Speaker 1: Welcome to Hoa of Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt. Today
Speaker 1: we're talking about the student loan shakeup with Travis Hornsby.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Joel, this is a more pressing, a more urgent
Speaker 2: interview episode, which we don't typically get to do because
Speaker 2: normally it's like a book tour and we're diving into
Speaker 2: the book. It's like, do we talk to him now
Speaker 2: or do we talk to him in like two months.
Speaker 2: Typically it doesn't matter, but that is not the case
Speaker 2: giving our topic of conversation today because according to the
Speaker 2: new US Education Secretary, it is time for student borrowers
Speaker 2: with federal loans to begin making payments. The clock is
Speaker 2: taking and May fifth is the date that nearly two
Speaker 2: million borrowers are going to be moved into repayment plans
Speaker 2: and collections will begin for a loan that are in default.
Speaker 2: This is a massive shakeup from what borrowers have experienced
Speaker 2: over the past five years. And luckily we're joined by
Speaker 2: a founder and CEO of Student Loan Planner, Travis Hornsby,
Speaker 2: to parse out all the details. And Travis is very
Speaker 2: qualified to talk about this. He has consulted on several
Speaker 2: billion dollars of student debt, which is mind boggling. He's
Speaker 2: a CFP, he's retired at the age of twenty five
Speaker 2: before starting a student loan planner. I don't even know
Speaker 2: if we'll have time to get to that, but he
Speaker 2: is the man to turn two in response to all
Speaker 2: of the latest student loan changes that we are about
Speaker 2: to experience. And so Travis Hornsby, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for coming on how to Money.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know, you know, student loans are pressing, but
Speaker 3: they don't have to be depressing, right, and so for
Speaker 3: how to Money listeners, it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 4: So I'm excited to talk about it today.
Speaker 1: Glad you're here to bring the optimism, my friend. First
Speaker 1: question we got to ask you, we ask everybody is
Speaker 1: what do you like to sport? John? And I know
Speaker 1: you're smart, be as smart with your money. You retired
Speaker 1: it twenty five. You know what you're doing, but you
Speaker 1: still spoilage every now and again. What is it that
Speaker 1: you're throwing big bucks at that most people might think
Speaker 1: is a little weird?
Speaker 3: So spiritually I'm like a seven or eight year old boy, right,
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna say telescopes and cargo electric bicycles. So
Speaker 3: those are my two right now. I'm really into astronomy.
Speaker 3: I've got a group of astronomy bros. And we hang
Speaker 3: out on the weekends just like you know, compete over
Speaker 3: who can get the best picture of Jupiter. And it's
Speaker 3: kind of kind of funny to some people that there's
Speaker 3: like a group of like astronomy dads just like hang
Speaker 3: out and look at the stars. But it's a great
Speaker 3: way to get perspective ha ha. You know, you see, like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, this nebula is like, you know, a
Speaker 3: trillion miles away, and you know, you know, like a
Speaker 3: billion earths could fit inside it, and oh maybe my
Speaker 3: problems aren't as bad. So I kind of really enjoy
Speaker 3: it for that reason. And then same kind of thing
Speaker 3: for bicycles, Like there's all these awesome electric bikes. I
Speaker 3: like cargo ones because I can throw my kids in
Speaker 3: them and strap them down, and they're too young to
Speaker 3: bike on their own, and so it's just kind of
Speaker 3: a cool way that I can turn something that's a chore,
Speaker 3: like dropping kids off at school and make it fun, right,
Speaker 3: so I get to take them to daycare in preschool,
Speaker 3: and like the the electric cargo bike can be one
Speaker 3: of those you know, cool Harley Dads except a bicycle.
Speaker 1: That's at least how we envision ourselves. Travis. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's I don't know if that's how other
Speaker 1: people see us, but yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, definitely I get some like, oh that guy,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, I definitely there's some definitely views
Speaker 3: like that. But you know what, I feel like a
Speaker 3: Harley dad and you know another dad got one. So
Speaker 3: we're talking about getting leather. You know, jackets made, right,
Speaker 3: We're gonna make a biker gang. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: an electric cargo biker gang. Yeah, so it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's definitely you know, student loans, right, you know,
Speaker 3: a weird person's attracted to doing them. So I'm just
Speaker 3: you know, showing people my honest self.
Speaker 1: Oh R, let's talk student loans. Let's get into it,
Speaker 1: because I'm curious, first off, Travis, to think about or
Speaker 1: to understand how you're thinking about the kind of whiplash
Speaker 1: effect of approaches towards student loans. The last administration, there
Speaker 1: was this incredibly generous spirit towards people who had student
Speaker 1: loans that seems to have evaporated. Now we're encountering i
Speaker 1: don't know, almost maybe a hostile vibe. How do you
Speaker 1: think about that change and how should student loan borrowers
Speaker 1: be feeling.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I've done this since the A Bomba administration, right,
Speaker 3: and so I've definitely seen a lot of different attitudes
Speaker 3: on student loans over time. I would say that what's
Speaker 3: kind of happened over time with the change in the
Speaker 3: political landscape is more and more educated voters have more
Speaker 3: drifted towards the Democratic Party, right in terms of like
Speaker 3: higher education levels predict more of a Democratic lane than
Speaker 3: it used to, right, especially if you think about like
Speaker 3: the Republican Party during like the Mitt Romne era in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve. And so what's happened is student loans have
Speaker 3: sort of drifted from this like kind of non partisan
Speaker 3: issue to being more of a partisan issue.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So if we think about like what happened during the
Speaker 3: Biden administration, Biden was you know, sort of the choice
Speaker 3: of the Democratic Party because they didn't have an alternative
Speaker 3: they could coalesce around, right, And President Biden wanted to
Speaker 3: unify the support of the progressive base, and so he
Speaker 3: viewed student loans is like this very easy policy area
Speaker 3: to go big on and to try to go really
Speaker 3: big on to maintain that political support to run for
Speaker 3: that second term, right, and in the first term of
Speaker 3: President Trump. You know, one thing that I would say
Speaker 3: for people that are just like really terrified about their
Speaker 3: student loans, really worried about what the administration's going to do,
Speaker 3: is it's important to have the perspective of the fact
Speaker 3: that the Trump administration was the one that started the
Speaker 3: student loan pause and paused collections on student loans in
Speaker 3: the first place. Right, So there's definitely some some negative
Speaker 3: things that are going to happen to some borrowers financially
Speaker 3: due to the new policies of the new administration. I
Speaker 3: don't want to minimize that, but I do want to
Speaker 3: say that everybody would need to have a very balanced
Speaker 3: view of what's going to happen with student loans in
Speaker 3: the next like few years.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I would just say, like at a high level,
Speaker 3: student un forgiveness is not dead. It's just not going
Speaker 3: to be offered on steroids anymore.
Speaker 2: One of the changes that seems like it's going to
Speaker 2: take places transitioning student loans like towards the Small Business
Speaker 2: Administration looks like they're going to run that. It seems
Speaker 2: like a massive potential paperwork nightmare. I guess what do
Speaker 2: you foresee being some of the problems with that transition.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they've fired half of the Department of Education, right,
Speaker 3: And there's one person put in a court deposition that
Speaker 3: there was six they left when they got fired. There
Speaker 3: was sixteen thousand borrower complaints that were in her cue
Speaker 3: that she had not answered yet.
Speaker 4: My gosh.
Speaker 3: So it's basically this wasn't working fast enough, is what
Speaker 3: you're saying. Yeah, it's her fault, right, you know. But
Speaker 3: so the thing is is like, so the new administration
Speaker 3: is sort of testing the boundaries to see what the
Speaker 3: courts will say is legal and what's not legal. Right,
Speaker 3: And the way I would interpret this is they're saying
Speaker 3: they're going to move it over to small Business Administration.
Speaker 3: I am not convinced that they can do that. The
Speaker 3: Secretary of Education is mentioned a whole lot in the statute,
Speaker 3: and they can say that they're going to move it
Speaker 3: over there. They can try to move it over there
Speaker 3: potentially with their big budget reconciliation bill, and maybe that's
Speaker 3: what they intend to do is try to pass it
Speaker 3: in Congress right to make it legal, or maybe they
Speaker 3: just plan to try to move it over there, right.
Speaker 3: But what a borrower needs to be concerned about is
Speaker 3: what's happened since the Obama administration is presidents have and
Speaker 3: the inaction of Congress taken more and more of a
Speaker 3: policy making role in student loans by issuing executive actions.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the things that have happened in
Speaker 3: the past several years, you know, have been the White
Speaker 3: House just making press releases about things they're just going
Speaker 3: to do, right, And what the Trump administration is doing
Speaker 3: is rolling back pretty much anything that the Biden administration
Speaker 3: did the executive action that's not written in the statute.
Speaker 3: So what that means is if a borrower understands what
Speaker 3: kind of loans they have and what they're guaranteed benefits
Speaker 3: are in the statute of the law, the borrower can
Speaker 3: make a plan for their future. And the confusion is
Speaker 3: coming from, you know, all these things that have been
Speaker 3: promised to the executive action that don't have the safety
Speaker 3: of being a law, and borrowers just don't know how
Speaker 3: to plan. So that's a big part of what we're
Speaker 3: doing right now is educating borrowers around what are they guaranteed,
Speaker 3: you know, with and the law, and what are they
Speaker 3: not guaranteed in the law, And then that can help
Speaker 3: somebody figure out like do I should I pay these back?
