Hey va, fam, we are all. We are featuring our favorite money and career expert, Lynette Califani Cox. Y'all might know her as the money Coach, but we know her as our financial fairy god mama. So Lynette went from having a career as a journalist to an entrepreneur who commands what five figure speaking fees. She's authored maybe at this point, more than a dozen books, as well as crafting financial courses for consumers and businesses. Y'all can find
Lynette at Askthemoneycoach dot com. And on today's show, she's going to share her expert advice on how to negotiate on the job. Hope you guys enjoy.
Lynette Calfoni Cox. She was our very first interview and she's bad. So we're super excited because let's kind of talk about all things negotiating. We're also gonna squeeze some college tips and info because Lynnette got her daughter a help to her daughter get not only a free ride, but tons of money for college. So if you want to be like that, you know, get on board. Take
a list of Jamal. You're listening, all right, So Jamal is who we call our We have a few handful of mail listeners and that's what we saw them.
Yeah, they tune out for the girls stuff but back in. But yeah, no, I think that this topic And thank you Lynette for joining us again. You are a fave. So this is a topic I'll never get tired of talking about. And I always like to get your perspective, like each person we talk to their perspective on this, because we still get a lot of questions about, you know, what are some strategies, How should I be asking for
more at work? What do I do if I feel stuck at work and I don't feel like I'm getting paid enough and the you know, opportunities for.
Growth just aren't there.
And I wonder if you maybe it could start off by talking a little bit about sometimes early in your career, even recently, when you feel like you either have missed an opportunity to negotiate or took advantage of one, and like what you learn from that.
Sure, well, over the course of my career, I've been super lucky in the sense that I don't even know how or like why I chose to like negotiate so early in my career, because honestly, I don't ever remember my mom telling me. I don't remember any female mentors or older women telling me to negotiate. I have five sisters, three of them are older than I am, but honestly, I don't remember them telling me to negotiate early in my career.
I just kind of took it upon myself to do it.
And I am so enormously grateful that I did, because it really has been kind of one of those benchmark areas in terms of my own financial life, not just as an employee, but even now as an entrepreneur. And so there have been times when I have not negotiated, and it's usually when I get an offer that's like excellent, sort of write out the box, and I'm like, I don't be greedy girl.
You know, but how do you know when it's good enough? Someone? Yeah, one of my younger cousins had asked me that, She's like, I don't know. I'm really excited, but I don't know if it should I just negotiate because everyone tells me to, or how do I know if it's good enough?
See, that's a great question, and you really should know quote unquote what's good enough for you. So I'll give you a case in points and you asked about my early professional career in my history.
Then the reason I.
Say you should know is you should know, like what amount of money would make you happy, and what amount of money is commensurate with the skills and the background and the value.
That you're going to bring to an organization.
So, for example, when I got out of grad school at USC in Los Angeles, it was nineteen ninety three, and I had gotten married very young, and then.
I moved to Philadelphia.
My ex was in graduate school, and so I was working not one, but two jobs.
So I worked at the Philadelphia.
Inquirer as a correspondent by day, and I worked at Fox at ten o'clock news by night. And I was a writer and an assistant producer at Fox. So for both of my jobs, literally I was, you know, working
myself to the bone. I would be at the agey as we called it for you know, from about nine o'clock in the morning to about five thirty almost six, and then I would race like a mad woman cross the bridge and come back in because I worked in South Jersey in the Cherry hillbureau for the Enquirer, and then I would rush to come back over to downtown Philly area, and then I would go to my job at the ten o'clock News, and I would get there about six thirty ish and be there until eleven till
the show ended. Long story short, when I changed and left those two jobs to go work for Dow Jones. Dow Jones, you know, the parent company at Wall Street Journal. The job offer that I got from Dow Jones was more than I was making for both of those previous two jobs put together, but I still negotiated for more.
So I knew at the time that.
Not only was I going to have one heck of a commute, because I was commuting on Amtrak from Philadelphia from thirtieth Street Penn Station to New.
York Now to go to.
The World Financial Center, which is where the headquarters for Dow Jones was. I knew that was going to be two hours, you know, door to door commute each way. I knew I was going to have like a four hundred or something dollars round trip Amtrak ticket and everything.
But I also knew, and again I don't even know how I knew this, but I knew that it was incumbent upon me to show my prospective employer what great things I was going to do for Dow Jones and how I was going to deliver value for them, and why I was worth X amount. And at the time it might have been like, you know, forty eight thousand or fifty thousand. I can't remember exactly what it was, to be honest with you, but it was more for sure that I was making at those two jobs combined.
