**** Producer's Note: The following is a general transcript of LCC Connect's weekly radio program. Contents include but may not be limited to podcasts, program imaging, announcements, and PSAs. More detailed and accurate transcripts of the podcast episodes featured in this broadcast can be found at LCCconnect.com or by following the links provided in the show notes of this episode. ****

Welcome to a Psycho delicious conversation on mental health issues and trends from two local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area. I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw.

And I'm Morgan Bowen, dnp, pmhnp. And we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond. Our aim is to be educational and entertaining. So just kick back and open your ears and your minds.

Hey, I'm Mike Stratton.

And I'm Morgan Bowen.

You know, it's interesting what we come up with on a week by week basis, you know, to talk about. It's a different, different thing at different times. This one is a really serious topic and we're going to address like a trigger warning right off the top.

Yes.

Yeah, that's good because we are going to talk about suicide and anyone who's feeling suicidal. Keep that in mind, you know, and consider calling 988 Suicide Crisis Lifeline. And that should help you because we're going to talk about a number of things of what? Just the dynamics of it, the scope of it, which is pretty large. How to assess it, how to work with it. I mean, all those kinds of things.

Yeah, it's kind of the, you know, it's the. I don't know, I'm trying to nth degree, the most extreme, one of the most serious things that we deal with in mental health and what people deal with when they have a mental health crisis. Certainly not everybody, not everybody with a mental health issue deals with this, but it can be a part of people's life. Certainly depression, serious depression, especially depression that is chronic and you know, it tends to be lifelong or bipolar disorder as well. Another mood disorder, schizophrenia. People with psychotic disorders frequently for many reasons, but the severity of the symptoms are just so. They're heavy to live with, they're hard to live with.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that that's one of the ways that I think about suicide. The idea of something that's hard to live with. More obviously more people have the thought of suicide than actually attempt it.

And that's an important, distinct.

Oh, really important. And it's surprising to me when I first meet with people and I will at some point talk about depression and then suicide. You know, have you ever had suicidal thoughts? It's interesting to me what a high percentage of the people actually have had suicidal thoughts. Like I would, I haven't done exact numbers, but I would guess 80 to 90% of the people I see have had that thought at some point or another. I've had that thought in the past.

Me too.

Yeah. Yeah. My dad had it. I grew up with a dad who was very, very depressed. And there was always that worry about is he going to kill himself or not. My mom would tell us he's going to kill himself, which was like, not a great thing to hear as a kid.

Yeah, no, that's. That's. Yeah, that's tough.

Yeah. And then he would tell us stories about how his mom talked about killing herself if he went out on a date.

This is a multi generation. This is a multi generational topic.

Why wouldn't I think about generational stuff like that? So. But the idea, it's interesting, and I've mentioned this before, that I've been in therapy a number of times, but kind of early in the process, someone explained to me, just because you have those suicidal thoughts, that's kind of a red flag that things are not going well in your life and that you're thinking about, well, I could do this, I could escape. If I did this, I could get out of this. And it's almost like a relief. It's something that comes up on your computer screen, a program that you don't intend to click on, but it's there. And just the fact that it's there is significant.

A lot of people talk about intrusive thoughts. I'm having an intrusive thought. It seems to come, you know, at times of stress, but sometimes it comes out of nowhere where there's, you know, I'm just going to drive off the road. A lot of people say that to me, you know, when we're working together or, you know, they're just in a scenario or a situation where, you know, it strikes them that they could, you know, do something that would what. That would end their life. And it's not that they want to, but that is a scary thought. And in some ways, you know, we. We try to normalize that. I don't want to say that's a normal thing, but it's not.

Understand it and explore it.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

It doesn't mean that. It doesn't always mean that the person is, you know, you know, on the road to suicide, but it's scary. So people don't. Sometimes people just don't understand that. So working, you know, talking about it is important.

Yeah. One theme I talk about a lot in these podcasts has been a continuum, you know, so the thought of it I don't think is at all uncommon, but the idea of having a recurrent thought about it and then the idea of how would I do it? And gathering the means to do it and making a plan if I would do it in this way, at this time, at this place, you know, all of those increase the seriousness of it, you know, that becomes more real. So all of those are factors to kind of look at.

Yeah, yeah. When I'm doing, you know, and I'm sure you as well, but when we're talking with somebody, I'm really trying to get a good idea of the severity or the risk really, of suicide. Those are the things, you know, that we'll ask, you know, when it does come into your mind, how long do you think about it? Does it happen daily? Does it happen in response to situations, or does it seem to come out of nowhere? Is it something that you spend time thinking about? It happens multiple times throughout the day. Are you approaching a plan? Have you researched a plan? Have you thought about a plan? Then taking steps to enact a plan, writing a note, sometimes making decisions about what will happen to your things or what would happen to your family afterwards. That's a dangerous situation or definitely a much more severe situation than a passing thought or a more reactive type of thinking. Something bad happens and you just want to kind of get away from it or escape it or not deal with something.

