Is College Worth It? #139

on a lot of people's backs. At the same time, I feel like it's almost the sacred cow where it's like, don't you dare question college? Like you know that there's benefit to it. And that's the thing. We're not gonna say that there isn't a benefit with going to college, right, But the question that we're going to try to answer

is is it actually worth it? Because there are some drawbacks it comes to going to college, we're gonna cover those and we're gonna mention some factors to consider when you aren't trying to decide whether or not to go to college, whether or not to pursue that higher degree and we know that our audience is in all fifteen and sixteen year old Matt, So this episode is going to be applicable for people thinking about going back and

getting another degree, yeah, nba, yeah, getting some higher education, like, well is that meaningful? Will that actually help me? Or for parents of kids who are looking to steer their

kids towards an intelligent decision. I think a lot of the stuff we're gonna cover here is gonna be good food for thought as you're having those discussions, because that's one thing that a lot of parents have a lot of trouble doing, is starting that conversation with their kid or letting them down when it comes to hey, actually that's gonna cost too much and it's gonna be bad for you in the end. But hold up, we're gonna

talk more about that actually later on too. Yes, yes, all right, so but before we get to that, Matt, I wanted you to see this thing I got in the mail for my Niecean Leaf. It was just this quick little mailer, and dude, it was kind of ridiculous.

This ominous looking mailer that is trying silly looking. It kind of silly looking, and really, ultimately, what is trying to do, is is trying to sell me an extended warranty from my car, And it says, in this kind of legally sort of type, this notice is to inform you that your niece on leaf is in need of vehicle protection in order to ensure it's continued safe operation. It says, our records indicate that you have not contacted

us to have your auto warranty activated. By neglecting to activate your coverage today, you assume responsibility for paying repairs in full out of pocket. Call Now it's it's just hype, and it would be enough to scare a lot of people into calling the number, paying the money and getting some sort of who knows whether it's even a good car warranty. It could be some third party trying to

sudd me something that's complete trash. Almost guarantee it's to not be a good policy based on their marketing tactics. The way it's written, it almost makes it sound like that literally, like the tires are gonna fall off from car right if you don't mail that thing back to them. Yes, safe operation of your vehicle isn't gonna happen if you don't call us number, like your brakes might give out if you don't send us back. Who knows. And I know most of us are used to getting less and

less stuff in the mail and something like that. We most of us see that and we kind of know it's ridiculous. But that's the kind of stuff that's that's the kind of over the top ways that people are trying to sell you things these days, and in particular,

something that's completely unnecessary or potentially completely worthless. And we haven't really talked about car warranties on the show before Matt, and it's something that we should cover at some point, but for the most part in particular, third party car warranties are almost always worthless. Yeah, man, you know what it makes me think of as well is private mortgage

life insurance. So if you've ever purchased a home, right after you close on your home, no kidding, like a week later, you'll start receiving these mailers and they'll have the logo of your lender or the bank that you went with, and you think, oh, this looks like something I need to definitely look at, and they're basically trying to sell you life insurance and it's crappy. Life insurance is because it's life insurance that's typically way overpriced, and

it's a policy that directly goes towards the lender. Actually, yes, exactly, bypasses your family and it just takes scare of the bank so that your family, I guess they can in the house because the home will be paid for at that point. Right, but typically, but it's terrible. But basically you are paying money every single month to ensure the lender, not yourself, and it's I mean, it's just absurd insurance.

But you get all these the same thing. It's final notice, and it's totally that fear marketing where they're praying on you not knowing exactly what's going on, and you think, oh, you know, maybe I can afford to pay a couple hundred bucks a month just so I don't have to worry about this thing anymore. Well, that's not something that we would at all recommend. So make sure that you're paying close attention to what's showing up in your mailbox. Yeah, when in doubt, throw it out and just put it

in the trash recycling. Is that a saying okay, yeah, I've heard of the round filing cabinet, right, like the trash can. Oh yeah, it's like classic office talk. Let me just file that in the round the color file there. Yeah, circular file tells you how long it's been since I've been in a corporate environment. You don't make those jokes to yourself when you're working alone every day. Nope, not at all. Kate's like, why is he giggling in there? You must have told himself in the funny jokes. I

think Matt's at the water cooler by himself. All right, let's mention the beer that we're having on the show today. The kind folks at Saint Archer Brewing out of California have sent us a couple of beers to have on the show, and this one is their Mexican lagger. So I'm excited to try this one. This is most definitely a style that we've never had on the show before,

most associated with beers like Corona, right right. Yeah, But there are some good Mexican loggers out there, man, And if I had to think that some good ones, if I had, if I had to pick my favorite right off top of my head, Negro Modelo. That is such a good Mexican logger. I'm a huge fan. But it's just not something to be in the mood for it though, right, Yeah, it's yeah, But yeah, I'm excited to have a Mexican logger because it's not a style that we try often.

And you know what, you and I we've been getting more and more into laggers, because that is true. They do have a completely different feel on your palette. And we're usually drinking just incredibly hopped up or fruited up beers or bourbon merril aged. I was like, they're drinking another hazy I p a right boy. Right, So you know we're dialing back, going a little more chill today with this beer variety. It's important. It's the spice of life, That's what they say, all right, Joel, you want to

kick off the topic for this episode. Yeah, onto the subject at Handmatt. We're talking about is college worth it? The price of college has gotten steep and the return on investment isn't as clear cut as it was decades ago, So it does beg the question. I feel like we have to discuss this topic. Is college worth it? Is getting a degree from a traditional academic institution the best

course for high school kids going forward? Well, I think there's a lot of nuance in the conversation, Matt that needs to be had, Like we touched on at the beginning of the show, and we'll touch on some of those important things that you need to consider before you decide to go back to school or as you have that conversation with your high school or employers even see

how bad it is, Matt. I just saw an article in the Wall Street Journal saying that in the last couple of years, basically the number of employers offering student loan assistance has doubled. Essentially, they see the problem that's happening with their employees and it's affecting how they do their jobs, even having higher levels of student loan debt.

