to essentially to be choosy
Speaker 1: and to exercise some discretion here because one think tank
Speaker 1: they found that more than a quarter of degrees in
Speaker 1: fields like psychology, religion, art and music, they leave the
Speaker 1: majority of students worse off than if they had never
Speaker 1: enrolled in the first place. They actually have a negative
Speaker 1: return on investment. So we would suggest thinking about how
Speaker 1: you can pursue a degree that offers maybe a wider
Speaker 1: variety of of high paying job opportunities, Like the engineering
Speaker 1: degree is going to be vastly superior to the art degree,
Speaker 1: and I hate it for all the creatives out there,
Speaker 1: but it's just that's the that's the truth, that's the facts. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we would recommend for you to check out the
Speaker 1: Department of Educations College scorecard website. Will make sure to
Speaker 1: link to that in the show notes, but you can
Speaker 1: check fields of study in particular colleges to see how
Speaker 1: that specific degree stacks up against others. You know, there's
Speaker 1: very few things that we buy in life without doing
Speaker 1: a cost benefit analysis, you know, like even I mean
Speaker 1: think about all the things where you can compare, Like
Speaker 1: even just like buying a roomba, which I personally like,
Speaker 1: Like you can click on the website, you can compare.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, what features does this one offer that
Speaker 1: this one doesn't. But oftentimes we don't do that when
Speaker 1: it comes to college, when you can be like, wait,
Speaker 1: the three hundred dollar roomba, like, and I like those features,
Speaker 1: but in the one just makes more sense for what
Speaker 1: I want, and you know what, I'm gonna wait for
Speaker 1: a tick on sale. Went for the two one, So
Speaker 1: it's got that smart mapping going on. But a lot
Speaker 1: of times we don't even consider college even to that extent.
Speaker 1: We just throw ourselves into an alma mater or a
Speaker 1: school that you've always dreamed about going to. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that that's not something you should consider, but
Speaker 1: it is worth looking at what that degree is going
Speaker 1: to be able to earn you once you graduate. You know,
Speaker 1: we've just become so desensitized to the price of how
Speaker 1: higher education right whereas we're we're not. We're highly sensitive
Speaker 1: to the price of everything else in our lives, and
Speaker 1: so it's not that there aren't additional factors that we
Speaker 1: need to weigh and consider, but the price needs to
Speaker 1: be more at the forefront of the decision than it
Speaker 1: typically is for a lot of individuals and families. And
Speaker 1: a large contributing factor to that negative r O I
Speaker 1: that you mentioned, Matt, that some degrees offer is is
Speaker 1: the reality that, like we said, a fewer folks are
Speaker 1: finishing the college degrees that they start. It's like, I
Speaker 1: think it's like stress and debt levels they often like
Speaker 1: convinced people to abandon the pursuit of that degree before
Speaker 1: they finish, and and I think maybe that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons we're starting to see undergrad enrollment dropping, especially
Speaker 1: for young men. And like I hinted to earlier, Uh,
Speaker 1: the quality of education isn't actually getting better for for
Speaker 1: the with the more money that we're paying, and in
Speaker 1: some cases it's it's getting worse. Uh. There was a
Speaker 1: recent article in the journal than It talked about how
Speaker 1: a lot of colleges are starting to use mass produced
Speaker 1: content in the form of online classes and programs that
Speaker 1: that they offer to students. And this isn't relegated to
Speaker 1: for profit colleges or your local community college. Like great
Speaker 1: schools like Vanderbilt, uh, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
Speaker 1: the University of Oregon, they have begun to rely on
Speaker 1: third party companies to the live are some of the
Speaker 1: courses and certificate programs that they offer to their students.
