Cozy Wittman: Mastering the Brutal College Planning Process

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Hello and welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartalus, and my special guest today is Kozie Whitman, who oversees education and partnerships for College Inside Track. She'll be discussing the college planning process and significant changes that have gone into effect this year that advisors and parents need to know about. Kozie, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Greg, for having me.

My pleasure. Tell us a little bit about your role and what College Inside Track does.

Sure. So College Inside Track helps families navigate the college search process. For us, the goal is right-fit schools for families, right? So we would define that as the right academic fit for students, the right social fit for students, and the right financial fit for the family, just meaning it fits the family's philosophy for paying for school. And at the end of the day, the real goal is just sending kids off to college that fit them well, allow them to elbow through a couple majors because everybody does, and graduate 4 years later on track. And my role is really education and partnerships, which means I work with families individually to help them understand what college search could look like for their student. And then I partner with advisors to allow them to leverage College Inside Track to really bring value to their clients.

High level, this topic is incredibly important. I mean, college is always super important, but right now with tuition the way it is, flux in the economy, uncertainty about jobs, etc., there's a lot to take in. Tell me, first of all, with advisors, what are you hearing? What are you recommending? Any emerging trends, etc.?

Sure. So in chatting with advisors, one of the things that we always talk about is the fact that families feel very confused, right? They don't really understand where to begin. They often come to Part of the challenge advisors have, of course, is families come to them when they start saving for college, and then they come back when they wanna spend that savings. But unfortunately, sometimes by the time you get to the, it's time to start pulling money out of a college savings plan or whatever vehicle advisors have them saving in, they've gotten themselves into a corner that they're not overly comfortable with or didn't align with whatever the retirement plans are. And so I think it's really important for advisors to interject themselves, and many do, but to interject themselves in that kind of middle school, early high school timeline to be able to say, what does the path for Jane look like, right? Is she headed off to, and as a family, do you value more selective schools, the big brand schools? Is Jane a good candidate for that style of school, and are we saving appropriately for that style of school? Because one of the challenges that families face today is there are, you know, roughly 3,500 universities and colleges in the US, and that means there are 3,500 acceptance policies and 3,500 gifting policies. And so it becomes very challenging for advisors who just have a limited scope usually about what college looks like to be able to help their clients.

You talked about leading with fit, right? Being a, a really great starting point. And it seems that Many people don't do that. They kind of begin with, I don't know, the names that they're familiar with or that they aspire to, and then the fit is almost a secondary or tertiary consideration often. Tell me about that whole process.

Yeah, so I think part of the reason people do that is they don't really know how else to slice the pie up, right? How do I decide if this school really fits me? And so Helping people break the search into a process that says, where's your student going to actually be successful? And starting with that question, and that's why we start with both academic and social fit, because the student needs to be comfortable on the college campus. But from an academic fit perspective, people kind of stick to, do they have the degrees? That my student wants. And at the end of the day, we want them to go a tiny bit deeper than that and say, what is the intended outcome of that degree on this campus? So who comes and recruits from there? What kind of research would I get access to? So that they have some level of understanding of where this degree is actually going to take the student. And the student still may not know, and that's okay, right? I think we put a lot of pressure on our high school students to choose a career. And I don't think most of us would say where we start our careers, where we're going to end our career. So I think it's okay to alleviate that. But at the same time, understanding, are the degrees that I'm interested in on this college campus, are they taught in theory because they're planning for me to go get a master's, or are they taught in practice? And here's who comes and recruits out of this program so that you have some level of understanding. And the other thing I think, um, Media does a really nice job of representing that, like big lecture hall, lots of students busily taking notes, tiny professor down at the front, right, with the big blackboard. Not all schools teach like that. That's not the way education is delivered at every single university. And so spending some time thinking about how does my student learn best and what schools can actually provide that level of education for them, who's gonna be a partner with us in our students' success, I think, is the best way to think about it.

Okay. And so you mentioned for kids who don't have a major, they may be unsure, and that's incredibly common. You know, awareness of majors available is obviously one thing. But tell me about, for these kids and the parents, what they should look for in a school in terms of the potential to help them gain clarity on what they'd like to study.

