Speaker 1: Episode fifty, The Truth about student loan forgiveness. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money,
Speaker 1: embrace simplicity, and live with your life. Here your host
Speaker 1: Jen and Jill Boom Boom boom Embracing the Truth. We
Speaker 1: we are all about the truth today. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends Podcast. Happy Frugal Friends Friday. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this when it comes out, I am Jen. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's Jill, and we are really excited about today's guest.
Speaker 1: Traps hornsby from Student Loan Planner. He is the expert
Speaker 1: on everything student loan forgiveness and so whether you are
Speaker 1: on the route to forgiveness, want to be forgiven, haven't
Speaker 1: taken it up with the Lord yet? Uh sorry, it
Speaker 1: sounded like that's where it was going, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's actually going to your student loans. So we had
Speaker 1: a really great conversation with him about things to know,
Speaker 1: things to watch out for, and then also probably some
Speaker 1: things you won't hear on any other It was new
Speaker 1: to my ears, but they're not illegal. They're not illegal,
Speaker 1: so were we included them. We didn't edit them out.
Speaker 1: We only include the truth and legal things in this podcast. Correct, Yes,
Speaker 1: and we're only passionate about one. So before we get
Speaker 1: into before we get into those, we're going to share
Speaker 1: our sponsors, and we got some new ones today. Well,
Speaker 1: this is also brought to you by waking up early.
Speaker 1: It's the lesser known sponsor to sleeping in and usually
Speaker 1: as preferred. But think of all the frugal things you
Speaker 1: can accomplish in the early hours of the day, like
Speaker 1: meal prepping, making your own coffee at home, or even
Speaker 1: starting that side hustle you're always talking to your friends about.
Speaker 1: Stop talking about it, just do it. Waking up early.
Speaker 1: Initially it sucks, but the payoff is good. Try it tomorrow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sleeping in wouldn't sponsor the show because we're not big enough. Someday,
Speaker 1: someday sleeping in the sponsor. We'll come up with the
Speaker 1: reason why. Yeah. All right, y'all, let's dive into this
Speaker 1: interview with Travis of student loan Planner dot com and
Speaker 1: also the Student Loan Planner podcast if you're more into podcast,
Speaker 1: which you might be if you're listening to this one.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, we are with Travis Hornsby from Student Loan Planner.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. For coming on, Travis. Thanks having
Speaker 1: me on, Jen and Jill. Yeah, it's so exciting to
Speaker 1: have you. I know, this is a big topic on
Speaker 1: a lot of people's minds. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners as well. So we're really getting into the
Speaker 1: weeds today with you. So just to dive right in, Travis,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about what you
Speaker 1: do at Student Loan Planner? How you got into it.
Speaker 1: Why is student loans something that's on your radar even? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's because of love. So my wife had
Speaker 1: a bunch of student on debt and we started have
Speaker 1: that money conversation you have when you're kind of getting
Speaker 1: serious about somebody and you're like, hey, I wonder if
Speaker 1: you have fifty thou credit card debt you're not telling
Speaker 1: me about, right, So that conversation and then oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, she had six figures of men school debt,
Speaker 1: which you know, I mean that is normal. Like I
Speaker 1: didn't know that at the time, but that's like super
Speaker 1: you married a doctor though, Oh yeah, I'm rolling in it,
Speaker 1: you know, because right, yeah, So it's it's really funny actually,
Speaker 1: So so because that's tied into how Student Loan Planner
Speaker 1: became like even more legit of a thing. So I
Speaker 1: started trying to use my bond trader Excel skill because
Speaker 1: I was a bond trader in my prior life and
Speaker 1: so managing money for very wealthy people, right, and like
Speaker 1: for one of the world's largest investment companies, so like
Speaker 1: super into like you know, VBA programming all those things.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, this is like I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet. It's gonna show her all the different options
Speaker 1: she can pay back her debt with and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be so easy. And so I did that, and I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a second, there's this like loan forgiveness thing.
Speaker 1: You can like refinance all these different companies you know
Speaker 1: you can go for like you know, different programs count
Speaker 1: for this loan forgiveness in different ways. Don't like what
Speaker 1: is this? Right? So I realized it was like way
Speaker 1: more complex than I thought it was. And then we
Speaker 1: sit in our certifications and like they didn't even count
Speaker 1: like a lot of her credit. And then I found
Speaker 1: out that she consolidated and made like an eighty dollar mistake,
Speaker 1: and I was just thinking, this is this is terrible,
Speaker 1: like this is ridiculous, Like why should she have gotten
Speaker 1: you know, screwed over with like this whole loan stuff
Speaker 1: that this is wrong. And then I kind of got thinking, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't really love like helping rich people
Speaker 1: get a bunch of more money anyway, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just quit. And at the time, like wanted to do
Speaker 1: early retire rant thing, right, So I traveled for about
Speaker 1: a year and a half on and off different places,
Speaker 1: like forty different countries. And the thing that caused student
Speaker 1: long Planner to happen initially was I made that spreadsheet
Speaker 1: and I shared it on and got picked up on
Speaker 1: Business Inside or the front page of Yahoo, and all
Speaker 1: these people started downloading it and asking me questions, even
Speaker 1: though I didn't really have like a full time consulting
Speaker 1: business at that point, because they were just there was
Speaker 1: such a big need. And then you know, I started
Speaker 1: doing that just like for friends and family and random
Speaker 1: people that reached out after seeing that email. And then
Speaker 1: I like asked permission for uh, you know, from her
Speaker 1: dad to like to marry her, because you know, I'm
Speaker 1: raising the cell's kind of like Holly thing's right or wrong.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting across room, like can I marry
Speaker 1: your daughter. And he's like no, I'm like wow. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, shoot, yeah, exactly yeah, because it's not
Speaker 1: how it went in the Lifetime movie. And I'm sitting there,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, exactly a hallmark. Yeah. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: so why right, So what's your reasoning? And he's like,
Speaker 1: you don't have an income like she's you know, they're
Speaker 1: her parents are for you know, first generation immigrants from
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. He's like, you know, we call uh, you know,
Speaker 1: men who who don't have an income when their wife works.
Speaker 1: We call them eaters of soft white rice. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know what that meant, but I thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty bad. So that sounds bad. That doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: the type of person you want to be. But it
Speaker 1: sounds better than hard white rice. It doesn't sound super bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I think Rice is pretty
Speaker 1: tasty personally. So so so I'm talking about me and saying, okay,
Speaker 1: so what's your problem? Like, you know, I have a
Speaker 1: very positive net worth and your daughter has a very
Speaker 1: negative net worth. I love her anyway, so like together,
Speaker 1: maybe our net worth is like, you know, merely positive.
Speaker 1: And you know, so yeah, I don't have an income. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have an income, like a big income, because
Speaker 1: that's my choice. Like I don't want to make an income, right,
Speaker 1: I don't need an income, uh, you know, because I
Speaker 1: was very lucky to have saved a whole lot, have
Speaker 1: like a seventy percent savings right back when I was
Speaker 1: a bond trator. So anyways, he's like, well, if you
Speaker 1: if you want my blessing, you know, you'll prove, you'll
Speaker 1: prove that you know, have the potential to make a
Speaker 1: high income to kind of, you know, be an economic
Speaker 1: security blanket for my daughter just in case you needs it.
Speaker 1: Like that was his kind of thing. It was kind
Speaker 1: of like old school a little bit, but it's super dad,
Speaker 1: super super He basically gave me like I don't know
Speaker 1: if you'll watch The Bachelor last night, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: like the Cassie's dad treatment, like I don't think you're ready,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, shoot, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: but it was just Asian American style, right, so like
Speaker 1: you don't have a high enough and Cup, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I'm just sooing. Now now we have like this
Speaker 1: amazing relationship. They love me, I love them. You know,
Speaker 1: but it's uh so that's to anybody listening, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you're trying to win over your future
Speaker 1: in laws. But yeah, so that just motivated me to
Speaker 1: basically say, okay, like the student loone thing, like I
Speaker 1: want to really treat it like a business. And so
Speaker 1: I really started focusing on what is the value? You know,
Speaker 1: how can I help people in a way that's transparent,
Speaker 1: that's that's affordable that you know, it's just it's very
Speaker 1: consumer centric. And so then I got so busy where
Speaker 1: I was doing like ten or eleven consults today, you know,
Speaker 1: so I was working, you know, like fifteen sixty now
Speaker 1: is a day, just doing long consults. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any time to produce any content. So it's like this
Speaker 1: isn't sustainable. And I had, you know, some people that
Speaker 1: I knew CFP kind of folks. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't you come and help me out
Speaker 1: with this and you do consults with me. And so
Speaker 1: then I started hiring other consultants with with the business.
