Should College Debt Stop You from Side Hustling? With Robert Farrington, aka The College Investor

Full Transcript

Taylor   0:02  

What's going on guys, this is passive wealth strategies for busy professionals. Thank you for tuning in. Today our guest is Robert Farrington from the college investor. Today we get into a few topics with Robert. He's a very successful blogger in the topic of college loans. College financing, what folks in college should do with their investments are ideas that they can use in their investments if they want to become investors. today we talk about financing college, how folks can pay back college loans, some steps to take in, in your journey of paying off your college loans, what things can do to prepare for their children to go to college financially, and we dig into Roberts specific experience as a successful tech entrepreneur. He's done very well. He turned his side hustle of a blog into his full time gig and he's very successful with it. I think those are both important stories, important pieces of knowledge that we can get out of Robert . It's we learn about his specific expertise in his area of experience, and we learn about his expertise. As someone who is a successful side hustler that is so much inspiration, whether you're paying for college to raise your income level, raise what you can make, what raise the salary you can command in the world. Or you're out there, building a side hustle, building a website, building something that's going to bring you more income on the side. There are lessons in this podcast. I really appreciate Robert coming and joining us for this lesson, and I learned a lot you're gonna learn a lot as well, too. For those of you who do not know I'm your host Taylor load. I'm a real estate investor, real estate syndicator. I buy real estate with passive investors and split the return. Thrilled to bring this interview to you today. Thanks again for tuning in. Without any further ado, here we go with Robert Farrington from the college investor. Robert, thank you for joining us today.

Robert Farrington  2:08  

Hey, thanks for having me.

Taylor   2:09  

So I talked a little bit about what we're going through today in the intro, but for the folks out there who don't know who you are and don't know what you do don't know your brand. Can you introduce yourself real quick, so we know who we're dealing with?

Robert Farrington  2:23  

Yeah, definitely. So I'm Robert Farrington. I started as a college investor over 10 years ago when I was finishing college. it was really just a side project. For me, I really enjoyed talking about money and talking about investing. I also kind of like a techie guy. So like the idea of starting a website, all that sounded really kind of cool to me. So I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna start a blog. I'm gonna put it all out there and kind of see what happens. so that's what I did when I was wrapping up college. I still did the traditional route. I got a job I was working full time but I was always doing this as my  hobby because I enjoyed it and Here we are 10 years later, it's my full time gig. I've been doing it now and I love it. I still enjoy helping people. I still love talking about money topics. So it works great for me.

Taylor   3:10  

Awesome. Awesome. I love it. There are a few things I want to cover in our conversation today. First, I want to pull out some of the lessons that you've learned from being the college investor. I suppose. Having the college investor brand however you look at it. then I want to learn about your experience of becoming a successful side hustler that turned it into your full time gig. So first, let's talk about financing paying for college and paying off those student loans there. I spent a lot of time in the real estate world and a question comes up all the time. How, how can I get started investing when I have this albatross of 80 to $100,000 more of college debt hanging on my neck? What are your thoughts? How do people get started paying off that college loan

Robert Farrington  4:00  

And that's it. That's kind of been my mission over the last 10 years because I didn't originally start this way. But I graduated with $43,000 in student loans myself. one of my first viral articles that I wrote way back when was when my student loan servicer started messing up my payments, and like, wasn't applying them correctly and stuff. this was back before like, this was like, everyone knew this happened like this was back eight years ago, nine years ago now. I start getting all these comments. Me too. Me too. Like, I like your investing stuff. That's cool. But how do we get there when I'm still dealing with all the student loan stuff. so I'm a big fan of financial balance. it starts with getting out of debt, but you could also invest and build wealth at the same time, but you have to be strategic about it. You have to be smart about it. it comes down to being organized. That's the key to getting out of student loan debt. there's 100 tactics, 100 tools, there's all these strategies, but like, none of us, I can't tell you what it is. The best and you can't figure out what's the best until you get organized. That's where I like to start this conversation. Lay out your student loans, lay out what you have coming in, lay out what your expenses are. then we can start pulling different levers about what might make sense for your loan situation, finding the best repayment plan, seeing if there's forgiveness options, maybe we can do all those, but you're still sure maybe we got to talk about earning more money, maybe we got to talk about side hustling. Maybe we have to talk about cutting other expenses, like your other parts of your budget, but we can't have any of these conversations until you're organized. It's all laid out on the table. We have a very clear picture of what we're working with.