Speaker 1: So uh, a lot of people have been disappointed in
Speaker 1: the equality of education that they're getting in some cases
Speaker 1: because that university is outsourcing the education to third party
Speaker 1: companies that aren't doing a great job, even though you're
Speaker 1: still paying name brand prices. So yeah, you might still
Speaker 1: get the degree or their certificate with the respected school
Speaker 1: of your choices name on it, but chances are you
Speaker 1: might be less impressed with what you've learned, with the
Speaker 1: actual coursework and kind of with how prepared do you
Speaker 1: feel going to the job market at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, And that's kind of a crappy way
Speaker 1: for things to go, right because what that means it's
Speaker 1: that's an entire workforce that's out there working there in
Speaker 1: their profession and they're not really maybe they're not doing
Speaker 1: a great job because they were hired because of a
Speaker 1: certain university, a certain degree that they earned, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be able to
Speaker 1: bring innovative ideas to whatever field or to whatever industry
Speaker 1: that they're working in, which also means that we as
Speaker 1: a public are gonna see the benefit right of their
Speaker 1: creativity and in our own lives. That's credentialism, right. You're
Speaker 1: paying for some sort of credential. You're paying Alpha wazoo
Speaker 1: in some cases, for some sort of credential instead of
Speaker 1: an actual education that's gonna make you better, that's gonna
Speaker 1: challenge you, that's going to sharpen you into basically give
Speaker 1: you better ideas. That's not give you better ideas, but
Speaker 1: give you the ability to create better ideas. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying here. And another thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that the price you pay for something that is
Speaker 1: a large determinant of whether or not it was a
Speaker 1: good purchase. You know, like getting something valuable that you'll
Speaker 1: use every day, but not paying a sent for it,
Speaker 1: maybe because your neighbor was giving it away. That's like
Speaker 1: the best case scenario. Right. I'm talking about curb alerts here,
Speaker 1: but they're not really giving away high quality college educations.
Speaker 1: Uh that often these days. In most instances, though, we
Speaker 1: have to weigh trade offs, and so the number one
Speaker 1: determining factor of whether or not a college degree is
Speaker 1: worth it is how much it is going to cost you.
Speaker 1: If you get an underwater basket weaving degree, but it
Speaker 1: didn't cost you a time, right, you know, like more
Speaker 1: power to you see a little bit of time, but hey,
Speaker 1: at least you'll learn a skill. No debt that's hanging
Speaker 1: around your neck for that worth Listen, Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you wracked up a hundred and fifty dollars in
Speaker 1: student loans plus interest for that useless degree, it's gonna
Speaker 1: haunch you probably for the rest of your life. And
Speaker 1: so scrounging for scholarships, scrounging like scoring grants, that is
Speaker 1: going to be key. If you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that your your college degree is going to be worth it.
Speaker 1: You can check out sites like bold dot org. That's
Speaker 1: a new one, but fast Web They've been around forever,
Speaker 1: college Board. These are all just a few sites where
Speaker 1: you can search for some of the different scholarships that
Speaker 1: are out there. Essentially, we want you looking for scholarships
Speaker 1: to become basically a full time job because effectively it
Speaker 1: is yeah yeah, and you want someone else, hopefully paying
Speaker 1: for a decent chunk of that education instead of it
Speaker 1: coming out of your pocket or you're taking it in
Speaker 1: the form of debt for and paying it off for
Speaker 1: years to come. And if you do want to go
Speaker 1: to college, we would highly suggest Ron Lieber's book we
Speaker 1: had wrong on the pod cast I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: a year and a half ago. His book was The
Speaker 1: Price You Pay for College, and it's just this invaluable resource.
Speaker 1: Spend the thirteen fifteen bucks whatever it costs, uh, even
Speaker 1: less now because it just came out in paperback. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, you can get or and you can get
Speaker 1: used on eBay. I'm sure too, um, but your library.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah exactly. But finding ways to lower the cost
Speaker 1: will increase the value of that degree, right. And so
Speaker 1: what one site that we talked about when we had
Speaker 1: Ron on the show, Matt was tuition fit dot org.
Speaker 1: And that's a great way to kind of compare your
Speaker 1: financial aid letters, uh, the offers that you're receiving from
Speaker 1: different colleges to other people what they're getting with like
Speaker 1: similar backgrounds and g p A s and at the
Speaker 1: same college. So so that can help you be a
Speaker 1: more informed shopper when it comes to deciding where or
Speaker 1: to go to school and kind of what degree to get.
Speaker 1: But what if the cost is still just too high,
Speaker 1: what if you don't qualify for enough scholarships, and what
Speaker 1: if you don't get much financial aid or merit aid
Speaker 1: from the school that you want to go to, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it makes sense to avoid college altogether. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about alter native paths and then we're gonna offer you
Speaker 1: some questions you should ask yourself that will help you
Speaker 1: determine whether or not college still makes sense for you. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that how you can make a wise
Speaker 1: decision right after this. All right, we are back and
Speaker 1: this is the third and final section of this episode,
Speaker 1: and we're asking the question, is college for dummies? And
Speaker 1: hopefully you don't find yourself on the dummy side of
Speaker 1: the chart that you're creating within your mind here and
Speaker 1: Jel what what you're hinting you're kind of talking about
Speaker 1: some of the alternatives to college. And what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about now is blue collar work. And we'll start
Speaker 1: by saying it certainly isn't going to be for everybody,
Speaker 1: but it is just a fact that some folks who
Speaker 1: go to college would be far better served by leaving
Speaker 1: high school and instead working within a trade. We talked
Speaker 1: about the value of blue collar work and how to
Speaker 1: make a great living without going to college back in
Speaker 1: episode two seventy seven with can Rusk check that one out.