I want to say it was in the high forties or something like that. And another thing that dawned on me was that it's not the employer's you know, responsibility or even concern, frankly, to worry about the fact that I had a four hour commute, you know, to and from when you took two hours each way, or that my Amtrak ticket was you know, four hundred and something dollars. At the time, I negotiated from a position of strength,
not from a position of need or greed. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they say, well, I don't know if this is a good amount, how much should I ask for, et cetera. You have to think about the value that you're going to give to a company and what is that worth, and also what is the dollar amount that you'd be happy with. So somebody can tell you, oh, you should
negotiate for more. But if you say, I'm looking for a job and you know, to get this new position, Wow, if they made me an offer of you know, seventy five thousand dollars a year, woohoo, I'd be jumping through the you know, jumping up and.
Down for joy.
And if they come through with, say an eighty thousand dollars offer, and you're like, who, I'm over the moon.
Do you need to negotiate? No, you don't need to.
Obviously you'd be happy or satisfied. Perhaps you might want the experience of negotiating and that can actually be helpful and beneficial, and yeah, you might actually get more. But it's not a situation where it's a it's a matter that has to be forced, where you wouldn't be happy and truly incentivized and motivated to do a very very good job.
So go ahead.
I'm sorry it Mandy.
Nope, actually, Tiff, did you move locations?
No, I'm in the same space, okay, socially echoway, but yeah, go ahead.
No. I was just gonna say, well, how do you so my little sister just called me the other day. She had a job interview, and it was strange in that her employer is based in London, and so they were asking, you know, they want basically heard I guess, to pay her health insurance out of pocket, but they wanted to include that into her income. So she was asking me like, well, how do I know you know,
health insurance as well as her retirement package. So she was asking about how do I negotiate that part of my salary because you know, she never had to do that before because usually it comes with the company figuring.
Out the dollar amount.
So what is something that somebody that she can I mean, she's already since I told her to go to like policy Genius to see how much insurance would cost that she was going to be paying out of pocket. But like, what are some tips that someone who has to figure out, Okay, this company's not giving me health insurance or a retirement package, how can you incorporate that into negotiating for how much
you want as far as your salary? So great question, and it's definitely an atypical situation tip that your sister is dealing with.
Usually it's the other way around.
Usually it's a company trying to perhaps give up a lower cash portion of the compensation, and they're trying to say, but look at all these other benefits and perks. You know, we're going to take care of your health insurance, We're going to give you retirement benefits, or profit sharing or
stock options or whatever. So what you advise her to do is actually was smart counsel, which is you need to understand exactly how much you would have to pay independently on your own for those types of things in general, though regardless of which way it goes, if you have to pay it or if the employer is covering those things for you. One of the things that I teach people, and you guys know that, I have a course now called The Art of Negotiating for Women on Money Coach University.
I talk about valuing other variables. And it's so important to do this because for the most part, when you think about your pay, it's not just about the cash dollars that the employer is going to give to you, you know, every two weeks or whatever. All of those other variables, all of those other benefits, those are real life dollars, because otherwise it would be out.
Of pocket costs for you.
So you need to say how much holiday pay am I going to get? How much extra or anticipated vacation pay will this employer be providing me? And how much negotiating room is there for that. It's always negotiable. Everything is negotiable. Will they be willing to pay off my student loans, for example, all or a portion of the student loans?
Will they provide me with flexible work schedules? You know, what is that worth to me?
When I was leaving, when I was at the tail end of my employment as a Wall Street Journal reporter for CNBC, one of the things that I negotiated at the end of my contract there, I had a very nice six figure salary, but I was in the process of writing my first book, and long story short, we were at an impass, and I had an agent who was negotiating for me, a very high profile TV and
book agent, a guy named Bob Barnett. But long story short, we were at an impass, and at that point I negotiated directly with a woman who was one of the.
Key people there.
And in the end it kind of all fell apart and there was, you know, some frankly bad faith negotiations that took place, not on the part of CNBC management and not on you know, Wall Street journal Folks. You know this person got fired and whole bunch of other stuff, as did I, you know, me, and two hundred other people.
But I'm saying all that to say that what I negotiated was when we got to an impasse and she told me, this is as high as I can possibly go, I said, okay, I'd be willing to accept that salary if I get that salary and I'm able to work four days a week instead of five days a week,
and having that flexible schedule was beneficial to me. It basically meant I was working eighty percent of the time instead of one hundred percent of the time, but I still got the same level of pay, and I used that extra Friday off each week to write my first book, invest Success. So you have to be able to quantify, and you can do it through a variety of means. But you should know, for something like that flexible work schedule, what would it be worth to you? Only you can
answer that question. You don't need to go on a website or to you know, look up something on Google or whatever. You know, what that is sort of worth to you from a quality of life standpoint or from an aspirational standpoint if it frees you up to do something else, right.
I have a question, Lynnette, So this is and you talked about asking for a semi part time schedule, a day off a week to work on your book. Do you feel like that is maybe treated differently than one So, for example, let's say a new mother may not get very much maternity leave at her office. Do you think it's looked at differently if a worker a woman would want to take off or ask for a part time schedule to spend time with her a newborn or with
her child. And do you suggest that you know, new moms ask for that, especially if they don't get a very generous which many many women don't get a very generous maternity leave schedule.
