Hi everyone! My name is Elizabeth and I’m a senior in high school at the moment. My parents (David and Jessica- founders of CollegePathing) have instilled the importance of choosing where I go to college carefully with both myself and my brother throughout our lives. They didn’t want us to be trapped with crippling student loans throughout our 20s and 30s- and I didn’t either. Truthfully, like many of their posts, it’s possible to avoid these loans through not using credit cards and/or finding other options, but the best way to avoid the majority of student debt altogether is something more out of your comfort zone. 

Our family moved to Rome just a few years ago when I was a sophomore in High School. We moved because it was not only a new experience for us but also, a good opportunity for myself. I’ve always wanted to go to college in Europe, but like many other Americans in the US, I was likely to drop that goal for the more comfortable and ‘realistic’ option of going to a state college. I’ve seen my friends who were eager to leave the US and go to Europe for college completely desert this idea, and not because they didn’t want to anymore. Despite the rising costs in college tuition in the United States, many students still don’t quite consider the opportunity to study abroad, but they should. 

One of the main questions I get when asked about what colleges I’m considering applying to is: ‘Wait, so you’re NOT applying to any in the US?’

The answer is a ‘hard pass’ for me. No, even though the US is what I know, I don’t want to pay thousands of dollars that I don’t have to go to a mediocre school when I can pay much less to go to a more advanced one in Europe. And may I remind you that it’s common for universities in Europe to take only 3 years compared to the ‘normal’ 4 in America. In the graph below, I compare the tuition rates of three universities from the US and three that are scattered across Europe. 

And this is JUST the tuition. These costs don’t include the housing, food, books and supplies, research expenses, health insurance, personal expenses, etc. As you can see in the graph above, the three colleges on the left (all based in the US) experience much higher tuition rates than the three universities on the right (all based in different countries across Europe). Though the tuition rates for LSE (a top and prestigious school in London) rival those in the US, you are gaining a new global view as well as an education from a 3 year school that is known as one of the top not only in Europe, but the world. Lund University is based in Sweden and like the Humboldt University in Berlin, courses are taught in English. Even though Americans wouldn’t qualify for in state tuition (EU tuition) unless they are EU citizens as well, the tuition costs are significantly lower and there are significant benefits to studying abroad. 

So what are they? What are the benefits to studying in Europe?

1. Significantly lower tuition costs 
2. An opportunity to study at a prestigious university for much less
3. Learning a new language/way of life/culture
4. Bragging rights 
5. Memories that you’ll take with you forever
6. Getting out of your bubble or shell
7. Making international friends
8. International food (a major benefit for me :))
9. Diverse people and diverse opinions
10. International travel
11. Independence 

I know, I know. I’m aware I’m making it sound much more simple than it probably is for someone to take the plunge and move not only to a different country but a different continent. But if you’re looking for a sign to study in Europe or even apply to one then this is it. A large thing that holds students back, including some of my US friends, from studying abroad is fear. I’ve given you some basic tuition statistics and will do more posts about this in the future for those of you who are interested in this topic. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to you. Whether or not you end up studying somewhere in Europe, I hope I’ve given you this chance to consider something out of your comfort zone. 

Let me know what you think below in the comments and if you have any questions for me then I’ll gladly answer them to the best of my knowledge. If you would like to comment on your own study abroad experience then please do so! It could help you find others like you as well as  motivate others to experience something extraordinary.

Today, parents fight the fight that our students should be able to go to any school they get accepted into, cost be damned. Many students feel this way too. Of course, cost always played into the conversation to some degree when we went to college. However, prices were relatively cheaper in the past.

We benefitted from a less expensive education no matter where we attended. And we passed on this notion to our students to feel like with their hard work, they could go to any school they choose to. Unfortunately, those days are past. The cost of an undergraduate education has risen so much that parents and students have to have hard conversations going forward.

The student’s hard work in high school now becomes more about establishing a strong work and financial ethic for the future at any college – even one they never intended on their list. That’s because the cost of college means we can’t just go anywhere if the future cost is so great that it undermines the student’s ability to save and build wealth.