Speaker 1: And so we make custom plans for people who owe
Speaker 1: fifty a million and student loan debt, and we figure
Speaker 1: out how they get out of debt. The best way,
Speaker 1: and we charge a flat fee for that. So that's
Speaker 1: what the business is. The other piece of the business
Speaker 1: is for people that obviously need to refinance. We're not
Speaker 1: trying to charge them fees for getting an answer that's obvious,
Speaker 1: like if you know they need to refinance. Like most
Speaker 1: of the business, the way they do it is they
Speaker 1: just have you just like click on their links and
Speaker 1: they get a big commission out of it. Right, So
Speaker 1: we give anywhere from half to of the commission to
Speaker 1: the reader if they go through the links in our sites.
Speaker 1: That's a cash back bonus instead of taking all of it.
Speaker 1: So I do that basically because I want to have
Speaker 1: the best links for people to use, so the conflict
Speaker 1: of interest isn't heavily there. So so we have that's awesome. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have two parts of our business, giving away a
Speaker 1: lot of that commission back to the readers a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who don't even hire us, and we
Speaker 1: have the part where we make the plans for people.
Speaker 1: I would say probably those people and hire us are
Speaker 1: people that you know, really need to be going for
Speaker 1: some sort of forgiveness strategy and are just trying to
Speaker 1: get you know, confirmation that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a business overall, and and actually it's exciting.
Speaker 1: So I have a consult writer for this interview and
Speaker 1: it's gonna help us. We're going to pass the half
Speaker 1: billion of student loan mark that we've made plans for.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty exciting. Wow, that is exciting. I mean
Speaker 1: very depressing, but exciting. Yeah, it's it's it's excite pressing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's the word, you know, it's that's it.
Speaker 1: That's excited pressing. Yeah, it's it's terrifying that you know,
Speaker 1: a group of relatively small number of people could within
Speaker 1: a couple of years, you know, impact that big and
Speaker 1: wan amount, because that's about the problem is out there, right,
Speaker 1: And the flip side of that is those are people,
Speaker 1: about two thousand people that are going to have a
Speaker 1: way less anxiety, you know, late in future because of
Speaker 1: us giving them the knowledge based they needed to live
Speaker 1: their lives in a freeway. Yeah. Yeah, so you are
Speaker 1: undoubtedly in my mind, the student loan forgiveness expert. I
Speaker 1: was vaguely familiar with what student loan planner did and
Speaker 1: so normally when we get pitched by PR firms, for people,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's you don't listen to the show. You
Speaker 1: have no clue who comes on here. But when I
Speaker 1: heard that you wanted to be on our show, I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't care if he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: our show is. Like, this is something that we need
Speaker 1: to talk about because there are so many options for
Speaker 1: student loan forgiveness that it's hard to decipher, Like what
Speaker 1: are the main types that are going to be most
Speaker 1: available to most people for federal student loans and like
Speaker 1: how do they differ? I guess there's maybe like four
Speaker 1: or five main ones, but like which ones are going
Speaker 1: to be most available to people that should focus on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a great question, Jen. So so like
Speaker 1: here's how I think your listeners can think about this.
Speaker 1: There's the one for the public servants, and there's the
Speaker 1: one for everybody else. Right, So the one for public
Speaker 1: servants is the one called public service loan freak goodness.
Speaker 1: So that's the one that's heavily in the media because
Speaker 1: that's the one that's starting to happen now. So that's
Speaker 1: the one people are paying attention to. Right, The media
Speaker 1: is very like what's happening today, Right, And so that's
Speaker 1: that's the one that's happening currently. Because you need ten
Speaker 1: years to get it, and the loan program passed in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, it wasn't really set up to even
Speaker 1: be possible to get it until like two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: You need a minimum of ten years of credit to
Speaker 1: get it, so two thousand eighteen is the very first
Speaker 1: year you really could have got it. And you know
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is like before two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: the program was just it was almost impossible to get
Speaker 1: signed up for this thing. It was very, very difficult.
Speaker 1: So you know, for that reason, that's why you're seeing
Speaker 1: such a high rejection rate right now, is because the
Speaker 1: program was set up to fail basically before like two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, when things kind of got ironed out and
Speaker 1: people figured out how to use it. So everybody until
Speaker 1: two thousand ten that's getting it, you know, and say
Speaker 1: everybody and told because that's ten years after two everybody
Speaker 1: up until that point just gonna be like somebody who
Speaker 1: have like a PhD and student long bureaucracy that's just
Speaker 1: like new how to do everything perfectly right, and so
Speaker 1: like most people don't. Most people are just like, hey,
Speaker 1: it worked somewhere ten years. It's like public service, like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna and so that's why people are getting rejected
Speaker 1: in mass right now. So there's this big misconception that
Speaker 1: this program isn't going to be around. It's absolutely going
Speaker 1: to be around. It's it's definitely going to be there
Speaker 1: for the people that you know, follow the rules and
Speaker 1: followed directions. But the problem is you have to follow directions,
Speaker 1: and so the what's gonna happen is if you work
Speaker 1: at a not for profit or government employer full time,
Speaker 1: you just need ten years worth of cumulative income driven
Speaker 1: payments that that's equal to Hunter twenty monthly payments. Basically,
Speaker 1: you can't rush it. You can't you know, kind of
Speaker 1: get there faster. You have to do Hunter twenty monthly payments.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be consecutive, it can be cumulative,
Speaker 1: so you can, you know, go back and forth between
Speaker 1: different jobs. Right but when you hit that mark, your
Speaker 1: loans are very given. Text for that is wonderful, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It sounds wonderful. Yes, yeah, it's it sounds wonderful, and
Speaker 1: people are getting it. I've gotten multiple emails from people
Speaker 1: that have gotten this program. I've gotten people that actually
Speaker 1: overpaid and they got refunds from the government. So one
Speaker 1: woman in particular, she got sixteen payments refunded to her
Speaker 1: in sixteen checks that she got to deposit at her bank,
Speaker 1: like from the U. S. Treasury. That's pretty amazing, right,
Speaker 1: So so there's this is a thing. It's happening, and
Speaker 1: the reality is is if you're set up to benefit
Speaker 1: for it, you're gonna get it. And if and if
Speaker 1: you're not that you won't. It's in your promise ory note.