The reality is there there are gender biases in the workforce. And yes, you know, I would be less than honest if I said that I didn't think many employers frankly dependent upon the industry, dependent upon the line of work that the woman was doing. If I didn't say that, many employers would look kind of a skance at that
or see that in potentially a negative light. You have to think about it in a bigger context, however, because not everybody, of course, you know, many of us are going to have kids, and I've had three kids, and many people will go through a phase where you're out of the workforce for X amount of time. Again, I'll tell you what I negotiated during my maternity leave and elsewhere.
It was great.
I got an office and built in my house twice, not once, but twice when I had my two kids when I was in corporate America, So it actually worked out for me. But some employers will look at what is the reason that you're asking for a flexible schedule.
For example, if you want to do a sabbatical, if you want to take time off to travel or do research, if you want to go do a graduate program or take part time for school, if you want to write a book, if you want to do something quote unquote professional, or something that's along the line of career or perhaps academic development. Chances are they're going to look at that in a certain light, which is going to likely be viewed differently than taking care of your personal needs, you know,
tending to your family, your kid, that kind of thing. Now, you and I we all know that a woman or a man who is not distracted at work, who feels focused, and who has flex time, et cetera, is probably going to be actually a better employee, right because they're going to be less stressed about it, They're going to have more work life balance, and they won't have the same
stress around those issues. But you know, think about a woman who's you know, on the sort of on the career track to become a partner in a law firm.
Et cetera.
Sure I can see her being you know, put on quote unquote the Mammi track and not being viewed as viable a candidate for promotion, et cetera. If she flat out said, listen, I want to take time off because I want to go, you know, with my kids.
I think a.
Better strategy is to come at an employer by explaining how a flex schedule or a co working schedule with you and another person who might be you know, the two of you might each do twenty hours a week or something to that effect, how that would benefit the employer period.
End of story.
Again, my initial advice is that people go to employers with the wrong approach or with the wrong messaging. So that sounds like a personal need to me. You know, I have a baby, and I want to spend extra quote unquote time with my baby. I took this six weeks maternity, three weeks, eight weeks, whatever it was you took. Oh, but now I want to spend extra quote unquote.
Time with a baby.
That's not the right approach because again, that's arguing from a standpoint of need, or sometimes people argue from a point of greed even and not from a position of strength.
If you can show your employer, if.
You can demonstrate to them how you are going to be just as productive during your twenty to twenty five hours, or how.
You will be.
Still effective in your job, or how you will actually impact their bottom line, whether that's revenues or profits, or ability to engage with and retain clients, whether it's achieving some cost savings or efficiencies, whether it's in the operation side, whatever, and you can and should be able to demonstrate that. So part of what I like to tell people about is we've all heard this expression about oh, you know, know your worth, you know and all of that. Well,
it's not important to just know your worth. It's important to show your worth, to demonstrate to literally give them a bottom line, give them some numbers, because that's what employers understand. They understand, Oh, she will still have x number of customers served. She will be just as effective on the sales or distribution or the marketing side, or you know, her efforts will help us to curb these
legal costs or you know that kind of thing. You have to be able to document and show to an employer how it is that you're still helping the bottom line and indeed improving it.
That's great advice.
Well, okay, so I'm going to ask for the entrepreneur side because you know, I know that you've answered some great questions.
For when you have a job.
So say you're an entrepreneur, and I you know, I know I've asked you this personally. You've guided me so well. When you're negotiating, you know, like a speaking engagement or a contract or, and you're not quite sure because you know, a speaking engagement can run anywhere from you get five hundred dollars, some people get fifty thousand dollars, and how do you know you know what your cutoff is?
Like?
You know, well, I'm at a point now I'm not going to take a less than this, but I probably should not expect fifty thousand dollars? Like, how how do you navigate?
You know?
So this is someone who's not brand new to speaking, but they're also not a super season veteran. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. How do you start to decide? You know, like, you know, how much is how much to expect and when? Because There's been times when people have said yes so quickly and I'm like, oh man, I not lay exactly, maybe you know thousands of dollars more, And I'm like, how am I supposed to know that? You know?
So how do you figure that out? So great question, Tiffany.
I think the way that I've navigated this challenge over the course of my career and especially the last fifteen years as an entrepreneur is I set my rates accordingly, first and foremost based on the value that I bring to an organization and what I would be happy to be paid to get for a speaking engagement or for other types of client work that I do. So for me, the first question is one of.
Value.
The second thing is around benchmarking. So yes, I mean you do want to have competitive pricing right, So that means that you do have to kind of know the going range. And as you said, somebody might be starting out, they might be like, great, if I get five hundred dollars one thousand dollars for a speaking.
Gig, I'm great, I'm good. I'm real happy with that.
My case, I think a third point of reference is instructive. It's definitely helped me, and that's to talk about this stuff.
That's to be candid and honest.