Yeah. I've had clients who are kind of surprised when they do talk about it. Sometimes they'll say, I don't want to talk about it with you because you'll lock me up. And they're surprised when it gets into that point of like, really, let's explore this a little bit. And just what you said, part of it is also the fantasy of what will happen after you're gone. You know, both what happens to you and also what happens to the people around you. What do you imagine is that? Do they have a particular fantasy with so and so be really hurt? Will so and so be really mad. Will so and so be, you know, whatever it is. And you can get to some of the underlying feelings. You know, I want to do this. So so and so will feel miserable, for instance, versus oh, my gosh, I didn't even think about what it would be like. You know, sometimes people will have that sense of being so insignificant that no one will care, or the world will be better off without me. So you can really get to some underlying dynamics if you let yourself explore that with somebody.

And when we start seeing somebody, or I'm sure you as well, but we have to talk about confidentiality. And then there are some caveats to confidentiality so one of those. If I'm concerned that the person is going to hurt themselves or attempt to do something, then I would break confidentiality in order to get some help or get them to safety. But I always have a cat. I always say I talk to people a lot about suicide. I mean, it's a pretty standard question with every assessment. But thinking about it doesn't mean that you're going to get locked up. I mean, it really is, I guess. Well, it is up to us as clinicians to understand what the risk factors are and when it is a dangerous situation.

Yeah. I was thinking that probably the most famous line to come out of Shakespeare, maybe. Maybe one of the top five most famous lines of all of literature, but Shakespeare in particular comes out of Hamlet. To be or not to be.

Yeah.

You know. Right. And that is the question, you know, am I going to. Am I going to stay here and deal with my life or do I check out Now?

Do you remember what was going on in Hamlet?

Hamlet was. It was his soliloquy, and he was trying to figure out what to do. Hamlet was very famous for his ambivalence. Waffling. Yes. And uncertainty about what to do next and whether he's going to rise up against his uncle, who was a ruthless bastard, or whether he's going to just check out and leave it all.

I haven't read Hamlet in a long time.

Me, too.

But I do know that line.

Do you believe that most people are pretty honest when they fill out those initial intake forms?

I can tell you that I was

a little bit hesitant when I went to go see my therapist and, you know, asked about the suicide.

And I was like, well, how serious was I? Not very.

But it came to my brain, just the idea, like, I'm going to document this on a form. Yeah, that was part of it. That was part of it. And it was. It was almost like I was hesitant to do it just because I didn't

want the therapist thinking I was taking

it seriously, because I did not feel like I was. It was just. It came to my brain. It went away. Well, I think it was like, no, that's not an answer for me, what you're saying today. And I think speaks to the idea of stigma of what's going to happen inside of therapy and people verbalizing, like, is this going to be used against me at some point? Is this going to be used to lock me up? And so people have those kind of fantasies and, like, probably what you do. Morgan, too. I make the distinction when I say this is one of the ways that I would break confidentiality. If I had a really serious concern about you hurting yourself, I would contact someone and try to get you more help. That's what it is. It's not about punishment. But at the same time, a lot of people say that they've had suicidal thoughts or they feel like committing suicide. And that's not something I would break confidentiality for. It would just be the level of lethality, you know, the level of, like, okay, it really feels like this could happen with this person and I.

And it's very common that people won't, you know, indicate it on the forum. And I think there is a right to privacy. I mean, you know, just because you're in therapy, you know, you don't have to unveil all of your thinking at one time, certainly before you've met and developed a relationship with the therapist. And so a lot of times people won't say it. And then when we do meet and talk and we, you know, they feel more comfortable or, you know, through our therapeutic relationship, we'll, you know, we'll reveal or be more honest about.

And I'll say that was my experience.

Yeah.

I mean, because I didn't feel like I was completely truthful in that area

when I filled out the form. But later on it became a little

bit of a discussion. So.

Yeah, well, you know that I always see it when I'm in, like, my primary care office. It's like, you know, do you have gastrointestinal whatever can, you know, all these things? And it's like, are you thinking of killing yourself? Like, who. Who says yes? But I have had people that have, you know, have come to me having had said yes, and then, you know, the primary care is, you know, refers them out. So some people do are compulsively honest and feel the importance of that.

I think primary care providers are doing a lot better job, that's true. Doing that screening for depression and for suicide. They never used to ask those questions, and now it's a regular thing where they do ask.

True, true. And that is a big thing with folding, you know, kind of regular mental health screening into primary care. And it's great. It's really, really a good thing.

Well, I looked into some statistics which might, you know, stir up some other thoughts and things that we can talk about at risk populations, youth and adolescents. Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death for teens from ages 10 to 19?

I did know that.

The older you get, the more likely you are to Commit it.

So I'll say was when I was younger, when I was a teenager, I did experience, and it had a lot to do with being gay, which is another at risk population. LGBTQ folks have a higher percentage of suicidal ideation. And so I came out to my parents and everything kind of collapsed and seemed like the world was over for me. So that was really the only time that I was very persistently in kind of a risk zone.