Taylor   5:38  

I love that. I think,  in the fire, financial independence, retire early space, I think there's not enough of a conversation around one, particularly one of the things that you said, earning more money or having a side hustle, that kind of thing, and we're going to get into your experience in a little bit. But first to kind of focus on what organization really means when you first said that that's the thing that came to mind for me was budget. But it sounds like budgeting is maybe downstream from organization and you want to get organized first. So let's dig into what organization really means in a nuts and bolts sense.

Robert Farrington  6:13  

Sure, and that's the thing, because we can't even make a budget till you're organized, right? Because the thing is, the average graduate has five student loans. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense, right? You got one your freshman year, your sophomore year, your junior year, your senior year, some people take five years, some people took a summer semester or something in the middle, and that's an extra loan. so you might have these five loans in different places. You might have different loan servicers, you could have fedloan and Naveen and you're trying to figure it out. So it's like you got to get all your stuff listed in order and then you could talk about your other personal finance stuff as well your checking account or savings account, maybe you have a 401k maybe you have an IRA like where is all your stuff, because I will tell you in 10 years of helping people with student loan stuff, mostly People and I'm talking like 90% of people that are lost with their student loans aren't even able to tell me how much they have in student loan debt, they're aren't even able to tell me like, this is my monthly payment, or this is the repayment plan I'm on. you know what some of this stuff is confusing. I'm not gonna lie, like they don't make it easy. But you have to have a little bit of accountability of yourself and your own money to figure out what you got. Because there's tools, there's services, you can google anything, if you just spent 10 minutes and did the work but you have to be accountable enough to do that.

Taylor   7:37  

Interesting, okay. So it's very surprising to me that folks might not know that details or it sounds even high level information about their actual student loan situation. I suppose. I just kind of took that for granted and assumed a lot of people would know that. Now when it comes down to questions like interest rate should I pay off the highest interest rate one first or the highest balance, things like that seem to come up over and over again, on these forums, people asking for help. Where do you stand on that? What's your opinion?

Robert Farrington  8:12  

 Debt Snowball Debt Avalanche, like you're charging a couple hundred, you're arbitrary instead, what we're saying is that the Debt Snowball is you pay the lowest balance first of your debts and the Debt Avalanche is you pay the highest interest first. Mathematically, the avalanche is the mathematical approach. The snowball is a psychological approach. If you arbitrage it out, you're talking about a couple hundred dollars difference in the end. So like for me, I'm a big believer and you pick what works for you. Across the board. When it comes to organization when it comes to your money, the best path is the one that you're actually going to do. So I'd rather you do whatever works for you, pay off one loan at a time. I don't care as long as you're making progress and doing something that feels right internally for you. Because That's what's gonna work.

Taylor   9:02  

That Well, that's a great point, the best path is the one that works for you. I guess, folks really have to know themselves when it comes to what they're

Robert Farrington  9:12  

gonna stick there. It's their style, right? And you probably encounter this too. I mean, you got the analytical people that are gonna do a whole spreadsheet and like, chart it out, then you got the people that are like, they're more of a feeling or psychological based approach. they're going to do the ones that feel better that way. It's the same when it comes to actually when you talk about budgeting or organizing your money, it's the same way. Some people love apps. I'm an app guy. So I like to put all my personal finance stuff in an app. There's a ton of them out there, right. But some people are spreadsheet people. Some people hate all of that. they're pen and paper people and they want to have like a little budget folder and write it all out. All of those are cool. I just want you to pick the one that works for you. I don't want to force you into something because if you're not if you're not a spreadsheet person, like trying to get someone to budget in a spreadsheet is not going to be successful.

