Purchasing an Education: Drawing On 35 Years of College Planning Wisdom With Tom O'Hare

Join Arsenal Financial advisors Doug Orifice and Jeremy Vaille as they open up their relaxed office conversations about various financial topics for everybody to hear. For this episode they welcome the podcast's first guest, independent college advisor Tom O'Hare. Listen to learn about:

• The state of higher education today, from the rising costs for families to the moves colleges and universities are making to keep up with the Jonses.
• Tom's strategy of purchasing an education like you would a house or any other large purchase. 
• The crazy supply and demand numbers right now and how to properly assess your situation to make sure you're looking at the right schools for you.
• When the proper time is to start planning for college and what are some of the things you can do to nudge students and parents into that frame of mind.
• And as always, start saving early!
• In the Mythbuster segment, Jeremy and Tom take on myths around what type of families get financial aid, whether people need to set aside savings for education even if they don't know whether their kid will go to college, and whether a "free ride" is really free.
• Then finish up with some dad jokes from Jeremy.

Learn more about Tom at getcollegegoing.com or (617) 240-7350.

Learn more about Doug, Jeremy, and Arsenal Financial at arsenalfinancial.com or call (781) 335-9100.

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener’s personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision.

Transcript

Doug: 0:05

Well hello everyone and welcome once again the to Arsenal Money Clip Podcast. This is just two financial advisors trying really, really, hard to give the people a listenable podcast about money. Today we are coming to you from four different geographic locations in a really, really cold January. Usually we're coming from Watertown, Massachusetts, and Norwell, Massachusetts, from our small firm called Arsenal Financial, where we help folks with financial planning and investment management. My name is Doug Orifice. I've been a financial advisor for 25 years. Again, it is the dead of winter. I am in warm undergarments ready to hit a mountain later today hopefully. With me is my pal, my partner, a recovering engineer turned certified financial planner, Jeremy Vaille. JV, how are you?

Jeremy: 0:49

Pretty good. I'm cold. I'm tired this week. It's been a rough re-entry back into the real world after a couple of weeks of vacation. End of the year. Good, though otherwise.

Doug: 0:59

Good yeah, we are recording this on the first sort of full week back into the thick of it. Man, you know, back to 130 miles an hour and not bored, are we? (Jeremy: No, not at all. Not at all.) I heard a rumor that you're going to get back on skis this weekend.

Jeremy: 1:12

I am going to attempt this again after five years. Very last time I skied was Sunday River, like the month before the shutdown. So five years coming up in a couple of months here, so we're going to see how it's going to go. (Doug: Welcome back, man.) Thanks, we’ll see.

Doug: 1:27

Hey, since risk management is part of what we do, helmet, goggles, you're going to be a Cranmore couple. Sets of undergarments, you know, don't forget your gloves.

Jeremy: 1:35

Yep, I gotcha, I gotcha. I've already been planning ahead as usual. 

Doug: 1:39

Beautiful. You know, oftentimes people ask us why we do a podcast. I think the DNA of this podcast is a lot like the DNA of our firm. JV, when we're talking to our clients, we're just ourselves. We treat our clients like they're our uncle next door neighbor. This is not advice that comes to you in a stuffy suit. The point of this podcast is not to show you how smart we are or, as my 12 year old son believes, to try and get famous and be some sort of podcast star like Bill Simmons. This is just a chance for us to hang out, talk, we're always talking about financial planning in our days in the office, and really just an extra chance to talk to our clients about something.

Doug: 2:10

Today is awesome. We have our very, very first guest today and our focus is going to be college planning. So I would like to thank, even before we get started, one Tom O'Hare, for being our very first guest here on the Arsenal Money Clip podcast. So, Tom, without further ado, welcome to the podcast. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, what you do, and then we'll jump into a conversation about the wild world of college planning.

Tom: 2:35

Thank you for having me, Doug and Jeremy. I too am coming from a cold setting and hopefully the wind will die down and I can get the fireplace back going so that the smoke doesn't fill the house like the old Sturbridge Village days. I'm Tom O'Hare. I'm an independent college advisor. I work with families to help them go through the process of managing what to do with their high school student after they graduate. Should it be college? Should it be work? Should it be enlisting in the military or service? It's an emotional, stressful, sometimes complicated process and I am blessed to have families look to me for assistance and resources.

