Today on Radical Personal Finance, we talk student loans, and I introduce you to a brand new sponsor of the show. Today we're gonna talk with Mr. Jay Fleischman, past guest of Radical Personal Finance and host of the Student Loan Show. If you've got student loans or if you know somebody who has student loans, get a pen and a paper because you're gonna need to take some notes.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me today. I am excited to bring you today's interview. This is my dream of the type of sponsor that I wanna bring to you, where it's a value, value, value, value, win, win, win, win, win, win, win.

Today, you're gonna win, Jay's gonna win, and I'm gonna win, and in a moment, I'll tell you how. (upbeat music) As I've been systematically launching new sponsors on the podcast over the last few weeks, you should notice the theme. And the theme that I want you to notice is that these sponsors are actually relevant, relevant to you.

I haven't just gone out and tried to see, well, who's gonna give me a check and tried to collect as big of a check as I could from anyone that I could. Rather, I have specifically chosen individual sponsors who I believe will serve you, the audience. And today's sponsor that I'm introducing, Jay Fleischman, is exactly that type of sponsor.

And you'll hear the whole story in just a moment, but Jay's a past guest on the show and he's got some really great information to share with you today. His other episode was very popular on the show, downloaded at this point almost, I think about 7,000 times so far.

And after this, now lots more people are gonna go back and listen to that show. It was filled with content and information, and today's show is no different. Jay's a really great guy. He, you'll hear in just a moment again, the full story of how this sponsorship came to be.

And make sure you got a pen and paper because you're gonna wanna take some good notes on the content of today's show. And this is an episode that you're gonna wanna share with other people. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this interview with Mr. Jay Fleischman, host of The Student Loan Show.

Jay, welcome back to Radical Personal Finance. - Thanks for having me again, Joshua. - So our previous interview was one of those sleeper interviews that I didn't expect to be quite the hit. When you contacted me originally and said, "Hey, can I come on Radical Personal Finance?" I checked you out and I said, "Okay, fine, "I'll have you on, it sounds interesting." And then in the course of that episode, it was episode 214 if listeners haven't heard it, I learned more in the course of that interview about student loans than I have in a very long time.

And I realized how I feel woefully ignorant now about all the things I didn't know about student loans. And I felt like that interview was just you kind of giving me, how would you say it colloquially, dropping knowledge bombs on me minute after minute after minute. (laughing) And it's been a very popular episode, very highly commented.

And one of the most important things I've heard about it is that it was extremely useful. And so today we've got you back for your reprise appearance and we're gonna be doing two things. Number one, we're gonna be doing another bang up, really valuable interview, but we're also launching you as an official sponsor of Radical Personal Finance.

I'm super excited about that. - Me too. - So for those who haven't heard episode 214, give us the quick two minute elevator pitch on you, what you do and your history and background as it pertains to student loans. - I am a consumer protection attorney and for the past, gosh, three and a half, four years, I have not only been helping student loan borrowers resolve their issues with respect to their higher education debt, but also teaching other lawyers how to do it as well.

So I am partially responsible for training a growing army of student loan resolution attorneys. We help people with federal student loan issues, repayments, default resolution, administrative wage garnishments, tax refund offsets, all of that stuff, as well as private student loans, helping people resolve those issues, whether it's settlement or a lawsuit defense or dealing with debt collectors, really the full range of issues that you might have when you're up at two o'clock in the morning worrying about your student loans.

- I'll tell you, I was just away as we record this on, we're actually recording on a Monday, November 9th. I just spent the weekend away visiting some friends up in Melbourne at their beach house. And these are friends of my wife and I who are similar in age.

And we got into the topic of student loans. And what's incredible, on the way back in the car, I was asking my wife and I said, "Do you know anybody in our age bracket "who's really happy with their college, "I'll just say expenses?" And we were talking about it.

And I know some people who are happy with their college experience. They had a good time, they partied a lot. I know some people who are happy with their college degree. It opened doors to them. But almost all of our friends whose college experience is still following them down the road in the form of their student loans, it's amazing how much they loathe and detest this debt.