And so employers are incentivizing their employees to pay down their student loans by contributing more to their retirement accounts if they will up the amount that they're paying towards their student loans. There are cool ways that employers are helping tackle this problem. But it is a problem, right And if you just look at a simple inflation chart over the past twenty or thirty years, you'll see so many things have gone down in price in our country.

The price of groceries or the price of TVs and stuff like that. Consumer goods have have fallen off a cliff really in large part, but the cost of healthcare in particular and college have risen just immensely and it's almost become unaffordable for a lot of people. Yeah, man, it is insane. And let me tell you another insane number. The total outstanding student loan debt totals now over one point six trillion dollars. Do you just think of the

staggering effect that this is having on our generation. Folks are possibly delaying marriage or you know, buying a home and even having kids. It's crazy to think of the financial sort of ramifications that it's having on just sort

of our lifestyle. Yeah, it's had a massive cultural influence because, yeah, the debt that people have taken on, it just basically prolongs adolescence and moving into adulthood is something that will lot of people want, right they want to own their own home, or they want to start a family, or they want to get married, but they feel like, because of the student loan debt, that they're riddled with their

unable to do that. Yeah. Yeah, essentially it makes it even more difficult to kind of move on to that next stage in life. And as bad as that situation is, let me tell you just like an even worse case scenario, which is the student loans without a degree to show for it. That can put you in a really difficult position of having loan payments without that increased income possibilities. So a quick word to the wise, make sure that you are working hard while you're in school and don't

drop out. Yeah, yeah, that is literally when you look at the biggest issues with student loans that people are having, the people that are most affected by increased student loan debt are the people that don't have a degree and don't have increased income to go along with that, but they do have the student loans, but they have the student loan still, so they're still typically stuck making a lower wage, but they're also saddled with more monthly debt payments.

So it's really tough. But let's get onto some good news, Matt. The stats also show that college is worth it for most people. A college degree will typically result in higher lifetime earnings. The median income of someone with a high school degree is only forty bucks, while it's seventy eight

thousand for someone with a college degree. So even with these massive student loan debt payments, the discrepancy clearly means that a college degree is helpful in your lifetime earning power, and the more you earn, the more you can save and invest. So I think that's something really important to note. Is we're not going to be bashing college here, and I think ultimately we're gonna come down somewhere in the middle.

But it's really important to note that if you do complete the degree and it helps you find a better paying job, that going to college can be worthwhile for for lots of folks. Yeah, and another reason we're not going to bash college is because you won't even have a shot at many jobs without getting a college degree. If you have hopes and dreams of a specific career, make sure that you know what sort of education that career requires, you know, if any, before taking expensive courses.

That being said, even with the planning, almost three out of four graduates they work in a field completely unrelated to their degree, and so in this case, you'll need to decide for yourself if the sort of secondary benefits of higher education are still going to be worth it to you. You know, we'll get to some of those intangible you know what we'd call like sort of bonus benefits a little later on in the show. Ultimately, once you know the career path you'd like to pursue, be

sure and keep that end goal in mind. If you don't do well in school and you graduated at the bottom of your class, that can make it more difficult to get into grad school if that's your ultimate goal. And even if it just takes you a little bit longer to graduate, well, you're accruing more debt along the way while you're in college, and then you're delaying the

benefits of having that degree at the same time. So if it takes you five or six or seven years, which is not uncommon these days, to graduate from college, you're accruing more debt along the way, you're adding to your student loan debt burden, and at the same time, you're delaying the start of your career, which is the time where you're gonna be able to start paying that

debt off. So it's important to stay focused while you're in school because the quicker you can get that agreed, that's gonna help get you on the road, get you to that place of essentially starting a career. Well, that's going to make a huge difference, because the longer you take, the less it makes sense to actually go to school. Yeah, and to prove that we're not hating on college completely, Joel, let me ask you a question. Do you regret going

to college. I do not regret going to college. I'm so I'm so glad I did proof, but I will say I will say I might have a different spin if I had a hundred thousand dollars and student loans on my back, and I was I was fortunate. I went to a private school for the first two years. Yeah, and when you know, it wasn't a really great private school.

