Zachary Freeman is only 18, but he's already making a down payment on financial independence.
Freeman, a freshman business major at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, arrived for his interview at the newspaper wearing a suit, necktie and polished dress shoes.
A former high school quarterback, he's the kind of kid every parent hopes for: self-supporting, industrious and 100 percent focused on extracting maximum value from his college education.
As it turns out, he's always had a mature attitude about money.
When he was 15, Freeman opened a Roth IRA with earnings from his summer job as a baseball umpire. He knows precisely what this return on that $300 investment will be at age 59.5 assuming historical market averages. Seriously.
At 17, he applied for every college scholarship he could find and scored enough money to attend UTC debt-free this year. He admits developing a slight addiction to opening scholarship letters that began, "Mr. Freeman, we are pleased to inform you ..."
More recently, he wrote a short book, "Free Money, Please: The 10-Step Guide to College Financial Aid," which has gotten an on-air mention by Fox Business Network money guru Dave Ramsey. (Visit Freeman's website, www.FreeMoney Please.com, for more information about the book.)
Did I mention Mr. Freeman is 18 years old?
Freeman, who attended Page High School in affluent Williamson County in Middle Tennessee, considered going to an out-of-state college. He's a big fan of University of Nebraska athletics, he says, but he quickly determined that funding a six-figure education just so he could watch Cornhuskers football games was silly.
He assures me that tons of high school seniors pick colleges based on the school's football prowess, with little thought about academic value or the cost of tuition.
"I don't think most college students understand how poisonous debt is," says Freeman.
He marvels at kids who take out exorbitant student loans and end up using the money to pay for flat-screen TVs and other luxuries. "What a painfully stupid mistake," he said.
When he was younger, Freeman said, he saw how debt challenged his parents, and he became determined not to go down the same road.
"They got married and acquired credit card debt," he explains. "I developed a goal: I'm not going into debt for college. Not one dollar."
In high school Freeman was a good student (3.6 GPA, 26 ACT) but he didn't have the kind of top grades that earn big academic scholarships. He blew out a knee in football, so athletics scholarships were out, too.
Instead, he learned that there were plenty of blue-collar scholarship programs that were begging for applicants.
"I did a survey one time in one of my high school classes," he said, "and found out that only about one in 10 of the students had applied for any kind of scholarships."
For several weeks during his senior year in high school, Freeman stayed up late at night writing personal essays and filling out scholarship applications. He learned to focus on close-to-home sources -- civic clubs, electric cooperatives, businesses.
Soon, his perseverance paid off. He applied for "about 40" scholarships and received 10. He figures his efforts netted him "$600 to $700" per hour of work.
Let that sink in.
Freeman has made enough money this year in scholarship awards to begin saving for his MBA. He says he eventually wants to own a business "or two."
Anyone care to bet against it?