And that’s what we are talking about here. We’re seeing students coming out of undergraduate college with large debt loads. And some of those students will go on to get advanced degrees and stack on even more debt.

We can run the numbers and look into the future to see what this will mean for the student. And for students borrowing large amounts of money, the future doesn’t look good. As soon as they step foot off campus with their degree, the student loan clock starts ticking. They’ll see what the total monthly payment is for the next ten years. If they’re lucky, they’ll land a job that pays enough to allow them to make the entire payment each month and still have money left over after all other bills. But for a number of these students, the high monthly payment means they will have no choice but to pull the trigger on a loan consolidation or refinancing and extend their term out from 10 years to 15 or even 20 years into the future.

And all during this time, they will wage a war in their minds as to whether it’s good to just make just the monthly payment and try to save separately or use all reserves to accelerate payoff of the loan. That assumes there is money left to save.

Budgeting will be critical if any student with high debt is to weather this period successfully and come out okay. Many students will likely take years to learn and implement the value of budgeting. In both circumstances, students will suffer from the fact that they can’t save at levels they really need to build for a healthy retirement until much later when they have to make up ground for years lost due to student loans.

As parents who care about our students, we have to help them see the hamster wheel in front of them and make choices that allow them to avoid stepping into it as much as possible. We need to help them to see that there is a smarter way. Unfortunately, it requires tradeoffs, some sacrifices and delayed gratification. We may not be able to save them from all of the pain but we can arm them with the perspectives they need to make decisions that lessen the adverse side of the college experience – paying greatly for it later.

I remember when I was a student at Arizona State University and had the opportunity to get a credit card. I signed up right away and was given an initial $600 credit limit. I’d like to tell you that I paid the card off each month like clockwork so that any interest accrued was next to nothing. I’d like to tell you I was diligent in making payments in the first place but I wasn’t. I’d like to tell you I kept my balance very low at any time but truth was, I charged right up to the limit. I was a bit careless with my money because I didn’t budget. When I had money come in, it was spotty in terms of timing. And combined with my habits of eating out and overextending my bank account through costly ATM withdraw and overdraft penalties meant that I was living a student life of pizza one week and top ramen the next.

Now, you might say, “Hey, that’s not me. I wouldn’t do that.” And in fact, if you took the statistics from Sallie Mae’s Majoring in Money 2019 report, you might say my behavior was in the minority. Because most students indicate they are smart with their money with 72% saying their pay their monthly bills on time. Meanwhile, an astonishing 84% say their want to grow their “financial know-how.”

However, 57% of students have a credit card. Why? And is it a bad thing?

Having a Credit Card to Establish Credit

58% of the students in the study with a credit card indicated that they got a credit card as a way to establish a good credit rating.

We can’t but ask why establishing a good credit rating is so important for a student at this stage in their lives. Are parents suggesting this? In fact, the survey says 30% of parents of students with credit cards are suggesting it. Are credit card vendors saying this from their booth at the front of the school bookstore? Are other students repeating it and the message gets passed on over and over? We have no way to know.

As a student, why are you focused on creating a good credit history? Why not instead, start your adult life with an attitude that any debt is bad and that any choices to incur debt are well reasoned? Wouldn’t it be better if the student was smart at budgeting their expenses each month and avoided taking on any debt that carried such a high interest rate?

The truth is that other payments you make can contribute to your building a solid credit rating that don’t mean having a credit card. For instance, monthly payments on a lease, utilities or other monthly charges can contribute to the history on your credit report.

Establishing Your Credit Through a Credit Card Isn’t Free

If your sole reason for having a credit card is for establishing credit, is it worth it when rates can be from 17% to 25%? When your first priority is studying and doing well in school, why are students so fixated on credit cards in the first place when they come with such a high cost.