Speaker 1: The thing that you signed that you know, agreed to
Speaker 1: the terms of the loan has public service loan forgetness
Speaker 1: in it. So you know, every expert that I talked
Speaker 1: to saying that it's pretty well impossible for them to
Speaker 1: take this away for people that currently have, for people
Speaker 1: that are not in a program yet, for people who
Speaker 1: are not in medical school or dental school, whatever they're
Speaker 1: you know, going to law school. If you're not in
Speaker 1: a program yet, they could take it away. So that's
Speaker 1: something that I would really kind of think about, is
Speaker 1: before you go to a grad school program, know what's
Speaker 1: in your promise right now I just literally reading, so
Speaker 1: look in there and see if it's in there. So
Speaker 1: that's the first kind of one forgiveness, right, and that's
Speaker 1: the kind that's for about the workforce. That's the percent
Speaker 1: of people that could use that. Now, that's always a
Speaker 1: better option than refinancing in most cases for anybody that
Speaker 1: has more than like thirty thousand of loans. You know,
Speaker 1: if you have less than that, probably you just pay
Speaker 1: it off. But that for the people that are not
Speaker 1: in that world, right, Like that's most of us, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like the you know the podcast Entrepreneurs of
Speaker 1: the World. You know your your private you know, private
Speaker 1: employee employers, right, and you know your your small business owners,
Speaker 1: and what about for them? Like what if I have
Speaker 1: a small legal practice and I'm just trying to run
Speaker 1: myself and I've got like two hundred thousand of law
Speaker 1: school det right. So so for people who are not
Speaker 1: employed by a government or not for profit, then that's
Speaker 1: the it's called I d R forgiveness, Income driven forgiveness,
Speaker 1: And this is the one for everybody else. So this
Speaker 1: one you're using the same repayment plans as the first
Speaker 1: one forgiveness option, but you just have to pay for
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty five years is stead of ten okay,
Speaker 1: so that's fairly straightforward. The other catch is that at
Speaker 1: the end of the twenty twenty five years, you have
Speaker 1: to pay income tax on the forgiven balance as if
Speaker 1: you've got a bonus on that entire forgiven balance. So
Speaker 1: if you have a five thousand dollar loan balance, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get taxed is if that's a five K bonus,
Speaker 1: and you'll have to pay the I R S two
Speaker 1: grand years from now. That sounds terrible. In reality, most
Speaker 1: people could prepare for that by putting five dollars a
Speaker 1: month or more away into a brokerage account. So there's
Speaker 1: ways to manage this, and that's when we obviously specialize
Speaker 1: in figuring out But you know, for forgiveness, what we
Speaker 1: find is that the ps LEFT thing is amazing. If
Speaker 1: you qualify for that, you should do it. And then
Speaker 1: for the non version, than the non PSLF version, the
Speaker 1: one that's available to everybody, you should generally do that
Speaker 1: if you're household debt to income ratios above one and
Speaker 1: a half to one, so if you have more than
Speaker 1: one point five times your income, if you're making a
Speaker 1: hunter k you have more than a hundred fifty K,
Speaker 1: and student loan debt than that forgiveness thing, and the
Speaker 1: private sector is a good option, right if you if
Speaker 1: you us than that refinancing, it's probably better. And then
Speaker 1: for the ps left option, you know you you probably
Speaker 1: want to go for that unless you just owe a
Speaker 1: really tiny amount of money. Those are the two big
Speaker 1: one forgiveness programs. There's obviously other ones that are out there. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll say that a lot of them are duplicative, like
Speaker 1: in particular, like that there's this teacher one forgiveness one.
Speaker 1: It's like almost useless and yet and yet like it's
Speaker 1: so terrible because like teachers sign up for it because
Speaker 1: it's literally called Teacher Love Forgiveness, but the max they
Speaker 1: can get is like five thousand or seventeen five hundred,
Speaker 1: and the max of PSL left is unlimited, and you
Speaker 1: can't count time for both programs simultaneously. Yes, that's terrible, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, there's there's other one forgiveness programs.
Speaker 1: In my experience, you really like you need to start
Speaker 1: the conversation by talking about those first two that I
Speaker 1: talked about. The other ones a lot of times can
Speaker 1: not even be in your interest to do, right. It
Speaker 1: sounds very daunting, and for you, someone who's an expert
Speaker 1: in the field, who has spent so much time I'm
Speaker 1: researching this and creating programs around it. I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: for the person who's just like I just graduated, I
Speaker 1: got my degree. Oh my word, that was real money
Speaker 1: that I now have to pay back, Like, how would
Speaker 1: so what would be some of those first steps that
Speaker 1: somebody could take in figuring out the loan forgiveness but
Speaker 1: also like just debt repayment. What would be some first
Speaker 1: steps people can take. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean,
Speaker 1: so the first thing you need is an emergency fund.
Speaker 1: If you don't have an emergency fund, that you're going
Speaker 1: to wreck your finances. So it's that's the point, because
Speaker 1: something's going to happen. If you don't have an emergency fund.
Speaker 1: You're eventually going to have a transmission blowout, or you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a ruth that needs to get repaired, or
Speaker 1: you're gonna have, you know, some sort of daycare expense
Speaker 1: that you gotta pay for. And if you don't have
Speaker 1: an emergency fund, then you're gonna be turning to credit
Speaker 1: card debt. And hey, student loans is seven percent, but yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so I would just say this that as soon as
Speaker 1: you graduate with your student loans, you're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: mostly federal student loans. If you go to student Loans
Speaker 1: dot Gov, all you gotta do is log in. It's
Speaker 1: it might be a little confusing, but like you know,
Speaker 1: like anything that you know says like forgot my password,
Speaker 1: Like you can figure it out. Like it just might
Speaker 1: take a little while of like passwords, right, So just
Speaker 1: force your way, force your way into st to loans
Speaker 1: dot gov. Once you're in there, you'll see a spot
Speaker 1: where you can consolidate your loans. So if you are
Speaker 1: graduating and you know you just finished that, you can
Speaker 1: consolidate those loans and get signed up for the revised
Speaker 1: pay as you are in plan, so that plans in
Speaker 1: most cases can you can get a zero dollar a
Speaker 1: month payment if you do it right after you graduate,
Speaker 1: So zero dollars a month. I think people can afford that. Right,
Speaker 1: So for like twelve months, like after you graduate, and
Speaker 1: during those twelve months, you have no excuse why you
Speaker 1: can't get an emergency fund of at least three times
Speaker 1: your monthly expenses. Get a job, get an emergency fund,
Speaker 1: get the emergency fund you got the emergency fund, things
Speaker 1: are going to work out okay now, So you can
Speaker 1: either refinance, you're you're comfortable refinancing because you've got the
Speaker 1: emergency fund to take care of anything bad that happens,
Speaker 1: or you're gonna go for forgiveness because you should be
Speaker 1: going for that anyway, right, So that would be the
Speaker 1: first thing that people can do to set themselves up
Speaker 1: on the right foot. And I love that before we
Speaker 1: were kind of turned on the recording, we were talking about,
Speaker 1: like how y'all talk about limiting the big expenses. That's
Speaker 1: you know, and and you also joked about not being
Speaker 1: experts that that sounds like the most expert vice ever
Speaker 1: because because let me tell you, like, out of the
Speaker 1: like twelve pans have done personally, the two biggest problems
Speaker 1: I see your car and housing expense, and it's not
Speaker 1: even closed. Like those two things will singlehandedly wreck someone's budget.
Speaker 1: And if if people want to live without a budget,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy, like have a paid off car and
Speaker 1: have a house payment. That's like where the price is
Speaker 1: less than two times you joined income. So if you
Speaker 1: do those two things, what what I have found is
Speaker 1: that if you're frugal in the big areas that frugality
Speaker 1: is going to trickle down to, like other other parts
Speaker 1: of your life. I don't know, like trickle down frugality.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should like coin that f And you can
Speaker 1: find links to our housing and transportation episodes in the
Speaker 1: show Notes You So, so trickle down frugality is the thing.
Speaker 1: And and so what I also joke about is like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you could drink Starbucks and Latte's until your
Speaker 1: liver fails. You're not gonna save as much money as
Speaker 1: if you cut your car and housing payments flower you know. So,
Speaker 1: so that's just where the big you know changes happen.
Speaker 1: So if you can limit your housing and car expenses,
Speaker 1: then at the very worst scenario, your your debt is
Speaker 1: kind of like a tax, and it's attacks where you
Speaker 1: lose ten percent of your income. Well, hey, if you
Speaker 1: if you're gonna go to bachelor's degree and make like
Speaker 1: fifty so adding like ten percent on top of that,
Speaker 1: so now you're at fifty five. Like if you went
Speaker 1: to a graduate program that you're making over fifty five K,
Speaker 1: then that was a good financial decision even if you
Speaker 1: took out like a bazillion dollars because you're just paying
Speaker 1: a percentage of your income and then you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to pay the income tax bomb in the future. But
Speaker 1: like if you want to just kind of account for
Speaker 1: that too, then set of ten percent more, say it's
Speaker 1: like fifteen or twenty are So instead of making like
Speaker 1: fifty five K, maybe need to make sixty K with
Speaker 1: your grad degree. So if you're gonna make like even
Speaker 1: a little bit more with that grad degree, you can
Speaker 1: go to a program that like by traditional standards, looks
Speaker 1: like a freaking scam and you can actually make the
Speaker 1: economics work. Now, I want to, you know, say that
Speaker 1: I do not at all recommend you do that. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I get I get people the time that
Speaker 1: are reaching out and I'm like, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to be you know, I want to be a chiropractor,
Speaker 1: and and I'm gonna make a lot of money, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, first of all, like you'll probably make
Speaker 1: fifty to seventy thou dollars and you're gonna graduate two
Speaker 1: K of debt. You know that work out? Like could
Speaker 1: I probably like finagle that into being a financially sustainable
Speaker 1: good life. Yes, but it's probably a terrible decision. To
Speaker 1: do that, you know, And so that's one thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of really frustrating is UM. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of schools just like blatantly lie, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of been real. I don't know if you'll
Speaker 1: have any thoughts about that. Went to one of those schools.