Doug: 3:14

Beautiful, well we’re looking forward to a great conversation today. JV, in our world, college is just one of the many goals that we're trying to solve for and one of the topics that we're talking about.

Doug: 3:25

Tom, you hit the nail on the head, one that is very emotional with our clients too. But you know, we don't get the reps that somebody like Tom does, and I think a lot of times our clients are looking to us for expertise that we just, frankly, don't have about the college application and even the financial aid process.

Doug: 3:43

So, Tom, we're really excited to dig in with you today and hoping our listeners can get to know you a little bit and maybe understand a little bit about what this environment looks like in 2025. Which you know for all of us on the screen who went through this, you know, decades ago at this point, how this is a little bit different today, right? Because I think this is what our clients go through and, Tom, what your clients go through, is the process of applying for college today and funding it it's a hell of a lot different from when they went right. So the frame of reference is totally different. Why don't we start off with the state of the state. Tell us a little bit about college applications and the whole college scene here in 2025.

Tom: 4:20

So the state of higher ed continues to be a little bit of status quo, with a lot of flavoring in of other issues and concerns. I think probably for us, cost is one of the biggest things to start off with. Colleges continue to be an expensive investment. I think that folks need to look at the process and the approach as a purchase, a purchase of education, just like they would from the standpoint of buying their first home, their car, maybe even furniture. What do we have saved? What do we need to potentially acquire in different assistance programs and maybe what do we need to borrow? And those are sort of the three elements of funding.

Tom: 5:01

But college is expensive. We've got schools that are now hitting the $100,000 mark for the first year of going to school and we have others that are coming along. So keeping the cost where it is affordable for families is a very tasking thing for colleges and university administrators because they're trying to not only keep it low but keep up with the Joneses to a certain degree and that's putting a lot of financial stress on schools. But families can see in ‘25 and ‘26, more of an introduction of discounting of tuitions by income brackets. That's slowly being announced and more and more schools are trying to catch up with that. If you have $100,000 or less in income, you might get free tuition at a particular school or you might be able to get involved in some of the things like they're doing in the UMass system or here in the state of Mass when it comes to free tuition at community colleges. I think the important thing families need to be concerned with, or be monitoring, is that nothing's free. There's always a process that has to be evaluated, the financial aid forms, the schools really what their enrollment goals are. But cost is going to be a major concern as we move forward and families really have to be concerned with is it the right move for them, based on what they're trying to get for the ultimate goal of their student.

Doug: 6:16

I think one thing that struck me when we were talking earlier this week is how you frame a college education, which was purchasing an education. I like how you frame that.

Tom: 6:26

I've been in the business for over 35 years, both selling products and services to colleges and working with them. And historically, the education and the knowledge sharing for families is, go find a school, evaluate it, fall in love with it, and then figure out how to pay. And even back in our days, we have different age categories on this podcast, but even in our days it was the same but it didn't seem to have the intensity. I don't know why, but it didn't seem to have the intensity of the dilemmas that come with that process. You always hear well, I commuted to school, I got my degree and everything's fine. But the desire to live on campus, the desire to live in dorms that have glass walls all around it and no brick buildings, you know it's forced schools to do things. And families continue to be following rankings, which I'm not a big fan of. The US News and Report, Washington Monthly, Peterson's, they're great organizations, but they put out the rankings and everybody follows the rankings and the rankings drive supply and demand. They drive individuals looking for the particular schools.

Tom: 7:31

So purchasing an education means starting with understanding how much you can afford before you go looking. It kind of works simultaneous. I always say to my clients you're going to be doing two things at the same time. You're going to be figuring out how to pay and you're going to be figuring out where you might go. But it has to start first with doing some type of an assessment of what our finances are today. Whether we're seventh graders, ninth graders, 11th graders or scrambling seniors or even grad students. What do we have to invest in this particular purchase and what are we going to need to fill it? And most people don't do that. If they do it, they do it too late and then they have their son or daughter standing in front of them with tears in their eyes because they got into the school that they wanted to get into, but now we can't afford it. But there's always the opportunity to borrow, and that has its own challenges.

