In this week’s episode of Retire in Texas, Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group, shares a timely and personal perspective on the cost – and value – of college education. With one child already in college and another preparing to go, Darryl walks listeners through findings from SoFi’s “The Cost of Admission” report and offers four hard-hitting takeaways that every family should consider before signing on the dotted line.
From real-life debt stories to the generational impact of poor financial decisions, this episode is a candid look at what too many Americans learn the hard way: how you pay for college matters just as much as where you go.
Key Highlights:
- Why “ignorance is not an excuse” when it comes to student loan debt.
- The $365,000 medical school debt story – and what it teaches us.
- What most borrowers say they regret about college financing.
- The importance of making affordability a higher priority than reputation.
- How parents can help kids “think long term” when planning their future.
Whether you’re planning for your child’s education or revisiting your own financial journey, this episode delivers the kind of clarity that cuts through the noise.
For more insights or to connect with a PAX Financial Group advisor, visit http://www.PAXFinancialGroup.com.
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Transcript:
Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group. And you’re listening to Retire in Texas. This information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit PAXFinancialGroup.com for more information. Hey, thank you again. We’ve got a wonderful group of listeners that are listening to this show.
Please share it with others. It’s my conviction that people need to be engaged in the content that we’re providing because of all the chaos and noise out there, and these podcasts are intentionally designed to give people some hope, and some direction in the midst of the noise. So, I certainly listen to my listeners in terms of what type of content I need to curate.
But I want you to know this is really for you and your community, so please be sure to share it with others. I thank you for that. So, I want to talk about college today. It was top of mind for me because I’m sending my second one to college. I already sent the first one off, and he’s doing exceptionally well, so I’m really proud of him.
And then my daughter is looking at colleges right now, so this was top of mind for me as I was doing some homework and trying to figure some things out and navigating the whole marketplace, because even though I did it once, if you’ve had multiple children, children are just different. And so, what worked for my first one won’t necessarily work for my second one, but college is important to us.
When my kids got a Social Security number the very next day, I set up a 529 plan for them. And even my first one, we didn’t have much money, I started setting it up. And a lot of people think that college is not as important. Today I’m going to make a case that it really is.
And I’m going to navigate that in such a way that I’m going to be very pragmatic about when it’s not. But I want to make a case that college is still important today. The evidence is still clear there. I want to do it in such a way that I navigate you through something called the Cost of Admission.
A 2025 report from SoFi. It’s an incredible research report. It’s a snapshot of how current students, graduates, and parents of students are feeling about the value of a higher education and how to pay for it. Really, I think the survey was done well because it covered a broad base of people – high school students, higher education students, graduates of a certain age group, a little older graduates, even parents who took out loans.
So really got a good group of people of 3500 individuals. And this was just a recent survey. So relatively fresh, hot off the press, April 27th through May 8th, 2025. Beth Armstrong, Vin Matano, Vivian Tu, Brian Walsh, who’s the PhD and head of planning at SoFi, all contributed to this study. And I thought it was well laid out, but I wanted to make four key points when I go through this study that are certainly my opinion, but I think that I extrapolated, my opinion didn’t change when I read the report.
But I’m going to frame this report through my lens. And so first, there’s four things I want to share with you. Again, my opinion extrapolated from what I read in this research report, that you can read yourself because I’ll put a link in here. But the first opinion that I have that I have conviction in regards to college planning is that ignorance is not an excuse.
This is, we’re seeing this over and over again, the debt crisis that we have in our country. It’s appalling that so many people. And I know you’re thinking this, too. It’s not just me. I hear it all the time. Are getting some nonsense degree and coming out with 50, 60, $70,000 of student loan debt. It blows me away, and I have zero empathy for being so careless in the thought process here.
Because there’s consequences to you and your family and your generations and even our whole economic system. I don’t live in a world of victim. So, you could make the case. Well, you know, it’s the institution or it’s society. It is incumbent upon every single one of us to be responsible with our money. Let me give you some statistics.
Let me give you some a framework from the content here, 28% of the people that they surveyed said that they have absolutely no idea what a four-year college experience costs. These are people who are paying for college that have no idea. And when asked what you know, what do you think it costs? They underestimated it between 30 and 60%.
It’s unbelievable. That’s like going to the grocery store as an example, filling up your grocery cart full of groceries and you say, I don’t know how much it costs, but I’ve got 400 bucks in my pocket. So, you get to the checkout counter and you go to check out and they say, no, I’m sorry. This is $700 now, back in the day, and I’ve had to do this when we didn’t have any money.
You would have to take stuff off, right. And say, okay, well I can’t afford it. That was then. What is today? Today is. Oh, you know what? I only have $400 cash, but I have a credit card. I have an Amex. And so that’s really what’s happening in the college student loan world, is that we have not been honest with ourselves in evaluating the whole cost of this machine.