Pretty much anybody can get in there. But you know, I racked up about thirteen dollars worth of student loan debt there and I decided on purpose to come back to my home state because there was In Georgia, we have the Hope Scholarship, and other states have something similar. You're out of state, Yeah, we talked. We talked about

this before Tennessee, New York. Other states have these awesome benefits for for folks to get a college degree for free, and the Hope scholarship still offered in the state of Georgia. I think it's changed a little bit since I went, But basically I could go to school for free, and uh and so I came back and I decided that, you know what, thirteen thousand dollars was all I was going to accrue and got the rest of my education

for free. But I might feel different about my education if I had a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debtor or some or anywhere close to that. What about you know, I don't regret it at all, man, Yeah, totally worth it. This is the kind of thing where maybe when I was younger, I would have said that, yeah, I didn't need to go to college, Like in your youth, you say things where you regret because you've gotten older

and wiser. Teenage ast yeah, well not teenage, but I mean in your twenties, you know, like early twenties I was. I've mentioned this before. I think I was kind of brain damaged until I turned twenty three years old. But even around twenty three and twenty six, I remember thinking, man, I didn't need to go to college, like what I am doing now. I didn't go to school four necessarily it was somewhat related, but it was along a very

different path than what I had gone to school. Four, Like we said earlier, three out of four graduates are you know, working in the field completely unrelated to the you know what they got their degree. And that's where I was. I was in my mid twenties. I was doing something that I felt I could have done actually

straight out of college. But with there being more time between then and now, I've learned that there are a lot of additional benefits, a lot of things that I learned, a lot of things I gained through college other than that specific bachelor's degree that I received. Yeah, you know, sometimes, Matt, I feel like college acts as like one of those gates that you pull your car up to. You gotta insert the ticket, you gotta pay your money, the gate opens up in your you can take your car out

of the parking garage. I feel like college is often something kind of similar. It's it's not that you don't learn useful skills, and it's not that you don't make useful connections. That's certainly true in college. I I think I learned useful things, But at times it can feel like it's some of the things that I actually needed to learn though to do my current job. I learned upon my internship, like that was actually more of an

education for me than my college classes at times. And so I think sometimes it can feel like it's just that gate. You have to pay the money in order to get through this hurdle so that you can apply for certain jobs that are otherwise off limits to you. So I think that's one aspect that needs to be mentioned in regards to college, that sometimes it is like just this barrier to entry and if you don't have the degree, well you're not going to get into that

career that you're aspiring to. But really, Matt, the costs are at the heart of this. That is a huge part of it. The shows how the money we talk about money and the costs associated with going to school are a huge thing that needs to be considered in this debate. Is college worth it? And we'll get to that right after the break. All right, Joe, we are back from the break, and we're asking the question is college worth it? And e t s to the cost

of college? That is an important consideration. We're going to talk about the money. Now, going to college doesn't mean that you have to graduate up to your eyeballs in debt. There are a lot of different options than taking on massive amounts of student loan. You can go to a community college for the first two years. You can scour the web and apply for dozens of different scholarships and

even choosing a lower cost in state option. Uh. Those can all be crucial in the college cost benefit analysis. And you know what, don't forget about grants that are up there as well. What you really need to do is just look at you know what your state has to offer. We talked about this a second ago, Joel. You mentioned how Georgia, how you've got the Hope Scholarship. Tennessee they offered two years of college for free to

all high school graduates. Right now. New York they have a tuition free program that is available to lots of people called the Excelsior Scholarship. There are a ton of different tactics that you can sort of employ in order to get the cost of college down. Joel. We're planning a full episode on ways to do that, Ways to minimize the cost of college coming up in the next

couple of months. But just know that the first step that you can take to make college worth it is to actually get a deal, try to try to get the cost down. I completely agree. Yeah, I think if you're spending too much, like I said, like, is my degree worth it? Well, it depends on the number I paid for it. And if the student loanedbt on my back is a hundred thousand dollars, then no, my degree

wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth that. But if the amount of debt on my back when I graduated was thirteen dollars, then then yeah, it was a slam dunk. It was a great deal. And so you mentioned cost benefit analysis, man, I think that is such a key thing to to think about in this debate, and it's important to run the numbers. It's important to consider, Okay, what are the costs and what are the benefits associated

with with getting this degree? And I think it's just something that a lot of people, maybe it hasn't even entered their brain, hadn't even entered their radar to to do one of those with their kids or for themselves when they're thinking about going back to school, because that can be make or break, that can be the yes or no, that can be the primary factor, right, the actual costs associated with it in making a wise decision. Yeah, it sounds a little heartless on us, right to be like,

all right, what's this gonna be worth? You know, like how much of my putting in? How much am I getting out? It's like a mechanism almost because college college feels like hopes and dreams, you know, like it's like I want to achieve this, but even still you have

to take this into account. Yeah, exactly. I think there's a balance between finding ways to monetize college, right, like you're actually looking at how much you're gonna be able to make, but like finding a balance between that along with like where do I really want to go to school?

Like wherever I had my dreams my hopes would have said on you know, like if you only are thinking about your hopes and dreams, well, shoot, you could end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars paying out the nose going to you know, one of the ivys or at the other end of the spectrum, if you're only looking at the dollars and cents, well that's not at all enjoyable. It kind of feels like, you know, like

I said, kind of heartless. I think there's a balance that we can strike where we are being money conscious, but we're also really excited about the school that we have the opportunity to attend. Yeah, I completely agree. On top of being thoughtful about the the actual specific university we go to, I think it's really important to talk

about which degree we choose. All college degrees are not created equal and Matt when we had Christie Shannon, I believe that was episode one eighteen, and Christie mentioned her her brilliant strategy for thinking about which degrees are worth it or not, and she called it a pot score or pot what you know what, whichever you prefer. But

it's like pay over tuition. Basically, she's creating like a score, like a ratio in order to gauge the cost of going to school versus what that degree is going to end up paying. Yeah, it's so important to actually be realistic about the potential salary you can earn based on the degree that you're getting and also based on the amount of debt and the amount of time that it's

going to take you to get that degree. And I think one of the most interesting things in that particular part of the conversation with Christie She was saying that even like the jobs of doctors and lawyers, they don't really rank highly on the pot score because they cost so much and they take so much time to get those degrees that you're better suited going in other directions

in order to kind of maximize your earning potential. That that's not to say that like, if you really want to be a lawyer, you can't do well, but it's just something to keep in mind. And you have to be even more conscious if you choose something like that about the costs and about the debt that you're accruing

along the way while you're getting one of those degrees. Yeah, you have to make sure that you're passionate about that, right, because it's not all about the money, because if you are only looking at the dollars and cents, well, that's where the plumber and the electrician. The master electrician pot score is, you know, better than that of a doctor. And so if your passion happens to be being an electrician, well, guess what, you're probably gonna make a pretty good living.

