460 | Preparing for the Cost of College | Brian Eufinger

23:50Or some kids love to have co-ops where you get work experience built in during your four years and stuff. So that's what I would say. Now, to be fair, some of the elite schools, there is a networking component to it, and there's also an internship component to it. So there's a large Fortune 50 company here in Atlanta that I'll leave nameless where we tutor a number of their execs, kids, and more from a logistics standpoint and an HR standpoint, they just have a policy. Like here are the seven schools we interview from for our interns. And pretty much most of our people in this department come from our internship pool that we have each summer.

24:24So if your student is forward thinking enough that they have an idea of XYZ industry or certain places they want to target, finding out that's one thing that honestly, when people do backwards walking dorm tours and college tours, I feel like not enough parents ask hard questions about what types of companies do internship interviews here. Like that's one of the most important and under asked questions because that feeder is so real and the strength of the relationships that those internships breed, you know, it's not like you're going to, everyone's going to go work at the place they do an internship, but there are a lot of first jobs where people, it's just a pipeline built that way.

24:55And obviously a lot of the schools that are higher ranked do have better access to some of the, those employers that are more in demand. Yeah, that's an interesting point, right? So if you have your heart set on Golden Sacks or McKinsey, then maybe Penn or Harvard or Stanford might be the worth it in that case. But short of that, because I don't think most people are aspiring to that or that's realistic. Yeah. Know thyself. So the thing that I'm hearing most from you throughout the first 20 minutes here is, okay, there's the intersection of the school, but the price as well. And that's what's so interesting about this new landscape is there is so much transparency that we can have a sense of, okay, what are you going to get in terms of merit aid?

25:36And it is very clear as day on these grids. And I absolutely love that. And I think, again, going back to that story of, what is it, firehouse subs? I mean, that's amazing. You can look at that and say, okay, these tests, I mean, I guess let's go to the test now, Brian, because obviously this is your bread and butter. A lot of people think that these are intelligence tests and that you take it once, you see what you get and, hey, I've been going to school for, at this point, 12 years. What I get is what I get. and it's pretty difficult to improve. But I don't suspect that's your opinion. And I'd love to hear like, how realistic is it for someone to improve five, 10, 20 % on this?

26:17And would it be essentially worth their while? Yeah, I mean, so we tell people all the time that ironically, if parents want to convince their student who's smart, but maybe a little bit chill and lazy, that they can do it. You go on some various Reddit and Discord threads where there are all these kids that are self-studying for the SAT and ACT. and one, it'll convince your student who might be wanting to not practice that there are actually people out there that are pretty hardcore, that are chasing some of these top scholarships or top schools. There's that famous Goodwill hunting scene where I learned a lot for$1.50 in library fines, et cetera.

26:49There are nerdy kids in some Brighton Beach basement in New York that had never had a tutor. They just maybe quietly dad printed off a ton of tests at work on the big copier and they just wailed away at it where, I mean, they might've been hellishly inefficient in doing so. That was me. In high school, I didn't have a tutor. I knew I need money or my dad said, you can just go to local U down the street and that's fine. So I didn't want that. I just got a bunch of books and I was super inefficient at it, but I quit JV tennis. I tell kids the first day of our test prep classes, I quit JV tennis.

27:18Notice that letter J right in there. I mean, the coach was not too broken up about it. I was not the best player. I enjoyed it. It was fun, but I had five APs and I had band and I had tennis. Something had to give junior year. And so I got 200 hours of my life back by not doing tennis that year. And I could lie to you and tell you and be a martyr and say, I spent painfully 200 hours studying for this test. I spent probably a third of it doing SAT, ACT studying and practice tests. And the other two thirds, I just spent enjoying junior year with my friends, which is also not a bad thing either. And in doing so paid for both my wife and I met in college and paid for all of room, board tuition, all of this stuff via these tests.

