As part of last week’s Money Smart Week at the Cranston Public Library, financial advisor Bill Geasey presented parents and students alike with some honest – and sometimes humorous – tips on planning and paying for college.

The workshop, “Plan and Pay for College Without Going Crazy and Broke,” took place Monday night at the Central Library. Geasey’s knowledge was gathered from his own experience in finance, coupled with his personal experience as a father of two children who attended and graduated from private New England colleges for less than half the cost of one student. He hoped to share what he had learned through the college planning process.

Guests included one high school student, and parents whose students ranged in age from 11 years old to seniors in high school and anywhere in between. As Geasey polled the audience, he learned that the participants had anywhere from one child to multiple children whose college years would overlap, to one set of twins who would potentially be attending college at the same time. He made a point of tailoring his interactive presentation to the needs of his guests as often as possible.

“No matter where you are, and everyone is in different places both financially and with the ages of your kids, my goal is to give you concrete information to take away with you tonight,” he said. “We’re going to look at how schools look at money and how other people look at money.”

Geasey explained that nearly a decade ago, when his oldest daughter was beginning to think about colleges, he worried about the costs.

“I would think to myself, ‘How am I ever going to pay $40,000 a year?’” he said. “Now, that cost is $61,000, $62,000, $63,000 a year. My goal is to give you more resources to help you make things happen.”

Geasey’s daughters eventually attended Wheaton College and Skidmore College.

Geasey handed out a copy of his workshop workbook, entitled “Getting to Grade 13: Plan and Pay for College without Going Crazy or Broke! A Guide and Workbook for Financially Concerned Parents,” to every participant, along with a coordinating packet of fill-in-the-blank questions for families to fill in if they chose to, entitled “The College Money Obstacle Course.”

While the workbook went along with Geasey’s workshop, the packet offered parents the chance to get some basic feedback as to what their roadmap for college planning might look like, including possible areas of concern as well as potential opportunities, based on the information they submitted to him.

“I’ve designed the workbook to be simple as to not overwhelm you,” he said. “We’ll be talking about the old way versus where we are today in education, and then we’ll talk about money.”

In mentioning “the old way,” Geasey was referring to the fact that the educational system has generally followed the same “industrial model” for the past 100 years, similar to an assembly line of passing from one grade to another for 12 years.

“We’re programmed to keep passing through this system for 12 years, even if problems pop up, but those problems may become very pronounced at grade 12, and you have to question whether or not grade 13 really makes sense, at least right away,” Geasey said. “Does your 12th-grader have the life skills they need to move on, from can they do laundry and get out of bed, to are they ready to take on debt? Students now need to show the skills that colleges are looking for and require, such as the ability to think creatively, to collaborate and work as a team.”

He said college loan as one of the toughest loan contracts there is, with some of the highest interest rates out there, and noted that debt is marketed the way automobile makers market their cars, including the fine print.

“Debt is a marketing tool, just like automobiles. They market their easy payments, but in the small print you see there’s a huge down payment required. Colleges are the best marketers on the planet, the best at getting people to buy in to what they’re selling,” he said.

Geasey helped his workshop participants consider their assets, both the countable kind and the non-countable kind, and explained the difference between the two, as well as the importance of having less of one and more of the other.

“The more they can count, the more they can count on you to pay,” he said. “Where you put your money may affect how colleges treat you. There are wealthier people who may not pay as much as you do for school because of where their money is, and there are people who are less well off who are being asked to pay more.”

Of the two types of available aid, Geasey said need-based aid is more available than merit aid. He defined need-based aid as being grants and other financial aid, while merit aid is based on achievement, skill, or something special that a student brings to the table, with scholarships being offered for that type of merit. He also noted that merit aid can be considered a countable asset.

Geasey recommended collegeboard.org as a good resource to help parents and students find colleges which meet their requirements for need, including schools that will pay 100 percent of the need which has been determined by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, form. He noted that private schools will often use the CSS Profile to determine financial aid.

With regards to private schools versus public schools, Geasey explained that students will often have as good a chance, if not better, of getting financial aid at the more expensive private schools, which tend to have more money to give, and at older and more established schools, which also tend to have larger endowments.

Geasey advised that income is considered more than savings when considering financial aid, and that debt is not considered at all. He noted that families in the middle of the spectrum – with too much income to qualify for much in the way of need-based aid, and too little to pay for college – are in the toughest spot.

He educated parents about the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and how that number is reached. As the workshop participants followed along in their workbooks, they were able to create a sample EFC example in order to clarify the term and its meaning. He also noted that families with students whose college years overlap, such as twins or families with more than one child in school at a time, do not have double the EFC.

Geasey gave parents some things to consider when calculating their EFC, including how their income levels, the types of assets they possess, and how they are counted. He also posed some out-of-the box ideas to parents, including the gap year scenario, in which a student takes a year off after high school while committing to a college for the following year, and uses that year as time to mature, gain new experiences such as travel, and save money. Parents can use the year as a means of delaying one child’s entrance into college and providing more years of overlap with other children in the family attending college at the same time, which gives them more opportunities for financial aid and additional tax credits for claiming their students who are in college.

After Geasey’s 45-minute presentation, he took nearly the same amount of time answering questions from his audience and helping them to further understand the process and clarify what they’d learned that night. At the conclusion of the evening, Geasey had one thing he hoped the guests had learned through his presentation.

“My biggest message of all, if you take just one thing away from tonight’s workshop, is to learn your EFC now,” Geasey said. “I speak to groups all over the state, and that is always my biggest message no matter where I’m speaking, no matter who I am speaking to. Don’t wait until your student’s senior year to learn this information. It’s never to early to start.”

For more information about Geasey, visit his website, williamgeasey.com.