Taylor   10:00  

That's true. Yeah, people need to have things that they're going to stick to. Now, I want to make sure we hit the other side of this too, because there are folks who are on the other side of that equation. They're trying to prepare for their children to go to college. I don't know about you, but to me, it looks like the cost of college is not going to come down, despite the coronavirus pandemic and all that, what we're going through and how that's going to impact colleges. What strategies do you think folks should look at to prepare for their children going to college eventually? And what are some things that maybe we don't know, that we should be looking into to make,  prepare for 1520 something years down the road?

Robert Farrington  10:41  

Yeah, I mean, it's all different. But I like to frame the college conversation as an ROI discussion, just like any other investment you're making, whether it's real estate, whether it's stocks, bonds, whatever. Because these days, and this is this is different as a 2020 conversation, this would have been a different conversation, the 80s and the 90s. But today, you know Education information is pretty free. You could go watch the best professors from Harvard and Cornell on YouTube right now giving the same talks and lectures and anything about anything, right? You could go on Udemy or a free course service and pay for a course to for very inexpensive to learn how to code or learn learn skills. So the college conversation is an investment and is going to college an investment. it is for some people, it's a good one. But you have to think of it as an investment as ROI because it's not just for learning sake. We don't go to college just to learn, we go to college because you're trying to boost skill sets, job prospects, things like that, which is really real . It's a different name for saying I'm trying to boost my future career earnings. so you're trying to figure out basically a net present value of what my future earnings are going to be, and does the college exceed that cost or not? And I think the reason it's so mainstream today, the conversation is because a lot of people are realizing that the degrees I've gotten over the last maybe 1020 years, they're not delivering on an ROI for me. that's why people are frustrated with the system. They're like, we had this mindset of everyone needs to go to college or wanting to go to college. Well, now a chunk of those people are discovering, I probably shouldn't have it, the cost didn't outweigh the benefits or the benefits outweigh the costs of going to college. so that's how I like to frame the discussion because I don't want to dismiss college. I think even in today's market, even with Corona and everything else going on, college is still a valuable thing for some people. But it all depends on what you want to do. So what I like to encourage parents to do is have these conversations as early as possible. There's two conversations, here's like, what do you want to do? And what is mom and dad going to pay? And what is the kid gonna have that expectation to pay? Because they're both integral parts of it because,  you can go to a community college for free and half the states, the United States, and then you could transfer to your State School for very anything Expensive to live at home. you can get a degree in pretty much anything for probably less than $20,000. If you really put the work and effort in, explore those options. if you want to go into certain fields or things, it could be even cheaper, potentially, right? And then there's the other route, maybe you need to go away to school because some kids do need soft skills. Some kids do need to, like, get out of the nest, but there's also cost effective ways to do that, too. it all needs to have an ROI. Like if you wanted to be a teacher, does it make sense to go and pay $250,000 a year or not? $200,000 total,  like $60,000 a year, whatever that is, to become a teacher, like math just doesn't add up. so it's important to have those conversations and it's important to not surprise kids like parents need to be transparent all the way back to like Middle School ages. Like start having these conversations, start getting kids some exposure to things. I think the other thing that we're really lacking in America is exposure. What's out there? Right? I don't know about you. But when I went to high school like the year before I started high school, they eliminated auto shops, they eliminated woodshops. they added in computer tech, right. that's been the predominant thing in high schools across America for like the last 20 years, right? everyone learns computers. But now we have this weird thing going on where the trades are having a big shortage of people, because people were never exposed to it. People don't realize that I can go be an electrician and pull in $180,000 a year being an electrician, because  unless their parents were an electrician, like or an uncle or somebody in their family. It wasn't anything they were exposed to all they knew growing up was,  technology, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, like whatever it is, right, that that's what they know. that's what they see idolized. so there's a psychology aspect to this to that. I think parents have a big part in when they're growing up. Can you expose your kids to Feels? Can you expose your kids to successful role models, outside of maybe the parents industry, so that the kids know that there's a lot of options out there? Because that's how you start building these, like,  concepts in your mind about, well, what does success mean? And if you don't have an idea that I can be an electrician, and that equates to success, you don't necessarily want to go down that path, right? And so there's a lot of psychology and I always like to say the math is the math. We can talk about math all day long. But it's a bigger psychological question of hopes, dreams, aspirations, parents, hopes, dreams, aspirations, family tradition, all this other stuff that really weighs on people heavily.

