Ever wondered why so many students drop out of college despite societal pressures to stay? Tune into this week's Balanced Blueprints as we unpack the hidden struggles faced by college students. We're thrilled to have Aiden, a high school student shadowing us, bringing a fresh perspective to our discussion. Together, we delve into the benefits of pursuing a career in the trades, offering a pathway not only to personal fulfillment but also to financial success. For graduates wrestling with employment in their chosen fields, we explore strategic methods to leverage existing skills to gain entry into desirable companies, eventually guiding them towards their dream roles.
Our journey doesn't stop at career transitions. We dive into the vital aspects of financial freedom and self-awareness, illuminating the path to achieve both. Discover why sometimes taking less fulfilling jobs can be the stepping stone to future financial stability and career flexibility. Through stories of sacrifice and smart financial choices, we emphasize how living below one's means today can open doors to more meaningful career opportunities tomorrow. This episode is packed with insights on understanding personal patterns and passions, providing a roadmap to align your career with what truly drives you.
Lastly, we tackle the often-overlooked issue of student loans, providing crucial guidance on borrowing responsibly. We discuss the importance of keeping student debt within 50% of your expected income and share practical tips to minimize debt through scholarships and frugal spending habits. We also explore how maintaining physical and mental well-being, including fitness and nutrition, can contribute to financial health. This episode is a comprehensive guide for college students aiming to balance their finances and health, setting the stage for a prosperous future. Don't miss this enlightening conversation designed to help you navigate the complexities of career transitions and financial management.
Ever wondered why so many students drop out of college despite societal pressures to stay? Tune into this week's Balanced Blueprints as we unpack the hidden struggles faced by college students. We're thrilled to have Aiden, a high school student shadowing us, bringing a fresh perspective to our discussion. Together, we delve into the benefits of pursuing a career in the trades, offering a pathway not only to personal fulfillment but also to financial success. For graduates wrestling with employment in their chosen fields, we explore strategic methods to leverage existing skills to gain entry into desirable companies, eventually guiding them towards their dream roles.
Our journey doesn't stop at career transitions. We dive into the vital aspects of financial freedom and self-awareness, illuminating the path to achieve both. Discover why sometimes taking less fulfilling jobs can be the stepping stone to future financial stability and career flexibility. Through stories of sacrifice and smart financial choices, we emphasize how living below one's means today can open doors to more meaningful career opportunities tomorrow. This episode is packed with insights on understanding personal patterns and passions, providing a roadmap to align your career with what truly drives you.
Lastly, we tackle the often-overlooked issue of student loans, providing crucial guidance on borrowing responsibly. We discuss the importance of keeping student debt within 50% of your expected income and share practical tips to minimize debt through scholarships and frugal spending habits. We also explore how maintaining physical and mental well-being, including fitness and nutrition, can contribute to financial health. This episode is a comprehensive guide for college students aiming to balance their finances and health, setting the stage for a prosperous future. Don't miss this enlightening conversation designed to help you navigate the complexities of career transitions and financial management.
Welcome to the Balanced Blueprints podcast, where we discuss the optimal techniques for finances and health and then break it down to create an individualized and balanced plan. I'm your host, justin Gaines, here with my co-host, jon Prober, so in this episode we're going to do something a little different. I have Aiden here with me. He's a high school student, he's shadowing me for the day, and so we're going to get a little bit of the financial perspective as well as some other perspectives from a high school student on what they're thinking about when they go and look at colleges or look at their next career step.
Speaker 1:
And obviously John and I have been through that. We've had two very different paths as far as approaching that. We had two very different college experiences too. I know that we've talked about it at great lengths in our personal lives about how we wish we knew a bunch of stuff that we didn't know going into it and probably would have made different decisions, and, you know, just approach things differently. So this will be interesting to see how you know, flash forward 10 years from when we were making this decision, see if 10 years changes the thought process and the questions, and then hopefully be able to answer them and have a good, good podcast out of it.
Speaker 2:
Well, well, this wasn't my next question, but this transition just seems seamless. So in 2023, there was a 33% dropout rate and in 2021, 28.2% aren't able to find a job in their field of study. How would you advise these people to restart their adult life and progress towards that financial freedom restart?
