Choosing our children’s college is the biggest financial decision our families will ever make, so we have to be as informed as possible going into it. 

The problem is, many of us simply don't know how much college costs, or how much we should be paying for it. How can we begin to advise our kids when we don't even know where to start ourselves? 

The only way we'll find out is by asking the right questions. So what should we be asking?

In this episode, New York Times Columnist and author of The Price You Pay for College, Ron Lieber shares what we need to know about college tuition.

Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How to change the way we think about thrift:
  
  In recent years, the word ‘thrift’ has got some bad press, but there’s nothing negative about it. Thrift is about spending money on the things we value most, while saving on everything else. 
  
  
• How to prepare our kids for the biggest financial decision of their lives:
  
  We can’t expect our children to make great financial choices if their biggest purchase to date is a bicycle, so teach them to understand how money works from a young age. Give them an allowance and let them learn through trial and error, so when the bigger decisions arise they’ll have a better idea of what to do.
  
  
• How to calculate how much to spend on college:
  
  The key to working out how much college should cost lies in asking really good questions. Before making a final decision on any college, we have to do the research to unearth how much value our kids will get from the experience, and what they’ll be able to do with their qualification, post-graduation.

Guest Bio:

Ron Lieber is the author of The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make, and the "Your Money" columnist for The New York Times. Ron is also the author of The Opposite of Spoiled. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters. 

To find out more, visit:

https://ronlieber.com/ 

https://ronlieber.com/books/the-opposite-of-spoiled/ 

https://ronlieber.com/books/what-to-pay-for-college/

https://www.instagram.com/ronlieber/ 

https://www.facebook.com/ronlieberauthor 

https://twitter.com/ronlieber 

Books mentioned in this episode: 

https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248