Speaker 1: But as we were talking to a Ken, he was
Speaker 1: telling us how some plumbers in Atlanta can make something
Speaker 1: like ninety thou dollars, And this is a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, so I'm sure that's up to a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars now coming straight out of school. The demand
Speaker 1: for these skilled trades has just completely outpaced the supply.
Speaker 1: But you know, with the decline of in particular shop
Speaker 1: class and high schools, there are just fewer young folks
Speaker 1: who are given the opportunity to develop those skills in
Speaker 1: order to see that it would be a better route
Speaker 1: for them to take. That's something that I would love
Speaker 1: to see brought back to a lot of different high
Speaker 1: schools that are out there, for sure. Man. So one
Speaker 1: of my one of my friends is a science teacher
Speaker 1: at a local high school and he has basically like
Speaker 1: uh delta donated a plane to their school that the
Speaker 1: kids can kind of like work on and tinker with.
Speaker 1: And so he has a whole class for uh some
Speaker 1: like was it like in the playground, Like there's a
Speaker 1: playground and then to the side of it there's there's
Speaker 1: an airplane. Yes, yes, and you can choose what you
Speaker 1: want to play. I'm sure it's not like the entire airplane.
Speaker 1: I haven't actually seen in person, like the airplane graveyards
Speaker 1: out in like Utah or Arizona where they just like
Speaker 1: sit there out in the desert at this picture of that,
Speaker 1: but next to a school. Yeah, So i'llous get him
Speaker 1: to send me some pictures. But but it's what he's
Speaker 1: told me kind of about how much these kids are
Speaker 1: able to learn in this class. Is there um, kind
Speaker 1: of learning some airplane mechanic skills? And he told me
Speaker 1: that these kids, upon graduation are going to be able
Speaker 1: to instantly without going to college, earn more money than
Speaker 1: he makes as a teacher, which is incredible. Um. And
Speaker 1: he went to a four year I went to school
Speaker 1: with this, uh, and so I remember seeing him in college,
Speaker 1: and I know that that cost him some money, yes exactly,
Speaker 1: And but some of his students because they are learning
Speaker 1: a skill in high school, they're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: turn that skill into a money making venture immediately. And
Speaker 1: so some of those some of those kids would be
Speaker 1: would be silly. Um, if they're so inclined to pursue
Speaker 1: this line of work, they'd be silly to think about
Speaker 1: going to college. Um, because they've got a marketable skill
Speaker 1: immediately at the age of seventeen or eighteen. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a failure oftentimes in the students part,
Speaker 1: but on the school's part. Sure, if a school is
Speaker 1: not offering a variety of options and if there are
Speaker 1: basically just trying to shuttle all of their students down
Speaker 1: the college path, I think that's an example of not
Speaker 1: being able to serve the kids as individuals. It's also
Speaker 1: a societal failure where we have created a line of
Speaker 1: messaging that says one plus one equals to that says
Speaker 1: home ownership is the American dream or college is the
Speaker 1: American dream, and it's like, sure, for some people it
Speaker 1: can be a great avenue, but um, we need to
Speaker 1: rethink both of those things, and in college in particular, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, But that being said, even if you
Speaker 1: do opt to go the blue collar route, you might
Speaker 1: still need a degree, you know, depending on what specific
Speaker 1: route you want to go. Uh to your degrees in
Speaker 1: fields like construction management or agricultural studies are actually in
Speaker 1: really high demand these days. Uh. There's degrees are often
Speaker 1: far less expensive, and they contribute directly to the ability
Speaker 1: to land a specific job or to help you to
Speaker 1: be able to start your own business. What I love
Speaker 1: about these degrees is that they're just so daing practical. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Like the problem is oftentimes is that high
Speaker 1: school students, high school graduates, they don't necessarily know what
Speaker 1: they want to do at that point, and then they
Speaker 1: go off to college, sometimes paying lots and lots of
Speaker 1: money for a liberal arts education. When I feel, oftentimes
Speaker 1: that should be the job of high school and like
Speaker 1: it should be while they're getting an education for like
Speaker 1: folks that is absolutely free within the bounds of high school,
Speaker 1: where you're not having to pay tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: And then once you are able to graduate, sure if
Speaker 1: you then want to go to college and get a
Speaker 1: degree in a specific field, or you want to go
Speaker 1: to a tech school, or you want to get whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you want to pursue, you can then
Speaker 1: pursue that degree or that field or that profession with
Speaker 1: just this laser like focus. That's when it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. It's it's just sometimes people go to
Speaker 1: college and their undecided on their major for the first
Speaker 1: three years of it, right, and they're waffling back and forth,
Speaker 1: and so they're paying good money taking classes when they
Speaker 1: don't really know what they want to do with their life.