Taylor   15:42  

Yeah, I think those parents hope dream hopes, dreams and aspirations really do weigh into this. I think you make a fantastic point that your children are kind of basing these decisions off of what they observe, who they know those kinds of things and not a lot of people know electricians and PA people just don't know how much money they can make to continue riding with that example now. I think one of the things we can expect over the next 1520 years is for that, that whole college situation to change in some way. But I wanted to turn the conversation a little bit more toward your experience here while we've got you. Do you feel that your college investment was worth it? In hindsight?

Robert Farrington  16:30  

Um, yes and no. I'm very mixed on it, but I also think the hard part is that there's no one size fits all. I worked full time during college and I minimize my college expenses. When I got my master's, my employer gave me some tuition reimbursement. So I minimize my cost. So like if I was paying full sticker, I don't know, but I wasn't. on the flip side, my degree was social signaling to my employer. So I got raises, promotions and  I was able to move forward there. I will tell you that in my experience Personally, I got zero benefit from networking. Like I think that's a myth. I think only 1% of people really network in college and that actually springboards them. I didn't find any of that. I got a little bit from a friend group and some social skills. But I actually got a lot of that from working because I actually, like I said, I worked full time during my undergraduate and I worked full time when I got my masters. I feel like that actually was the better thing for me. But I can't. You can't take one from the other. Right. I think it's also because I worked and went to school and had that time management and had that experience as a whole. It was valuable. I also went to a state school. I went into school with sophomore standing because I took a ton of AP classes in high school. so I had a lot of flexibility there to like minimize costs and stuff. So it's like once again, Everyone's so different, but there's so many levers you can pull to change the ROI equation. So for me personally, I mixed I mean, I definitely think it was a positive ROI. But I think that the situation could have easily swung in a different way had I not had some access to these other levers?

Taylor   18:17  

It's a very nuanced answer, but I think it's a very insightful and thought through answer to that question and to continue the spotlight turned to your experience. You're, you're working hard, you work full time, go to undergrad work full time doing your masters. At some point in there, you decide I'm going to start this side hustle, I'm gonna start this blog that is now your full time gig and has been for a few years now. I want to learn about that and how you got started and how you eventually realized somewhere in there that hey, I could do this full time.