Speaker 4: Like when? Like should I go for forgiveness? Like what should
Speaker 4: I do?
Speaker 1: I feel like the most recent news was the op
Speaker 1: ed that was written by the Department of Education secretary,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like she issued kind of a clearly
Speaker 1: line of demarcation and that may fifth date stuck out
Speaker 1: in my mind as a really important one. What is
Speaker 1: the fallout going to be from, you know, based on
Speaker 1: her pronouncement what she's said about the resumption of student
Speaker 1: loan payments, Like we've obviously had student loan payments are
Speaker 1: supposed to be being made right now except for some
Speaker 1: folks who are in limbo on the safe plan, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It gets all confusing to me, like
Speaker 1: where are we at right now? Do people need to
Speaker 1: be paying? And how worried should they be if they're
Speaker 1: not paying?
Speaker 3: So there's all the kinds of complex issues going on
Speaker 3: with this to different types of borrower populations, right, So
Speaker 3: to craft this for your listeners, what would you guess
Speaker 3: would be the average balance of like how you know
Speaker 3: and how to money listener, would you guess like in
Speaker 3: terms of the size.
Speaker 1: I'd say twelve thousand dollars. I would say more than that,
Speaker 1: because what the average student loan balance of the average
Speaker 1: America's upper.
Speaker 4: Thirties, Yeah, which is like an undergrade balance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say maybe something close to that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's a range, right, So I'm sure a
Speaker 3: lot of your listeners have thirty k and then I'm
Speaker 3: sure a lot of your listeners have a lot more
Speaker 3: than that. There's probably a long tail of people right that, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, high five figures, low six figures, even mid
Speaker 3: six figures. So what I would say is, you know,
Speaker 3: since the COVID pause and made in March twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: the Department of ed Is essentially turned off the vast
Speaker 3: collections apparatus of student loans and caused no consequences to
Speaker 3: borrowers at all from not caring about them. And what
Speaker 3: does that mean? Like, before the COVID pause, something like
Speaker 3: thirteen percent of all borrowers were in default and a
Speaker 3: lot of borrowers were in forbearance, which was you know,
Speaker 3: not as damaging as a default on their record, but
Speaker 3: still meant they weren't paying anything. And so if we
Speaker 3: think about thirteen percent default rate, that roughly translates to
Speaker 3: about five million people. They would be struggling to make
Speaker 3: payments at any given time at a baseline. And so
Speaker 3: your average person as thirty thousand of student debt, like
Speaker 3: they'd have to pay about three hundred a month on
Speaker 3: average to pay their loans off completely, right, And the
Speaker 3: Biden administration came out with a plan called the Save
Speaker 3: Plan that basically allowed most of those borrowers to pay
Speaker 3: maybe like zero to one hundred dollars a month, so
Speaker 3: it was making their payment far more affordable. Right, So
Speaker 3: a lot of those listeners have just either not had
Speaker 3: to worry about making payments because they just completely ignored
Speaker 3: them and they weren't having their credit scores danked, or
Speaker 3: they were signing up for this Save income based payment
Speaker 3: plan and they were paying a very low percent of
Speaker 3: their income, like five percent of your income, but only
Speaker 3: after you make the first thirty or forty thousand. That's
Speaker 3: like kind of simplifying things a little bit, but in general,
Speaker 3: that's what the formula was, and the courts are saying Hey,
Speaker 3: hold up, this Save Plan is not legal because Biden
Speaker 3: tried to cancel student debt right, tried to cancel ten
Speaker 3: to twenty thousand of all debt for all Americans, and
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court said, hey, no, no way, Jose. And
Speaker 3: then the response to that was, let's create an income
Speaker 3: driven plan that's so generous. It's basically kind of like
Speaker 3: the same things like forgiveness light exactly. It was Plan B, right,
Speaker 3: And so they came out with Plan B and it
Speaker 3: was about to go into law in July twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: and at the last second a bunch of Republican led
Speaker 3: states sued and blocked it. And so since June of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, about eight or nine million borrowers that
Speaker 3: did sign up for the Save Plan out of the
Speaker 3: forty million or so total, have been on ice and
Speaker 3: just frozen in place, not knowing what they should do.
Speaker 3: So that's like eight or nine million people. So that's
Speaker 3: a lot of your listeners are going to be on
Speaker 3: the Save Plan for barants. They're going to know what
Speaker 3: that is, right, and they have not been allowed to
Speaker 3: switch out of that, which is maddening. So they're saying,
Speaker 3: we're turning on all collections may in early May. But
Speaker 3: at the same token, they fired half the staff and
Speaker 3: there's nobody to process these incometerin repayment applications, and they're
Speaker 3: not allowing people that want to get out of this
Speaker 3: paused frozen payment situation to get onto something. So are
Speaker 3: those people going to be hurt negatively? I don't think
Speaker 3: so by and large because Department of Ed knows that
Speaker 3: these people haven't been allowed out of this forbearance, and
Speaker 3: so those folks are going to have more time than
Speaker 3: early May. There are people, though, that have not made
Speaker 3: payments for years, that have been in default like before
Speaker 3: COVID even, and they are going to start having their
Speaker 3: wages garnish, their benefits garnished, and their tax refunds garnished.
Speaker 3: So probably the single biggest impact for folks who are
Speaker 3: more you know, economically disadvantaged or vulnerable is going to
Speaker 3: be those tax refund intercepts. So that is not going
Speaker 3: to happen this year because most of those refunds have
Speaker 3: already gone out. But what often happens is people kind
Speaker 3: of really especially lower income Americans, depend upon those you know,
Speaker 3: two three four thousand dollars tax refunds to be able
Speaker 3: to pay their bills. Right, So next tax season when
Speaker 3: people go in file in like February March, we've had
Speaker 3: years worth of you know, not collecting you know, intercepts
Speaker 3: and wage garnishments and things like that, and that's going
Speaker 3: to get turned on in May, and so people will
Speaker 3: notice it right away. I mean, people that have not
Speaker 3: paid attention to their loans for years are going to
Speaker 3: start having their wages sapped at like fifteen percent of
Speaker 3: income on average. So it's it's definitely not going to
Speaker 3: be good. But I would say that there's a baseline
Speaker 3: of thirteen percent of people being in default even before COVID, right,
Speaker 3: so the measuring how bad will it be, I think
Speaker 3: you probably need to look at like that baseline to say,
Speaker 3: you know, if it's five million people, that's kind of
Speaker 3: a normal environment for student and default collections, and if
Speaker 3: it's way more than that, which actually I think it
Speaker 3: will be way more than that once all of the
Speaker 3: protections end. Because you do have people who are not
Speaker 3: certified on a current income for their tax returns and
Speaker 3: people that are in this eight million people that are
Speaker 3: in this forbearance. It's not actually a default yet, but
Speaker 3: it will be when they have to get told to
Speaker 3: go get on a payment plan, So it could be
Speaker 3: I think it could be ten to fifteen million people
Speaker 3: that will end up in default, which will be really,
Speaker 3: really bad.
Speaker 2: We're kind of transitioning from talking about the policy to
Speaker 2: kind of like as practical steps that folks can take,
Speaker 2: and when folks aren't able to make these payments, I mean,
Speaker 2: they're going to see damage done to let's say their
Speaker 2: credit score. Do you have any recommendations for folks when
Speaker 2: it comes to just practical steps that they can take
Speaker 2: when they aren't able to afford making these payments as
Speaker 2: they do resume?
Speaker 3: Absolutely so, I mean I think the first thing is
Speaker 3: to figure out what are you eligible for? I remember
Speaker 3: I said what is in the statute versus what's an
Speaker 3: executive action? So are you a new borrower as of
Speaker 3: July twenty fourteen? In other words, did you have an
Speaker 3: existing student on balance, you know, on July twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: or before, and if you did, the thing you're eligible
Speaker 3: for in the law is something called old income based
Speaker 3: your payment that's fifteen percent of your income and you
Speaker 3: get one hundred and fifty percent of the poverty line
Speaker 3: to earn money on before they take that fifteen percent.
Speaker 3: So for most people, it's about twenty grand for a
Speaker 3: family of one. For a family, you know, a four,
Speaker 3: maybe it's more like forty grand, And so they let
Speaker 3: you earn that much first before they take fifteen percent.
Speaker 3: But everything above that they're going to take fifteen percent.
Speaker 3: And within that there's ways that you can pay less.
Speaker 3: Right So, if you're a married borrower and you, you know,
Speaker 3: are the only person in your household loans, a lot
Speaker 3: of people are going to need to look at changing
Speaker 3: have they fight all their taxes. So people tend to
Speaker 3: file their taxes joint because that's just the default that
Speaker 3: most married couples do a lot of married couples could
Speaker 3: switch to married filing separate instead, and they could drastically
Speaker 3: lower their student loan payments because then it's fifteen percent
Speaker 3: of just their income instead of everybody's income.