Speaker 1:
their adult life and progress towards their financial career. So this is where I think people with a degree start to pigeonhole themselves and think that that's the only thing that they can get into. Most jobs that you go into retrain you anyways. So what I would tell these individuals? The dropout situation. In my experience, individuals that drop out tend to drop out because they were forced to get into college, because that's what their school told them to do, that's what their guidance counselor told them to do and, quite frankly, they never should have been there in the first place, because it wasn't where they should have been. They might have had an interest and a passion for working with their hands and they were told you know, you're going to be a failure, You're never going to make it in life unless you go to college. They go there for a year or two. They drop out because they absolutely hate it. The people that are in that spot should absolutely go work with your hands. You are going to make a ton of money and you're going to be just fine.
Speaker 1:
The individuals that have a degree, like the degree that they're in and are trying to be in that field, find ways to sell the skill sets that you have to get into a bit of a job that you can then laterally move into something that more identifies and more lines up with what you're trying to be into. But just try to get into a business that has those careers that you're looking to get into. Sell your skills to get into that business and work in some department and then, once you've built rapport and you've shown your value to the company, telling them that you want to try something in a lateral move is going to be a much easier sell than trying to sell them on you as a whole Once you're in the door. The cost of acquiring a new employee for a business is highly expensive. So if you present to them that you're not really loving the career you're in right now you went to school for X, you want to be in X position.
Speaker 1:
You see that there's job openings in that company for that position. You want to make a lateral move. If you've shown your value of the company, they're going to retain you and move you into that position. It might not be right away, it might take some time, but if the issue is that you're having a hard time finding a degree in your field, one look up the statistic on how many people actually use their degree, and you'll find that it's an alarming rate that most people who go and get a degree do not end up working in that field, and so you know you're not alone. But if you are in a position where that's the field you want to be in, find a way to get into a company that has lateral movement opportunities for you and eventually get into that field.
Speaker 3:
Mine's pretty short here in terms of I'm going to take a nice woo-woo holistic approach like I normally do approach, like, like I normally do it, I would just look at.
Speaker 1:
I think you should maybe go a little longer on this because you have, you have the, you had the degree, but the degree that it would get you isn't the right fit. But now you're you're doing what you're doing in order to get into what you actually want to get into. So I think I mean, honestly, I can talk about theories and concepts of numbers, but I think you have more real life experience with this one that's true.
Speaker 3:
Can you repeat the question? It was harder to hear yeah.
Speaker 1:
So the question was um he rightful, awesome statistics, but there's a large percentage of individuals that went to college and then dropped out within the last five years and then also within the last five years, there's a large percentage of individuals who got degrees and are not in the career okay, are not able to get a, get a job in the career that they wanted to be in based on their degrees I see and then what advice would you give to those people which I feel like the latter part of that is you, where you have a degree.
Speaker 1:
You weren't advised properly, so what you wanted to go into didn't line up with what you actually had. So it's going to be an uphill battle and now you're doing the whole re-education. Try and finding the right fit for you yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
So I'm going to zoom out and say it's all about knowing yourself. It's not about knowing and I. That's even hard to say because I don't even know how you do that at 18, 19 years old. But I was, like Justin said, pretty misguided from the start. I didn't decide where I wanted to go to school in high school, so I wasn't going to go anywhere. My guidance counselor called my parents and said you can't send your son to a community school, which I think is completely terrible and overstepping, because there's nothing wrong with community school. Ours did a two plus two program, so I could have just done it for two years.
Speaker 1:
Save some money when you probably would have what you actually wanted to do if you did two years at way cheaper rate than what you did yes, so that that was.
Speaker 3:
I never knew she did that until years later. I was like that's, that's bad. So I was guided that way. I ended up going to a community uh, not a community college, a suny college, because I guess that's better. Um, so I went to suny. I applied very late. I'm saying all this because to show you how much of a roller coaster, crazy, not guided path it was. I went abroad the first semester ever of my college experience.
Speaker 3:
Came back didn't like the school I was at, transferred to Siena, still didn't know the major I wanted to do. Took a class that I really had interest in, but the school didn't have a major in that interest. They only had a class. Tried to make my own major for it. Found out later on that the USDA, the government, they don't really like your own major, that you need to be like we talked about earlier, play more of their game. You need their grades, their classes. So I just boil it all down to is I didn't know what I wanted. I still sometimes don't.