That is extremely problematic. There’s a lady named Molly Webster that I don’t know personally, but she said she left school with a master’s degree, had 78,000 of student loan debt. And so, she thought, well, you know, I’m going to get a good job and I’m going to have a lot of money. But when it came time for repayment, she realized that every single month she had $700 of interest.
And so, think about it. You’re going to have to pay a lot more than $700 a month to be able to knock down that principle. Even master’s students, people who are getting advanced degrees, are going into it with complete ignorance. And so, this is not something that we need to continue to have a victim mentality on, or even a high degree of sympathy.
We need to start telling people that they need to start paying attention to what they’re paying for, and I think a lot of people are waking up to this. And this SoFi report alluded to that. But there’s a lot of damage that’s been done out there. And obviously this student loan debt crisis is very real. And frankly, don’t assume I don’t have lack of empathy for individual situations that they’re in.
That’s a real situation. I just think we got to stop playing around and saying, I didn’t know. You know, when it comes to tuition, I mean, when it comes to the cost of college, you’ve got tuition, you’ve got room and board, you’ve got books. But just like any business decision that I’ve made over my life.
It’s going to cost more and last longer than you think. So, any time you’re looking at these things, you’ll always want to add a 25-30% buffer. Okay. Second opinion that I have in regards to college is you got to be allergic to debt. You really do. There’s a little story I heard about it, a guy that just got married.
This is his commentary. He said I always knew she, his fiancé had student loans, and he knew that she had seven years of private higher education. So, he thought that student loans would probably be a large number. But after going through her paperwork, he said his heart stopped. He realized how extraordinarily dreadful their new situation was.
Not just his, not just hers. There was an our situation. Her student loans were in excess of 340,000. $340,000 a year. Now, going into a marriage, you probably want to talk about those things far in advance. But in this situation, it was right after they tied the knot. There’s an old saying that I’ve always lived by, and it says those people that understand interest collect it.
Those who don’t understand interest, pay it. A medical student on Twitter, she said she owed roughly $365,000 after medical school. She said she’s paid for 6.5 years, $2,500 a month. So, she’s paid approximately. I didn’t do the math, $165,000. Remember her? Her original balance was 365. Her current balance 350,000. Those who understand interest collect it, those who don’t understand interest, pay it.
Today, many borrowers don’t even have intentions of paying back. I mean, I can almost see your situation. I have kind of a different perspective in terms of by the way, I had student loans. I went to Saint Mary’s University. We didn’t have a lot of money, I had grants, I had scholarships, I had student loans.
I had to pay them back. It was not easy. I did forbearance many times because we were broke, but I was able to pay them back $35,000. It was not easy, but I did it. Many people are just jaded. And the report does allude to this. That, you know, the government told them that they were it was going to be paid off and then they didn’t.
And so I think a lot of people are like, forget it. Maybe they’ll pay it off one day, the rhetoric actually is paying off debt without executing was problematic. And I know it gets real political there. But some people just kind of make the assumption that, you know, it’s going to automatically come out of the account and then it doesn’t.
And then they look up and this interest is accumulating. That does happen. But generally speaking, I’m telling everyone to be allergic to debt. But generally speaking, people, if you look at the report a lot of people are allergic to debt. There’s loan aversion as an all-time high. Maybe that’s a byproduct of Dave Ramsey, I don’t know.
And I’m not saying that college isn’t valuable. You heard me at the very beginning. I believe college is really, really, really important. But you got to make sure it’s worth it. Some people are going, if you look at the report of how they’re paying for college, it is, you know, there’s alternative ways some people are even doing crowdfunding.
And then another way is selling crypto. So, these are new methodologies of how people are paying for college today. So, the third thing, the third Darryl opinion here is you’ve got to start thinking about your future. You know, I talk about thinking long term, what’s this degree going to do and what kind of job prospects are its interesting because they did do a survey.
Or one of the elements of this survey was, they asked the participants to create your version of the American Dream. What are the seven essential elements of an aspirational life in America today? So, here’s that, here’s what they said, and I’ll give you the top five. Number one, this is an element of having an American dream.
Number one, homeownership. That was like the most important thing, which is obviously a challenge today. We’ve done a podcast on that. I probably need to do a new one because there’s always new information coming out. The second thing, in terms of an American dream, that this group of participants said was most important, first of all, homeownership. Second is being debt free.
That’s the type of concern people have and the weight people have in the marketplace relative to debt in their lives and what they’ve seen their peers go through and their parents go through. Three, having a career you’re passionate about. That’s great. Love it. Four, this is part of the American dream college education. So, college education is still really, really important to people.
That has not lost its allure. And then the fifth one is having children, interestingly enough. So, that’s kind of the byproduct of the survey. The top five college education is still important. And we might hear, you know, I know Charlie Kirks has some strong opinions here, but college is still important to most people.