27:51So I approached this entire place from a place of gratitude because I will never today or ever make more money than I did studying for these tests in high school. It's boring. It's commas, it's rectangles, it's putting in the reps. It is not the Harry Potter sorting hat that it is often branded in the media. And honestly, if it were an IQ test, then no one would ever be able to improve their score and we'd be out of business because we'd have a bunch of unhappy clients because their scores didn't move. So it's not a two-hour miracle, but it's important that parents who might be stressed at hearing older parents at their high school share sometimes embellished stories.

28:21It is not nearly as scary. If you did every released ACT test that exists on earth, it would literally take under 200 hours and no one should ever do that. Like the average person who does a pretty darn good job is spending one fourth of what one sports season might take maybe. So it's not a two hour miracle, but it's reasonable. Especially some kids surprise their parents. They take a mock test and they're like, wow, I, you know, here's the merit aid grid for XYZ school. I'm literally two points away. Hey mom, you mean I can fix 10 questions and just be done? Like, you know, sometimes people are better off than they think.

28:54Yeah, that's fascinating. So right. A lot of people get up in arms about, oh, we're over-testing our kids. I hear a lot of parents talking about opting out of this and that, both of SAT, ACT, but just regular testing. And I mean, listen, I can understand that from a point of view, but realistically with this case, this is a financial independent show and this is just brass tacks, right? Like there are these grids, there are these tests and you can study and improve your score and get, if that example that you showed is representative a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars per answer that you get correct over your original test.

29:30I mean, like there's remarkable potential here. And that's what I think is so cool about it. Just from like, again, that ROI financial independence point of view, just putting aside how you wish the world is because it's largely relevant. Like we look at the landscape as it is and we try to maximize and we try to understand that. So I think that That is beautiful. I guess just last thing on this, Brian, before we kind of mosey on over to the governmental forms, because I think that's a lot of detail on that. But in terms of like the courses and studying, like is a lot of it just familiarizing with the exam itself?

30:03Or is it okay? In the first ACT and SAT test that this student took, we determined they're a little deficient in geometry. So we're going to give them a couple of courses on geometry. Like, how does this, from a very high level, like, how does your course work? Yeah, I mean, everyone has their own opinions. But in my opinion, for most people, you know, the number one cuss word among tutors is the phrase tips and tricks. It drives us crazy. Fingernails on a chalkboard because tips and tricks is like a crash diet to shed two more pounds before prom or something. That can help you a little bit, but not really.

30:38Because if you learn how to get faster via some tips, that will let you get faster. But if you still don't know the rules. So 80 % is content, in my opinion. 80 % content, 20 % strategy, where strategy is mostly about being meticulous and getting faster and time management and that kind of stuff. But in the end, if you don't know the content, there are limits to how far you can get. And I always tell kids, commas, rectangles, reps, it's really about just learning the bread and butter, the stuff that supposedly you're learning in school. And it's really just putting that work in. Now, one thing that's important to note, I'm not too proud to admit that I was wrong.

31:11I've been wrong on a lot of things. When we first chatted our very first Choose FI episode many years ago, I told you famously that you always tease me about that we are in the least scalable industry on earth, which it's still a tough one because it's a very people intensive business. It's not widgets and everybody's different. So we have grown from two of us, my wife and I still teach all the group classes, to 14 of us, largely ironically on the backs of the test optional, the worst test optional. When the worst test optional came out four years ago, my mom was freaking out. She's kind of old.

31:42And so she sent me literal newspaper clippings in the U.S. mail with, yes, mom, I'm aware of this test optional stuff. And so she's like, I told her mom, I said, listen, I was in the corporate world for a decade. I understand corporate doublespeak when I hear it. It's not real. But if I'm wrong, I'm very entrepreneurial. I have a hundred other ideas I will pursue. It's going to be fine. And the irony is for the first 12 years, it was just my wife and I. And it's so not optional that we had no choice but to grow from two to 14 because it's just exploded. And because it is not just getting in, it is also merit aid.