You're not gonna have a ton of debt. So that's why a surprising number of trades actually score higher on the pot score than lawyers and doctors. Another thing to consider once you are actually in school is to make sure that you don't forget about the extracurriculars. The other things that you pursue while you're in college can make you stand out in an interview situation and can make your college experience incredibly worthwhile. Like my intense bad mitten

skills totally paid off worth it. I brought that up in the interview and they were like, sold, you're hired right now. Yeah, so, you know, maybe it wasn't bad mitton. But if you were a president of the college association, well that's gonna make you stand out. You know. Did you take electives that were beneficial to your career path or did you just take history of rock and roll, which is what I did. And you know what, you don't have to do that because there's podcasts for that. Now.

You can listen to the History of rock and Roll in free podcast form. Don't take the class exactly, and so and so I enjoyed it, but and maybe oh I thought this was just an example. You actually took this class? No, no no, yeah, I actually took the History of rock and Roll at Georgia and you know, I learned a lot and it was really interesting and I

think it's made me a more well rounded person. But how much did that actually further my career or you know, at least the career that I've been in the past ten years, Like, how has that helped that? Uh? Maybe none, but I'm sure it helped out at trivia night, you know, here and there just maybe some of that rock and

roll history. And this isn't to say don't take any fun classes at all while you're in school, but make sure that you're taking a balanced approach between you know, what we'd call maybe personal enrichment courses and courses that are going to be more career path options for you. Look beyond the bare minimum requirements though to get your degree, right, Like, you can't just show up, take the basic classes, barely get your degree and expect to graduate from college and

have a job just completely land in your lap. It kind of goes back. It's I mean, it's economics essentially, Like more and more folks are taking out loans in order to go to school, and so there's this flood of college graduates in the job market and that makes that degree that much less valuable to folks, which is why folks are pursuing even higher levels of education, right,

like higher degrees. But if you are making the most of your college experience with extracurriculars, with the classes that you're taking, maybe it's a liner ways to make you stand out. Well, that's definitely gonna be a way to

make college worthwhile. Yeah, I agree. And another way to really make yourself stand out on the application front, but also help you as you're trying to figure out what you want to do while you're in school is to pick up relevant part time work or do an internship over the summer in an industry that you want to be a part of. Not only does that experience give you a leg up when you're trying to land that first job, right seeing work experience is one of those

crucial things that employers want. And so many people graduate from college without any because they never did an internship and never took part time work in the field. But if you can do that, you've got a leg up on most of the people that you're applying against. But also, like I said, it allows you to get a fuel for that industry before committing for complete years worth of

tuition towards that degree. How much better would it be to realize that you don't really actually want to be an industrial engineer right after just your freshman year because you did an internship that summer after versus at the end of four years of schooling. That is nice to know ahead of time. And I know, Matt, for me that my internship, I I credit my internship with so much in where I'm at in my career. Literally, the place where I interned is the place I still work

thirteen years later. You're a lifer, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been there a long long time now. And the gold Watch yeah yeah. Well, and a lot of the skills, like I said that I learned that that were necessary I learned in the internship. And if I had just graduated with a degree, without that history with the company and without the skills I picked up during that internship, man, I would have been a flop in the job market. I really think. I mean that was that was crucial

for me, and it was completely unpaid. It's not like I made any money, but it was still like the most valuable thing I've ever done. Yeah, that's one thing I'll credit certain tech schools with I went to U g A, and so I don't want to credit Georgia Tech with anything basically except for being bad football exactly. But they their internship programs, like in Georgia Tech and just the different technical schools like like Clemson. I know, when you can go to school for a semester and

then intern for a semester. They've got that system where you kind of bounced back and forth. That is so stink and art man. I think that's just brilliant because for all the reasons you said, it just gives students an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience in the actual field before graduating and before kind of being thrown out into the wild, you know, expected to land yourself a job.

But Joe, I need to admit, while you had an amazing internship experience right where you you know, you got an internship and that landed you the job you know that you've been at for the more than the past ten years. I didn't intern and instead I did fun things like work at summer camps up in the woods of North Carolina. Because that was awesome at the time.