Doug: 8:22

And we'll definitely ask some questions about that. Interestingly enough, my son in school this week, they've been dealing with some, in seventh grade, some more pragmatic, real world math which is cool, such as tipping at restaurants. But one that came up and I was shocked, given that we were doing this this week, was talking about 40 years ago, the minimum wage and then what college used to cost and how many hours you would need to work in order to afford tuition. So I was blown away that that's what they were talking about this week, and I even go think back to myself I worked two jobs to help pay for a good chunk of my college costs at then known as Bentley College in Waltham Massachusetts. And, to your point, it is harder for something like that to happen. We're also seeing youth unemployment rates skyrocket and maybe that's part of it is just the futility of paying for this. So I guess my question for you, Tom, is like have you seen a shift in this purchasing in education, a shift in choices?

Tom: 9:21

Slightly, slightly.

Tom: 9:22

I think that society still has the goal for everyone to have a college education, which is important, but it seems that companies and organizations no matter how much you read about companies in the state of Massachusetts, for instance, and other states saying you don't need a degree anymore for a particular job, there's still that underlying tone that if you don't have a degree there's something wrong.

Tom: 9:39

The flip side is that if you've hired a plumber or tried to get an electrician in the last year, you know that there's not enough of them and the cost is really high. So we haven't seen the shift large enough or strong enough to have that good narrative conversation about the fact that, yes, there are certain jobs that need college degrees, there are certain jobs that need associate's degrees and there are certain jobs in society to be happy and financially stable that may not need that type of extensive education. The system is still structured so that until we see more and more colleges close, more and more other resources open up, like going back to the old days of training and development in a company where you used to be able to build some credentials and skills, it's not going to change that much. And from prestige and eliteness, families are still chasing that degree.

Doug: 10:31

Speaking of supply demand, you hit us with a crazy statistic. I'm going to quote one great, Tom O'Hare, from Lynn Massachusetts. Right. Over the next 10 years, one third of universities in our country are projected to either close or get merged away.

Tom: 10:46

Yeah, I mean, it can even be sooner than 10 years. I read another that might blow you a little bit, that in the first half of 2024, we had a school close, restructure, or merge with another on a weekly basis. So the nature of higher ed, and I'm not a negative Nancy, I'm just a down-to-earth, realist type of individual, is that higher ed was always considered to be sort of an untouchable, pure industry that will have no bumps along the way and if there are they’re certainly minor. But the realization is, it’s no different than any other consumer-based industry that rises and falls with trends with the economics, with unemployment, with individuals, and it's now hitting the schools. So the schools are now starting to really look at, you know, as they should have over the years, the same thing they teach in their business classes and apply them on their campus from an administrative standpoint.

Tom: 11:40

A glaring thing that I ask parents to always ask in students when they go on a college tour, is not so much about how's the food, but that's important or the health services, but that's important, is what programs are going to be cut in the next two years? What academic programs are going to be eliminated? What extracurricular activities are going to be eliminated so that the school can cut back and reduce some of their expenses by eliminating undersubscribed programs, faculty, and administration and support staff to go with it. That's unheard of 10 years ago. It'd be like the sky opening up if that ever was brought up in conversation. Now it's a regular happening thing. And it's not only at the big schools, where everybody wants to go, or the highly selective, it's also across the board, all the way down to the local schools that may not have the same brand power. So the nature of the finances that schools are dealing with is going to cause schools to look at different ways to operate, and that's fine. I mean we don't need a thousand schools teaching all of the academics they do, but we don't want to go to a whole shift over where we have schools that are only specializing in certain degrees, because that's even worse when it comes to supply and demand.

Tom: 12:50

So it's a dilemma. It's a dilemma and at the same time, families are looking at the value, the return on investment, for the return on education. Is it worth it? It is, if you pick the right process, if you pick the right school, and the nature of it is that if I'm going to study social science or I'm going to be a social worker, when I get out I can't come out with a $200,000 debt.

Tom: 13:12

So, yes, if I could get into the school of my dreams because it's a great brand and it's a great community. It might not be the right one from a cost standpoint. It's causing some problems and we're going to see these things over the next 5 to 10 years. And I think families should be conscious of it, advisors should be conscious of it, both you and me, so that we can help direct people. So they're not going to panic, they're not going to go to the ledge and jump, but they're going to make some right decisions along the way

Jeremy: 13:38

Tom, the question that comes to mind to me is we've heard anecdotally at some of these schools getting 100,000 applicants. You know some of the schools in the Northeast, specifically in Boston right, with only a 2, 3, 4, 5% acceptance rate. So you got a lot of kids that aren't getting into the schools. The trades aren't filling up either, so where are all these kids going? What's actually happening tactically?