32:13It's also other rules. So I'll give you an example. Is the University of Alabama test optional, at least for this year? Next year, we'll see. But not if you want merit aid. The Auburn merit aid grid requires scores. So there are places where you can get in possibly without scores. Oh, but not if you're homeschooled. Or at Elon, I'm tutoring a girl literally in an hour from now who wants to go to Elon University. She had never even taken a practice test. She's a senior. She's a panicked senior. here. She went to Elon on a tour during this Columbus Day break here. So she basically found out during the tour, one mom said, so you're test optional, right?

32:45And they're like, well, yeah, I mean, in general, I mean, not if you're homeschooled or if you want the direct admit business or direct admit nursing, she wants to do nursing. And so now there's all kinds of little penalty boxes. Or if you don't submit scores, there's a placement exam. And if you don't do well in the placement exam, then you have to take these remedial classes that don't count for graduation, which could, this is choose FI, delay graduation and therefore increase cost. So to me, I'm pretty mellow. I'm pretty hard to ruffle my feathers, but transparency and honesty is not too much to ask.

33:14Like people don't realize there's all these trap doors. And truly, if things were truly super optional, I would already be doing any number of other pursuits, but we're busier than ever and I'm tired. I need a nap. So it's important because parents are going to hear this from their friends or kids will seek the path of least resistance and say, I'm just going to chill. Well, no, you're not. Because if you want Alabama, like, yeah, you can get into Alabama test optional, but I can't afford that price tag. And so parents will have to have this come armed with the knowledge of what I just share right here, knowing that there are lots of different definitions to the word optional, heavy on the air quotes.

33:48Yeah. And like I said, on the info session that I attended, you spent a lot of time on this, this test optional nonsense that you You basically debunked it. Could you go into this a little further? Because I think there are a lot of people out there who have read this repeatedly. Oh, this school went test optional. I know you just said clearly that for most schools, okay, whether that's true or not, it's still not going to either get you into a particular program or get you merited. But let's even just take that step back and say like, are tests actually optional? Like, is that way overblown? It totally depends.

34:23And it's hard because kids who are in high school who might be book smart or not, it's hard to understand that nuance and the context and a little bit of naivete that you can't expect a 16-year-old to have. So if a school was test optional prior to COVID, then they probably mean it. And in general, like Reed College, they're a very good liberal arts college. They were test optional before either you or I were even born. Like they mean it. You know, their shoes optional, test optional, their little hacky sack, et cetera. That is who they are. They've always been that way. And the University of California went test blind famously with the whole lawsuit that happened due to the disability, all that stuff.

34:55So if your state touches, like this is a crass rule, but if your state touches the Pacific Ocean, are they probably 100 % on the up and up when they say test optional? Actually, yes. Like at Pepperdine University, only 22 % of kids that applied last year, they're test optional. Only 22 % even sent scores. So yeah. Okay. But on the other hand, Auburn, who last year was air quotes test optional, only admitted 6 % of their entire student body without scores. And those who submitted scores got in 800 % as often as those who didn't. And it's annoying, frankly. It takes you a long time to research. I actually just got picked since we last chatted at the parent info session.

35:31I'm speaking at a national conference. Apparently, I've been branded as someone who collects a lot of fun tests, optional data. So I get to speak at a conference here in January. So that'll be fun. Okay. So, right. What I'm hearing is there are some schools that are truly test optional. Many of them have been that way for a very long time. But for people who are not locked in very precisely on Reed College or schools that did so more recently, mostly due to COVID may or may not mean it as much as those who have been doing it for decades. And that's legit. If you've been doing it for decades, you believe it, you live it, you've lived that path for a long time.

36:06And also there's context. I am promised a jersey from a person who will hopefully be drafted, who's playing at a certain very fancy school for football. And yeah, I mean, he could have gotten in no matter what he did because the coach's email, he's like, we're good. Just like, please don't make any national media stories and embarrass me. And so there's always going to be exceptions. Yeah, there are always edge cases. But how I'm reading this is it is a very dicey proposition for you as either a student or a parent of a student to say, oh, tests are optional now. My kids shouldn't even think about the SAT or ACT.