Number four again, Darryl opinion based on this SoFi survey, we’ve got to make better decisions here. Affordability needs to matter more than reputation. Affordability needs to matter more than reputation. And that’s just not happening right now. Living at home for a couple years is okay. Going to community college is okay. I say it’s okay because I do recognize the power of peer influence.
I’ve always said you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So, if you’re at a community college and you’re around people who don’t have ambition or focus or discipline, then you’re going to you’re going to digress. So, it’s the type of person to me, the type of person that can stand on their own at the community college and not be influenced by other people.
I think that there has to be consideration for the person specifically, because sometimes the community college will just lead to just, you know, dropping out altogether, but living at home for a couple of years, that’ll save you some money. As you would imagine. You’ve got this FAFSA form. Take some time and fill that thing out.
I have a good friend, Doctor Andrew Riley. He has a company called College App 101. I’ll put a link in there. And him and I talk about this, and he helps with the essay part of it. So not only do you have the FAFSA form, but you also have the college applications, and then you have essays for many of these universities that are really, really important.
And so spending some time on the essays, Doctor Riley will help your child or even you with those essays. So be sure to look at his resources on the website, scholarships and grants. You got to hustle for 500 bucks. You got to hustle for 5000 bucks. You can go to a website called Goingmary.com.
That’s a good website to look for scholarships, not necessarily grants, grants are government subsidies, but scholarships there make sure you understand the financing options. Like I said, understand the interest and the terms. There’s also the public service loan forgiveness program for those teachers or doctors or government employees. Make sure you know what those are.
I know we don’t like to bow at the altar of a credit score, but credit scores actually do matter in this regard, and especially if you have student loans and you default and it pings your credit score and then you want to buy a house, all of this thing ties together. So, make sure that you do pay attention.
I like to use Credit Karma to keep up with my credit score. Again, make better decisions. Know what career you want. You know, if you’re going to get a, you know, a career in, I guess, you know, poetry education and you’re going to take out $100,000 in student loans. That’s actually just stupid.
And so, you know, find an alternative route to get the education you want. There’s, as you know, and it’s, you know, trade schools are awesome. And I know a lot of, we have a lot of clients that had went to trade schools and, or had been freakishly successful starting their own business. It’s a very technical skill set in the marketplace because of the computer integrations and the regulatory environments.
You know, the Green New Deal, all that that goes into almost every, you know, HVAC to plumbing. So, there’s an intellectual component to the trades now. And so, as you would imagine that, you know, there’s a premium for that. So being in the trades is an awesome thing. And I think it’s a function of who you are as an individual.
But there’s nothing wrong with being in a trade. I think if you get in a trade, go start a business and go be a boss and go create your own destiny. So that that would be, that’s what I would encourage you to do if you if you decided to go down that trade path.
But regardless, my main point is to make sure you know what career you want before you spend all that money. This is adulting 101. I mean, this is when you start to think about things critically and realize that there’s boundaries in life and you got to work within those boundaries. And I think if you’re a parent and you’re working with your children, it’s engaging them in these boundaries and being able to say, no, that doesn’t work.
Or let’s try this and talk about the money. You know, I’ve mentioned this before in several of my books. You’ve got to have all these micro conversations with your kids over the years about money. And so, this one has to be very real. And this is, kind of handing the baton to the child and tell him it’s time.
It’s time to be an adult. So let me lay in the plane. So those are my opinions. I’m an expert in my own opinion. Number one, ignorance is an excuse. Number two, be allergic to debt. Number three, think about your future. And number four, make better decisions. I laugh a little bit because I’m stating the obvious.
This is great research from SoFi, but I do want to recognize that, those that have a bachelor’s degree have almost $1 million more in earnings than high school graduates. That’s just the reality of life, whether it’s the network, whether it’s the discipline, whether it’s the reputation, whatever it is, it’s still true that somebody who has a college degree makes $1 million more.
So that’s the reality. So, until that data changes, I still believe college is really important. But here’s the final thing I want to mention. They asked a question that I love. If you could do anything differently, what would you do? And I love that question. I’ve asked that question to retirees, people who’ve been married for a long time.
I’ve asked it to business owners. I’ve asked people my career. So, I love that question. If you could do anything different, what would you do? And so, they ask that question to people who took out loans, went to college and, you know, reflected. And here’s what they said, 93% admitted that if they were given a second chance, they would have approached college financing differently.
93% said I would have approached college financing differently. Listen to that survey. That’s telling, and I hope that this helps you. I hope you check out that SoFi research report. And remember, you think different when you think long term. Have a great day.
Resources:
About Dr. Riley – College App 101
Scholarships for College: Find and Apply Online for Free | Going Merry
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