Speaker 3:
I think it's not about how much money I want to make or what job I wanted people to see me in. I think it's just about what do I want to do, how do I want to spend my time? How do I want to wake up each day and maybe use what I have to help other people? Because I guess, why would you do a job unless you feel like you're making an impact and I am now taking the time I guess what I would suggest people to do is get yourself a decent financial spot.
Speaker 3:
If you found like, okay, I am in the wrong profession or I dropped out or I have a degree I don't want to use, you can't go and explore or figure things out if you're in debt or don't have any money. So I spent probably time after that of building up some money, graduating, paying off school and saving up some money. And now I'm in the spot of rediscovery. And I'm not looking at rediscovery in terms of what job, although I am exploring different jobs but I'm looking at it in terms of, like, what do I want to do for a long time, and that always may change.
Speaker 3:
But yeah, I would say, save up some money and then just don't be afraid to try new things, Things that I saw this yesterday. That was a great thing is you know if you're always wondering what to do or what your purpose is is like we have patterns in life. So now that time has gone by, it's like look back, what do you usually go back to, what do you usually do? Look to those patterns and then you can figure out your job and how to make money from there. But I wouldn't start at start with like what college degree or what job do I want to get. I would just be like who am I?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and also you glazed over it really quickly, and I want to, I want to put some emphasis on here, because I do think it is a big thing that you did is you took jobs, that, and because, because we're so close, I can state all this because I, you know, was with you through it. Um, you took jobs that you didn't like at all, but that they paid you well and you lived well below your means, saved up money, paid off all of your student debt, which was like I mean, do you want to share that number? I don't remember what exactly it is, but yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 3:
I think I was paying with scholarships, like probably 24 a year, four years, so like and then your debt once you got out of college, so that you just paid off.
Speaker 1:
What was that dollar amount? That was like oh, the one I just did, that was just 34, 34 yeah, so so, and now you don't have any student loan debt, which is what has given you the flexibility to now, so you took probably well, all of covid and this really since 2019. You've really been working jobs you don't like it's a great life so you've been working for the last five years.
Speaker 1:
You've been working jobs you don't like, living below your means, got yourself into a position where you have a sizable savings, no college debt, actually, no debt at all, right, right, yeah. So you have no debt, you have sizable savings and you have the ability now to do what you want and work jobs that may not pay as much but allow you to either self-discover or just do a job that you find meaning in. And that is because you took the self-sacrifice for five years, live through that pain and now are starting to be able to, you know, reap some of the fruits, and I know that. You know we're still at a early trajectory on that path and it's still. There's still some plenty of painful days, as I know from our conversations. But, yeah, I feel like you're finally starting to be able to see the light at the tunnel instead of just digging that tunnel to be able to get you out of there.
Speaker 1:
And I think that's that's a key component that I don't think our generation or the current working force likes to think about is. They want everything to be nice and easy, bright, rosy, sun-colored glasses, and that life is supposed to be easy for me and just hand it to me, and that's just not reality. You've taken the sacrifices over the last five years to put yourself in a position where you have control now again over your life and over your decisions when it comes to going back to school, working jobs, doing all that sort of stuff. But if you didn't take the time to put in those five years of sacrifice and live and it wasn't just sacrifice working in jobs that you didn't like, it was sacrifice living well below your means to be able to have that savings to then be able to clear out those debts it wouldn't be possible.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and I think it's easy to get bitter too, because I look back and I'm like I'm sacrificing five years, but then I'm like what was college?
Speaker 3:
Sacrificing four, you know.
Speaker 3:
So it's that's why my main advice is really know yourself, because if I knew myself before all this, I still may be working very low end job, but at least I have like what I'm working towards. So I'm not saying you can avoid the hard work by knowing what, what, what I want and what job, but you at least have that carrot in front of you of like that's the care I want. I'm working towards that because I know myself, whereas now, like I've done all that to get myself into the position, like Justin said, of now I have that freedom to explore and I think where I'm really at is like, oh well, I'll see that light come closer to me once I even know myself more. So if I did that earlier, or really emphasized on what's what my heart's telling me versus what my peers are doing or this or that, I'd say that's probably the best thing. I mean, that's why people change careers, they drop out. They do that because they're just, they're not, they're not listening to their heart. But it's also hard to do.