Speaker 1: Was it that a blip though, too, like a week
Speaker 1: or two ago where there was something issued about Mary
Speaker 1: filing jointly and hey, if you file separately, we're still
Speaker 1: going to treat you the same way. But then they
Speaker 1: had to redact that.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I, along with some other people brought this
Speaker 3: to the attention publicly of a lot of people urgently
Speaker 3: because it was a major, major deal if they were
Speaker 3: going to interpret things this way. The reason is is,
Speaker 3: if you know what the statute says, which after ten
Speaker 3: years of doing this, we do, it says in the
Speaker 3: law that married borrowers do have the right to file
Speaker 3: separate and exclude their spousal income.
Speaker 4: So it's in the law.
Speaker 3: It's not an executive action. But when one of the
Speaker 3: acting Undersecretary of Education made pronouncement and a reply to
Speaker 3: a lawsuit, it came out of nowhere. And because in
Speaker 3: the same reply they affirmed something called the ps left
Speaker 3: Buyback Program, which is a Biden error program that's kind
Speaker 3: of generous to borrowers. So it made no sense that
Speaker 3: they're ignoring, you know, a major part of the student
Speaker 3: loan statutes while also affirming something that's in executive action.
Speaker 3: So I raised that issue on X and other places
Speaker 3: and said, what gives here right? And it turns out, guys,
Speaker 3: that they just literally made an honest mistake, which is
Speaker 3: which is which is? And the reason why we know
Speaker 3: this is because within literally two or three days, they
Speaker 3: came out with a corrective statement saying what we meant
Speaker 3: to say was that we will include your spouse and
Speaker 3: your family size no matter how you file your taxes,
Speaker 3: not that we would include your spouse's income and your
Speaker 3: payment calculation regardless of how you file your taxes. So
Speaker 3: that's actually a positive for borrowers because instead of a
Speaker 3: deduction based on a poverty line of three if you're
Speaker 3: married with two kids, now you get a deduction based
Speaker 3: on a family size of four. And you know, the
Speaker 3: bidenmdministration had actually changed the rules in a negative way
Speaker 3: to exclude your spouse from your family size if he
Speaker 3: filed separately.
Speaker 1: And that's like an additional child tax credit.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: And the reason is because that's how the REGs were
Speaker 3: pre COVID, and that's because the court struck down or
Speaker 3: you know, is put on ice the save plan rule,
Speaker 3: that income based plan that Biden did. He also put
Speaker 3: in a ton of changes to regulations around IDR plans,
Speaker 3: and the courts don't want to full with figure out
Speaker 3: what they're going to pause and not pause, so they
Speaker 3: just pause the whole thing. And in some kind of
Speaker 3: hilarious ways, it's actually positive benefit to some borrowers because
Speaker 3: some of those rules from pre COVID were actually better
Speaker 3: than the ones that the Biden administration came out with. Interesting,
Speaker 3: So you know, so the thing is is, like, the
Speaker 3: ability to file separate is affirmed actually, which is great news.
Speaker 3: And most borrowers that listen to this, especially if they're younger,
Speaker 3: will have taken out their first student loan as of
Speaker 3: July twenty fourteen or after. And what that means is
Speaker 3: you actually qualify to pay ten percent of your income
Speaker 3: instead of fifteen. And if you're in the private sector,
Speaker 3: it's years tell forgiveness instead of twenty five. And that's
Speaker 3: written into the statute. So might we see some major
Speaker 3: legislation come out of Congress soon from the House Republicans
Speaker 3: and Senate Republicans that might try to modify some of that.
Speaker 3: It is possible, but it's also likely that they would
Speaker 3: grandfather and existing borrowers under current law. And even if
Speaker 3: they did make changes, those changes would probably be temporary
Speaker 3: in nature because of the legislative maneuver they're going to
Speaker 3: have to use to pass their bill for you know,
Speaker 3: with the limited majorities they have. So you know, I
Speaker 3: would say that I would say this, here's a quick
Speaker 3: kind of like way that a borrower can get a
Speaker 3: handle on their situation. Right, If you have less debt
Speaker 3: than what you earn every year, you probably need to
Speaker 3: pay it back. And there's a lot of flexibility you
Speaker 3: have in terms of how much you can pay. You
Speaker 3: can get on an extended or graduated plan. If you
Speaker 3: can't afford to pay the standard plan, you can consolidate
Speaker 3: your loans with the government and put them on a
Speaker 3: longer term repayment plan you know, amortization schedule. But you
Speaker 3: probably do need to pay it back. If you have
Speaker 3: two times what you earn every year or more, so
Speaker 3: you have debt that's twice your income or more, you
Speaker 3: need to go for forgiveness. The only question is is
Speaker 3: how and you can optimize that and do a better
Speaker 3: job of paying a lot less. And if you're somewhere
Speaker 3: in between, if you're one to two times debt of
Speaker 3: what you make every year, then the answer to what
Speaker 3: should you do with your loans is it depends and
Speaker 3: you need to kind of have a careful analysis of
Speaker 3: you know, what are your goals, what are your dreams?
Speaker 3: You know, what are you willing to do to you know,
Speaker 3: in terms of sacrifices to make to pay off loans
Speaker 3: versus not payoff loans, and you can still do a
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff to lower your payments.
Speaker 4: So most people's.
Speaker 3: Payments are not low as low as they qualify for
Speaker 3: because they're not taking advantage of all the loopholes that exist.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, and being able to take advantage of those
Speaker 2: loopholes depends on understanding and knowing what the law is.
Speaker 2: And like you pointed out, that's it seems like there
Speaker 2: are more mistakes that are being made these days where
Speaker 2: stuff's just kind of getting tossed out there. But I
Speaker 2: don't know, at least there was a corrective statement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, positive, you know, look glass half all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, little silver lining to the shakeup.
Speaker 2: And I love how you're getting to more of these
Speaker 2: practical tips and pieces of advice, Travis. We're going to
Speaker 2: get some more of that, including whether, just I guess,
Speaker 2: the likelihood of whether someone should even consider discharging student
Speaker 2: loans through something like bankruptcy, how that's changed.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that and more. Right after this. We're
Speaker 1: back still talking with Travis Hornsby, talking about student loans
Speaker 1: and the shakeup that's happening in the first you know,
Speaker 1: six months of the Trump administration and how that impacts
Speaker 1: you as someone who has student loans. One of the
Speaker 1: things traves that happened during under the Biden administration was
Speaker 1: essentially looser rules about discharging student loans through bankruptcy. And
Speaker 1: for as long as I've been alive and been thinking
Speaker 1: about these things, student loans through bankruptcy, like getting them
Speaker 1: discharged was impossible. And then the Biden administration said, hey,
Speaker 1: we we want to make it a little bit easier
Speaker 1: for people to pull that off. They had to be
Speaker 1: able to prove what basically that they were unable to
Speaker 1: pay these student loans back student loans back, and then
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to How has that changed in
Speaker 1: the first four months of the Trump administration? Can people
Speaker 1: still Is that still a way that people can get
Speaker 1: rid of their student loans altogether?
Speaker 3: Generally speaking, No, it's very difficult to get your student
Speaker 3: loans discharged in bankruptcy. I would like to give kind
Speaker 3: of a quick rule for people to think about student loans,
Speaker 3: like studenton policy tends to get driven by terrible and
Speaker 3: horrific headlines. So let me give you an example of this. Right, So,
Speaker 3: in the first Trump administration, there was a headline that
Speaker 3: a Michigan man who was a combat veteran of Iraq
Speaker 3: and Afghanistan suffered a traumatic brain injury when ied exploded,
Speaker 3: and had a couple hundred thousand of student loans right
Speaker 3: from a graduate degree that he did pre you know,
Speaker 3: combat tours. The balance was considered taxable income as a
Speaker 3: result of his disability discharge, and so the IRS and
Speaker 3: the State of Michigan sent him a nearly six figure
Speaker 3: tax bill for his forgiven student loans. This is a
Speaker 3: guy who served our country literally suffered a brain injury,
Speaker 3: and they gave him a huge tax bill. And what
Speaker 3: the Trump administration did and the Tax Cuts and Jobs
Speaker 3: Act is made discharge due to disability tax free. When
Speaker 3: I say that, I don't say that to say that
Speaker 3: the Trump administration is going to be super generous to
Speaker 3: people and change bankruptcy laws in a way that most
Speaker 3: borrowers would really get excited about.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying, though, is if you have ten to
Speaker 3: fifteen million people going to student un default like could
Speaker 3: happen right like we're talking about on this show. If
Speaker 3: that were to happen, the headlines would be so horrific.
Speaker 3: The problems in the housing market in other economic markets
Speaker 3: would be so bad that they would have to confront
Speaker 3: what do we do with student un default? Because right
Speaker 3: now they made the rules based off of this like
Speaker 3: undoe hardship standard, which is extremely difficult standard to meet
Speaker 3: to actually get your loans discharged. And most people they think, well,
Speaker 3: if I just stopped making payments, that'll go away. So
Speaker 3: that doesn't happen, because what happens when we have collections
Speaker 3: turned on, which we're going to have that in early May,
Speaker 3: is the government just takes fifteen percent of your income anyway.