Yeah. Yeah. I would say for me, it was when I was 16 was the most lethal. And then in my adulthood, there were a couple of other times that that kind of would pop up and just the thought, just a quick blurb, but the same kind of thing of just life was really, really hard. Things in the family were really bad. And that just seemed like, well, there's a way out. I could do that, but I didn't.

You know, what I kept at that time was this particular person, Terry Enfield was a friend of mine. So Terry, if you're out there. But I kept thinking about what it would be like for friends of mine to know. In some ways there was like, oh, my funeral, and everybody's going to be so sad. But then when you're seriously thinking about it and just how. I mean, it's just. It's devastating. Suicide really is. It's just a special burn for the family, for the people, for the loved ones who are left behind. It's just devastating. So I don't think I had a real concept of that, but I just remember thinking Terry Enfield would be really upset if I killed myself. Terry Enfield, he saved you.

He saved you.

It's a girl. She.

Oh, she. See? Well, the numbers are really startling. You know, 5%, 5% of males and 9% of females in high school have reported having a suicide attempt in the last year.

Yeah, it's pretty startling.

It's huge.

Yeah, it really is. It's huge. And this usually comes from. There's a Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Yeah, the Y. I use that a lot in my studies when I was in school. And it's very startling.

Yeah, Bullying, abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, parental mental illness or suicide attempts, isolation. And during COVID everybody experienced that, especially teenagers. And they thrive on social contact, and all of a sudden they were all isolated from each other for a couple of years. Traumatic injury, all those kinds of things. That's really difficult. The other thing that LBGQ individuals. This was kind of interesting to me. The passage of laws to discriminate against this population coincides with an increased substance use and also suicide Attempts. So when people talk about let's outlaw this and let's deny marriage to gay people, that coincides with increased.

It does. I see a lot of gay. I see a lot of people in the community, trans folks, gay folks, and particularly trans. You know, the anti trans movement, I guess I would call it legislation. Not necessarily in Michigan. Michigan actually passed a Civil Rights act. The Elliot Larson. Yeah, Civil Rights Act. So we are doing better. But that's only recently in the current Whitmer administration. But Texas, Florida, places that have passed a variety of things. No hormone treatment for people, pediatrics, stuff like that. The trans community is very connected, especially digitally through online, and there's almost this kind of underground railroad type of thing trying to get trans folks out of areas that are in these really conservative red states. Oh, it's interesting. Get them into more, you know, more. More liberal or more tolerant. Yeah, tolerant places.

Environment. Right, right, right. Accepting.

Accepting.

Yes. Yeah, that's. That's. That's true. That's good. Another couple of populations. Veterans. Veterans and other military personnel are at high risk and so are the elderly people over 85. That's a, that's a high risk. I am not over 85.

Well, I would never ask that, Mike.

No, no, I'm not. No, I'm not.

Anyway, elderly suicide, though, is a. Is a thing. I mean, it's a big thing.

Yeah.

Loneliness, isolation. People's. You know, I'm the last one left. All my friends are gone, My spouse is gone, my children may be gone. You know, I can't travel, I can't see. You know, it's. It's very isolating. It can be.

And the other thing that really jumped out at me when I was looking at different statistics and stuff is how much the rates have increased since the year 2000. It's just gone up and up and up and up and up. And what happened in 2000? I mean, that was. When was. When was 9, 11. Was that 2000?

That was 2001.

That was 2001. 2001. I mean, it's just gone up kind of incrementally. And it peaked in 20. It peaked at 2018, kind of went down in 2020, went back up in 2022. And that's the last thing that the CDC has marked out. That's fairly surprising that 2020 was a little bit of a drop there. I think maybe there was hope maybe. I don't know, Maybe after the election. I don't know. Okay, I'm gonna get political for a minute. So the first time I Encountered suicide really closely was when I worked in day treatment over at St. Lawrence Hospital. So we had kind of a partial hospitalization set up there. And I was working there with a population of basically chronically mentally ill people, often schizophrenic, but other diagnoses as well. And I left that after working there for a couple years and went to graduate school and. And that coincided at the time when Blanchard lost the election to Engler. And one of the first things Engler did was to decrease social spending on these programs, that these people had all kinds of services available to them. They had housing, they had case managers, they had people looking after them. They had places to go during the day. And we had five suicides within the next two years amongst that population. So, I mean, policies, they matter. They really do matter, and the services really do matter. And you didn't see people standing on street corners begging for money in those years like you do now. So, anyway, just to sound off on this stuff, Frank Okberg was the medical director, and he's the guy who came up. I think he came up with the Stockholm syndrome. He wrote about that.

Yeah, I know what that is, but I couldn't connect it to anybody.

