RPF0258-Jay_Fleischman

00:00:00.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we talk student loans,

00:00:03.000 | and I introduce you to a brand new sponsor of the show.

00:00:06.680 | Today we're gonna talk with Mr. Jay Fleischman,

00:00:09.440 | past guest of Radical Personal Finance

00:00:11.640 | and host of the Student Loan Show.

00:00:14.880 | If you've got student loans

00:00:16.320 | or if you know somebody who has student loans,

00:00:18.900 | get a pen and a paper

00:00:21.600 | because you're gonna need to take some notes.

00:00:23.760 | (upbeat music)

00:00:27.180 | (upbeat music)

00:00:29.760 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.

00:00:42.020 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.

00:00:44.100 | Thank you for being with me today.

00:00:45.620 | I am excited to bring you today's interview.

00:00:48.460 | This is my dream of the type of sponsor

00:00:52.380 | that I wanna bring to you,

00:00:53.840 | where it's a value, value, value, value,

00:00:56.220 | win, win, win, win, win, win, win.

00:00:57.840 | Today, you're gonna win, Jay's gonna win,

00:01:00.920 | and I'm gonna win, and in a moment, I'll tell you how.

00:01:04.180 | (upbeat music)

00:01:06.760 | As I've been systematically launching new sponsors

00:01:14.420 | on the podcast over the last few weeks,

00:01:16.060 | you should notice the theme.

00:01:17.720 | And the theme that I want you to notice

00:01:19.680 | is that these sponsors are actually relevant,

00:01:22.940 | relevant to you.

00:01:23.800 | I haven't just gone out and tried to see,

00:01:25.900 | well, who's gonna give me a check

00:01:27.060 | and tried to collect as big of a check as I could

00:01:29.140 | from anyone that I could.

00:01:29.980 | Rather, I have specifically chosen individual sponsors

00:01:33.620 | who I believe will serve you, the audience.

00:01:36.860 | And today's sponsor that I'm introducing, Jay Fleischman,

00:01:41.020 | is exactly that type of sponsor.

00:01:43.980 | And you'll hear the whole story in just a moment,

00:01:46.080 | but Jay's a past guest on the show

00:01:47.780 | and he's got some really great information

00:01:50.040 | to share with you today.

00:01:50.880 | His other episode was very popular on the show,

00:01:54.180 | downloaded at this point almost,

00:01:56.300 | I think about 7,000 times so far.

00:01:58.220 | And after this, now lots more people are gonna go back

00:02:01.060 | and listen to that show.

00:02:02.980 | It was filled with content and information,

00:02:05.140 | and today's show is no different.

00:02:07.160 | Jay's a really great guy.

00:02:08.420 | He, you'll hear in just a moment again,

00:02:10.500 | the full story of how this sponsorship came to be.

00:02:14.380 | And make sure you got a pen and paper

00:02:15.980 | because you're gonna wanna take some good notes

00:02:18.140 | on the content of today's show.

00:02:19.900 | And this is an episode that you're gonna wanna share

00:02:21.820 | with other people.

00:02:22.860 | So sit back, relax, and enjoy this interview

00:02:25.660 | with Mr. Jay Fleischman, host of The Student Loan Show.

00:02:28.780 | Jay, welcome back to Radical Personal Finance.

00:02:33.300 | - Thanks for having me again, Joshua.

00:02:34.740 | - So our previous interview was one of those

00:02:37.500 | sleeper interviews that I didn't expect

00:02:39.340 | to be quite the hit.

00:02:40.580 | When you contacted me originally and said,

00:02:42.060 | "Hey, can I come on Radical Personal Finance?"

00:02:44.100 | I checked you out and I said, "Okay, fine,

00:02:45.780 | "I'll have you on, it sounds interesting."

00:02:47.260 | And then in the course of that episode,

00:02:49.140 | it was episode 214 if listeners haven't heard it,

00:02:52.260 | I learned more in the course of that interview

00:02:54.820 | about student loans than I have in a very long time.

00:02:58.620 | And I realized how I feel woefully ignorant now

00:03:03.020 | about all the things I didn't know about student loans.

00:03:05.780 | And I felt like that interview was just you

00:03:07.420 | kind of giving me, how would you say it colloquially,

00:03:10.860 | dropping knowledge bombs on me

00:03:12.220 | minute after minute after minute.

00:03:13.860 | (laughing)

00:03:15.140 | And it's been a very popular episode, very highly commented.

00:03:18.900 | And one of the most important things I've heard about it

00:03:21.180 | is that it was extremely useful.

00:03:23.540 | And so today we've got you back for your reprise appearance

00:03:27.340 | and we're gonna be doing two things.

00:03:28.660 | Number one, we're gonna be doing another bang up,

00:03:30.620 | really valuable interview, but we're also launching you

00:03:33.100 | as an official sponsor of Radical Personal Finance.

00:03:35.180 | I'm super excited about that.

00:03:36.900 | - Me too.

00:03:37.740 | - So for those who haven't heard episode 214,

00:03:40.100 | give us the quick two minute elevator pitch on you,

00:03:42.620 | what you do and your history and background

00:03:44.760 | as it pertains to student loans.

00:03:46.500 | - I am a consumer protection attorney

00:03:49.820 | and for the past, gosh, three and a half, four years,

00:03:53.740 | I have not only been helping student loan borrowers

00:03:57.300 | resolve their issues with respect

00:03:59.540 | to their higher education debt,

00:04:01.300 | but also teaching other lawyers how to do it as well.

00:04:04.580 | So I am partially responsible for training a growing army

00:04:09.300 | of student loan resolution attorneys.

00:04:10.980 | We help people with federal student loan issues,

00:04:14.140 | repayments, default resolution,

00:04:18.100 | administrative wage garnishments, tax refund offsets,

00:04:21.980 | all of that stuff, as well as private student loans,

00:04:25.340 | helping people resolve those issues,

00:04:27.900 | whether it's settlement or a lawsuit defense

00:04:31.480 | or dealing with debt collectors,

00:04:33.140 | really the full range of issues that you might have

00:04:36.180 | when you're up at two o'clock in the morning

00:04:39.340 | worrying about your student loans.

00:04:41.380 | - I'll tell you, I was just away as we record this on,

00:04:44.900 | we're actually recording on a Monday, November 9th.

00:04:46.580 | I just spent the weekend away visiting some friends

00:04:48.420 | up in Melbourne at their beach house.

00:04:50.700 | And these are friends of my wife and I

00:04:53.100 | who are similar in age.

00:04:54.300 | And we got into the topic of student loans.

00:04:56.540 | And what's incredible, on the way back in the car,

00:04:59.180 | I was asking my wife and I said,

00:05:00.540 | "Do you know anybody in our age bracket

00:05:02.940 | "who's really happy with their college,

00:05:06.600 | "I'll just say expenses?"

00:05:08.440 | And we were talking about it.

00:05:09.620 | And I know some people who are happy

00:05:11.160 | with their college experience.

00:05:12.580 | They had a good time, they partied a lot.

00:05:14.380 | I know some people who are happy with their college degree.

00:05:16.580 | It opened doors to them.

00:05:18.220 | But almost all of our friends whose college experience

00:05:22.340 | is still following them down the road

00:05:23.860 | in the form of their student loans,

00:05:25.380 | it's amazing how much they loathe and detest this debt.

00:05:30.380 | And so you got your work cut out for you

00:05:34.180 | in the population at large.

00:05:37.260 | - Yeah, it's really a great way to turn a party

00:05:40.180 | into a downer experience.

00:05:41.500 | You just mentioned student loans

00:05:42.860 | and then suddenly the music goes off

00:05:45.660 | and the lights go dim and everybody gets sad about it.

00:05:48.020 | But you're absolutely right.

00:05:49.320 | There's so much out there.

00:05:51.100 | It's well over a trillion dollars.

00:05:53.700 | The average student loan debt is,

00:05:57.180 | I believe now it's at $34,000 on average per graduate,

00:06:02.180 | which is just enormous.

00:06:04.940 | The amount of default is just off the charts.

00:06:08.980 | Overall, the number is one in three student loans

00:06:13.980 | are in default or past due.

00:06:17.860 | And that includes the ones that are not currently

00:06:20.260 | in repayment because so many people,

00:06:22.600 | what they do is they'll come out of school

00:06:24.560 | and they'll put themselves into a forbearance.

00:06:27.200 | Or I actually know a lot of people

00:06:30.140 | that have gone back to school, to a community college,

00:06:32.860 | to an online college, just to take enough credits

00:06:36.620 | so that they don't come out of their in-school deferment

00:06:40.260 | on their student loans.

00:06:41.300 | And so of course, they're racking up more debt

00:06:44.060 | while just because they don't want to,

00:06:47.060 | they don't have the ability to pay back the existing debt.

00:06:50.300 | So it's hamsters on wheels.

00:06:51.780 | - In theory, can you do that into perpetuity,

00:06:55.220 | defer the loans by just continually taking classes?

00:06:58.220 | - In theory, yes.

00:07:01.420 | And as I said, there are a large number of people

00:07:04.500 | who do it because when you are in school,

00:07:07.020 | your federal student loans go into an automatic

00:07:09.700 | in-school deferment.

00:07:11.620 | Your private student loans, a lot of them do have limits

00:07:14.900 | on how long you can defer.

00:07:16.860 | It's as if the banks are onto the game

00:07:21.860 | and so they want to cut that short.

00:07:24.380 | But even in those cases, you could roll this thing

00:07:28.300 | for a decade or better.

00:07:30.440 | - It's an interesting strategy.

00:07:33.380 | And the only problem with the plan

00:07:36.620 | of doing it into perpetuity,

00:07:37.540 | I think of myself as a lifelong learner.

00:07:39.020 | So I like the idea, oh, if I had $100,000

00:07:41.860 | of student loan debt, maybe I'll just continually

00:07:43.700 | take classes and study things that I care about.

00:07:46.620 | But the problem is you're subject to just a simple stroke

00:07:48.860 | of the pen and some rule changes and things could change.

00:07:52.580 | But at the moment, it's kind of an interesting angle.

00:07:54.780 | Well, I'm excited about the process

00:07:57.140 | of what we have planned in today's interview

00:07:59.140 | because basically what I want us to do

00:08:00.940 | is try to give away as much knowledge as you have

00:08:03.500 | as I can pump out of you.

00:08:05.980 | And we're doing this to launch your sponsorship.

00:08:07.900 | So there's always gonna be, we'll talk at the end

00:08:09.820 | about how people can work with you personally

00:08:11.540 | if that's right for them.

00:08:12.700 | But before that, I'm gonna try to get everything

00:08:14.240 | out of you possible.

00:08:16.740 | And the theme that I want us to focus on

00:08:18.660 | is the process of planning for what to do

00:08:22.460 | with student loans.

00:08:23.860 | So let's assume that here I am, I've graduated from college

00:08:29.700 | or it doesn't matter if I've graduated,

00:08:31.260 | I've got student loans.

00:08:32.900 | And I give you a call and I say,

00:08:34.620 | "Dear Jay, I know you're a real knowledgeable expert

00:08:37.580 | "in this area, I've got student loans.

00:08:39.980 | "What is the very first thing that I need to do

00:08:42.560 | "and look at to figure out what on earth

00:08:45.140 | "I should be doing with these things?"

00:08:47.780 | - Okay, the process is, as I'm sure you can imagine,

00:08:51.700 | it's like a flight of stairs.

00:08:53.980 | There are a number of steps that are involved.

00:08:56.140 | And the first thing that you're going to do

00:08:58.420 | is you're going to pull your FSA information,

00:09:02.740 | that's Federal Student Aid, that is directly

00:09:05.260 | through the US Department of Education.