As an example, for this post, we visited Capital One’s website and searched on “student credit card.” Here’s the top result. Thanks to Regulation Z by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, credit card advertising has strict rules on disclosing APR rates and other fees. If you didn’t gulp at that interest rate, you should have.

You need to be asking yourself whether paying up to 24.99% interest to effectively borrow money is worth it. Or, if you practiced sound budgeting, you wouldn’t pay an interest to use your own money.

Credit Cards Build Rewards Toward Purchases

Ah, the rewards cards. Yes, we know them too. Whether it’s free airline miles or cash rewards, they make for attractive enticements to get a credit card for many Americans. However, are they really worth it?

It depends on you. If you’re someone who will pay off your balance each month without fail and avoid costly interest charges, then you can make the case that the rewards may give you real value back. However, if you’re not that person, then be prepared that the charges you incur more than make up for the rewards you get later. Ask yourself if the risk involved in getting the rewards is worth any extra cost that would accrue that would more than overtake the value of the rewards themselves.

And let’s take a look at what rewards you might earn for your spending. Here’s a calculator Capital One placed on their web page advertising their Journey(R) student credit card.

For all the spending you would have to do and the risk and interest you take on, is it worth it to spend $6,000 over 12 months and only get back $75?

Just for the record, 60% of students with a credit card indicated they pay off the balance each month. We hope so but we’re a little dubious as to this high result. Regardless, the bigger point is why have credit cards at all instead of budgeting when the average card balance cited by students was $1,183.

2+ Credit Cards – Are You Serious?

In the Sallie Mae study, 68% of students that cited having a credit card also cited having more than one credit card. In fact, the average number of cards for card holders was 5.2 though the median was 2 cards. When asked why, students chose “Improve My Credit Score,” “Earn Rewards or Different Rewards,” and “Serve Different Purposes (i.e., one for every day, one for emergencies)” as their top reasons in order of importance.

We were astounded why students would think having more than one credit card would be necessary at all. Even if we assume that some students may be older, married and/or have families to support, we wouldn’t expect the results to be so high in this case.

By the way, the average credit balance of $1,183 cited earlier rises to $1,423 for the last month’s balance.

The Real Reason for a Credit Card?

Let’s get real. A lot of students think having a credit card is cool. It’s convenient and makes you feel like you have more money in your pocket should you need it. It’s instant gratification as well when you can buy something on the spot whether you have the savings to cover it or not. However, that so-called money ready in your pocket incurs a hefty penalty called interest and it’s somewhere around 18% per year.

Now, in some cases, a credit card may be used to smooth out expenditures, if monies come in unevenly, assuming you pay the balance off every month. Or, if an unexpected emergency charge should pop up. However, how often does this happen and could most cases be addressed by budgeting and having a small emergency fund set aside as well?

We challenge smart students to strive to go to college without a credit card and budget their money instead.

Source: Sallie Mae Majoring in Money 2019 Report

I’m in business and in my opinion, the most damaging behavior a company can do is overextend. Once a business has overextended, it’s hard to reel in the business when times go bad. Countless companies have gone under because they tried to grow too quickly, spreading far and wide, only to see that reach collapse at the first indication of economic trouble. And they seldom recover fully after that.

I can’t help but think schools have done the same thing. They continued to expand their campuses to other sites, built new buildings and sprawled outward rather than replace aging buildings. They expanded their offerings to include just about every field of study you can imagine. And as their costs internally continued to rise, they began to rely heavily on out-of-state and international students to bring in the monies they needed to keep going. And they pulled in loads of new students.

They didn’t act to maintain a focused vision and tight operation. Like in business, we reward a leader who has a vision to grow, leaders of colleges and universities became all about visions of expansive growth of their campuses, growth in the number of students, and growth into a spectrum of ventures that reached well beyond the physical boundaries of their institutions. Of course, much of this is legitimate. However, overextension is a fine line in the sand and not easily seen when vision is only about how far you see.  