Speaker 1: I just I'll put my hand up right now you
Speaker 1: can't see it, but I went to one of those schools.
Speaker 1: I had a girl reach out to me yesterday on
Speaker 1: Instagram saying she saw that I went to UM, this
Speaker 1: acupuncture school and what I thought about it, And I
Speaker 1: was like, the school is great, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to make enough to pay back your student loans. You're
Speaker 1: not going to make what they tell you're gonna make.
Speaker 1: I had to do so many other things besides acupunculor
Speaker 1: to pay back the loans that I took out to
Speaker 1: get the degree. Yeah, I've always thought that there should
Speaker 1: be like a sliding scale for what you're getting your
Speaker 1: degree in, Like why does a social work degree cost
Speaker 1: as much as a business degree? Right, we're not making
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just like so, so this is some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that I hear, so like they'll use old statistics,
Speaker 1: so like part of it as like administrators will like
Speaker 1: why with that actually lying, you know, like they can
Speaker 1: claim plausible deniability right, Like it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: Reagan Ran contra lie, like oh I didn't know like you.
Speaker 1: I mean. So, so it's kind of like a as
Speaker 1: a thing where you know, if you use statistics from
Speaker 1: like two thousand and seven, and you use those average
Speaker 1: debt statistics and then you use the incomes from back,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you can possibly say like, oh, yeah, our
Speaker 1: grads are paying it back, right, and so yeah, people
Speaker 1: pay it back in like seven years, like for example,
Speaker 1: this one dental school. Like I know for a fact,
Speaker 1: like so many people have told me, the administrators tell
Speaker 1: them that they people pay back the debt and the
Speaker 1: average of seven years. But to pay back the debt
Speaker 1: the average debt and ten years would take incomes that
Speaker 1: are greater than a hundred percent of what people earned
Speaker 1: after graduation. So I know flat out that that's a lie.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I think that they're able to
Speaker 1: like mentally say that is because they're using data that's old,
Speaker 1: so then they can just kind of like in their minds,
Speaker 1: I guess get away with, you know. And so if
Speaker 1: you look at like some of these other schools, like
Speaker 1: there's tons of pressure that these schools are under to perform.
Speaker 1: And the deans in the university presidents get large bonuses
Speaker 1: now they didn't used to get and a lot of
Speaker 1: those bonuses are dependent upon revenue and performance for the college.
Speaker 1: And I've even had conversations with like high level administrators
Speaker 1: and I can't say their names because they asked me
Speaker 1: to be off the record. They're basically like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: the money is there, and you know, we can charge
Speaker 1: the tuition because there's no cap on on on borrowing now,
Speaker 1: so since two thousand and six that you can borrow
Speaker 1: in amount, there's no there's no cap with the new
Speaker 1: federal loan system. So the schools figure that out and
Speaker 1: there they can borrow up to the cost of attendance
Speaker 1: for schools now. So the schools are like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: so then we'll just raise your cost of attendance to
Speaker 1: like infinity and beyond. And so that's what's happening. And
Speaker 1: the reason why you know, students haven't like freaked out
Speaker 1: yet is because you have capped payments that are percentage
Speaker 1: of your income. So if your payments are percentage of
Speaker 1: your income, you're never gonna feel the full cost. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you graduate from macupunctre school two or fift
Speaker 1: debt instead of paying month where you have like mass
Speaker 1: protests and pitchforks and like burning torches, right, you have
Speaker 1: like payments of like five month, And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of why nobody is like freaking out yet. And so
Speaker 1: the only thing that would stop this would be what's
Speaker 1: happening in like pharmacy right now. So like, for example, pharmacists,
Speaker 1: their acceptance rate for pharmacy school went from thirty one
Speaker 1: in two thousand five to about three percent today. So
Speaker 1: now if you have a pulse, you can get into
Speaker 1: pharmacy school. But that's done to incomes. Is incomes have
Speaker 1: gone from like hutter twenty k too, like an eighty
Speaker 1: or ninety k average, so incomes actually falling. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like thinking about what happened to law schools, right, Like
Speaker 1: law schools, you had that big like legal recession where
Speaker 1: like way more people were like, Hey, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get a legal job, don't go to law school. So
Speaker 1: it's the salaries in the job market that prevented people
Speaker 1: from going in right now, like the job markets pretty good,
Speaker 1: like the economic expansions hopping right. Everybody can get jobs,
Speaker 1: or a lot of people can. It's like everybody just
Speaker 1: kind of running into all these programs. So it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty wild out there, and like, I just hope that
Speaker 1: some of these schools eventually get held to account for
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Yes, wow, now that we're sufficiently depressed,
Speaker 1: Yes it is. It's a it's a whole problem. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: there's people who are like seizing the occasion to really
Speaker 1: get serious about their debt and get rid of it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for those thinking about going to school, this
Speaker 1: is a big deal to consider in what you want
Speaker 1: to do with your future. If you've already done it,
Speaker 1: you're in it, and now you're like head down gazelle
Speaker 1: pace trying to get at it, then it is possible.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a problem. Yeah, we have some listeners
Speaker 1: struggling with um they're in like an income driven program,
Speaker 1: they're set up, they're at a PSLF qualified workplace, and
Speaker 1: they've got you know, those loans, maybe not like two
Speaker 1: fifty dollars, but uh, god bless you if that's you.
Speaker 1: But they know that they could be making more if
Speaker 1: they weren't working for the government or for a nonprofit
Speaker 1: like doing the same thing in the private sector. So
Speaker 1: how do you balance that, Like, like what do I do?
Speaker 1: Do I stay for the PSLF make a little bit
Speaker 1: less or do I go out into the private sector
Speaker 1: and make more? Like how do you counsel people on
Speaker 1: dealing with that decision? I mean, I'll give the one
Speaker 1: size fits all answer, which is actually, like in my experience,
Speaker 1: a really good answer. You should do what makes you happy.
Speaker 1: So if you're like, man, I want to make more
Speaker 1: money and have more dynamic career opportunities, and man, I'm
Speaker 1: tired of using this like you know, email database from
Speaker 1: like two thousand and one, you know, and like you know,
Speaker 1: like all the stuff that you know, the government kind
Speaker 1: of jobs come with, right, then like, yeah, you should
Speaker 1: do the private sector job. And if you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I love doing public service and I love helping people
Speaker 1: and having great vacation and sickly even you know, all
Speaker 1: these benefits and I love my coworkers and the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not high pressure and like really focus on
Speaker 1: you know, profits and everything, then you should continue in
Speaker 1: that job. And you shouldn't feel bad about making less money.
Speaker 1: So the reason for that is I calculate like a
Speaker 1: break even for clients, and so like the break even,
Speaker 1: I try to tell them, like what PS left is
Speaker 1: worth is as if it was like an annual bonus.