Speaker 1:
Right For do this because they're just, they're not, they're not listening to their heart. But it's also hard to do, right for sure, for sure. I just wanted to highlight, you know, a few of those things that, yeah, you've done, that have been hard, that most people there's probably a ton of people that are going through it and it's just, it doesn't. It's not a good feeling, it doesn't seem like it's the right feeling, you feel like you might have made a mistake, but you know, part of that's life you know?
Speaker 3:
yeah, you're right. I mean I won't keep us on this question too much longer, but I glaze over. You glaze over the hard stuff or the recognition. It's been a bumpy road, an emotional road, a lost road. So just ride it, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You're not alone. You're not alone. It happens and you learn a lot from it. I also, I remember we were talking about this a little while ago and I'll say this and then we can move on, because I think we're both to that point on this where we're not. We don't. We don't like the, the sappy emotional stuff. But, um, we were talking about how it's ironic that most of the milestones that society like pushes for seem to be on 10 year delays.
Speaker 1:
We tell 18 year olds in this country to have it all figured out at 18. And realistically, they're probably not going to start figuring it out till they're 28 or 30. Everybody wants to be a millionaire by 30, which is very hard to do. It's possible, but it is very hard to do. It takes a ton of sacrifice Whereas the majority of people, if they took a little bit of sacrifice and were very targeted, could be millionaires by 40.
Speaker 1:
And it's just, it's interesting that you know and I don't know if it's a consumption thing or a sales thing from large corporations, or you know what the case is but it just seems that in this country we push people 10 years faster than reality should be. And I think if more people came to that realization, they would realize that they've made some serious accomplishments. They're still ahead of the eight ball or they're right on track for what the average person does. The problem is is, in our eight second attention spans and tick tock and Instagram, Facebook world, All we see is the person who became a millionaire at 25 or is making 300, $400,000 a year and like that's just not the average person. That's not reality. But because that's what we see all the time on those social media platforms, we think it is reality. I'll go off my soapbox, but I just, you know, I do think that's another portion to this.
Speaker 1:
But I think we have time for one more question and then we'll wrap it up. What's the last one you want to put in the podcast?
Speaker 2:
Student loans. How do you know when you should and or stop borrowing money for your college? So student loans your college.
Speaker 1:
So student loans, when should you and when should you not borrow money again?
Speaker 1:
This is where I think it goes back to the previous question of you know, jobs, careers, evaluating whether or not you should or shouldn't go to college. If, if the average pay for the profession you're going into is going to exceed what you're paying each year, you're going to have a problem. But I also think, because I'm a proponent for working and applying for as many scholarships as you can, your debt load should not exceed your debt load for your degree. Absolutely in no circumstances should it exceed the equivalent of what you're going to make in that profession. So if your profession, your average income in your profession and I'm not saying right out of college, I'm just saying average income in your profession If the average income in your profession is a hundred grand, you should not under any circumstances have more than a hundred grand student debt. I would put it even for like that is the absolute stopping point. But I would say that you probably shouldn't get in a situation where it's exceeding 50%. If you're going into a career that generally makes $100,000, you probably shouldn't rack up more than $50,000 in student loan debts, in student loan debts. You want to keep that number as low as possible, but the higher it goes, it just means you're going to have higher payments. The interest is going to compound harder and faster on that and the ability for you to pay it back it's just going to be that much more difficult. You're going to be taxed by student loans the rest of your life and then you know if you go to college you get a job that pays you well, but in order to get that job you had to rack up a massive debt that then you have to pay back. You're not actually making more money, you're just making more money and paying off student loan debt. So your take-home pay still ends up being what it would have been if you didn't go to school, because you're paying that massive student loan payment.
Speaker 1:
Generally speaking, where interest rates are right now, for every on student loans debt that is, for every ten thousand dollars of debt you're probably going to be paying somewhere in the two hundred dollar per month range. So if you have a hundred thousand dollars of debt, you're going to be paying a mortgage. You're going to be paying close to two grand a month to pay it off in 10 years and, like you know now you're not going to be able to buy a house Now you're not going to be able to buy all these other things and work towards those things. So you're making $100,000 a year, which means you're taking home roughly 80, we'll call it high 70s, we'll be ambitious eighty thousand dollars take home pay. 24 of that is going to student loan payments. So you're only taking home fifty six thousand dollars. Yeah, fifty six thousand dollars a year is your take home pay.
