Funding provided by The Equifax Foundation is dedicated to helping people Build Financial Capability Because, a single financial opportunity Can change the trajectory of families and communities for generations.

Learn more at Equifax.com/foundation ♪ I've got brand new feeling - I'm Jacqueline Schadeck, and I'm soon to be your favorite certified financial planner.

♪ And I'm feelin' good - My name's Chris Corinthian.

I'm a financial literacy expert and financial coach.

♪ Ready for action - We are a professional powerhouse.

♪ I've got a brand new feeling - So I handle the numbers.

- And I try to see, what is their relationship with money?

- So we meld the two together to give you the most financial empowerment.

♪ And I'm feeling good ♪ Hey (upbeat music) - All right, what you got for us?

- Today we're gonna give it the old college try.

- Mm, I'm looking forward to this one.

- Mm hmm because we have Emerson Keith who's getting ready to go to college.

- I'm Emerson Keith.

I'm a senior in high school.

I hope that we can figure out our financial situation for sending me off to college out of state maybe.

- I wonder what our goals are, like how far along is she?

Has she planned for anything?

- You might think that college will cost x, but in reality, cost of college has been growing at the highest inflationary rate in the whole entire economy.

College is really expensive.

This is gonna be a six figure ticket for sure.

- You know, now that I think about it, we're not just having one mentee we're working with, but a family of mentees.

Emerson has goals, but I wonder if the parents have those same goals for her future.

This challenge is something I'm looking forward to.

- I think it'll be great.

- Let's go.

(upbeat music) - Hi, good morning.

- We're at the Keiths' to find out exactly what their pain points are when it comes to paying for college.

- I'm Scott Keith, - I'm Shana Keith, and we're Emerson's parents.

- I'm in technical sales.

- And I'm public relations and corporate communications.

We reached out to Jacqueline and Chris to help us figure out how we send Emerson to college based on what she wants and what makes sense financially for us.

I'm hoping to learn from the mentors, how we can make Emerson's dream come true, but also make sure we maintain our retirement and our financial goals as well.

- I wanna make sure that when Emerson goes out into the real world with her degree, that she's not fighting the debt battle that so many others do.

- We'd love to hear from you how can we help you?

You know, why are we here?

What can we do to best serve you?

- So our oldest daughter, Emerson is 17, and she is going into college next year, and we've prepared for that from an in-state perspective.

When we were younger parents, we opened up the 529.

We did all those types of things and other things to prepare, but here we are.

- Every month we're putting money away into the 529 for both of the kids, and we have roughly $35,000 I think is where we're at.

- Yeah, we never considered out of state.

And that's why we're here too, is like, what are our options?

We as parents of course wanna say, look, we've got you covered for college, but if we go outta state, that's not the, that's not the message unfortunately.

- What are some of your biggest challenges with this whole process?

- I mean, having the time to be able to go and do the research.

It's analysis paralysis.

- [Jacqueline] Not to mention you're balancing this with another child, right?

- Yeah, she's staying in state.

(all laughing) - Paying for college or just sending a child through college can be a daunting and overwhelming task.

So no parent or family should feel bad because they don't understand all the nuances of this process.

- She wants the four year experience, and I want that for her too.

She's a great kid.

She has a ton of drive.

She's a natural leader.

I think she's gonna do great things.

We think that, and so I wanna give her the best opportunity possible.

- Good, and one thing we wanna let you know upfront, like no matter where you are on the spectrum, where you started, if you've done nothing, that's okay.

Right, we wanna meet you where you are and get you where you wanna be.

Just because you've planned for other areas of your life financially, sometimes those other areas, such as cost of education, can really be a burden to you, especially if you don't have a strategy in place.

- No matter how successful you are financially, you can always benefit from having an objective third party come in and help you out.

As a certified financial planner for 10 years, helping people establish generational wealth, I know that one of the biggest keys to that is how we pass down education through our family.

Right, it's our education, it's our values, and then it's the actual wealth piece.

And so we really wanna bring that education piece to life for you guys because we would like to find ways for you to fund college without having to sell your beautiful home to do that.

- [Shana] That would be good.

- I love it.

This is exciting for me, especially because a lot of this, I've been trying to figure it out on my own, and she's done her own as well.

- He's spreadsheet.

I'm the dreamer.

Like let's, I want you to have it all.

- That's the best combination.

- How can we blend the two together to work in Emerson's favor?

- I'm looking forward to this.