00:09:07.380 | You should have received a username and a PIN

00:09:11.620 | when you first applied for,

00:09:14.500 | when you first filled out your FAFSA.

00:09:17.020 | You get a student, you get a username and a PIN.

00:09:20.100 | And that's been transitioned to a username and password,

00:09:23.420 | I guess, because people are so much more used

00:09:26.660 | to having usernames and passwords online

00:09:28.660 | than just four-digit PINs.

00:09:30.420 | So what you want to do is you want to go

00:09:32.540 | to studentloans.gov, that is the US Department

00:09:36.060 | of Education's website.

00:09:37.820 | And if you don't have a username and password,

00:09:41.460 | it will walk you through the process of transitioning

00:09:44.820 | from the username and PIN system

00:09:47.060 | into the username and password.

00:09:48.540 | Once you've got that, you can log into the system.

00:09:52.100 | It is called the NSLDS system.

00:09:57.100 | And what that is is a repository

00:10:00.300 | of all of your federally guaranteed

00:10:03.580 | and federally issued student loans.

00:10:06.060 | And that's useful because what you want to do

00:10:09.100 | is you want to have a sense of which loans you have

00:10:12.660 | that are federal and which ones aren't.

00:10:15.780 | Now, all of your federal student loans

00:10:18.020 | are going to be there.

00:10:19.140 | Your federal Perkins loans, your Staffords,

00:10:21.900 | your field loans, all of that's going to be there.

00:10:25.140 | And it's going to give you a lot of information

00:10:28.260 | about the date of issuance, the original balance,

00:10:33.100 | the current balance principle, as well as interest,

00:10:36.020 | as well as the interest rate.

00:10:37.340 | And beyond that, it'll give you the information

00:10:40.180 | on who your current servicer is,

00:10:42.740 | which is important because the servicer

00:10:45.700 | is the entity that is sending you bills

00:10:48.900 | that you're sending money to or not if you're in default,

00:10:53.340 | the entity that you're sending money to,

00:10:55.380 | and the entity that you're going to deal with

00:10:58.420 | when it comes to restructuring the payments

00:11:01.620 | to the extent that you're able to do so.

00:11:03.660 | So those are your federal student loans.

00:11:06.180 | Now, this system came into effect in the '90s.

00:11:11.180 | So there are some really old loans,

00:11:14.580 | like if you've been a borrower since, say, the '70s,

00:11:19.500 | some of the really old loans may not be there

00:11:22.420 | because they were manually hand-coded.

00:11:25.140 | So if you've got a really old loan, you may be missing one,

00:11:28.180 | but for the most part,

00:11:29.460 | all the Fed loans are going to be there.

00:11:31.380 | So once you've got that access

00:11:33.580 | and once you've got that information

00:11:35.340 | that you can readily pull off of the system,

00:11:38.180 | you want to be able to take a look

00:11:39.580 | at your private student loans.

00:11:42.180 | Private student loans have nothing to do

00:11:44.660 | with the federal government.

00:11:46.580 | They're issued by private banks.

00:11:48.540 | There's a private promissory note.

00:11:50.540 | There are no federal programs involved,

00:11:55.140 | and they're treated exactly like

00:11:57.780 | any other private bank loan that you may get,

00:12:01.620 | with one notable exception,

00:12:03.340 | they were for an educational purpose.

00:12:05.500 | So in order to find out information about that,

00:12:08.580 | that gets a little bit trickier.

00:12:10.420 | You should take a look at your credit report.

00:12:14.020 | That's always going to give you

00:12:15.900 | the first step of information.

00:12:19.420 | And then if looking at that credit report

00:12:22.460 | doesn't look complete or doesn't look familiar

00:12:25.540 | or the names are off, because that will often happen,

00:12:29.420 | what you may want to do is you may want to go back

00:12:31.780 | to the school that you attended,

00:12:34.260 | go to the Bursar's office,

00:12:36.340 | and have them provide you with the information

00:12:40.380 | about who it is that you borrowed the money from originally,

00:12:43.780 | because they'll have the information

00:12:45.700 | because they're the ones that got the money.

00:12:48.140 | So that's going to be really your first step,

00:12:53.100 | figuring out what you've got on the table to deal with.

00:12:56.980 | What's federal, what's private.

00:12:59.380 | We got that so far?

00:13:01.300 | We good?

00:13:02.140 | - Why is this distinction between federal

00:13:03.540 | and private so important?

00:13:05.380 | - Okay, because federal student loans

00:13:07.820 | come with a number of repayment options,

00:13:11.020 | and they also come with a number of options

00:13:14.540 | with respect to getting yourself out of default.

00:13:17.860 | And when you've got those options,

00:13:20.820 | for example, repayment options,

00:13:23.260 | there are now nine, I think.

00:13:28.260 | Okay, I'm going to count them down

00:13:30.460 | because I know them better just by rattling them off.

00:13:33.460 | There is a standard repayment agreement,

00:13:35.380 | which is a 10-year repayment option,

00:13:38.060 | pay the exact same amount every month.

00:13:40.980 | You've got a graduated payment option,

00:13:44.340 | which is the payments start low,

00:13:46.820 | and then every two years they bump up,

00:13:49.060 | again, like another flight of stairs.

00:13:51.300 | There's an extended payment option

00:13:53.820 | that will take you out to, depending on your loan,

00:13:56.580 | either 25 or 30 years.

00:13:58.780 | Flat repayment, same payment every month.

00:14:01.780 | There is graduated extended, which is just like graduated,

00:14:05.820 | starts low, goes up every two years,

00:14:07.900 | but for the fact that it goes up every two years

00:14:10.220 | for the extended period of time.

00:14:12.940 | Then you've got your income-based options.

00:14:15.980 | You've got income-based repayment,

00:14:18.100 | which allows you to repay 15% of your disposable income

00:14:22.860 | every year for a period of 25 years.

00:14:25.700 | At the end of that,

00:14:26.540 | there is a discharge of the unpaid balance.

00:14:30.300 | There's income contingent repayment,

00:14:32.580 | which is kind of like income-based repayment,

00:14:35.180 | but it's for primarily, at this point,

00:14:38.060 | parent plus loans,

00:14:39.020 | which don't qualify for income-based repayment.

00:14:41.620 | There's pay as you earn,

00:14:44.000 | which caps payments at 10% of adjusted gross income

00:14:48.820 | for 20 years for new borrowers only.

00:14:51.620 | There's new income-based repayment.

00:14:53.860 | Does your head hurt yet?

00:14:55.060 | - I'm at nine.

00:14:56.780 | (laughing)

00:14:58.060 | Okay, keep going.

00:14:59.300 | - There's new income-based repayment,

00:15:01.820 | which is just like pay as you earn,

00:15:04.320 | but it is 10% for 20 years for only newer direct loans.

00:15:09.320 | And now, coming in December 2015,

00:15:16.580 | depending upon when you're listening to this,

00:15:18.340 | it may already be in effect,

00:15:19.860 | there is revised pay as you earn,

00:15:22.740 | which expands pay as you earn

00:15:25.260 | to every single direct loan borrower,

00:15:29.140 | which is great,

00:15:30.420 | caps it at 10% of your disposable income,

00:15:34.440 | which is great if you don't make a lot of money,

00:15:37.100 | because revised pay as you earn does not cap your payments.

00:15:42.100 | Under income-based repayment,

00:15:46.560 | under income contingent repayment,

00:15:49.080 | under the original pay as you earn,

00:15:52.160 | and under new income-based repayment, new IBR,

00:15:56.060 | your payments are capped at the amount that would be due

00:16:00.180 | under a 10-year standard repayment plan.

00:16:03.420 | Under revised pay as you earn, there is no cap.

00:16:07.500 | So if you make $2 million a year,

00:16:11.740 | your payment is 10% of $2 million a year.

00:16:16.740 | Whereas under income-based repayment,

00:16:20.360 | and under the old pay as you earn system,

00:16:23.460 | your payments are capped at whatever the payment would be

00:16:27.900 | for a 10-year repayment cycle.

00:16:29.940 | - Interesting.

00:16:30.780 | - There are some other nuances as well.

00:16:32.340 | For example, under income-based repayment,

00:16:34.880 | if you are married but file taxes separately,

00:16:38.440 | your payments are only based upon your disposable income

00:16:43.320 | and your family size.

00:16:45.160 | So let's say it's you and, Joshua,

00:16:48.820 | let's say it's you and your wife,

00:16:50.120 | and let's say you've got five kids.

00:16:52.780 | You and your wife file taxes separately.

00:16:55.140 | You don't make a lot of money.

00:16:56.400 | She makes a ton of money.

00:16:57.940 | You file taxes separately.

00:16:59.980 | Income-based repayment is going to,

00:17:02.660 | your monthly payment is going to be based upon your income,

00:17:06.820 | your disposable income only.

00:17:08.780 | However, it's going to be based upon a family size of seven,

00:17:12.980 | you, your wife, and your five kids.

00:17:15.140 | In spite of the fact that your wife is filing separately,

00:17:18.380 | and you may even be loading all five kids

00:17:20.820 | onto her tax return for the purposes of deductibility,

00:17:25.380 | under revised pay-as-you-earn,

00:17:27.820 | we look at yours and hers,

00:17:29.940 | whether you file together or not,

00:17:32.540 | and we use the family size of seven.

00:17:35.340 | So under revised pay-as-you-earn,

00:17:37.760 | you pay more money if you're married,

00:17:40.900 | if your spouse makes a lot of money,

00:17:43.300 | or if you get into revised pay-as-you-earn,

00:17:46.300 | and then you don't change your repayment,

00:17:48.380 | and then you start making a lot of money.

00:17:50.620 | So it's a lot more complicated.

00:17:52.860 | How many did we get?

00:17:53.900 | Did we get nine? - We got 10, 10.

00:17:54.940 | - We got 10. - Yeah.

00:17:55.780 | - All right, great.

00:17:56.600 | So there are 10 repayment options for federals.

00:17:59.140 | There is consolidation options for federals.

00:18:05.580 | You can consolidate your federal student loans

00:18:09.180 | under the U.S. Department of Education's

00:18:11.300 | Direct Loan Program.

00:18:13.420 | You can also refinance privately.

00:18:15.180 | That's absolutely fine.

00:18:16.580 | There are a number of great ways to do that.

00:18:18.480 | But if you consolidate under the Direct Loan Program,

00:18:23.160 | you retain the ability to utilize

00:18:26.240 | all of these repayment options.

00:18:27.960 | If you refinance through a private bank,

00:18:30.540 | even though it may be better rates, better terms,

00:18:33.840 | you're not going to have the availability

00:18:35.760 | of those repayment options.

00:18:37.500 | Also, if you go into default,

00:18:39.520 | there are ways to get out of default of your federal loans.

00:18:42.520 | There's rehabilitation, making nine monthly payments

00:18:45.900 | over a 10-month period of time

00:18:47.840 | based upon what's called a reasonable

00:18:50.960 | and affordable formula, which is the same as IBR,

00:18:54.440 | which is 15% of your disposable income.

00:18:57.240 | You can also rehabilitate.

00:18:59.920 | So you can rehabilitate your way out of default.

00:19:02.800 | You can also consolidate your way out of default.

00:19:05.680 | That's federal student loans only.

00:19:08.280 | None of those programs, and I do mean none of those programs,

00:19:13.680 | exist for private student loans, none of them.

00:19:18.600 | - Is there a way for a borrower

00:19:19.800 | who has private student loans outstanding

00:19:23.000 | to transition any of that debt over to federal student loans?

