How To Help Your Child Be Degree Free in 2025 (DF#183)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Child wants to be an audio engineer. They do not have to go to college to do that. Look at every other option before you entertain a college or university for that, because there are so many programs that teach it. Your child wants to go into cybersecurity, look at every other option, every other cert, every other boot camp before you look at a college degree for that, because that's the least efficient way to do it. And a degree is not legally required to do that job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:22]:
Aloha folks, and welcome back to degree free. Today, we're going to go over how to help your child be degree free in 2025. We are going to go over step by step what you can do to help your child be successful in 2025, the degree free way. And speaking of the degree free way, we're going to go through everything step by step here, but the basis of all of this comes from our workbooks, the degree freeway, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. You don't have to buy the workbook too. If you want to it's degreefree.co4/book. You can get it there or you can go to Amazon. However you want, The book is broken down very simply.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:58]:
I'll just go over broad strokes of what it is. The first we start off with a job limit inventory, and that is going over how many jobs your child currently knows because to get somewhere, we have to know where we currently are right now. That's what we do is we basically say, Hey, just get a list, figure out how many jobs, you know, just write them down. So that's the first one. Then it's going to be vocational creative. Which is an exercise to expand the amount of jobs they know, because what we've identified is that job limit inventory, that list of job that is the menu that they have. If they don't know a job exists, they can't shoot for it. They definitely can't get it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:38]:
If they don't know what that job is, we've created an exercise it's called vocational creativity to expand their mind about the different jobs that are out there. And then for you too, if you don't know a lot of jobs, there's nothing wrong with it either.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:51]:
Most people don't.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:51]:
When you go through it, if you get the degree free way, there's exercises in there to help you figure out more and more jobs. Then we would have to identify what your child needs in their work, what they want in their work. Then we have to figure out what different roles out there would fit those needs. Then we figure out interest. Then we think about whether or not a degree is required for those jobs. That is the breakdown at a high level and let's get into everything kind of step by step.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:18]:
All right. So I'm going to break down for everybody how you're going to go about having these conversations and then doing this at home. Let me preface this by saying it is going to take you a very long time. And we know that because we do this in the degree free launch program, but I'm going to tell you how to do it. And I just want to make sure that your expectations are set. This is not a quick process and there's a reason it's not a quick process. It's because you are talking over decisions that have very long term ramifications. And so you need to be thorough and you need to take your time when you were doing this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:45]:
In the degree free way. If you look at it, if you're on YouTube, it's actually very thin. It is designed to go through over a weekend. It is literally Friday night after school, Saturday, Sunday. That is what it's designed to do. It can take longer and it does take longer for a lot of families. So don't let that discourage you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:04]:
I'm gonna talk about a few things in addition that are actually things that you're gonna have to do after you go through the book as well. And I'm going to give you little bit of idea about how to go through doing those things too, because you're still gonna have to do research after you get through the research of the book as well. Because every single person that goes through is gonna get a different result and every single person then has different budgets, different expectations, different timelines, different needs, different location, all of those things play into. And that's why this takes so much time because it's individual for every single person, which is how we should be making these decisions to begin with. The first thing that you're going to do is you are going to go through with your young adult and you are going to have them open their minds up a little bit. Because a lot of times, especially if they're facing these decisions, they start to get kind of panicky. They start to get a little cagey. They're feeling overwhelmed and they don't know how to choose, or they feel like there's only a couple and they're not sure how to choose which one.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:51]:
But the thing is a lot of times what we filter down to at this point, you haven't thought through it or they haven't thought through it in a way that's really strategic about whether or not it's gonna meet their needs. That's why we have to kind of unpack and roll the train back to the station, park it, and then start over.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:05]:
Hey there. I hope you're enjoying this episode of the degree free podcast. At degree free, we wanna help everyone thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. And the only way to truly reach everyone is with your help. If you're getting value out of this episode or if this is your second, 3rd, or 4th episode that you're tuning into, if you could just ship this to a friend, just click that one button and share it with someone in your contacts or on your stories. It would mean the world to us. And more importantly, get our message out to more people who need help getting out of their current situation. If you could do that right now, that would mean a whole lot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:41]:
So pretend they don't have any ideas, pretend like they haven't committed to anything yet, and then put interests and passions aside for now. Park them with the train, leave them. We're walking away from the station now. Ask them, they could choose anywhere to live wherever they live. These are really practical things. What does their perfect daily routine look like? They could break down a week and they could live it how they want every week. What would that look like to them? What would they do? Who would they spend time with? What would they cook? Thinking about things in this way, this very physical way is helpful for young adults because they can picture a lot of these things. And even if they can't picture necessarily the future in a concrete way, they can still extrapolate, you know, this is kind of what I want my life to look like long term.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:17]:
These are the things that I'd like to be able to do. And then ask them what kind of goals they have. You know, do they want to travel? Do they want to own a house? If you guys live in an area and they want to stay where you live, if they want to own a house in that area, what kind of house they wanna have? Don't ask them any money questions necessarily yet, unless you know that your child has a goal income that they like to make. And then the last question is, and I always preface this with, you have to work. So if you could work where you wanted to work or how you wanted to work, how'd you do it? Would you go into an office? Would you work from home? Would you be able to get in a car and drive from work site to work site? Would you work 2 weeks at a time or 2 weeks and then have 2 weeks off? Like how would you like to do that? And then just see what they say. It's really hard for a lot of parents in this situation too. Don't interrupt them and don't finish their sentences or correct them, which I think is really tough. That's actually probably gonna be the hardest part for a lot of parents.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:04]:
I told you on this podcast a few months ago or a week ago, my experience with this. We had our nephew who is a little bit younger than who we work with. He's a 15, but he was going through some of this at the beginning process of it. And I was sitting there while you were working through because it didn't make sense for me to work through. He's blood related to me and, like, we were super close. I remember when he was just a little bulldog.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:25]:
He's a little baby.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:27]:
Yeah. I didn't do it because I was like, this is too much for me to do, but then so you did it and he was giving his answers and it was I had to stop myself 27 times and not interrupt him and just jumped down his throat. It's interesting. Cause like I'm used to it, but when it's somebody that you care about, it's so difficult to just have them. Okay. Speak. Cause he was saying some things and he was like, is that really what you like? That's not what I just had to just let him talk.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:52]:
That's the thing at this age, they're told a lot of things. They're just talked at a lot. And honestly, no one really likes to be talked at, but especially teenagers to be talked at.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:01]:
It goes to the value of hiring

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:05]:
Trusted outside third party.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:06]:
Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:07]:
So many parents say that actually they say, I just really helped to have a third party. We had a family come through the program and the dad was actually a marriage and family therapist. And so he said that is the biggest value for for them was just having somebody outside the situation to be a little bit more objective about what's possible and what they could do, and then how to go about doing it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:24]:
Even the parents that go through this workbook, the degree free way, even though you have our workbook here and the exercises are coming from an objective third party resource, it's still you. It's still all of your biases. It's still all of your history with them. It's still you, their mom, you, their dad delivering it. And a lot of the parents that buy this workbook and do it with their young adults, they're good at it, but it's still, you can't get rid of it because at the end of the day, mom's standing right there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:54]:
And they're your child and you love them so much and you just want to make it easier. You just want to help so badly. And that's the reason. So that's the big note here is just listen, do not interrupt, do not correct, and do not amend. Don't say, well, don't you mean? Nope. Don't say that because they will stop. You're not going to actually get what they're thinking and you really want to, because that's the goal of this. The next thing, and this is going to be a little harder.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:13]:
You might have to help with this, but this is identifying what they actually need. And this is a really tough thing to do because you're projecting into the future. Usually we say that you can kind of amend how long you're projecting into the future. So this could be 5 years from now. What are they gonna need moving out in the next year? What do they need 5 years from now? What do they need 10 years from now? So you can change basically, you know, in the next year, how much money they need to make in order to move out or move in with a roommate or do whatever they're planning to do in the next year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:37]:
Like we were talking about before a previous section, talking about all of those things, all of those questions, The function of those questions is so that we can hear the answer so that we can extrapolate their needs. And the needs are in 4 key areas, location, schedule, income, work environment, and that's in the degree of freeway right here for those watching the YouTube. Income or money, work environment, location, schedule, and those questions before are there so that you can ask it in a kind of a roundabout way to then back yourself into those numbers or those things, because asking somebody, anybody, and not even just a 16 or 20 year old, not even just a teenager or an 20 year old, what kind of money do you want to make?