Speaker 1:
On that, versus if you, you know, didn't get that degree and you just went into the workforce and worked your way up and were making $60,000 a year and after taxes that comes out to, say, $48,000, you're talking about an $8,000 difference in annual income as far as take-home is concerned because of the amount of debt you racked up, the amount of debt you racked up, and so it's just. You know the juice isn't worth the squeeze, so to speak. If you're going to rack up debt, that's going to be equivalent to or exceed your income earning potential. Now, after the 10 years, you get all that money back and you know you get that. You pay off the debt. So then you have that spending potential back into your budget.
Speaker 1:
But is it worth that 10 years of sacrifice?
Speaker 1:
That's where you have to ask the question.
Speaker 1:
So, from a financial perspective, I think it should be below 50% of what your average income in the profession is. Again, because you might not even end up in your profession as we've already talked about in those conversations and you find out you hate it, and now the profession that you actually go into is $80,000. You hate it, and now the average, the profession that you actually go into, is 80 grand. Well, if you only have fifty thousand dollars worth of debt because you're at 50 now, that only bumps up to 75 by shifting careers 75 by shifting careers versus if you had a hundred thousand in debt and you had to shift to a career that doesn't make as much money, and now you're only making 80. Now you're at 125 and you know your take-home pay drops down into, you know, minimum wage jobs, slightly above minimum wage jobs for take-home pay, and so that's where I think it's a delicate balance, but I think it's something that needs to be considered. Yeah, I don't expect you to have much to say, but the only thing I got from that was it's.
Speaker 3:
I mean, if you know that's what you want to do and you love it, nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1:
So if it that's the only thing it's you and that's a good point that you make is, if you know that you're going to love it and you know that you're going to go into it, then it's not so much a big deal because you're going to have that high income rating. But what that also means, though, is that you've handcuffed yourself to that career. If you're looking at $100,000 a year career and you have $100,000 in debt, you've handcuffed yourself. Doctors, lawyers that have $200,000 in debt. They can make 200 grand. That's fine, but the problem is they just handcuff themselves. If they do not want to be a doctor, do not want to be a lawyer, it doesn't matter, they have to be a doctor. They have to be a lawyer for the next 10, 15, 20 years in order to pay off the debt, because the other thing is is they're not going to pay to be able to afford the $2,000 a month when they first start off. So they're not going to pay on a 10-year loan. They're going to pay on a 15 or a 20-year loan in order to cut that payment, or being in a high earning career, versus if you don't have the debt.
Speaker 1:
You know, if you, if you got out of out of high school weren't sure what you wanted to do and went and worked for a landscaper or a carpenter or a plumber not as, not as a certified in any one of those, but you just were a laborer in that field. You could save a bunch of money. Find out that you either love what you're doing and keep doing it and make all kinds of money, or then go and go to college afterwards but have the money to be able to pay for it, so that then, even if you get a degree in something you don't absolutely love, pivoting to a different career isn't as detrimental. And it all comes down to how much debt you're going to take on. Now, if you're somebody who wants to go to college and you're pretty certain that you're going to be an electrical engineer and you're pretty certain you're going to love it, what I would say to you is find all the scholarships you can apply for them.
Speaker 1:
Get as much money as you can out of that so that you can make it, so that the amount of debt you have is not much less. Take a campus job. Take a job off campus. Find some way to minimize the amount of debt that you're taking on. All right, he said. Do another question, because he's going to split it into two episodes for us.
Speaker 3:
So you get a bonus question. He said he has some good ones. He has, yeah, he does.
Speaker 2:
There's quite a few more. We'll go into the diet side for this one since this one.
Speaker 1:
the other one was Diet-specific question for John.
Speaker 2:
How would you avoid that typical college diet, whether that be food alternatives or getting money to afford the healthier foods, college-specific being the typical instant ramen in the microwave.
Speaker 1:
This will be good. I'm curious to hear your response that's tough.
Speaker 3:
How do you?
Speaker 1:
avoid it. And if you're going to do it through buying different stuff, how do you afford it? I'm going to put myself right back at sienna, because sienna's food was not not great yeah, and I feel like I feel like sienna's food though to you know, this might be because I love sienna but I feel like sienna's food was probably like most college campuses, where it's just not great yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
The only school I went to that was cool, that I visited was colgate, that they use stuff from the garden they grow, so I guess that colgate had some great food.