Robert Farrington  18:56  

Well, you have to realize I've always been side hustling, right? So even if In middle school, I was selling candy bars out of my backpack. I started my first eBay account when I was in high school like 17. I was like, literally I remember because I had like an old Super Nintendo with all like 100 games, right? And I started selling all that on eBay when I was in high school, and it was giving me spending money. It was great. so like, even through high school and college and stuff, I've been side hustling. So like the idea of doing something on the side wasn't a foreign concept to me, I really just found this intersection of my passions and making money investing talking about it, and I created the website, and I would do it on nights and weekends. Like, for me, I kind of joke because I met my wife and we were together. But we weren't married yet. But like she would be watching Real Housewives of somewhere. I'd be sitting next to her on my laptop writing a blog article, because like I wanted to be with her but like I didn't really enjoy watching the show. So we just sat together and I did my thing and she did her thing and that was out. We went along and so I really enjoyed it. I like talking about These things. But honestly, when I started as a college investor, the first year and a half, two years, it actually really didn't make any revenue. I didn't even know how to make money online. It was all a passion project. But then I started connecting and networking with some other bloggers. I kind of for that first year and a half, I was like, in a bubble, I didn't like reaching out to anybody. I was just doing my own thing. But like, I finally started, like engaging with some people on social media. I discovered a blogging forum back in the day. like people were talking about, like, topics about marketing and how to blog and I was like, Whoa, you can actually like, make money online. so I started implementing a few of these things. it's like, Whoa, I remember because I made $24. The first month, I actually like to put some monetization on my site. it was a big milestone, though, because here we are, like nine years later, right? And I remember that first month, I made $24 because it was huge. Like you're kind of making money from air, basically, like you have this little code online and it's free. so then it just continued from there. By networking , by learning, by helping other people, giving back to them in turn would help me and, and then I would just continue building and I would also get better at it right? I'm a big believer in consistency over time, right? The more you do something, the better you get. It's the same with sports or anything, you practice that, right? Like, the more you practice, the better you get. in turn, you get better results because you've been practicing and doing it for so long. That's kind of how this worked. I just kept writing, I got better at my writing, I learned how to market online because I started doing it and some things work. Some things didn't but then you just keep iterating and iterating and iterating on it.

Taylor   21:41  

Interesting. So one of the things that I like to talk about with successful folks like yourself is kind of that mindset, the mentality of success. one of the things that comes up when we talk about that is limiting beliefs. I'm just curious if you have any information on this, but I'm curious if you think I have any limiting beliefs about this? Or was it such a passion project that you didn't mind? Not even trying to make money off of it for the first year or two? And you're just doing it for fun? I mean, where's that?

Robert Farrington  22:13  

Yeah, I mean, yes and no, like in terms of marketing and making money, I didn't really have any limiting beliefs, but like, in terms of like, the content I was putting out, Yeah, I do. I like imposter syndrome very much. I actually get this from some readers because like,  we're in this modern age where you can learn anything online, we kind of just talked about that, right? I consider myself pretty smart and savvy when it comes to personal finance investing. I probably know more about student loans than 99.99% of people in this country, right? But because I don't have a CFP or a credential behind my name, every now and then I get these readers that say like, well, like who are you to like, talk about this subject? Like you have no idea. You're just Joe Schmo writer. so there is some of that limiting belief. it's like, yeah, I probably know more about this than anybody else. But, people don't always know that and then it also just becomes a check back on you like, do you really know it? And so that's the harder part is when it comes to the content per se, like, Am I am I right? And is this right? Should I actually do this? Like, that's a harder limiting belief. But,  it just comes with practice. you also just have to kind of brush off the haters online. That's just part of the game to like,  there's nothing you can do about that sometimes, but it doesn't mean it doesn't cut you every time it happens.

Taylor   23:31  

That's exactly the word that I was going to use is how do you ignore the haters out there? Sounds like it's just just just part of the game.

Robert Farrington  23:39  

It's just part of it and never gets easier but it never doesn't hurt kind of thing, right? Like you just learn how to cope with it a little better. I always second guess myself. I'm also a big believer. I like taking feedback to like, was there something that I could have done differently or better, or Did I miss something or was there a nuance here like you joked about my nuanced answer, but Like, the one thing I've learned is that all this stuff is very nuanced. Like, there's not necessarily like a spectrum. There's no real right or wrong answer. There's definitely a right or wrong extreme, but like most of the middle is a,  there's different ways to look at it. I've also learned that just because something isn't right for me, doesn't mean it's right or wrong for everybody else. Right? Like, there's different people that in different situations or maybe had a different starting point, and things like that. And, and so maybe that is something that's helpful for them, even though I disagree with it, but maybe that's like what they need at this point in time. then we can get them to where we can have a different conversation, you know?