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:20]:
It's a hard question to answer. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:21]:
$1,000,000. How much money you got?

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:24]:
Yeah. But asking them how much they need to cover their bills to live where they want and to do what they want is a much better way. Oh, how much do you think you need to live there?

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:31]:
Or not even that. You can back into it yourself, which is you say that you wanna live in Orange County, California. You say that you want to live in Brooklyn, New York by yourself in your own apartment with a dog, whatever. And then you just go. And then depending on how vivid their life picture is in the timeframe, let's say it's 5 years. Let's just go to the good old Googs and we'll Google how much all of this costs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:55]:
Like pet food and pet insurance.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:57]:
Exactly. And with ChargebeeT nowadays too, you don't even have to do all of the work. You can literally just be like, how much does it cost to have all these things and just have it spit out a number to you? It's probably wrong. At least it's directionally

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:11]:
correct. So you do that not just with income, but you do it with location, with schedule, and then with work environment. And you have them rank. Ideally, what you have to do is figure out which thing is the number one need. The more needs they have, the more difficult it's going to be to do the next step. So figure out what the thing they actually need is for most of them in this age is going to be income, just spoiler alert because you need money to do things. So it was probably gonna be income.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:30]:
For most people on most ages, it's income. The exception would be

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:33]:
Medical needs where you have to be close to your parents or you're physically unable to do things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:37]:
Medical or family needs, both types of needs, whether or not, like, you're disabled or your family's disabled, you're have to take care of your kids, or you actually don't need money. Like if your spouse is working or if you'd have a trust fund or do you have a major windfall or something like that, which are more edge cases for sure. But like that happens. But for most people at most ages, income is the most important.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:59]:
We had a good example of this where someone was like, oh, well, isn't it always income? And I said, well, no. And this is a good example of somebody who wasn't rich, rich, but definitely had this situation figured out where her grandfather had left her a little piece of paid off land and a single wide well maintained trailer. And so she did not have to worry about her housing. Her cost of living was extremely low. And because of that, her needs were actually not income. It's different. So she can optimize for schedule as opposed to income, because that was more important to her. Just depends on everyone's unique set of circumstances.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:29]:
So have your child figure out what the number one need is that they have from their work. And then after you do that, it gets easier. Now you have some more information. So if you're now looking for jobs that have 4 day work weeks, you're looking for any type of job that has a 4 day work week. Any of them look at all of them. If you need a job that makes $60,000 a year starting, you're now looking for jobs that pay $60,000 a year. Do not eliminate jobs at this point based on anything. What you're doing here is going, all right, this is what they need.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:53]:
These are jobs that fit these needs.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:54]:
Yeah. Or rather the only way that you're eliminating them is through these filters.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:58]:
Is through the need, not through like, oh, it needs you to do this and this. Don't worry about that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:02]:
Maybe not an extreme example, but if it's like the child or a young adult, they don't like smelly things and $40,000 is their need. Well, you could be a garbage man. You can drive a garbage truck and they're like, I don't want to do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:12]:
Don't worry about that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:13]:
That's not the time. If the only thing is income, then put it down the list. We'll filter it out later.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:18]:
And the note here too, is focused solely on matching needs, set aside your personal interests and their personal interests during this phase. And this takes a long time. Now, the reason you don't have to eliminate during this step is because you're trying to build a list that you can then eliminate from. Now you eliminate by interests. Once you'd go through this and all the jobs fit their needs, then you're going to narrow down based on careers that your child is interested in or not interested in.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:39]:
The way that we think about it is that they're 2 different steps, the elimination process and the accumulation process. They're 2 different steps. Even though the job doesn't sound interesting for whatever aspect, like we were saying, it's smelly or something, and I don't like smells. Even though that's the case, you don't want to eliminate it now. That list that we have after the accumulation phase, as I was saying with before with the job inventory at the very, very beginning, that list is now the list that we are going to use. Your child is going to pursue one of these things. Let's not eliminate it before we've accumulated it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:11]:
Cutting too soon is a problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:12]:
We're doing 2 things at once. And personally, I'm not very good at doing 2 things at once. I believe that most people are the exact same way and you should just do one thing at a time. So if we're looking for jobs that make $40,000 a year, let's just look for jobs that make $40,000 a year. And then after that, then we cut.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:28]:
And the next step is now aligning careers with their interests and their passion. So whatever the jobs meet their needs, that they're the most interested in, that's what you're looking for. And you don't have to cut all but one at the beginning, that's going to be really tough, but have them cut the ones they don't like at all at first. The next thing is you have them prioritize based on which ones are the most interesting to them. And then now you should have a couple rise to the top here. Now, what you do is you go to the good old Googs, as you say, and you will figure out what are the necessary steps to do that job. What do you actually need at this step? This is where you would also run these jobs through the legal requirement breakdown, and you make sure that these jobs legally require a college degree because a lot of times, so often, only 7.7% of all US jobs legally require college degrees. So, so often people will go through this process and they'll go, all these jobs require degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:13]:
And they'll look at the list and I'll go, no, they don't. And you need to do that yourself. Does this job legally require a college degree or not? If someone would get sued, if your child did that job without a degree, it requires a degree. That's the criteria, literally. That's how serious it is to add a degree requirement where there actually isn't one. Here, what you're doing is you're going to figure out if there's licenses associated with this job. If there are certifications associated with this job, if there are degrees associated with the job, there may be a couple. And then what you're doing now is figuring out where they would get the education needed or the certification or the licenses needed for that job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:44]:
So then you open the search up and I would always use college as the last domino. That's what we advise people to do. So look for other things. If your child wants to be an audio engineer, they do not have to go to college to do that. Look at every other option before you entertain a college or university for that, because there are so many programs that teach it. Your child wants to go into cybersecurity, look at every other option, every other cert, every other bootcamp before you look at a college degree for that, because that's the least efficient way to do it. And a degree is not legally required to do that job. That's how you do it now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:10]:
And then the next thing that you do is you are going to, based on your family's educational budget that you can spend for your child or that your child can spend themselves, the timeline that they want to finish it, and then their specific goals and interests in how they want to learn. Then you pick the best option for your family, specifically for your child. And you go over this with them because you guys are making this decision together. And you are going to say, all right, this is how much is available for you to spend. If that's applicable, or this is how much you can get through a loan or something, or this is how you could finance this. And then you'll finish on this timeline. And this one's online. This one's hybrid.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:43]:
This is in person, which of these is the most interesting to you? And then based on that, now you choose what path they're going to take going forward. That's how you do it. And then there's 2 minor follow-up things. Now you've done all the hard part. Your child knows exactly what they're going to do, how they're going to do it, how much it's going to cost and how long it's going to take. And you as a family have made an informed decision about what next step they're going to take in your mind and in your child's mind as well. College is always an option. If at any point they want to go back, they can.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:09]:
The college is a business. It will always be there and it will always take your money. If they can wait until they are 25, the costs will be significantly less because they'll be independent from you on the FAFSA. Their prefrontal cortex will also be fully formed. And so they're much more likely to be sure that they need to go. And that's actually something that fits their life goals, as opposed to this. You're about to graduate, figure it out. Just go, just pay the man, just take on the loans.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:32]:
That's the way that you can reconcile that to yourself. They can always go back to college. It will always be there. It's not going anywhere. And then the next thing is that for you redefining the definition of success to yourself, because your emotional support going forward here is going to be really helpful to your child. So when friends and family go, oh, well, they're not going to college. Usually go, yeah, they're not, they're doing this because this is a better fit for them. And you feeling secure, knowing that you as a parent are doing a very good job by having methodically gone through what your child actually needs from their work to get what they want out of life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:05]:
And that your child taking steps to get what they want out of life is the definition of success. It is not going to take on bankruptcies and student loans from a 4 year college because everybody else is doing it. That is not the definition of success. The definition of your child's success is them getting what they want out of life. That's it. And your child is going to be learning. If they're taking steps to get a skill, they don't have to get a job they don't yet have, and they have to learn something in order to do that. Your child is becoming educated.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:29]:
Your child is not going to be uneducated. They're going to be very educated in an area they need to be educated in to do what they want in life. And you as a parent are doing a great job supporting them and doing that. And you can feel confident knowing that you are going to help your child be successful, not through other people's definition of success, but through your own child's definition of their success. And that's better.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:48]:
I couldn't agree more. To recap, in the beginning, we went over the job limit inventory, the vocational creativity. I had it in and break those down in the degree free way. The reason why we start there is because it's a perfect way to open all of this up. Up. It is a perfect way to open up how many jobs they know, and then also to expand the amount of jobs that are out there. Kinda just started at the needs versus wants section of the book to make it a little bit more actionable for everybody because that is at the end what we care about. But for the degree free way, I do stand behind putting that in there because it just highlights what a big problem it is with the lack of vocational creativity is keeping your child back.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:28]:
That is just the truth. Whatever jobs you know are whatever jobs they are going to know. Whatever jobs they know is definitely whatever jobs they're going to know. The more that we can expand their knowledge base, their vocational creativity, as the more that we can expand your vocational creativity, the better off we're all going to be. Then I did want to just one last thing. If you do go to degreefree.coforward/book and you buy this, one of the biggest feedback that we've gotten in 2024 was that this is not a list. And I've said this before in the podcast, I believe is that this is not a list of jobs and that's valid. That's totally valid.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:59]:
What a lot of people that don't know what this is, they think that this is a list of jobs that are out there that don't require a degree that your child can do. I agree that you might think that that's useful. I know that it's not useful useful because I do this every day. And the reason why I know it's not useful is because you already have a list of every single job imaginable somewhere around you right now. You're probably using that device to listen to my voice or to watch me right now. And that's either a computer or that's your phone. You have the Internet at your fingertips. There's an infinite amount of things that you could do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:30]:
You can create a list in so many ways. You have the list available for you and you haven't used it. And the reason why you haven't used it is because that list isn't useful. What is useful is a custom guide for your child. Really, what you need are constraints because you have unlimited opportunities of like, hey, you can be a plumber. You can be an HVAC tech. You can be a developer. You can be a cloud architect.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:55]:
You could be a hairdresser. You can be an aesthetician. You can be an architect. You already have that list. That list exists, which you need are constraints and what you need is to figure out what they need. And then from there, then you can look it up. And that's the reason why we didn't give a list. And we also think that choosing from a list is the wrong way to do it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:13]:
It's the reason why colleges get such poor outcomes is because they're just choosing from a list because I just chose my degree from a list

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:22]:
based on interest availability, all that kind of stuff.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:24]:
No, based off of like research about what I thought the life outcome was going to be. I did my research or I thought I did my research. It just so happened my research was wrong or the assumptions that I made about my research was wrong or the actions that I took was wrong or whatever. Something wasn't correct. But it wasn't necessarily just about interest. I did for sure just choose from a list. Instead. What would have helped me is to think through all of this stuff instead for me, I did think through how much money did I want to make.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:50]:
I said, oh, $90,000 sounds good. But what I didn't do is what we do here and what we've broken down on this episode, which is I didn't imagine my life. And I didn't actually back that number out from what I thought reality would be and say, okay, what do I need then? And then I didn't think about all of the different jobs that were out there that could make that amount of money. I just didn't think about it. I just didn't do it in my mind. And which is why we've structured the book like this and why we don't give you a list is because we don't want to bias you with any of our things of what your young adult can or can't do. And then I think a list is just not very useful.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:27]:
Yeah. It's not because people, like you said, they have access to it and they don't use it because it's not in a way that can be useful, even though the list you'll get from the internet is the most up to date, the most accurate, the, you know, the most frequently amended. So that's the one you wanna use because that's the one that's gonna be the most accurate, but you have to know how to look through it. Otherwise, it's not useful.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:44]:
Yeah. You need your constraints.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:45]:
And that's what the degree freeway is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:47]:
Exactly. All of the first few exercises is literally just getting to the point where we can figure out the constraints of the problem or say, okay, well, we need this, we need this, we need this. And then this, this, this are the next priorities. And with that, now let's look. So that is just a quick but powerful way to help your child be degree free in 2025. Let us know how we did. Let us know in the comments, subscribe on YouTube. I think that's pretty much it until next week guys.