So, for example, I pride myself on pricing integrity, and that's what I call it in the sense that any client who calls me up, they're going to get the same price. It can be Walmart or Prudential or you know, Capital One or anybody else I'm gonna tell Or it can be Joe's Autobody down the street, or it can be a local nonprofit or a national nonprofit or a regional I'm going to tell them.
All the same price.
Now, do I have pricing flexibility, Yes, Will I be willing to negotiate, absolutely, But in general, for me, I set my price is according to the value where I think I am in the competitive landscape, and the fact that I do want to speak. I'm I want to be active and out there speaking, and I like to be out there active speaking and based on me sort of knowing kind of you know, going rates. So I'm very upfront and telling companies and even my peers like
you guys, here's my rate. This is not a hypothetical, this is the truth. My rate is twelve five hundred dollars for a corporate speaking engagement. And my clients know that they have me. So if they want me to do a keynote address or a workshop or seminar.
I don't parachute in and out.
I try to stay and be social and sign books and do meet and greets and you know that kind of thing. For nonprofits, I discount my pricing by fifty percent, So my price to nonprofits is sixty two fifty. I priced it that way knowing that many nonprofits frankly will.
Not have the budget.
However, they will have sponsorship, a corporate backer, or I will have a corporate sponsor that's willing to come to the table. And I also know that there's flexibility, which is one of the great things as an entrepreneur. You can package certain things so somebody might say, okay, but if we bought books also, would you be willing to come down a little on your speaking fees? Yes, absolutely, I will. If it's a local engagement, will I accept less as opposed to me going and flying, you know,
and taking two days away, Yes I will. So we definitely indicate flexibility in our pricing. But I'll tell you, I'll give you a case in point. Toyota for example. So I've done some work with Toyota and they support a number of nonprofit efforts. So I did some work.
With them about a month or a month or two ago with a nonprofit.
I said, Toyota itself was the entity that came to me and I and they said, oh, we're sponsoring this nonprofit. And I said, I tell you what, I know you're supporting this non I typically charged twelve five for corporate speaking engagements. I know you're doing this for the nonprofit. I'm going to charge you my nonprofit rate sixty two to fifty. They said, no problem, they paid the sixty two to fifty. Great client, and you know it was,
it was great. They came back to me recently and they said, we have something else we want to do in October, and here's the here's the event, and at the event, it is something out of state. You know, here's the event, and we want you to do two workshops, and we want you to do this and that. Right, So I said, not a problem. It is something that they're sponsoring also for a national, a major nonprofit. I quoted them my normal. I said, I can give you this.
I can. I can do the two workshops for this day. I'll be out of state, and you cover the travel and all that. And they also asked about books, because of one of the presentations I'm doing is for adults and another one is for children. So we gave them just a straight quote, said here the rate is twelve five and here for these books.
Here's another price.
And it was like, I don't know, twenty five hundred dollars for books for here and another twenty five hundred dollars or so for books for the for the kids books and they just said yes. So now was I did I say, oh, darn, I should have asked some more.
No.
I was extremely happy to, you know, to lock that in and I'm very happy with that pricing. I'll do that all day long, you know, I'll be on the road once a week, you know, but so so for me.
I also know that.
Companies appreciate when you not only deliver value, but when you are sensitive to their budget. But at the same time you're giving them so much out you know that they probably wouldn't get elsewhere. So for me as an entrepreneur, almost all of my clients are long term clients. They I mean, they come back again in a and again, especially in this problem. This may surprise you, Tiff, especially
when I say no, wow, okay. So so part of the issue for us as entrepreneurs we think that in a no isn't for me?
A no might be.
It could be for a whole host of reasons. Sometimes it could because there's a conflict of interest. I have another client in the space or category. Sometimes it could be it's not exactly the right fit. Sometimes I could be a timing question. Sometimes I could be booked already traveling. Obviously on occasion, we have a differensive opinion on money and I'm saying, you know, this is the price that I'm looking for, and they're saying, oh, here's where we are.
And if we can't have a meeting as of mine or some sort of you know, in the middle, it's like, no harm, no foul.
You know, we'll get together when the time is right.
And you know, honestly, Earl and I we have a we have an internal a saying we say pay now or pay later. Either way you're done, I mean, and honestly, I almost every single client comes back, So.
I you know, you don't burn bridges.
You don't you know, pull a Diva routine and go off or anything like that, obviously, but it's it's you know, sometimes it's it's not the right timing or they don't have it in the budget. And if and if you say, I can't really see my way clear to perform these services or to do that for ex budget, if it's you know, beneath the number that's acceptable to you, then I don't think you should do it because there's a huge opportunity costs.
There's always opportunity costs.
That deal that you say yes to, you know, for half your rate or whatever the whatever you know rate that would have been satisfactory to you, that's when you're gonna get another client calling for something.
That same time, and you're gonna be like, oh darn, you know, and.
Obviously you never want to break an engagement if you you know, kind of sign on the diet line there.
So I don't know.