Tom: 13:58

That’s a good question, Jeremy. Because outside of one or two organizations in the United States. We don't have a lot that I'm aware of, and they may be out there and let's find those people in those organizations, but we don't have a lot of knowledge because we're not tracking them. In the state of Massachusetts, from the Department of Education standpoint, each school has a category in the progressiveness of the students when they're coming out, whether they go into four-year schools or trade schools. They have a category called unknown. And in the particular town I live in I watched that number and I've steadily seen it go up. Well, where's the unknowns going? So, okay, not everybody should go to college. I believe 20% of a high school class should really look hard and fast about whether they should go for the first year, because we still have withdrawal rates that are 20% to 25% and it's because of academic readiness, it's because of financial preparedness on the parent's standpoint, and sometimes it's the fit. But where these kids are going I'm not sure and I would be happy to talk to any business leader about developing a program to try to find these individuals and coach them along the way.

Tom: 15:00

You talk about the trades. I talked to people at some of the trade schools in our state. Some are happy, some are mad because the kids aren't going into the trades, they're going into college, which is great for them. But the trade industry is not seeing the flow of individuals as they used to. The statements you pose is a haunting one for me that in order for a school to maintain a selectivity rate of negative five, nevermind 1%, they encourage this enormous flow of applications into their operations so that they can evaluate, pick and choose, supply and demand, sell their education to the best one that wants to purchase it, and make a little bit of money. A couple of schools in Boston. They hit 90,000 in their application pool for 2,300 seats and they're charging $70 a pop for the application. That's a great revenue stream too.

Tom: 15:53

So families have to be conscious of the fact that, and students and as I talk to them in my practice, you're not only competing against individuals of the same profile, but you're competing against the numbers. I call it the Swifty process now, because so many people wanted to buy tickets to go to see Taylor Swift that some were squeezed out and some weren't. I had a couple of students who went to Pittsburgh to see Taylor Swift because they couldn't get into Boston. Same thing in the college world. So we have to be conscious that there's 250 schools that fall into that highly selective or sought after category and there's another 3,000 in the United States that are outstanding institutions but they're not getting the same look because they're not in the same sort of brand category or they're not the ones that everybody's chasing. So we have to be conscious of that because you can apply and get turned down very easily at certain schools.

Doug: 16:44

So I think we've reestablished. It's tough out there, right, harder than ever. So let's maybe get a little deeper into the how, the funding, the when, the readiness, you know, maybe to frame this, we actually had a podcast which is in and around college planning, and we tried to kind of separate this journey into these six year intervals, right, and we talked a little bit about this this week, which is there's this age of zero to six for your child. Six to 12 and 12 to 18. And zero to six, Jeremy and I just plainly call it Get Started. So somehow find a way to incorporate into your budget some sort of saving for education later on down the line Six to 12, go from Get Started to Get Serious.

Doug: 17:24

The clock is ticking, time's running out, your child's six years old. A third of your time in terms of saving is gone. It's in the rear view mirror. So take a hard look and let's make a commitment, let's get serious. And then 12 to 18, and I think this is where I want to kind of position this for you, Tom, 12 to 18 is where you start, hopefully, a partnership with your child to start to open up the discussion of what that next step looks like. So, in terms of a parent's journey trying to help pay for school and then a child's journey trying to figure out where they're headed, ideally, when do you want to start the college planning process? Not the college funding process, right, because Jeremy and I would tell you as soon as there's a social security number and a date of birth for the kid, start saving, right. But the college planning process for you, ideally, when does that start?

Tom: 18:13

Ideally it starts in the second semester of the sophomore year. For some students it might be earlier. Early college awareness truly in some cases starts in eighth grade when we're picking the high school we want to go to. If my son and daughter is a bookworm or has that look and feel of wanting to be in a college prep program, then we're going to enroll them in a college prep high school program, whether it's in the public system or the private system, based on your finances. If they’re a tinkerer,  they've been following around you with a tool belt and they got a screwdriver in their hand and they have an inclination to go into the trades or go into something associated with that, then you put them into a technical school, if you can get them into it. We don't have as many. So it starts then because there's some preparation as to what the future after high school is going to be. I like the second semester of the sophomore year because the students have got a little bit of education under their belt. They've got a little socialization under their belt from the high school standpoint. They're unfortunately dealing with the good, the bad and the ugly of being in high school. It's a time for them to start exploring what's out there.