And so you got your work cut out for you in the population at large. - Yeah, it's really a great way to turn a party into a downer experience. You just mentioned student loans and then suddenly the music goes off and the lights go dim and everybody gets sad about it.

But you're absolutely right. There's so much out there. It's well over a trillion dollars. The average student loan debt is, I believe now it's at $34,000 on average per graduate, which is just enormous. The amount of default is just off the charts. Overall, the number is one in three student loans are in default or past due.

And that includes the ones that are not currently in repayment because so many people, what they do is they'll come out of school and they'll put themselves into a forbearance. Or I actually know a lot of people that have gone back to school, to a community college, to an online college, just to take enough credits so that they don't come out of their in-school deferment on their student loans.

And so of course, they're racking up more debt while just because they don't want to, they don't have the ability to pay back the existing debt. So it's hamsters on wheels. - In theory, can you do that into perpetuity, defer the loans by just continually taking classes? - In theory, yes.

And as I said, there are a large number of people who do it because when you are in school, your federal student loans go into an automatic in-school deferment. Your private student loans, a lot of them do have limits on how long you can defer. It's as if the banks are onto the game and so they want to cut that short.

But even in those cases, you could roll this thing for a decade or better. - It's an interesting strategy. And the only problem with the plan of doing it into perpetuity, I think of myself as a lifelong learner. So I like the idea, oh, if I had $100,000 of student loan debt, maybe I'll just continually take classes and study things that I care about.

But the problem is you're subject to just a simple stroke of the pen and some rule changes and things could change. But at the moment, it's kind of an interesting angle. Well, I'm excited about the process of what we have planned in today's interview because basically what I want us to do is try to give away as much knowledge as you have as I can pump out of you.

And we're doing this to launch your sponsorship. So there's always gonna be, we'll talk at the end about how people can work with you personally if that's right for them. But before that, I'm gonna try to get everything out of you possible. And the theme that I want us to focus on is the process of planning for what to do with student loans.

So let's assume that here I am, I've graduated from college or it doesn't matter if I've graduated, I've got student loans. And I give you a call and I say, "Dear Jay, I know you're a real knowledgeable expert "in this area, I've got student loans. "What is the very first thing that I need to do "and look at to figure out what on earth "I should be doing with these things?" - Okay, the process is, as I'm sure you can imagine, it's like a flight of stairs.

There are a number of steps that are involved. And the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to pull your FSA information, that's Federal Student Aid, that is directly through the US Department of Education. You should have received a username and a PIN when you first applied for, when you first filled out your FAFSA.

You get a student, you get a username and a PIN. And that's been transitioned to a username and password, I guess, because people are so much more used to having usernames and passwords online than just four-digit PINs. So what you want to do is you want to go to studentloans.gov, that is the US Department of Education's website.

And if you don't have a username and password, it will walk you through the process of transitioning from the username and PIN system into the username and password. Once you've got that, you can log into the system. It is called the NSLDS system. And what that is is a repository of all of your federally guaranteed and federally issued student loans.

And that's useful because what you want to do is you want to have a sense of which loans you have that are federal and which ones aren't. Now, all of your federal student loans are going to be there. Your federal Perkins loans, your Staffords, your field loans, all of that's going to be there.

And it's going to give you a lot of information about the date of issuance, the original balance, the current balance principle, as well as interest, as well as the interest rate. And beyond that, it'll give you the information on who your current servicer is, which is important because the servicer is the entity that is sending you bills that you're sending money to or not if you're in default, the entity that you're sending money to, and the entity that you're going to deal with when it comes to restructuring the payments to the extent that you're able to do so.

So those are your federal student loans. Now, this system came into effect in the '90s. So there are some really old loans, like if you've been a borrower since, say, the '70s, some of the really old loans may not be there because they were manually hand-coded. So if you've got a really old loan, you may be missing one, but for the most part, all the Fed loans are going to be there.

So once you've got that access and once you've got that information that you can readily pull off of the system, you want to be able to take a look at your private student loans. Private student loans have nothing to do with the federal government. They're issued by private banks.