I hope that helps somewhat though, to think about those for who are entrepreneurs, who are are are looking at, you know, ways to negotiate. Again, I always negotiate from a position of strength and I and it's not a take it or leave it style.
It's not that.
That's not what I mean by a position of strength. I mean with a documented, proven track record. Okay, I mean by showing my clients here, this is what you can expect if you work with me. So you know, we have everything from case studies literally that we show and they're like, oh wow, you know so they're like, you can do this with us.
Yes, So it's almost.
Like prepackaged for them to give them a heightened sense of security and a knowledge around what to expect. Because I really I like to manage expectations properly and then I like to exceed those expectations. So that's whether I'm doing a speaking engagement or spokesperson work, or I'm writing
content or doing some videos for somebody or whatever. Now, thank you for that, because honestly, it provides a loall you always provide me with a lot of clarity when it comes to you know what to ask for and you know what I deserve. It's hard sometimes because you don't even know. Sometimes I don't even know what I deserve, you know, And sometimes I feel like I overshoot, and then sometimes I know I undershoot.
You're like, where do I land?
And it'll be crazy because you know, someone will come to me one day and say, have got five hundred dollars honorarium, and I'm like what, And then the next day a client will say, I have ten thousand dollars for you.
So it's just weird.
You're like, why am I still getting offers of five hundred? Not that say ten thousand happens often, but when it does, You're like, it's just where I should be now. So it's definitely for entrepreneurs, it's definitely not an easy road. Can I tell you one other thing, Tiffany, And I kid you not. You know, I give everybody the same advice, and you know, people take it for what it's worth, or use it and don't use it, whichever I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt, it's almost
like consider it like consider this my boyfriend rule. Okay, how you allow yourself to be treated, it's exactly how you'll get treated. So if you with corporate clients, if you sort of say this is my price, this is my expectation, and you kind of stand firm on your pricing, not to say that you won't ever be flexible on your pricing, but if you know for sure I'm not just I'm just not doing a five hundred dollars speaking gigs. And for me, I know I'm not I'm not gonna
do no five hundred dollars speaking gigs. I can say that unequivocally it's gonna take a couple thousand dollars to get me out the door.
Period.
However, I what but what I will do is I will try to over deliver or be flexible for for for some things, especially if I say, huh, I see some great opportunity here, I see some uh potential upsells or some some some you know, some other ways to to kind of make this work. I had a a nonprofit client for for discretion, for the for the client, I'm not I won't reveal who the client is, but for this purpose, but a nonprofit client recently, I went to New York, which is you know, forty minute drive.
I just you know, left my house in New Jersey to New York. It was it's a nonprofit I I was paid four thousand dollars to do basically an employee event and great organization and they've already said okay, when can we have you back?
You know, And.
Because it's a national organization and they have interest in other things digital financial education for their employees, I saw a bigger opportunity there. So again, sometimes you get you know, you might be a little more flexible to think about you do want to think about long term, so that
that matters a lot too, I think. But for the most part, if you just have sort of a rate sheet, or if you have a set price and you say here, here's the price, you know, what happens is the people who can't, who can't play in your sphere, who aren't ready and who don't have the budget, they go away and believe it or not, word gets around, and that's a good things.
You want word to get around.
So in the African American community, in the nonprofit space, in the college market, in the government market, in different arenas, and some women owned sort of spaces for a time. You know, some people were like, oh, you know, don't reach out to Lynette because you know she might be ex price.
And it's not.
That I'm going to say no, like no, I'm you know, oh you're beneath me. I can't come on and do something with you.
Absolutely not. It's the opposite.
It's me saying, let's make this a bang up you know, presentation and event for your constituents, your employees, your customers, your prospects, whatever, right, and here are my ideas. This is what I can bring to the table, and here's the price for that. This is what this is going to get you. Sometimes they are like, great, let's do it.
You know.
Sometimes they say, oh, this is what our budget can accommodate, and we negotiate a little bit and it, you know, works out.
Other times it's like Nope, we just don't have that at all.
And if it's a platform or an organization that we think, huh, we could have developed something here, I may go to one of my corporate partners or to another third party to try to make a three way deal happen.
And those are also.
Lucrative and creative opportunities, so it doesn't have to be a know, a hard no. I always say that a no is sort of just not yet, especially when you when you're negotiating, but you know, kind of setting a benchmark or like just an absolute minimum, Like really, I'm not coming out the door for this, I'm just gonna you know, and just knowing at least internally what that number is for you.
It really is important.
Because you can just put all the other stuff. You can just like let that stuff go away or redirected, or or help educate your clients too, to say, you know, here's where my pricing is X, because I feel like, like I know in the industry for personal finance experts, what I do, Like, I know that say a gene Chatsky is going to charge more than me. I know as Susie Orman definitely is going to charge more than me.