36:42Now, their strategy, I mean, their strategy, if you study, study, study and get to a certain point, you might strategically submit to certain ones and not to others. But to not even try to me is wild just because you're, if not getting in, money on the table, other things is for closing a lot of doors. And the one last thing, I mean, we can talk about FAFSA and CSS Profile is we are hearing from some of our students who texted me grateful that they took it because some of their friends didn't because now that they're in college, they're applying for internships and there's a field in the internship form.

37:11Okay, what were your scores? Imagine if you're a student who didn't even sit for the test, much less try or study or to do well. Like the long tail of possible uses of it for grad school, for internship applications. I mean, Merit Aid is the big 800-pound gorilla for a lot of people in getting in, but there's a long tail beyond that sometimes as well. Yeah. All right. So I think that was a wonderful overview of that side of things. But like we talked about a couple of times or alluded to here, we have these governmental forms. And I know things are changing with the FAFSA. and frankly, a lot of people, myself most certainly included, have little to no knowledge of the CSS profile, what it means, what it is, with the intersection of FAFSA.

37:54So let's start from the top here, Brian. Just give like your elevator pitch for what do we need to understand, think about with these governmental forms? Sure. So one thing I'm going to start off with, there've been some scary numbers we've been sharing so far. Things have been getting better with transparency of merit aid grids and so forth. there's also alongside you filling out your FAFSA since the same numbers you're using for a lot of that are the same numbers to their credit a lot of colleges have these things called NPC net price calculator and it's not going to you can't hold them to it it's not a guarantee but in my experience they're pretty darn accurate and so if families think there's no hope I'm not going to afford college the same data you're feeding into FAFSA and these other forms if you entered in there you might be pleasantly surprised like oh based on x y and z we might qualify for some good aid so that is well worth the time you spend just to know the good news, bad news about various schools and what the cost might be.

38:45Because just like there are stores that have a sticker price of this and they're known for being, you know, Macy's is famous for charging. No one's paying that much for a pair of khakis and then, oh, what do you know? 30 % off. There's a lot of schools that do give various aid and can give you a very different sticker price. But the two main vehicles for the financial aid forms, there's the FAFSA, which is the feds. It's the federal application. And then there's the CSS profile, which is actually administered and owned by the College Board, the same people who do the AP exams and the SAT. So the FAFSA is more common at public schools and just more common in general.

39:16And the CSS profile is only used by about 150 schools out of the 2 ,000 or so in America. It is mostly private schools. It is mostly some of the more elite, fancy and harder to get into schools, but that's the high level look at it. Now, as far as filling them out, The FAFSA, you can think of it as sort of the 1040EZ form, whereas the CSS profile is more like the 1040 long form. There's a lot more to it. And that was a true analogy I've used before, even before the new FAFSA, which neatly is now going to be far fewer questions than it used to be. So it's nicer from a customer and family perspective.

39:51Now, one important note, there are some people that are fashionably pessimistic that assume I'm well off enough that I'm not going to qualify for any financial aid. There are some places that for whatever reason, it's their right to do it. They will not allow you to possibly apply for merit aid unless you fill out the FAFSA. So even if you make a gajillion dollars, just beware that a lot of colleges will still make you fill it out just because that's their rule and that's their right to demand and it is what it is. But some people find that out too late and they are like, oh, oops. And so that is important that families fill it out.

40:23Worst case, you wasted a couple, a little bit of your time, but yes, it's better to have it and not need it than the other way around. Gotcha. So, okay, that makes sense, Brian. When do people need to start thinking about filling in the form? Is there like a certain time range? Is it right before you apply? Like, talk us through that. And roughly how long does it take to fill this thing out? Sure. Now, in a normal year, people would already be able to fill this thing out. It's been delayed a little bit. The current plan is that they're going to release it due to it, because it is an overhaul, to be fair.

40:52You know, please pardon the dust, our construction, but it's been delayed. The plan currently, again, we're recording in October, is to open it up in December of 2023. The deadline to submit is going to vary by institution. So you want to check, especially if your kid is applying or either early action or early decision. That's just an important note. But just at a high level, this upcoming change is the biggest change in the U.S. Department of Education's process for financial aid in the last 40 years. People had long complained that it's too difficult to complete the application. It's lengthy, it's confusing, et cetera.

