Paying For Harvard Business School
I have a lazy start on Saturday morning. I got up early due to being hungry. (Unfortunately, this has been a recurring phenomenon throughout this week.) I should eat breakfast. Today's topic is about finding a way to pay for Harvard Business School. If you remember, I got admitted back in June of this year into the school's 2+2 program. The gist of the program by getting accepted, you have a spot reserved for you to attend in the future. You will first work for a minimum of two years, then matriculate into the 2-year MBA program.
It's nice to have that in the back of my pocket as I'm still exploring possibilities out here in California. But here's the thing, I know what I want to do. I know that getting there will take me through HBS. But I don't know how I will pay for my schooling there. The truth is, I don't want to take on any form of debt to pay for HBS. It limits your options during your time there and the range of jobs you can take on after graduation. I have to be thoughtful about how I spend my time now earning money to get to pay my way through HBS. Ideally, I'd like to be able to cut a check for the full tuition price the day that I arrive there as a student. It's a crazy goal - I'll need more than ~$222,000 (using 2019-20 attendance prices) to pay my way in full. And that doesn't even include all of the "optional activities" one can partake in with their classmates. I'm sure that that will be incredibly expensive as well. So I'm budgeting $250K paying off tuition and other associated costs (assuming a rate of inflation for when I plan to attend in 2023). I'll budget another $100K ($50K split between two years) for "optional activities." I want to be able to take full advantage of my time at HBS. I don't want my options while I'm a student to be limited, and I don't want my choices as a graduate to be limited either. You ask, "Fred, how will I pay for HBS given these goals?" Here's my answer: I'll write my ticket to HBS. I'm good at writing, and I want to monetize it truly. I want to earn so much from my writing that I have the option to make it a full-time gig. So I've decided to start a subscription newsletter on sourcing the best advice from founders. I'm targeting to launch it on Substack come sometime next week. The is to charge monthly subscriptions of $7/month or $60/year ($5/month) for bi-weekly subscriptions. These subscriptions will be the way I generate revenue to pay for HBS. If we assume that everyone pays only $5/month, then I would need roughly 6000 subscribers to make enough to pay for HBS in a year (not including taxes here, which I estimate to be 30-40%). If I reach 50,000 paid subscribers, I can pay for HBS in a month. Five thousand subscribers allow me to do this full-time if I wanted to. So that's my goal. If I can hit that, the game changes completely. This newsletter will serve not only as the foundation to pay for HBS but to finance and support my other creative endeavors. Success in this area will unlock whole new worlds to explore. Luckily enough, I have the key in my hands already to open it. Fred