brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today's question comes from

michael and ohio how do you reconcile paying off debt prior to funding college we started on our

journey to freedom from debt last year and our son will be attending college within the next two years

my focus has been earmarking cash specifically for his college tuition

and expenses with early debt payoff as a secondary priority based on the time frame of when that

cash is needed. What's your advice to parents with a more imminent timeline to college?

Imminent. So intense. Okay, so we're talking within the next two years, Sun is attending college. They've got some consumer debt. They're trying to help pay for junior's college. What say you, Dave? Why this order? Because baby step two is pay off your consumer debt. Baby step five is safe for kids college. Well, this is not really saving for kids college this is almost budgeting because this is a current

budget line item because it's here cash flowing and so what it's doing is it's whatever we're

paying out of our pocket for the kids college because it's upon us it's imminent to use his word

because of that it's a budget item It's not really a baby step.

And so what that does then by mathematical necessity is it reduces the amount of money you put towards your debt because you have this expense line in your budget.

It's going to slow down your debt pay off.

But that's not because college is more important.

It's because college is on top of you.

Now, having said all of that Michael in Ohio... that's not because college is more important it's because college is on top of you now having

said all of that michael in ohio junior is going to community college for the first two years

because he's got a mom and dad that are broke.

He's not going to Harvard.

Hello?

The number one reason people go into student loan debt is not to get an education.

It's because they chose to go to a college they couldn't afford.

The University of Tennessee at Knoxville,

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