Speaker 1: And so that we'll talk about something else in a
Speaker 1: little bit, like like a gap year is potentially best
Speaker 1: for like that totally the solution for that for sure.
Speaker 1: Well sticking a blue collar worked up for a second
Speaker 1: mate one of the other things. Like I think some
Speaker 1: people think that blue collar or doing work as a
Speaker 1: skilled trades person means that you're just trading time for
Speaker 1: money every day for the rest of your working life.
Speaker 1: But we would say that's not true either. Like you
Speaker 1: can you can totally become a blue collar entrepreneur, which
Speaker 1: can allow you to make even more money by building
Speaker 1: a business by hiring other people. And you know what's
Speaker 1: more motivating than getting tired of doing manual labor by
Speaker 1: yourself as you get older, than to kind of start
Speaker 1: a business around it, hire other people and and become
Speaker 1: kind of the master of your own domain. Uh, in
Speaker 1: terms of building a business, So it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be I make seventy dollars an hour as a plumber
Speaker 1: or an electrician or an h fact technician. It can
Speaker 1: truly be I've got this business where other people work
Speaker 1: for me. I mentored them, and they they are going
Speaker 1: out and doing most of the work. But I am
Speaker 1: now a business owner and that's my main function because
Speaker 1: my knees are bad right, my back hurts, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be the one out there in the
Speaker 1: field anymore. Just guys, maybe I loved it now and
Speaker 1: I find something else I love about the process of
Speaker 1: being able to like I mean, maybe doing the work
Speaker 1: still occasionally, but now building a business is kind of
Speaker 1: more enthralling, like more more fun to think about. Totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, you know, blue color work, it's not for everybody.
Speaker 1: You don't see us out there digging ditches or welding
Speaker 1: or fixing furnaces. That's not for everyone. I do. I
Speaker 1: do change my own air filter so sore, which you
Speaker 1: should do. How often do you do it? By the way,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like every three months do do you really?
Speaker 1: If you do it every three months, then you're like
Speaker 1: the guy that flosses his teeth everything. Nobody does it
Speaker 1: every You're not good at flossing, but I'm good at
Speaker 1: dude that will. That's It's like you oil change in
Speaker 1: your car. Don't don't wait on those two things because
Speaker 1: it'll cost you more money do those things. But what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is that blue collar work. Even
Speaker 1: though it's not for us, that doesn't mean that this
Speaker 1: route doesn't make sense for millions of high school graduates.
Speaker 1: But here are a few questions, though, to ask yourself
Speaker 1: in order to help you make a smart decision when
Speaker 1: it comes to that pursuit of higher education or not.
Speaker 1: And I think the first one is has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with lifestyle, you know, Like I want you
Speaker 1: to ask yourself what you want your life to look like,
Speaker 1: because for some the idea of sitting behind a computer
Speaker 1: screen eight hours a day, like that's going to sound
Speaker 1: like like nightmare work for them, right, Whereas like others
Speaker 1: might naturally have skills that would make them a very
Speaker 1: successful uh software engineer or a programmer. And then still
Speaker 1: others might want to be like a biologist, which would
Speaker 1: require a completely different approach to thinking about higher education.
Speaker 1: There there, there's not going to be a one size
Speaker 1: fits all approach. Uh, and your aptitude, your desires, they're
Speaker 1: going to be crucial to making a smart decision. And
Speaker 1: these are the kind of things that are important to
Speaker 1: start thinking through that will help to point you within
Speaker 1: the right direction. Yeah. I mean, man, I met somebody
Speaker 1: at the beach who teaches. He's an entomologist at the
Speaker 1: University of Georgia, and for him, uh, college college wasn't dumb,
Speaker 1: That wasn't a bad choice because he's turn it into
Speaker 1: a career that he loves. He followed a passion and
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of higher education, a lot of
Speaker 1: time spent in at the university in order to get
Speaker 1: to the place that he got. So so much of
Speaker 1: it does depend on your bent, like what you want
Speaker 1: to pursue in life. And then immediately after weighing some
Speaker 1: of those lifestyle considerations, you're gonna want to dive into
Speaker 1: the numbers. Right, how much is my education gonna cost?