Speaker 3: And so what I tell people that are you know,
Speaker 3: don't want to make student loan payments, are struggling to is, hey,
Speaker 3: you might be able to pay ten percent instead of
Speaker 3: fifteen percent of your income if you qualify for new
Speaker 3: IBr for example, and you won't.
Speaker 4: Wreck your credit.
Speaker 3: Because if the government's going to take fifteen percent through
Speaker 3: wage garnishments and tax refunds, they are going to get
Speaker 3: their money, right, There's no doubt they're going to get
Speaker 3: their money, So you might as well give them less
Speaker 3: by voluntarily turning it over instead of involuntarily turning over
Speaker 3: and also wrecking your credit. So for bankruptcy, the only
Speaker 3: scenarios I think where bankruptcy is something that could be
Speaker 3: considered is maybe on private student loans, but only with
Speaker 3: the assistance of, you know, a very educated student, own
Speaker 3: attorney that understands the consumer laws in your state, because
Speaker 3: they're all different on things like statute of limitations and
Speaker 3: burden a proof and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess on that note, what other factors should
Speaker 2: folks consider if they're like, Okay, maybe you know, maybe
Speaker 2: now's a good time to refinance out of a federal
Speaker 2: student loan. Maybe I should consider private student loans. What
Speaker 2: are some other wellan considerations there?
Speaker 3: You know, the Trump administration here is not going to
Speaker 3: last forever, right jokes on SNL aside, right, Like, he
Speaker 3: will be done after the second term. And the question
Speaker 3: is will a Republican win in twenty twenty eight or
Speaker 3: will a Democrat win in twenty twenty eight? What I
Speaker 3: would bet is if a Democratic wins in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 3: the federal student loan benefits are going to increase, and
Speaker 3: if Republican wins, they will stay the same or decrease. Right,
Speaker 3: That's generally a good bet. And so if you are
Speaker 3: what I would call a marginal refinancing candidate, Like, you
Speaker 3: have five and a half percent federal loans and you
Speaker 3: might get a five percent from refinancing. You know what,
Speaker 3: federal protections are worth something, and so if you're only
Speaker 3: benefiting by like half a percent lower rate, it might
Speaker 3: be kind of a good idea to kind of just
Speaker 3: keep it federal, make your minimum payments. You know, see
Speaker 3: what happens the next three years or so three and
Speaker 3: a half years, right, and then if you are just
Speaker 3: a slam dunk refinancing case, what is that? First off,
Speaker 3: a lot of people are getting zero percent interest in
Speaker 3: the same plan for bearance, and you want to benefit
Speaker 3: on that until you you're completely done with that, Right,
Speaker 3: So if you're getting zero percent, get all your zero
Speaker 3: percent you possibly can. Yeah, And when that ends, you'll
Speaker 3: have a decision to make. And the decision might be
Speaker 3: depending on when you borrow your loans, because the interest
Speaker 3: rates of the loans are all different depending on what
Speaker 3: year you borrowed. So if you borrowed and your interest
Speaker 3: rate is like eight or nine percent and you can
Speaker 3: get five percent the private market. Remember that test I
Speaker 3: said earlier of do you earn more money than you
Speaker 3: have in student loans. So if you have you one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand of income, you have fifty thousand of student loans.
Speaker 3: Which you could do is do a selective refinancing. You
Speaker 3: could say, Okay, anything above a five percent I'm going
Speaker 3: to convert that to a private loan or a lower
Speaker 3: interest rate, and anything that's you know, three to five,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to keep it on the federal market.
Speaker 3: So people have a lot of choices in how they
Speaker 3: tackle this, right, they could refinance the whole thing. They
Speaker 3: could do it with a federal government, which doesn't change
Speaker 3: the interest rate, but it does change some of the
Speaker 3: terms sometimes in your favor, right, like things like stretching
Speaker 3: out the payment terms. So, for example, if you have
Speaker 3: over sixty thousand in federal suit of loans, if you
Speaker 3: quote unquote refinance with the government, then your payment required
Speaker 3: payment goes from like a ten year schedule to a
Speaker 3: thirty year schedule. And so that could be really beneficial
Speaker 3: for somebody who has a bunch of credit card debt
Speaker 3: who's struggling to make their payments and they can't make
Speaker 3: the ten year payment, Well, what if you can convert
Speaker 3: a tenure payment to a thirty year payment schedule? You'll
Speaker 3: have to pay a lot less and you'll get more
Speaker 3: breathing room. Right, So there's all kinds of levers that
Speaker 3: you can pull, and the key thing is just to
Speaker 3: know what, when do you pull which lever and why?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard, I've heard you also make the suggestion
Speaker 1: that people think about changing jobs or taking a work
Speaker 1: break in order to reduce that student loan payment, bring
Speaker 1: the payment down. I guess maybe it's not. It's easier
Speaker 1: said than none for a lot of people who are like,
Speaker 1: I need a paycheck, Travis, but thank you. So how
Speaker 1: do you think some people, though, can implement that strategy
Speaker 1: in order to reduce their student loan payments? And when
Speaker 1: might that be worth it? Well?
Speaker 3: I mean, so, for example, you do not have to
Speaker 3: report when your payment where your income goes up except
Speaker 3: at like regularly scheduled intervals. So they're going to tell you, hey,
Speaker 3: it's time to recertify your income, so we can calculate
Speaker 3: your income based payment of what you should pay every
Speaker 3: month on your loans. Right, But what they do allow
Speaker 3: you to do is if your income goes down, you
Speaker 3: can request an early recertification at Student ad dut Gov
Speaker 3: slash IDR And I'll give you an example of this.
Speaker 3: We had a client who was on a maternity leave
Speaker 3: and the first six weeks were paid and then the
Speaker 3: other six weeks were unpaid. And during those latter six weeks,
Speaker 3: she was not getting a taxable income. So what I
Speaker 3: suggested to her is go to student ad dut gov
Speaker 3: slash idr and click on recalculate my payment and state
Speaker 3: the truth, which is that at the moment she did that,
Speaker 3: she did not have a taxable income that was coming
Speaker 3: in right during the six weeks window that she did
Speaker 3: not have a taxable income coming in. That was a
Speaker 3: true statement, and so she was able to re calculate
Speaker 3: her payment to a much lower number. So, if you're
Speaker 3: in between jobs for a couple months, if you are
Speaker 3: doing a a sabbatical from your job, if you're doing
Speaker 3: what I did when I was in my twenties, traveling
Speaker 3: the world, taking a break from where, it is within
Speaker 3: your rights to go to your student loan website student
Speaker 3: a dut gov slash IDR and get your payment recalculated
Speaker 3: to a much much lower number.
Speaker 1: How long does it last? Like so she goes back
Speaker 1: to work and then her payment doesn't go up, right,
Speaker 1: when she goes back day one.
Speaker 4: Right, we all it depends the keys.
Speaker 1: What TRAVI said, you said regular intervals. What are those intervals?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends on the person. So what happens is
Speaker 3: most people when they graduate, graduate in the spring, and
Speaker 3: you have a six month grace period if you don't
Speaker 3: do anything otherwise. So most people, if they do nothing,
Speaker 3: are going into a like they graduate in June. Six
Speaker 3: months after that is like November December, that's when they
Speaker 3: get their first payment due. And so for that person,
Speaker 3: their recertification date for their income based payment plan is
Speaker 3: going to be November December every year at the same time. Right,
Speaker 3: So if she's on this maternity leave, she might get
Speaker 3: you know, the point at which she recalculated her payment
Speaker 3: until her next recertification date with low payments, and then
Speaker 3: you know what would happen is when she goes to
Speaker 3: recalculate her new payment, she could do is to say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, is my current income lower or higher than
Speaker 3: my last tax return. If it's higher than my last
Speaker 3: tax return, then she wants to use her last tax
Speaker 3: return to recertify her income at her next recertification date
Speaker 3: when she has to report her income for calculating her
Speaker 3: IBr payment. Right, So for example, let's say you know,
Speaker 3: she's making one hundred twenty K a year, you know,
Speaker 3: and let's say she has to recertify every year in
Speaker 3: December or something. So if she has this you know,
Speaker 3: unpaid maternity leave, she recalculates her payment to basically zero,
Speaker 3: and then her next you know, let's say her next
Speaker 3: recertification date, she's back to making one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: K year. Well, since she had a maternity leave or
Speaker 3: she was making nothing, maybe her prior year tax atturn
Speaker 3: is showing one hundred K of income, so she'd rather
Speaker 3: use that to recertify her income instead because it's going
Speaker 3: to give her a lower payment. So that's kind of
Speaker 3: that's kind of what I mean about just knowing what
Speaker 3: are you allowed to do based off of the rules
Speaker 3: and the laws. And you know, that's why most people
Speaker 3: pay too much, is because they're not taking advantage of
Speaker 3: what they're able to do legally.
Speaker 2: Sure, I think some folks might have call them like loopholes,
Speaker 2: but no, it's this is just truly what the law states.
Speaker 2: And so to put a fine point on it, it is
Speaker 2: an annual recertification because I thought I saw something about
Speaker 2: enrollments in these IBr plans not requiring recertification every single year.
