294. How to Graduate College Debt Free with Jocelyn Pearson

19:40Jocelyn Pearson:It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. It's really quick and simple to switch to Gusto. You can just transfer your existing data to get up and running fast. And you get direct access to certified HR experts to support you throughout any tough HR situation. Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash ffpod and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash ffpod. One more time, gusto.com slash ffpod.

20:14Jocelyn Pearson:so when we look at committees right committees are deciding or sometimes individuals even are deciding who gets what scholarship walk me through how scholarships are actually awarded what is that committee looking for when they're picking one student over the other i love this

20:33Financial Feminist Hosts:topic and I could go on and on about it. If I was to boil it down to my most commonly used phrase, they want an ROI, a return on investment. And through the scholarship system, we've actually not only, we give scholarships as well. So I can personally attest to this. If I'm giving out thousands of dollars each year, I want to know the student's actually going to graduate, that this student's going to take this money and pursue something. And that is what they're assessing. That's why they're asking, well, what challenges have you overcome? Because hint, hint, are you going to be able to overcome challenges when it gets tough in college?

21:12Financial Feminist Hosts:Are you going to be able to overcome challenges when it comes to getting an internship or a job? So they are using these prompts to see if we give you the money, maybe not necessarily will it come back to us, but will it come back to the world in a fruitful way. So this is where actually, going back to the myth of it's never too late, or it is too late, and the truth is that it's never too late. College students are already showing, hey, I'm here and I'm doing this. This is where if college students are eligible, sometimes they have a leg up because they already show, hey, I'm one, two, three semesters in, here's my GPA.

21:50Financial Feminist Hosts:I've gotten involved. I've chosen this major. So they actually, when it comes to communicating and ROI, they have a little bit of an advantage there. So that's one of the biggest things. And how do we show that we are a good ROI on the scholarship spend? Again, what are we going to do with this money and why? Do we have a plan? Sometimes I get pushback where they'll say, well, what if we don't exactly know what we want to do? I actually love even being honest and saying, I'm in between these two things. Try to say something. What are we interested in? Because it'll just make the rest of it so much easier to answer.

22:29Financial Feminist Hosts:But committees are looking for, do you have a plan? Do you think you have a plan? We know it'll change, but do you think you have a plan? Because you need a plan in order to get through the four years. And we want to make sure that if we give you the money, you're going to do that.

22:44Jocelyn Pearson:So I had so many people I met in college who came in to the four years, totally understandably, undeclared with their major. Are we saying that you should give the major you think you're going to pursue, even if it's not the one you are, does that position you better in a scholarship application?

23:04Financial Feminist Hosts:I do. And I don't want anyone to lie. I don't want anyone to lie. We can absolutely say I am considering this and this. If we are, this is probably a bigger discussion. If we are allowing our students to go to college and they're completely clueless and they're just there to party, this is a different conversation, right? Hopefully they're going to college with the idea at least that they're heading to something that requires a degree. And it can be, I have no clue. So actually I was between biomedical engineering and business school. They were not related. at all, right? But I could, going back to my why, going back to my what is my scholarship superpower, my story, I could show that actually it's because I wanted to make an impact, right?

23:53Financial Feminist Hosts:Whether it was making mechanical hearts or whether it was creating a business that changed lives. And so this is where you can actually, I just basically crafted a story right in front of you, right? Hey, I don't exactly know what I want to do, but I know the impact I want to make. And here's a challenge that helped me figure that out. And that's going to be memorable with committees.

24:17Jocelyn Pearson:If a committee is down to two finalists who are both qualified, who gets the scholarship?

24:23Financial Feminist Hosts:One of the things that committees do, and this is myself included, I still remember stories that I read from, I can actually tell you one specifically is 2017. And the reason I remember is because I remember the apartment I was in when I was reading the essay. And it was this adorable essay about the Boy Scouts and they were hiking up a mountain and he became the bottleneck and he had this whole plan and it was so good. So he became, oh, the Boy Scout boy or the bottleneck boy because you hide identifiers. But what that actually showed was committees remember stories and they remember how you made them feel, right?

25:04Financial Feminist Hosts:I was the vending machine girl. Okay, there you go. So you've got your, there was a girl who was, she created costumes. She was the costume girl. I can tell you our winners years later because I remember the story. So when we're talking about winners, who actually wins, it's going to be that person that left enough of an impact that when I'm negotiating, hey, I want this person to get the money, they're the bottleneck student or they're the costume or the vending machine girl. That's going to help. Now, say they both have two good stories. We're going to go to, did they follow the rules? Did they answer the prompts?