41:25So think of like the federal like paperwork reduction act. They're trying to do better and be less onerous for, you know, the citizens that are the ones paying their bills. And so the goal really was to reduce their questions and make it more plain language and easier to fill out. Now it is important every year, ideally, you know, file your taxes at a decent time, you know, so I, I'm a hypocrite. We've extended a time or two, but the sooner you can have during the period, during the years where you're going to have kids in college and filling out the FAFSA. If you can do a better job filling your taxes earlier, you can start finding out numbers earlier.

41:57Obviously, we're here on the 13th. I think the 15th is even the extension deadline. So almost everyone, by the time this episode comes out, will have their 2022 tax returns, I would imagine. So you're fine. But earlier is always better. Now, one thing that is great and is new is that under the new FAFSA, they're calling it the brand name. They're branding it as better FAFSA. So, you know, new Coke, but hopefully not new Coke, but better FAFSA. You can directly import your tax info from the IRS to FAFSA. Now that's going to require you to fill out a form. Like, I don't know whether it's going to look like a docusign or otherwise, but it's going to be a thing where you consent to what they call DDX, like direct data exchange.

42:36And so that just lets the IRS talk to the department of education and share the variables on your tax return that are used to calculate where you stand from a financial aid standpoint. That's part of how they were able to make it shorter is by allowing that importing of some of the data that you've already given elsewhere. So why make you reinvent the wheel? And another thing, because a lot of the people who listen to this, maybe you have an older child and now you have a younger child who's doing it. You may have heard of a term called EFC, which stands for expected family contribution. It is now being called SAI, Student Aid Index.

43:11So Student Aid Index, it's similar. It's basically the new version of that number. So that is just so parents can say, where'd my EFC go? Don't be confused. Now, what is important is also that the majority, I was looking through a draft, you know, they're still working through it, but a draft of what this one blog post, what it's going to look like, the majority of the items for the 2024, 2025 FAFSA can be found directly on the actual income tax return, mostly on the first page or two. So if people don't, unless they have insanely complex tax situations, it's going to be for once, you know, that people always complain to the government.

43:44It seems like it's, you know, fingers crossed, it's going to be a pretty neat thing. Now, I don't know why they're doing this, but there are some people who, if they are on the lower income band, technically based on the way that it's calculated, some people will have an SAI, a student aid index that is actually negative, which means your your family is not only not expected to contribute something, but it goes even further, which I don't know how that's going to manifest itself. You can't get less than zero, but that is something that will certainly confuse parents, at least for the first year.

44:13But that just means that your number, your estimated family contribution is going to be none or less than zero. Brian, obviously we're talking to the financial independence community here. I'm curious, you mentioned the FAFSA, most of it, this new version, can come from, like you said, maybe page one of the income tax return. What is the intersection of your assets? How does that get included? How does that get included into the calculation? Sure. So before the FAFSA simplification, you were calculated, the old version, your EFC incorporated income, assets, also family size, how many kids do you have in college at the same time?

44:50And so the lower the EFC, the more aid you'd potentially be eligible for. After the new FAFSA, the new simplification, as we mentioned, the EFC is being replaced by the SAI. And same thing, the lower the SAI, the more aid you can possibly be eligible for. The difference is the new formula increases and they haven't finalized all the details. But as a general rule, the new formula is going to increase the income protection allowance. So it allows more of a student or a family's income to be excluded from that aid calculation. Some of the examples I was looking at last week with a student because their family was looking at things that in this case, the blog post, a parent income protection for a family of four for the old year, 32 ,600, and the new one is closer to 35 ,800, which doesn't look like that much, but it is 10%.