So but then I know that my pricing is going to be more than many many, many other people who aren't at you know, at their their level, right. But for me, twelve five is perfectly comfortable. I'm just you know, it's I don't feel that it's over or underpriced. I feel that it's it's it's right about right for me.
I think that's such a great piece of advice for anyone, whether you're an entrepreneur or negotiating a salary in the corporate world, because I I have certainly felt like people walk into a negotiation and have no idea what even to ask for. They just feel like, I got to negotiate, and I want a lot of money, but I don't know what the number is. And if you have to, I mean, it's as simple as like, what does it cost you to live? And what will it cost you
to be you know, happy? And I think you should have that number in mind when you go in. And then either way, when you you know, you walk out, you at least know that you went and educated and you went in having a number and knowing what you want, and you know when to be happy and when not to be happy with an offer.
And honestly, when it comes to negotiating again, one of my other principal lessons is bring your a game. You absolutely cannot bring your a game. You can't be your best.
You aren't being your best if you don't have a number in mind when you're going to an employer, because frankly, it's telling me that you've been lazy, you've lacked discipline, or you've lacked initiative because you haven't done the bear basics in terms of research, there is absolutely no reason, with all of the information and knowledge that's at our fingertips today, for you to go into a negotiation and say, well, I don't even know, like how much is this job paying,
or you know, what's the the person who's already on the job, or the predecessor in this position, how much did they get paid, or others in the industry what do they get paid.
There's just way too many sources of information for you to get that. You know that data. You can go to glassdoor, you can go to salary dot.
Com obviously, indeed, you can use payscale, and you can find out even the government, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Okay, you can find out based on all kinds of information literally down to a specific company, what pay scales are in a company, based on title and industry, based.
On years of experience.
You can always find out about a given range for salary for a specific position. And you really should go into the door of a negotiation, whether you're trying to get hired or even get promoted on a job, you should absolutely know that information. If you don't, it's telling me you haven't brought your a game, you haven't done
enough homework yet. Even just talking to you know, HR managers, employees, and other colleagues, even if not at that specific company, but at other competitors who are in the same job and getting a feel for salary.
You can and should do that. Okay.
So I do want to get into your story because it's so extraordinary and I'm excited to hear that you know even more about it than you did two years ago.
Okay, That's why I ask how much time do you have?
So tell me start off with your daughter and then I know you have a son you just started college, right or is going to be starting in college, and talk about how you sent your daughter to school with far more money than was necessary to cover the cost of college.
Okay. So the reason I asked you how much time do you have? Is I like to tell these stories in their entirety, and I like to revisit them because frankly, there's always good, bad, and ugly and excellent, you know, in any sort of financial decision or any kind of process like this, and paying for college obviously is a process. So here's my family's story to date. So my daughter, Aziza is nineteen years old. She just finished her second year at the University of Texas at Austin. My son
is seventeen. He's going into his senior year of high school, so he has one more year and then he'll be going off to college. I have a third child, alexis my eleven year year old. But Aziza, long story short, was one of those just outstanding, over the top kids. She was a national Merit scholar. She speaks French. She was a president of the French Club.
In high school.
She's founded the Multicultural club. She had like a twenty two thirty SAT score. She you know, she was an a student. She did all these amazing things volunteer work, drama, girl, theater club, blah blah blah.
So she was one of those off the charts kids. She was sought after. She got accepted to a lot of great schools.
And she won a boatload of merit based scholarships, not need based scholarships.
There's two types of scholarships.
You can get need based based on your family's income and assets, and merit base, which is based on the student's accomplishments in some ways, typically academic, athletic, artistic, or social engagement like volunteer work, community service, etc. Okay, so my daughter had a lot of academic accomplishments and artistic accomplishments. She won really in total, over seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars worth of scholarships. WHOA, yeah, So now you have to understand this was from the schools that the vast majority of the aid that she was offered was through the colleges and universities themselves. And so that's one of the things that I teach people is if you're looking to get scholarship money, the biggest dollars come not from private sources, third party sources. You could, of course win a Gate scholarship, a Coca Cola scholarship, et cetera.
Very competitive obviously for those scholarships, but the schools themselves, colleges and universities themselves are the biggest source of money directly to for merit based aid. Okay, so she got for example, at NYU, she won the MLK Scholarship. You know, they were giving her fifty thousand dollars a year.
At my alma mater at USC in Los Angeles.
She won a presidential scholarship, and that was going to be like twenty seven thousand dollars a year. She got accepted to Fordham, she won a national merit scholarship there forty eight thousand dollars a year, blah blah, blah, on and on. Ultimately she turned those down, of course, and she went to UT Austin. She got accepted into their Business Honors Program, and she won about forty thousand dollars roughly worth of scholarship aid to pretty much cover most
of her college costs. We only had to cover like maybe five thousand dollars you know some some you know, the books, you know, the travel back and forth, the you know some a little bit of the housing stuff like that. But she won a lot of scholarship money directly from the school itself, including a ten thousand dollars a year scholarship from BHP the Business Honors Program. And the best thing was an out of state tuition waiver
that she which was almost thirty thousand dollars. As a result of winning that ten thousand dollars scholarship, the two were tied together. Okay, now, let's fast forward. My child, my a students, my my National merit winning child had a horrible first semester.