Speaker 1:
I visited there a couple of times and it was pretty impressive what they would do there. But I feel like most college campuses have one spot that's decent and the rest of it's just average at best.
Speaker 3:
All right, so to navigate, I'm just gathering my thoughts here.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, While you gather your thoughts, I guess I'll make my my comments that you'll hate All right.
Speaker 1:
I would say that you know we we talk about in our podcast that um health. There's a lot of overlap between health and finances and one of them is is that if, just like if you have money, you can spend money on stupid stuff because you haven't, it's not going to negatively impact you. Generally speaking, if you're fit, active and you do a lot of the other physical fitness stuff and be involved and stay active on campus and you get out in the wet and you get out in the sun and do all these things, you can eat a less than ideal diet because you have good health, and so you can spend that good health while you're young and then make up for it once you actually have a good job with buying local and really good things. Um, because on the finance side, I would say your food is something that you can get on the meal plan.
Speaker 1:
Not eat off campus, not, you know, we'll talk about the elephant room not spend a ton of money on booze and all this other things that college kids do. Reduce your spending there, because college kids will find 50 to 100 to go out on the weekends. But if they could take that 50 to 100 and put it towards their student loans and put it towards other things like that, that would make a much better impact and then eat whatever school has for food. Yeah, maybe it's not the best, maybe it's not the most ideal, but most ideal. But if you're able to reduce the student loan piece, it's going to directly impact the ability to afford better food when you get out. And then play catch up, so to speak, on your health in that component. That would be my take on it as a non-health expert, but we'll send it over to John expert, but we'll send it over to john.
Speaker 3:
For what? Uh, it's funny because I agreed with basically everything. And then, when you were like it's funny because they'll find 150 to go out, but they can put it to their loans, my head went to they'll find 150 to go out, but they could put it towards healthy food yeah so like yeah, so there's the other route so that's the only difference.
Speaker 3:
But but to go off your point, as a freshman you're probably either stuck on campus or only on a meal plan. It's going to be, like Justin said, more about your other activities. Go to the gym, get outside, soak up as much sun as you can, especially depending on where you're going to school if it's in the northern hemisphere. Get sunlight, have good relationships, take care of your mental health. Justin and I got into a lot of conversations about how important is diet versus these other factors of your health. Then what you're going to do is you go to the dining hall, just do your best to like. An extreme version is go to the salad bar and make your own salad with the protein they have every day. That's extreme. The other extreme is eat the pizza and fries they have every day. So I would just go to the middle and try and do like pick the whole foods, pick the yogurt, pick the yogurt without sugar added, add your own toppings Like they should have better stuff there of. Okay, for breakfast I'm going to go get plain yogurt, vanilla yogurt, throw in some dried fruit have, throw in some nuts. They have you know. Just pick whole foods, real food, and I think this is more important.
Speaker 3:
We're not like huge proponents of you have to fast, but this might be a better time to, because they see they've shown that fasting helps. When you're eating actually more junk food than healthier food, it plays a bigger role. So this might be better to be like I'm just going to eat between 8 am and 7 pm. So this is where you know a lot of college kids will burn the midnight oil, do homework all night. They'll be like you want to go get pizza at midnight. This is where I'd say maybe those are the ones where you can leave out and be like nope, I ate tons of food during the day, I'm not hungry. Or hopefully, you're sleeping, because sleep schedule is going to be there.
Speaker 1:
It's funny you bring up sleep, because I was just going to say that was my big thing in college I would never do any work past 10 pm and I always made sure I was in bed by midnight.
Speaker 1:
There was occasional nights out drinking and having a good old time, that it was midnight that I got to bed.
Speaker 1:
But I always remember my friends being like I don't understand how you get all your work done and still not work past 10 and go to bed at midnight. And I was like, and I always told people the issue was, is that I could work past 10. The problem is is that the amount of time that it would take me to do a task if I was working past 10, versus waking up at 7 and doing my morning routine and starting work again at 8, from 8 to 9 in the morning, I could do just as much as I could do from 10 to 1 at night. And it was because you're tired, you're exhausted, your brain's not properly firing, and so you know I I wasn't even doing it from a health perspective. But you know there's that health component as well that just getting the right amount of sleep will also play a huge role in your body's ability to combat the fact that you're eating all these seed oils and yeah, you know, fried foods and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I didn't think about the fasting one. That's an easy, cost effective, doesn't cost you a penny to do it.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and that's how I would answer your question. I mean food's important, but really focus on the other ones because if you do it right, you can become if this is what you want I say this because it's cool to me you can become like an absolute unit in college, and by that I mean sleep well. You live on a campus with a gym. You live on a campus with a gym. You live on a campus with unlimited food. So just pick high protein foods. Always eat protein first. You can't overdo it.