45:36And inflation, hopefully, is not 10 % per year. So it's a little larger, which is not a bad thing. Now, what is also important is some parents look at this number and don't understand just because you have need does not mean the school is going to meet that need. And this is a highly, highly misunderstood topic in the college realm. So there's this thing called gapping, which is not very polite, but it happens. Not every school, somebody's got to pay the bills, got to keep the lights on. And so gapping is you can have a SAI that shows, no, I really do have this much need. The school might give you just a little bit and then leave you with a giant gap, which makes realistically it not affordable for you to attend that school.

46:16There are other schools. And if a family wants to do some research, it's pretty easy if you Google meets need schools, like a list of schools that promise that we accept our class, whoever gets saying, we promise to meet the need. So if the calculation says this, we'll find out a way to make that gap work. Obviously, the schools that have larger endowments are better able to do that. Other places wish they could, but realistically, they just can't. Right. That makes sense. And now, so right, Brian, the different components that make up the aid that's offered by the school. So I remember from back in the day, there's grants, which are best case scenario.

46:49There's loans, work study. I suspect there's some other options. Can you talk us through like, what can people even consider when they're talking about, all right, this school has met my need, but is it actually as good as it looks? So, I mean, I guess that's an eye of the beholder as far as is it good as it looks. In the end, there's a certain cost of attendance. You know, there's tuition, room, board, books, other expenses. And to be fair, a lot of colleges are way better than they used to be at having a nice document on their website. If you type in COA, like if you type in University of Illinois, COA is like any school, you're going going to find a pretty decent listing of it.

47:23Now, one thing that is important, because I mentioned how the FAFSA, how it used to be EFC, not SAI, but the genesis largely of part of why this episode is happening today is parents are hearing inklings of, wait a second, they're changing what? The biggest change in the better FAFSA is the elimination of the multiple sibling discount. So before, if you had two or more kids in college at the same time, the SAI, the student aid index, is no longer just simply divided between them. So the net impact is that aid packages may be reduced. You still list all your siblings, but before, if you had a hypothetical family where they just pop, pop, pop, they had all their kids just one year apart versus you had a family where they had kids every four and a half years, there'd be a much more dramatic financial impact when you have your kids spread out versus together.

48:10And that is no longer going to be the case. So in And this next statistic might be one that applies to a lot of ChooseFI listeners. There's an awesome article I'll share with you for the show notes from NerdWallet. Basically, it talks about how for families who have incomes between$75 ,000 and$200 ,000 as a household, that impact of removing the sibling discount, if there are going to be multiple kids at the same time and they're used to the prior calculations, could be a difference of thousands of dollars in the calculations. So that is an important aha heads up for those families in that bracket.

48:43Now, even though the FAFSA calculation is not doing that, that does not prohibit colleges from still using that data in calculating any institutional aid, any grant that the school chooses to give you. So there's what the feds say. The school can always give you any money they want for any reason they want. So some schools that can afford so may not just take the new number from FAFSA at face value. Many will, obviously. Right, right, right. those schools, will they see that that family has two, three, four kids in college at the same time and understanding that the form is huge? Well, that's important.

49:19Yeah. So to be clear, just because the feds did that change does not mean you should not still list the multiple siblings when you fill out all of the forms, especially if they're both in college and you're filling out the form twice anyways for each kid. And the biggest change is truly the multiple sibling discount. There are also some changes that have been happening where it's beyond the scope of the podcast, but if you have a divorce or separated parents, there's some changes based on who provides XYZ financial support, not necessarily based on the custody percentages or anything. So that's important to look at that fine print if that applies to you.

49:51Now, there is one piece of good news and one piece of cautionary news that is also useful to know about. The good news is, so grandparent 529 plans. So currently, if there's a grandparent that owns a 529 plan on behalf of a dependent, the distributions the student gets from that plan are counted as untaxed income, which means not that year, but the next year, because they do a look back of the prior year, it could impact their financial aid eligibility. But under the new plan, starting with the 24, 25 year, those will no longer count as untaxed income for the student. And additionally, and again, caveat, this could still happen when they, in the final rules, they tweak it and change this, so double check.