There's a private promissory note. There are no federal programs involved, and they're treated exactly like any other private bank loan that you may get, with one notable exception, they were for an educational purpose. So in order to find out information about that, that gets a little bit trickier. You should take a look at your credit report.

That's always going to give you the first step of information. And then if looking at that credit report doesn't look complete or doesn't look familiar or the names are off, because that will often happen, what you may want to do is you may want to go back to the school that you attended, go to the Bursar's office, and have them provide you with the information about who it is that you borrowed the money from originally, because they'll have the information because they're the ones that got the money.

So that's going to be really your first step, figuring out what you've got on the table to deal with. What's federal, what's private. We got that so far? We good? - Why is this distinction between federal and private so important? - Okay, because federal student loans come with a number of repayment options, and they also come with a number of options with respect to getting yourself out of default.

And when you've got those options, for example, repayment options, there are now nine, I think. Okay, I'm going to count them down because I know them better just by rattling them off. There is a standard repayment agreement, which is a 10-year repayment option, pay the exact same amount every month.

You've got a graduated payment option, which is the payments start low, and then every two years they bump up, again, like another flight of stairs. There's an extended payment option that will take you out to, depending on your loan, either 25 or 30 years. Flat repayment, same payment every month.

There is graduated extended, which is just like graduated, starts low, goes up every two years, but for the fact that it goes up every two years for the extended period of time. Then you've got your income-based options. You've got income-based repayment, which allows you to repay 15% of your disposable income every year for a period of 25 years.

At the end of that, there is a discharge of the unpaid balance. There's income contingent repayment, which is kind of like income-based repayment, but it's for primarily, at this point, parent plus loans, which don't qualify for income-based repayment. There's pay as you earn, which caps payments at 10% of adjusted gross income for 20 years for new borrowers only.

There's new income-based repayment. Does your head hurt yet? - I'm at nine. (laughing) Okay, keep going. - There's new income-based repayment, which is just like pay as you earn, but it is 10% for 20 years for only newer direct loans. And now, coming in December 2015, depending upon when you're listening to this, it may already be in effect, there is revised pay as you earn, which expands pay as you earn to every single direct loan borrower, which is great, caps it at 10% of your disposable income, which is great if you don't make a lot of money, because revised pay as you earn does not cap your payments.

Under income-based repayment, under income contingent repayment, under the original pay as you earn, and under new income-based repayment, new IBR, your payments are capped at the amount that would be due under a 10-year standard repayment plan. Under revised pay as you earn, there is no cap. So if you make $2 million a year, your payment is 10% of $2 million a year.

Whereas under income-based repayment, and under the old pay as you earn system, your payments are capped at whatever the payment would be for a 10-year repayment cycle. - Interesting. - There are some other nuances as well. For example, under income-based repayment, if you are married but file taxes separately, your payments are only based upon your disposable income and your family size.

So let's say it's you and, Joshua, let's say it's you and your wife, and let's say you've got five kids. You and your wife file taxes separately. You don't make a lot of money. She makes a ton of money. You file taxes separately. Income-based repayment is going to, your monthly payment is going to be based upon your income, your disposable income only.

However, it's going to be based upon a family size of seven, you, your wife, and your five kids. In spite of the fact that your wife is filing separately, and you may even be loading all five kids onto her tax return for the purposes of deductibility, under revised pay-as-you-earn, we look at yours and hers, whether you file together or not, and we use the family size of seven.

So under revised pay-as-you-earn, you pay more money if you're married, if your spouse makes a lot of money, or if you get into revised pay-as-you-earn, and then you don't change your repayment, and then you start making a lot of money. So it's a lot more complicated. How many did we get?

Did we get nine? - We got 10, 10. - We got 10. - Yeah. - All right, great. So there are 10 repayment options for federals. There is consolidation options for federals. You can consolidate your federal student loans under the U.S. Department of Education's Direct Loan Program. You can also refinance privately.