And here's the thing, I don't regret that at all. Well, that's honestly, that's good stuff just for building yourself right as you're pouring into other people, your your self enrichment that we're kind of talking about earlier. If that stuff is honestly is is just as good in so many ways. On a resume as an internship. I'm saying it's probably good idea to do both. Yeah, Well, that that's what I was gonna say, is that having that balance, I

think is incredibly important. While yeah, there's a lot that I learned. There's a lot of self enrichments from you know, being at this awesome you know boys outdoor summer camp. There's a lot that you learned, you know, if when it comes to leadership and just like life skills and like survival skills being in the woods, like backpacking with these third graders, but taking a more balanced approach because I got to the end of my senior year and man,

I didn't really have a plan. Whereas my roommate he had interned that I think the previous two summers, uh, both times in New York within the advertising industry, and guess what, man, he had a job lined up ready to go, and I remember thinking, crap, I'm just gonna go back up to North Carolina for another summer and have a blast. But after that, I've got no clue

what I'm gonna be doing. And so, like so many things in life, and like so many things we say on this podcast, I think taking a balanced approach to that is the most important thing to do. On that note, by the way, if you're looking for kind of some guidance, if you're not sure what it is that you want to do, if if you're lacking a little bit of direction, I think he can be helpful to to meet with professors,

to actually go to their office during office hours. How many students completely disregard that they don't even think about going to see a professor to ask some questions. And sometimes you can get hooked up with so many different things and that can be such an enriching experience, not only relationship building, but they have access to internships, jobs, so many different things on campus that could be beneficial to you in in growing your resume and growing your

possible future career. So yeah, meeting with professors that you feel connected to, that you feel like can be really helpful in that process. And also, don't forget to visit your college's career services department, and don't wait until your senior year. Be thinking about your future employment while you're in the process of getting your degree. And if your college has a career services department, that can be so helpful in helping you to assess potential possibilities. And Joel,

so you just mentioned senior year. Now imagine you're kind of in that final semester you're looking towards job opportunities, right, Be careful though, of that first job that you take after graduation. Oftentimes your most recent job experience right out of school, that can be defining and it can hurt

job opportunities moving forward. More than graduates take a job that doesn't require a degree, and one in five of those are still in that boat ten years later, you know, And maybe you love your job, and so you don't have any plans to leave that job even if it didn't require a degree. But just be aware that a lot of times that first job that can sort of set the course of your career. Yeah, man, And and it's not even just in regards to pay, it's in

regards to what you want to do. And so my first job out of school was for another radio station down the street that I worked at for a while, and to be honest, it was part time and it wasn't for very much money. But I was like, this is what I want to do that. Yeah, I have to get my foot in the door. Do it. Within two weeks, the morning show radio producer quit and I was this green, like twenty one year old kid, and I was like, I can do it. I'll do it.

And I probably did a terrible job, but I learned so much and I still got paid very little, but man, it was like this perfect thing to have on my resume. It was this perfect growth opportunity. And I could have settled for something that made me more money in a field that I just didn't care about, or that still used my degree, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. But that first step was so important and it doesn't

take long. Man. Sometimes you gotta pay your dues and it's kind of and you might have to spend a year or two kind of work in that morning show shift that sucks and completely ruins your your sleep habits. You might have to do something like that in order to kind of get where you want to go. And for for me, it was totally worth it. What time did you have to get up for for that show? Gosh, so it was the show was on from five to eight, but I had to be there at like three fifteen.

So yeah, yeah, I probably would have been fired because I would have rolled in at like four or five, thinking I was there earlier. But it's like no, man, like the show started, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you're fired. Yeah, so early. And you know we mentioned advanced degrees, right, but here's the thing, they are even a bigger gamble. Pursuing an m b A. Getting your masters or doctorate can be expensive and often it doesn't result and that

higher salary that you hoped it would. Obviously, you're likely to see that bumping salary if you're getting your m d or you know, your j D going to law school. But for the rest of the advanced degrees out there, make sure and know that you'll be making more. If not, and you still want that degree, just accept the fact that you're going to get that degree for yourself. It might be worth it to you, right, but it's not gonna be worth it from a dollars and cents standpoint. Yeah,

And that is a difficult thing to weigh. Right. If you know you're taking on a lot of student loan debt and you're gonna have to be paying on that for for quite a long while, then how do you justify the value proposition if it's something you're doing for personal enrichment and that is something that you kind of have to figure out for yourself. I mean, really, we're kind of talking more about the nuts and bolts of spending money to make money when it comes to college.

But there are certainly some people who decided to go back and get a degree because it's really really meaningful to them, and that I completely understand. But in that vein mat I would also tell people to to think about investing in themselves through some awesome free avenues out there. It doesn't always take going back and paying to get

a forty or fifty education. There's so many ways that if you're just doing it for personal enrichment, that you can get access to that information elsewhere and avoid the fty price tag. Yeah, Juel, you may not have you know those letters by your name by taking courses online, some courses online for free, but a lot of times you will have the you know, those gained skills like the increased skill set for free by taking classes online.

I just made up my own letters and put them next to my name, and people are like, oh, like I must be smart. It works out really well. How do money, jewel ABC? It's like, well that those are the first three letters I thought of X Y if I'm down. Something I am excited that we're gonna discuss too is whether or not a degree is necessary for entrepreneurship. And we're gonna get to that right after the break. All right, Matt, we're back and we're gonna talk about

entrepreneurship here in just a second. Do folks that want to be entrepreneurs need a degree? That's a really good question. But first, Matt, let's talk about the intangible benefits of college. I think it's it's something that we know deep down in our head that the college experience wasn't all about the degree. It was about the friendships we made. It was about all these other intangible things that are kind of hard to put your finger on, especially when we're

talking about a cost benefit analysis. Right, These benefits that it's it's really hard to put on paper. It's really hard to assign a dollar amount of value with are are still beneficial are still really important in your college experience, right, So, so one is the connections that you end up making, the friends in the network that you make while you're

in school, Well, they're not only fun. You're not only creating lifelong friendships from your college experience, but those connections can have employment ramifications immediately after school and then further down the road in life. And in my mind, man, I feel like that's the number one intangible of college. As you grow your friend group in school, you're also kind of creating your first network really of folks that you might reach out to later on or that might

reach out to you. It's funny. I work with a couple of people that I went to college with actually at the station that we're getting the degree. At the same time, I was these are friendships to kind of stick with you. There are people that you're gonna see throughout your career as you work in the same field. And those are just meaningful, important relationships that are forming.