But he came down and he talked to the staff after this. So the suicides had occurred after I had left. But it just wrecked me to know some of these people who had died during that time, and at least two of them for sure, were suicides. And when I talked to them about it, they said something that he had said that Frank Okberg had said to them. He said, you don't like it that people. You know, this goes against everything we try to do in mental health, is try to help people, try to help people thrive, help people survive things, he said. But ultimately, ultimately, people have a choice. And you don't have to like it, but you have to respect it is what he said. And that was just such a different way to think about it than I'd ever thought of before. Now, having said that, once again, trigger warning. If you think, oh, this validates my ideas about killing myself, call 988. Call 988. Because even though it helps the survivors to know, like, okay, well, we can respect their choice. You don't have to make that choice. So there is a way out. No specific crisis will define your entire life, and people get through hard stuff.

There are some risk factors, too, that I wanted to talk about, but access to a firearm is probably the most. It is the biggest risk factor because of the lethality, for sure. And Then also the quickness of, you know, it's very. If somebody impulsively, you know, decides to do something, a firearm can be a very permanent thing over any really, you know, any method can be, but, you know, overdoses, you know, there's, there's a lot of people survive suicide attempts, but it's hard to survive a firearm attempt. Male and this is, you know, in the adult population, male tends to be a, you know, just in and of itself a risk factor at least More yes, substance use, substance abuse is as well.

Women are more likely to attempt it, men are more likely to succeed at it, which is interesting. And men are more likely to use a gun. So that may be a big factor with that.

So I, you know, and I would wonder what your experience is. But a lot of I worked inpatient where there's a lot of inpatient treatment as geared towards, you know, suicide prevention or you know, post suicide kind of providing somebody with a safe space. So the substance use piece, people are intoxicated when they attempt. A lot of times people are really scared to do it. And so, you know, alcohol or substance, some type of substance is frequently, at least in my experience, involved in the attempt.

Yeah, yeah, I guess probably in part two we're going to talk about treatment of depression and different ideas with suicide. But before we get there, just once again to emphasize 988, if you don't want to go on to the second part of this, which would be helpful if you did. But 988 is the hotline for that. There are other community based programs that are available to people, just crisis hotlines. There's a national suicide prevention which is 1-800-273-TALK. 1-800-273- TALK. And of course 988. And there's also, if you want to get involved, there's training programs, gatekeeper training programs and community awareness campaigns. There's school based programs as well. There's counselors and therapists in every school these days in Michigan and policy advocacy, peer support groups, the American foundation for Suicide Prevention and let's see, Michigan Suicide Prevention Commission and also nami. Nami, the National Suicide yeah.

There's a huge amount of resources for influencing policy as well as creating and executing programs for suicide prevention, especially with youth, which is great and in the schools.

And the last thing I want to say is that for myself, even though if I have these stray thoughts occasionally, even within the last couple years I've had a stray thought, it's always a red flag for me, always talk about it with somebody else. Always, always, always mention it to someone else. I always say that some things grow well in the dark and those kinds of thoughts grow well in the dark. Those kind of secrets grow in the dark. So make sure you talk to a loved one or a caring professional and

or call 988 or call 981.

Yep, a psycho Delicious conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such. If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consult your local provider, Google Therapy, or therapists in your area. Check with community mental Health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike and Morgan welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas. Feel free to send us an email at a psychodelicious conversationmail.com that is a psychodelicious P S Y C H O D E L I C I o u s conversationmail.com the views expressed on

this podcast are solely the opinions of

Mike Stratton and Morgan Bowen and do

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cc, lcc, Connect, Voices, Vibes, Vision. Welcome to B2B boots to books, the show where we explore the journeys of veterans and military connected students as they navigate their paths from service to the classroom and beyond. I'm Dustin Abrego.

And I'm Kyle Jacob, your host. Each week we will dive into powerful stories of resilience, determination and success.

Whether you're a veteran yourself, a military family member, or simply inspired by the strength of those who serve, you're in the right place.

Let's turn the page and start this incredible journey together.

Hello and welcome back to B2B. I'm Dustin Abrego.

And I'm Kyle Jacob.

So this week's gonna be a little interesting. I'll have to be doing a verbal describing. Please always check out our YouTube LCC Connect for this episode because we're gonna be looking at the GI Bill comparison on the website. So we're trying to do stuff to walk people through some really useful tools of looking at the different benefits. So I'll do my best to do descriptor without belaboring Kyle, what's going on.

So yeah, and I'll do my best to also describe what's going on on the screen. Actually, before we get started, I'm gonna shout out our center because we made Best for Vets again this year. So Military Times does that survey every year in Lansing Community College. I believe we're going on our fifth year of winning that award in that distinction of best for vets. So that's another great website and resource to look at if you're looking for schools is the Military Times Best for Vets list.

And that's not one that we just pay to get that is like an independent thing that they go and assess us and go. This is actually easy to use for vets and they actually can get degrees and jobs and other things. So it's not a we paid for that award. Yeah, correct.