That's absolutely fine. There are a number of great ways to do that. But if you consolidate under the Direct Loan Program, you retain the ability to utilize all of these repayment options. If you refinance through a private bank, even though it may be better rates, better terms, you're not going to have the availability of those repayment options.

Also, if you go into default, there are ways to get out of default of your federal loans. There's rehabilitation, making nine monthly payments over a 10-month period of time based upon what's called a reasonable and affordable formula, which is the same as IBR, which is 15% of your disposable income.

You can also rehabilitate. So you can rehabilitate your way out of default. You can also consolidate your way out of default. That's federal student loans only. None of those programs, and I do mean none of those programs, exist for private student loans, none of them. - Is there a way for a borrower who has private student loans outstanding to transition any of that debt over to federal student loans?

- No, I wish that there were. There are a number of, there's always rumblings in Congress, but there are invariably bills getting put down in front of Congress to try to get that to happen. But I don't see that as being in the cards, 'cause then what you're really talking about is you're talking about the federal government taking the burden off of the private banks.

And that's, talk about a bailout, that would be enormous. It would be a great win for borrowers, but I think that we would probably see a taxpayer revolt if that happened. - So you've printed off the reports, you've gotten details on the loans. Back to our steps of the process of planning.

Now what? - Now we're gonna focus solely on the private loans, just for a minute. The first thing that you wanna do with respect to the private loans, you wanna get copies of the promissory notes that you originally signed, because you wanna know what it is that you're up against.

You wanna understand what the terms of those notes are. You want to determine whether or not you've got a guarantor on the loan. 'Cause if you've got a guarantor on the loan and you fall behind, not only do you take a credit hit, and not only are you subject to collection activities, but so is the guarantor.

Most people think that if they've got a guarantor or a cosigner on a loan, that's just a signature. But it's not. A guarantor or a cosigner on a loan means that you, as well as that other person, are both 100% legally liable for repayment of that debt. And if you go past due, you're gonna get phone calls, they're gonna get phone calls.

If you get sued, you're going to have to defend the case, they're going to have to defend the case. You can have a judgment against you, they can have a judgment against them. And especially if that guarantor has assets, has a house, has a bank account, has investments, that may be subject to enforcement, to execution.

They could take it, depending upon what your state law says about enforcement of judgments. So you want to be able to have a sense of who else, who else is gonna be impacted by whatever decision you come to. And you want to be able to have a conversation with that person to let them know.

Because very often, a parent or a grandparent who's cosigned, they figure they're out of it. They signed. What a lot of people think is, I signed for the loan so that they would see that my credit was good. My credit got the loan, but that's where my involvement ends.

And that's just not the case. So you want to know who else is gonna be involved here. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you want to be able to take a look at what the terms of the note are. Do you have a fixed rate? Do you have a variable rate?

When does that rate adjust? How does it adjust? What's the mechanism? What sort of notification do they have to provide to you? That promissory note is also going to give you an indication of what you may be able to do if you've got a guarantor, what you may be able to do to get that guarantor off of the loan.

A lot of promissory notes, what I've seen is there's an indication that you can get the guarantor off. But if you have been late at any time on that loan within the first 24 months of repayment, a lender will automatically not entertain a guarantor release. It doesn't matter what you do.

It doesn't matter how long you've been good with them. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. If you were late within the first 24 months, you're out. And late does not just mean my payment was due and I didn't make the payment. It means also to some lenders, my payment was due and I called them up and asked them to put me on an interest only plan or to give me another forbearance.

So a lot of borrowers step into that without even realizing that they're stepping into it. Another big thing is if you've got a guarantor, especially a lot of these loans will go into automatic default if either you or the guarantor dies, files for bankruptcy. Those are the two big things.

So if you're a borrower and you're making your payments on a regular basis and let's say your grandma co-signed for you, grandma dies, that loan goes into default automatically. - That seems a little bit, is that a loop? That doesn't make any sense. Is there a logical reason why that should be the case?

- (sighs) Banks. (laughing) - One sigh can tell the whole story. Okay, moving on. (laughing) - Exactly. No, I think the real reason is in the case of one of the borrowers dying, the loan becomes a debt of the estate. So if grandma dies-- - They wanna make a claim on the estate.