Speaker 1: So for example, I can say they're like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be like earning an extra ten k a
Speaker 1: or and you know with your government jobs, so like
Speaker 1: a private sector job would be like seventy K plus
Speaker 1: ten so that'd be a d you know, And so
Speaker 1: those two jobs you'd be financially indifferent between. So if
Speaker 1: you can get an a D K private sector job,
Speaker 1: you're exactly the same place you're at. And what I
Speaker 1: typically find is like the extra income you can make
Speaker 1: in the private sector is often quite similar to the
Speaker 1: income you're making adjusted for that one for you giveness
Speaker 1: benefit and the public sector for a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there, and so then you just have to pick
Speaker 1: the one that makes you happiest. And you know, too,
Speaker 1: I'd say that you want to make sure that you
Speaker 1: adjust for the hour's worked too, because I've had some
Speaker 1: scenarios where it was kind of like a wash. But
Speaker 1: one private sector job would ask this guy to work
Speaker 1: like fifty five hour speaking the government job, you'd be
Speaker 1: working forty, So you know you kind of want to
Speaker 1: adjust it for like number of hours lifestyle and then
Speaker 1: make the decision that's best for you and your family.
Speaker 1: And I promise you, like nine of the time, you
Speaker 1: know you'll you'll be able to choose either one. That's
Speaker 1: good advice. Mhm. I didn't think you're going to give
Speaker 1: good advice on that one, but you surprised me. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Oh yeah, no, bring it, you know,
Speaker 1: actually I got I got even better advice. So let's say,
Speaker 1: like you want to just totally dodge your suit of loans,
Speaker 1: right and you're just tired of America and you're like
Speaker 1: screw this, Like I just want to get the heck
Speaker 1: out of here. So the best thing you can do
Speaker 1: is marry like an Australian or like a New Zealander,
Speaker 1: or you know somebody in like you know, a foreign country.
Speaker 1: Like So I'll give you an example, like this one guy,
Speaker 1: he's living in Dubai right now, and he's a dentist,
Speaker 1: and so Dubai they have no income tax there, and too,
Speaker 1: there's something called the foreign earn income tax exclusion, which
Speaker 1: means you can exempt like a hunter k of income
Speaker 1: and not put it on your taxes and it's totally legit.
Speaker 1: So if you live in like France, right and you're
Speaker 1: being like a social worker in France, then your US
Speaker 1: income could be zero and then your payment is based
Speaker 1: on your US income, so it could be zero. Right.
Speaker 1: What I don't have to do you have to marry
Speaker 1: somebody from at place? Or can you just move there?
Speaker 1: You can move there. You don't have to marry somebody.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot easier. I already have a husband.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can do more than yeah, well
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, if it's worth it now, I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. She could handle more than one. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so so it's like, you know, but what you could
Speaker 1: do is get permanent residency, right, or you could get
Speaker 1: like another you know, like passports somehow like figure out
Speaker 1: some sort of special program and immigrate somewhere. Like actually
Speaker 1: have a group of clients in Australia and New Zealand
Speaker 1: that like a lot of them are like weirdly, it's
Speaker 1: like veterinarians or something. I think like they meet people
Speaker 1: in that school and they're like take me away from
Speaker 1: like my giant and so like you know, so they
Speaker 1: go so they go down there and like, yeah, they
Speaker 1: have like four hundred a death, but they're paying zero mondy.
Speaker 1: This is going to be the new trends. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're living over there with zero payments. Do they
Speaker 1: have to come back and deal with it one day? Well,
Speaker 1: if you're legally ndling it, then you don't have to
Speaker 1: write and so eventually the debt would be forgiven. You'd
Speaker 1: have to pay income tax on that. But then there's
Speaker 1: something called the insolvency exclusion. So if you have what
Speaker 1: forgiven death and your assets are less than your liabilities,
Speaker 1: then under current i r S code, you're dead is
Speaker 1: forgiven text free. So there's all kinds of ways to
Speaker 1: deal with this. You don't have to default, you don't
Speaker 1: have to freak out or just feel like trapped. You know,
Speaker 1: there was this case in CNBC. This guy was like
Speaker 1: talking about how students made him so stressed. He just
Speaker 1: like moved to a jungle in India and like he
Speaker 1: had a picture of him like writing an elephant and
Speaker 1: he's like I feel so great, even though I know
Speaker 1: my credits trash, Like I don't want to come home
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't be able to even open like a
Speaker 1: bank account, you know. And I'm like, dude, this guy
Speaker 1: not only could he not be trashing his credit and
Speaker 1: like compounding his interests and all this stuff, he could
Speaker 1: be getting zero dollar on payments and his interest would
Speaker 1: be cut in half if he was on the repay program.
Speaker 1: So there is a way to run away from your problems.
Speaker 1: And I have for your problem to solve itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have. We have like an hoping to find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like how to flee the country with student loans,
Speaker 1: and it's notes that someone's going to take this option.
Speaker 1: It's legal. Well, you completely support it, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they might you know, they might close it, in
Speaker 1: which case you might have to adopt your new country. Right.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know, probably my ancestors were probably like
Speaker 1: locked up in like you know, an Irish poorhouse or something.
Speaker 1: They're like, I'm tired of being in debt. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to America, right, So maybe, you know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: some other people need to start thinking like that too, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm just joking around, But like the thing is is,
Speaker 1: you know, debt can cause tons of anxiety and tons
Speaker 1: of stress. Yeah, you know, like I get I get
Speaker 1: like and some of the extreme examples, like I get
Speaker 1: people that are contact to me that I have to
Speaker 1: refer to like the National suicide online you know. So
Speaker 1: it spans the gamut of like hey, this is stressful
Speaker 1: to like this is destroying my life, right, And so
Speaker 1: the thing that people need to realize is like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's all these creative options, right, Like who knew that
Speaker 1: you could just literally move to like New Zealand and
Speaker 1: like never have to deal with your debt? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, who knew that you could get on an
Speaker 1: encombent and program and pay like way less, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's actually okay. And the main thing that's going
Speaker 1: to determine your financial success is just the fact that
Speaker 1: you you know, you actually have a high savings rate.
Speaker 1: So like I've been building this tool to try to
Speaker 1: like show people this too within my calculator, that's like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you go for forgiveness and you make sure you
Speaker 1: have a high savings rate, then what will happen is
Speaker 1: your assets will be like three times your your student
Speaker 1: lawn debt, and then at some point they'll like kind
Speaker 1: of solve the student low debt crisis, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and and then you'll have a really positive net worth.
Speaker 1: And so I even have like a strategy to where
Speaker 1: people die with their debt. That sounds like really depressing.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it like this, but like, let
Speaker 1: me just paint an example. So say someone's got a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty thousand or two hundred thousand apparent plus loans
Speaker 1: and they're seventy years old because their kids like went
Speaker 1: to like private Catholic school, right, so that mom or
Speaker 1: dad like, instead of just like delaying retirement just forever
Speaker 1: to pay like fifteen hundred a month under loans on
Speaker 1: the loans until like eighty, what you can do instead
Speaker 1: is if you max social Security, then you can use
Speaker 1: like this loophole where social Security is not really considered,
Speaker 1: you know, in your income. If it's you know, below
Speaker 1: a certain level, it's actually really high. It's a lot
Speaker 1: higher than you think. And then you can pay zero
Speaker 1: a month on that for twenty five years and you
Speaker 1: have to pay income tax. And if you pass away,
Speaker 1: then the debts forgiven tax free. So what you could
Speaker 1: do is if you're frugal and you listen to the
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends podcasts, right, and you're just like the one
Speaker 1: seven to year old that listens to happen in podcasts.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to offend anybody that I don't.
Speaker 1: We got a couple of seven year olds and hard
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, well yeah yeah, Stage twenty at hard seventy
Speaker 1: year olds. But you know, so that person could you know,
Speaker 1: if they live until and pass that they probably get
Speaker 1: a disability discharge. If they pass away before that, then
Speaker 1: it would be discharged text free. And that hundred fifty
Speaker 1: two K is something that now can get forgiven instead
Speaker 1: of paid back. So there's like, you know, this this
Speaker 1: loophole with like the moving overseas, the dying with your
Speaker 1: debt and taking it with you, you know, because you
Speaker 1: don't take The thing is you don't take your assets
Speaker 1: with you, but they don't tell you they don't. You
Speaker 1: don't take your debts either, so you have to you know,
Speaker 1: you have to be creative with it. We joke about
Speaker 1: some of this stuff, but it is it's important to
Speaker 1: note that there's such an emotional, like in mental aspect
Speaker 1: to paying back debt because I had that, I had
Speaker 1: that severe anxiety when I had my debt, and just
Speaker 1: to know to be assured that it's not the end
Speaker 1: of the world. You can always move to Australia and
Speaker 1: maybe just keep that in the back of your head
Speaker 1: and it just makes a little makes it a little lighter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be something that rules your mental capacity. Yeah, Travis,
Speaker 1: you've taken us through some a lot of non traditional
Speaker 1: ways of dealing with debt. Are there any other even
Speaker 1: lesser known but more understood programs that could offer a
Speaker 1: loan forgiveness something maybe better than p PSLF programs or Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's something called n h SC Loan Forgiveness.