Actually it's the complete opposite. They send out their survey and they usually take about six to nine months to compile all their evidence and all their stuff. And then they come out with their list every year. And we are, we made it go. Go us. So yeah, real quick. So the GI Bill comparison tool. So the quickest way to get to this because the VA website is very tricky to navigate. Just Google GI Bill comparison tool. This page will pop up. So what this does is it allows you to search by your school name. You can also do location, but the best way to do it is just by the school name. So we're going to use Lansing Community College just as the first example here. So you just type in where you want to go, hit search and then your school is going to pop up and it's going to give a quick little synopsis of what the school looks like. So at Lansing Community College, it's in Lansing, Michigan tuition benefit, housing benefit. So it'll pay 100% in state rate. We talked about that before. The GI Bill will pay 100% of the in state rate at that school.

And in state also for people are like, well if I'm currently deployed and other things, it's where you do your taxes on your taxes, where you're at. Like if you're on base, that could be a little bit different for an extended thing. But usually it's where home and stuff.

It's where your home of record is. So if those active duty folks that are thinking of it, it's usually where you are, where you. I said deployed, but where are you enlisted at? So if you enlisted in Michigan and you're stationed in Washington and your home of record is still Michigan. Yes. Use your Michigan address. You get in state tuition at Michigan schools. So there's a cool little feature you can compare and it'll save your compare institutions down here at the bottom. So we'll come back to that later. But you just click on the school and it'll give you a more in depth look at what your school is, tells you about how many students are currently using the GI Bill. Tells you, you know your programs, your accreditation also says the size of the school, link to the website, Yellow Ribbon program, et cetera. You can calculate your benefits down here and then it gives you a Cost breakdown. So it tells you how much your housing allowance will be, how much your book stipend is a year and the total paid to you directly. So going to LCC you get $15,299 a year. That's just fall, spring. It doesn't calculate summer either. And then out of pocket costs for tuition. GI Bill pays the school this much, which is 7340 on here if you're in state is more than enough to cover. It also gives you an estimate per term of what you're looking at for cost. So that it'll tell you up here, tells you out of pocket cost is going to be zero down here. It shows what it's actually going to pay per year and, and gives you that estimate.

So those numbers that Kyle gave, currently we have chosen for post 911 full like a hundred percent status for that. So that's not a guarantee of these numbers. And the numbers can change from year to year based off of different things as well. This is a, you get to go in and choose your benefit from a dropdown. This isn't you log in and then do it. You can just access. This is still a va.gov website, so it's legit.

Right.

But you need to know your benefit when choosing these dropdowns and things. So that way you know you're getting an accurate estimate correct.

And we can talk through there. So you click into the school and then down here where it gives you this big, you know, breakdown of what is actually going on. There's a little drop down bar to the left where you can pick what benefit you're using. So for example, if you're using VR and E, the Chapter 31, you can click that and it'll show you a little bit different. I actually wouldn't do that if you're VR and E because it's only showing 724amonth. So I'm not sure what's really going on there. But if you're using VR and E go off the post 911 rates, you can do your, you know, are you 30 months or 24 months, 18 months. How much you have? Did you use your post 911 for housing and everything like that? You can literally customize this to you in specific. You can even go to the tuition and fees amount. So if someone's told you something different like if you've talked to financial aid or you talk to a counselor and they tell you you're finding your $10,000 for example, it'll switch everything over here will Change and it'll tell you how much it pays. You're still at $0 out of pocket.

So it's adjusted initially like out of the box when you're looking at things so you don't have to fiddle with tuition rates and things it sets to the in state tuition. Kyle's bringing up that for example, some of our selective admission programs, maybe Rad Tech, Surg Tech, Dental assistance, those will have different fees than other classes would.

Right.

In English class and the amount of things that an English instructor needs and the classroom setup is very different than the fees for someone that's licensed to be able to teach different things or other things like that. So you can adjust the fees to see is this still going to meet me where I'm at.

Right. And then speaking of fees, that's a good question that I get a lot is like what fees does the VA pay for? Good rule of thumb, if it's an optional fee that does not have to be applied, that is a student support fee or a legal fee or something like that, that is optional and you can opt out of, VA will not pay for it. If it is a mandatory fee for a class or a licensure or anything like that, VA will pay for it.

There are very few fees. Usually schools tend to wrap everything into mandatory. If you're at certain universities they might because the fitness center and we're talking very large D1 like very large. I think MSU is like this where you can optional have the fitness center and things you can choose to opt out of it for the fees. Those would be the ones that Kyle's talking about. Most schools tend to wrap things into for financial aid reasons, whether it be GI Bill or even FAFSA related things to make them not optional to allow students not because they're trying to tack on the bill more, but so that way more they're more eligible for financial aid reasons.

Correct? Correct. Yeah. Fees get a little tricky, but yeah, just good rule of thumb, if it's something you can waive, VA won't pay for it. If it's something that's mandatory, VA is going to pay for it.

Right.

So this is where this tool is extremely helpful is when you're looking at multiple different schools. So let's just use the example Michigan and Michigan State. Just because we're in Michigan.

Sure.