Tom: 19:16

Parents should be talking about academic interests, not majors. I am a firm believer that the word major puts me in a box and if I don't fit that box there's something wrong. So, academic interest. What is my son and daughter interested in in high school? You know it's the old, what's the best class you like and what's the worst class that you take? And that develops some of your academic interest. Let them explore what their relatives and parents are doing. Let them explore what their cousins are doing if they're older and they're out in the field. Take them on, you know, daughter to daddy’s come to work day type of thing if they still do that in society. Expose them to different things. Have them focus, of course, on their study skills, their study skills, time management skills and take them on as frequent as possible drive-bys at colleges. Big, small, away from home, right around the corner. Because one of the things that I'm always frustrated by as I look at my folders and records of who all is in my pipeline right now.

Tom: 20:15

Students have no concept about and that's because of their age. I mean, come on, we're talking about 13, 14-year-olds, maybe a little younger. They have no concept that, you know, I want to go to school in California. Well, do you know it's a plane ride away and you're not going to come home on the weekends? And mom and dad may come once. It's a distance. And how are you going to be personally able to do that?

Tom: 20:37

If you can send your kids to camp, whether it's a day camp or an overnight camp, that's great, because an overnight camp is even better. You're sleeping with others, you're using the facilities with others. You're starting to acclimate yourself a little bit more. Test them into or have them get involved in project-based, research-based programs. And yes, it's a cost with a lot of it, but there's also some opportunities for it to be free. That's a good thing to be doing in the second semester.

Tom: 21:04

If they're struggling academically, find academic help. There's a lot of good tutors out there. There's a lot of good teachers in the school system that will stay after with students. Help them build it because it's got to be done slowly and gradually. Just like saving for college starts when they're born, you can't all of a sudden take an 11th or 12th grader and snap your finger and boom, they're going to be ready to go and they're going to be able to adapt. So that's a good time. For me, really, college planning begins in January of their junior year. I have some meetings in the fall to talk about. Are you ready? Have you saved? How are you going to pay?

Tom: 21:42

And give them some introductions into a couple exercises. Build a resume. Every high school student should have a high school resume, just like we need it when we look for our jobs. They should have it for a variety of things, for anything. It helps them complete the Common App very easily because everything is in the documents. It's a very simple process but it allows them to start looking at some of the things they're doing.

Tom: 22:07

If they're not involved in a community activity or an extracurricular activity, even in that sophomore year it's a good time to get going. I'm a big fan of the Rotary. They have a program called the Interact. It's designed for high school students. They can get involved in it, they can grow, they can participate and it's a very soft and easy thing. But come January, we're starting to really get the wheels of motion going. We are developing a college list. You start evaluating the list, you start visiting schools, and again, you got to do it in the pace of what's going on in the student's life and the family's life. It's unfortunately sometimes like death and taxes, we do it real quick because we have to. I'm a big fan of pacing the process within the student's timeframe.

Tom: 22:45

Colleges do not know students exist. When I take my PSATs as a junior and when I take my SATs my name is going to be purchased. Colleges buy names from those lead providers and they're going to send out information and all of a sudden families start thinking that I'm being recruited. They get giddy, they get jazzed up because they're going to send out information and all of a sudden families start thinking that I'm being recruited. They get giddy, they get jazzed up because they're getting a nice glossy brochure but for the most part the colleges don't know them. And if they want to apply in a pool of 90,000 applicants, they got to be able to distinguish themselves against that mess.

Tom: 23:15

So having a resume and starting to interact and build a relationship with the admissions people by doing phone calls and Zoom calls and campus visits, it's critical and it's got to be done in the spring and through into the fall so that the colleges know. Because if I have two applications in front of me and they are like in profile, academic, extracurricular, and I've met one, I don't have any statistics to back it up, but from talking to my colleagues in the admissions world, they're going to pick the one they know because they've developed a relationship. And colleges want to pick students who are going to come. They're going to pay for things like coffee and donuts on the campus. They're going to graduate and be good funding alumni. So it's a process that has to move forward along the way. In the senior year, it's all about when do we apply, how do we apply, where do we apply, and doing the financial aid process.