Speaker 1: This is a program where if your health professional work
Speaker 1: in an under certain area, they'll pay I think it's
Speaker 1: like twenty a year towards your loans or something like that.
Speaker 1: I had to look up to be sure. But then
Speaker 1: there's another one called National Institute of Health you know,
Speaker 1: LONG for you and it's there just's like a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of them for health professionals in particular. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: like there's Perkins lung cancelation. UM, there's some various programs
Speaker 1: for specific states. So we have like a list of
Speaker 1: some of them on the blog that are out there
Speaker 1: that you know, if you are a you know, a
Speaker 1: teacher in a certain area, if you're you know, a
Speaker 1: certain kind of professional a certain area. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are tied to some sort of you know, serving
Speaker 1: underserved populations, which kind of makes sense. You know, your
Speaker 1: your employer might have an employer assistance program to pay
Speaker 1: student loans. That's becoming more popular. Yeah, so there's there's
Speaker 1: definitely options out there. I think that the best path though,
Speaker 1: is to kind of rely on your own self to
Speaker 1: get out of debt. If you're not gonna get forgiveness,
Speaker 1: like the probably the majority of people are not going
Speaker 1: to get any forgiveness. That's one thing that I think
Speaker 1: we should kind of say, because the majority of borrowers
Speaker 1: actually have you know about well, the majority have less
Speaker 1: than forty debt, and the population that has you know,
Speaker 1: six figures is actually only about five to six percent
Speaker 1: of the total student loan borrowers. So if you have
Speaker 1: that like typical undergrad debt, you probably need to pay
Speaker 1: it back. Like I'm apologize, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: the very bad news, but yeah, you probably gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of it. And then the good news is like
Speaker 1: fort k is a lot, but it's kind of like
Speaker 1: uh an F one fifty purchase you wish you could
Speaker 1: take back, you know what I mean. It's like it's
Speaker 1: a card nayment. It's not like it's a mortgage, and
Speaker 1: people pay car payments all the time. So for for
Speaker 1: that situation, you know, you can refinance, and you can
Speaker 1: refinance twice, right, so you could do like a refi
Speaker 1: and get a five hundred dollar bonus, do like a
Speaker 1: tenure payment and like four a month that you can
Speaker 1: pay more than what you oh and then that will
Speaker 1: knock down your balance faster than what the stated loan
Speaker 1: skye Jel says, and you'll knock down forty k to
Speaker 1: like twenty k. And then you could refinance again with
Speaker 1: a different company and get another five hundred bucks, and
Speaker 1: then you could do a payment that's four hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: But then that would get you at a debt in
Speaker 1: five years instead of ten years. So you know, if
Speaker 1: you're making those extra prepayments, you get down from forty
Speaker 1: to twenty, now you could cut down that ten year
Speaker 1: schedule down to like six or seven years total. So
Speaker 1: like there's that's called a refinancing ladder. So refinancing ladders
Speaker 1: when you refinance multiple times to keep your payment manageable,
Speaker 1: but always keep lowering the interest rate. And the other
Speaker 1: flip side to it is just you know, live on
Speaker 1: you know the old live on rice and beans means
Speaker 1: rice until you like, hey, if you're like if you
Speaker 1: got k, you're coming out like I paid two like
Speaker 1: I think three D a month living in like the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia area for my first job, because we had a
Speaker 1: guy living in the attic. Was it great to live
Speaker 1: in the attic? Probably not, But I've got some great
Speaker 1: memories from it, you know, like trying to white. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just gotta live that frugal life, you know, like
Speaker 1: getting the We had to climb the roof with the
Speaker 1: mattress to fit it in through the attic, and that
Speaker 1: was probably really stupid, you know, So I gotta do
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. Yeah so, but you know, but
Speaker 1: in reality, like paid off car like three a month,
Speaker 1: Like you're making fifty k, which is like a typical
Speaker 1: after college income. You got twenty cave debt. Okay, Like
Speaker 1: suck it up and pay it off, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if if that's you, I don't want to sound like
Speaker 1: kind of mean or anything, but like empower yourself to
Speaker 1: like just pay, Like, if you pay two percent of
Speaker 1: your dead amount every month, you'll be done in five years.
Speaker 1: If you pay four or four percent, you'll be done
Speaker 1: in like less than probably around two years, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's that's like a good rule of thumb. If
Speaker 1: you pay one percent of your dead amount every month,
Speaker 1: then you'll be done in ten years. So like you
Speaker 1: know when you'll be out of debt. So just like
Speaker 1: throw tons of money. I didn't get rid of it,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that the only thing that comes
Speaker 1: before getting rid of your student low debt, if you
Speaker 1: know you need to get rid of it, is putting
Speaker 1: money into your reversity find and getting your retirement match. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another bumper sticker, Suck it up and pay it off.
Speaker 1: See what you gotta do? Yeah, dot dot except when
Speaker 1: you need to move to Australia exactly. Oh my word.
Speaker 1: Next best thing to moving to Australia, though, is our
Speaker 1: favorite time of the definitely the bill of the week.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's time for the best minute of your
Speaker 1: entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name
Speaker 1: is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your
Speaker 1: car died and you're happy to not have to pay
Speaker 1: that bill anymore. That build buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this
Speaker 1: is the bill of the week, Travis. Every week we
Speaker 1: invite a listener or guest to share with us their
Speaker 1: favorite bill for the week, whether that's lower case, upper
Speaker 1: case whatever. Bill Travis, do you have a bill of
Speaker 1: the week for us today? I sure do, And it
Speaker 1: wasn't even my bill. So this is kind of what happened.
Speaker 1: So we started tracking or spending on you need to
Speaker 1: budget dot com. So maybe some of your listeners are
Speaker 1: familiar with that. And so I used to be so
Speaker 1: frugal that I did not need to budget at all,
Speaker 1: because again I was I was seeing my software Rice.
Speaker 1: I know you could buy that in bulk for like,
Speaker 1: you know, a dollar for thousand pounds, and so like
Speaker 1: I didn't need to budget, right, But then I got married,
Speaker 1: and hey, you know, you know you you kind of
Speaker 1: start spending more money, like things that you were willing
Speaker 1: to do when you were like nineteen or like twenty
Speaker 1: one or whatever. Suddenly like naughty Light doesn't taste as good, right, so, uh,
Speaker 1: it's something on top of that Rice exactly. So I noticed,
Speaker 1: I noticed we were spending a lot more money. So
Speaker 1: I'd like we started tracking or spending more so we
Speaker 1: can know exactly like what we were spending in each category.
Speaker 1: And and that was like good too, because like I
Speaker 1: don't know what she spends and she doesn't know what
Speaker 1: I spend. So now it's like a place where we
Speaker 1: can communicate with each other what's going on. So one
Speaker 1: of the parts of this budgeting app is you have
Speaker 1: to like add in all of your expenses, you know,
Speaker 1: even if they're like brought out automatically, you have to
Speaker 1: like match them up to what your categories are. So
Speaker 1: I was doing that one night and I was like, dang,
Speaker 1: like we really spent a lot of money in uber
Speaker 1: eats this month and uh. And I was like looking
Speaker 1: at the expenses and there was like five different charges
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't even think we've ever
Speaker 1: used duber eats. And so then I asked, you know,
Speaker 1: I asked my wife. I was like, did you order anything?