Yeah, so there are schools that have process in place to walk students through potential degrees that might be of interest to them. The liberal arts schools, for instance, have the students spending time kind of dipping into all kinds of things in the first couple of years and hoping to expose them to degree areas maybe that they aren't familiar with. Some schools make it really easy to double and triple major, for instance, and that's a great place to send a kid who kind of doesn't know what they want, right? Because you can change your degree without losing speed. And so I just want people to ask the school, how are you partnering with us on this? 'Cause my student doesn't really know. And see what the school says, because if they don't really have an answer, you've kind of got your answer.

Okay. I wanna widen the lens a little here. Talk about, talk big picture first for kind of a macro context. The New York Times a short time ago ran a guest essay with the following headline, This is Peak College Admissions Insanity. And it was a really great article. It discussed the intense competition that exists now, changing policies on standardized testing, the increasing influence of early admissions, and problems, current problems with financial aid system. Yeah. There's so much going on. So I have about 40 questions, but I'll just have you provide one response.

Yeah.

So tell me, you know, how do you unpack that?

Yeah, so I, I think the, the primary thing— and a great article, by the way, I also read it— um, the primary thing I want people to understand is, one, that the college admissions process was never set up to be a meritocracy, right? It was never intended to be fair. And I think because we're talking about educational bodies, and a lot of our kids go to public high schools, right, we think about these We think of colleges as being— helping us in our best interest. And really, they're businesses. And they're making decisions on their best interests, right? And as long as you approach it that way, then it helps you really think about whether or not this college education you're getting ready to purchase— because I think sometimes people forget, like, you're buying a college education. They talk about the prices, but they don't treat it like a purchase. And so at the end of the day, what I really want people to know is, look, you have to seek out schools that are going to serve you, serve your students, serve your family, and understand the landscape that you're playing on, right? In 2002, there were 175,000 applicants to the Ivy Plus schools. In 2022, so just 20 years later, they had almost 600,000 applicants. Most of those schools have fewer than 10,000 spots, right? So you just have to understand that things do not look like they did back when the parents went to college.

Absolutely. I mean, I'm kind of astonished at the acceptance rates, um, how they've changed over 30 years. It's like, wow. Look at that, yeah.

And not just at the private schools, like people are like, oh, okay, but my kid isn't gonna go to an Ivy Plus school, right? UVA has a 19% acceptance rate. University of Michigan is under 20%. University of Texas is under 20%, right? These are the flagship public universities in their states.

And what's driving that? What are the, I mean, there are a number of things, but tell me a little more like what's behind all that.

Yeah, so a lot of the colleges, The volume of applications at those schools is driving a bunch of it, right? Back in the day, well, in my dinosaur days anyway, right? You just kind of looked around.

I was on the Earth too then.

You know, you kind of looked around and said, here's this local college, I'm just going to go there, right? But the beautiful thing is we've opened the world up. Kids believe they can go anywhere and they can. And the public flagship schools are battling the, you know, we've got a ton of kids from our state trying to come,, but also we want to balance our budgets with international students and students from other parts of the country. And so it really drives a huge influx, right, of numbers. UCLA last year had 147,000 applicants for 6,000 to 7,000 spots. And it's because it's a big brand, right? University of Texas, it's a big brand. University of Michigan, it's a brand. And so those schools are just seeing kind of the same influxes that the private selective schools are, and that's part of the challenge for families is, you know, they're still thinking about the idea that the Ivies are the only selective schools in the country, but they're not.

Right. I think there's a big disconnect between what a lot of parents think, and again, it's based on old information, and then there's a rapid learning curve that can be disheartening when they go, huh, look at that.

That's right. That's right. And, you know, candidly, when you're living in your house with a really sharp kid, you don't know that there are thousands of really sharp kids. Somewhere in your brain, you kind of understand that, but you don't really know the numbers you're up against. Exactly.

The Times article had an interesting point talking about how ED, early decision, is such a big thing, and obviously colleges like that because it provides so much clarity, certainty, but in net, a byproduct of this is that it's almost like the strong and more competitive got even stronger and more competitive. Yes.

Right? Yeah, that's exactly what happened. It's been really interesting that as things have shifted and changed, it's actually shifted and changed in favor of the colleges and not in favor of families. And again, that's a landscape, you know, what's happening is kind of earthquake status. But families are not feeling the shaking underneath their feet.