Speaker 1: And how much am I likely to earn? Those are
Speaker 1: two really really important questions before you proceed. So if
Speaker 1: you want to go into a profession that requires a
Speaker 1: college degree, well, how much will it cost to get
Speaker 1: that degree? And even if you're thinking a skilled trade
Speaker 1: is the best route for you, what will the cost
Speaker 1: of that trade school run you? And do you even
Speaker 1: need to go to trade school? Right? Or can you
Speaker 1: apprentice under someone? But then immediately after considering the cost,
Speaker 1: you should be figuring out what the likely earning potential
Speaker 1: will be for that job or career path that you're
Speaker 1: interested in. A part of the equation isn't just what
Speaker 1: folks in the industry are making now, but what the
Speaker 1: trajectory of that industry is going to be in the
Speaker 1: coming years as well. For instance, some occupations the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Labor Statistics is projecting to have the most growth
Speaker 1: in the next ten years are wind turbine technicians, nurses,
Speaker 1: and physical trainers, So those totally make sense. They do
Speaker 1: about mental health professionals, right, That's another thing we've talked about,
Speaker 1: how Emily is going back to get her master's degree
Speaker 1: so she can become a licensed therapist, and it's like, great,
Speaker 1: she's not gonna want for job opportunities with that degree.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that we we talked
Speaker 1: about as a rule of thumb is we want people
Speaker 1: to to be able to make in their first year
Speaker 1: out of college more than the amount of debt that
Speaker 1: they took on during their entirety of college. And so
Speaker 1: preferably you're able to keep your debt load even lower
Speaker 1: than that. But the problem is if you take on
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty dollars in student loan debt and you're
Speaker 1: starting salary coming out of school is fort like that
Speaker 1: that's a losing proposition, that is when that college education
Speaker 1: is more of a burden than the help. And so
Speaker 1: at least use that rule of thumb hopefully to help
Speaker 1: you make a better decision about whether or not college
Speaker 1: makes sense for you or or which college you you
Speaker 1: actually end up going to. Yes, right, yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is all assuming though that you have an idea that
Speaker 1: like like an assumption that you do want to pursue
Speaker 1: higher education. But if you don't, sort of like we
Speaker 1: were talking earlier, if you're not sure what you want
Speaker 1: to do, that you might be better served by taking
Speaker 1: the gap here, because I mean, like most folks will
Speaker 1: will opt to do that between high school and college. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that makes a ton of sense because for
Speaker 1: a lot of young adults, their brains are quite literally
Speaker 1: still developing. You have no idea what you want to do.
Speaker 1: What better way to spend that time than maybe just
Speaker 1: like you, like you said earlier, to like working within
Speaker 1: the field for a period of time where you're not
Speaker 1: taking on loads and loads of debt there too from me, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you maybe you don't want to learn, uh, and you
Speaker 1: are able to instead earn some money. But if you're
Speaker 1: in a lucky enough position to have maybe some money
Speaker 1: set aside, man the actual ability to do like what
Speaker 1: you envisioned when someone says a gap here where maybe
Speaker 1: you're able to travel for a little bit of time
Speaker 1: where you're able to go abroad and not do like
Speaker 1: the tourist to the backpacking thing where you dropping tons
Speaker 1: of money every single day, but like literally going finding
Speaker 1: a city and finding a way to earn a living
Speaker 1: there for a little bit, like working for a small
Speaker 1: period of time, experiencing some different cultures, exposing yourself to
Speaker 1: just the vast variety of life that's out there before
Speaker 1: you commit yourself to this path that's going to end
Speaker 1: up leaving you in this massive whole of debt. I
Speaker 1: think that can be seen as like a self indulgent
Speaker 1: move right to take time away from school at that period,
Speaker 1: but I think it it's horizon broadening and maybe if
Speaker 1: you're not sure what you want to do next, like
Speaker 1: encountering some different people, some different ways of living, different
Speaker 1: parts of the country, may be different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and and spending you know, you didn't have to cost
Speaker 1: a lot of money in order to travel. Again, it's
Speaker 1: travel the country, specially if you are living somewhere first
Speaker 1: of all that's affordable. She right, Like we're not talking
Speaker 1: about you move into like Tokyo or New York City
Speaker 1: or London, but like, I don't know, somewhere in Thailand
Speaker 1: where it's crazy affordable and you can make some money
Speaker 1: on the side and just take your stage wagon and
Speaker 1: you're sleeping bag and a tent and like travel the
Speaker 1: country for a few months and just kind of to
Speaker 1: Alaska and try to hike out into the wilderness and
Speaker 1: then right, no one ever finds you don't pull the
Speaker 1: Christopher McCandless thing, um. But yeah, I don't do that. There.