Taylor   24:37  

Oh, absolutely. And, and I don't mean to make light of the nuanced answer to any of the questions because I think if we had a broad stroke, yes, no, this is the answer to anything, then we're not really answering the question. It's like,  the question comes up, should I invest in real estate won't shoot? That's I don't know. You

Robert Farrington  24:57  

know, hard because, I mean, I think  this to us. As a content creator, as people,  people instinctively want a yes or no, or they want the shortcut they want the quick and they want the quick and easy. The hard part is that we kind of have to explain to them that there's no shortcut. There's no quick and easy here. Like you have to understand that. then decide what's right for you. Because everything has pros and cons. maybe it's a yes for you. But it might not be I don't know.

Taylor   25:24  

So as a technology entrepreneur, at least I see you in that way. You've been around long enough that the internet changes constantly. given the amount of time that you've changed, you've been in the business, things have really changed. it's hard to see in the moment. But if we look back at just what has happened over say, the last 10 years to the internet, how we're all more glued to our phones now than we were a year ago and just keep rewinding that we just are more and more glued to our phones. I wanted to ask how do you stay current, how do you adapt to changing market conditions and kind of see where the ball is going? And where the puck is going, whatever, and skate to it rather than staying stuck in your ways?

Robert Farrington  26:15  

Yeah, well, I think there's two, two thoughts to this one, I think the best of whatever it is, is going to win. I kind of live by that mindset. So the best content, the best tool, the best, whatever is going to win the game of whatever we're talking about. yes,  the marketing tactics and strategies and stuff might change. But as long as you're creating the best, you have a good shot, then it comes to like, Where are you playing. so I like to dabble in all these frontier kinds of technologies. I like to always think that I like to be where my audience is and where they're going. Right. So we have the blog, written format, I don't think the written format is going to die anytime soon. But it has to be really, really good, the best written format, but there's a good contingent of people that like audio, so Have a podcast and there's a good contingent of people that like video. So we have a YouTube channel, right? And then  I like to dabble in all the frontier tech. So like we do a little tick tock we do a little Reddit, we do a little,  we dabble with all these other stuff to see what's resonating, what's not resonating, and how we can best employ that. That's how I try to stay ahead and some stuff works, some stuff doesn't. But I always think like if you're always going back to your own home base, and you control your home base, which is what I love, technologies come and go but like we control our blog. So if Facebook dies or changes something like it sucks maybe in the short term, but like we don't we control what we can control and make that the best. then you kind of use everything else to kind of drive to your home base.

Taylor   27:45  

I love that and I relate to that specific example you gave so much because listeners don't know this. I haven't discussed this on the podcast, but Facebook flagged my website as spam about two months ago, and there's nothing I can do about it. They will not respond and you know what? I was upset at first, but it is what it is. I changed some of my things. now listener numbers are higher. I have more folks wanting to get involved with the podcast than previously. But having that control is so important. I'm so glad to hear you say that and say that specific example.

Robert Farrington  28:19  

Yeah, I mean, you just have to, you have to, you have to be there if your audience is there, but on the flip side, like your audiences, other places, too, and I actually really kind of learned this from my brother in law. It's a funny story, but like, it's like two Christmases ago. he's like, I will never read anything as long as I live, you know? I'm like, what do you mean by that? He's like, like a tutorial or review or whatever. I will, I will search it on YouTube and watch a video. He's like, I'm this like, it's like a pro. He's mountain biking, right? So he's like, here's a bike review. This is on YouTube. Here's a you know how to change something like he only watches YouTube videos and it really just clicked in my mind that you know what, there's people like him. Now I've kind of elaborated on what I think there's like, I feel like this is generalizing a lot like a third of people are readers, a third of people are listeners and a third of people are watchers. it's just kind of how our brains are wired like you prefer like yes, you'll do it if you have to like read something, but like if you are given the choice of the exact same thing and all three mediums you would go to the one that you prefer and so that's how I like to bridge our content strategy.