So acknowledging that aid is, of course, part of the landscape, we see all these stories about tuition hitting $90,000, et cetera. I think it might have been Vanderbilt or somewhere, I think it was like $98,000 or what have you. But the point is the tuition rate has far outstripped the rate of inflation. Tell me about how parents are dealing with this now against a backdrop of, you know, sticky inflation, if you will, elsewhere in the country, right? I mean, and you got higher interest rates and et cetera. So I'm just curious, like, does that, how does that affect the calculus in terms of looking at schools?

Yeah, so I think it's important for families to have a conversation internally about what they value, because I have found that college education is a lot like buying cars. Right? A car gets you from point A to point B. And some people really want the luxury brand because it matters to them and they think it's important. And other people are just fine with the economy brand. And so as a family, I think you have to really sit down and say, what's important to us? What do we care about? And then line up the, do we have the budget to back up, right, that price tag that comes with that school? But the challenge for families, of course, is that sometimes when schools show you the price tag, That's the actual price tag. And other times it's not the actual price tag. And so it's really challenging because families can do all the right things. They can build their budget. They can know exactly how much they can spend. They know they want their student to contribute or they don't want their student to contribute. They're going to use loans or they're not going to use loans. But then they can turn to the colleges and they can't really get solid answers for them. So it's, It's hard. It's hard for families right now.

I guess each school requires its own separate approach too, right? It's not a one-size-fits-all at all, which adds to the burden of the parents to be— pick your targets well, because you don't have infinite time, energy, and resources.

That's right. That's right. And that's the challenge, really. So when I sit down with families and we do a family consultation, that's the main question they ask me is, which schools should we be looking at? And it's a much more complex answer than, oh, here are 6 schools. You should go look at these, right? Because, as mentioned, and there is a gifting program for every single school. And sadly, the schools, right, that are at the highest price tags also tend to be the most selective in the country, which means when you head off to those schools, there are not scholarship dollars to offset the cost for that family. So you can have a really smart student and not be able to afford the school, or you might be able to afford the school, but your kid can't get in because they aren't the elite of the elite candidates.

Tell me now about changes this year that advisors and parents should be aware of.

A huge change kind of rocking the financial end of college is— are the changes to the FAFSA. And lots of families kind of, you know, wipe their hands and say, well, we weren't going to ever qualify for need-based aid. And that may be true. But filling out the form certainly is an important fact that people should know matters to the colleges. And when you think about it from the college's perspective, without a financial aid form, they really have no understanding of your ability to pay. So if you're a high net worth family and you don't care about need-based aid, you should fill out your FAFSA so they know, I don't care about your need-based aid, right? It actually helps boost the student. Right. And if you're not that family, it's sadly the FAFSA changes are really impacting kind of the middle and upper-middle-income classes. One of the major changes to the formula was the formula is no longer going to reflect when a family has multiple kids in college at the same time. And what that means is, in the past, if families had 2 kids in college, it wouldn't be unusual for them to qualify for need-based aid even when they didn't qualify with just 1 student in college. But what this new change means is that now If you didn't qualify with one kid in school, you're not going to qualify for two or three or four. I met a financial advisor in California who had five kids in college at the same time. They were a blended family. Those guys for sure would've qualified, right? So it's a big change. The other piece there really would be just the admissions changes. We see a lot of schools, you mentioned this, Greg, leaning into early decision, taking well over half of their freshman classes. Now what that means is if you can cash flow you can cash flow a college and you're really comfortable with the price, leveraging early decision significantly boosts your opportunity to get into a school. But when you apply early decision, per the name of the application, you are making a decision that this is my school and I am coming. And you make that decision before you know what the financials will look like. So for families who can't just cash flow college, it's a dangerous pathway to walk.

Right. And in addition, because of that financial dimension, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that a student should only commit to a school for ED if that student is 138% sure they want the school. I mean, they're really— you don't want them to be ambivalent and second-guess, what have I done? So tell me about the conviction that you really want to see in a student to, to pursue ED.

Yeah, we always, when we talk with our students, we, we say, look, this is, this is the school you're getting engaged to, right? It is the committed school. And sometimes kids just aren't ready, candidly, by application season. They haven't really made a decision about where they want to go for sure, for sure. And in that case, you can leverage, for the schools that have it, you can leverage early action, right? It says to the school, I love you so much, I got my act together and got all my stuff out the door, but I'm applying lots of schools this way. I'm not just committing to one school.