Speaker 1: There is like so much to be said for getting
Speaker 1: away from school for a little bit of time and
Speaker 1: kind of getting some perspective about what you want out
Speaker 1: of life, because we don't always know. After what twelve
Speaker 1: years of education right from ages six to eighteen um,
Speaker 1: sometimes we feel overloaded and we need our brain needs
Speaker 1: a little bit of rest and we need some time
Speaker 1: to kind of figure things out before we just launched
Speaker 1: directly into four more years of school. And it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that it's been twelve hard years of hard education, right,
Speaker 1: But in my mind, it's the fact that you have
Speaker 1: gone from one grade to the next without having basically
Speaker 1: to make any decisions, any choices, and that is just
Speaker 1: a muscle that young oaks haven't flexed. They're not ready
Speaker 1: to make life changing decisions like this. And I think
Speaker 1: it can be helpful to make smaller ones that have
Speaker 1: shorter expiration dates, right, rather than ones that will last
Speaker 1: not only four years, but student loan debt that might
Speaker 1: stick around for twenty or thirty years, and they be
Speaker 1: one thing if it was life changing decisions. But these
Speaker 1: life changing decisions are accompanied by life changing sums of
Speaker 1: debt most of the time that stick with you. It's
Speaker 1: like we're talking about earlier, with student loans being like
Speaker 1: tar and so another question we want folks to ask themselves,
Speaker 1: is if you could potentially d i Y your higher education,
Speaker 1: because if pursuing some sort of higher degree is it's
Speaker 1: still in the cards for you, and maybe you want
Speaker 1: to do it on a shoestring budget, maybe you don't
Speaker 1: have any money on hand at all. Something we would
Speaker 1: suggest is sort of a like more of a d
Speaker 1: i Y college path, and that's because there are more
Speaker 1: free resources now than ever before to educate yourself. Of course,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get a diploma that you can hang
Speaker 1: on the wall, but you also don't have the debt
Speaker 1: burden that goes along with it. Peer to peer university
Speaker 1: that's worth checking out. It allows you to delve into
Speaker 1: topics that you want to study without an instructor, but
Speaker 1: you're still able to do it within sort of like
Speaker 1: this learning circle with other folks. UH. The amount of
Speaker 1: free information that you can get thanks to other other
Speaker 1: resources like Project Gutenberg, Google Scholar, it's incredibly impressive as well.
Speaker 1: UH Alison dot Com that's another site that offers free
Speaker 1: online courses that can even allow you to actually earn
Speaker 1: some like a type of degree and some certificates. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different options out there where. If
Speaker 1: you are just thirsty for knowledge, there's a way to
Speaker 1: do that without you going going off to university, hanging
Speaker 1: out on campus, you know, uh, throwing the frisbee on
Speaker 1: the quad like like which which are all these are
Speaker 1: all fun things. But if that's not your jam, if
Speaker 1: that's not something that really interests you, there are still
Speaker 1: ways to learn and to acquire knowledge without the sort
Speaker 1: of debt or the lifestyle shift. What makes me think, Matt,
Speaker 1: that we have hired one person to help us with
Speaker 1: something recently on how the money and it's kind of
Speaker 1: fun to to bring someone into the fold to help
Speaker 1: us out with some tasks. And I don't know, actually
Speaker 1: if he has a college degree, no clue. We never asked.
Speaker 1: We made the decision. We made the decision based on
Speaker 1: that's so funny work that he's been putting out into
Speaker 1: the world for a number of years. And so I
Speaker 1: think that your college degree matters so little after a
Speaker 1: few years for for a slew of professions, including the
Speaker 1: work that we have hired, and he gets paid a
Speaker 1: decent rate per hour, that just means we're just terrible interviewers. No,
Speaker 1: it means that, like it's really not that important for
Speaker 1: for what he's doing for us. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's not important for some things. If you want to
Speaker 1: be a doctor, you should have a degree, like like,
Speaker 1: you gotta go to medical school if you're going to
Speaker 1: operate on my heart, right, Like, it doesn't matter that
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for a couple of years. I've
Speaker 1: been putting out a good work. I got good reviews
Speaker 1: on you help. That works for some things, but yeah,
Speaker 1: not very high level professions or occupations like being a lawyer,
Speaker 1: being a doctor. There are a lot of degrees that
Speaker 1: you could you mentioned some of them earlier that have
Speaker 1: a negative r o I and you need to avoid
Speaker 1: and all, Like a lot of people need to avoid
Speaker 1: those degrees in particular, But then some other ones where
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, maybe they're giving you some hard skills,
Speaker 1: but even some of those skills can be developed um
Speaker 1: on your own for free, just through kind of working
Speaker 1: and working on it. And and because the cost of
Speaker 1: college is often so opaque, that makes the decision I
Speaker 1: think really hard for people right to determine whether or
Speaker 1: not it makes sense. We'd obviously love to see more
Speaker 1: transparency when it comes to the cost of higher education.