25:43Financial Feminist Hosts:You would be amazed at how many people, when it comes neck to neck, you're like, well, they did miss this material or they didn't quite do this. You would be shocked at how many people don't follow instructions. And it makes our jobs, unfortunately, a lot easier.

25:57Jocelyn Pearson:I mean, I think about it as I have my own version of this as an employer who offers a really compelling, robust benefits package. We get a lot of applications to work for us every single year. And often when we're not even hiring, like I get cold pitched a couple times a week. So when I have hundreds, if not thousands of people I'm looking through, the easiest way to say no is, oh, you missed something, or you didn't follow the instructions, or you clearly didn't read this thing that I asked you to do. So if I'm looking for an easy way to say no to you, I'm going to take it. Absolutely. If you've made it easy for me to say no, I'm going to take that no.

26:40Financial Feminist Hosts:Right. We have so many that are high quality. we've got to find ways to simplify and that's definitely an easy one.

26:51Jocelyn Pearson:Being a small business owner, I think is the hardest thing. And it's only getting harder every single day. The costs keep increasing. Everything just feels so stressful right now. And this is why NetSuite is an incredible tool for small business owners. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, CRM into one single source of truth. and it's trusted by over 43 ,000 customers. And NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how business gets done. It automatically surfaces custom insights throughout your day. It works alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work.

27:26Jocelyn Pearson:And if you have a question, you can just ask and it'll help come up with the answer for you. NetSuite is customized for a variety of industries. So it supports the way that your business truly works. And it's one of those things I'm so excited to continue investing in as we grow HFK and as we continue solving new problems in our business. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai.ffpod. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai.ffpod. So much of my work here at Her First 100K is making sure women are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to their finances.

28:08Jocelyn Pearson:But even the most financially savvy women in our community have a hard time talking about one of the most important financial protections you can have, life insurance. Here's the deal. Life insurance isn't for you. It's for the people who would be financially devastated if you were gone tomorrow. The people who depend on your income or your labor, even if it's unpaid, it's one of the most powerful ways you can protect your loved ones. And so many people think it's complicated. So they just keep putting it off, which then compounds because life insurance only gets more expensive the longer you wait.

28:33Jocelyn Pearson:Fortunately, SoFi has teamed up with Ladder to make it easy to quickly get life insurance. SoFi, the all-in-one finance app where you can bank, borrow, and invest now offers insurance. SoFi can help you find term life insurance that's competitively priced, quick to apply for, and easy to understand. Just answer a few health questions and you could get up to$3 million in coverage with no medical exam or doctor's visits required. As your life changes, like getting married or buying a home, you can always adjust your coverage with a couple of clicks. No policy fees. Apply online and you can get an offer in minutes.

28:58Jocelyn Pearson:And In turn, life insurance is more affordable than you might think. Healthy females in their 30s could get rates as low as$19 a month for a 500K policy for a 10-year term. Individual rates will vary as specific circumstances will affect each customer's rate. Head over to sofi.com slash ffpod to get your quote in minutes. That's sofi.com slash ffpod. This is a paid advertisement by SoFi Technologies. Coverage and pricing is subject to underwriting criteria. Ladder Life Insurance LLC, California license number OK22568, distributes life insurance issued by multiple issuers. Ladder, SoFi and SoFi Insurance Agency are separate, independent entities.

29:29Jocelyn Pearson:Terms apply.

29:35Jocelyn Pearson:I have to ask you about AI because I do feel like this is one of those things that can be so helpful for this process, but I can also see kids using AI to write their whole essay, which is not what we want. So how do we use AI effectively for something like building a system? And when should we not be using AI to help our system?

29:59Financial Feminist Hosts:I am so glad you asked this. We're revamping our entire program and we are building software tools for this reason. When used in the right way, AI can be so powerful. However, I just got an email from a scholarship committee member. I'm so scared. We shared it with our members. Yeah. They said, hey, this kind of sounded like AI. I went to chat GPT, told it my name. And I said, can you answer this for me? It was the exact same text, almost verbatim with the name switched. He's not even a real student. It was so terrible. And then, this is even scarier, they did it with a recommendation letter. So I'm actually waiting.

30:45Financial Feminist Hosts:I've shot him back a message and I said, okay, do you think the student did this because they forgot to request one and they tried to just pull one together? Or do you think the recommender, which is even scarier in my opinion, went to chat GPT and said, write me a recommendation letter for the student. So again, he tested it, same recommendation letter came out for Greg instead of the student. So where there's great power comes great responsibility. We are using AI tools to streamline the systemizing, right? How can we actually, we've got a cool tool where it takes our superpowers and you just say, tell me what to do based on what Jocelyn says for Sundays.