- [Jacqueline] Yeah, I think this gives us a good baseline - Now that we talked to the parents, it's time for us to chat with Emerson.

- We hear you're going to college.

- Yeah, it's kind of scary.

- Kind of scary, kind of exciting too.

- It's both.

It's mixed emotions.

I've been in journalism within high school, and I love writing.

I love writing about sports especially.

I would love to attend a big SEC school.

My biggest dream is to work with big sports organizations, whether it's ESPN or NFL.

And I always see like the women in front with like the players, like with their microphones and I'm like, that's me.

That's gonna be me.

- Emerson sounds really dedicated to sports journalism, and I love to see her excitement.

Tell us a little bit about what you've seen financially with the different colleges you're looking at.

- I mean, I pretty much want to go out of state.

If they're not small schools, they're all big name SEC schools, and they're expensive.

- SEC's price tag.

- Yeah.

- And how much money do you have?

- Me?

- Yeah, you.

How much money do you have?

(all laughing) - That's a really great question.

- So you have this dream of going to a big SEC school, being involved in sports journalism, and you know that that may come with a big price tag.

- Yeah.

- Are you willing to take out student loans for this price tag?

- I don't know.

- The main concern is that we put her in a situation with debt when she gets outta school.

That's what we do not wanna do.

- We're talking about some serious dollars associated with going to school, either in-state or outta state.

Selfishly knowing what the in-state offers, to me that's what makes the most sense.

But I'm also struggling with the idea that for what she wants to do, may not be found in state.

- What about your test scores?

Have you taken any standardized tests yet?

- Oh yeah, I started last October.

I took the ACT for the first time before it was online.

So it was on paper.

It took five hours.

- Not on paper.

- All my tests were on paper.

- We should have told her we took our tests on stone tablets.

We're hoping that whatever it takes doesn't involve you taking out six figures of student loans.

- [Chris] That part.

- We should get working on this plan.

- Yes, yes.

- Yeah, the number one topic in our house right now is this.

This, talking about school, college, Emerson, where she's going and how we make it happen.

So the timing couldn't be any better, literally.

- Right.

- So I think we are really just grateful for the opportunity.

- After meeting with Jacqueline and Chris, I do feel confident that we're gonna have more of that direction that we're looking for.

(upbeat music) - To figure out the best ways to help the Keith family, Chris and I are meeting up to strategize on a plan that'll make paying for college a lot simpler.

(upbeat music) The Keith family, I thought they were great.

- I love their energy.

I'm glad that they were opening up, becoming vulnerable with us.

I often find parents be in a place of embarrassment, right?

They don't want to talk about it.

They're like, man, I should have done more to prepare for this.

- Life is expensive.

And so the fact that they've even saved anything for college, I think that gives us something to build around.

What I don't want the Keith family to do is to do their planning in silos.

While Emerson is the focal point right now, they still have the younger daughter who needs to go to college too.

So we can't just exhaust all their resources for Emerson because then we'll leave the younger one out.

- We need to have a family plan, right?

- We need to figure out how we're gonna layer in some other financial options.

- Absolutely, we need to find out how much it is for the school she really wants to go to, how much they have saved and what the difference is to make up that difference.

- I say we lay out some scenarios for them, give them some options.

Recipe for success.

- Let's go.

(upbeat music) - Today we're meeting up with the Keiths to go over all the options that we've come up with.

First we're meeting with Emerson's parents to go over the numbers and to talk about different ways to pay for college.

- On the board, we've written all the in-state and out-of-state costs, so that the family understands what they're really getting into here financially.

Come on in.

- Good to see you.

Well, you know, usually Emerson is in class, but today you guys are in class.

- Oh, okay.

- So go ahead and have a seat for us here.

So how are you feeling since we last spoke?

- I'm excited about having more information that's really gonna allow us to go in the direction that we'll feel more comfortable with, so exactly.

- Our goal for today is to build your financial confidence around Emerson going to school, and then we also wanna plan for your second daughter to go to school as well, so.

- Okay, great.

- Perfect.

- Let's get started.

- Let's get started.

- So we wanna walk you through the numbers of in-state versus out of state, okay?

So we're looking at in-state here.

We've got tuition and fees, $12,000, room and board, $12,000 and books and living expenses at about $6,000.

Okay?

So we estimate this total all in to be about $30,000 just for one year.

We wanna also account for the fact that she mentioned she may want to rush or do some other extracurricular activities, putting your all in at $35,000 a year.

That sounds about in alignment with what you guys thought?

Okay.

- All right.