Speaker 1: So that we can make more informed decisions. There there
Speaker 1: aren't many decisions that we have to make as consumers
Speaker 1: that are so kind of fraught with peril that we
Speaker 1: can't we can't look at a price and look at
Speaker 1: the product and easily determine whether or not it's a
Speaker 1: good deal or not. Literally, it's higher education and the healthcare.
Speaker 1: Is it any coincidence that they say that we've seen
Speaker 1: the highest price increases in within these industries while simultaneously
Speaker 1: the transparency has just been non existent. Yeah, exactly. Again,
Speaker 1: we would like no market forces at play, basically, are
Speaker 1: there are few and far between that Check out again
Speaker 1: Ron Lieber's book, because he kind of talks a lot
Speaker 1: about that and how it's not the price isn't what
Speaker 1: you think it is. So you've got to dig in
Speaker 1: and you've got to figure that stuff out because there's
Speaker 1: no there's no sheet a paper or website online that's
Speaker 1: going to give you all the information you need. You've
Speaker 1: got to kind of come across an amalgamation of things
Speaker 1: to make a smart decision, and then you have to
Speaker 1: make a value judgment based on what you encounter for
Speaker 1: your specific situation. So again, like is college for dummies. Well,
Speaker 1: we would say that college is still a great path
Speaker 1: forward for a huge swathy young folks. But it's crucial
Speaker 1: to go about the pursuit of higher education the right way,
Speaker 1: and that evolves knowing why you're going and what you're
Speaker 1: paying for, and yeah, realizing that there are still a
Speaker 1: ton of ways to lower the cost of going to college,
Speaker 1: sometimes making it completely free, and that is worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: That's worth exploring because that substantially lower price tag it
Speaker 1: changes the dynamics of your decision. It massively changes the
Speaker 1: value proposition. And as the value proposition has gotten worse
Speaker 1: and worse, as cost of skyrocketed, as people are graduating
Speaker 1: just loaded down with NEBT and unable to make the
Speaker 1: income that they hoped or thought they would be able
Speaker 1: to make, you have to look out for yourself. You
Speaker 1: have to look out for your friends, your kids, to
Speaker 1: make sure they aren't making some sort of life altering
Speaker 1: decision that's going to burden them with with debt for
Speaker 1: the rest of their life. Man, it makes me makes
Speaker 1: me think of like buying a new car. We pretty
Speaker 1: much always say buying a new cars a bad idea,
Speaker 1: And I've like kind of lusted after the rivan trucks
Speaker 1: for those beautiful electric trucks for a long time, and
Speaker 1: because there's seventy thousand dollars though, so there's no way
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy it. But if they were fifteen thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. We wouldn't talk bad about buying into electric
Speaker 1: car because the value would make sense then, right. But
Speaker 1: for a lot of people were not principally against the
Speaker 1: There's not like there's theology against life by buying a
Speaker 1: brand new vehicle. It's the costs. It's the fact that
Speaker 1: the depreciation hit that you take, uh, leaves a lot
Speaker 1: to be desired when it comes to the fact that, oh,
Speaker 1: well I can buy a used vehicle, uh, and somebody
Speaker 1: else has already taken that depreciation exactly. Yeah, So you
Speaker 1: have to think about the value proposition in in everything
Speaker 1: in life. And although it's harder to figure out when
Speaker 1: it comes to college, it's important to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of it in your personal situation. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: There's no one size fits all response to this, but
Speaker 1: hopefully we gave you some food for thought for what
Speaker 1: it looks like for you, or for your kids or
Speaker 1: for your friends to to pursue to pursue a higher
Speaker 1: education and do it in the right way where you're
Speaker 1: not saddled with debt that you can't pay off for
Speaker 1: a long period of time, which just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: those four years were fun, but they probably won't. What's
Speaker 1: worth the price tag in that case? Yeah, exactly right, man,
Speaker 1: And honestly, like, my biggest takeaway from this conversation is
Speaker 1: like I'm right now, I'm thinking to myself, man, my
Speaker 1: kids are all going to take gap years because if
Speaker 1: there were anything like me, and hopefully they you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're a nice mix. But between me and Kate, right,
Speaker 1: maybe two of them they're more like her. We'll have
Speaker 1: they we'll have more of a clear vision as to
Speaker 1: what they're wanting to do with their life. But maybe
Speaker 1: the other two are are thinking. I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I don't know. If there's any word I said more
Speaker 1: often as a senior than I don't know, because that
Speaker 1: kind of summed up where I was at that point
Speaker 1: in my life. And I think there's a lot that
Speaker 1: you can gain by kind of stepping out into the
Speaker 1: real world full time. And I think it can be
Speaker 1: difficult for us, especially as parents, to allow our kids
Speaker 1: to do that. And so we're ten years you know,
Speaker 1: from having to make that decision with our oldest. But
Speaker 1: I hope that I do have a similar point of
Speaker 1: view as I do right now. And it's crazy, though.