And if you don't go to college, you don't get that. Yeah, and you know that that's one of the things that colleges often tout right, like they're always talking about the alumni network. I'm constantly getting things from Georgia basically trying

to get everyone to stay connected. And it's so true, right like, even from an entrepreneur standpoint, not a job opportunity, but as the business owner man, so many of the initial jobs that we received were because of the friendships that we had made, right, these connections, And so it doesn't just apply to you know, the corporate world where you're looking, you know, for someone to make an introduction to their boss, you know, for a position that's opening up,

but it also applies to you if you're gonna hang your own shingle, they might actually hire you because of those relationships, and that obviously is incredibly valuable. Yeah, another kind of intangible benefit of going to college is the secondary skills that you learn. College can teach you interpersonal skills, it can teach you work ethic, and it can teach you how to wake up early. I don't know about you, mat those A A M classes they were a pain.

Were they're prepping you for that four am wake up call? Uh? They didn't quite prep me for that. It took a lot of just inner strength really to get me through that. But seriously, what time are you going to bed in order to get up at three in the morning. Oh man, it was terrible. I would try to go go to bed at ten uh and and wake up at at like two, but still like five hours of terrible. I would have to take a nap every day, a couple hour nap every afternoon. It was just the worst schedule

for your health. Man, It's it's not healthy. I felt like a zombie most of the time. But but those secondary skills, man, I feel like those expand your horizons and they can help teach you how to learn, which is such a crucial skill for future growth. We do learn how to learn as kids and teenagers, but it's a lot different when you're without your parents, without your high school teachers who are getting after you to study

and do well. When you're in college, you're in a hundred person lecture hall, you quickly learn whether your motivations have been internalized or whether they're purely external. And so I think, Matt, you're kind of putting yourself to the test in college in this way, and not that not be doing the same thing if you skip college and you go straight into kind of a forty hour work week.

But there's this element where you are able to develop these these secondary skills as you're going to school, not just the primary reason you're going of of of learning, of getting a degree, but it's those secondary things that that are kind of growing you as a person at the same time. And let's not forget to mention that college it's fun, right, Like fun is a terrible reason to take on just a boatload of debt, but that

college experienced. Man, This college years are so memorable, right, But something to consider though, is like a gap year spent traveling and working abroad that could give you something really similar or maybe even better. But Matt, I completely

resonate with this note. College was so much fun. I feel like I was always going out on the weekend with some friends to go for a hike, or play some really really crappy golf course, or play some disc golf, or just the ridiculous stuff that you do, you know, between classes. Completely like, I'm looking back now and I think, man,

life was so easy back then. Once you get into the real world and you have responsibilities in a job where you're waking up at two forty five on the morning to go to work, you think, man, I was such a wuss for thinking in eight am class was early, right, because that's the boat I was in. Man, I didn't sign up for any eight am classes after my freshman year because I had such a difficult, such a hard

time getting to them, so spoiled. But a lot of that has to do with the fun experiences that you do have, and so I don't want to discount those countless hours of of having a blast, all right. Best example for me of having fun in college with my with my friends was one time it's snowed on campus. My buddy Travis had a pair of skis. So what we did was we had a fifty ft electrical cord.

We slammed one end in the back of my trunk, we held the other end, put the skis on, and we drove my old school Toyota Cameray all the roads around campus and we did skiing at like and it was it was so much fun. It's that kind of stuff that like only happens in college, that kind of like ridiculous stupid creativity. Yeah, man, I would have been right there with you if I was at the same

school as you, and I've got a similar story. Actually, I think it's maybe unfortunate that both of our memorable stories have to do with an automobile mixed with something that should not be associated with an automobile. Do we need to insert a disclaimer here? Yeah, I used to do this thing again, going back to the early classes. I would sleep right up until like a couple of

minutes before my class would start. And I lived really close to campus, and I lived up hill from campus, and so what I could do is literally roll out of bed, throwing our shirt, grab my bag, stumble outside, half asleep, get on my bike, and start peddling in the direction that I know I needed to go. But so what I learned was that my roommate he was also going to class at the same time, but he had to drive because he had a class, you know,

on the complete other side of campus. It just worked out better for him, and we got into the habit of doing this thing where I would ask him for what I would call a toe, and he would roll down the passengers side window in his car and I would grab onto the side of his car and he would take off and we would go zooming down the hill and we would hit thirty miles per hour, and that momentum would pretty much take me all the way to the student learning center without having a pedal, So

that will also wake you up really quick, right, yes, and get the journaline flowing. I would show up at class, you know, with that one blown Look. It was great Now that we're in our mid thirties, were so much wise, But we would never do something stupid like that, or would we? Man? Back then, I wasn't even wearing a

helmet either like that. That's another thing that was so dumb. Yeah. Man, that's the thing when you're in your like late teens, early twenties, like you just make a lot of stupid decisions. And those were a couple of ours. But you know what good memories we made it through. Yeah yeah, all right, Matt,

let's talk about win college doesn't make sense. I think it barely made sense for us based on the stories that we just felt him right, right, But I think it must be said if you're Bill Gates or your Steve Jobs, that in college doesn't make sense for you for sure, Right, just keep tinkering in your parents garage whatever it is. But for real, most people aren't going to be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. You're not going

to start the next behemoth tech company. But there are some reasons to bypass a college degree, and let's talk about those now, Matt. One is if you really want to pursue entrepreneurship in particular, I think it makes a whole lot of sense if you take a gap year and you give yourself a little bit of an opportunity to see where that year takes you before you decide

to enroll in higher education. So if you're taking that year after school and you're using it as an ability to kind of let your creative mind flow and give yourself an opportunity to start something, I think that can be a really interesting way to at least see whether entrepreneurship is a better idea for you than going to school.