Speaker 1: And you know, uh, you know, and I checked kind
Speaker 1: of my history and I didn't order anything, And I asked,
Speaker 1: are So it's kind of weird. Our best man lives
Speaker 1: with us right now, our roommate, you know, save money, right,
Speaker 1: save that money. So I was thinking, okay, maybe he
Speaker 1: took my phone and you know and in order dubered,
Speaker 1: so I asked him to he didn't do anything. And
Speaker 1: so we found two of somebody's you know, career and
Speaker 1: barbecue charges or whatever on our on our cards. And
Speaker 1: if I hadn't tracked him a United budget, like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest, like I would not have noticed it.
Speaker 1: Because credit card expenses, it's just like this long list.
Speaker 1: You don't have to like think about it that much.
Speaker 1: You just see it, just pay it off. I liked
Speaker 1: to log in every couple of weeks and pay it off.
Speaker 1: And if I hadn't been tracking a United budget, then
Speaker 1: I would have we would have literally just like given
Speaker 1: like some you know bro like two forty dollars of
Speaker 1: like Korean barbecue and or reads for a bill that
Speaker 1: like I didn't even seriously, yeah, you didn't even get
Speaker 1: to enjoy that Korean barbecue. It's terrible. And like I
Speaker 1: think that that would buy you quite a bit, because
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, that's great. That was a big lesson
Speaker 1: learned that you know, how are you going to know
Speaker 1: if somebody is out there like using your card if
Speaker 1: you're not even tracking and the budget apt like where
Speaker 1: it's going, so they get your info. So I'm a
Speaker 1: little scared that it could have something to do with
Speaker 1: me being a public more public personality. But I think,
Speaker 1: I think probably really what happened was just like somebody
Speaker 1: kinda was making fifteen dollars an hour, we were kind
Speaker 1: of chilling at their restaurant. They might have taken a
Speaker 1: picture of our card, like real quick, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: think that's probably what happened. I think somebody just kind
Speaker 1: of like little pretty and just took a quick, you know,
Speaker 1: picture of it, and you know, and like St. Louis
Speaker 1: Police has got bigger things to worry about than somebody
Speaker 1: getting a little bit of free chicken, you know, so
Speaker 1: you know, if it was like thousands of dollars, they
Speaker 1: probably would investigate it. But I mean, it's like it's
Speaker 1: not a big deal because credit card companies obviously just
Speaker 1: you know, give it back to you pretty pretty easily.
Speaker 1: They don't charge you for it. Um, it's nearly as
Speaker 1: bad as like I got money stolen from my debit
Speaker 1: card when I was in Mexico, and I actually had
Speaker 1: to go to like the Mexican police station and file
Speaker 1: a formal report because you know, debit cards, you have
Speaker 1: to actually have the money deposited back at your account,
Speaker 1: which is way tougher than getting a charge canceled on
Speaker 1: your credit card. So you know, that's that's like a
Speaker 1: different rodeo. But that's my favorite bill. One one more built.
Speaker 1: That's like an actual bill. It's a bill the Congress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this this bill is the Higher Education Act, and
Speaker 1: it's being reauthorized as we speak, and it's going to
Speaker 1: change a lot of things about student loans. There's a
Speaker 1: really high probability that it passes. I think that will
Speaker 1: grandfather everybody in on the current programs as they expectation,
Speaker 1: but there's a real good chance that it's going to
Speaker 1: dramatically alter the landscape for student loans for the next
Speaker 1: ten years. So if you're you're a student lombar where
Speaker 1: now and you want to protect what you have, reach
Speaker 1: out to your congress person or your senator. If you're
Speaker 1: going to school and you're like thinking about being a
Speaker 1: doctor and you're like the PSLVE program going away would
Speaker 1: be ruinous for me, reach out to your person that's
Speaker 1: you know, and tell them, like, this is a very
Speaker 1: important program for me. Because whatever they write in the
Speaker 1: bill is going to be what's gonna happen in the
Speaker 1: next ten years, and it's probably not going to get changed,
Speaker 1: you know, for another ten years when they do it.
Speaker 1: So that bill is just the Higher Education Act. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just getting you know, every ten years it gets reauthorized.
Speaker 1: They put it off for like twelve years or ten
Speaker 1: or eleven, twelve years now, so it's overdue. So definitely
Speaker 1: kind of keep tabs on that. If you're interested in
Speaker 1: student loans man double bills, and double greatness. Those were
Speaker 1: two really good ones. And y'all, if you think you
Speaker 1: can top that or get anywhere close to it, visit
Speaker 1: us at Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill and
Speaker 1: leave us your bill of the week. We got a few.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard yours yet, it's coming, I promise.
Speaker 1: We got a few in the queue. It's coming down
Speaker 1: the line. But now it's time for our lightning round, yes,
Speaker 1: or lightning round the night like just didn't prepare for today.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be fast, just like lightnings, because I don't
Speaker 1: fully understand what the lightning round is yet we changes
Speaker 1: everybody does, and nobody knows that the lightning round is,
Speaker 1: so just shorter than the first part. That's it. It's
Speaker 1: shorter than the first part than the thunder round. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a lightning question for you guys. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: even turning the tables. Okay, would you would you rather
Speaker 1: have an m D degree with four thousand of debt
Speaker 1: or a j D degree with two hundred thousand of debt?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Well, I don't think that I would want
Speaker 1: to ever be a lawyer, so I think I would
Speaker 1: just have to go with my heart and take the
Speaker 1: mp D. Um. Yeah, less debt always, but you have
Speaker 1: to so much and argue all the time. So, Jim,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what you want to think about graduate degree
Speaker 1: is is like that you should go not for the money, right,
Speaker 1: you should go for what you wanted. But sorry, but
Speaker 1: but think about it this way. It's like, what is
Speaker 1: your income going to be? I had somebody with like
Speaker 1: four or five thousand of debt, but she was an
Speaker 1: OBG and in a rural area, she's making four year.
Speaker 1: And then I have a lawyer over here that's working
Speaker 1: as an associate, like a decent law firm, making nine
Speaker 1: dek a year and he makes has two thousand of debt. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you have a lot higher income than having
Speaker 1: a lot higher debt. It's totally worth it. Okay, flipping
Speaker 1: the tables again for the lightning round, Travis, you said
Speaker 1: you traveled for a year to like forty different countries.
Speaker 1: What was your favorite where? I mean, you obviously probably
Speaker 1: don't have time to list all the places that you went,
Speaker 1: but what were your favorite explorations? Ukraine was my favorite
Speaker 1: because anybody in America is a one per center in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and being a one per center gives you a very
Speaker 1: different perspective on life, even if it's very temporary. It's
Speaker 1: like only for ten days, right, That's how long I
Speaker 1: was in this one particular city in Laviv, and I
Speaker 1: loved it. I mean Laviv and and um in the
Speaker 1: capital of we're just amazing cities to be in. Because
Speaker 1: a hostile a super nice hostel, was very clean, everything,
Speaker 1: great internet, five dollars a night and dinner at a
Speaker 1: place with like a swing band that was like playing
Speaker 1: in the mood. It's like four level brewery. You know.
Speaker 1: I had like a flight of beers and food and
Speaker 1: appetizers dessert A dollar fifty for that, you know, and
Speaker 1: it was good food. You didn't get sick. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: It was just like really really high quality, and I
Speaker 1: was Ukrainian food. Nothing was imported, right, like, so anything
Speaker 1: that was important you had to pay, like the foreign
Speaker 1: currency price, but anything that was in Ukraine dollars specifically,
Speaker 1: Like the economy was a wreck at the time I
Speaker 1: was there, and you know, the exchange rate which is
Speaker 1: out of control because of the war with Russia. You know,
Speaker 1: so I stayed in the part obviously that wasn't in
Speaker 1: the conflict area. It's just it's just an exciting place
Speaker 1: to be. I really love the foods on the people.