Speaker 3: We also they have pushed out recertification dates every few
Speaker 3: months four years. So it's one thing we talk about
Speaker 3: the turning on the payments and collections aspect of student loans. Again,
Speaker 3: the Trump administration, not the Biden administration, has just pushed
Speaker 3: out IDR recertification dates to know earlier than February twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six. So the Biden administration started doing this by
Speaker 3: pushing out IDR recertification dates basically every few months because
Speaker 3: they wanted payments to be low, especially before key election dates.
Speaker 3: And they also didn't have the capacity in the services
Speaker 3: to recalculate what people even owed, which is that's kind
Speaker 3: of terrible, isn't it, Like in terms of just, you know,
Speaker 3: an embarrassing operational failure that the servicers cannot even calculate
Speaker 3: what people owe because they don't have the staff, they
Speaker 3: don't have the rules given to them by department.
Speaker 2: Event you don't have the infrastructure in place to be
Speaker 2: able to handle exactly figuring out what the new payments
Speaker 2: are going to be.
Speaker 3: And so even the Trump administration which is making this
Speaker 3: big public spectacle of you know, we're going to make
Speaker 3: people pay what they owe. Well, they have pushed off recertification.
Speaker 3: I've seen some borrowers with a required recertification date of
Speaker 3: January twenty twenty seven. And these are people in some
Speaker 3: cases who last recertified their income where their twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: tax return in twenty nineteen, and then COVID happened in
Speaker 3: March twenty twenty, and then people got paused on their
Speaker 3: requirement certify. So I'm not I don't want to get
Speaker 3: like in trouble sharing too much here, but we have
Speaker 3: people making six figures that are perfectly willing to pay,
Speaker 3: you know, two thousand a month, and their student loans
Speaker 3: that they're supposed to that are getting credit for forgiveness
Speaker 3: programs but are still paying based off of when they
Speaker 3: just graduated. They're paying two hundred dollars a month, right, So,
Speaker 3: and the Trump administration is saying we don't mind extending
Speaker 3: those two hundred dollars a month payments to January twenty
Speaker 3: twenty seven for some people. So this is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's crazy.
Speaker 1: From a personal finance standpoint, I'm curious, like, what are
Speaker 1: you telling clients who come to you because hey, right
Speaker 1: now the getting has been good, you've had payments deferred
Speaker 1: or you have had an artificially low payment, and are
Speaker 1: you suggesting bulk up those reserves because this might not
Speaker 1: last forever. How do you help people think about the
Speaker 1: fact that payments could go and they already are going
Speaker 1: up for some people, uh and to be prepared for that.
Speaker 1: While maybe you have a pretty solid deal right.
Speaker 3: Now, Well, I mean I think that, you know, people
Speaker 3: have different level of economic security, and I just want
Speaker 3: to kind of acknowledge that, right, like so uh so,
Speaker 3: for example, if if my taxes go way up, right,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, make a comment hashtag
Speaker 3: check my privilege here, right, But you know, if taxes
Speaker 3: go way up, maybe maybe I'm cool with my one
Speaker 3: thousand dollars telescope for a while, do you know what
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 1: Upgrading quite yet?
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe I'm putting off the fully loaded you know,
Speaker 3: like you know, computer tracking the comments or whatever. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean, like so, so and and so,
Speaker 3: maybe for like a middle class person, this might mean,
Speaker 3: you know, cay, I'm gonna drive my camera for a
Speaker 3: while before upgrading to the newer model, right, or something
Speaker 3: like that. Now for people at the lower end of
Speaker 3: the economic spectrum, they don't have those those privileges, right,
Speaker 3: And so the good news is if somebody knows their
Speaker 3: rights under the student on rules, if you truly are
Speaker 3: making not a lot of income, you should be able
Speaker 3: to qualify for a zero dollar payment like or very
Speaker 3: close to it, because you just have to get onto
Speaker 3: the income based or payment plan. And so many people
Speaker 3: don't even know that they could benefit from that, Like,
Speaker 3: so many people don't still do not know that they
Speaker 3: can sign up for that. Like, you know, eight million
Speaker 3: or nine million people sign up for the Save plan.
Speaker 3: The awkward truth about that though, is actually maybe like
Speaker 3: twenty million people could have benefited from it, but only
Speaker 3: eight or nine million people signed up, right, So you're
Speaker 3: more economically struggling folks. The government cannot auto enroll people
Speaker 3: into IBr they're not allowed to.
Speaker 1: So maybe all those people were clairvoyant and they knew
Speaker 1: that it wasn't going to last. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's what it was. Yeah, but I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it as people like to. I mean, money is
Speaker 1: very stressful, particularly for people who are who do not
Speaker 1: have access to the same income that middle and upper
Speaker 1: middle income families have right, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: people just take the maybe if ignore it'll go away approach.
Speaker 1: And the problem with that thinking is it's absolutely not
Speaker 1: true because the government can seize your wages and tax refunds.
Speaker 2: Again, i've heard you mention the term partial financial hardship.
Speaker 2: Is that something that folks should Is that what you're
Speaker 2: talking about here or is that like a completely different term.
Speaker 3: Well, partial financial hardship doesn't mean what it sounds like,
Speaker 3: so Parkay, partial financial hardship sounds like you're struggling. In reality,
Speaker 3: what it is is do you have a payment that's
Speaker 3: lower than the standard tenure for your loan amount. So,
Speaker 3: for example, somebody could have a forty thousand dollars income
Speaker 3: in twenty thousand dollars of steat of loans and not
Speaker 3: have a partial financial hardship because their payment calculated on
Speaker 3: the income based your payment plan is higher than what
Speaker 3: they'd have to pay if they paid two hundred dollars
Speaker 3: a month to pay their twenty k off in ten years.
Speaker 3: So that person with forty forty k income twenty k
Speaker 3: of loans might not have a partial financial hardship. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: you know a doctor who has four hundred thousand of
Speaker 3: steel loans with two hundred thousand of income might have
Speaker 3: have a partial financial hardship because their income based your
Speaker 3: payment is lower than four thousand a month, which is
Speaker 3: what they would have to pay to pay it off
Speaker 3: in ten years.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So what that means is is that you know, in general,
Speaker 3: what I said about the greater than two times your
Speaker 3: income and debt, you know, basically all those people should
Speaker 3: go for forgiveness. Like if you're not going for forgiveness,
Speaker 3: you're probably just hurting yourself financially. And what I said
Speaker 3: during the Biden administration is is basically, if you have
Speaker 3: more debt than your income at all, like if your
Speaker 3: debt to income ratio is more than one to one,
Speaker 3: you should go for forgiveness. During the Biden administration, you know,
Speaker 3: the problem is is with the less generous rules the
Speaker 3: Trump administration is rolling out. Forgiveness is still very much
Speaker 3: a thing, but it's not as a thing for as
Speaker 3: many people, which is why I'm saying, well, now it's
Speaker 3: really more like two to one debt to income ratio,
Speaker 3: go for forgiveness. And if you're in this one to
Speaker 3: two times, you know your your income in debt student debt.
Speaker 3: Then then it's a it depends, right, It depends on
Speaker 3: your plans for your career, your family goals, your your
Speaker 3: expected income growth, right, your your risk tolerance for you know,
Speaker 3: do you want to wait it out a little bit
Speaker 3: to see what happens policy wise? And you know, for
Speaker 3: people who have less student debt than their income, there's
Speaker 3: still strategies, there's still approaches to pay less, there's still
Speaker 3: ways to have a better situation. You know, some people
Speaker 3: even could still benefit from forgiveness if you're very low
Speaker 3: income and that ratio applies to you. But you know
Speaker 3: it just you know, it depends, is the mushy mouthed answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, but that's really helpful kind of lines
Speaker 1: of demarcation there. I'm curious too, your you've talked about
Speaker 1: the clawing back of forgiveness. People who have gotten forgiveness,
Speaker 1: they're not going to get unforgiven, right, and that that
Speaker 1: would be illegal. But are you worried about the PSLF
Speaker 1: program and maybe some sort of rug pull. I know
Speaker 1: people who are in that and who are let's say
Speaker 1: seven eight years along, and they're worried. They're like, is
Speaker 1: something going to happen before I get to that point
Speaker 1: where forgiveness is real each cause, like I'm pop committed
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I like to think in terms of probabilities. Right,
Speaker 3: I was an econ in stats. Major makes me weird,
Speaker 3: but you know that's what I like to think of
Speaker 3: in terms of giving people advice, because there's probabilities that
Speaker 3: are fifty to fifty and there's ones that are like
Speaker 3: ten percent chance.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And so with PS LEFT, the biggest drug pull that
Speaker 3: can happen is there's a bill right now in the
Speaker 3: House to take away nonprofit status from hospitals and make
Speaker 3: them for profits. So that would be a way that
Speaker 3: you could take away PS LEFT through a back door
Speaker 3: for at least half the people that currently qualify for it, right,
Speaker 3: And should you be worried about that? Like, what I
Speaker 3: would tell people that are in that boat is no.
