Ron Lieber 

… AND WHY DO WE AVOID CONVERSATIONS ABOUT COLLEGE ENTIRELY? 

Family conversations around college evoke fears like tumbling down the social-class ladder. They evoke guilt… not having saved enough, not striving enough, or “cheaping out.” They also inspire fears of elitism and snobbery—either your own or that of others.

My friend, Ron Lieber, has been the “Your Money” columnist for The New York Times since 2008. He has written an amazing new book about what to pay for college called The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Roadmap for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make.

Recently, Ron agreed to join a Worldwide Chapter Meeting for The Society of Advice for a conversation about his new book! I talked with Ron about how you can help your clients make better decisions regarding one of the most pressing issues in their financial plan. You know… how and what to pay for college.

Not only did Ron agree to have this conversation, but he also put together content you can use in your email newsletters, on social media, and in blog posts to share with your clients!

What you’ll find below is the full video and some detailed show notes put together by Paul Davies to clue you in on some of the highlights. He even went so far as to cross-reference our conversation with the corresponding Declarations you’ll find within The Society of Advice.

SHOW NOTES

0:00 – 5:38 Carl introduces Ron Lieber and his new book, The Price You Pay for College. Carl explains the usefulness of the book for Real Financial Professionals and their clients… mostly because of how it’s full of “conversation grenades”—thought-provoking topics and questions you throw in a room and conversations break out. Ron tells us which of Carl’s sketches the book probably would not exist without. He challenges the view that questions about education funding are questions about money. They’re not. They’re questions about feelings.

Why is a $300,000 school better than a $100,000 school? Why do we ask how to save or pay for college rather than what to pay for college? Family conversations around college evoke fear, for example, of tumbling down the social-class ladder. They evoke guilt, for example, of not having saved enough, or not striving enough, or “cheaping out.” They also inspire fears of elitism and snobbery, either your own or others’—say, hiring snobs who look only at Ivy League colleges.
See Declaration Ten: We Diagnose Before We Prescribe

“If we can get a hold of our feelings in this insane process that involves giant piles of money and our precious children, then we can have a values conversation about what our families stand for, and what we hope to reach for and spend on, as we launch them into the world.”

5:38 – 10:43 Why do we avoid these conversations? Carl relates how of all topics where it feels like spouses have avoided important money discussions for fear of potential conflict, education funding is top of the list. Ron tells us why this is and how it involves not only difficult conversations about the future but also dredging up difficult experiences from the past.

As Carl explains, education funding masquerades as a simple non-fiction story, but it’s woven throughout with fictional narratives: What did your parents do for you? What do you wish they had done? How did you feel about it then? Or five years after? Or now? What choices did you have? What choices would you like your children to have? What are your stories about Ivy League and state schools? There’s a high likelihood a couple will disagree on at least one of those.
See Declaration Seven: We Tell The Truth
See Declaration Fourteen: We Tell People What We Think

10:43 – 13:36 Carl and Ron talk about Ron’s six-page conversation guide, available for download under the video player above. Ron explains how, drawing on talking to families and schools for years and years, he imagined he would steer a conversation about the best way to pay for college and the right amount to pay for it and turned that into this guide.
See Declaration Eleven: We Ask Really Good Questions

“One of the challenges is to cement long-term relationships and provide value through asking questions that clients would not think to ask themselves. Questions that are not just about money and data but that are about feelings and complex emotions and the things clients care about the most.”

13:36 – 22:09 Ron recaps a story from his previous book, The Opposite of Spoiled, about a man who believed his children should not only know how much money he made, but also what it looked like, so he withdrew his entire monthly salary from the bank in $1 bills—over 10,000 of them—piled them on a table, and showed his children how the pile got divided up. 

Carl and Ron talk about why we find this story so shocking—why are we so reluctant to have serious conversations about money with our families? What do we actually have to hide? Getting families to have conversations about difficult things is at the heart of Ron’s work. Ron argues that children need to know the rules of the game before they begin playing it because this is how you develop an understanding of how the world works and how grown-up decisions get made.

Carl raises the question of children repeating these conversations with their peers and the possible unintended consequences of doing so. How do we handle that? Ron explains why this shouldn’t be a concern and how it usually reflects worries that have nothing to do with the children. Ron gives us a great framework for explaining to children that people who care about what someone has, or makes, aren’t those you want to hang out with and that if they go blabbing about numbers outside the house, people won’t want to hang out with them either.
See Declaration Eight: We Are Professionally Confident
See Declaration Sixteen: We Embrace Reality

“High school grades could be worth $100k in discounts at most colleges in America right now, private ones in particular. Should you tell your eighth-grader about it?”

22:09 – 27:40 Carl asks Ron what an important family dining-room conversation about education funding might look like. Ron repeats his core message about how most families fail to have conversations about what college is and what college is for, rather than focusing blindly on how to pay for it. Good starting points for opening up these conversations include:

• If you went to college, what did you think about the college experience?
• If you didn’t, what do you think you missed out on?
• What did you do well?
• What did you do wrong?

And more… including questions to ask your children about their views. Ron sets out his three broad answers to the question of what college is for and how the question of how to fund it differs depending on the balance of which aspects matter most to you.

“There’s not a lot of research that suggests that people learn very much. So if you’re going to college just to have your mind blown, you actually have to shop very differently to make sure that you’re going to have that opportunity.”

27:40 – 32:03 Ron tells a couple of stories that hint at how the relationship between college and future careers is changing. “The more prestigious the institution, the more the career office sucks.”

32:03 – 34:28 Carl asks: What’s the best way to make a difference to help these conversations happen? How can everyone watching spread the word? Ron invites listeners to talk about these topics in client newsletters or on Twitter, for example. And, of course, Amazon reviews matter! The highest compliment Ron gets paid by Real Financial Professionals is from those that want to buy a signed box of books. This can be arranged through Ron and his local independent bookstore. Ron’s email is in his six-page conversation guide, available for download under the video player above.

34:28 – 40:36 Ron shares his advice for Real Financial Professionals wanting to help the world know they exist. What’s the trick that most advisors miss when it comes to finding prospective clients with education-funding problems and helping to solve them? Hint: it’s not just about general marketing! A lot of prospective clients know who the good people are… but a lot of good people aren’t good at advertising clear solutions to clients' most pressing problems.
See Declaration Three: We Share Our Work

40:36 – 44:41 Carl and Ron discuss “content holes” that influential outlets (e.g., local papers) have to fill. How can you help fill them? How can you become valuable in the lives of these influential people? How do you become a great source of good ideas?
See Declaration Two: We Know Our Opinions Are Valuable

So, that’s a wrap. What a pleasure to talk with Ron about his incredibly useful and important book and to leverage the absolute ton of research that went into creating it.

I hope you found this as valuable as I did.

Again, if you enjoyed this conversation, I know for a fact that you would LOVE The Society of Advice. Much of what Ron and I talked about hinges on concepts we visit regularly on the inside.

If you're curious about the Declarations highlighted above, request your invitation to The Society today!

-Carl