Speaker 1: Those conversations are, like we talked about, kind of starting
Speaker 1: now anyway, and so it's nice to have this information
Speaker 1: and be so I can kind of help her be
Speaker 1: thoughtful along the way. It's not just some sort of
Speaker 1: senior your discussion. Those discussions are starting earlier and earlier
Speaker 1: and younger. Exactly. That's right, man, Yeah, okay, So our beer.
Speaker 1: Let's get to our beer. You and I enjoyed food
Speaker 1: or beer, and let's say, just so folks know, food
Speaker 1: or is spelled fo e d e R, and they
Speaker 1: complemented it by spelling beer b I e R just
Speaker 1: to be fancy. But this is an oak aged Southern
Speaker 1: wild ale. I can think of no style that aligns
Speaker 1: more with my tastes than this beer. This is my
Speaker 1: Southern brewing company. What your thoughts on this one? Okay?
Speaker 1: First off, a food er by the way you spelled it, Yes,
Speaker 1: but it is a giant oak vat right for aging
Speaker 1: beer so that the beer can get a nice key
Speaker 1: flavor and to an age, and so this this beer
Speaker 1: is part and it's okay. It's got kind of those
Speaker 1: two main characteristics of a photo beer going on. In
Speaker 1: the difference between just a like a wine barrel or
Speaker 1: an oak barrel and a footer is that footers are
Speaker 1: like huge. They're like ten times larger than a traditional
Speaker 1: Jack Daniels barrel that you might have seen. Maybe even
Speaker 1: they're h I mean they're like the size of a
Speaker 1: small room basically and there. But yeah, I completely agree. Man.
Speaker 1: What was great about this one is that it wasn't
Speaker 1: overly aggressive. There are some breweries out there which I love,
Speaker 1: um thinking of Cascade, I'm thinking of the brewery. They
Speaker 1: also make sours that fit within the description of incredibly
Speaker 1: aggressive sour beers. And this one just is super chill.
Speaker 1: It's like laid back. It's it's like you're sitting on
Speaker 1: the porch down the south like swatting up mosquitos. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's just got this super laid back, chill
Speaker 1: vibe about it, which meant that by the time you
Speaker 1: got to the end of the class, you weren't you
Speaker 1: didn't have palette fatigue. And sometimes that can happen with
Speaker 1: some of those really acidic aggress of sours, but with
Speaker 1: this one, you got to the end of it and
Speaker 1: you were still wanting some more. I'm glad you and
Speaker 1: I were able to enjoy this one. And this is
Speaker 1: a brewery that they're in Athens, Georgia, so not too
Speaker 1: far away. We've totally got to check them out, like
Speaker 1: I've never been. Yeah, but I've had a couple of
Speaker 1: their beers and they've been delicious every time. They're so good.
Speaker 1: So next time we go, we're definitely gonna have to
Speaker 1: swing by Creature Conforts, but Southern Brewing Company is definitely
Speaker 1: going to get a visit most all right, that's gonna
Speaker 1: do it for this episode. If you want show notes
Speaker 1: to this episode, we have a lot of links, a
Speaker 1: lot of actual websites and resources that we talked about. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll link to that stuff in in our show notes
Speaker 1: up on how to Money dot Com. That's right, But
Speaker 1: that's gonna be it for this episode, buddy, So until
Speaker 1: next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.