Doug: 24:08

There's a lot to unpack there. I think one thing that resonated with me, prior to your engagement too, is this idea of when your kids are a little bit younger whether they're a sophomore, middle school, whatever it is, is just exposing them to the idea of college, right. I have, incidentally, brought my son to about a half a dozen college campuses, not really with the intent of saying, hey, here's what it looks like. We just happen to be on a college campus for whatever it is, most recently to go visit my brother-in-law, to go take in a University of Michigan football game in September. But, yeah, great point. You know, like I got the quote from my son, who's 12, dad, college is scary. And we happened to be with the neighbor's daughter at the time, who is a senior this year, and she talked him off the ledge a little bit, which was good. Yeah, it's interesting.

Tom: 24:52

We're talking about 17 and 18 year olds going off on their own, and there's just so much about that that we have to get them prepared for.

Doug: 25:00

I want to just dig quickly back into the process that you have with students and specifically talk about the financial aid process. Maybe let's take a couple minutes to look at that period of time. In terms of the financial aid process, Tom, could you give us an idea of maybe what has changed? Hardworking, two income, high two income families here in Massachusetts are facing. You know those former Stafford loans, right. The loans that are on the student are maxed out after four years. Funding can get pretty tough, right, If they haven't saved. Can we just talk about the world of financial aid for a couple minutes here.

Tom: 25:33

Yeah, one thing that's important for me, along with the notion of changing the terminology or starting to use a different approach, we have to talk about tuition assistance as the resource or vehicles to help us, help parents. Because financial aid is just one component. And so we have tuition assistance that includes scholarships that come from the colleges and college scholarships that individuals can seek out from external sources to help supplement. But the whole notion of tuition assistance is from the early days of the founding fathers of developing these programs is to help supplement the family. People think of financial aid and it really does fuel some of the emotions because there is a great, not disparity, but there's a great separation between families. So financial aid is driven by what we call demonstrating need, which is controlled by really three factors: income, household size, and assets. The concern, or one of the misnomers, is that assets controls a great part of the calculation and it doesn't. Assets, like non-retirement money, including 529s for college savings, is looked at right now in a calculation by 5.6%.

Tom: 26:53

Okay, income based on household size can range from 27 to 47. And the important factor is that the household size helps determine how much of that income should be set aside. So if I'm a family of two earners, we make $200,000 in income and we have relatively little or no assets, but we're a family of three, the system is designed to look at that family having greater resources to help that one child versus if it was the same profile and there's four kids in the family, then that's a distribution of money for four different individuals. So household size is important. We don't control household size right. Household size has gone down, which is one of the dilemmas that colleges face from the standpoint of demographics changing, but it's also going to change the calculations, so that means it puts more emphasis on the family to be able to have resources to pay for school or borrow it.

Tom: 27:50

But financial aid and this form called the FAFSA form drives people crazy because they're so fixated on the fact that we should get money and why is our friends and relatives getting money when we're not. But that application is no different than a credit application that goes into a process that's used to determine what we might be eligible for, and it's used by so many different people, so many different organizations, and we don't know what they're doing with it until they issue a financial aid award that it causes distress and anxiety. So I'm a big proponent of trying to do that assessment as early as possible in our family's life to figure out what if we applied for college today our numbers might look like. 

Tom: 28:36

And at least it helps people start thinking about well, we are a high earner, we have one child, they're a superior student in the profile of academics. Where can we best purchase and spend that money? If we're on the same type of high earner but our child is a little less in the academic scope, where can we find that best place for our students to enroll and for us to spend the money? But, to be honest, financial aid hasn't changed since I started in this business 35 years ago. It's still this process of trying to help people figure out how we can supplement from a college, from the state of Massachusetts, from the federal government. And the federal government only gives a very small amount of resources. But because that application's got that word federal in it, people think there's more money coming. What I want people to understand is that there's multiple layers of resources that people can use to invest and purchase the education based on their family's profile and working with guys like you to help them save the money and then realize the money when they're coming into the junior year and their senior year is a great partnership.

Doug: 29:37

Jeremy and I are lucky enough to have some multi-generational clients where we have sometimes three, I even have one family, four generations, and we see how hard it is to do everything to buy a home in this day and age, to run around work two jobs, to have a kid or two and to do all the things.