I completely agree and resonate with that. Right, Like, we are so oftentimes so booked that we don't have the time to be creative and to like sort of allow our minds to wander where we can pursue something that we're really excited about. But you know, you you just mentioned Steve Jobs and and Bill Gates. They didn't know that they were going to create these massive companies, right, But what they did know, though, is that they loved

electronics and computers, and that became their focus. When you have such a clear vision of what it is that you want to do, it may not be necessary to spend the time and money in undergrad exploring your options and learning something that you might already know how to do. Those guys are outliers. But for every Steve Jobs, there might be thousands of folks who know that they want to say, get into real estate. You know, you don't have to be really smart, you don't have to be

a genius to to get into real estate. Hey, take it from true non geniuses. You are in real estate, dable in real estate. And for every Mark Zuckerberg out there, there are gonna be countless of folks who already know how to take amazing photos, or they know how to sell a cool innovative product, or they know how to build great websites. Right, and you can do all of

those things without a degree. So I guess what we're sort of getting out here is that, like, you don't necessarily need to have a degree in order to be an entrepreneur, You don't need a degree if you already have focus. Yeah, man, I completely agree. I think you know it would be interesting to bring our friend Grant Sabatier back on the show. We had him on quite a while back, and he wrote a great book called

Financial Freedom. But I've heard him tell the story about starting to make websites for a law firm I believe it was, and he just he made one and they liked it, and they paid him like way too much money to make a second one, and so he just kind of was like, oh, wait, this is a really good place for me to be this is a good space for me to be in just making websites for people. He kind of learned it on the fly and decided to and after doing one he started to develop the

knack for doing it well. And it's just kind of one of those things where if you do allow that time, if you do give yourself an opportunity, if you search for that opportunity, entrepreneurship, that word has kind of taken on a lot of baggage, I think over time. Really being an entrepreneur is being a go getter and trying things out and seeing what sticks. And so yeah, for Grant, he tried something out and it's stuck and it ended

up doing well for him for a long time. And I think if you're willing to at least give it a shot, than someone who truly desires to take that entrepreneur route, well, and they might be better or served by not getting a college degree. Also, let's say you have a different kind of smarts and skills. If you prefer to work with your hands, a trade school or apprenticeship might be best for you. You can grow a whole lot in your job in those four years that

your peers are in school. So instead of griding to that idea that you have to go to college, look at the type of work that you enjoy. Heck, you might be like a master plumber or a master electrician by your mid twenties and have zero debt hanging over your head, making a really good living in the exact sort of profession that interests you. It's just all about,

kind of like what you're into. We're all created differently, we all have different things that were Like I'm like, I could not be an electrician man if I went over to do this, Like, I would not take this advice for myself because it's just not something I'm skilled at. I'm not really good with my hands. I have a little better with my mouth, like, that's just kind of I don't know, that's what I was gifted with, right, So I'm gonna use what's the radio path? Yeah, there

we go. So that's like the that's that's what I'm gonna use. But I think it is important to to assess your own smarts, your own skills, like what are you good at and kind of let that determine the path that you take, because for a lot of folks, college makes the most sense, but for for a lot of other folks it doesn't. And one other time that a college degree may not make sense for you is if your degree costs too much money. If you're gonna be graduating with more debt than you can hateal, you

should reconsider student loan debt can haunt you. You can't get rid of it even in bankruptcy, So make sure that you are proceeding with caution, and a good rule of thumb to consider is to not take out a debt load that is going to be higher than you're expected to first your salary, and make sure that you're being realistic as well, right, like, don't set yourself up for failure by you know, envisioning the most optimal high

salary that's sort of out there. And so for instance, like a journalism major, they make them out thirty eight thousand dollars on average. So make sure that you're not taking out more than thirty eight thousand dollars for that journalism degree in undergrad Yeah, no matter how fun those four years are and no matter how fulfilling the work is.

When you get out of school and you start your career, well, if you have a job that's gonna pay you around thirty eight thousand dollars in your salary is probably gonna rise at the rate of inflation. Well, if you have nine thou dollars in student loan debt, it's gonna be such an albatross or around your neck that it's gonna put a stain a blight on those years that you were in school and on the actual day to day

of of what you're doing. And so I think that's why that's such an important rule of thumb for people to to really heed, to really pay attention to. Don't take out a debtload that is higher than you're expected first year salary. That's going to keep you in that range where you can actually afford the payments on that student loan debt and it's not going to have an

insanely negative impact on your quality of life. Yeah, and this next point is going to go out to all the parents out there, or maybe all the soon to be parents, But start having the conversation about, you know, the burden that student loans can create, so that your

kid can make an informed decision. Don't saddle them with the expectation of going to college, especially without preparing them financially or at least, you know, giving them the financial knowledge to know how to approach student loans and to look at them, you know, in a reasonable way. Just think about like when your kid turns sixteen and they're

