- So, my parents had always told us,
like "If you're going to school,
"you're gonna pay for it yourself."
So I went to the scholarship office
at the community college I went to.
And at the time, I was under 25,
and if you're under 25,
your parents' income counts against you.
So she told me in order to get any sort of scholarship
or financial aid,
I needed to bring in my dad's tax returns.
So I went in there and I handed her my dad's tax returns.
And she looked at it, she laughed,
handed it back to me,
and said, "I can't help you honey,"
and sat back down and started typing.
And I was just like crushed.
I was like, they can't help me.
I don't have the savings for this.
I knew I was not going to be able to afford
to go to school without a lot of scholarships.
I applied for scholarships like it was going out of style.
Like the debt snowball,
there's kind of a scholarship snowball where
if you have one scholarship
and then you can put that on your next
scholarship application,
it gives you more legitimacy,
and you're more likely to get the next scholarship.
And then on the third scholarship,
you can put that you got two others,
and you're more likely to get the next scholarship.
So that's what I ended up doing.
I got tons of scholarships,
not because I was so much more qualified
than everyone else,
but just because it gave me legitimacy.
Graduating without debt has allowed me to do
so many things in life.
My husband and I have cash flowed a car,
and paid off $30,000 on our house in the last year,
and saved for renovations.
None of that would've been possible
if we were under tons of student loans.
- Whenever my mom sat me down
and talked to me about college,
we started talking about scholarships,
and I kinda thought that was the only option.
Basically my freshman year of high school,
she sat me down and said,
"Christina, I love you and I believe in you,
"but there's just no way that I can support you financially
"once you graduate from high school,
"so you've gotta figure out your own way
"to pay for college."
So she introduced me to scholarships
and told me that if I worked really hard,
that I could get it paid for,
get college completely paid for with scholarships,
so we just kinda went on that journey.
We read every book we could find on the topic.
We talked to alumni who had won scholarships.
We just did as much digging as we possibly could.
So we put together a strategy,
and throughout high school,
I was just really strategic about
what kind of things I did,
making sure I volunteered a lot, which I loved.
I just really built my resume to not only be
enjoyable throughout high school,
but also to stand in the scholarship application process.
I talked to a lot of kids who were freshmen in college,
and they were blindsided by the cost of an education,
and I think that's a really big struggle.
So I always encourage parents to have very real
conversations with their kids about finances early on.
Even if they can't pay for their college education,
and it feels awkward,
just go ahead and have those conversations
so that the kid has enough time to
prepare and come up with different strategies.
I mean, if you spend two hours applying for a scholarship,
and you win a thousand dollars,
that's like making $500 per hour.
That's more money than you're gonna make in
pretty much any other part-time job in high school.
So go ahead and give it a shot,
and put yourself out there.
The fact that I went to college without student loans
has been amazing.
It's allowed me the freedom to build my own business
after college, and if I had debt leaving college,
I wouldn't be able to have the freedom to
pour back into other people
and do something that I'm really passionate about.
- I knew that it's a possibility
you could have student loans,
but in my family, that was never an option.
So it was either go to school and work for it,
or don't go to school and choose something else.
So I did the one thing I said I would never do,
which was live at home and go to school.
Throughout college, I worked and had two to three
part-time jobs, and then by the time
I got to senior year,
scholarships covered my entire senior year.
- Yeah, and I had paid for college.
Well, I've had a job since I was,
or had jobs since I was 14 years old,
and just I've always worked and saved.
My university work, I did it all online
so I was able to work and then do that when I was off.
The way my parents helped me was
providing a place to live through college,
and that's a huge money saver.
I couldn't have graduated debt-free
if I had lived elsewhere on my own or on campus.
- I think in our society and our culture,
parents have a standard that they feel like
they have to meet,
that if they don't send their kid to college,
they're somehow a failure as a parent.
And so I think comparison really creeps in.
And so when it comes to that,
I think that parents need to take a step back
and see what is true success as a parent,
and that's instilling work ethic and generosity
and responsibility into your child.
College is not a promised land,
and it's not a golden ticket to success.
So, who your child is is more important than
them getting a four-year degree.
So our life now as being out of school debt-free,
we kind of sat down.
We've been married for four months.
There's just freedom, and there's just peace.
- There's no pressure of "Can we pay the bills?"
or "Can we pay down our loans and everything?"
You get to choose what you spend your money on,
and choose what to save for.
- Everybody talks about the postgrad life.
You're like, oh my gosh, it's so hard to be in the workforce,
it's so hard.
We were like, this is a breeze.
This is so fun because we don't have to go to school
and work two or three jobs or all that.
It's a break to us, so it's kinda opposite
of a lot of people that we know.
But man, it's a fun life.
- See, I told you.
There is proof that your child can go to college debt-free,
even if you're not able to help.
See, it's an amazing thing.