- Yeah, they have to make a claim on the estate. They don't know how much they're gonna get and that's the same thing in a bankruptcy context as well. So you wanna know what it is that you're potentially gonna be up against there. There are a number of other things that you wanna take a look at.

You wanna find out what sort of notice requirements there are. There's one really neat thing that I have found in a lot of private student loan promissory notes that I never hear spoken about. The student loan, and this goes to the ability of the private student loan company to sue you.

There is something called a statute of limitations, a time period within which the lender has to file legal action against you. And that is always going to be state-based. So it depends upon where you are and what your state law is. But in most places, it begins to run from the date that you fail to make a payment.

So the day that your payment goes past you. A lot of times, and I don't know if you know anybody who's got student loans who has tried to go into a forbearance with their lender. Most of the time, they'll call the lender and they'll say, "Hey, can you give me "a little bit of time?" Lender says, "Yeah, no problem.

"We'll give you another three months "or six months or a year," or whatever it is. Or, "We're gonna change the terms." That's always done by phone. That's never done by writing. Maybe the lender will send you out a letter, but there's never anything in writing. You never sign anything.

They don't co-sign it to change the terms of the agreement. In so many of these private student loan promissory notes, there is a clause that says, "If the loan terms change at all, "it's gotta be done in writing." And there are some state laws that require that as well.

And that could make a big difference to somebody who went into deferment for a year and then didn't make payments for another five years, and there's a six-year statute of limitations. Then becomes, when did it start running? Well, there was never any alteration of the terms of the contract in writing, and therefore, it would start when the payment was missed, not when that new forbearance ended.

And that's an argument that you just wanna be able to know because you want to know how long they have to file a lawsuit against you if it comes to that. So that's what you wanna look at on the private student loans. On the federal student loans, your second step is you wanna take a look at what your current income is because your income enables you to look at all of the repayment options that may be available to you.

Your income is going to be what's going to qualify you for income-based repayment or the original pays you earn because in order to qualify to get into those programs, not to stay in those programs, to get into those programs, you must have an income that is insufficient to cover your 10-year repayment amount.

So you've gotta be able to see what your income is to be able to determine whether or not you may have the ability to get into one of those federal student loan repayment programs. - Okay. - I think that's where we are. And what I'm talking about is not if you are in default.

Not if you are in default. It's I'm in repayment and here's where I am. But jumping off on the income option, your next step is if you're married, you wanna sit down with your tax professional and you want to determine what the tax difference is going to be based upon a variety of factors.

If we file jointly, how much do we get back or how much do we owe at the end of the year? If we file separately and let's say my spouse gets the kids' deductions, I get the mortgage deduction if we're homeowners or vice versa, or my spouse gets everything and I get nothing or vice versa, how does that impact the amount of money that we're gonna have to pay at the end of the year or the amount of money that we get back at the end of the year?

Because then you get to look at what your federal student loan repayment options are going to be in relation to the difference in the tax hit. Because if you're saving 200 bucks a month on your federal student loan repayment, but you're going to have to pay another, on average of $400 a month to cover your tax nut at the end of the year, well, it doesn't make sense, right?

- Right, right. - Right, and vice versa is true as well. So you want to be able to determine which way is going to be financially better for me depending upon what my repayment option's gonna be on the feds. From there, see, this is multiple steps. From there, what you want to do is look at what your employment options are.

This is really important because depending upon your employment situation, you may have options for federal student loan forgiveness. The big one is public service loan forgiveness. That's the one that everybody talks about. If you are employed full-time by federal, state, municipal government, or 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organizations, and you are a direct loan borrower, and you are on an income-dependent repayment option, that's IBR, ICR, pay-as-you-earn, or now revised pay-as-you-earn, after having made 120 on-time monthly payments while full-time employed with one of those employers, the unpaid balance is not just discharged, but is forgiven, and there's a big difference there.