31:23Financial Feminist Hosts:And it just like just creates it. So we don't have to become an expert in it. We can, it can use what I've trained it on and it just tells us what to do. So I love for the systemizing piece of it. Maybe I would say as if, because I know students are going to try it anyway, even though I'm going to tell them not to, do not, do not, please do not write an essay with it. If you're going to try, if anything, ask it to ask you questions to uncover what story we can tell. That is a better way to do it. I love AI for proofreading, not for rewriting, right? So use it as a mentor, but not to do the work for you because they are spotting it.

32:03Financial Feminist Hosts:We run all our winners through an AI checker. And if it comes up as AI, automatically eliminate it. So actually, I should have said one of the things of a winner or not, a quick way to get eliminated is by using AI to do the work. We've always been innovative. We are really trying to fine tune these software tools for our families to try and streamline some of the gritty work, even helping them find the scholarships that are not on the big search engines. That's great. But for using it for writing essays and recommendation letters, if anyone writes those, please don't. Please don't. Yeah.

32:39Jocelyn Pearson:I wanted to ask you because I know students are out there. There's so much conversation about students using AI for their school essays. So I wanted to acknowledge if we're using AI, if that is a thing for you and your family, okay, how do you use it effectively and when should you not use it? So that was super helpful.

32:59Financial Feminist Hosts:Yes. And I will say, this is actually a little bit scarier for me. Parents, so I have recently been polling during my live trainings. Parents, is your student using it? And you would be shocked at how many of them say no. Oh, because they just have no idea. I'm sorry, I call bullshit. I call complete bullshit.

33:15Jocelyn Pearson:Yeah, it's the same way. My students never drank. My students never done that. It's the same thing. It's like, yeah, they have. And that's okay, but they have.

33:23Financial Feminist Hosts:In two seconds, they can have a full paper written for them. They are absolutely using AI. And so this is, that is a whole nother conversation. So, but I would, parents, you've got to address this when doing these scholarship applications. Absolutely do not use it to do the work for them. Yeah. What scholarships are students commonly overlooking? So when it comes to scholarships, when we're talking about the myths, right, going back to the good scholarships, the big ones, a lot of students want to get that Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper, right? They want the$100 ,000 win. And unfortunately, everyone wants that.

34:00Financial Feminist Hosts:So you're looking at 100 ,000 applicants as well. And so when students are looking at scholarships, they will see the$500 one and think, oh, 500 bucks. I need so many of those. I'm not going to waste my time on that. But we've had, oh my gosh, endless students where they spend an hour, 45 minutes on an application and they win$500,$1 ,000, even$2 ,000. That's a pretty good hourly rate, right, if we're calculating it. So for sure, a lot of students overlook the small dollar ones. And I would say, actually, even I did this at first. I spent a whole year applying to the wrong ones, the enter to win$10 ,000 and put your favorite ice cream flavor in here.

34:52Financial Feminist Hosts:and not shockingly, I didn't win a single penny that way. But even when I started tweaking again, trying to figure out this system, if it was under, I would say probably 5 ,000 at first, I was just kind of moving on. But then I finally applied to a local$500 one and I won it. And that's when I said, okay, maybe I shouldn't be overlooking these. Actually, I can tell you, my largest win was a$4 ,000 scholarship. $4 ,000.

35:21Jocelyn Pearson:And you had$126 ,000 of scholarship. So we can do the math on that. If$4 ,000 was the highest, you still made up$122 ,000 somewhere, right?

35:31Financial Feminist Hosts:Yeah, right. And that$4 ,000 was recurring. So multiply that by four years. So that knocked off. But still...

35:38Jocelyn Pearson:You had over$100 ,000 in small checks.

35:41Financial Feminist Hosts:Right, right. And it added up and to where I actually got overage checks. So the biggest one is do not overlook these small dollar ones. The reason is not only can they add up, but your competition. I'll never forget one of my favorite wins I had. They actually told us there were four winners and they were, I don't remember the amount, but somewhere in the range of anywhere from$1 ,000 to$2 ,000. And they said to us, believe it or not, actually, you guys were the only ones that applied. And it was a 100 % success rate. All of us got an award. I later found out that they actually were only planning to give two, got four applicants, reached out to the donors, would you match your donation so we could give all of them a win?