And just to be clear for anyone listening who's unsure, early action, —does not— you're not committed to it. You're not committed. Yeah, but it gives you a benefit, advantage of sorts. That's right.

It's an early application. So typically these are November, early December deadlines, where regular decision would be usually after the first of the year. So you are getting your stuff in early, but it's not a committed application. OK.

And then, I mean, with other changes in FAFSA, there was, I think, the divorce formula played a role. Correct.

So in a divorce formula, the parent who is going to fill out the FAFSA, because only one is going to fill it out, is the parent who is financially supporting that student more. Here is the challenge. The federal government, in the original legislation, they did not define what financial support means. And as it's been rolling out, the federal government, the Department of Education, has not defined what financial support means. So families are kind of left up to themselves to figure out what that actually means. In the event that both parents are contributing 50/50, they actually must choose the household with the higher household income. So, you know, and it is household. So if one parent is remarried, but the other parent is not, the remarried parent does need to include the spouse in their income.

Okay, nitty-gritty question, but would you know if that includes like bonuses or is that just base compensation or it's hard to tell?

It's whatever shows up on the tax return as adjusted gross.

Okay, and then amongst the other FAFSA changes, there was a small business farming exemption and then the grandparent contributions no longer having a negative impact.

Yeah, this is giant actually, the grandparent and sub in any third party here, right? So it could be an auntie, an uncle, a godparent, whoever. Any third party who wants to help a student pay for school can now do so without negative impact to the student's need-based aid. Now, if a student isn't getting need-based aid, grandma and grandpa could always help. But for families where maybe grandma and grandpa have a lot of money, but their adult children do not necessarily, it's such a huge, lovely bonus that it's not going to now come back around and kind of nip the student in the bud, right? Right. The other thing I will just say there is for advisors, it's an opportunity to to do some serious cross-generational work if they have never met, for instance, the adult children of the grandparents or vice versa. It's a good time to bring everyone in together to talk about, you know, as grandchildren are being born, where do we want to save for college? Maybe Grandma and Grandpa should own that 529 plan and Mom and Dad just contribute to it. So it's a good opportunity for advisors.

Yeah, it seems like a very organic and tasteful way to Yes. Open up new possibilities. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I want to ask a little about transfers. Transfers have always been part of the landscape, of course, but given the high tuition rates and the tough lower acceptance rates, tell me about just that as a strategy or the dynamics of it. I know I read that last year, I think the number of transfers rose 5.3% to about 13.2%. And then there has been most of the growth was in 2-year schools. 7.7 lateral transfers for your institutions, 4.3. So directionally, there's more of it, but just unpack that a little. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, so I think when people set out on the path of college search, starting the search with what is the best path for my student? Because today, certainly from an academic and social fit, there's not one right path to choose. And from a financial fit, there is not just one right path to choose. So I can't say, If you said to me, Greg, what's the cheapest path for someone to send their kid off to college? I couldn't answer that question because there's not a single answer there. So our recommendation is people take in the entire landscape, think about who their student is from an academic perspective. I would not choose the 2-year and transfer route for the student who really doesn't know what they want. So we'll just start at the 2-year school, maybe they'll figure it out there. I'm here to tell you they don't figure it out. So when they do studies, what they show is for the kids who started the 2-year school with the intention of going on to a 4-year college, only 20% make that leap. And, you know, think about who goes off to get their 2-year with the intention of going to 4. It's often the kids who don't know what they want to do yet, right? So parents think, well, this will be a cheap way, you know, if it doesn't end up working out, we're not out much. But it turns out your student's better off at a 4-year school rubbing elbows with a bunch of other kids who don't know what they want in an environment intended to kind of help them figure that out. Right.

The destination is a little bit murky and in the distance, but they're getting closer. Correct.

Correct. And, you know, they bump into kids. Kids tell them their major. You know, you just get exposed. Sure. And so now in some states, California is a good example. They actually have relationships between the big flagship schools, the UC system, for instance, and the community colleges. Where they agree, we'll accept all those credits, start here, and you'll get an automatic transfer if you've got these qualities about you. And so where people live, the family's background financially, and the student's academic background all play into what is the best pathway. And that's where I would go with that. Okay.