Leaders didn’t seemingly prepare for state funding to ebb and flow with the latest shift in the political makeup of their legislatures. Or, take steps to prepare for an economic downturn that comes with some predictability now – the Dot Com implosion in 2000 to 2002, the housing bubble in 2008 to 2010 or the current pandemic – that forces states into the red and then cascades into budget cuts affecting state schools.  

And here we are today where international enrollments are estimated to see a drop of as much as 25% in the coming school year because of COVID-19. Meanwhile, students are hesitating to commit to college in the Fall out of concern whether the campus will be open for business. And not many will want to pay for online schooling at the same rates as in-person study.

There’s no doubt that colleges and universities are getting really nervous. We may see some that fail as a result of the pandemic, something that Americans aren’t used to as compared to businesses failing. After all, when’s the last time you remember a well-known college failing?

And, in my opinion, get ready for the next reality. Schools will start to see a declining number of out-of-state students as students see that attending an out-of-state school is not work 2X or 3X the cost of an education at a comparable in-state school.

Because the cost of a college education is too high. Students and parents have caught on. They may not fully know what to do to offset that cost yet but they are searching for answers and options. We’ll start to see changes in student expectations that demand greater value for lesser cost. And as they do, we’ll start to see the composition of students change across colleges and universities.

Source: “As Students Put Off College, Anxious Universities Tap Wait Lists,” – New York Times, May 1 2020

An advanced degree can bring many benefits. It can lead to higher-paying job opportunities and the ability to save more and build wealth. An advanced degree helps differentiate you from the pack of students who never went to school beyond their undergraduate education.

Unfortunately, the downside can be tremendous too in terms of the cost. Especially, if the cost of your advanced degree was largely financed with student loans. And the result is that in concert with any student loans from undergraduate study, you could be paying on them for well over 10 years.

Let’s give an example:

Imagine you go to college and when you graduate, you have the average level of student loans at $30,000. That doesn’t sound too bad on the surface. Let’s say you have a mix of federal and private student loans and the combined interest rate between them is 5%.

$30,000 at 5% interest over 10 years = $318 Monthly Payment

That payment doesn’t feel too bad. It’s just a little less than what the monthly payment would be for an inexpensive car (less than $18,000).

Then you decide to pursue an advanced degree. Since the cost for an advanced degree can vary widely, let’s say you pursued a Master of Education in Special Education. For the sake of this example, we looked up the cost of tuition at a major state school that specializes in this degree. The program would take approximately two years and tuition would total around $25,000. Now, as you can imagine, parents are less likely to pay for graduate school than they are for undergraduate studies. So, let’s say you managed to offset the cost of living during this time to pursue your degree and what you borrowed essentially equates to another $30,000.

We now have a cumulative payment of somewhere around $650 per month.

Of course, if you deferred your original loan balance during this time, you can imagine that you’ve accumulated interest over that period. On the flip side, you may be able to make more money which can help offset the cost over time.

The question though becomes one of what you can afford. If coming out of graduate school you are able to earn a salary of $48,000 per year, you might find that the $650 per month in student loan payments becomes difficult given all other expenses you have. Now if that advanced degree helped you realize an income $12,000 higher than someone with just a bachelor’s degree, you can see the financial incentive and value. Nonetheless, it’s hardly comforting when you look ahead and see a lot of struggles to make payments. 

Now, imagine if through your college choices you had an opportunity to incur $15,000 less in debt coming out of undergraduate study as compared to $30,000. That means your payment for that portion would be more like $160. And imagine if you were able to reduce the amount borrowed for graduate study to $20,000 through your choices. That would reduce your overall payment even more.

That’s the type of thinking it’s going to take – to look at the bigger financial picture and take actions to reduce the overall burden of college and graduate school to both boost and protect your ability to save in the future. Looking at your college and graduate choices this way doesn’t mean that financial considerations override everything else but they must play a key factor in your overall choices.