36:28Financial Feminist Hosts:And they did. It was a local construction company and they had this cute little banquet and it was awesome. But that's where also this just naturally increases our chances of winning because we're going for ones that are less competitive. I think the other one that's often overlooked, and this is helpful to students even already in college or especially already in college, are ones that are specific to departments later on.

36:51Jocelyn Pearson:I'm laughing because if you didn't bring this up, I was bringing this up. Yeah. I mean, I got, I dual degreed. So I have a degree in theater and I have a degree in organizational communication. And I auditioned to get a theater scholarship before I entered my program. And then I don't remember what the first year was. I think it was maybe$1 ,500, but it increased every year. And I think by the time I was a senior, it was$4 ,000 a year. Same thing with communication. I had no idea there was even a comm-specific scholarship. I think I discovered it my sophomore year. They told me it was mostly need-based.

37:27Jocelyn Pearson:And we'll talk were making enough money where I didn't qualify for financial aid. But in no way did we have $55 ,000 a year set up for me to go to college. So I applied anyway. And I was like, who knows? Also, the people who were deciding it were my professors. And I was doing really good work and building good relationships with them. I didn't get$2 ,000, which was the max, but I got $500 a year because nobody else applied. It was like me and a couple other people because nobody knew about it. And then every semester I would be like, hey, are we still at this? There's still a communication department scholarship available.

38:06Jocelyn Pearson:So I don't remember what I ended up getting, but total, it was probably a couple thousand dollars per department. So that saved me, yeah, probably$8 ,000 over the four years I was at university. And they were scholarships I did not know about. I had to ask. I had to ask about them.

38:22Financial Feminist Hosts:I have the exact same story. I went into the business school. And I said, do you guys have any scholarships? It was this like paper method. I'm like, we're the business school. We're supposed to be innovative here. No. And each year, the amount increased. It was like literally your story verbatim. And so many students think when they apply to a university, they're automatically considered for as much money as they can get. And that's not the truth. It never hurts to ask, but specifically those departments, what they do and to explain why. They want to know you're actually going to stick around in their major.

39:00Financial Feminist Hosts:They don't want to give you money and then you transfer. And so this is why, again, those students who are already in college showing, hey, I'm here, I'm doing this and proving like you, I'm doing good work. I'm into this major and interested. They want to give the money there. So absolutely, these are so overlooked. And I would not say, choose a school that has a$100 ,000 gap for you because of this. This is not something that we sacrifice our financial future banking on. It's going to be a few thousand dollars max a year, but this is definitely low-hanging fruit.

39:33Jocelyn Pearson:I will also say this is a really sneaky thing, but it's what happened. My sophomore year roommate, basically her funds dried up. I think her parents had a hard time. She had a really tricky family situation and she went into the financial aid office. And she was kind of like, I will not be able to finish at this school. I might not even be able to finish this year. And they found money for her. So I think that we are often so scared to talk about money, period. That's why this show exists. But also, oh, we don't want to ask for too much. And it's like, again, do you know how much university costs?

40:13Jocelyn Pearson:College now at this point, my college that I graduated from only 10 years ago costs, I think,$20 ,000 more than when I went to school. That's an insane jump. So I am okay taking money from my university. I am okay making sure that I can graduate either debt-free or less in debt, even if I have to go in and be like, hey, this is the real reality. Help me make sure I can stay at this school.

40:39Financial Feminist Hosts:This is more the financial aid side of this. This is where FAFSA, families submit FAFSA every year while our child is in college because our situation changes each year, which also opens up the doors for negotiating for more money. So I love this, going back and asking for money every single year, just in case. And especially because FAFSA uses prior, prior tax information. Two years ago, a lot of us were sitting in a very different economy and our numbers are very different these days. And so the story being told on FAFSA is just not accurate. So it's also from a numbers standpoint on FAFSA, you can absolutely ask for more.

41:19Financial Feminist Hosts:But no matter what, I would always just walk into the office and ask them no anyway.

41:28Jocelyn Pearson:So much of my work here at Her First 100K is making sure women are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to their finances. But even the most financially savvy women in our community have a hard time talking about one of the most important financial protections you can have, life insurance. Here's the deal. Life insurance isn't for you. It's for the people who would be financially devastated if you were gone tomorrow. The people who depend on your income or your labor, even if it's unpaid. It's one of the most powerful ways you can protect your loved ones. And so many people think it's complicated, so they just keep putting it off, which then compounds because life insurance only gets more expensive the longer you wait.