50:33But the other good news is the value of the plan that's owned by a grandparent does not necessarily have to be reported as an investment in the FAFSA. Whereas if it is parent owned, then it is reported as a parent investment in the FAFSA. So that changes the ultimate calculation. So that is a small loophole. There's not a ton of loopholes in this process, but that is a small one where if you can coordinate with the grandparents as you're establishing 529s and things that is important. Now, to be clear, FAFSA is the 1040EZ. So on CSS Profile, the grandparent 529, that trick will not really matter much because it is still taken into consideration for financial aid calculations for the CSS Profile ones.

51:11Okay, gotcha. So right, it's funny because you preempted my next, my very next question, which was, we led with the key is preparation and knowledge. And I think that's what those of us in the FI community like to think years ahead a time. So are there any hacks for people in the FI community for financial aid? Again, with understanding that there are largely, we're talking about people with assets and potentially some of them might have reached a point of financial independence, might not be working in the same capacity that they were previously. So again, just things to think about. So it sounds like this grandparent 529, I don't know if this is a loophole that will exist years down the road.

51:49this could always be closed. It could always be added to the FAFSA, obviously. But again, like you said, if you can coordinate it, it doesn't sound like there's any downside. It sounds like a, to go back to poker, right? There's, it's a free roll situation where there's no downside to it potentially, if you can coordinate it. So that's something to at least think about depending on your, your life situation. Are there anything else jumped to mind of like, Hey, if you could plan this years in advance in terms of your assets, your income, Are there things to consider if somebody really wanted to optimize this?

52:20We're talking edge cases here, obviously, Brian, but anything to consider? Yeah, I mean, I think if someone has some time to spare, two things. One thing is very clear. The more complex your family situation is, the less you should rely on some quick CNBC article that's just one or two screen lengths to provide you good advice on this because colleges, other than your house, one of the largest expenses that you might undertake in your lifetime. So if there's weird alimony and child support situations, if there's people who are self self-employed, who own businesses, all the rules for how business valuation is counted and how money inside the business is counted, self-employed folks, farmers.

52:54There's a lot of technicalities where if that happens to you, that's important that you spend more time than the average Joe researching this stuff. But also, people who are FIRE folks are some of those people where you might have an unorthodox situation where you look kind of weird, where you have a bunch of assets squirreled away, you're FIRE, and you are not working as much and just living. So if you are in the disbursement phase, it would behoove you to start using the net price calculators earlier just because I have no clue how that would look if you have tons of assets and then lower income, you might get some different results.

53:26But what is not good is there are people that I stay very far away from, it scares me to death, who claim they have this magic potion that, oh, we will find a way to totally legally make you artificially look poor in the eyes of FAFSA. I'm sure there's ways that can be optimized, but some of our clients who have done that have ended up being pitched some very gray area, variable life insurance, whole life insurance schemes, lockup period of this and blah, blah. I would not encourage people to indulge those folks if they are ever pitched those. It's very common with a lot of upper middle class parents.

53:59They somehow get ahold of those mailing lists and advertise that type of stuff. Yeah. Don't fall prey to any of that. That is great advice. So the net price calculator, that was something I wanted to follow up with you about. So I'm glad you brought it back up. Are those on the individual college websites? Is that where they exist? Yeah. If you just type in an insert university name and net price calculator or NPC, it'll pop up pretty easily. And they've gotten way more accurate. When they first started, there was some bumpiness. I've had a lot of parents complain to me just in general, but that's the one part where they've been decently gratified.

54:29Like, yeah, they told us it was going to be X and it was off by 500 bucks. And it's good for being able to do financial planning. That's cool. So similar question about the FAFSA. So let's say there's somebody out they're listening. They have a kid in seventh or eighth grade and the new FAFSA form comes out whenever it's finalized. And they wanted to, in a perfect world, go in and enter their information just to see what their SAI would be. Is that something you can do just for giggles in essence? Or do you have to have a student at a certain age? No, I mean, you can do it. I mean, knowing that in five years from now, your job situation might change.