00:19:26.820 | - No, I wish that there were.

00:19:28.360 | There are a number of,

00:19:31.280 | there's always rumblings in Congress,

00:19:33.960 | but there are invariably bills getting put down

00:19:38.960 | in front of Congress to try to get that to happen.

00:19:43.020 | But I don't see that as being in the cards,

00:19:46.720 | 'cause then what you're really talking about

00:19:48.600 | is you're talking about the federal government

00:19:52.400 | taking the burden off of the private banks.

00:19:55.200 | And that's, talk about a bailout, that would be enormous.

00:19:59.000 | It would be a great win for borrowers,

00:20:00.600 | but I think that we would probably see

00:20:03.840 | a taxpayer revolt if that happened.

00:20:05.680 | - So you've printed off the reports,

00:20:10.240 | you've gotten details on the loans.

00:20:12.120 | Back to our steps of the process of planning.

00:20:15.240 | Now what?

00:20:16.080 | - Now we're gonna focus solely on the private loans,

00:20:19.680 | just for a minute.

00:20:21.700 | The first thing that you wanna do

00:20:23.140 | with respect to the private loans,

00:20:24.900 | you wanna get copies of the promissory notes

00:20:27.400 | that you originally signed,

00:20:29.720 | because you wanna know what it is that you're up against.

00:20:32.360 | You wanna understand what the terms of those notes are.

00:20:37.260 | You want to determine whether or not

00:20:39.840 | you've got a guarantor on the loan.

00:20:42.600 | 'Cause if you've got a guarantor on the loan

00:20:44.440 | and you fall behind, not only do you take a credit hit,

00:20:48.960 | and not only are you subject to collection activities,

00:20:52.240 | but so is the guarantor.

00:20:53.880 | Most people think that if they've got a guarantor

00:20:56.040 | or a cosigner on a loan, that's just a signature.

00:21:01.040 | But it's not.

00:21:03.280 | A guarantor or a cosigner on a loan

00:21:06.360 | means that you, as well as that other person,

00:21:10.660 | are both 100% legally liable for repayment of that debt.

00:21:15.660 | And if you go past due, you're gonna get phone calls,

00:21:21.680 | they're gonna get phone calls.

00:21:23.120 | If you get sued, you're going to have to defend the case,

00:21:26.600 | they're going to have to defend the case.

00:21:28.440 | You can have a judgment against you,

00:21:30.280 | they can have a judgment against them.

00:21:32.200 | And especially if that guarantor has assets,

00:21:36.880 | has a house, has a bank account, has investments,

00:21:41.040 | that may be subject to enforcement, to execution.

00:21:44.600 | They could take it, depending upon what your state law says

00:21:48.400 | about enforcement of judgments.

00:21:49.960 | So you want to be able to have a sense of who else,

00:21:54.840 | who else is gonna be impacted

00:21:56.540 | by whatever decision you come to.

00:21:59.320 | And you want to be able to have a conversation

00:22:01.480 | with that person to let them know.

00:22:04.200 | Because very often, a parent or a grandparent who's cosigned,

00:22:08.640 | they figure they're out of it.

00:22:10.280 | They signed.

00:22:11.120 | What a lot of people think is,

00:22:13.980 | I signed for the loan so that they would see

00:22:18.920 | that my credit was good.

00:22:20.240 | My credit got the loan, but that's where my involvement ends.

00:22:25.240 | And that's just not the case.

00:22:27.240 | So you want to know who else is gonna be involved here.

00:22:32.240 | So that's the first thing.

00:22:35.880 | The second thing is you want to be able to take a look

00:22:38.400 | at what the terms of the note are.

00:22:40.260 | Do you have a fixed rate?

00:22:42.580 | Do you have a variable rate?

00:22:44.660 | When does that rate adjust?

00:22:46.440 | How does it adjust?

00:22:47.660 | What's the mechanism?

00:22:49.160 | What sort of notification do they have to provide to you?

00:22:53.240 | That promissory note is also going to give you

00:22:56.200 | an indication of what you may be able to do

00:23:01.200 | if you've got a guarantor,

00:23:03.280 | what you may be able to do to get that guarantor

00:23:05.440 | off of the loan.

00:23:06.880 | A lot of promissory notes, what I've seen is

00:23:10.080 | there's an indication that you can get the guarantor off.

00:23:14.840 | But if you have been late at any time on that loan

00:23:19.840 | within the first 24 months of repayment,

00:23:23.600 | a lender will automatically not entertain

00:23:27.080 | a guarantor release.

00:23:28.680 | It doesn't matter what you do.

00:23:30.200 | It doesn't matter how long you've been good with them.

00:23:33.260 | It doesn't matter.

00:23:34.880 | Nothing matters.

00:23:36.000 | If you were late within the first 24 months, you're out.

00:23:39.320 | And late does not just mean my payment was due

00:23:43.520 | and I didn't make the payment.

00:23:45.200 | It means also to some lenders, my payment was due

00:23:49.640 | and I called them up and asked them to put me on

00:23:52.380 | an interest only plan or to give me another forbearance.

00:23:56.320 | So a lot of borrowers step into that

00:23:59.560 | without even realizing that they're stepping into it.

00:24:03.520 | Another big thing is if you've got a guarantor,

00:24:06.960 | especially a lot of these loans

00:24:10.600 | will go into automatic default

00:24:15.080 | if either you or the guarantor dies,

00:24:20.080 | files for bankruptcy.

00:24:22.620 | Those are the two big things.

00:24:24.180 | So if you're a borrower and you're making your payments

00:24:28.060 | on a regular basis and let's say your grandma

00:24:32.260 | co-signed for you, grandma dies,

00:24:35.420 | that loan goes into default automatically.

00:24:37.940 | - That seems a little bit, is that a loop?

00:24:41.620 | That doesn't make any sense.

00:24:43.680 | Is there a logical reason why that should be the case?

00:24:48.700 | - (sighs) Banks.

00:24:51.360 | (laughing)

00:24:53.360 | - One sigh can tell the whole story.

00:24:55.080 | Okay, moving on.

00:24:56.220 | (laughing)

00:24:57.060 | - Exactly.

00:24:57.900 | No, I think the real reason is

00:25:01.920 | in the case of one of the borrowers dying,

00:25:05.640 | the loan becomes a debt of the estate.

00:25:10.640 | So if grandma dies--

00:25:13.400 | - They wanna make a claim on the estate.

00:25:14.880 | - Yeah, they have to make a claim on the estate.

00:25:16.720 | They don't know how much they're gonna get

00:25:18.000 | and that's the same thing in a bankruptcy context as well.

00:25:21.320 | So you wanna know what it is that

00:25:24.040 | you're potentially gonna be up against there.

00:25:27.900 | There are a number of other things

00:25:30.800 | that you wanna take a look at.

00:25:32.200 | You wanna find out what sort of notice requirements

00:25:35.680 | there are.

00:25:36.520 | There's one really neat thing that I have found

00:25:40.320 | in a lot of private student loan promissory notes

00:25:43.500 | that I never hear spoken about.

00:25:46.900 | The student loan, and this goes to the ability

00:25:51.540 | of the private student loan company to sue you.

00:25:55.060 | There is something called a statute of limitations,

00:25:57.540 | a time period within which the lender

00:26:02.220 | has to file legal action against you.

00:26:05.140 | And that is always going to be state-based.

00:26:07.900 | So it depends upon where you are

00:26:09.940 | and what your state law is.

00:26:11.580 | But in most places, it begins to run

00:26:15.880 | from the date that you fail to make a payment.

00:26:19.260 | So the day that your payment goes past you.

00:26:22.820 | A lot of times, and I don't know if you know anybody

00:26:25.820 | who's got student loans who has tried to go

00:26:28.020 | into a forbearance with their lender.

00:26:30.660 | Most of the time, they'll call the lender

00:26:32.420 | and they'll say, "Hey, can you give me

00:26:34.420 | "a little bit of time?"

00:26:35.300 | Lender says, "Yeah, no problem.

00:26:36.680 | "We'll give you another three months

00:26:38.160 | "or six months or a year," or whatever it is.

00:26:39.780 | Or, "We're gonna change the terms."

00:26:42.500 | That's always done by phone.

00:26:44.820 | That's never done by writing.

00:26:48.440 | Maybe the lender will send you out a letter,

00:26:50.400 | but there's never anything in writing.

00:26:52.480 | You never sign anything.

00:26:53.720 | They don't co-sign it to change the terms of the agreement.

00:26:57.400 | In so many of these private student loan promissory notes,

00:27:00.860 | there is a clause that says,

00:27:02.900 | "If the loan terms change at all,

00:27:07.380 | "it's gotta be done in writing."

00:27:09.800 | And there are some state laws that require that as well.

00:27:13.040 | And that could make a big difference to somebody

00:27:17.840 | who went into deferment for a year

00:27:20.400 | and then didn't make payments for another five years,

00:27:24.420 | and there's a six-year statute of limitations.

00:27:27.360 | Then becomes, when did it start running?

00:27:30.660 | Well, there was never any alteration

00:27:32.140 | of the terms of the contract in writing,

00:27:35.220 | and therefore, it would start when the payment was missed,

00:27:38.860 | not when that new forbearance ended.

00:27:40.940 | And that's an argument that you just wanna be able to know

00:27:43.900 | because you want to know how long they have

00:27:48.280 | to file a lawsuit against you if it comes to that.

00:27:52.640 | So that's what you wanna look at on the private student loans.

00:27:57.300 | On the federal student loans,

00:27:59.220 | your second step is you wanna take a look

00:28:02.820 | at what your current income is

00:28:05.460 | because your income enables you to look at

00:28:10.900 | all of the repayment options that may be available to you.

00:28:14.740 | Your income is going to be what's going to qualify you

00:28:19.420 | for income-based repayment or the original pays you earn

00:28:24.060 | because in order to qualify to get into those programs,

00:28:29.180 | not to stay in those programs, to get into those programs,

00:28:32.680 | you must have an income that is insufficient

00:28:38.900 | to cover your 10-year repayment amount.

00:28:42.580 | So you've gotta be able to see what your income is

00:28:46.380 | to be able to determine whether or not

00:28:48.620 | you may have the ability to get into one

00:28:51.500 | of those federal student loan repayment programs.

00:28:54.360 | - Okay.

00:28:56.100 | - I think that's where we are.

00:29:00.380 | And what I'm talking about is not if you are in default.

00:29:06.420 | Not if you are in default.

00:29:09.300 | It's I'm in repayment and here's where I am.

00:29:13.460 | But jumping off on the income option,

00:29:17.180 | your next step is if you're married,

00:29:21.640 | you wanna sit down with your tax professional

00:29:24.980 | and you want to determine what the tax difference

00:29:28.860 | is going to be based upon a variety of factors.

00:29:32.180 | If we file jointly, how much do we get back

00:29:35.020 | or how much do we owe at the end of the year?

00:29:36.980 | If we file separately and let's say my spouse

00:29:41.380 | gets the kids' deductions, I get the mortgage deduction

00:29:46.100 | if we're homeowners or vice versa,

00:29:48.620 | or my spouse gets everything and I get nothing

00:29:50.860 | or vice versa, how does that impact the amount of money

00:29:54.560 | that we're gonna have to pay at the end of the year

00:29:56.580 | or the amount of money that we get back

00:29:58.220 | at the end of the year?

00:29:59.060 | Because then you get to look at what your federal

00:30:03.500 | student loan repayment options are going to be

00:30:06.500 | in relation to the difference in the tax hit.