So you can look at Michigan State. So it actually has a cautionary warning school placed on heightened cash monitoring. So I don't know what that means, but I've never seen that. But, but that's an interesting thing to look at. And you can, you know, that's something when you're looking at this school and I'm not trying to bash on Michigan state, but that's the.gov website and I know Michigan State's veteran services very well. They're excellent people. So. But that's something, you know, when you, when you contact that school to look at it, that's something that you might want to ask about it. And you know, why are you doing that? So you can hit that little compare button down here and it'll save it right here. So you can do up to three schools, but we're just going to do two to make it easy. So we're going to look at the Ann Arbor campus and then we're going to hit the compare button down here. So once you've done that and you selected your institutions down here at the bottom, there's a little button on the left hand side that says compare. Just go ahead and click that. It's going to bring up the two schools side by side. So you scroll down, it shows the location, shows the accreditation, the amount of GI Bill students, length of program type, institution, size of institution, et cetera. And then down here is where it's going to give the cost breakdown. So at Michigan, it's 16,736. At Michigan State it's 15,372 for tuition and fees. The GI Bill pays both all tuition and fees. So your out of pocket cost is $0 if you are getting in state. Tuition key.

And for our audio listeners, it literally has a line, we didn't have to do math. It literally says out of pocket tuition. Like basically what do you have to pay? And it shows $0. So you don't have to do math. It's very like I don't use this tool because that's outside the scope. Kyle and Andrew in our office use this a lot. So this is maybe the second time I'm seeing it and I'm very much keeping track of what's going on right now. So yeah, it's very easy to use.

It's, it's super, super user friendly. You can even do this and highlight the differences.

Oh, that's nice.

So it'll be everything that's the same will show up white. Everything that's different will show in this like beige, yellow color. So right here you can see the tuition and fees are different at each school by about, you know, 1500 bucks. Not much, but still that out of pocket cost is zero. And then down here, what everybody loves is what is it going to pay you? So the housing allowance for Michigan State is 1581. It's in East Lansing. University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a little bit more expensive town to live in. They pay you a little bit more because of that. Again, it's based on the area code that your school is located in. Not where you live, not where you live. And it pays the E5 with dependence rate. So if you, if you're looking at BAA chart or BAH charts, you can look that up as well and it'll show you. But the GI Bill comparison tool, it's pretty accurate. It might be off by a few months. So, for example, January, all this stuff changes. You usually get a cost of living increased every January. But your school should know. If you just call the school, then you're good. Down here. The caution flags, it'll tell you what the caution flag is. Again, this is. Must be, must be new. But I like that they have it. It also shows student complaints, if there are any. Both of these schools have zero academics credit for military training. So it says Michigan State. No, Michigan. Yes. That is not counting the JST. JST you send your JSTs in. I'm not sure what this is.

It could be. So when it comes to. And this could be a whole other episode when we say jst, your joint service transcript, basically, it takes all your MOS stuff.

Yeah, it takes. It takes everything that you've done, any school you've done, and then the Air Force is the community college of the Air Force. Jst, Community college of the Air Force. Transcript, same thing, just call it different. But yeah, it takes what you've done in the military. So any schools, any trainings you've done, and turns it into college credit. Whether that college credit goes towards anything with your degree, that's a different question.

Or if the college offers things like that. A college can only give credit at that school. So it doesn't mean it's not valuable. It's just if that school doesn't offer anything like that. I worked with a student where they had some really significant experience, like being an instructor at a sniper training range for like a decade. And I went, that's great. We don't offer anything like that. That's similar. Maybe the police academy would be something, I'm not sure. But he wasn't aiming at that. So it's valuable credit. But if the school doesn't offer anything for it, they can't give the college credit at that place.

Yeah. So it'll show on your transcript as credit, but it won't show as credit applied anywhere. Right. So that might be what they mean is they don't apply the credit anywhere. Again, I'm not Michigan State guy.

So we don't work.

We don't work there. So call Michigan State. If you're interested in Michigan State, ask these questions. But this is a good resource to have these questions come up. So Michigan obviously says they do take credit for military training. And then down here it has veterans programs. So both are yellow ribbon. Both have a student veteran group. Both follow the VA principles of excellence. Both have the eight keys to veteran success. Both offer military tuition assistance. So if you're still on active duty or you're in the Guard and using that 1606 and FTA. Perfect. They also have priority enrollment for veterans at both schools.

What does that mean, priority?

They want veterans to come. So.

So they get.

You get point. You get earlier. Yeah, I guess. No, I would say priority enrollment. Enrollment. This is enrollment. This is what I'm hearing is veteran preferred.

Okay.

And I mean. Yeah. And University of Michigan, actually, I know for a fact, because I went there, they do have priority registration for veterans. So veterans get. I actually sign up. We actually sign up as the same time as student athletes.

Yeah. Yep.

Okay.

And that's usually, if schools do that offer priority registration, it's usually the same as like the student athlete schedule.

Right.