So now let's look at the out state, right?

Tuition and fees is $27,000.

Room and board or housing and meals is really spot on around the same.

And then you have your books and your living.

This might not show up on the bill, but these are things that she's gonna have to pay for.

Okay?

So the total out pocket per year is $47,000.

Whichever institution she goes to, she might wanna get involved in some of those organizations.

So total per year is going to be around $62,000 a year, okay?

You can see the difference, right?

- So now the question is how are we gonna fund either one of these decisions?

That's what you're here for today, right?

Okay, so let's go over funding.

The options for paying for college are from your cash flow, which would be the income that you make, from setting up a 529 college savings account, from your 401k, from your home equity, getting scholarships, taking out student loans or accessing the ACM, the academic common market.

You could just pay out of pocket.

You could pay out of what you make, right?

I heard that, I heard that chuckle.

- There was a little chuckle.

They were like, okay.

- Yeah, okay.

Not sure if cash flow's gonna be the way that we pay for it.

All right, but aside from cash flow, you have what?

The 529, and that has about $35,000 in it?

- And that was good that you all put money into the 529, right?

Because a lot of people still don't know what a 529 college savings plan is.

- A 529 is an investment account that you can set up specifically for college.

Money that goes into this account is going to be tax deferred for you.

And when you take that money out for qualified education expenses, you'll pay no taxes on that money.

Now with your 401Ks, you're looking at coming out with only about half of what you take out.

So if you took $100,000 out of the 401k, you would only net about $50,000.

So that's a very, very expensive way to cover the cost of college.

So let's do away with that.

Home equity oftentimes makes sense for families.

A lot of clients will use the equity in their home to fund the purchase of a property at the school.

That way you're not paying for the room and board out of pocket or for the 529.

You'll be able to build equity in another home, and so then it can make sense to potentially leverage what you have in your home's value.

- We love that.

- What else can we do?

Financial aid, so we could look at loans.

- The last resort, right?

Another thing that we talked about was.

- The ACM.

Any ideas on what this is?

- I'm on the edge of my seat.

(all laughing) - The ACM or Academic Common Market is a group of states that have come together and said, if you have a student that wants to come to an out-of-state school for some specific programs, they may be able to qualify for in-state tuition.

- We're bringing up the ACM to the Keith family because this might be a great way for Emerson to go outta state and still not have to pay that out-of-state tuition, - Which means that no matter which direction she chooses, college could be more affordable for you, okay?

Let's talk about scholarships.

There's a lot of ways to pay for college, but the best method to avoid debt is to apply for scholarships.

- So when I work with parents and students, one of the things I always want them to know is that most of the scholarships you apply for, you'll get denied.

That's the harsh reality, right?

We need an overall strategy to tackle this scholarship challenge.

Here's how you do it.

Number one, apply for as many scholarships as possible.

Find out exactly what the cost is going to be and apply for 10 times the amount in scholarships.

So if you have $30,000 a year that you owe, you need to apply for $300,000 in scholarships.

- Are there any limits to the number of scholarships that a student can apply for?

- No, there's no limit to the amount of scholarships you can apply for.

That's why I say apply for 10 times the amount you need.

So all you need is a 10% success rate, and you have 100% of the amount you need.

- I am picking up what you're putting down.

- Okay, that's what I love to hear, absolutely.

And then another method I share with my students and parents is I call it the LLC method.

LLC in this instance stands for local and low competition scholarships.

These are scholarships that are in your local community.

You have many organizations and businesses that want to support the students in that community.

Therefore you apply for these scholarships, and you won't find much competition compared to the national scholarships where you literally have thousands of students applying for these same scholarships from across the nation.

Scholarships that are tied to your major or career goals are also least competitive compared to general scholarships that anyone can apply for.

- When Chris is talking about local and low competition strategies for scholarships, that LLC, I felt elated.

Like all we have to do is put the time and effort in over the next couple of months really, we could actually do this.

I'm feeling hopeful for the future and Emerson's ability to go to the college she wants.

I like the scholarship strategy a ton, and I think that in and of itself could be overwhelming.

But like if we could figure out a way.

- Emerson doesn't have a lot of money right now, but she has quite a bit of time.

So let's put that time towards applying for scholarships so that she can cover all of this.

And sometimes students can even end up with money back in their pockets.

So again, we're focusing here for you.

This maximum out of pocket, okay?

So $20K in state and $47 out of state, of course, without any waivers.

And so as we're looking at funding these numbers, we of course wanna start with the 529 as the nucleus and build around there.