55:05The stock market may have done various things. Yeah, different funsies. You can do it. You just want to make sure don't go on about.com where they have some like outdated stuff from the Geo Studies type era. You just want to go straight to an individual school's website to get some fresh stuff. Okay. That's great. Now, there was one thing I wanted to mention because I do this whenever I talk to parent groups is it can seem if there's a student who is hardworking, maybe their GPA is not going to be the most amazing thing in the world or their test scores. They're not type person who even if they work really hard, might get to where they want on the merit aid front, still try, get good grades, get good test scores, at least try.

55:40But I am always a big fan of parents knowing about other ways that are not academically related where you can save a boatload of money. So the first one, which I talked about back in one of the old Choose the Five episodes, is being a resident advisor. Because room and board is no joke. Even if you get some good tuition, room and board is expensive. And so for five of my semesters, I did not pay room or board. And that was a huge, and they just forgot to charge me. So it's just, boom, done. That was great, great savings. But that requires pre-planning because they are very competitive positions.

56:08So you need to become a known, known in a good way, known entity to the Office of Residential Life. And you have to know whether your kid is the type of person that would be a good dorm dad, dorm mom, so to speak. And then there's one other example that I love so much. So we all know Boston is not cheap. And it also has a million colleges. I ran into one of our students here over winter break a year or two ago. We caught up. I was getting my battery replaced at the Apple store. And so I had some time to kill, which we caught up. He's such an entrepreneur. He's such a hustler where he, you only get housing at his university for freshman year.

56:39And you can imagine what apartments cost in Boston. Yes. And so he went to his college and found a list of professors that were going to be going on sabbatical. And he got a list. And he said, Hey, do you want to not pay to board your cat for a semester or water your plants or lawn, whatever. And so he just got free rent. And so he had a reference letter from his youth pastor or something like, but he, once he did a good job of it, he just literally hopped and he housed that for like, I think it one semester he just came up, no dice, but the other semesters, that's a lot of savings anywhere, especially in Boston.

57:10So don't despair if you think, oh, I don't have a 4.0, so therefore I'm toast. If you put even just a little bit of Googling and creativity in it, you can really cut the cost of college, no matter what your specific situation is. Even if that includes just graduating early, because you brought in a boatload of AP credits by doing well on those exams. So there's a million different avenues you can do. Yeah, that's a brilliant one. And that very last one, I know we've had the millionaire educator on a number of times talking about different ways, AP exams, CLEP tests, and the like. We'll put those links in the show notes for sure.

57:41That's something I'll need to get him back on as well. Because yeah, anything we can do to prepare in advance is just, like we said repeatedly here, just having this knowledge, thinking in advance, and just understanding there are many options. Like you said, life is not over if your grades weren't perfect from the time you were a freshman, there are different ways to think about this. And certainly the increase of the scores, that sounds like a very plausible option for a lot of people on tests that really you can study, you can improve, and you can really make a massive difference in your bottom line.

58:13So Brian, as always, my friend, it is wonderful to see you. Thank you so very much for all this information. It's great. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of questions. So maybe we'll do a follow-up, a Q &A. But if people want to find you, what is the best way to get in touch? Sure. It's just edisonprep.com or you can search Edison Prep on Facebook. The parent info session that you attended, we do those six or seven times a year. The next one's November 14th. But I can give you links for the show notes for the info sessions. And like I said, it's important to us that we have the mock tests, the diagnostic tests that are for free on the weekends.

58:47So if parents just want to see good news, bad news, where their kids stands. We have those as a public service, just like the info sessions. And I can give you that link as well. So yeah, just Edison prep, like Thomas Edison, Edison prep.com. Wonderful. Brian, thank you again. Really appreciate it. And until next time. Always happy to help. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter.

59:17I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com slash subscribe. And it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there. And I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this, the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in-real-life community, we have Chooseify local groups in 300-plus cities all around the world.

59:54So head to chooseify.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20-plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI, or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways. Chooseify episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence? What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life?

1:00:30And then Choose a Vi created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.

1:00:46Thank you.