Speaker 3:
Like Justin said, there's a lot of fried. Tried to go for the not fried food. And then my only other thing there is we leveled up our college. Once you get out of freshman sophomore year, our college had a store like a little convenience store with just plain ingredients. We used our campus money to buy those. You can cook for yourself or shop at Walmart. It's just brown beef, avocados, fruits. It's a lot cheaper than most people think. You know it's not seasonal, local, but you're going to get healthy and fit off of just going to walmart and getting decent quality, organic fruits, meats, things, things. There. It's still cheap. So I would say that's probably probably that nice, that was a fun one.
Speaker 1:
What else you got?
Speaker 2:
send it our way I don't have any specific diets to answer my second question but uh, that's good, it means we gave a good answer.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'm looking at our recording time. I think we can get one more in one more. One more, and then we'll be able to split it in two. This one is a little bit open-ended, so perfect, that's a great way to end. We're going to end with an open-ended question.
Speaker 2:
Moving up the rungs of college. My plan personally is community college, private. Hopefully something better after that. How do you know when to stop putting money into that dream of something like an MIT or an Ivy League with that moving up process? When should you know to quit?
Speaker 1:
Interesting question, I would say.
Speaker 3:
Try to reiterate I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, I'll repeat the question. So he said that his trajectory is do some community college, then do a private and then continue to move up the rungs to a better and higher, more prestigious college in that process. When do you give up on that pipe dream? When do you say enough is enough? At what level do you stop?
Speaker 3:
I'll let me do mine, because it's super quick okay, go for it, yeah good you stop when you're happy and you're satisfied and you continue when you feel like you're stagnant. I mean that I feel like there's no reason to continue for me if I'm enjoying what I'm doing, enjoying where I am. If I want more because I feel like I stopped learning, I'll go for more right, yeah and I think that's a good response.
Speaker 1:
I would reiterate the point that I made earlier of when you're going to those schools, one I'll back up a little bit. I think it's the right approach to take. I think doing two years of community college and then going somewhere else is phenomenal. I think it gives you the ability to keep that student debt down. It also allows you two years to be able to be like do I actually want to become an electrical engineer? For, I mean, what does hudson valley cost right now? Is it like it would be basically free, with all the um, with all the scholarships, so you wouldn't even have to pay for those two years and even if you were you're talking about like four grand a year or four grand a semester, I think.
Speaker 1:
Eight grand a year, 16 000 for two years. Like you make that sort of mistake, you can work a minimum wage job and make up the difference there. So one absolutely completely agree with the trajectory Go to a community college, figure out what you want to do, make sure it's what you want to do and then jump from there To me. So you would make a jump then potentially for your bachelor's. So you go two years, get your associates, go bachelor's. Maybe not even get your associates, but just go into a college for your bachelors. Your next jump would be masters. So you have the potential of three different colleges there.
Speaker 1:
What I would tell you is Do what makes sense from a networking perspective, because just by going to a college you have access to their network. You go to Hudson Valley Community College. You have access to people who went to Hudson Valley Community College. Now, because it's a community college, typically that alumni network won't be as strong and cultish, if you will, as some different colleges. But then the private school you go to probably is going to have that very network, alumni-centric focus.
Speaker 1:
And then where you go from there is also up to you. I am a huge proponent of not getting your bachelor's and your master's at the same college though. So even if even if you're you know, say, you go to a private school and then you know you're looking at Ivy's for your master's, but you don't get into the Ivy's and you could just stay where you're at I'm a huge proponent of moving to a different college, and the reason being is that I firmly believe the reason why you pay more to go to a private school versus a state school is because of that cult-like alumni network.
Speaker 3:
Thanks for listening to our podcast.
Speaker 1:
We hope this helps you on your balance freedom journey.
Speaker 3:
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.