So I think we have a lot of really great opportunity here to get started to cover her cost of college, whether she chooses in-state or out of state.

(upbeat music) It's time for our one-on-one with Emerson.

I'm looking forward to seeing what she's really about now that we'll have her away from her parents.

Today we wanna talk about how you're going to fund your college experience.

Not any school specifically, but we wanna give you the tools to be able to go to any college that you get accepted into.

- Why do you want to go into sports journalism?

- When I started really getting into writing my freshman year, something just clicked with sports, and then I had a new teacher that came in, and she was like amazed at how well I could cover sports.

And I guess that really just motivated me, and that made me wanna like find a profession in it 'cause I love it so much.

- That's awesome.

- Yeah, we love that, and we wanna help support you in that endeavor.

And your story is very similar to mine in that I went to school in the same state as you, and I had to make the decision, was I going to pursue college in state or was I going to go out of state?

- You want to shoot for the one that you want to go to.

So when it comes to applying for scholarships and coming up with all the money that you need to go to school, we're gonna go for the top one, right?

And then worst case scenario, if you don't get everything that you need to go to that school, you have more than enough to go to the other schools that you want to.

- How against taking loans are you?

- Well, in my young brain right now, I'm like that would be an easy way right now to just get it and go.

But I know in the future it would be a big burden on me.

So thinking further ahead it would, I would lean closer to no.

- With student loans, you have to remember that your debt is somebody else's asset.

So of course they're promoting you to take the easy route to take student loans first, but that's gonna be very costly.

- There's a national debt of over $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.

This is a norm for many American families across the country, and we don't want the next generation to have to fall into that trap.

- Student loans should be your last resort to paying for college, definitely not the first.

The good news is there may be another way for you to fund your college that doesn't require you to take out loans, but it may require you to spend a little bit more time doing research.

- Yeah.

- You okay with that?

- Perfectly fine with that.

- Okay.

- The second option that we have for you is scholarships.

And we wanna take a deep dive into that today to see how you can take some of that money that's available off the table for scholarships and use it towards pursuing your goals.

- Now it's time to get to the tactics.

What specifically does Emerson need to do to get this stuff done?

So I have a few resources here for you.

And these are college application checklists, which gives you a timeline of what you can do right now during your senior year, things you'll do this semester, and then things you'll do in the spring semester before graduation.

And then there's a scholarship application checklist.

This is where you're just gonna take all of the extracurricular activities, any type of organizations that you've been involved with, any type of leadership positions, anything that can come to memory that you've done, you're gonna list it.

No matter how big or small you think, okay?

Most students or even families don't like the scholarship application process for two big reasons.

Number one, they don't know where to find the scholarships.

And number two, they don't feel like applying because of essays.

And one of the gifts that you have is the gift of writing, okay?

- [Jacqueline] Right?

- Yes.

- Okay, facts tell, story sell.

And this is your opportunity to tell your story.

This is where you shine.

How do we tackle the essay challenge?

Most of the scholarship prompts are going to ask for five essential essays: your rags to riches essay, your impact/leadership essay, your how will the money benefit you essay, your career slash major goals essay, your wild card essay.

Now that we have our scholarships to apply for, and you have your five essential essays, you can merge those two together and easily apply for two scholarships every single day within 20 to 30 minutes.

You wanna make sure that you're giving yourself as many shots to succeed as possible, okay?

- There's at least a hundred million dollars every year of scholarships that go unclaimed.

That means there's a ton of money out there and a ton of opportunity for you.

- Do you think you could spend 30 minutes a day applying for scholarships?

- It's definitely overwhelming, but I know I can get it done, and I'll be able to actually get some money from different organizations locally and hopefully nationally.

- Let's make a plan for you to apply for these two scholarships a day, okay?

You're gonna stand on business about getting the scholarships done, right?

- Yes.

- Don't let me put words in your mouth though.

- No, I am.

We're standing on business over here.

Gonna get all this done.

- Okay.

(Chris laughing) - [Jacqueline] Good.

- The only thing you can do is the best you can do, okay?

And then if you've done your best, and you know it's your personal best, that's all that matters, okay?

- Okay.

- Okay.

(Chris laughing) - Thank you guys for helping me.

- All right.

- Talking about my future right now is very, it's kind of like a roller coaster of emotions just because it's very exciting.

It's a new chapter.

It's a new door opening for me.

'cause moving away from home is scary.

That's like the first step.