41:58Jocelyn Pearson:Fortunately, SoFi has teamed up with Ladder to make it easy to quickly get life insurance. SoFi, the all-in-one finance app where you can bank, borrow, and invest, now offers insurance. SoFi can help you find term life insurance that's competitively priced, quick to apply for, and easy to understand. Just answer a few health questions and you could get up to$3 million in coverage with no medical exam or doctor's visits required. As your life changes, like getting married or buying a home, you can always adjust your coverage with a couple of clicks. No policy fees. Apply online and you can get an offer in minutes.

42:23Jocelyn Pearson:In turn, life insurance is more affordable than you might think. Healthy females in their 30s could get rates as low as$19 a month for a$500K policy for a 10-year term. Individual rates will vary as specific circumstances will affect each customer's rate. Head over to SoFi.com slash FFpod to get your quote in minutes. That's S-O-F-I dot com slash FFpod. This is a paid advertisement by SoFi Technologies. Coverage and pricing is subject to underwriting criteria. Ladder Life Insurance, LLC, California license number OK-22568, distributes life insurance issued by multiple issuers. Ladder, SoFi, and SoFi Insurance Agency are separate.

42:53Jocelyn Pearson:Independent entities. Terms apply.

42:57Financial Feminist Hosts:When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

43:30Jocelyn Pearson:Let's talk about that middle income gap because full disclosure, that was my experience. There is a specific group of families that's almost invisible in these kind of conversations where you do not qualify for need-based aid. And this was me. I did not qualify. My parents did not qualify because frankly, my parents made a lot of really smart financial choices. They did not upgrade their house when they could. We were still driving 10-year-old cars. On paper, yes, my parents did not qualify for need aid, but in no possible circumstance did they have a bunch of money just sitting around waiting to send me to college.

44:10Jocelyn Pearson:I'm also an only child, so that was part of it too. So I imagine that's a big chunk of listeners is that middle where it's college is so expensive, but I'm not qualifying for the need aid that I might actually need to go to the university I want to go to. So what are the actual options for these type of families?

44:31Financial Feminist Hosts:Yeah. And I love this. And I have to say, actually, this was me too, right? So I had this big gap to close. It was not something where we just got this free ride. And I will say that actually nearly a third of families that make six figures do receive some kind of institutional grants. So that can still eliminate a lot of families. But this is where a lot of people will be told, oh, you make too much, just don't even bother with FAFSA. We've had families come to us, they missed a deadline for FAFSA, someone told them don't bother doing it. And now they're realizing, oh my gosh, we just missed out on so much money.

45:10Financial Feminist Hosts:Because even if FAFSA says you can afford this, what's great is that a lot of universities and scholarship committees understand that FAFSA is no longer an accurate picture. I don't know if it ever has, but especially now, it is just so unrealistic. Like you said, the increases have just been exponential. And so I actually have committee members that I speak to from other scholarships and I kind of get their scoop on this. And this is where they do ask for FAFSA information because they want to get a full picture because they know so many families are told this by the universities. Oh, you make too much.

45:47Financial Feminist Hosts:We don't have money for you. And that's just ridiculous, right? So I'm just on the little kind of got me on my train here on how unrealistic FAFSA results are and how many families are put into this middle income gap is what we call it. So I was there as well. And I will say, of course, for me, these private external scholarship dollars is where I was able to chip away at the bill. But I will say that this is also where if we have not chosen a university, casting that net wide and being open to finding a financial fit is a quick way to possibly save tens of thousands of So choosing the school, we got a message today from a family that they, it is so strange, actually.

46:38Financial Feminist Hosts:I have had two stories that specifically were NYU. They missed the FAFSA deadline and NYU will absolutely not budge. This family has a very low FAFSA number, which means that they would have gotten a ton of money from NYU. They won't budge. And to me, my answer to that is you're not going to NYU. I'm sorry. I mean, for undergraduate to take on all this debt, for me, I don't think the name on the degree matters that much to bury yourself in. And not, you know, no, it's not maybe masters, you know, that's different when we're talking about an MBA and you're accessing their network and stuff like that.

47:25Financial Feminist Hosts:But for undergraduate, follow the money. And one family can have very different offers at different schools with the same FAFSA number can have very different offers. So, so for sure, if we can shop around and I know students don't like to hear that. I know. I know that student wants to go to NYU. you. But again, when we're talking about potentially 21 years of student loan payments, I know as a mother of two daughters, I would give up my left foot for whatever. I would do everything I can for them. But at the same time, our job as parents is to help them make mature decisions. If they told us, I'm never eating again, we're going to say, no, that's not good for you.