Doug: 29:56

And time and time again I think we often see education savings getting squeezed out of the calculation because it wasn't a financial habit prior to, right. You may buy a house but you had a habit paying rent and now you have a habit paying mortgage, escrow, real estate tax, right. Hopefully, and thank you for your insight and everything, hopefully this gives a little bit more incentive to get serious a little bit earlier. And, Jeremy, right, we can't stress enough that when you do start a family and you do have some discretionary income to put away for longer term goals, you just can't ignore the education one. Even if you don't know who your kid is yet and man, sometimes we never know who our kids are and grow up to be, you can't not put some money aside for this goal.

Jeremy: 30:42

Yeah, I mean we talk about it being one of the three big honkers, right. And now when you're talking about 90, 100 grand a year for a four year stretch, you're talking houses in most of America, right? So huge goal that you got to save for.

Doug: 30:55

To purchase an education quoteth one, Tom O'Hare.

Tom: 30:59

Spend more time learning and gaining knowledge, because you just can't wait to the end and all of a sudden hope it's going to happen, whether it's saving or it's preparing.

Jeremy: 31:09

Well, that's just it, Tom. I mean we, like Doug mentioned, as soon as somebody gets a social security number, we're urging the savings process because, just like everything else, the earlier you save the better. But you know it goes to your point. You said, I think, on the side that you had 10 seniors scrambling last minute this year. It just goes to show the lack of preparation and just the, I guess you could say, behind the eight ball that families come into coming into this process in this day and age.

Tom: 31:34

Right, and that's driven by a lot of different things. But, as I say to my students, approach this as a part-time job. Allocate a certain amount of hours every week as we work together to assess and deal with the tasks at hand. And I say that to the parents, have conversations about financials with your family and your kids. For some reason parents, they don't think their kids know anything. Well, when my four kids were coming along, they knew what peanut butter and jelly and mac and cheese for a couple of weeks meant versus when we broke open the steak. That money wasn't coming into the household as much as we wanted because you were doing dance and you were doing this and you were doing that. Parents need to realize that kids know far more about the family's financial structure than they even think they do. So bring them into the conversation and have realistic conversations, but plan the process, whether it's saving or preparing for whatever life after high school is going to be over time. Don't just ignore it until the end.

Doug: 32:33

Amen. Hey, Tom, tell us a little bit about where people can find you online.

Tom: 32:36

They can find me at getcollegegoing.com. That's my one-on-one advising business. They can call me on the phone at any time or text me at 617-240-7350. I'm involved in a couple different ways of helping families, so whether you need an advisor or you need a DIY tool, it starts with the conversation. You're not going to get pitched on business. I want to educate and help people understand if I'm the right fit, then we'll move forward together. Yeah, you can find me out there. If you're on the North Shore and you're reading the Route 1 Business Magazine, there's an article in there once a month that I'm writing to try to share information. So yeah, look me up.

Jeremy: 33:16

Oh man, your posts on social media. You put out informative posts, trying to do more, and I'm going to encourage you to do that so that we can reshare and repost.

Tom: 33:25

That's what we do in the networking world, put it up there on LinkedIn and share it. And yeah, likewise, that's an important thing to be doing when we're trying to help each other.

Doug: 33:33

Well, we appreciate your time. We also appreciate your approach and how you are really working with these future, current and future students, partnering with them, thinking about this holistically. That's so important, so we appreciate it. Hey, we're glad that we have you with us today, too, because you get to join us in some of the fun things that we do on this podcast, too. And one of them is Jeremy's Mythbusters segment. You ready, JV.

Jeremy: 34:03

I'm ready, I'm ready. So we have a few that are related to college in this process. So I thought I'd throw a kind of a rapid fire round at Tom. So, Tom, we're talking 60 seconds or less for these, just kind of give the high bullet points. And I'm going to start with number one. So we got to bust this myth. Only low income families get financial aid.

Tom: 34:18

Not true, false, false. As I said before, it's all based on the different families, income, household size and assets, and everybody's different, look around the neighborhood, everybody's different. So, no, not just low income and not just high income.

Jeremy: 34:34

Okay, great, going on. Busted, Boom, boom, boom, matt, with your sound effects, (boom busted). Okay, number two. We hear this a lot. I don't know if my kid's going to go to college. I don't need to invest in a 529 or set money aside for that particular goal.

Tom: 34:50

I think that that's false too, because savings is savings. I don't care if it's a penny in a jar for 18 years, a penny a day, or it's an official 529, a college savings plan. You need to have some personal resources to help supplement what you receive in financial aid. And the new changes to the 529 is now actually allowing, I think it's, up to five years, this is your lane, not mine, but if you don't use it, you can turn it into an IRA account. So you can automatically give your kid a retirement program before they even know it.