But it's also very exciting because I know there's gonna be so many new opportunities and new lessons I'll learn through it all.

So I'm definitely feeling more excited over anything.

(upbeat music) - [Chris] Before we take off, we wanna meet with the Keiths one more time to see if Emerson's closer to making her decision.

- Especially since now they found out there's multiple ways to pay for college.

- Surprise, surprise.

- Hi!

- [Shana] Hello.

- We're here.

We have a special activity for you guys to bring home everything that you've learned with us in your last few sessions.

You ready to do it?

- Yeah, let's do it.

- Yeah.

- Let's go.

- We're gonna have to take a long trip to the backyard, so.

- We know sometimes finance can be a little bit boring.

So it's game day for the Keith family, and we're putting Emerson to the test.

- Emerson is going to have to make some choices.

We have one goal.

- And eight basketballs.

On each of the basketballs, there's a representation of a key part of college.

Now when she puts that basketball through that hoop, she's then gonna make the decision as if that key part is going to be better for her in an in-state school or an out-of-state school.

Let's see how Emerson does.

We need you to pick a ball off of the rack.

- Okay, what does that ball say?

- It's location.

- [Chris] Location.

- First things first, we have to make the shot.

You have to make it.

- Oh, they're so bouncy.

- [Jacqueline] Yes, you got it.

Oh, woo!

(all clapping) Okay, location is huge in your decision in going to college, right?

You have the option to go in state or you can go out of state.

All right?

Which one are you leaning towards when it comes to location?

- Out of state.

- All right, fine, fine.

- Out of state.

All right, next one up.

- Okay.

- [Jacqueline] The campus.

- [Chris] What does that say?

- Campus.

Oh gosh.

- [Jacqueline] Let's take our shot.

Yay!

- What?

- We thought we were gonna catch her off guard with this game, but one shot.

- Okay.

- [Jacqueline] Two shot.

- Oh, lemme get that.

Got it.

- Four shots, five shots in a row.

She's a real athlete here.

You might need to go on a basketball scholarship.

- Right?

- So now we have one more.

Your favorite.

What does that say?

- Sports.

- Sports.

- Sports, all right.

(all applauding) - Okay, we know what she likes.

- In-state sports or out-of-state sports.

which one are you leaning more towards?

- [Jacqueline] Which one are you leaning more towards covering?

- Ooh, good question.

- Well, I grew up a UGA football fan, so I'm gonna go in state on this one.

- Wow, okay!

- Here we go.

- [Chris] Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.

- All right, should we see who won?

Okay, you only have three.

- One, two, and three.

Three for out of state.

- Three for out of state.

- Yes, let's see how many you got.

I probably have more.

- Yes, five in state.

- Okay.

- It looks like Emerson's a winner today.

(all clapping) - All right, way to go.

Way to go, Emerson.

- I mean, there's so many pros of each, going in state or out of state, and I just feel like I've learned that either way I can do it.

- This is just to get the ball rolling in a direction, right?

And I think you have the support, you have a strategy, and I believe you're gonna accomplish everything you wanna do in life, okay?

- Emerson, this was just a game so that we could have a little bit of fun and help illustrate to you some of the decisions that you're gonna be making about the college that you end up at.

Now, wherever you go, we're all here to support your decision, and we can't wait to see you be successful.

- And the decision is yours, okay?

- Okay.

- All right.

Well, let's shoot some hoops.

- Let's go!

- [Shana] I'm super grateful for Chris and Jacqueline for coming into our lives at this critical time.

- [Chris] Okay, man.

- I mean, they talked us through options for funding Emerson's college experience in and out of state, and did it in a way that was super digestible and easy to understand, and then made us feel that we could achieve what we want for Emerson.

- I am really fired up about, because now we can start moving forward instead of just being frozen in time.

- The goal is for Emerson to do everything she needs to do to prepare herself financially for that stretch goal, for that out-of-state school.

However, as a backup plan, she can go to the in-state school and have more than enough to cover it.

- It's time for Emerson to call the shots.

She's doing firstly what she feels is best for her, but then also leaning on her family for support too.

And this is really how she's gonna see success in her college experience.

- I'm feeling a lot more excited now about college and my applications because I have so much more insight now.

I'll have so many great opportunities and not have to be in so much debt in the future.

Find more My Money Mentors financial advice, tools, and resources at MyMoneyMentorsShow.com Funding provided by The Equifax Foundation is dedicated to helping people Build Financial Capability Because, a single financial opportunity Can change the trajectory of families and communities for generations.

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