Forgiveness does not come with a tax bill. Discharge comes with a 1099 forgiveness of debt statement at the end of the year and may subject you to income taxes. - Yeah, that is the one that angers people more than anything else. What was the word you said? Not forgiven, but discharged.

When the debt is discharged, the amount of the debt that's discharged, let's say you've negotiated with the creditor and they've discharged $50,000 of debt, at the end of the year, you're gonna get a 1099 for $50,000 of income, and that, my friends, is what we call the lovely phantom income, income on which you owe taxes, but you have not received any money, and that can really put a hurting on you at tax time.

So the fact that it is forgiven, not discharged, is a big deal. - Exactly, and when it comes to IBR, when it comes to income-based repayment and the original pay as you earn, you could theoretically, and in most cases, you're negatively amortizing your loan. Your payment isn't covering your interest.

And so what happens is, over the 20 or 25-year period of time, your loan, it's like a snowball, but a bad snowball. It's an avalanche. You go from your $80,000 student loan and you think you're in great shape because you're paying 20 bucks a month on them. Well, by the end of the 20 or 25 years, your 80 grand is gonna be like two and change more.

You're gonna owe a lot of money, and all of that's gonna get forgiven, and then in the mail, you're gonna get that 1099. Now, revised pay as you earn is a little bit different than that because 50% of the interest that accrues is automatically taken off the table, so you're not gonna negatively amortize in quite the same fashion or to quite the same extent.

But again, you've gotta play with those numbers. And a lot of people have said, well, that's a disincentive to getting married. - Mm-hmm. - And I'm not sure that I disagree with that. I think that when it's IBR or it's the old pay as you earn, you say, well, we'll just file separately and that's fine, and what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours, and that doesn't matter whether it's a community property state or what's called an equitable distribution state.

It's always what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine because you're filing taxes separately. If you're opting for revised pay as you earn, then you really have to, you've gotta think hard about this. - Right. - So that's your next step. There's public service loan forgiveness. There are certain federal agencies that have loan repayment options and loan forgiveness options.

There's Veteran Affairs, there's Department of Defense, there's Department of Justice, there's Immigration. All of these agencies have certain loan repayment and loan forgiveness plans in place that you wanna look at your options because if you're well-educated, if you've got a diverse range of skills, you may elect to go into one of these employment situations that's going to get you out of the loan.

And by the way, with respect to public service loan forgiveness, it is employer-based, not job-based. So most hospitals, for example, are 501(c)(3) not-for-profits. So public service loan forgiveness would work for everybody from the overnight janitor all the way up to the chief of neurosurgery in the hospital. Everybody who's employed by that 501(c)(3) is going to be able to benefit potentially from public service loan forgiveness.

- And if you don't work for a 501(c)(3), you can always sign up and start working at the Bunny Ranch, right? With your recent podcast interview. (laughing) I listened to your interview with the guy who, that was the name of his show, the guy who owns all the brothels in Nevada, Bunny Ranch, and now he does matching dollars for all of his employees, all the prostitutes who work for him, he does matching dollars for them towards their student loans.

So there's always that as a backup plan, right? - Exactly, exactly. - Just trying to throw you off your game here. - That was a crazy show. And you listened to his show. He was hysterical. - He was. - But beyond that, he really understands this stuff. Agree or disagree with his business itself, he's got a really good understanding of what it is that people are up against and exactly how the system operates.

And that was the part that blew my mind. I mean, look, I know that there are other reasons why an employer would want to do that. The press was amazing for him, but just beyond that, the guy really understood this stuff. It blew my mind. - Yeah. Sorry to throw you off your game.

I couldn't resist, though, after listening to that interview that you did. It was a fascinating thing. You take one of the world's oldest professions, prostitutions, and you mix in some of the newest and weirdest laws and economic financial realities, and you have an interesting business that that man is running.

- No kidding. - Interesting. On the 501(c)(3), I think to emphasize on a serious note, to emphasize what you just said, that it's employer-based, not job-based, that is huge. Because I think that many listeners could, if only that little bit of information were to be the case, that could make a world of difference.