Before You Ponder Student Loan Debt, Ponder the Total Cost of College

Student loan debt is only one part of the cost of attending college. You need to calculate the total cost of college across the four years. And that cost is more than just tuition and room and board. You need to factor in all of the other costs that go into attending one school versus another. For instance, if all things else being equal (meaning that if two schools could be identical in all ways), one college required you to have a car while another had acceptable public transportation alternatives, the latter would present a better value as you wouldn’t likely need to incur as much cost as having a car with insurance, gas and parking-related charges.

Looking at the total cost for college is important because its cost has an impact on you and your parents if they are offering to help. For instance, if the total cost for college was $100,000 over four years and your parents had offered to cover that expense, how does that cost affect their savings and ability to retire or pursue any goals they have? It’s only reasonable and mature that a student ask their parent(s) what the impact is to them for paying the level of money.

What if a student wasn’t getting any financial support from parents at all? That $100,000 takes on a whole new meaning in terms of how the student looks at paying for school.

Kick Off a Monumental Funding Drive

The next part of understanding the potential cost is of course, applying for any and every scholarship and grant that the student may be eligible for. This is all about reducing the impact through “free” monies. And don’t rely only on possible funding sources the college might suggest but looking for other scholarships and grants by organizations around the country that you could potentially attract. Every bit helps.

This should be a goal for students and parents alike regardless of how much the parent(s) are contributing. The cost of college is high and there is no reason to leave money on the table that could offset costs for either the student or the parent(s).

Calculate the Amount Needed in Student Loans

Once you have an idea as to the total cost for each college you’re thinking about and the amounts of any scholarships and grants you’ve been awarded (or are highly likely to be awarded), the next step is to see what’s left over for paying. This is where your parent(s) may contribute to the cost of college. Whether your parent(s) do contribute or not, this remaining amount is what you will have to fund and if you have no other resources to pull from, student loans may be necessary.

Assess the Impact of Student Loans on Your Financial Future

Next, you will want to create a budget outlook based on your future earning potential to see how student loans affect the quality of your life and ability to save for the future.

Lenders will always talk about “Debt-to-Income” ratios as a key measure to look at when evaluating an application to lend someone money whether that be for a mortgage, a car or other major purchase. Debt-to-Income is a simple calculation. Say, you borrowed $50,000 through college and your monthly payment at 6% for 10 years = $555. Let’s say you started your career with a job that pays $60,000 gross (before taxes) a year or $5,000 per month. Your Debt-to-Income ratio of student loans would be:

Debt-to-Income Ratio = Monthly Student Loan Payment/Gross Monthly Income

= $555/$5,000

= .111 or 11%

So, in this scenario, your debt-to-income ratio means your student loans make up 11% of your gross income each month.

Is that an acceptable amount if the student had no other debt? Actually, it can be. Though it varies across lenders, anything under a Debt-to-Income ratio below 20% is definitely attractive when considering a prospect for a loan. Sallie Mae cites a range of 10 to 15% of monthly income for general guidance on their website. Our own stances is that 15% is too high so that as long as the student was diligent in making payments and their credit worthiness is good (or at least not flagged as bad in any way), the student won’t be hobbled by student loans when it comes to borrowing for other types of purchases.

But this isn’t the whole story. We also need to look at what the overall cost of living might be too.

For instance, let’s say the student lives in a more affluent part of town and the cost of living is so high that that $555 monthly payment means the student can barely get by. Though the student’s debt-to-income ratio is low, it doesn’t matter one bit if the student is unable to save because their cost of living is too great. A not-so-informed student may consider refinancing their student loans over a longer period to reduce their payments. A smart student may see the need to relocate and budget their spending so that they have money each month left over for savings and possibly to accelerate paying off their student debt.

Look at Student Loans in a Bigger Context

One last perspective here is the combination of the two factors. Let’s use the debt-to-income ratio of 11% again. However, let’s say you do have some money left over because you made better choices in the cost of living and live within a reasonable budget. However, now you’re looking at buying a house. Let’s say the house costs $250,000 and at a 4% interest rate, your monthly payment over 30 years would be $1,194.