Speaker 3: And the reason is it has to pass not just
Speaker 3: the House but also the Senate. And if you look
Speaker 3: at the Senate, there are basically four Republicans swing votes
Speaker 3: right now. In my mind, there's Murkowski and Collins in
Speaker 3: Alaska and Maine. There's Mitch McConnell, who's been voting against
Speaker 3: administration and a lot of things now that he's not
Speaker 3: the Republican leader, and there's Tom Tillis in North Carolina
Speaker 3: and he's kind of like the wing votes. So if
Speaker 3: you think about somebody like him, I live in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: imagine Douke and you and see going from not for
Speaker 3: profit to for profit and them having to do a
Speaker 3: bunch of layoffs, and he's got a competitive reelection at
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six. Is he going to vote for that?
Speaker 3: I would bet not. I would bet that the Senate
Speaker 3: modifies and makes less aggressive a lot of the House
Speaker 3: GOP's proposals for things like this, and I would not
Speaker 3: worry about that until we actually see the text of
Speaker 3: the bill move along and pass you know, a committee
Speaker 3: for example. So I think that people are really worried
Speaker 3: about what the House and Senat are going to do
Speaker 3: because they do have unified control of DC, right, and
Speaker 3: they will pass some kind of big bill that's gonna
Speaker 3: have a lot of stuff in it because they have
Speaker 3: to because the Trump tax cuts expire at the end
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five. So that is a guarantee that
Speaker 3: you will see a bill and there will be something
Speaker 3: related to student loans in it. The question is is
Speaker 3: how much will be in it and how much will
Speaker 3: borrowers have to worry about when they find, you know,
Speaker 3: when the text has battled over and finally published.
Speaker 2: Could you see a situation where it's at least for
Speaker 2: looking and a lot of folks get to get grandfathered
Speaker 2: into the previous PSLF or I'm sorry, with a hospital
Speaker 2: nonprofit designation.
Speaker 3: I think that it will be and I think that
Speaker 3: you know that the people the only people that have
Speaker 3: to worry about forgiveness being clawed back is people that
Speaker 3: were not actually eligible for it. And I know that
Speaker 3: might sound ridiculous, but what I mean by that is
Speaker 3: there are there's no auditing a PSLF really at all,
Speaker 3: and so there are some employers that have been approved
Speaker 3: for PSLF that I know, based on the rules, do
Speaker 3: not qualify. And I've seen borrowers that have been mistakenly
Speaker 3: given credit for years of payments that should not.
Speaker 1: Say there's no cop on the beat.
Speaker 3: There's none, no zero. So like a lot of there's
Speaker 3: a lot of scams, there's a lot of fraudulent activity
Speaker 3: going on there. And you know, if somebody, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: for example, goes and starts a fake nonprofit and has
Speaker 3: been approved for you know, ps LEF based on starting
Speaker 3: a fake nonprofit. If they get approved and forgiven, like
Speaker 3: it might work out. It's kind of like lying on
Speaker 3: your taxes, right Like if you say you know, I'd
Speaker 3: made no income and like they never audit, you got
Speaker 3: away with it, right And if there's very little auditing
Speaker 3: that's happening at the IRS, then maybe maybe some people decided,
Speaker 3: well that's worth taking the chance on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We don't give that type of advice. We say what
Speaker 3: are the rules, what are the things you can do
Speaker 3: within the rules? And you know, I would not be shocked.
Speaker 3: I tell people, I would not be shocked if we
Speaker 3: did see some kind of like you know, Operation Varsity
Speaker 3: Blues right where they went after the famous actors, right
Speaker 3: like the ones on Desperate Housewives whatever, right that we're
Speaker 3: getting their kids in for water polo to like fancy schools.
Speaker 3: Su I think that you might see something like people
Speaker 3: that's like going after the very worst offenses for student
Speaker 3: loan like stuff. Right Like for example, there was a
Speaker 3: case pre pandemic where there was a group that was
Speaker 3: telling borrowers to list of family size of ninety three,
Speaker 3: so that they would have such a large family size
Speaker 3: they'd qualify for a zero dollar payment and like, and
Speaker 3: the funny thing is they put out a report like
Speaker 3: February twenty twenty saying, like, hey, maybe someone a department
Speaker 3: of edge should ask is it possible to have a
Speaker 3: family size of ninety three in the if you're a rabbit,
Speaker 3: you know, only like on the online form, And then
Speaker 3: of course COVID happened a month later, nobody ever followed
Speaker 3: up on it. So I mean, I think that there
Speaker 3: will be a little bit of like a return of like,
Speaker 3: what are the craziest things about the studolone system that
Speaker 3: probably shouldn't be the case the way they are, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, and frankly, like even the Daily Podcast had
Speaker 3: this recent episode on you know, his student on forgetting
Speaker 3: his dad, and they even talked about, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: we shouldn't have unlimited student on borrowing, right, Like maybe
Speaker 3: a student on borrowing should not be unlimited that you
Speaker 3: can take out like eight hundred thousand for school across
Speaker 3: like five children with no limit on your borrowing, which
Speaker 3: is currently the rule. Right, if you want to send
Speaker 3: six kids to the most expensive private schools in the country,
Speaker 3: you can take out a million dollars of parent plus
Speaker 3: loans currently and there's no limit on that.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to ask you more about that
Speaker 1: and about incentives of student loans moving forward and kind
Speaker 1: of how that impacts the universities as well. We'll get
Speaker 1: to some questions on that with Travis right after this.
Speaker 1: We're back from the.
Speaker 2: Break again, speaking with Travis Hornsby about student loans, what
Speaker 2: it is folks should be doing now that they have them. Actually,
Speaker 2: so let's turn the tables a little bit. Travis, what
Speaker 2: about folks who don't have student loans yet? Because you
Speaker 2: released this list of the careers where folks tend to
Speaker 2: incur the most student loan debts, and Orthodontis turns out
Speaker 2: they have it the worst. How do you think about
Speaker 2: the trade off of taking on massive amounts of student
Speaker 2: loan debt versus the potential for higher paid down the road.
Speaker 3: Well, I remember, like one of the Orthodonts cases that
Speaker 3: I talked about with the Wall Street Journal back in
Speaker 3: the day. They did a story on like one of
Speaker 3: the first borrowers to pass the million dollars of student loans,
Speaker 3: Mark Oh, And that was like I think twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. And that's because the borrowing is unlimited, right,
Speaker 3: And so if you're not yet in a program, what
Speaker 3: I would be laser focused on is what does Congress
Speaker 3: put out for their bill this summer or early fall
Speaker 3: for the Reconciliation bill, which is going to pass in
Speaker 3: a party line vote. And what that bill will say
Speaker 3: is it will either say like, as of a certain date,
Speaker 3: loans are capped and you can't borrow more than next amount,
Speaker 3: or it might not make any changes, or it might
Speaker 3: say if you're enrolled in a program as of a
Speaker 3: certain date, you get to borrow whatever you need to
Speaker 3: finish the program. Right. And so if I was somebody
Speaker 3: that's looking at a graduate degree program, I would make
Speaker 3: really sure that I looked at what that bill says,
Speaker 3: because it might make the difference of you being able
Speaker 3: to finish your medical school, dental school program or not.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And so pay attention to what Congress does this summer
Speaker 3: and fall to see what changes they make to the
Speaker 3: studento on system. But by and large, I would say,
Speaker 3: under the current studo in system, you should always go
Speaker 3: get another degree, another you know, educational pursuit. If you
Speaker 3: don't mind a ten percent income tax. And what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is, let's say that you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's a struggle to get a job initially, like is
Speaker 3: it worth it or not? Well, income driven repayment is
Speaker 3: basically a ten percent income tax. There's more complexity to
Speaker 3: it than that, but you're losing ten percent of your
Speaker 3: income to pay back the government for like twenty years
Speaker 3: on average. You know, people doing the public service thing,
Speaker 3: it's ten years, some people it's twenty five. But you know,
Speaker 3: ten to twenty five years, you're losing ten percent of
Speaker 3: your income.
Speaker 4: So what I like to tell.
Speaker 3: People is, Okay, if you stop at being a nurse
Speaker 3: and you're making sixty K a year and you have
Speaker 3: zero debt, are you better or worse off than if
Speaker 3: you go get you know, a nurse practitioner job and
Speaker 3: you're making one hundred and twenty a k a year,
Speaker 3: but you're losing ten percent of your income to an
Speaker 3: income based your payment plan. We'll take away ten percent
Speaker 3: of one hundred and twenty grand and you're still making
Speaker 3: just over six figures. And so that income gap is
Speaker 3: worth it, you know, compared to sticking to just your
Speaker 3: bachelor's degree. So in general, get your bachelor's degree if
Speaker 3: you can, and if you want to go to a
Speaker 3: graduate program, I would just suggest that it be a
Speaker 3: valuable program of some kind where you're going to make
Speaker 3: at least ten percent more than you would make if
Speaker 3: you just stopped at your current educational level. And even
Speaker 3: if you wouldn't make that earnings gap, if you would
Speaker 3: enjoy that job a lot more than what's your current doing,
Speaker 3: it's still worth doing under the current rules. And so
Speaker 3: I would just think that if the rules change or
Speaker 3: there's more caps unborrowing and people actually have to think, well,
Speaker 3: what if I actually had to pay this back directly,
Speaker 3: then the math would change. But the math doesn't change
Speaker 3: until the rules change.
