I'm Jeannie
Burlowski. I'm an academic strategist with 25 years of experience
helping students apply to highly competitive graduate schools
and now my focus is helping younger students not just get to dream
colleges but get to dream lives.
So I started out in test preparation and so I was helping students create
well-reasoned application essays.
Well, pretty soon there was a line going around the corner
from my office at Kaplan
and my husband said, "why don't you go and open your own office?"
So I did that.
When my first baby was on the way,
right
about a week before he was born,
I discontinued all the Kaplan teaching
so I was only left with this consulting practice where I could
completely schedule my own hours.
I made staying home with my kids my priority
and I just saw clients in my consulting practice in the evenings.
I've been in this consulting practice for 25 years.
One day I met Cindy Mattson and Cindy Mattson said to me, "I help students
by using three career assessments
so they choose only the schools that are really going to help
them get where they want to go."
I heard this and I thought, "this is one of the best strategies I've ever heard
of for saving $50,000 on college costs."
I want people who could never afford to do this on their own or hire a
consultant to have access to the best, very highest level of information.
And I realized that the way I'm going to be able to reach parents is with a book.
And the transition for me was slow.
I'm still consulting many hours a day
and then at the same time I am writing
book chapters as fast as I can.
My kids were young at this time.
I was a stay-at-home
mom.
I spent years trying to get a publisher interested in picking up this book.
I stalled out and I was not making the money that I could have been.
When I finally decided to take the publishing reins myself,
that's when things really took off for me.
So yes, there was a loss of income.
However, my husband and I had established this pattern
years before we ever had kids.
We think it's fun to live frugally far beyond our means, and we invest the extra
and so we live on only a small portion of our actual income.
The very first step for a family that becomes interested in debt-free college
is to feel hope that there are ideas that don't involve saving up money in advance.
Even if you have a child that's in 12th grade, it is not too early to get started.
My best advice plan ahead for dual-enrollment.
This is where students take real college classes for real
college credit in high school.
Parents ask me about college savings.
What it takes is being intentional and deciding how can we live beneath our
means so that we can put extra money away into paying off debt and into
investing and families who do this
are able to grow to a point where they're able to put a little bit of money
into a 529 college savings plan.
It's very important that parents are planning for their own
retirement every single month
and if that means that less needs to go into college savings,
so be it. Because you can borrow money to pay for college, if you absolutely have
to, but you can not borrow money to pay for retirement. No matter your kids' ages,
I suggest three critical conversations to be having on an ongoing basis.
One is,
the value of frugality - the allowance system. You say to your child, "I want
you to manage your own money." They begin to realize pretty quickly how much
things actually cost in the real world.
A second thing is about career goal early-on
so you will know exactly what kind of college you want to go to.
And here's the third one.
What some parents say is,
"We are willing to pay a certain percent of your college experience.
Then we expect you to pay the rest of it."
One thing you can really encourage is that your kids should work for money while
they're in high school and put aside a portion of that money into investments
so they can learn about what compound interest is
and part of that can be in the end college savings.
I put all this in information together because I was worried about the people
out there, who their incomes were not high enough to just be able to write
a check to pay for college. The most rewarding
part of all this, it's when I get to hear back from the people that
I've helped, it makes every year of sacrifice completely worth it.
If there's anything I'd say to any mom who wants to start a business,
it's that you know how to love people.
And if you will love your potential customers in that same way, that's
going to make an irresistible business.