Your debt-to-income ratio combining your student loan debt and mortgage debt would be:

Debt-to-Income Ratio = Monthly Debt Payments/Gross Monthly Income

= ($1,194 + $555)/$5,000

= $1,749/$5,000

= .3498 or 35%

Now, you can see how your overall debt-to-income ratio is much higher which is to say more of your monthly income is going toward servicing debt. From a lender perspective, you’re probably in a range where you don’t want to go any higher from a credit worthiness standpoint.

From a quality of life perspective, the student is running the risk of becoming cash tight and less able to save or build wealth given the level of debt servicing. What was once thought to be a reasonable level of student loan debt now feels like it’s constricting the student’s finances. Of course, some level of a mortgage payment is no different than what would be paid in rent. However, the costs usually go higher and include greater property taxes, higher cost of utilities, upkeep and maintenance as well. And then making more money each year can help. However, raises and promotions and the like are partially offset by any rise in costs such as healthcare costs and other increases in the cost of living.

Conclusion

So, in this last example, we hope you see that your end goal should be to minimize the level of student loan debt you incur and its impact on your future ability to save. By taking a methodical approach to evaluating the colleges you are interested in, you will have a window into their overall impact on you and your parent(s). You may still have the burdens associated with student loan debt depending on your end choices, but you can take comfort knowing that you made better choices to make your situation after college bearable versus brutal.

You Can Do This. We Can Help

If all of this seems a little daunting to undertake, this is what College Pathing helps you to do. We apply sound calculations to get at the total cost of college, identify the net impact of any scholarships and grants and parent contributions to get at what if anything, may need to be borrowed, and help you understand the future impact of the cost of college on your ability to save and build wealth when you leave college.

I’ve been doing research lately to understand more about the extent of the problem with student loans and their impact on former students. It’s easy to find lots and lots of articles highlighting the struggles on an individual level of borrowers who are struggling to pay their debt. However, I wanted empirical insights.

What I realized through this process is that there are really very few reliable sources for insights on student loans. And instead of someone and some organizations stepping up to get a better grasp on the state of student loans or publish true statistics (for instance, colleges publishing each year how many of their students took on student loan debt and how much debt they took on), we’re left with an unclear picture at best.

So, I thought I would hit on a couple good stats.

The Good Student Loan Statistics and What We Can Learn From Them

The New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel in concert with Equifax publishes a quarterly capture of all debt owed by Americans. This includes student loan debt (the red band), mortgage debt (the purple band), credit card debt, auto debt and other revolving debt.

We see two things happening in the chart above. First, around 2010, we see the band of accumulated student loan debt start to really take off. There are likely a few reasons for why student loan debt began to take off. If you think back to the 2008 Great Recession, many public colleges and universities saw their state governments slash budgets. This likely put pressure on colleges and universities to raise tuition to make up for shortfalls which in turn, means many students had to borrow more to pay for schooling. Also, it’s likely that many people who were impacted by the recession and lost their jobs enrolled in college at this time.

And then the debt kept accumulating. The concern is that we don’t see, even in the boom economy we’ve been having in the last few years, any discernible drop in the amount of student loan debt. In effect, more is getting added on than being taken off through repayment. And that can make sense if it only takes debt four years to pile on and ten to twenty years to pay it off. Nonetheless, today, we see that Americans hold a staggering $1.63 Trillion in student loan debt and growing.

If you think about the impacts of Covid-19 on the U.S. education system, we’ve likely entered a similar environment as to that of 2008. So, let’s take a look at another chart from the New York Fed.

If one could make the argument that inevitably, we will have growth in student loan debt as more people attend college, this chart raises the alarms on that notion. What this chart shows is that 11% of borrowers are delinquent in their balances by more than 90 days. Notice the rise in the 2010 period that follows the Great Recessionary period.