Speaker 1: How do you think the like the government's approach to
Speaker 1: student loans, to the federal student loan program will change
Speaker 1: the future of universities, how they price their education and
Speaker 1: how much borrowers are willing to take on, like if
Speaker 1: the program becomes less generous, right as interest rates have
Speaker 1: already gone up of course since when I was in
Speaker 1: school and since five years ago. So when people have
Speaker 1: to make those trade offs, when they're thinking through, well,
Speaker 1: how much debt should I take on even though I
Speaker 1: can essentially take on ridiculous amounts. Are we going to
Speaker 1: have just better incentives in place that will actually produce
Speaker 1: some secondary benefits like reducing the cost of education overall?
Speaker 1: Do you see that in the future.
Speaker 3: Well, so the problem there's the dirty little secret and
Speaker 3: hire that a lot of the big name schools that
Speaker 3: have very popular football teams earn a lot of money
Speaker 3: from the parent plus loan program right now. And so
Speaker 3: any big school with a big football program that has
Speaker 3: a lot of out of state students, what they'll often
Speaker 3: do is go market like maybe for example, like a
Speaker 3: University of Alabama might go market in Illinois to get
Speaker 3: them to come down and pay out of state tuition.
Speaker 3: Maybe those families don't have the money to just cut
Speaker 3: the twenty five k year whatever it is to go,
Speaker 3: and so those families might load up on parent plus
Speaker 3: loans because they're unlimited, and then the university's making a
Speaker 3: bunch of extra money compared to what they make on
Speaker 3: in state students, right And so there's this big incentive
Speaker 3: currently for the schools to bring in all these out
Speaker 3: of state students. And you know how parent plus loans
Speaker 3: be the thing they offer to people, and the schools
Speaker 3: are able to spend more money in a lot of
Speaker 3: different things because of that, right, like faculty, bigger stadiums,
Speaker 3: and il deals whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, And the parents just don't know how big of
Speaker 1: an albatross it's going to be around their neck for
Speaker 1: decades to come, exactly, and so and so there's been
Speaker 1: some loopholes too to manage that problem for parents as well,
Speaker 1: So like parents that have lots of parent plus owns,
Speaker 1: because you know, up till now, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of strategies you can do. But that's kind of an aside.
Speaker 1: The issue with university is the big name universities are
Speaker 1: going to be fine. They're just going to have to
Speaker 1: make cuts. So maybe you have to cut back on
Speaker 1: some faculty and some programs. Maybe you can't do, you know,
Speaker 1: the athletic expansion you planned on doing if they were
Speaker 1: to lose access to.
Speaker 4: The parent plus loan program.
Speaker 3: Now, there's other schools that are more kind of like
Speaker 3: marginal schools that might not have the big football name brand, right,
Speaker 3: that are more just maybe they're serving a lot more
Speaker 3: just like middle class families. It maybe more regional schools.
Speaker 3: Some of those schools would absolutely have to close if
Speaker 3: they capt loans. It's just the reality a lot of
Speaker 3: these schools are in swing districts in swing states, and
Speaker 3: so the question is is a lot of these proposals,
Speaker 3: you know, makes sense on paper until you think about, well,
Speaker 3: what does it mean if you close down a bunch
Speaker 3: of regional schools in Pennsylvania? How popular are you going
Speaker 3: to be in the next presidential election in some of
Speaker 3: these swing districts? Right, So I think that from a
Speaker 3: political standpoint, there's there's some checks on what they're going
Speaker 3: to be able to do in terms of changes to
Speaker 3: the system. But you know, I mean, if you think
Speaker 3: about it just a common sense, it probably does not
Speaker 3: make sense to let universities charge whatever the heck they
Speaker 3: want for higher ed Like that's probably a really dumb idea.
Speaker 3: Like that changed in two thousand and six, and they
Speaker 3: did it to try to expand access. But the problem
Speaker 3: is they made it a blank check. They just said, hey, universities,
Speaker 3: go do whatever you want. There's no limits on what
Speaker 3: you can borrow for graduate programs. You could just charge
Speaker 3: whatever you want. And so what happened is the number
Speaker 3: of pharmacy schools, for example, more than tripled.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So within literally like a few years you had triple
Speaker 3: the number of pharmacy schools. So pharmacy school went from
Speaker 3: a thing that was like a thirty five percent acceptance
Speaker 3: right to like a ninety five percent acceptance rate. And
Speaker 3: so a lot of incomes and graduate programs have actually
Speaker 3: like been very flat or even declined. And there's a
Speaker 3: big oversupply because the universities just thought, oh, look a
Speaker 3: great new revenue source, so we can just go open
Speaker 3: another school. Right, So there probably is a big contraction
Speaker 3: in the number of graduate programs and the number of
Speaker 3: universities that needs to happen just in terms of like
Speaker 3: a balancing. But the problem is is that also means
Speaker 3: real pain, like people will lose their jobs, like you know,
Speaker 3: And so that's just a question of do you want
Speaker 3: to take that pain? You know, how much pain do
Speaker 3: you want to cause? Do you want to make it
Speaker 3: a little bit softer by having the loan limits be
Speaker 3: a lot higher. Do you want to increase pelgrants so
Speaker 3: lower income students can still attend university. So there's all
Speaker 3: kinds of policy trade offs that and that's why the
Speaker 3: easier decision is just let's go punt the football, right, Well,
Speaker 3: you don't know what to do. Let's just yeah, income
Speaker 3: recertification in twenty twenty seven, how about that, you know exactly,
Speaker 3: So that's what's been happening, and that they must.
Speaker 1: Do the same thing with Social Security too, Travis, why not?
Speaker 3: No, I mean that's but that's the easier thing to do.
Speaker 3: And so politicians, you know, in my experience of student loans,
Speaker 3: always choose the easier thing to do unless they're forced
Speaker 3: to make a change, Like you get the headline of
Speaker 3: the you know, Afghanistan veteran with the traumatic brain injury,
Speaker 3: they got the six figure tax bill, and then they say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe we need to change the laws, maybe
Speaker 3: these dumb laws. But it takes that kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: level of an event to make a change.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised at the amount of politics that has gone
Speaker 2: into our conversation today, given the fact that we're talking
Speaker 2: about students loans, so to that note, and the fact
Speaker 2: that it does seem like politicians are punning the ball.
Speaker 2: Do you see a world where it makes sense for
Speaker 2: the federal government to get out of backing student loans.
Speaker 2: I mean, like that this all started with our desire
Speaker 2: to what back in the sixties to compete with like
Speaker 2: Russia and the space race and all that, and shoring
Speaker 2: up the ability for the US to be competitive from
Speaker 2: that standpoint, But like, are we past that? Does it
Speaker 2: make sense to open this up more up to the
Speaker 2: to the to the free markets as opposed to the government,
Speaker 2: which tends to react more slowly to some of the
Speaker 2: changes that need to happen.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of people are asking that question, and
Speaker 3: the policy problem to that is how do you extract
Speaker 3: the government from one point six trillion dollars? So that's
Speaker 3: that's a really big problem, right, Like do you just
Speaker 3: have an auction and you just sell all the loans? Well,
Speaker 3: a lot of these benefits of those loans have already
Speaker 3: been promised, like income based repayment. Does a you know,
Speaker 3: a you know a JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs want
Speaker 3: to take on a bunch of what that? Yeah, people
Speaker 3: can pay ten percent of their income and never pay
Speaker 3: the balance off. So, you know, there's all kinds of
Speaker 3: problems with how do you get egg is that the
Speaker 3: existing you know, commitment that's been made, And then the
Speaker 3: other problem is, like you know, for the future if
Speaker 3: you do you know, the old system was essentially like
Speaker 3: the government would kind of cover the losses on the
Speaker 3: loan portfolio, and private lenders would make the loans and
Speaker 3: make the interest income.
Speaker 4: And that system.
Speaker 3: Worked like okay for a while, but then they decided, well,
Speaker 3: we want to expand access, and so pendulum and politics swings, right.
Speaker 3: So I think we're in the in the zone of
Speaker 3: like the pendulum swinging more towards Hey, let's do less,
Speaker 3: let's do fewer loans, let's make it, you know, more
Speaker 3: on the borrower to pay them back. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think that the devils and the details of student
Speaker 3: huns though, like you know, it's real easy to say, hey,
Speaker 3: get get the government of the student loan business, but
Speaker 3: there are so many problems that the government would have
Speaker 3: to figure It would be almost like saying, let's get
Speaker 3: the government.
Speaker 4: Of Social Security. Well, oops, how do you do that?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, for sure, Travis, this has been super helpful.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of our listeners are going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of value from this conversation. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us and your videos. By the way, your
Speaker 1: video updates have been incredibly helpful to I've been following
Speaker 1: them as I'm trying to kind of figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on with student loans in the day to day,
Speaker 1: which is kind of sad that we have to be
Speaker 1: pay attention to it that much. But how how can
Speaker 1: how do money listeners find out more about you and
Speaker 1: what you're up to?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I actually the best way is to
Speaker 3: get the discount for how to Money listeners if they
Speaker 3: if they need a custom plan, and I would say
Speaker 3: this is probably more in the you know, you owe
Speaker 3: maybe over fifty thousand dollars or US maybe even six
Speaker 3: figures if that's you. If you go to student Loan
Speaker 3: Planner dot com slash how to Money, so that's going
Speaker 3: to get you a discount and one hundred dollars off
Speaker 3: a custom supit loan plan if you think you need
Speaker 3: that right now? Who needs that? You know you have
Speaker 3: a lot of studilong confusion. You have a significant balance.