Taylor   29:26  

I love that and that also,  going after say that third that are writers it speaks to what you said before about the best content will win is that said essay writers readers a third, our readers, they're not reading crap. They're reading the best stuff that they can find in whatever they want to learn about. So it pays to strive to be the best.

Robert Farrington  29:48  

It does. You know what, it's just easier to do all of the above to like there's like a marketing saying like, if you deliver a crap product, all you do with marketing is shine light on crap, right? Like and so If you have the best product, and then you start sharing it or encouraging, like reaching out to people and doing outreach, or however you're gonna mark it, if it's a really good or the best thing, it actually feels pretty good to share it like you're proud of it. Like it's just easy to be like, dude, I created like the most awesome thing over here and I just want to share it with you or,  maybe you find it valuable because I know we talked in the past, this is something important to you,  and it's such an easier sell. It's easier to share than it is if you didn't create the best, right?

Taylor   30:30  

I love that you want to make that shareable content. love getting your thoughts here today about college loans, the college loan situation, what folks are doing wrong, for example, and your experience in entrepreneurship right now. We're gonna take a quick break for our sponsor. All right, Robert, I've got three questions. I asked every guest on the show. Are you ready?

Robert Farrington  30:55  

All right, let's do this.

Taylor   30:56  

All right, here we go. Number one, what is the best investment you ever made. maybe I don't need this caveat for you, other than

Robert Farrington  31:04  

in your education. All right. this is like, it's funny because I think we're gonna tie some things together here. But the best investment I ever made was when I was probably about 19. This is one of the precipices for starting the college investor, right? I was investing in individual stocks. I remember this stock very well, it's Monsanto and love it or hate it however you feel about ag tech. I knocked it out of the park with this stock. I was talking, I think it was like a 10 x return when you're 19 years old, with a decent sum of money at the time for one year, that age, and I thought I was the most amazing investor that had ever existed to that point in time. So it was really rewarding. It was exciting to see. it was especially exciting to see how you earn income, right? And then I took that income and I invested it and then you see a massive return on investment for things that like you didn't even have to do so it really opened my eyes to investing and actually So my passion about it, and yeah, that was that was it.

Taylor   32:04  

Nice. I love that. On the other side of that we have your best investment now we go to the worst investment. What is the worst investment you ever made?

Robert Farrington  32:12  

So let's trail it on the end of that. So because I thought I was amazing, I started picking some other random stocks. guess what happened with the other random stocks? Right to zero Exactly. Like we lost a lot of money and  once again relative money at that point in time in my life. So what I took away from this is one I'm a big fan of and low cost index fund investing. I don't think that stock picking is for you. It's like Vegas, you might get some winners. I actually think early winners are probably the worst thing that can happen to you because you get this false sense of that,  everything  and I just realized that you know individual stocks really aren't an investment is speculative. I don't think I can win that any now as I've been in this industry for 10 years. I know a lot of the behind the scenes and it's kind of like, why do I think I'm better than Wall Street that literally has a million workers with unlimited money and supercomputers that spent all of their time in the entire entire existence trying to figure out the best stocks. yet me and like 10 minutes thinks I figured it out. I don't know. Like there's something about that it doesn't seem like it's right. so I'm a low cost index fund investor and I'll let the stock picking go to other people at this point in time.

Taylor   33:28  

Good for you and that is a very important point particularly for newer investors as we record this and I'm betting this will change when this is released. But as we're recording this Tesla stock is hitting a new high every day. Last I saw I was like 1800 dollars a share ridiculous Yeah, that makes them bigger than like every other car company combined, which is just ridiculous. But I'm sure we have a lot of young Roberts out there making swings on this stock and they're doing really well. So far. But don't get

Robert Farrington  34:00  

me wrong, it's an exciting story. I don't want to take away the win. Like, that's cool, but like, it's not necessarily repeatable. The other thing I like to think about is that for the vast majority of people, it's not going to be game changing well, too. It's like, okay, you put $100 in Tesla when it was at 500 bucks a share. Now it's at 800 bucks a share. So you tripled your money. But now you have 300 bucks, that's cool that you tripled your money. But like the amount of money you tripled, doesn't actually make a dent or change your life in any way, shape, or form. Now, some of these hedge funds and other things, maybe,  you put in  $10 million, and you triple your money. That's a cool story. Right? But like, the vast majority of investors that are in Tesla stock are probably not that,  if you're on Robin Hood, and you're trading on the app, you're trading with probably small dollars and once again, cool story, but it's not going to necessarily be life changing money.