And I just wanted to— I don't want to risk forgetting this, but tell me a little about legacy admissions because there's been a movement afoot to make it less of a thing to the extent it even is a thing at many colleges.

Yeah, so interesting. I did some research for a presentation I was doing on the ROI of college. And one of the things that I dived into was, you know, who gets into the most selective schools. And it turns out legacy is one of those pieces, right? But it also turns out that the legacy kids also fall into the most common reason people get into those schools. They're coming out of the top 1% income earners, families. And the legacy people, guess what? Also top 1% people, right? So there's kind of a blending there of how much legacy actually impacts college. And each college has so many different ways that they go about selecting students. That if you're concerned about legacy or you want to understand how much legacy plays into this, you can call the admissions group and just ask them, what's the acceptance rate among legacy students? To find out whether or not that's elevating your game. And there's so many legacy kids now that at a lot of colleges, it's not as much a thing.

Well, you just answered my question because I was going to ask you, a lot of schools are saying, oh, no, no, no, plays no role, but then you can wonder, well, are they just kind of saying that and winking like they acknowledge it on the back end? It can't, certainly can't hurt, but you gotta be getting perhaps a small advantage. But I think with what you just said, the acceptance rate is the numbers kind of speak for themselves. So you could look at that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Interesting. I did wanna bring something up and there's no natural segue here and it is a negative, sad topic. And so I don't wanna end it here, but I just, it's important and I wanna talk to you about it. So, There are a lot of colleges closing across the country. It's very sad. I did some research on it and I was kind of shocked by how much it's happening. And a lot of these schools have long histories, legacies, et cetera. But one point is that when you apply for a school, you really, it's helpful to know the financial health of the college, right? Like you want to know it's going to be around in 4 years, 10 years, et cetera. Can you add a little color to this?

Yeah, this, the livelihood of the colleges for sure is a large topic. The schools that tend though to be in this mix of at-risk tend to be the very small private colleges. One closed this year in Milwaukee, Cardinal Stritch. And one of the things that I joke with people about is in the thousands of family consultations I've done, not a single student has ever sat in front of me and said, Dang, I can't wait to go to Cardinal Stritch, you know? So they tend to be the smaller schools. Some aren't closing their doors, some are getting absorbed, right? So there's an acquisition process for some schools. It allows some of the bigger schools to create satellite campuses. But I do think it's helpful for families to, so Forbes has done an amazing review of, you know, Potential financial outcomes. They gave students or the colleges grades from A to F on likelihood of survival. So, and I think it's the top 400 schools in the country, so that can be helpful. But I think you certainly can, for at least public institutions, you can go in and take a look, right? They're public institutions and see what it looks like. Also taking a look at the endowment can be helpful and asking what the endowment looks like for families to families who are interested.

Is it public information to see the trajectory of an endowment over time? So you could see the trend. I mean, there's a larger history that's available to people or?

Certainly at the public schools, I believe. I don't know about the private schools. Okay.

And then on the flip side, I'm curious, tell me what are some positive encouraging trends that you're seeing that, because you know, it's a lot of, it's the obvious doom and gloom, high tuition, it's competitive. You know, it is tough. That's very true. Where, where are there, where's their hope or reason for optimism?

Yeah, so many, right? I think we get so wrapped up in the how hard it is to get into these certain schools, but the reality is there are thousands of schools in the US and we have a tendency to think there are 100 great schools and the rest of them are kind of crappy, you know, and that's just blatantly untrue, right? So spending time actually thinking about who else is in the market. So chatting with a family yesterday, The girl is interested in the East Coast. She's from the Midwest. And they were trying to figure out which schools should we look at? 'Cause she of course had all the, you know, BU, BC, she had all the big names on there. And one of the things we talked about was you can't have an entire list made up of highly selective schools, right? You've gotta balance for risk. And so one of the things we talked about was looking for schools in the marketplace that have acceptance rates that hang closer to the 30 to 60%. It does not, the thing is that rigor rigor and acceptance are not the same, right? You can find very rigorous programs at schools that have higher acceptance rates. And so diving a little bit more deeply, not just using the brand of the school as your selection point, but diving at the school to ask things like the intended outcomes of some of the degrees the student's interested in. So what's the acceptance rate of the school, but also what's the acceptance rate at this this degree program. So, you know, there's thousands of great schools. And by the way, thousands of great schools interested in bringing their prices to something that people would consider reasonable. You just have to widen your search. Exactly.