00:30:11.060 | Because if you're saving 200 bucks a month

00:30:14.540 | on your federal student loan repayment,

00:30:17.540 | but you're going to have to pay another,

00:30:21.360 | on average of $400 a month to cover your tax nut

00:30:25.460 | at the end of the year, well, it doesn't make sense, right?

00:30:29.060 | - Right, right.

00:30:30.100 | - Right, and vice versa is true as well.

00:30:35.100 | So you want to be able to determine which way

00:30:38.900 | is going to be financially better for me

00:30:42.700 | depending upon what my repayment option's

00:30:45.340 | gonna be on the feds.

00:30:46.980 | From there, see, this is multiple steps.

00:30:51.700 | From there, what you want to do is look at

00:30:57.140 | what your employment options are.

00:30:59.660 | This is really important because depending upon

00:31:04.660 | your employment situation, you may have options

00:31:09.140 | for federal student loan forgiveness.

00:31:12.100 | The big one is public service loan forgiveness.

00:31:14.500 | That's the one that everybody talks about.

00:31:17.300 | If you are employed full-time by federal, state,

00:31:22.300 | municipal government, or 501(c)(3) not-for-profit

00:31:28.660 | organizations, and you are a direct loan borrower,

00:31:33.660 | and you are on an income-dependent repayment option,

00:31:40.380 | that's IBR, ICR, pay-as-you-earn,

00:31:43.820 | or now revised pay-as-you-earn,

00:31:46.900 | after having made 120 on-time monthly payments

00:31:51.900 | while full-time employed with one of those employers,

00:31:55.200 | the unpaid balance is not just discharged,

00:31:59.360 | but is forgiven, and there's a big difference there.

00:32:02.120 | Forgiveness does not come with a tax bill.

00:32:06.560 | Discharge comes with a 1099 forgiveness of debt statement

00:32:12.720 | at the end of the year and may subject you to income taxes.

00:32:18.560 | - Yeah, that is the one that angers people

00:32:24.160 | more than anything else.

00:32:25.360 | What was the word you said?

00:32:29.540 | Not forgiven, but discharged.

00:32:30.720 | When the debt is discharged,

00:32:32.160 | the amount of the debt that's discharged,

00:32:33.880 | let's say you've negotiated with the creditor

00:32:35.240 | and they've discharged $50,000 of debt,

00:32:37.360 | at the end of the year, you're gonna get a 1099

00:32:40.440 | for $50,000 of income, and that, my friends,

00:32:43.480 | is what we call the lovely phantom income,

00:32:45.820 | income on which you owe taxes,

00:32:47.840 | but you have not received any money,

00:32:49.440 | and that can really put a hurting on you at tax time.

00:32:52.040 | So the fact that it is forgiven,

00:32:54.280 | not discharged, is a big deal.

00:32:56.360 | - Exactly, and when it comes to IBR,

00:33:00.320 | when it comes to income-based repayment

00:33:01.800 | and the original pay as you earn,

00:33:03.520 | you could theoretically, and in most cases,

00:33:07.800 | you're negatively amortizing your loan.

00:33:10.440 | Your payment isn't covering your interest.

00:33:13.880 | And so what happens is,

00:33:16.480 | over the 20 or 25-year period of time,

00:33:19.560 | your loan, it's like a snowball, but a bad snowball.

00:33:24.560 | It's an avalanche.

00:33:26.240 | You go from your $80,000 student loan

00:33:29.960 | and you think you're in great shape

00:33:32.560 | because you're paying 20 bucks a month on them.

00:33:35.200 | Well, by the end of the 20 or 25 years,

00:33:38.440 | your 80 grand is gonna be like two and change more.

00:33:42.640 | You're gonna owe a lot of money,

00:33:44.880 | and all of that's gonna get forgiven,

00:33:47.800 | and then in the mail, you're gonna get that 1099.

00:33:50.840 | Now, revised pay as you earn

00:33:53.160 | is a little bit different than that

00:33:54.840 | because 50% of the interest that accrues

00:33:58.040 | is automatically taken off the table,

00:34:00.640 | so you're not gonna negatively amortize

00:34:02.600 | in quite the same fashion or to quite the same extent.

00:34:05.680 | But again, you've gotta play with those numbers.

00:34:08.360 | And a lot of people have said,

00:34:12.400 | well, that's a disincentive to getting married.

00:34:16.880 | - Mm-hmm.

00:34:17.720 | - And I'm not sure that I disagree with that.

00:34:21.080 | I think that when it's IBR or it's the old pay as you earn,

00:34:26.080 | you say, well, we'll just file separately and that's fine,

00:34:30.280 | and what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours,

00:34:32.360 | and that doesn't matter

00:34:33.200 | whether it's a community property state

00:34:35.320 | or what's called an equitable distribution state.

00:34:39.000 | It's always what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine

00:34:41.560 | because you're filing taxes separately.

00:34:43.880 | If you're opting for revised pay as you earn,

00:34:46.960 | then you really have to,

00:34:48.400 | you've gotta think hard about this.

00:34:50.080 | - Right.

00:34:51.400 | - So that's your next step.

00:34:54.920 | There's public service loan forgiveness.

00:34:57.800 | There are certain federal agencies

00:35:01.600 | that have loan repayment options

00:35:03.440 | and loan forgiveness options.

00:35:05.320 | There's Veteran Affairs, there's Department of Defense,

00:35:09.080 | there's Department of Justice, there's Immigration.

00:35:12.400 | All of these agencies have certain loan repayment

00:35:16.280 | and loan forgiveness plans in place

00:35:19.200 | that you wanna look at your options

00:35:23.080 | because if you're well-educated,

00:35:25.760 | if you've got a diverse range of skills,

00:35:29.880 | you may elect to go into one of these employment situations

00:35:34.880 | that's going to get you out of the loan.

00:35:37.800 | And by the way,

00:35:39.200 | with respect to public service loan forgiveness,

00:35:41.800 | it is employer-based, not job-based.

00:35:45.600 | So most hospitals, for example,

00:35:49.280 | are 501(c)(3) not-for-profits.

00:35:52.240 | So public service loan forgiveness

00:35:55.520 | would work for everybody from the overnight janitor

00:36:00.520 | all the way up to the chief of neurosurgery in the hospital.

00:36:10.560 | Everybody who's employed by that 501(c)(3)

00:36:14.680 | is going to be able to benefit potentially

00:36:17.720 | from public service loan forgiveness.

00:36:19.840 | - And if you don't work for a 501(c)(3),

00:36:21.760 | you can always sign up

00:36:23.160 | and start working at the Bunny Ranch, right?

00:36:25.360 | With your recent podcast interview.

00:36:28.080 | (laughing)

00:36:29.600 | I listened to your interview with the guy who,

00:36:31.840 | that was the name of his show,

00:36:35.520 | the guy who owns all the brothels in Nevada, Bunny Ranch,

00:36:38.240 | and now he does matching dollars for all of his employees,

00:36:42.040 | all the prostitutes who work for him,

00:36:43.840 | he does matching dollars for them

00:36:45.160 | towards their student loans.

00:36:46.280 | So there's always that as a backup plan, right?

00:36:48.800 | - Exactly, exactly.

00:36:50.800 | - Just trying to throw you off your game here.

00:36:53.240 | - That was a crazy show.

00:36:54.760 | And you listened to his show.

00:36:57.640 | He was hysterical. - He was.

00:37:00.440 | - But beyond that, he really understands this stuff.

00:37:06.200 | Agree or disagree with his business itself,

00:37:09.800 | he's got a really good understanding

00:37:12.840 | of what it is that people are up against

00:37:15.520 | and exactly how the system operates.

00:37:18.240 | And that was the part that blew my mind.

00:37:19.760 | I mean, look, I know that there are other reasons

00:37:23.920 | why an employer would want to do that.

00:37:26.480 | The press was amazing for him, but just beyond that,

00:37:32.720 | the guy really understood this stuff.

00:37:35.200 | It blew my mind.

00:37:36.040 | - Yeah.

00:37:37.240 | Sorry to throw you off your game.

00:37:38.320 | I couldn't resist, though,

00:37:39.160 | after listening to that interview that you did.

00:37:42.160 | It was a fascinating thing.

00:37:43.440 | You take one of the world's oldest professions,

00:37:45.600 | prostitutions, and you mix in some of the newest

00:37:48.880 | and weirdest laws and economic financial realities,

00:37:52.440 | and you have an interesting business

00:37:54.560 | that that man is running.

00:37:56.160 | - No kidding. - Interesting.

00:37:58.200 | On the 501(c)(3), I think to emphasize on a serious note,

00:38:02.120 | to emphasize what you just said,

00:38:03.680 | that it's employer-based, not job-based, that is huge.

00:38:08.200 | Because I think that many listeners could,

00:38:11.920 | if only that little bit of information were to be the case,

00:38:15.960 | that could make a world of difference.

00:38:19.320 | Because if you take a skill set that you have

00:38:22.440 | and a financial situation that you have,

00:38:24.400 | and you go out on the marketplace,

00:38:25.920 | the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations have to compete

00:38:33.600 | with for-profit corporations for employees.

00:38:36.520 | So many times, they might have competitive wages.

00:38:40.320 | They might have different perk benefits,

00:38:42.960 | things that in some ways are even better than for-profits.

00:38:46.120 | And if you have substantial student loan debt,

00:38:48.320 | and if you can get involved in one of these repayment plans

00:38:51.640 | that will serve you more than paying off the debt,

00:38:55.080 | that can be huge.

00:38:55.960 | And here'd be the example,

00:38:57.800 | two things that I'll give and let you comment on them.

00:38:59.800 | Number one, a number of years ago,

00:39:02.720 | I was involved in a philanthropy course

00:39:05.800 | for a designation called a CAP designation,

00:39:09.160 | Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy.

00:39:10.880 | And as I went through these courses,

00:39:13.440 | I did it in a local study group.

00:39:14.840 | And one of the things that blew my mind

00:39:16.240 | is I had been one in the past who would share these memes

00:39:20.240 | about, well, the CEO Goodwill makes $767,000 a year,

00:39:24.520 | so therefore you shouldn't take your money to Goodwill,

00:39:26.840 | or you shouldn't support the breast cancer organization

00:39:30.720 | because the CEO makes $2 million a year.

00:39:33.560 | And I still like some of those arguments.

00:39:36.200 | I don't wanna support some of those other organizations,

00:39:38.360 | but I no longer necessarily disqualify

00:39:42.440 | a non-profit organization simply because the CEO

00:39:46.960 | makes a million or $2 million a year.

00:39:49.160 | And I realized that if I were on the board of the directors,

00:39:51.960 | it's not a matter of a simple six-figure number.

00:39:55.560 | The question is, is this CEO effectively advancing

00:39:58.600 | the causes of our organization?

00:40:01.360 | And that's the point that an organization

00:40:03.840 | like the Susan G. Komen Foundation

00:40:06.740 | or the American Heart Association,

00:40:08.480 | this is a massive company, and so they need in some ways

00:40:12.120 | to attract a high-level, extremely skillful CEO.

00:40:16.640 | And money is going to be one part of that.

00:40:19.480 | And I realized that that can be filtered down

00:40:21.520 | at other levels.

00:40:22.360 | If you are, for example, a talented salesperson,

00:40:25.680 | you can put your talents to use in selling life insurance

00:40:29.440 | for a life insurance company.

00:40:30.880 | And you can also put your talents to use

00:40:32.520 | as a development officer at a local non-profit organization

00:40:35.760 | that you care for.

00:40:36.720 | And depending on how your compensation is structured,

00:40:39.040 | you can do quite well for yourself honing

00:40:41.440 | and developing those sales skills at either organization.