Taylor   34:57  

I love that concept of life changing money. I think That's so important when it comes to making these financial decisions, whatever they are, think about the life changing aspect of it. my favorite question here at the end of the show, we covered a lot of topics. You've got a lot of knowledge here, both from the financing your college endeavors space to becoming a successful entrepreneur and everything in between. So my favorite question is, what is the most important lesson that you've learned in business and investing?

Robert Farrington  35:28  

Yeah, I mean, it's honestly been networking. I learned this, which we touched on a little bit when I went to a forum and I started networking online with other people. That was the first game changing moment for my business where I actually went from zero to like actually earning money. But it's never stopped. The more I've networked, the more I've connected with other entrepreneurs, other business people, other people in finance. The more I've learned, the more I've gained, and the more has propelled my business forward. I would say like the next game changing moment, my business was going to a conference in real life, which is like,  you're taking that off. Online networking and then you go to,  in person networking, it's huge. Like just do a sit down, have a beer with someone talk about anything under the sun from money to marketing the business, like you build real connections, but that like just, it's just so seeds that pay dividends down the road and in networking is like the biggest thing that if I could have gone back in time, I would have done it from day one. But you'd learn these lessons as you go. So hopefully someone else picks this up and starts networking.

Taylor   36:27  

Just to dig a little bit more into that. I love that answer. Regarding the in person conference, what kind of a conference does somebody in your business go to like what's a couple examples? So

Robert Farrington  36:39  

the one I'm referring to is the financial blogger conference, which actually has now evolved into like a money and media conference, which puts together pretty much every financial brand with all the financial media, which includes blogs, podcasts,  YouTube, but it also includes mainstream media, New York Times Wall Street Journal, usually they send them teams as well. So we're money and the media come together. As a result, you get this really cool mix of people from just bloggers and podcasters in their house to legit like newspaper media, to all the major brands from fidelity and the Vanguard of the world to small fin tech startups that are just trying to make a name for themselves. So it's a really fun event. It's been going on now like 810 years, something like that. It's awesome.

Taylor   37:24  

I'm gonna look that up and I may join once coronavirus pandemic is,

Robert Farrington  37:29  

This is the year to join. I think it's gonna be virtual this year. So I think it's this fall, but I think there are moving everything online. So I think now's the year to do it. You can at least just do it from home.

Taylor   37:39  

That's true and I don't have to buy a plane ticket. Yeah, interesting. I'm gonna think about that one. I'll have to look that up. Well, anyway, Robert, and thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all this knowledge. I think these things are so important from the decision to go to college to how to fund it to expanding our incomes through some kind of side hustle Or if you're someone at work, who's going to school for a Master's to get additional pay, I think they're all great lessons. I'm glad we extracted some of those today. if folks want to get in touch with you if they want to learn some of your lessons, some of your knowledge about financing college, whatever, where can they find you?

Robert Farrington  38:18  

Yeah, so you can find us at the college investor calm, if you'd like to listen in our podcast is the college investor audio show, and we have a YouTube channel, the college investor.

Taylor   38:27  

I love it. I love it. Well, thanks again so much for joining us today to everybody out there. Thank you for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts. It's very much appreciated, and it helps other people learn about the show. If you know anyone who could use a little bit more passive wealth in their lives. Please share the show with them and bring them into the tribe. Thanks for tuning in. Once again, I hope you have a great day and a great rest of your week and we will talk to you in the next episode. Bye bye