48:08Financial Feminist Hosts:If they're going to tell us, hey, I missed a deadline and now I have to borrow$200 ,000, but this other school is way more affordable, it's a tough conversation. And this is where we support a lot of parents. Okay.

48:19Jocelyn Pearson:So this is such a good thing to pause on because this is the reality. And you're exactly right where no 17-year-old kid wants to hear, you can't go to X sexy school. Yeah. Whether that's NYU or I don't know what other sexy schools are. I'm too old now. But how do we actually start to think about the thing that feels like the in moment decision of I want to go to, yeah, the school in New York, or I want to go where my friends are going or my boyfriend is going versus getting them to understand. Like, how do I convince a 17 year old to think like a 30 year old who has had crippled student debt? I mean, do we show them Dave Ramsey?

49:02Jocelyn Pearson:I don't think that's the right solution. But like, how do we work like it worked for you? And you know, I don't know. John Mulaney has this great bit where he's like, you know, I went into$120 ,000 of debt to get an English major for a language I already spoke, you know? And it's like, yeah, he's like, I was, you know, asleep and in sweatpants and had to sign away my life to be an English major. So what kind of conversation do we need to be having with the reality check of student debt is a trillion dollar issue.

49:37Financial Feminist Hosts:I love this. And we are in the middle. I am completely updating our whole program around these superpowers. We're going to give a link to that quiz because it is so important for this because each student is going to react to information differently. So for some people, numbers speak right to them. For me, just tell me, well, the alternative is borrowing$100 ,000. And I was like, you know, like, okay, I will do it. For other students are like, well, everyone does that. That what, you know, who cares, right? They're not putting themselves in that future situation. And I will tell you that we actually bring in a teen psychologist for this reason.

50:20Financial Feminist Hosts:She speaks to how their brains are actually not even developed fully in the way of thinking in long-term consequences. So to ask them to think of how this is going to impact their life in 15 years, for many of them, their brain is not even capable. So this is where we have to break down the consequences in a way that our student can understand. And for anyone that's in this, understanding what motivates you is helpful too, right? So if you're trying to muster up the energy to do a scholarship application and it's just not coming, again, we're going to find your superpower completely free and try to find a way that motivates you.

50:59Financial Feminist Hosts:So for example, maybe hearing$100 ,000 is not going to work for you. However, maybe if we can convert that into, again, going back to what's that monthly loan payment going to be? And what would you do with that instead? So if we're freeing up$1 ,000 a month, let's have fun with this. If we're a parent, where could we travel to? I mean,$1 ,000 a month, one year of those payments? $12 ,000. That is actually a pretty decent vacation even today, right? Or maybe they like fancy cars and they know they want to lease something, or maybe they are into investments. We need to find ways that speak to that student.

51:46Financial Feminist Hosts:Or again, ourselves, we need to understand how we are motivated. So we have something, our college class calculator, where it puts all the schools side by side so that you can kind of see apples to apples. So do that with your student and say, okay, this is the borrowing amount that we are seeing. And we take it a step further and then we have them put in what career path they're looking at and we pull what their disposable income would be. That is eye-opening, right? So again, if money speaks to them, you can say, hey, your take-home is going to be$4 ,000 a month and 25 % of that is going to go to this bill, right so it really is about figuring out what are what speaks to our students and have the conversation in that way if we just try to go in it i know best i know better you just have to do this whether you like it or not they are probably going to double down i had a mom email me once panicking because her daughter was doing this and i said hey pull up that cost calculator show her the show her the difference and paint the picture in the future i got a follow-up email like a week later, she chose the debt-free ride.

52:51Financial Feminist Hosts:And it just, it had to be converted into words that actually spoke to them.

52:55Jocelyn Pearson:I mean, I remember being 18, 19 years old and truly having no concept of money. What I mean is like how much$50 ,000 or$100 ,000 actually was. And I remember looking up like the average salary I was going to make when I graduated versus what it costs for one year of college. That was the thing that really started cementing because, yeah, my college without any scholarships or without aid, all in was$55 ,000 a year. And that didn't mean anything to me because I wasn't making any sort of salary. I had jobs, but I wasn't making a salary that required a degree. And so the first time I actually sat down and considered, what is the value of$55 ,000?

53:41Jocelyn Pearson:And I that was my exact salary the first year out of school. I made 55k. And it is wild to think about. I was working 40 plus hours a week for an entire year, five days a week, you know, for these to earn the same amount of money that it cost me to go to one year of school. Again, I got scholarships. I got other things. But like, that was the only sort of connection that really clicked for me. At the time, it was just like, yep, we're going to college. I know it's expensive. I'll figure it out later.