Yeah, so you know, without you know.
Telling all of them on her business and she doesn't mind, she really doesn't. So her scholarship was dependent upon her maintaining a three point five GPA or better and she didn't and she did not, So her first semester was horrible. Or second semester she bounced back. I was like, what has happened to you? You better get those grades up, you
know so, and she did. She recovered, and then her second year, which was had just passed, she did well again, did great, but bottom line, because she did not at the end of her first year overall she did not have a three point five GPA, she lost her scholarship.
Oh my goodness, hell yeah.
Forever or whatever.
Right, I'm like my probation or so she.
Was on probation her after her first semester. Then she was off after one semester and she, like I said, she bounced back. She was, she was fine, but but that wasn't the issue. The issue was, Sorry, girl, we said three point five or higher and you don't have overall, she didn't have a three point five. So even if she had not had a horrible if she had had a three point four to nine, pretty much they would have been like, sorry, you'd have to be three point
five or better, you know. So, so it's been a learning experience. It taught us a couple of things. One was about transition. I don't know if I shared this with you before, and I'm sure I didn't. My daughter and her senior year of high school. A couple of months before graduation, she suffered sudden hearing loss in her right ear that impacted her, you know a little bit.
Her first semester in college, she was sick for three weeks, and you know, she didn't tell me, and I was like, you didn't go to like the campus health.
She was like, I didn't know how to or what to do, you know, on her own.
The first time. I think there was transition issues her going from you know, east coast to the south basically Texas. That transition being raised in a bubble admittedly, you know, in the suburbs here mountainside, New Jersey population eight eight thousand, and then going on a campus with fifty thousand students alone on the campus, you know, so I think there was a lot of transition and it was just a little overwhelming for her. Everything. So but got back, you know,
right back up on the horse. I told her, don't prove it to me, prove it to yourself. Go back up there and show me what you can do, show yourself even more importantly.
And she did.
And so so I'm fast forwarding to say, as her parents, and we did something that I'm sure some parents would be like.
What We actually doubled down on a ziza.
We put a game plan together and I said, if you need any tutoring, you're going to be talking to your academic advisor and your counselors. You're going to do this. She did everything I asked her to do. Her grades went back up. She got a's, a's and b's, and she it was and there's no problems. However, because we had a financial situation now that we had to say, okay, what are we going to do here school?
There is about fifty.
Five thousand dollars a year, you know, all in tuition, fees, room and board as an out of state student. So cutting to the chase, this is what we did. We bought her a condo. Now some people would be like, what.
What you're trying to follow? But I'm hanging out there, okay.
So the short explanation is that her having a condo ownership of a condo for one year establishes.
Texas residency for her.
So instead of us having you know, thirty eight or forty thousand dollars a year tuition bill, she gets now she'll be getting in this, this, this, and her junior year in state tuition of about eleven thousand dollars. And the housing side is covered because we put down you know, twenty one thousand or so twenty five thousand for to buy the place for her. She has two roommates. The roommates pay fourteen hundred dollars a month. The mortgage is
fourteen hundred dollars a month. So there's no net sort of out of pocket costs for us with that, and her housing is covered with that. So it actually, you know, thank you Jesus, it worked out. But that's actually how we dealt with it. And you know, now she's getting back and she's applying for scholarships again, and you know, part of the lesson is if you lose a scholarship, you know, mercifully for her, she had parents who had the financial wherewithal to backstop her because you know, I.
Can tell you.
Know, her father, my ex was like, oh, well, I guess you got to come back home. And I was like, no, no.
No, wait.
So but she still had to pay for out of state tuition right for that? So did you guys finance that with student loans or.
We had to We had to just pay it. We had to pay yeah.
So yeah, but something similar happened to my little brother, My little brother, and UT is a state school, right, yep, So their merit based aid comes out of state funding, correct or is it like a private endowment.
No, it's a public school.
So there they do have some scholarships that they award through private owners that give them, you know, give students their scholarships, but the if you're a resident, that's coming through the If you get state aid, that's through the state of Texas.
Right.
One thing that happened to my brother as far as losing his scholarship, he had a We went to the University of Georgia state, big state school, and he had a merit based aid. But they since the recession, once college funding has sort of dried, up in a lot of ways in state funded schools because states have been you know, in some cases divesting, there's less money to
go around. So the same scholarship that I got for maintaining a three point two I think GPA, he had to maintain like a three seven or something and he loved it.