Because if you take a skill set that you have and a financial situation that you have, and you go out on the marketplace, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations have to compete with for-profit corporations for employees. So many times, they might have competitive wages. They might have different perk benefits, things that in some ways are even better than for-profits.

And if you have substantial student loan debt, and if you can get involved in one of these repayment plans that will serve you more than paying off the debt, that can be huge. And here'd be the example, two things that I'll give and let you comment on them. Number one, a number of years ago, I was involved in a philanthropy course for a designation called a CAP designation, Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy.

And as I went through these courses, I did it in a local study group. And one of the things that blew my mind is I had been one in the past who would share these memes about, well, the CEO Goodwill makes $767,000 a year, so therefore you shouldn't take your money to Goodwill, or you shouldn't support the breast cancer organization because the CEO makes $2 million a year.

And I still like some of those arguments. I don't wanna support some of those other organizations, but I no longer necessarily disqualify a non-profit organization simply because the CEO makes a million or $2 million a year. And I realized that if I were on the board of the directors, it's not a matter of a simple six-figure number.

The question is, is this CEO effectively advancing the causes of our organization? And that's the point that an organization like the Susan G. Komen Foundation or the American Heart Association, this is a massive company, and so they need in some ways to attract a high-level, extremely skillful CEO. And money is going to be one part of that.

And I realized that that can be filtered down at other levels. If you are, for example, a talented salesperson, you can put your talents to use in selling life insurance for a life insurance company. And you can also put your talents to use as a development officer at a local non-profit organization that you care for.

And depending on how your compensation is structured, you can do quite well for yourself honing and developing those sales skills at either organization. And when you factor in the impact that you can make on your student loans, that idea alone can really serve, I would say, a good number of people in my audience.

- Yeah, I agree completely. I think that when you understand that it is employer-based, it cracks open your universe in so many different ways because you're still looking at your financial reasons for taking a job, but your financial reasons become larger than just what your immediate paycheck is. And that's really what, that's what public service loan forgiveness is all about.

It was designed to make it more attractive for somebody to do good, to do good work. I mean, look at it this way. And this actually happened to me, I don't know, two, three months ago. I was on the phone with somebody who is a neurosurgeon, and that's why I now say the chief of neurosurgery.

Neurosurgeon coming out of residency at a county hospital. And they said to me, "Okay, well, I don't make "a lot of money now. "I've got all of these federal student loans, "but I don't think income-based repayment's gonna work "for me because next year I'm gonna be done "with my residency, and I'm gonna look "to go into private practice." I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, "that's probably not your best idea." They said, "Well, but I'm gonna go from like $70,000 "to 200 and some odd." It was some ridiculous amount of money that they were gonna jump.

I said, "Well, wait a minute, you've been in this residency "for I think it was seven years." I said, "If you stay three more years, "you'll qualify for public service loan forgiveness. "You're not gonna make as much money "for the last three years of being there, "but you'll qualify for public service loan forgiveness." And I ended my part of the conversation at that point.

And the woman said to me, "Really? "Well, that's great because I would love "to be able to stay here because there's a shortage "of good people outside of the teaching level "who are actually doing this on a day-to-day basis "for patients, and I could do a world of good." And the only reason why I was gonna leave in the first place was because of the student loans, but now that I know that I don't have to leave because of the student loans, I can do the things that I want to do, and I thought that was really telling.

- It is, and this is the core of even just the whole approach of radical personal finance is use everything at your disposal to create the ideal lifestyle. And an extra $100,000 of income is not always a good thing if it impedes your lifestyle. Now, if you can create lifestyle in such a way that it's gonna be exactly what you're looking for and you can make an extra $100,000 of income, go for it.

But when you start looking at this, you can put together a package, whether it's working in a lower-stress environment. I mean, face it, schools, non-profit environments, they are lower-stress, more fun, and easier, government organizations, easier places to work than for-profit enterprises. There is, in the aggregate, there are individual exceptions, but in the aggregate, they're easier places to work.