54:12Financial Feminist Hosts:Exactly. And that conversation, again, going back to not to lecture parents, but this is our role. And this is what's so incredible about the work you do, especially for women. They don't like to talk about money regardless. Period. Never mind having, you know, a lot of parents, they are still paying on their student loans. So how can they tell their kid you're not allowed to borrow money when they did? Or maybe their parents didn't give them the school of their dreams. And so they want to change generational patterns. I mean, there's a lot going on here, right? And so I just have the utmost empathy for parents that are in this situation that have to say to their child, honey, this is not practical.

54:54Financial Feminist Hosts:So breaking it down in a way that does speak to them so that hopefully they can start getting to that decision on their own. But still, no matter what, I mean, going back to the debt figures, if we're talking about borrowing that money, that parent is going to have to co-sign if they're capable, if their credit allows it. And that means if their child doesn't pay those loans, they're on the hook for it, just as if they borrowed it. I met a mom. She had a falling out with her daughter. Her daughter disappeared. She is paying$1 ,200 a month on student loans because otherwise it will completely destroy her own credit.

55:26Financial Feminist Hosts:So this is where we're not just talking about them being buried in debt. We're talking about parents, even grandparents these days, right? So this really is a family conversation and decision. And if you have a hard time having that conversation, that's where experts like us can help with that because I do know money is such a sticky topic.

55:49Jocelyn Pearson:Yeah. I mean, with that conversation, Sally Mae says that 42 % of families with federal student loans expect them to be forgiven. So that's part of it too, is I think there is this belief of, oh, but student loan forgiveness. And of course, I think you and I both would say we support student loan forgiveness, absolutely. But is an administration, is the people we elect going to support student loan forgiveness? And not just for the two, four, eight years they're in office, but to actually get things passed. So what is the actual reality of student loan forgiveness at this moment because I have a feeling it's pretty bleak.

56:29Financial Feminist Hosts:Yes, I would say so. I, you know, people joked back in the Bernie Sanders days, what are you going to do if he, I'm like, I'm not concerned because these kind of, you know, I mean, first off, Harvard can always charge. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, like if I, if my, if my reason, if the scholarship system is no longer necessary, that means we solved a pretty big problem for our nation. I am ecstatic, please, but I'm not that concerned about it because like you said, each administration changes their opinions on this. And there are forgiveness programs. They're absolutely under attack right now, the ones that have existed.

57:10Financial Feminist Hosts:But even then, they're narrow, they have very strict rules and often do still require decades of on-time payments. This is not like you can just not pay your bill and hopefully one day it'll disappear. Maybe we'll get lucky. But for me, the most important line of defense is minimizing what we borrow from the beginning. For me, I'm not an expert on student debt because I avoided it. I am an expert on helping families stay out of debt. So for me, the most important piece is just trying to not even borrow versus banking on them being forgiven. Because yeah, we saw, a lot of people got their hopes up just for it to be ripped away.

57:52Financial Feminist Hosts:And even the ones that have been well-established for public service, even those are under attack. So this is not a smart strategy. Yeah.

58:02Jocelyn Pearson:And a really harsh stat we found is that there is a number of Social Security beneficiaries having their checks garnished for student loan debt. That's grown 3 ,000 % between 2001 and 2019. So we have half a million seniors in default who are at risk of losing part of their retirement income because of student debt. You know, that's a whole other conversation. But this is why your work is so important of if we can prevent or significantly lower student debt in the first place, this doesn't have to be the reality for students.

58:34Financial Feminist Hosts:Absolutely. And that goes back to what I was saying with the co-signing. It is not just the student's problem. We are seeing it's now parents' problems and grandparent problems. And during COVID, they paused a lot of this, but it is starting back up. We're going to start seeing this happen again where IRS checks are being intercepted or social security checks. So yeah, hit the nail on the head. And a lot of people, actually, I think there's a stat, over half, over 51 % of people who have co-signed already know they're going to have to delay retirement because of it. And I have told families, they can always find strategies for paying for college, but you cannot find strategies to pay for retirement.

59:20Yeah.

59:21Jocelyn Pearson:Right? It's one of the things Dave Ramsey and I agree about. It's one of the only things. Yeah. But it's true. There is no loan for your retirement. Like, student loans are not ideal, but they exist. Retirement loans do not. And if you are trying to get your child financially ahead and you're like, okay, well, I'll help contribute for their college, you might be moving back in with them and becoming a financial burden later because you could not afford your own retirement.