00:40:45.260 | And when you factor in the impact that you can make

00:40:47.680 | on your student loans, that idea alone can really serve,

00:40:55.560 | I would say, a good number of people in my audience.

00:40:58.240 | - Yeah, I agree completely.

00:40:59.880 | I think that when you understand that it is employer-based,

00:41:04.880 | it cracks open your universe in so many different ways

00:41:09.720 | because you're still looking at your financial reasons

00:41:14.640 | for taking a job, but your financial reasons

00:41:17.080 | become larger than just what your immediate paycheck is.

00:41:22.080 | And that's really what, that's what public service

00:41:24.760 | loan forgiveness is all about.

00:41:26.080 | It was designed to make it more attractive

00:41:31.080 | for somebody to do good, to do good work.

00:41:34.560 | I mean, look at it this way.

00:41:35.880 | And this actually happened to me, I don't know,

00:41:40.880 | two, three months ago.

00:41:41.880 | I was on the phone with somebody who is a neurosurgeon,

00:41:46.640 | and that's why I now say the chief of neurosurgery.

00:41:49.500 | Neurosurgeon coming out of residency

00:41:53.700 | at a county hospital.

00:41:55.720 | And they said to me, "Okay, well, I don't make

00:41:58.360 | "a lot of money now.

00:41:59.480 | "I've got all of these federal student loans,

00:42:02.000 | "but I don't think income-based repayment's gonna work

00:42:05.600 | "for me because next year I'm gonna be done

00:42:07.920 | "with my residency, and I'm gonna look

00:42:11.540 | "to go into private practice."

00:42:13.400 | I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

00:42:15.920 | "that's probably not your best idea."

00:42:18.520 | They said, "Well, but I'm gonna go from like $70,000

00:42:22.440 | "to 200 and some odd."

00:42:24.700 | It was some ridiculous amount of money

00:42:26.620 | that they were gonna jump.

00:42:28.220 | I said, "Well, wait a minute, you've been in this residency

00:42:33.220 | "for I think it was seven years."

00:42:35.240 | I said, "If you stay three more years,

00:42:39.000 | "you'll qualify for public service loan forgiveness.

00:42:41.660 | "You're not gonna make as much money

00:42:43.600 | "for the last three years of being there,

00:42:45.140 | "but you'll qualify for public service loan forgiveness."

00:42:48.780 | And I ended my part of the conversation at that point.

00:42:52.880 | And the woman said to me, "Really?

00:42:55.960 | "Well, that's great because I would love

00:42:59.100 | "to be able to stay here because there's a shortage

00:43:02.860 | "of good people outside of the teaching level

00:43:06.600 | "who are actually doing this on a day-to-day basis

00:43:10.000 | "for patients, and I could do a world of good."

00:43:12.600 | And the only reason why I was gonna leave

00:43:14.760 | in the first place was because of the student loans,

00:43:17.580 | but now that I know that I don't have to leave

00:43:19.940 | because of the student loans,

00:43:22.100 | I can do the things that I want to do,

00:43:24.740 | and I thought that was really telling.

00:43:27.420 | - It is, and this is the core of even just

00:43:30.300 | the whole approach of radical personal finance

00:43:32.700 | is use everything at your disposal

00:43:36.580 | to create the ideal lifestyle.

00:43:38.560 | And an extra $100,000 of income

00:43:41.220 | is not always a good thing if it impedes your lifestyle.

00:43:44.740 | Now, if you can create lifestyle in such a way

00:43:47.620 | that it's gonna be exactly what you're looking for

00:43:49.560 | and you can make an extra $100,000 of income, go for it.

00:43:52.540 | But when you start looking at this,

00:43:53.740 | you can put together a package,

00:43:55.260 | whether it's working in a lower-stress environment.

00:43:57.820 | I mean, face it, schools, non-profit environments,

00:44:01.240 | they are lower-stress, more fun,

00:44:04.300 | and easier, government organizations,

00:44:06.740 | easier places to work than for-profit enterprises.

00:44:09.700 | There is, in the aggregate,

00:44:11.560 | there are individual exceptions,

00:44:12.780 | but in the aggregate, they're easier places to work.

00:44:14.700 | There's not as much pressure to the bottom line.

00:44:16.740 | There's not as much pressure on the employees.

00:44:18.700 | And so for some people who aren't highly competitive,

00:44:22.620 | who wanna just simply kinda do what they need to do

00:44:25.000 | to fulfill the requirements of their job and continue on,

00:44:27.000 | this is gonna create a much better lifestyle

00:44:29.140 | than going into a highly competitive market

00:44:32.240 | where you gotta work, work, work to earn the extra money,

00:44:34.460 | and now you turn around and send half of it to the taxman

00:44:36.820 | and half of it to the student loan company.

00:44:38.580 | So look at employment in terms of a comprehensive package

00:44:42.040 | and look at it in the context of all of the benefits

00:44:47.040 | across the board, and this is a big, big deal.

00:44:52.200 | Let's continue on with the checklist here

00:44:55.200 | that we're laying out for people,

00:44:59.620 | 'cause I wanna wrap up this checklist

00:45:01.820 | in about five or 10 minutes,

00:45:02.780 | and then spend the last 10 or 15 minutes of the interview

00:45:06.280 | talking about services and approaches.

00:45:10.140 | After this, what's next if somebody

00:45:12.940 | wants to do it themselves?

00:45:14.240 | - Next thing that you wanna look to is,

00:45:17.960 | we're gonna go back to the private student loans,

00:45:20.120 | because the private student loans tend to be

00:45:22.560 | a lot more difficult for people to get a handle on.

00:45:25.400 | Your private student loans, if you can get your cosigner

00:45:28.880 | or guarantor off the note,

00:45:30.400 | then you wanna be able to set yourself up to do that.

00:45:32.920 | And in large measure, that's going to involve your credit,

00:45:36.260 | it's going to involve your income,

00:45:38.820 | and you wanna know what it is

00:45:40.720 | that you're gonna need to do.

00:45:41.580 | So you wanna talk to your servicer about that.

00:45:44.380 | You may wanna look at refinancing,

00:45:46.520 | depending upon what kind of terms that you can get.

00:45:50.120 | There are a number of companies out there that do it,

00:45:52.320 | so you may wanna look to see if there's a way

00:45:55.120 | to restructure your private student loans

00:45:57.040 | by refinancing through a private bank.

00:46:00.040 | Beyond that, if you are in default

00:46:03.000 | or in danger of going into default,

00:46:05.480 | call your servicer, ask them what they've got available.

00:46:08.420 | Sometimes they may have something,

00:46:10.920 | most of the times they don't.

00:46:12.080 | But you really wanna know what your options are.

00:46:16.960 | Once you go into default, and this is,

00:46:19.720 | I know you wanna wrap it up,

00:46:21.440 | but I gotta go on like a five minute rant here.

00:46:24.000 | - Go for it, go for it.

00:46:24.980 | - Okay, there are all of these companies

00:46:27.180 | that are coming out saying,

00:46:29.160 | "We can settle your private student loans

00:46:31.560 | "for 50 cents on the dollar, including our fees,

00:46:35.400 | "and all of the private student loans are fraudulent,

00:46:38.680 | "they're terrible, there's no way,

00:46:40.300 | "they can't prove the loan,"

00:46:41.940 | and they go on and on and on and on.

00:46:43.900 | First of all, these are all of the same companies

00:46:46.660 | that were doing credit counseling a decade ago,

00:46:49.340 | then they were doing debt settlement nine years ago,

00:46:52.380 | then they were doing mortgage modifications

00:46:54.380 | for the past couple of years,

00:46:55.740 | and now that the mortgage mod market has dried up

00:46:57.960 | or become highly regulated,

00:46:59.580 | now they're all going back into debt settlement

00:47:01.860 | and doing student loan work.

00:47:03.060 | A lot of them are doing, A, getting you into new loans

00:47:08.020 | with new lenders on even worse terms

00:47:11.420 | and getting their legal fees,

00:47:12.900 | which are an enormous percentage of that loan

00:47:17.100 | from that new lender.

00:47:18.660 | The way that they're doing the debt settlement

00:47:21.820 | is they're making you promises that they can't keep.

00:47:24.940 | Anytime anybody guarantees anything,

00:47:27.300 | you really need to be suspicious of it,

00:47:29.460 | 'cause nobody can guarantee something

00:47:31.620 | that they don't have control over.

00:47:34.020 | That having been said, private student loans settle.

00:47:37.580 | They settle a lot.

00:47:39.380 | They settle at extreme discounts,

00:47:41.680 | depending upon the loan, who actually owns it,

00:47:45.920 | because they're all bundled together

00:47:47.340 | and turned into securities

00:47:48.840 | and very complex financial instruments.

00:47:52.920 | But it all depends upon how old the loan is,

00:47:56.520 | how badly the rest of their portfolio is doing,

00:48:00.220 | and when you hit them.

00:48:01.740 | If you are in default or know

00:48:04.400 | that you're gonna go into default,

00:48:06.440 | what your step is, you've gotta start bankrolling money.

00:48:10.780 | You've gotta start throwing, even if it's 50 bucks a month,

00:48:15.020 | you've gotta do something.

00:48:16.780 | Throw money on a regular basis into a savings account

00:48:20.580 | that is unattached to your checking account,

00:48:22.340 | because at some point,

00:48:24.140 | you are going to have an opportunity to resolve that loan

00:48:28.100 | for an amount of money that is less

00:48:30.420 | than what you currently owe,

00:48:32.900 | and you get a far better deal if there's cash at the door.

00:48:36.100 | If you can throw money on the table day one,

00:48:38.940 | you're gonna get a far better deal.

00:48:40.860 | Now, your deal's not gonna come right away.

00:48:42.980 | You've gotta be really far behind.

00:48:45.140 | I'm not talking about 30 or 60 or 90 days.

00:48:47.500 | I'm talking about a year, two years, three years.

00:48:50.860 | You've gotta be way behind.

00:48:52.400 | But if you can't make the payment

00:48:55.980 | and keep food on your plate and a roof over your head,

00:48:58.720 | you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

00:49:01.820 | And so, that's really gonna be your last step

00:49:06.940 | until you get to the litigation stage

00:49:08.860 | or whether bankruptcy's gonna be an option

00:49:10.780 | or any of those things.

00:49:11.780 | But you want to know that you've got some money

00:49:15.300 | sitting in your back pocket,

00:49:16.540 | so if somebody comes to you with a decent deal,

00:49:19.500 | you can afford to pay it.

00:49:20.900 | And last but not least,

00:49:23.660 | you don't need to hire anybody

00:49:26.140 | to do a debt settlement for you.

00:49:27.860 | There is nobody, nobody,

00:49:31.340 | who's got an in with the company

00:49:34.100 | or knows the right people or has the right relationships.

00:49:38.420 | That's sales and that's only gonna cost you money

00:49:41.940 | and it's not gonna save you anything

00:49:44.060 | in terms of your settlement.

00:49:45.620 | - Got it.

00:49:46.980 | I think that's really valuable to talk through

00:49:49.100 | and this is why, so I wanna transition here

00:49:52.180 | to just talking about your sponsorship.

00:49:53.600 | This is why I am so excited to have you on the show

00:49:56.900 | because, so the way that we got to talking

00:49:59.900 | about sponsorship was that I had you on the show,

00:50:02.860 | we did the interview,

00:50:03.940 | and then when I was up at FinCon,

00:50:05.900 | you mentioned to me that some of my listeners

00:50:08.300 | had called you and that you've been able

00:50:10.500 | to help some people and you've been able

00:50:11.660 | to make some money, serve some clients,

00:50:13.480 | and you said, "Hey, let's talk about sponsorship."