Speaker 3: Generally speaking, probably ninety percent of the time we're going
Speaker 3: to save a sort of projected mid five figure balance
Speaker 3: for the average client, which is about a two hundred
Speaker 3: k average balance. So for a few hundred dollars, the
Speaker 3: high likelihood will save that much money is generally really
Speaker 3: worth it. You can, you know, check our reviews by
Speaker 3: looking at Student one planner reviews and Google and see
Speaker 3: that we really do have a huge impact on people's lives.
Speaker 3: And then if you cannot if some of the listeners says,
Speaker 3: you know, that's great, I cannot afford, you know, a
Speaker 3: few hundred dollars even with the one hundred dollars off
Speaker 3: how to Money listener discount, then just like the student
Speaker 3: one Painter podcast, we have a free podcast where we
Speaker 3: answer a lot of people's questions and go over like
Speaker 3: what people need to know, and so that's the free way.
Speaker 3: And then of course our student old painter dot com
Speaker 3: website's got a lot of free content too. So but
Speaker 3: you know, if they want they want one hundred dollars
Speaker 3: how to Money discount, it's just again student one pointer
Speaker 3: dot com slash how to Money.
Speaker 1: That's right, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're trying to help folks to avoid that student
Speaker 2: loan confusion, and y'all are doing that on all the fronts.
Speaker 2: Travis Hornsby, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me all right, Matt, great convo with Travis.
Speaker 1: I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about the state of
Speaker 1: student loans these days, but I'm less worried after talking
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 2: It makes total sense. The more, the more you know
Speaker 2: in the star is streaking across the sky, you see
Speaker 2: it that, of course Travis would be able to see
Speaker 2: because he's got the right tele that's good right to
Speaker 2: be able to It's a good point. And the more that, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's more control that we have in our hands than
Speaker 2: I guess I was under the impression. I will say
Speaker 2: I was disenheartened that so much of the future of
Speaker 2: US student loans comes down to who's going to be
Speaker 2: in the White House. And so my big takeaway is
Speaker 2: going to be, we just need to figure out who's
Speaker 2: going to be elected to office, and then you'll know
Speaker 2: what to do in four years exactly what's so hard.
Speaker 1: About about doing that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I think American politics so easy to producere Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: I do think my big takeaway is going to be
Speaker 2: to consider re certifying your income, in particular if you
Speaker 2: are on an income based UH student Loan Repayment plan.
Speaker 2: Because the and he mentioned this u r L a
Speaker 2: couple of times, I'm going to do it again because
Speaker 2: I think it sounds like a fantastic resource student A
Speaker 2: dot go for slash i d R. The i DR
Speaker 2: stands for income driven repayment and.
Speaker 1: As this is especially true if you've.
Speaker 2: Seen your income drop recently, the ability you're not you're
Speaker 2: not fibbing, You're you're telling the truth. Your income has
Speaker 2: gone down and your repayment should reflect that. And I've
Speaker 2: got a feel and there are fewer folks doing that,
Speaker 2: or is it it's something that's kind of it's it's automated, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's automatic. It's they're not really thinking about it.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, I've done that before, but no, this
Speaker 2: is something you can revisit. It's almost like reshopping your
Speaker 2: insurance rates that your insurance coverage. The ability to do
Speaker 2: that and save money every single month, especially if you've
Speaker 2: seen your income go down, I think is a fantastic
Speaker 2: takeaway for folks who might maybe they're even like overwhelmed
Speaker 2: with everything that we talked through with Travis, and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: well that's at least one thing that I.
Speaker 1: Can do one hundred percent. Yeah, even the maternity leave thing.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, wait, you can, yep do that
Speaker 1: if that and apparently, according to the rules, you can,
Speaker 1: which I think is heartening. There's a lot of situations
Speaker 1: that where that could apply, I think to somebody whose
Speaker 1: income has gone down or gone away for a little bit.
Speaker 1: But how about how about for you? Is a big takeaway.
Speaker 1: I really liked kind of how he talked about the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of getting a secondary degree and how
Speaker 1: to think about the financial consequence essentially as like a
Speaker 1: flat ten percent tax on your income. And I think
Speaker 1: I can be just a really easy then back of
Speaker 1: envelope math to figure out, well, is it going to
Speaker 1: be worth it taking this dead into my life or not?
Speaker 1: Like how much more am I going to make? And
Speaker 1: then when I take the ten percent off of that increase, well,
Speaker 1: is god is it worth the time, the energy and
Speaker 1: is the joy I'm going to get from switching careers
Speaker 1: going to be worth all the effort that it takes
Speaker 1: and the debt that I've got to take on my back.
Speaker 1: So I think that's just at least when when we
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners who are kind of in
Speaker 1: that period in their lives, like do I change careers
Speaker 1: and if so, how do I think through the financial consequences?
Speaker 2: Do I go get that MBA and do I get
Speaker 2: student loans for that or do I take on some
Speaker 2: special graduate degree.
Speaker 1: That's a that's like a simple math equation that can
Speaker 1: I think at least at least be helpful as you're
Speaker 1: kind of trying to figure that out. Berts, Yeah, especially.
Speaker 2: If you are looking to take on additional debt. But
Speaker 2: the beer Joel that you and I enjoyed during this episode,
Speaker 2: and this is one of those Burial beers. So it's
Speaker 2: got the long name and it reads only calling hours
Speaker 2: pull me back to these Midwestern roots.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to read. I'm pretty sure that's
Speaker 1: what it says. This is a West Coast style IPA
Speaker 1: by Burial collab with Hot Butcher. What do you think
Speaker 1: two of the greatest breweries in the world at this moment?
Speaker 1: I would say so. And this beer reflected that it
Speaker 1: was so good. This to me didn't feel like a
Speaker 1: traditional West Coast It was like juicier, less abrasive than
Speaker 1: a lot of them are. And that's what I would
Speaker 1: expect from these two guys trying to create a West
Speaker 1: Coast together. It's like, so good, it's a West Coast,
Speaker 1: it's up my alley.
Speaker 2: It's not a West coastal it's a Midwest Coast just
Speaker 2: like the there's a coast on the in the Midwest.
Speaker 2: Match is like the less we're talking about, like the
Speaker 2: shores of like Michigan. Yeah, Michigan's where it's out man
Speaker 2: also home to many fantastic breweries. But yeah, this was
Speaker 2: amazing and I'm going to shout out the label too,
Speaker 2: because I've never seen It's funny.
Speaker 1: So before we hit record, you said all kind of
Speaker 1: looks like.
Speaker 2: A bony their album cover, and I guess the snow
Speaker 2: is that what you were thinking of?
Speaker 1: For some reason it was I was thinking blood Bank
Speaker 1: and the kind of frigid it's kind of got the fridge.
Speaker 1: It looks cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned blood Bank because so in printing.
Speaker 1: I know this from my advertising days.
Speaker 2: Uh, there's a thing called spot color and it's a
Speaker 2: you know, you get the specific Pantone code because you
Speaker 2: want to want to use a very specific color. And
Speaker 2: it looks like they used a spot color and it
Speaker 2: makes this label, this artwork looks so premium. Specifically, it's
Speaker 2: on the red and it looks like it's just glowing.
Speaker 2: And that's how they've used it. It's like the science,
Speaker 2: it says, Limby's liquor. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: And then they got the red glow coming out of
Speaker 2: the windows a little bit, and it makes it look like,
Speaker 2: truly that this can is glowing in my hand. I
Speaker 2: almost want to set it over here next to our
Speaker 2: all day Food Market winter item that listeners sent our
Speaker 2: away because it's got the similar kulga, which I figured.
Speaker 1: You could appreciate. Yeah, well, and I think I am
Speaker 1: particularly drawn to dope can art and this and very
Speaker 1: all makes some great stuff, but this is like one
Speaker 1: of my favorites of this.
Speaker 2: Well, normally it's a bit more gothic, it's like it's
Speaker 2: a bit more metal and this just the vibes.
Speaker 1: Of this are off the charts. Yeah, for sure, very
Speaker 1: thoughtful as well as the beer. Very thoughtful art so good,
Speaker 1: but oh not quite.
Speaker 2: Let's remntion the url that he mentioned for how to
Speaker 2: money Listeners to get one hundred dollars off student loan
Speaker 2: planner dot com.
Speaker 1: For slash how to money. If you've got.
Speaker 2: A more complicated student owned situation going on, you want
Speaker 2: to take it to another level other than just recertifying
Speaker 2: your income. You're like, no, no, no, I really want
Speaker 2: to knock this thing out, really figure out how to
Speaker 2: pay as little as possible.
Speaker 1: Talk to the experts. That's what Travis's team are. So
Speaker 1: our buddy. Until next time. Best friends out, Best Friends Out.