59:48Financial Feminist Hosts:Truly. And this is where, again, we have families that have said, I cannot pay for college for my child, but I can do this work with them. and this is where parents helping them create a system, helping them find the scholarships, helping motivate them, learning their superpower and having these conversations to speak to that superpower profile. This is where parents, I actually have an interview with a mom. She said, you know, I knew I couldn't pay for her college, but I could pay for this. And we gave up eating out, you know, X amount on our dates. And instead we flipped it for a scholarship Sunday time.

1:00:26Financial Feminist Hosts:That girl ended up going to college for free. So I told her, I said, you did pay for her college. You did with the attention and the time and the focus on the process. And I would love to tell parents, hey, just, you know, send this podcast to your child and they'll just go and do it. But they are still kids. They can, the families that get the big wins that we've had families get more money than I have now. And they do treat it like a partner effort. But again, with these stats of co-signing affecting parents and grandparents, it behooves them to.

1:01:00Jocelyn Pearson:When we look at students or families that have a successful scholarship system in place versus those who don't, what is the number one difference somebody listening could make? I think consistency, right?

1:01:17Financial Feminist Hosts:So a lot of families, we talk about, we've got kind of three personas of families. We've got the freezes where they try to apply for scholarships, they do a few Googles, and they get so overwhelmed. And then we end up applying to absolutely nothing. And then we've got the hustlers where they are doing the opposite, where they're applying to everything under the son, the sweepstakes scholarships, the scams, and they burn out, right? And then we have what we, of course, call our rebel families, those savvy strategic families that, no, these are the ones that align to our student. They're not going to beat the Harvard kids for that Coca-Cola scholarship.

1:02:03Financial Feminist Hosts:But again, we're great at agriculture. And so we're going to go for that one and narrow it down to something that our child can win. So the more strategic approach, this is what a system brings, right? Going at it in a strategic way so that we can be consistent, so that we don't either freeze or hustle and burn out because that's where I find families. They tend to go on opposite ends of the spectrum. And so by the end of senior year in high school, they are so done, they don't wanna even hear the word scholarship. But if we can be strategic, have a clear plan, have kind of tunnel vision with clear steps to follow, that is when they can bring in money.

1:02:43Financial Feminist Hosts:Because this is a long game. Like I said, for me, some students, they'll get millions of dollars in offers up front. If that's your child, fantastic. That's amazing. But for a lot of us, we had to chip away at it. And so we need to plan for the long game.

1:02:59Jocelyn Pearson:Thank you for being on the show. I will tell listeners that you and I met in 2018 when her first 100K was still a side hustle. And you gave me some great business advice around building my email funnel. And I literally remember meeting you and being so impressed by you. And I went home and did my homework and it worked. And I was just so thankful for you. So this is, I think, maybe the first time we've talked since then, or at least face-to-face through Zoom. And so I just appreciate you being on the show and sharing all of your guidance. So plug away, my friend, where can we learn more about everything that you teach?

1:03:32Financial Feminist Hosts:Oh, yes. And I was so in love with you back then. And I knew that you were just going to blow up. I'm like, you just need to collect these emails because you are already going to make such an impact. So I'm so happy to hear that. So if they go to thescholarshipsystem.com, we have so many incredible free resources. But we do have a free webinar. And if you go to thescholarshipsystem.com slash financialfeminist, then you can go ahead and it'll just beeline you right there. We also do have that scholarship superpower quiz. And I do want to give that again, it's free. And at the end, the report will give you insight on the best ways to have these tough conversations, the best motivators, and even how to tackle the process so that we can have that consistency and build that system.

1:04:19Financial Feminist Hosts:So we also created an easy link. It's Financial Feminist Quiz. So we go to thescholarshipsystem.com slash financial feminist quiz for that. But start with those two free resources and get your feet wet. And we've got tons of stuff on YouTube, Instagram, follow us in all the places. But also if you just want to say, give me tunnel vision, just tell me what to do. You can learn more about our course at those links too.

1:04:43Jocelyn Pearson:Amazing. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, produced by Her First 100K. If you love this show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you're looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to herfirst100k.com slash sspod.

1:05:11Jocelyn Pearson:Class is now in session.

1:05:13Financial Feminist Hosts:And the UPS Store is here to help you ace arriving on campus. Our certified packing experts can pack everything you need, from desktops to decor. Plus, when you pack and ship with us, you get our exclusive pack and ship guarantee. Your items arrive safe or your money back. Restrictions and limitations apply. To get a 20 % off packing coupon and for full details, visit the upsstore.com slash packing. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world.

1:05:56Financial Feminist Hosts:Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.