00:50:15.820 | And immediately I knew that this was exactly the fit

00:50:19.380 | that I've been looking for of how to bring sponsors on

00:50:21.940 | because you are a subject matter expert

00:50:24.400 | and what I believe, if I were still working

00:50:27.440 | as a face-to-face financial advisor,

00:50:31.840 | every single one of my clients who had student loans,

00:50:35.140 | I would send to you because this is the way

00:50:38.280 | that we should work with professionals

00:50:39.840 | where we should talk to professionals

00:50:42.520 | and find out exactly what the options are.

00:50:46.280 | And if you do a review for them

00:50:48.100 | or if it costs them 100 or 200 bucks,

00:50:50.800 | however much your initial,

00:50:52.060 | and we'll talk about that in a moment,

00:50:53.700 | but however much your initial packages run for people,

00:50:56.820 | then knowing just the idea of,

00:51:01.820 | hey, why don't you leave this $50,000 job

00:51:04.460 | at a for-profit company that you don't like,

00:51:06.640 | move into a $50,000 job at a not-for-profit company

00:51:10.400 | that you do like, learning a skill that you want to learn,

00:51:13.460 | this will allow you to help have your student loans

00:51:15.520 | paid down using a repayment plan

00:51:17.980 | while you enhance your expertise and credibility

00:51:21.420 | and serve this cause that you really care about,

00:51:24.060 | become a world-class employee in X skill,

00:51:28.340 | and then after the loans are taken care of,

00:51:31.300 | you'll be able to transition back to the for-profit world

00:51:33.700 | and you'll have spent that time building that skill set

00:51:37.960 | where you can now switch from 50,000 bucks of income

00:51:40.980 | to $250,000 of income

00:51:43.240 | and you've had a better experience along the way.

00:51:45.020 | One idea like that is incredible, has incredible options,

00:51:49.220 | and so, but it's really hard, you know, for me,

00:51:51.820 | I'm a generalist in most things

00:51:53.540 | and I have a little bit of general knowledge.

00:51:55.460 | I can't have, I'm so confused

00:51:57.880 | about the 10 repayment plans that you said.

00:52:00.980 | I wouldn't even know where to start.

00:52:02.540 | And so this, I believe, is gonna be,

00:52:05.100 | I'm hoping that our business relationship

00:52:07.820 | is gonna be a long-term scenario,

00:52:10.140 | and I believe it's really gonna serve listeners in my show

00:52:13.060 | who have student loans to go through

00:52:14.940 | and check, and even if they go through

00:52:16.460 | and they check on what, on their situation

00:52:20.940 | and they find out, oh, okay, there's no magic formula,

00:52:24.840 | I just need to pay this thing off,

00:52:26.660 | then still, at least you've got the confidence

00:52:28.700 | of knowing that that's the right path,

00:52:31.000 | and that is such a big thing for people to be aware of,

00:52:35.120 | and it's hard to get really good advice on this area

00:52:39.100 | because it's not mainstream.

00:52:41.500 | - Right, yeah, absolutely.

00:52:43.380 | - And that certainty is what allows you to sleep at night.

00:52:47.260 | At least you know where things are going, right?

00:52:48.940 | - Right, and I mean, Proverbs says,

00:52:51.100 | "In a multitude of counselors, there's wisdom."

00:52:53.340 | So I've always believed, get as much input as possible,

00:52:55.980 | and I, as an individual, I'm always able

00:52:58.700 | to be at the center of my situation

00:53:00.660 | and look at all the different options,

00:53:02.100 | but I should be getting as much info as possible.

00:53:05.660 | I learned, I'll tell you, one thing I learned in sales

00:53:08.860 | when I originally got in the life insurance business,

00:53:11.180 | I thought, when I started in the life insurance business,

00:53:14.460 | that the easy people to get in front of

00:53:16.540 | would be the broke people, and the difficult people

00:53:19.340 | to get in front of would be the rich people.

00:53:21.260 | And in general, in any aspect of financial services,

00:53:23.720 | you usually want to get in front of the rich people

00:53:25.500 | because the rich people can write bigger checks,

00:53:27.140 | and you're paid a commission that's based upon

00:53:28.620 | the size of the check they're writing,

00:53:30.180 | and so you want to get in front of rich people.

00:53:32.180 | Well, what I found was that the broke people,

00:53:34.940 | here I am, really just a knowledgeable, caring person

00:53:38.160 | wanting to help them with a debt snowball,

00:53:40.140 | and to get out of debt and pay off their credit cards.

00:53:41.980 | The broke people would not take my meetings.

00:53:44.420 | They would generally tell me no,

00:53:46.040 | and the rich people would say, yeah, come on by.

00:53:47.860 | I'll be in the office Monday afternoon, come on by.

00:53:50.020 | Now, the rich people were very careful with their time.

00:53:53.040 | I couldn't sit there for an hour and a half

00:53:54.600 | and drone on and on, but they always wanted to hear from me.

00:53:57.620 | And I learned, and I couldn't prove this with data,

00:54:01.960 | but I proved it with personal experience.

00:54:04.620 | I learned that I think one aspect of people who are rich

00:54:07.940 | is that they always are open for an idea.

00:54:09.780 | They're always looking for something.

00:54:11.460 | So, anytime, that's why I go to conferences,

00:54:14.940 | I listen to podcasts, I read books,

00:54:16.620 | 'cause one idea, just one, one little idea

00:54:19.660 | that you find in the most interesting corner of the world

00:54:22.580 | that you were just looking, rooting around in

00:54:24.400 | for a few minutes can make a massive difference

00:54:28.600 | in your life, and so some of these aspects

00:54:30.580 | of student loans, I think, can be that.

00:54:32.800 | So, let's talk about your actual services,

00:54:35.300 | because you have some consulting,

00:54:37.220 | which is what we're primarily bringing you on for.

00:54:40.020 | Then you have the podcast, and I want us

00:54:41.340 | to talk about the podcast, 'cause that's where

00:54:42.620 | I want my listeners to go if they're interested

00:54:44.020 | in more details, is to also listen to your podcast,

00:54:46.860 | to reach out to you, and then you also have

00:54:48.660 | the attorney thing, but you're a little bit limited

00:54:50.900 | on who you can serve there.

00:54:52.300 | So, talk about your services, the offerings

00:54:54.060 | that you provide, the offerings that your firm has,

00:54:56.580 | the media outlets that you have.

00:54:57.820 | Walk us through everything that you have to offer

00:54:59.900 | for my listening audience.

00:55:01.680 | - Sure, so if somebody is in the state of New York,

00:55:06.780 | or in the state of California, we're licensed

00:55:09.220 | in both places, and can really give a full range

00:55:12.060 | of services in terms of legal representation.

00:55:14.940 | If you're being sued, we can help you defend that lawsuit.

00:55:19.540 | If bankruptcy is an option for you,

00:55:21.900 | we can help you file for bankruptcy,

00:55:23.620 | and that could be either to wipe out the student loans,

00:55:26.740 | which, no, it's not impossible, or it could be

00:55:30.980 | to restructure those student loans,

00:55:32.860 | which is what a lot of people do.

00:55:34.940 | So, in the states of California and in New York,

00:55:37.700 | we can do those things in addition to the things

00:55:42.320 | that we can do nationwide.

00:55:44.020 | Nationwide, I work with people with respect

00:55:47.180 | to their federal student loan issues,

00:55:49.620 | helping them determine which is their best repayment option,

00:55:53.120 | helping them determine whether or not consolidation

00:55:55.840 | is in their best interest, helping them with a rehabilitation

00:56:00.920 | either by working directly with the debt collector,

00:56:05.200 | or giving them the tools to do it on their own.

00:56:08.540 | All of those things, the full range of services

00:56:12.200 | with respect to the federal student loans,

00:56:13.960 | and a lot of people find that useful

00:56:16.240 | because the way that I structure my analysis

00:56:19.960 | is always because you're paying me for the analysis.

00:56:23.800 | So, I'm gonna give everything that there is to give.

00:56:28.360 | Not only here's what you need to do.

00:56:31.920 | For example, you're in a position where you may want

00:56:36.920 | to go with public service loan forgiveness.

00:56:42.760 | Well, in order to do that, you've gotta be

00:56:45.060 | in the direct loan program.

00:56:46.440 | So, you've got five loans, three of them are field loans.

00:56:50.960 | You're gonna need to consolidate them.

00:56:53.960 | Most people are gonna stop there and say,

00:56:56.360 | "Okay, great, consolidate the loan."

00:56:58.160 | And by the way, I can do that for you

00:57:00.120 | for X amount of dollars, not how I do it.

00:57:02.960 | As far as I'm concerned, it's a waste of money

00:57:04.960 | to hire anybody for consolidation because it's a form.

00:57:09.040 | It's a two-page form, and half of the form is check boxes.

00:57:13.320 | So, I'll give you a link to the form.

00:57:16.000 | It's a federal form, there's no magic involved.

00:57:19.080 | I'll tell you what form to use.

00:57:21.200 | I'll tell you what to do with it,

00:57:22.880 | and I'll tell you where to send it.

00:57:25.400 | I'm giving an entire roadmap,

00:57:28.520 | and I do that for a couple of reasons.

00:57:30.680 | First of all, I realize that there are too many people

00:57:34.200 | who are getting taken advantage of by these private companies

00:57:37.400 | and I would love nothing more than to put all of them

00:57:40.320 | out of business by doing what I do,

00:57:42.840 | by just giving reliable information.

00:57:45.160 | Second of all, the people who don't have the ability

00:57:49.880 | to, say, do their own consolidation

00:57:51.740 | or do their own rehabilitation,

00:57:53.520 | either they're afraid of the bureaucracy,

00:57:56.000 | they don't have the time, they're busy,

00:57:57.920 | they travel, they've got big families,

00:58:00.120 | maybe it's worth it for them to hire somebody else to do it.

00:58:04.540 | Sure, we'll do that, and yes,

00:58:05.820 | there's gonna be an additional fee,

00:58:07.040 | but it's not gonna be nearly what you're gonna pay

00:58:10.440 | for any of these private companies.

00:58:12.080 | And quite frankly, I would say maybe three or 4%

00:58:16.960 | of the people who call me up and talk to me

00:58:19.400 | about a federal student loan issue

00:58:21.480 | are going to need to hire me for anything else.

00:58:25.240 | It's just not something that happens all the time.

00:58:29.220 | So I give you the tools to do everything

00:58:33.600 | that you need to do for your federal student loans.

00:58:35.640 | With your private student loans,

00:58:37.900 | I am more in the nature of a coach.

00:58:40.340 | It is a discussion of what the collection process

00:58:45.120 | is going to entail if you do fall back,

00:58:47.960 | a review of your promissory note with you

00:58:50.480 | so that you can better understand

00:58:52.880 | what your rights and responsibilities are

00:58:55.100 | and how to structure that,

00:58:56.720 | a discussion of maybe there's a refinance option

00:58:59.680 | that you hadn't thought about,

00:59:01.480 | talk about that a little bit

00:59:02.760 | and talk about how that process works,

00:59:05.120 | talk about the impact on your co-signers, guarantors,

00:59:10.120 | tell you what the collection process looks like, as I said,

00:59:13.700 | but also talk to you about the ways

00:59:16.160 | that you can make that process easier,

00:59:19.720 | how to stop the phone calls, how to stop the letters,

00:59:23.840 | how to make sure that the negative impact

00:59:28.840 | on your credit score is not as bad as it could be

00:59:33.340 | because there are ways to actually minimize

00:59:35.880 | the hit that your credit score takes.

00:59:37.760 | Most people don't realize that.

