Your Expected Contribution

Help Me, Piggy

This past week saw two interesting and seemingly unrelated events in my life that are merging in my mind.

The first was an interesting exercise with my teams and HR department at the day job, with the promise and actual delivery of personal insights as to how we are all seen by co-workers, in terms of the kinds of energy, strategies and modes of working.

My natural way of thinking for this kind of thing is to compare it to horoscopes (why yes -- I am perceptive! That's so interesting and unique to the sub-set of people born in this month of the year!), and to disregard what is told as nothing I didn't already know... but when you get under the hood and really consider what is said, there was real value in the process and exercise. (There's also the relatively tender matter of how much of this you will want to share, and with who. Knowledge is power, after all. Not always nicely used power...)

What was intriguing to me wasn't the specific points, but how it jibes with what the day job expects. It's a different role than what I bring to consulting, or parenting, or being a husband. Limiting my energy to my known role may limit how I'm seen, and make it seem like I'm holding something back, and not delivering the full contribution.

Which leads me to Saturday's activity, which was taking my eldest daughter, a high school junior, to her fifth different college visit. (No need to specify which one, as I'm not sure it's going to be in her final consideration set, but it was a fine presentation and pitch.)

What was especially valuable in this session was the publicization of a calculator Web site that estimates your EFC -- expected family contribution -- for when your child gets accepted to a school. This number takes your tax return, assets and current financial situation to bear to determine the student's level of aid, .

It is, as you might imagine, a daunting and sobering number, no matter how long you have kept this goal in mind. Making this number isn't going to be easy, and might require some significant need to leave my comfort zone -- either through pushing the consulting billing to higher levels, doing more to step up monetization of content, cutting expenses in ways we haven't been willing to do, or maybe even just adding formal second and third jobs. Setting our child up for a lesser educational experience than what my wife and I were able to achieve is just a non-starter, and expecting our kid to just achieve all goals through aid packages or exceptional debt acceptance is similarly unacceptable.

For the moment, we've got time to make some moves, but not nearly as much as we used to. We know we're not alone in this concern, as it's kind of the signature worry of the age. Maybe political change might make the situation better, too, but again, not something you can count on.

Your expected contribution.

I had no idea that phrase could seem so loaded, really...

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