Which is great. You get first pick of the litter. It's awesome. But this is pretty much what the comparison tool does, is you can compare institutions right away. Now, let's say you're stuck between going to Michigan State. We're going to remove University of Michigan out of here and we're going to return to the school search and we're going to do two schools in the same area. Michigan State is in East Lansing. Our college is in Lansing. It's right next door. So let's say you're thinking about going to Michigan State, but you see that Lansing Community College might be a cheaper option for you. It might save you some money. This is where it becomes really helpful. I'm always going to highlight the differences just so it's a lot easier. So you can see a small community college like Lansing Community College. And I say small. We're a big community college, but in a big school, Michigan State University, which is right down the road, you can see the length of the program. Two year versus four year. The GI Bill students is vastly different. We have 276. They have 903. Both are public you can see the size of the institution, medium versus large. And then down here is where you're really going to see that cost breakdown. So the GI bill here is going to pay the 7340, which is all of the tuition and fees that are estimated versus Michigan State's is 15,000. The big thing to look at though is that out of pocket cost is still $0 to the student.

So when we look at this, I always try to hit home on this because this is viewing this as a post 911 bill. This is how this is currently set up. Right. Students that come to us want to use the post 911 bill here at LCC. Usually there's a bunch of other financial aid options instead of using. Because you use the post 911 bill that's done like it's a timer. You use it within a certain time. That's done. So again, you've already earned this benefit by putting in time, blood, sweat, tears, all those things that you had to do. It's not that our education is less. We only offer up to associates. You're going to have to take these classes at MSU anyway. So you might as well save the post 911 bill if you're going to go get a bachelor's at msu. And again, it's not a knock against msu. They're university, so it's going to cost more. But I always try to tell people, or we both do, to maximize it, to save it. Because when we. I need to pull this up more often to try to show. Because like if I can just say the numbers double and people are like,

oh yeah, just save it. I need to do this. I use this all the time. I used it yesterday with a student to show, you know, they were eligible for that Michigan Reconnect that we talked about on here. And they wanted to use their post 911 GI bill.

They're like, it's easier.

And I go, it is, it is, but it's not. And I'm like, you know, the question I always ask is, I'm like, do you need the income? And they're like, no. I'm like, okay, here's this awesome Michigan Reconnect while you're at lcc. Because they actually planned on transferring to Michigan State. And I showed them this exact page. Your tuition is almost double. Yeah. So if you get the free college, you know, with Reconnect or the community college guarantee here in Michigan, you might

even have Pell Grant. Also, usually people are not aware and have not filled out the FAFSA First.

Right.

You can do whatever you want. I'm not a financial advisor. I will not tell people, but I will say that you are just like throwing it and not getting the max out of it. If you are going to get a bachelor's or if you're ever thinking about it because it doesn't expire, just chill on it. And when Kyle says income, like, can you scroll down again? Kyle, your payments made to you, this is what we're talking about. It's like the housing allowance if you're going full time. Because sometimes people are like, I need it because of mortgage, rent, family, other things. If I'm going full time, that makes total sense.

Yep.

Still fill out the fafsa. See if you have L grant availability. And again, grants are loans you don't pay back. I know that's a weird way to frame it, but people understand that when I say, yep, they'll give you money to go to college.

Yeah. Fill out your fafsa. Always fill out your fafsa. Because if you're using any of these benefits, whether it's reconnect, Whether it's the post 911 GI Bill, the Pell Grant is a refundable grant. So meaning once your GI Bill comes in and pays your tuition, what's left over on your account from your federal aid that is refundable goes back into your pocket.

Right.

So if you're eligible for Pell Grant and you're using your post 911 GI bill, that money is going to get refunded back to you. Right. So that's just way more money in your pocket. And I believe it's what, up to like 3, 600 a semester if you're, if you are fully Pell eligible, eligible

and other things like that.

So up, you could get up to 3, 600amonth just depending on different things, income level, etc.

And this lets you shop around and look at things because oftentimes I feel like when students look at after here, they're like, where should I go? And they look at programs and sometimes the programs are, well, I've heard about this one. And I go, right. Have you looked at the other one? Because the tuition might be completely different. Some of the partner schools we've looked at because they might have a different veteran rate that some students are like, oh, because of this different rate that I get. This is way different when we're talking thousands of dollars. And if God forbid, you have to do loans, you know, that completely changes a lot of things for people.

Yeah. So excellent scenario that I always look at. When I was working at Michigan and Toledo, people would always be like, I want to go to Notre Dame or I want to go to Yale or I want to go to Harvard.

Love it.

So we'd always be like, okay, cool. Have you looked at the GI Bill comparison tool to see what the tuitions at those schools were?

Right.

So again, we're going to leave Michigan State just because it's the most local state school around here, and we're gonna go Notre Dame. We're just gonna look at a big private school.

And I don't think people know that, like, they are private. I think people get confused because they just. I. I'm not sure why. I think. I think in this state, people think Grand Valley is private too, for some reason. Yeah, it's like Grand Valley State University. Like, they're public.

It's the same thing. In Ohio, you have University of Dayton that people think is a state school, but it's a private college or. Yeah, it's a private Catholic college. So right here you can see, like Notre Dame has way less students. GI Bill students, I believe students overall, too. I mean, Michigan State's huge.