00:59:40.240 | Reviews of your credit reports

00:59:42.940 | to ensure that what is there is accurate

00:59:46.320 | and to work with you to help you get rid

00:59:49.640 | of the inaccurate things.

00:59:51.220 | By law, you can't get rid of anything that's accurate.

00:59:53.880 | It's not the way that the law is working,

00:59:55.840 | but anything that is not accurate or is out of date,

00:59:59.900 | we can talk about ways for you

01:00:01.620 | to get that off of your report,

01:00:03.280 | and I will help you work through that process.

01:00:06.500 | So it really is the full range of the federal

01:00:12.080 | as well as the private student loan work.

01:00:14.240 | The only things that I can't do for people

01:00:16.840 | who are outside of the states of California or New York

01:00:20.240 | is I cannot help you file for bankruptcy.

01:00:24.960 | I can't really tell you very much about that

01:00:28.800 | because so much of that is local.

01:00:31.000 | Bankruptcy is federal law, but so much of it is local.

01:00:33.960 | What you get to keep, what you have to give up,

01:00:36.800 | qualification levels, a lot of that is gonna be local.

01:00:39.880 | - But you do teach, don't you teach at the consumer,

01:00:44.120 | like in the Bar Association,

01:00:45.800 | don't you teach a lot of lawyers around the country

01:00:47.840 | that you could refer people to?

01:00:50.920 | - Yes, absolutely.

01:00:52.120 | So, and that's really the last piece of the puzzle.

01:00:55.460 | To the extent that you're located someplace where I'm not,

01:01:00.460 | I've got people everywhere around the country.

01:01:04.360 | They're friends of mine, they're people that I've trained,

01:01:06.880 | they're people who understand the lay of the law

01:01:09.960 | exactly in the fashion that you need them to understand it.

01:01:14.240 | So let's say you're in Dallas, Texas.

01:01:17.300 | I can't represent you if you're being sued,

01:01:20.160 | but I know a couple of really great lawyers who can.

01:01:23.920 | And so the end of our conversation

01:01:26.920 | with respect to the private student loans

01:01:28.760 | is going to include, okay, well,

01:01:32.800 | why don't you call this person

01:01:34.480 | and they can take you that last mile

01:01:37.300 | if you want them to do so with respect to the private loans.

01:01:40.520 | Of course, with respect to the federal loans,

01:01:43.160 | if you're in Dallas, I can still help you there.

01:01:46.140 | - So what about,

01:01:48.040 | tell some of the people that,

01:01:53.000 | and obviously individual's information is private,

01:01:56.700 | but you had mentioned, you mentioned to me

01:01:58.080 | that some of the listeners of the show

01:01:59.360 | had reached out to you after the previous episode.

01:02:01.880 | What were the different types of ways

01:02:03.400 | that you were able to help some of those listeners,

01:02:06.200 | speaking in general terms?

01:02:08.280 | - Speaking in general terms,

01:02:10.660 | a lot of those listeners had questions about,

01:02:13.620 | I mean, look, you got confused about 10 repayment options.

01:02:16.940 | It's not--

01:02:17.780 | - How am I supposed to know what I'm talking about?

01:02:20.700 | By the way, I want to come,

01:02:22.180 | next time you do a bar association,

01:02:23.860 | like workshop or something, let me know.

01:02:25.740 | And I want to come, 'cause I just realized

01:02:28.140 | how much I don't know in this area.

01:02:29.540 | And I've been listening to your show to learn more,

01:02:32.260 | but your show is consumer-focused.

01:02:33.820 | So I want to come to one of your attorney education classes,

01:02:37.880 | or have you record it for me

01:02:39.320 | so I can listen to it after the fact.

01:02:41.440 | - That sounds great.

01:02:42.520 | We're actually going to be in Florida

01:02:46.180 | in either the end of January

01:02:48.120 | or right after Super Bowl Sunday, the next week after that.

01:02:51.680 | - All right, we'll see if we can make that happen.

01:02:53.280 | - Yeah, exactly, that'd be awesome.

01:02:55.440 | But so a lot of people called me up and said,

01:02:58.560 | hey, look, I've got all of these repayment options.

01:03:01.200 | I don't understand what's going to work for me.

01:03:03.180 | And I want to make sure that I'm getting into them

01:03:06.360 | in the right way.

01:03:07.520 | And one just hits me off top of the head.

01:03:10.560 | One person had a whole bunch of loans, all federal.

01:03:14.640 | One of them was a Parent PLUS loan,

01:03:16.920 | wanted to do a consolidation of all of their loans

01:03:19.400 | and get into income-based repayment.

01:03:21.240 | I said, well, that's a great idea,

01:03:24.360 | but for the Parent PLUS loan.

01:03:26.120 | If you have a Parent PLUS loan

01:03:28.200 | that is part of a federal consolidation loan,

01:03:32.060 | that federal consolidation loan does not qualify

01:03:36.640 | for income-based repayment, pay-as-you-earn,

01:03:39.440 | or revised pay-as-you-earn,

01:03:41.880 | and in fact will therefore cause you a lot of problems.

01:03:46.880 | So there was this one client

01:03:50.260 | that I counseled them specifically

01:03:52.200 | on consolidating these loans,

01:03:55.200 | not putting that Parent PLUS loan into the consolidation,

01:03:59.040 | handling that separately

01:04:00.480 | so that they can lower their overall payment.

01:04:03.620 | I had clients talk to me about the husband and wife,

01:04:08.620 | and one had loans, one didn't have loans.

01:04:11.660 | Should we file separately?

01:04:12.760 | Should we file jointly?

01:04:14.020 | Let's run the numbers.

01:04:14.980 | Let's see what it's gonna be.

01:04:16.620 | I had people who were in default,

01:04:19.820 | didn't know if they should rehabilitate

01:04:22.180 | or whether they should consolidate.

01:04:25.420 | The list goes on and on.

01:04:26.820 | On the private student loan issue,

01:04:28.620 | should I continue to make payments?

01:04:30.600 | Should I intentionally default?

01:04:33.240 | 'Cause some people do that.

01:04:34.520 | Strategic default is a big deal in private student loans.

01:04:37.560 | Is there a way for me to get my cosigner off?

01:04:41.920 | What about refinance?

01:04:43.120 | We talked about all of those options.

01:04:44.720 | So those are just some of the things in general terms

01:04:47.680 | that I've talked to listeners

01:04:49.120 | of Radical Personal Finance about.

01:04:51.040 | - Yeah, that's perfect.

01:04:52.440 | And again, I'm excited about our getting this going

01:04:55.960 | because this is the perfect value-add sponsor

01:05:00.020 | where you add tremendous value to the audience.

01:05:02.860 | You add tremendous value to the message

01:05:04.500 | of Radical Personal Finance,

01:05:06.360 | and it really provides a resource

01:05:09.600 | that I'm really, really thrilled about.

01:05:11.380 | So we have a number of packages that you offer

01:05:13.760 | as far as student loan analysis,

01:05:16.020 | details of all of those things at,

01:05:18.420 | basically three things that we want people to do.

01:05:21.180 | Number one, sign up for Jay's podcast

01:05:23.520 | and listen to the show.

01:05:25.020 | So sign up on iTunes for the student loan show

01:05:27.900 | with Jay Fleischman, and I'll make sure

01:05:29.540 | that there's a link in today's show notes.

01:05:31.900 | Sign up for Jay's podcast

01:05:33.760 | so that you can get more specific information from him.

01:05:36.040 | That's free for everybody to listen to.

01:05:38.040 | And do you publish that on a schedule?

01:05:40.980 | How frequently do you publish new episodes of that show?

01:05:43.420 | - That's weekly on Tuesdays.

01:05:44.860 | - Okay, perfect.

01:05:45.700 | So every week you can listen to that.

01:05:46.660 | So I want people to do that.

01:05:47.820 | That's free.

01:05:48.660 | Number two, if you have student loans,

01:05:51.000 | go to the special link for the show.

01:05:53.120 | It's studentloanshow.com/radical.

01:05:56.100 | So studentloanshow.com/radical.

01:05:58.860 | And there you'll find some information

01:06:01.180 | on the different packages that Jay has to offer

01:06:04.100 | as far as consultations.

01:06:06.880 | And we're doing a special for listeners of the show

01:06:10.100 | on a student loan review by email.

01:06:13.320 | They get 25 bucks off that package.

01:06:15.120 | So instead of 75 bucks, it's 50 bucks for listeners

01:06:18.420 | of the show who use that link.

01:06:19.700 | Is that right, Jay?

01:06:20.820 | - That's correct.

01:06:21.660 | - Okay.

01:06:22.480 | So you've got, that's the silver package,

01:06:24.300 | that's the entry-level package

01:06:25.560 | that is a student loan review by email.

01:06:27.520 | Then you've got a gold package,

01:06:28.860 | which is, excuse me, that would be

01:06:29.980 | the federal student loan review.

01:06:31.340 | You've got a gold package,

01:06:32.520 | which is a federal and private student loan.

01:06:35.260 | And then you've got an ongoing monthly package as well.

01:06:37.760 | So people can, and you'll consult with them.

01:06:41.020 | And then listeners can start with the simplest package.

01:06:44.380 | And then if they move up to some of your fancier

01:06:46.740 | consulting deals, then you'll roll that price in for them.

01:06:50.100 | And then you also have, once they start

01:06:52.320 | to get connected with you, if they need help from you

01:06:55.360 | with any further work as a lawyer,

01:06:57.800 | then you can service them if they're in New York

01:07:00.320 | or California, or you can at least point them

01:07:02.320 | in the right direction.

01:07:03.160 | And one thing about the pointing in the right direction,

01:07:05.320 | it's my understanding that in the lawyer business,

01:07:07.000 | you guys don't, you don't get commissions

01:07:09.740 | for referring business.

01:07:10.980 | So in real estate, if I were a real estate agent

01:07:13.600 | and I were referring somebody across the country,

01:07:16.460 | I'd get a split of the deal.

01:07:17.560 | My understanding in the lawyer business,

01:07:18.720 | you don't do that.

01:07:19.560 | - Okay.

01:07:20.560 | - I don't do that.

01:07:21.400 | - Okay, good.

01:07:22.220 | - Yeah.

01:07:23.060 | Anybody that I ever refer anybody else to

01:07:28.880 | is always done without a financial motive.

01:07:32.340 | I think that it just makes the most sense for me

01:07:35.400 | that I'm sending you to the right person,

01:07:38.240 | not because the check's gonna be big enough.

01:07:40.520 | And you know, so yeah.

01:07:42.000 | - And as long as the listeners,

01:07:44.000 | I mean, and the important thing is

01:07:45.900 | that they're paying you up front.

01:07:47.400 | And I think all service providers

01:07:49.160 | should always be paid up front.

01:07:50.800 | You can provide some level of information

01:07:52.600 | as kind of a getting to know you,

01:07:54.020 | but listeners who sign up for your consulting packages,

01:07:56.280 | they're paying you up front.

01:07:57.600 | And so as such, you have an incentive to go ahead

01:07:59.920 | and help them to the extent of you can

01:08:01.420 | with the consulting work.

01:08:03.320 | And then also, if you need to send them to somebody,

01:08:06.040 | then that can be helpful.

01:08:07.000 | And there's no kind of backdoor,

01:08:09.200 | behind the scenes stuff going on.

01:08:10.920 | It's straightforward and clear.

01:08:12.880 | - That's correct.

01:08:13.720 | - So those are the three things.

01:08:15.000 | Sign up for Jay's Student Loan Show.

01:08:16.560 | Listen to that.

01:08:17.400 | If you're interested in his podcast,

01:08:19.240 | check out studentloanshow.com/radical.