And to that point, I recently attended a panel discussion of college admissions officers. So it was interesting to hear the view from the other side. And, you know, some represented excellent, you know, school, brand name schools, others in the middle, others less so. So it was a diversity of academic profiles represented. There was a palpable lament of these, the lists that, to your point, the top 100. So it's kind of like this or out of sight, out of mind. And a lot of these schools out there are tremendous, but they're just like, they're not known. So to your average person, so it's a shame there's this massive disconnect. And one of the One of the people on the panel made a great point. They said, you know, he referred to a list, and I'm not sure if it was real or hypothetical, but it said, you know, best cities in the world. Okay, so let's say it was like Paris and, you know, just throwing out a name, Dallas or whatever. But the person reading it said, I'm a skier. I want to go to somewhere to ski. So that top list was of zero help. And in the same way, with these top college lists, to the extent you can ascertain what you want, why do you want it, then some of those top schools may be meaningless or not. It really depends. That's right.

And I always tell people, it's a little like trying to grocery shop in a foreign country, right? So if your student wants to pick themselves up and go to another region of the country, what schools are you going to know in that region? The big brand schools, right? And you're thinking, well, I've never heard of Quinnipiac, so can't be any good, right? You walk into a grocery store and you want to buy jam and you see your favorite jam brand there, you're like, oh, I'm going to buy this, even though— just because you don't know the other ones, right?

Precisely, and it's a virtuous or vicious, if you take the other side, cycle, right? Where it just begets further attention, it attracts more attention.

Yeah, and that's what the college lists do, right? Most of the schools end up in those top spots, in those—, you know, college list rankings because of the volume of applications they get. And so those admissions groups are driving application numbers.

And that's part of the reason I heard that many are now going back to standardized tests. There was during COVID there was a time when they said, you know, it's optional. And now, you know, what I heard on this panel, some of them said the sheer volume of applications is overwhelming. Yes. Give the required attention to each application. And so in a way, having the standardized test numbers provides a useful data point to provide additional context and can help them navigate this onslaught of applications. For sure.

And taking the more maybe cynical view, there was a study that came out a couple months ago, hyper-compelling evidence that standardized testing can be a better predictor of success on a college campus than a GPA. And that has to do with kind of the artificial inflation of GPAs that we see around the country. Country, right? And so consequently, as soon as that study was released, guess what? Duke stepped back up into the test required. Brown did. University of Texas, who's been test blind for probably 12 years, stepped back in to say, we're going to go back to test required because for them, they see it as a better predictor. And at the end of the day, what do all colleges want? They want kids who are going to come and be successful. They don't want kids who are going to end up on the academic probation list, right? So if the testing can provide that for them, of course they're going to choose it.

And also an interesting point on GPA, not all GPAs are created equally because they don't account for the academic rigor of the class and the school profile, right? That's right. And what I heard though from the panelists is that they're on the backend, if you will, they do account for that. So it's not all GPAs are created equally. There are a lot of different inputs. Yeah. That's right.

And, you know, some very rigorous high schools don't weight their GPAs. Some schools weight their honors classes or their accelerated classes now so that they can elevate the average GPA for the high school. So, yeah, I totally understand the position the colleges are in. It's very challenging.

Yeah. So we're almost out of time. I want to ask you if there are any final thoughts, things you'd like to share that we haven't touched on.

Yeah, I guess for me, I want people to do a deeper level of research on the front side, right? So as advisors are interacting with their families, there's opportunity there to have conversation with them. And I wish that advisors would and encourage the families to not just look at big brand schools, right? Encourage families to say, What is academic fit for your student? So start there, family. What is social fit? Start with those. And then as an advisor, right, you've got their long game. So helping families really think about what can we actually afford on an annual basis for a college education? Because families are really divided in the, I can cash flow college, or I make enough to save for college, but not enough to cash flow college. And so making sure people, use a strategy that really leverages that savings well. Great. Well, that's excellent advice. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for joining. My guest has been Cozy Whitman. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com/advisor. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartolis.

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