The takeaway here is that as the delinquency rate rises, the quality of the debt overall erodes. In the past, it was advanced degree holders that made up 80% of all student loan debt. However, these people had a high potential income, strong job prospects and statistics bore out that they were very reliable payers. Today though, this is not as much the case as the cost of college has made it expensive just to borrow for an undergraduate degree let alone tack on an advanced degree.

Net net, that $1.6 Trillion in student loan debt is growing and becoming less and less reliable in terms of credit worthiness. And with the tragedy of Covid-19, it’s likely a safe bet to expect that we’re about to see another sharp rise in the overall default curve as seen in 2010 within the next 1 to 2 years.

What this means for students and parents is that we’ve entered a new period where it’s more important than ever to make smart choices when selecting the right college. Cost absolutely has to play a major factor in the consideration. Choice of majors and actual job prospects and likely salary have to play a major role in the consideration.

Other Statistics That Tell Small Parts of the Story

Often times, we see a statistic on the average amount of student loan debt students have coming out of undergraduate study. By the way, we used this stat too and it’s $29,200 and 65% of students coming out of undergraduate study had taken student loans (The Institute on College Access and Success). However, without richer data sets and tracking, we can’t tell the distribution. We don’t know how many borrowers there are above the average amount or if the average is pulled downward by a sea of small-scale loans or not. Because our fear is that there are many borrowers with a lot more than this amount but that the average is getting pulled down by very small borrowed amounts.

We just don’t know. The other issue here is that on the surface, $29,200 in borrowed monies doesn’t sound all that bad, right? Don’t get us wrong, it’s a lot of money. However, it seems totally surmountable to pay it back in ten or even less years. So, why is our sense that this isn’t happening and we keep hearing about people with a lot more debt, and taking longer and longer to pay it back?

The other side of the coin is that average student loan debt figures don’t tell you anything about the total cost of college including tuition and fees, room and board and other costs not included in room and board. The school might cost $100,000 overall. And if you’re a student with very little parental support financially, you’re going to be facing a much larger student debt. Your debt won’t just be $29,900.

And last but not least, these figures say nothing to the added cost of advanced degrees that may be recommended for your choice of major. So, if you come out with the average and go right into an advanced degree program, how much more debt and interest will you be accumulating on your way to what you hope is a great career?

Where the Uncertainty Leads Us

All of this uncertainty leads to two things in our minds.

First, there needs to be a national requirement for all of this information to be required for collection in a systematic and consistent away across all colleges and universities, and lenders both public and private. And the information needs to be made available to the general public to inform their decision-making as well as policy-makers.

Second, it’s up to the student and parents to understand what’s at stake in taking out student loans and make smarter decisions on their financial future when selecting the right colleges to attend.

We are very excited to announce the creation of College Pathing.

Those of you who know us know we have done this type of thing for families and friends. We are MBAs who naturally think through things from a financial perspective. Being able to put that skill to work to help young adults fina a college path that doesn’t put them at a disadvantage when they graduate.

If you read our story, you know that we learned through our own mistakes. It gives us great joy and satisfaction to help young adults make college decisions with eyes open on how debt will impact them once they get out of college. We didn’t know. Many parents don’t know. And really, how can an 18 year old know without having even been financially independent?

The truth is that financial aid offices offer packages- scholarships, grants, loans and it seems normal. Everyone does it. That’s how you get through college. No one tells you how large your payments will be. No one tells you how it compares to your future income. We believe there is another way.

We believe that today’s young adults heading to college are smart. They are young but they are also adults expected to make financial decisions that will impact the next 10-20 years of their lives. We believe that when given the information, today’s students can make an informed decision.

Our purpose is to make sure our student clients and their parents have a realistic view into what their student loan debt will do to their future. With a little creativity, even students with no financial support from family can look into creative options to keep their debt as low as possible.

We hope that you like what we read. We hope that you’ll become a client. This is a side-hustle for us so our hours will be a little odd. Further, we live in Italy so our timing is off. That said, this is what we do for fun and for personal satisfaction.

We’re here. You can do this and we’re here to help you start college with your eyes open.

Let’s do this!