01:08:22.280 | And you'll find links to,

01:08:23.800 | with a special offer for listeners

01:08:25.360 | of the Radical Personal Finance podcast.

01:08:27.200 | And then listeners can consume your content.

01:08:29.240 | And if they need to go deeper,

01:08:30.080 | they can get in touch with your law firm through that.

01:08:32.600 | Anything else, Jay,

01:08:33.420 | that you'd like to make sure people know about

01:08:34.680 | as we kick this sponsorship off?

01:08:37.240 | - Tell your friends.

01:08:38.720 | - Exactly.

01:08:39.560 | - Student loans are not a death sentence.

01:08:42.860 | And if you face them head on,

01:08:44.440 | and you understand your options,

01:08:46.240 | you're gonna be able to sleep better at night.

01:08:48.080 | And you're not gonna look at it as this albatross

01:08:51.840 | that's gonna hang around your neck

01:08:52.960 | for the rest of your life.

01:08:53.800 | 'Cause it's just not the way that it is.

01:08:55.640 | - And one idea that comes to mind,

01:08:56.920 | I didn't think of this as we launched this here

01:08:58.480 | before the holidays.

01:08:59.340 | But if you wanna give a gift of Jay's consultations,

01:09:03.960 | that might be a good gift.

01:09:05.000 | Many of you who listen to this show,

01:09:07.420 | you guys are nerds, financial nerds.

01:09:09.320 | I mean, you gotta be to listen to me

01:09:10.400 | rattle on for an hour a day.

01:09:11.800 | So you guys are not normal people.

01:09:14.320 | And I say that with a firmly compliment.

01:09:16.680 | I'm not normal either.

01:09:18.320 | But what that means is that you know a lot of people

01:09:20.600 | who are often struggling.

01:09:22.000 | And so some of the strategies and ideas here,

01:09:24.680 | many people have student loans.

01:09:26.560 | Maybe those people are not gonna go ahead

01:09:28.360 | and get on the financial independence

01:09:29.800 | in five years bandwagon.

01:09:31.440 | But, and also many times people who are struggling

01:09:34.240 | or have problems with debt and money,

01:09:37.200 | they're not gonna listen to you

01:09:38.840 | 'cause you're just a friend.

01:09:40.100 | But it's possible that if you wanted to give them a gift,

01:09:42.160 | give them a gift of Jay's consulting services

01:09:44.600 | and let him see if there's something that they can do

01:09:47.720 | that's gonna make a big difference.

01:09:49.240 | And you might be able to give them a 50, 75, $150 gift.

01:09:52.940 | And that might make a difference

01:09:55.280 | in their life of thousands of dollars.

01:09:57.120 | So this might be a really great way

01:09:58.400 | for you to help some friends of yours.

01:10:00.120 | Even if you don't personally have student loans,

01:10:02.020 | it might be a good way for you

01:10:02.860 | to help some friends of yours who do

01:10:04.700 | so that they can save some money overall.

01:10:06.760 | 'Cause I tell you, we do have an epidemic

01:10:09.800 | in this country of student loan debt.

01:10:11.200 | And I hate it.

01:10:12.320 | I despise student loan debt.

01:10:14.840 | And so if you got it, we got it.

01:10:17.520 | I borrowed money when I was in college.

01:10:19.280 | I was one of the fortunate few

01:10:20.640 | that paid it off before I graduated.

01:10:22.060 | Although in retrospect, maybe I sometimes wonder

01:10:24.960 | if that was a good idea.

01:10:25.800 | But at that point I was on the Dave Ramsey plan.

01:10:27.480 | I was getting out of debt no matter what.

01:10:29.520 | (laughing)

01:10:30.480 | So at any rate, it's done and done.

01:10:33.600 | But if we have the debt,

01:10:35.800 | we can work through it and get it squared away.

01:10:38.180 | So Jay, thanks so much for coming on.

01:10:40.040 | Thank you for sponsoring this show.

01:10:41.680 | I'm excited about this.

01:10:42.840 | - And so am I.

01:10:43.920 | - I look forward to a long

01:10:45.000 | and profitable business relationship with you

01:10:47.400 | on both of our ends. - And so do I.

01:10:48.720 | Yeah, it's gonna be great.

01:10:50.240 | Thanks for letting me be a sponsor.

01:10:53.160 | I know that you don't take everybody.

01:10:55.080 | And look, this is a great show

01:10:57.600 | and I am so pleased to be a part of it

01:11:00.120 | in any way that I can be.

01:11:01.340 | So thanks for that, Joshua.

01:11:02.680 | - Hope you enjoyed that and I hope you learned.

01:11:06.480 | And now I would just simply encourage you to take action.

01:11:09.640 | And remember, there's those three things

01:11:11.200 | that I'd like you to do.

01:11:12.120 | Number one, subscribe to the Student Loan Show podcast.

01:11:16.080 | Jay does a really good job with that podcast.

01:11:18.320 | It's very focused and he's an expert in that area.

01:11:21.880 | So if you have any interest at all in student loans

01:11:23.800 | or you wanna learn about strategies

01:11:25.480 | or you have student loan questions, go and do that.

01:11:28.280 | And I think you'll enjoy the content.

01:11:31.300 | You can find it in iTunes

01:11:32.560 | or probably in whatever podcatching program you use

01:11:34.880 | to listen to it or on his website.

01:11:36.860 | And check out episode 31.

01:11:38.080 | That was the episode that we referenced

01:11:40.520 | with the owner of the brothel, a man named Dennis Hoff

01:11:44.400 | who owns a number of brothels,

01:11:46.440 | including the Moonlight Bunny Ranch out in Nevada

01:11:49.000 | and how he's offering discounts to his employees,

01:11:52.800 | the girls that work for him.

01:11:54.320 | He's offering a matching program

01:11:55.840 | where he's paying for their student loans.

01:11:57.760 | Very interesting, very interesting perspectives.

01:11:59.680 | Number one, subscribe to the Student Loan Show.

01:12:02.040 | Number two, go to, if you have student loans

01:12:04.640 | or if you know somebody who has student loans,

01:12:06.240 | go to studentloanshow.com/radical

01:12:09.400 | and you'll find there that special discount link.

01:12:11.760 | If you use that code, he, knocking $25 off

01:12:15.440 | the review by email where it's normally 75 bucks

01:12:19.800 | and at this point in time, he's offering it for 50 bucks.

01:12:23.160 | So a $25 discount for listeners of the show.

01:12:25.600 | But use that link, studentloanshow.com/radical.

01:12:28.440 | And then you can see there the other options

01:12:30.680 | if you have further detailed needs.

01:12:32.900 | And he'll offer, he'll apply that money

01:12:35.760 | over towards those other packages as well.

01:12:38.120 | And then if you have need for attorney services

01:12:40.600 | and you have questions on bankruptcy or student loans,

01:12:43.360 | reach out to him with that.

01:12:44.400 | You can easily email him on the show

01:12:47.000 | or connect with him through the consultation

01:12:49.760 | and he would be a great resource for you with that.

01:12:52.720 | As I'm sure that you heard from the content,

01:12:55.700 | there's a lot of different options.

01:12:57.420 | And if you've got questions,

01:12:58.680 | if you're going through bankruptcy,

01:12:59.760 | if you're in a difficult place,

01:13:01.160 | especially as regards student loans,

01:13:02.640 | Jay would be a good guy to reach out to.

01:13:04.000 | Hey, he's the one who's teaching all the other attorneys.

01:13:07.060 | (laughs)

01:13:08.040 | Why not work with the person

01:13:09.100 | who's teaching all the other attorneys if you can?

01:13:11.920 | And if not, then you can work with some of the attorneys

01:13:14.000 | that he's taught.

01:13:15.080 | So check out that information.

01:13:16.280 | And Jay, thanks for sponsoring the show.

01:13:17.920 | I'm really proud of this sponsorship.

01:13:19.600 | I've gotten some questions from some of you guys

01:13:21.200 | about how am I doing the sponsors.

01:13:22.800 | What I've been working to do on Radical Personal Finance,

01:13:25.000 | when I do a sponsor, I don't want you,

01:13:27.520 | on a podcast, you can always skip commercials.

01:13:30.080 | That's what's cool about podcasting.

01:13:31.440 | So I don't see any point in playing

01:13:34.240 | irrelevant commercials for you.

01:13:36.760 | At some point, who knows, maybe I'll do it at some point,

01:13:39.040 | but I don't intend to.

01:13:40.920 | Rather, I want you to gain as much value from the sponsors

01:13:44.320 | and from the commercials as even you do

01:13:46.120 | from the normal content of the show.

01:13:47.880 | That's my goal.

01:13:48.960 | Now, whether or not I can execute and complete that goal,

01:13:51.660 | that remains to be seen.

01:13:52.880 | You're the judge.

01:13:53.840 | But that's what I'm working on.

01:13:54.740 | I don't want you to have to feel like

01:13:56.280 | you've got to skip every time when I talk about a sponsor.

01:13:58.760 | So Jay is a perfect example of somebody

01:14:01.040 | who can serve a subset of you in the listening audience.

01:14:04.920 | And I'm really thankful that he agreed to sponsor the show.

01:14:09.760 | And then there are other people similar to him,

01:14:12.420 | or I want to bring on other consultants

01:14:14.320 | and things like that who can use

01:14:16.840 | the Radical Personal Finance platform,

01:14:18.440 | and they can go and provide for you

01:14:20.600 | the individual services that you need.

01:14:23.200 | So if you've got student loans, connect with Jay.

01:14:25.320 | Thank you all so much for listening to today's show.

01:14:27.320 | I really, really appreciate each and every one of you.

01:14:29.120 | I appreciate your support.

01:14:30.840 | I'm working hard to make the show better for you.

01:14:33.640 | I hope you can see that.

01:14:35.080 | I had a comment from a listener the other day

01:14:37.200 | that just talked about how much better

01:14:38.640 | the show's gotten since episode one.

01:14:40.360 | They referenced some of my early interviews.

01:14:42.480 | They said, Joshua, you've gotten a lot better.

01:14:44.240 | Thank you.

01:14:45.080 | For those of you who've made nice comments like that,

01:14:46.880 | I've been working hard at it.

01:14:48.160 | And obviously got a long ways to go still,

01:14:50.360 | but I am working hard at it.

01:14:51.760 | And that was what I promised in the beginning

01:14:53.240 | was to improve and to do it publicly

01:14:55.760 | so you can see the journey that I'm going through.

01:14:58.880 | If you'd like to support the show directly,

01:15:00.440 | please do that as a patron of the show.

01:15:02.640 | Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:15:05.480 | By the way, if you sign up there at minimum the $10 level,

01:15:08.600 | that gives you access to all of these conference calls

01:15:11.840 | that I've been doing here

01:15:12.680 | in the month of October and November.

01:15:14.400 | And for any of you who have wanted my personal opinion

01:15:16.880 | and feedback on any of your situation,

01:15:18.900 | that has been an absolute steal for you.

01:15:21.760 | We did a call last night on Monday,

01:15:24.080 | and there were a total of three participants

01:15:25.680 | who joined that call.

01:15:26.760 | So all of those three participants were able to get

01:15:30.120 | basically a long period of time with me.

01:15:32.940 | So that's been an absolute steal.

01:15:34.600 | So check that out here during the month of November.

01:15:36.600 | We're doing weekly calls for my role of serving you,

01:15:39.480 | the patrons of the show.

01:15:40.920 | You can find all those details on the Patreon page

01:15:42.640 | at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:15:44.960 | I ran out of music, but I'm done.

RPF0258-Jay_Fleischman_Interview