And can I tell you something, you guys, I'm telling you this is I hate to say it this way. I won't call it a racket, but I will say that colleges and universities across the country employ specialists and professionals that are called enrollment managers or yield managers. They actually know that a pretty high percentage of students are simply not going to to maintain those grades, thus the
high performance bar. So it's preparing me with my son because I know that based on our family's income and assets, it's not likely that we will qualify for need based aid. I will still apply, I will still go through the
faster process, just like I did with Azisa. But when I think about scholarship opportunities and any potential free money for college for him, For my son, I'm looking at merit aid and institutions that do grant merit aid or schools that have very very strong need based aid, and those are mostly the ivy's top, you know, sort of elite private schools and those with strong endowments.
But these schools know they absolutely, I believe me.
When I went through this experience with Aziza, I did an exhaustive amount of research and I was like, oh, this is not actually uncommon. Can I tell you something that I want? One one factoid that says it, you know, clearer than anything else that I came across. The average high school student suffers a zero point five drop in their GPA when they go from senior year of high
school twelfth grade, that is, to their freshman year in college. So, in other words, the student who had a three point eighty five let's say GPA on average, that student will have a three point three five or zero point five drop in their GPA. That's just nationwide the average. Okay, so you might be like, oh, my student, my child is so smart and brighton. They'll be great, they'll be fine, yet they won't be able to maintain. I was like, three point five. Oh is Jesus got this no problem?
You know? And so but obviously it's next level, it's it's a higher tier of performance that's required of the students. Not to mention, it's not even so much the academics and the grades that are you know, oh, this is so hard.
It's more about all.
Of the stuff that they have to deal with being on their own for the first time, the transition for many students. Financial definitely plays a role for a lot of students if they're stressed or if they're worried about it. My daughter, she wasn't stressed worried about money at all. It wasn't that kind of thing. But everything else in her life she had to give attention and focus to. I think was, you know, sort of a factor for her.
But these schools absolutely know. So now I know with my son, oh you can believe, I'm going to negotiate the other way. When they say when they say, oh, a three point five, he here's his scholarship, blah blah blah, its depending on him having a three point five, I'm being like, mmm, he'll come to your school, how about a three point Oh how about a you know like that, I'm serious. I'm absolutely going to negotiate. And I've talked to parents since who have in fact negotiated and gotten
that bar down a little bit. Or I've even talked to parents who said that they had a provision as long as the student is making quote satisfactory academic progress.
So you can read that it means no GPA requirement.
As long as they got a two point or better basically at the end of a given year, as long as at the end of a year in case they have a little blip one semester. So you know, I think back to my college days. My freshman year, I was fine. It wasn't then, but it was either the end of my sophomore year, I did some cookiness and you know, just running wild and I was like, oh, let me get it together here before I get kicked.
Out of this school. That was yourn.
Yeah, that was the breakdowns in the parking deck.
After my career. When I was freshman year, my father brought my behind right back home because I was not used to because I was raised in a really strict household, and so living on campus was like, what.
That's over a stimulation.
And you know the thing is I was not really wild. It was just like I could say, up late because my dad, especially my dad was attacked to be like, where are you going put the name on the refrigerator. I'm going to call the parent ahead of time. I'm going to drop you off. I'll drive you to the movie. So I was not used to any freedom. Yeah, it's like you know, and so it just it was just too much. And I had got I always got a
really good grades. And I think I got my first D. And he could not believe I had gotten a D. I know you're not about with life. He's like, yeah, no, Well this is funny. When my daughter was I can't remember if it was her sixteenth birthday. It's possible it could have been her fifteenth birthday. Now again, remind you, I live in a very tiny little town, eight thousand population. Suburbia is you know, basically about It's ninety seven percent white.
It has, you know, some diversity, African American, Asian, you know, et cetera. And it's a small place that is also a safe place.
So when my daughter.
Turned I think it was when she was sixteen, I said, oh, what was you like for your birthday?
Aziza?
She said, I'm gonna give it some thought, and then she came back to me and she said, okay, mommy, I thought about it and I said, great, what would you like? She said, just a little freedom, And I said and I was like, well freedom, freedom to do what she said, just like to walk around the block by myself. And then I was like, oh my god, Lynette, you now, gri I used to be running the streets in La Okay.
We used to run outside and come in when the lights came on. Okay. I mean, it's a whole different ballgame.
Even though you know, my child is in a very safe environment here, the bubble that we're in is crazy. So I think that she had the same experience, Tiffany, that you did, which is like, oh my god, I'm free. Nobody tells me what to do, and nobody's on me making me go to bed at a certain time, double checking my homework.
Do you know? It was just transition to young adulthood.
Illnete, Thank you so much. Tell the people where they can find you and find your great work.
Sure they can catch me on my free financial advice blog ask the Moneycoach dot com.
Or they can take a course with me and.
Get video training one on one lessons through my platform on Moneycoachuniversity dot com free and paid offerings there.
Awesome.
Thank you, Lynette, You're always the best.
Thank you, guys.
We always love listening to our financial fairy godmother, Miss Lynette Cawfani Cox. Thank y'all for coming on this trip down memory lane. Make sure to check out regular episodes of Brown Ambition every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.