Guide
How to Send Your Kid to College Without Going Broke
The Transparency Guide to Higher Education Pricing, Financial Aid, and the Lies They Tell You About Sticker Price
This guide names the real price and the merit aid strategy that could save your family tens of thousands.
For the parent who sees $85,000/year tuition and panics. Nobody pays sticker price. The net price calculator exists. Merit aid is negotiable. The FAFSA is a tool, not a confession. This guide makes the system transparent.
The Name It First Experience
Nobody pays sticker price — and the school is counting on you not knowing that before you read the $85,000 number and decide your family cannot afford it. How to Send Your Kid to College Without Going Broke walks you through how college pricing actually works: the net price calculator, the difference between need-based and merit aid, why financial aid offers are negotiable and how to negotiate them, what the FAFSA does and does not reveal, and how to build a documented funding strategy that closes the gap between what the school costs and what your family pays. This guide is for the parent who has already written off schools based on the published price and has not discovered that the published price is not the price. The Transparency Guide to Higher Education Pricing, Financial Aid, and the Lies They Tell You About Sticker Price names the real number — and the strategy that gets there.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What schools are you or your student considering — and what is the actual net price versus the published cost?
- What do you not understand about the financial aid process that is creating the most anxiety?
- What would change about the college list if you calculated net price first, before prestige?
Research basis
Grounded in higher education financial literacy research (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2014) on the cost of uninformed college financing decisions / FAFSA completion and aid optimization research / college choice and affordability literature on the role of family preparation in reducing student debt load.
Choose your format.
Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.
Print Paperbackpersonalize
A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.
$19.99
eBook + journal
The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.
Not available
Audiobook
We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.
Not available
Hardcoverpersonalize
The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.
Not available
Digital Fill + membership+membership
Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.
$9.99
Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership
Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.
Not available
Everything packages
The Paperback Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
The Hardcover Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
The Premium Hardcover Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.
Choose your pace.
The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.
Essential path
Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.
Full depth
Every question. Every scenario, every angle.
Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.
Buy it for yourself.
Choose your format above.