Jeremy: 35:20

Yep, yep, you nailed it on the head and we actually did a podcast on that a couple of times ago. I believe 529 is just one way to save, but the other thing, beyond the tax benefits of a 529, is that designated bucket for education savings. And we don't talk about that enough. That's the behavioral element, that behavioral concept of setting aside very specific resources for a very specific goal and making sure that that's designated and set aside. So thanks for that. (boom, busted) Alright, last, third one for the day. This is an interesting one. Might not apply to everyone, but might apply to some. A free ride means I won't have any educational expenses. So my first question to you is do you have any stats on how common a free ride is and when you get a free ride, do you truly have no cost?

Tom: 36:05

So stats, I would say less than 10% of a college population or a high school gets a free ride where everything across the board is paid. Room and board, tuition fees, everything like that. Less than 10%. Whether it's athletics, academics or talent. The other part of a free ride is a lot of tuition is discounted, but housing, meals, and other expenses is not. And that's one of the things with the new changes coming down as schools are promoting these different ways to reduce the cost of education, is that they may reduce tuition versus housing. So, as a good example, in the state of Massachusetts, tuition goes back into the state treasury for our public schools. All the other money is held on the campus. So who's giving away what for free?

Doug: 36:52

We don't want to curb all those revenue sources, right.

Jeremy: 36:56

All right, (boom, busted) so it sounds like three for three busted. Thank you, Tom. Thanks for playing myth busters.

Doug: 37:05

All right, JV, let's see if you can stump one Tom O'Hare with a dad joke today. (Hold on, daddy, don't try to be cool. Don't try to be cool, bro, with your dad jokes.)

Jeremy: 37:17

All right, here we go, guys. Couple, I'm going to give you three. What form of art is very popular among college kids?

Tom: 37:30

I have no idea.

Doug: 37:31

I want to go down like the like frat party road, but you know that wouldn't make a dad joke. 

Jeremy 37:38

Yeah, ramen doodles. 

Doug: 37:41

Oh my God. 

Tom 37:42

That's poor, that's poor Jeremy. 

Jeremy: 37:43 

Isn't it? Isn’t it? 

Doug: 37:47

Even Tom outed you. I love it. 

Jeremy: 37:50

That's great. That's great, all right. Next one, and it's not my favorite, but you might have a chance at it. What did the buffalo say when his kid left for college?

Doug: 38:02

Now you have to pay the bills?

Jeremy: 38:05

Bye son.

Tom: 38:10

Oh, that's pretty good, (Jeremy: That's not bad you like that? That's pretty good, yeah.

Doug: 38:16

We'll give you a that one's clever. 

Jeremy: 38:18

All right, last one, last one. Why did the dolphin get a degree in marine biology?

Tom: 38:25

Oh, you told me this one. I forgot.

Doug: 38:28

To get a sense of porpoise.

Jeremy: 38:31

To find porpoise in her life. Yeah, 

Doug: 38:35

That's the closest I've ever been.

Tom: 38:37

That's a good one.

Doug: 38:39

Beautiful.

Tom: 38:40

Now you have a disclaimer that this is indicative of the resources and services provided by you?

Jeremy: 38:45

Oh yeah, Everyone gets a dad joke at every meeting. (Doug: Oh my God.) Hopefully they provide me one.

Doug: 38:52

Tom O'Hare, thank you so much for joining us. Really really appreciate it. Again, they can find you at getcollegegoing.com. Once again, Matt Hanna, thanks for your help with our podcast and always being a guiding source in allowing Jeremy and I to do this once a month. JV, helmet, don't fall this weekend. Beware of ice. Be safe. 

Jeremy: 39:12

I'll do the best I can. Thanks.

Doug: 39:14

I love it. Thanks for listening to the Arsenal Money Clip Podcast. If you’d like to get in touch with Jeremy Vaille or myself, we are reachable at 781-335-9100. Send us an email at info@arsenalfinancial.com or go to our website www.arsenalfinancial.com. Until next time, you’ll have to wait another 30 days for dad jokes. Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time. Thanks a lot.

Matt: 39:43

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor, member FINRA SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature. It does not take into consideration the listener's personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial legal or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional before making a final decision.