Correct.

Notre Dame, I think it's like 8, 000 people. It is a private school. It is a suburban school. So we're going to do that highlight differences again too. And you can see there's a lot more community focus. It says right there it's a Roman Catholic denomination school. And here is where it gets tricky. Okay, so the tuition and fees is $60,000. $60,301 at Notre Dame compared to the state school, 15,372. Like I said, the GI Bill will only pay up to the in state tuition at the public schools for that state. For that state. So that means, wow, Notre Dame, you're only going to get $28,937 covered by that GI bill out of that 63.

And that's a year.

That's a year.

This is not four years.

This is not four years. So this is out of pocket at the University of Notre Dame. 2 of GI Bill to a post 911 GI Bill user is $31,364, which

is a huge cut. If you just were thinking of doing. It's a lot.

It's a lot.

It's a lot of money. Like, I mean, down payment of a

house and without the GI bill.

Right, right.

It would cost you 60,000. So you're still saving $30,000 a year using the GI bill. And I mean I'm sure Notre Dame has. I'm not bashing private schools. I'm not saying don't go to private schools. There's probably other ways to get that. 31,000 covered scholarships.

Private agencies will often pick things because just like all of us do I know someone that went there or I like their football team. That's fine. Sure. That can be a starting thing. Look at the actual numbers of what you're doing. And is that going to make you drown in debt? Like, we don't want that for anyone.

Correct. I mean, I have a buddy that's at University of Notre Dame using post 911 GI bill right now. He loves it. He wouldn't trade it for a thing. He also has scholarships. He also has things to make that number a little bit easier on him. Right. Did he still have to take out loans? Yes, but he's going to the University of Notre Dame. Chances are he'll be fine. Again, the cautionary flags. Notre Dame doesn't have any. And you can just keep going down credit for military.

If you went up to where the housing allowance actually is, I think people might think this is surprising that you would actually get more for MSU versus Notre Dame because it is a smaller area. I have a friend that lives around that area. He doesn't work or go to Notre Dame, but it's a little less dense population and as much so the housing, I mean, it's within like, you know, 100 bucks or so that we're looking 150 bucks. But it's not. It's going to be different. Even though the school costs, like the housing allowance, that it's not going to offset it. It's not like the money is coming up from somewhere.

Nope. And that's a, you know, that's a good distinction. It shows you what kind of the institutional local. So Michigan State says it's in a city. Notre Dame is in a suburban area. Usually the suburban areas are going to be a little bit less cost of living. So your housing allowance is going to be a little bit less.

And when we look at all of this, all of this is a bachelor's level tuition rate and things.

Yeah. For. I mean, until we put a community college in. And specific to the community college. But these two.

Yes. This is not Notre Dame master's program tuition rates. This is not MSU PhD rate for, you know, some of our students that are advanced and want to hit that point and stuff. This is the rate that they're going to be paying for that. Correct.

Correct. This is literally Looking at just undergrad usually. Right. Like I said, there are that tools on the side. So if you just remove one of your schools and you're looking at one school alone, you can go over to the edge, go down, you can do the school costing calendar. So if you know that you're in a PhD program that is 30,000 a year, we'll just use that as a blank. It's semesters. You're going full time, it'll still tell you your out of pocket cost is still going to be zero. Still gives you that housing allowance, still is total paid to you. So same things. If you do know that you're in a PhD program or a master's program that costs more and you know what the cost is or you have an estimate of what the cost is, you can come over here to the left hand side, click on school cost and calendar. Drop that box down. You can pick if you're in state or not, you can pick your tuition and fees and you're good to go.

So takeaways from this. People need to do this, shop around, especially before a certain time, knowing what your benefit is. Right. Being able to figure that out. And then what are we missing? What is there anything else on here other than you just need to look at different things just because the school sounds fun, you want to go to the games, you can still go to the game with. Without throwing 30k at a school and money. Yeah.

I went to Notre Dame games when I was a student at Michigan. It was cool. Yeah. Like if we, I mean we could dive into this for hours. It's one of these things, you just have to play with it. It is a little. It's not perfect. It's gotten better. Obviously. There's some things on here today that I found out. I look at this almost on a weekly basis and they're always updating it, they're always making it better.

And you don't have to log in, you can just get in.

You can literally just Google this. You don't have to have a VA login, Anybody can Google this. You don't have to be a veteran to even look at this. If you're a taxpayer and you're genuinely concerned about where your tax dollars are going to education, this is a great, great place to look up and, and see what's going on. There are so many different tools in this tool itself. Get on it, play around with it, do your research. And this is. Makes it a little bit easier to do that in my opinion.

Sure. And again, for our audio listeners. We tried the best of trying to work over it, but please check out the video for YouTube LCC Connect and then B2B will be posted there at some point here in the future. Otherwise this is great. I learned some stuff today Kyle, so

I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Well, I hope it helps and if you have any questions just reach out.

Thanks so much.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.

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