Speaker 1: I love that You're like your standard was like how
Speaker 1: cheap the place was for being Yeah, my husband and
Speaker 1: I figure out where we're going to go. I think
Speaker 1: that's the secret, like slow travel and being able to
Speaker 1: afford to travel like for a super long time and
Speaker 1: just pick a place, like spend more time in the
Speaker 1: cheap places exploring nose and then the more expensive places,
Speaker 1: but just like let's spend there. Yeah, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good time. And Travis, lastly, what do you have going
Speaker 1: on at student loan Planner? Where can people find more
Speaker 1: about you? What's happening another? Yeah, so help at student
Speaker 1: Loan Planner dot com. We'll get you in touch with
Speaker 1: one of our cps or cf a s and you
Speaker 1: can just like spill your guts out and just tell
Speaker 1: us what's going on and what your stress is, and
Speaker 1: we'll tell you if we think that you should work
Speaker 1: with us or not. And then if you just want
Speaker 1: to learn more, I would just go over to the
Speaker 1: student planter dot com site and just click on the
Speaker 1: blog and you can literally type in the search bar
Speaker 1: like what you're interested in, where you can see all
Speaker 1: the categories we have. So anything you know, any kind
Speaker 1: of profession imagineable, we should have a category dedicated to
Speaker 1: you that you could read and get a lot of
Speaker 1: free stuff from. And of course there's the calculator that
Speaker 1: you can don't you even have an acupuncture section, which
Speaker 1: nobody does, so you literally have that resection. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're not there, send us an email tell me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we have almost everything like emphasis on almost
Speaker 1: like every now and then pilots like real flight flight
Speaker 1: air traffic will have like two hunder granded debt, or
Speaker 1: like people that are like professional clowns like I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, Like any profession that you can imagine
Speaker 1: that could have a graduate degree attached to it often
Speaker 1: has a lot of debt, So I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of like at the top of my head, like I've
Speaker 1: had like Jewish canterists have like three K and debt,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to figure out if they were like
Speaker 1: proselytizing at all, because if you're proselytizing, you don't qualify
Speaker 1: for PSLF. And there's just so many weird, interesting professions
Speaker 1: that I've run across doing this that have a lot
Speaker 1: of debt. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for hanging
Speaker 1: out with this, Travis. This has been super fun. Off
Speaker 1: the rails. On the rails, so so good, and I
Speaker 1: think people are going to get a lot out of it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jill. That was real good. That was so good.
Speaker 1: And if I still had a ton of debt left,
Speaker 1: honest to goodness, Jen, I would have been the crazy
Speaker 1: one saying, yep, France, Australia, I don't care, throw the dart.
Speaker 1: We're going this is ridiculous. So that's fantastic. But also
Speaker 1: for those people who aren't going to be as traumatic
Speaker 1: as I am, there's some great aces in there for
Speaker 1: you too. I would not have done that. I did
Speaker 1: not do that um and and even I didn't go
Speaker 1: with student loan forgiveness. But I thought his insight on
Speaker 1: how to more easily discern what's going to be right
Speaker 1: for you was good. And I'm try to remind people
Speaker 1: that paying off debt is so much more than math
Speaker 1: and income. There's a mental and an emotional aspect to it,
Speaker 1: and it never ever should make you feel hopeless or anxious,
Speaker 1: are like you just don't want to live anymore. And
Speaker 1: if that is what you're feeling, then definitely talk to
Speaker 1: somebody about it, like Jill, Yeah, because I'm a social worker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and there's always hope and light at the end
Speaker 1: of the tunnel. Hopefully that's what people can walk away
Speaker 1: from this episode with because it can feel so overwhelming
Speaker 1: and then to feel like there's so many different options
Speaker 1: and you've got to read all the fine print and
Speaker 1: what does this mean for me, and all the lingo
Speaker 1: and the jargon that there are experts out there who
Speaker 1: can help you, But then there's also just the chipping
Speaker 1: away at it. It can happen for you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is a broken system. We recognize that, but
Speaker 1: there are there's a whole community of support and friends
Speaker 1: around you to help you pay off that debt and
Speaker 1: live a really fantastic life with your finances. And if
Speaker 1: you need more friends that are trying to pay off
Speaker 1: their debt, head over to Frugal Friends podcast dot com
Speaker 1: slash group. There's a whole group, a big group, and
Speaker 1: we're all frugal and supportive and there are no dumb
Speaker 1: questions in our group. So come hang out with us.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear more from Travis again,
Speaker 1: check him out on Student Loan Planner podcast or on
Speaker 1: his website. And if you just need something else to
Speaker 1: do after you've done all of those things, we are
Speaker 1: reading Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill this April, and
Speaker 1: we're still doing the given away free copies. So if
Speaker 1: you want to enter to win a free copy of
Speaker 1: this book, Think and Grow Rich, leave us a review
Speaker 1: on iTunes or Stitcher, Screenshot the review and email it
Speaker 1: to us at Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: We will select the winners at the end of the month.
Speaker 1: One in every five reviews for the month gets a
Speaker 1: book those goods Yes, yes, And if you want an
Speaker 1: example of a very helpful review that will help strangers
Speaker 1: figure out if they want to be our frugal friends
Speaker 1: or not. Here's a really good one. It's from Sarah
Speaker 1: and it's topped with five stars, and it says like
Speaker 1: frugal soul sisters. I decided two thousand nineteen was there
Speaker 1: I finally get my finances in check. One of the
Speaker 1: ways that helps me is listening to smart personal finance
Speaker 1: podcasts that align with the choices I need to make.
Speaker 1: Listening to these ladies dish about all the different ways
Speaker 1: I can change my spending and be frugal without giving
Speaker 1: up the fund in my life, It's been a lifesaver
Speaker 1: and has helped me stay on track. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: this to anyone who wants to make their money work
Speaker 1: for them. Thank you so much. There we are audition
Speaker 1: that that makes it sound juicy too. It makes it
Speaker 1: sound like we're getting together, we're addition on stuff and
Speaker 1: we are. Yeah, we definitely are a good point. So
Speaker 1: give us a review, get us some more friends, get
Speaker 1: yourself some more friends by leaving us a review, and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next week. Bye guys. Bye. Frugal Friends
Speaker 1: is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Serria um Jen
Speaker 1: what is the craziest thing you have done to get
Speaker 1: rid of your debt? Craziest, craziest. I'm not a very
Speaker 1: crazy person, right, so for you who once the craziest, gosh,
Speaker 1: I wish I was more fun crazy out here. You
Speaker 1: are fun and crazy. You responded to a random Facebook
Speaker 1: request invite and that's how we met. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: so this may not be crazy, but to some it
Speaker 1: wasn't crazy to me, but to some people it might
Speaker 1: be crazy. But I worked in foster group homes for years.
Speaker 1: I remember that was that part was that considered like
Speaker 1: a side hustle for you, That was a side job
Speaker 1: for me. Like every weekend I was at one of
Speaker 1: one of four smaller group homes and one like large
Speaker 1: kid group home. And sometimes I would get punched, sometimes
Speaker 1: kids would run away. Uh, sometimes they would be the
Speaker 1: most precious humans on the planet. You just never knew
Speaker 1: what you were going to get. And then yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: I would get shingles with physical abuse in order. It
Speaker 1: was never paid. Actually think that I had to break
Speaker 1: up a fight once and I left and I went
Speaker 1: home and I had like a fist sized bruise on
Speaker 1: my thigh, but I didn't feel it. In the moment, so, um,
Speaker 1: because your adrenaline was going because you were in the
Speaker 1: middle of a crisis, right right, So that was pretty
Speaker 1: I mean I don't think a lot of people would
Speaker 1: do that. No, No, that's definitely crazy. So you did it,
Speaker 1: You're crazy. I don't know if that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's like the bar we want
Speaker 1: to set. But yeah, and it's still I still want
Speaker 1: foster and adopt, So it didn't change my view on that. Fantastic.
Speaker 1: Should I ask you the same question, Jill? Have you
Speaker 1: done something crazy? Should we? Should I ask you this
Speaker 1: while we're still recording? Yeah, um, I mean you already know.
Speaker 1: Probably the most dramatic is living in a trailer, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, that was the reason. I mean other reasons too.
Speaker 1: We like the minimalist lifestyle and all of that, but
Speaker 1: that's why you know, downside and you're heading back in there,
Speaker 1: heading back into square feet. Yeah, it's adorable, horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do an episode on that. I'm
Speaker 1: getting people as me about it, so we will. It's coming,
Speaker 1: all right,