you know, they're looking at cars. Well, if you ask them maybe what car that they want, they're gonna say some amazing car that might cost a lot of money that goes really fast that you know, it's gonna be a terror idea for sixteen year old. Granted that this is a maybe a bad analogy, right because a car is not the same thing as a college education. A college education you are investing in yourself, whereas a car

just depreciates. But that being said, we label college and higher education as this sort of golden thing that it doesn't really matter, Like you can forget the costs and you know, the cost don't matter. You're investing in yourself that sets you for the rest of your life. So what we are saying though, is that it is important to consider the costs. We need to be reasonable with how we're taking on student loans and the financial implications

that they have on our futures. Yeah. Man, I think one thing I would say to the parents in kind of the conversations with their kids surrounding college and future and stuff like that, if I'm creating a recipe, I would say, three quarters of a cup of hopes and dreams and one quarter of a cup of let's be

real about the cost. If you can kind of put that in and and mix it in a bowl, that's going to be your best recipe for for educating your kid and also inspiring them at the same time, helping them to see that they can achieve something great, that the job they truly aspire to is within their grasp, but that there are also just really smart ways to go about it where they're not completely mortgaging their future

in order to do that. But so, yeah, I would say, three quarters of the hopes and dreams one quarter of the dose of reality when it comes to the cost of school and talking about the cost benefit analysis of what this education is going to mean. In my mind, that's kind of a good way to to think about your conversations going forward. Nice man, I like your your little recipe there. I'm like the Polladine of talking about

college costs. All right, let's takeet back to the beer we had, Mexican Lagger, which is a beer by st Archer out in California. What were thoughts on the beer mat? Yeah, well, I've never challenged myself to sort of dissect what sort of Mexican style Lagger tastes like. Right, so this is certainly the most thought that I think I've ever given to a beer in the style. But that being said, because it's a Logger, it kind of does have that sort of rice aroma, kind of got like a fresh

pot of rice going on. It just has a certain smell to it, And I little up in your house, dude, I love rice. This perspects your childhood, it does, but it's like this rice aroma and it kind of has this dry weedingness, and there's also like this dry bitterness as well. That kind of reminds me of like a rubbery bouncy ball, you know, like when you're a kid and you go to the mall and you kind of have those multi colored bouncy balls or face from sort

of pink to blue, and they bounced super high. Oh yeah, I got in trouble in the aisles playing with those things the time. What's the deal? You drop it once and it bounced the straight up, but then the second bounce always shoots it like forward, and then it bounced straight up again, and then it shoots forward again. It's something like they just seemed to go like all every which one. I can never figure out how it did that. I think it was something with a spin, but it

always fascinated me anyway. But you know the way that those balls smelled, that's what Mexican loggers sort of remind me of, you know what I'm talking about? Um maybe, oh no, I tell't no true. Like I thought, finally I was gonna break through and you're gonna agree with me on this sort of weird tasting palette. No, man, you have you have a palette that is completely unique, and I appreciate that about you. I did not get that, but but maybe it's Honestly, it could be that my

tongue is completely unrefined. I don't think it's refinement. I think I just put everything from my chidhood in my mouth, so I know I know what things like as a kid. Well that's good to know, how about you? So all right, Well, first off, I'm not completely sure what the differences between a Mexican logger and an American logger. Actually looked it up, and everybody kind of has their own take on what the difference is, and it doesn't seem that there's much

consistency in it. But I thought this was a pretty tasty little logger. It was dry, it was clean, It tasted like the air south of the border. It um it really was, man, it was it was really nice. I enjoyed it. Like we mentioned at the beginning of the show that loggers or something that we're drinking a little bit more of because we are drinking so many big, bold,

just kind of crazy beers, which I love. I don't often get tired of them, but but every once in a while, like my neighbor brought me a farmhouse logger the other day, and it was just it hit the spot. Man. It was so good because it was it just gave my mouth kind of like a break, you know. It's just really a nice little palate cleanser. Yeah, there are these little notes in there that I can really appreciate without it being over the top and just like putting

my tongue into like some like stranglehold, you know. But yeah, so this was fun taste, this tongue a nice break from the ordinary. So yeah, thanks to the folks at st Archer for sending this br away. All right, Joel, let's go ahead and share some final thoughts and sort of in summary, if you do decide to go to college, just make sure that you are doing everything you can to lessen your eventual debt load while at the same time maximizing the impact that higher education will have on

your career. At times, it might be tough to kind of find and strike that balance, but I think if you can sort of enter college and complete college with that in the forefront of your mind, you're going to be in a much much better place financially. Yeah. Man, I think if we're asking the question is college worth it, well,

the answer is actually in every individual's hands. Really because the price point, the earning potential in the experience is going to be different for every single one of us as we're determining where we go and what we want to do and what we want to study. So is college worth it? Well, the answer is truly in how you go about it. Like I said, if my college degree came with a much much higher price tag, then

it likely would not have been worth it. And so running a cost benefit analysis and figuring out how you can lessen the cost while increasing the value that is going to be a recipe that makes college worth it for a lot of folks that want to pursue a traditional higher education as their path. All right, buddy, I think that's gonna do it for this episode, and we will have show notes up on our website at how to money dot com. We've also got some other articles

up there, so take a look. And here's the thing. If you want to support our show, we would love for you to leave us a review if you haven't already. When you leave a review, and when you give us a rating over on Apple podcast, that helps to sort of spread the word of how some money and what we're doing over here. So taking thirty seconds to to leave us a quick review, a solid rating that helps

us tremendously, and much thanks in advance. Alright, buddy, until next time, Best friends asked friends out