There's not as much pressure to the bottom line. There's not as much pressure on the employees. And so for some people who aren't highly competitive, who wanna just simply kinda do what they need to do to fulfill the requirements of their job and continue on, this is gonna create a much better lifestyle than going into a highly competitive market where you gotta work, work, work to earn the extra money, and now you turn around and send half of it to the taxman and half of it to the student loan company.

So look at employment in terms of a comprehensive package and look at it in the context of all of the benefits across the board, and this is a big, big deal. Let's continue on with the checklist here that we're laying out for people, 'cause I wanna wrap up this checklist in about five or 10 minutes, and then spend the last 10 or 15 minutes of the interview talking about services and approaches.

After this, what's next if somebody wants to do it themselves? - Next thing that you wanna look to is, we're gonna go back to the private student loans, because the private student loans tend to be a lot more difficult for people to get a handle on. Your private student loans, if you can get your cosigner or guarantor off the note, then you wanna be able to set yourself up to do that.

And in large measure, that's going to involve your credit, it's going to involve your income, and you wanna know what it is that you're gonna need to do. So you wanna talk to your servicer about that. You may wanna look at refinancing, depending upon what kind of terms that you can get.

There are a number of companies out there that do it, so you may wanna look to see if there's a way to restructure your private student loans by refinancing through a private bank. Beyond that, if you are in default or in danger of going into default, call your servicer, ask them what they've got available.

Sometimes they may have something, most of the times they don't. But you really wanna know what your options are. Once you go into default, and this is, I know you wanna wrap it up, but I gotta go on like a five minute rant here. - Go for it, go for it.

- Okay, there are all of these companies that are coming out saying, "We can settle your private student loans "for 50 cents on the dollar, including our fees, "and all of the private student loans are fraudulent, "they're terrible, there's no way, "they can't prove the loan," and they go on and on and on and on.

First of all, these are all of the same companies that were doing credit counseling a decade ago, then they were doing debt settlement nine years ago, then they were doing mortgage modifications for the past couple of years, and now that the mortgage mod market has dried up or become highly regulated, now they're all going back into debt settlement and doing student loan work.

A lot of them are doing, A, getting you into new loans with new lenders on even worse terms and getting their legal fees, which are an enormous percentage of that loan from that new lender. The way that they're doing the debt settlement is they're making you promises that they can't keep.

Anytime anybody guarantees anything, you really need to be suspicious of it, 'cause nobody can guarantee something that they don't have control over. That having been said, private student loans settle. They settle a lot. They settle at extreme discounts, depending upon the loan, who actually owns it, because they're all bundled together and turned into securities and very complex financial instruments.

But it all depends upon how old the loan is, how badly the rest of their portfolio is doing, and when you hit them. If you are in default or know that you're gonna go into default, what your step is, you've gotta start bankrolling money. You've gotta start throwing, even if it's 50 bucks a month, you've gotta do something.

Throw money on a regular basis into a savings account that is unattached to your checking account, because at some point, you are going to have an opportunity to resolve that loan for an amount of money that is less than what you currently owe, and you get a far better deal if there's cash at the door.

If you can throw money on the table day one, you're gonna get a far better deal. Now, your deal's not gonna come right away. You've gotta be really far behind. I'm not talking about 30 or 60 or 90 days. I'm talking about a year, two years, three years. You've gotta be way behind.

But if you can't make the payment and keep food on your plate and a roof over your head, you've gotta do what you've gotta do. And so, that's really gonna be your last step until you get to the litigation stage or whether bankruptcy's gonna be an option or any of those things.

But you want to know that you've got some money sitting in your back pocket, so if somebody comes to you with a decent deal, you can afford to pay it. And last but not least, you don't need to hire anybody to do a debt settlement for you. There is nobody, nobody, who's got an in with the company or knows the right people or has the right relationships.

That's sales and that's only gonna cost you money and it's not gonna save you anything in terms of your settlement. - Got it. I think that's really valuable to talk through and this is why, so I wanna transition here to just talking about your sponsorship. This is why I am so excited to have you on the show because, so the way that we got to talking about sponsorship was that I had you on the show, we did the interview, and then when I was up at FinCon, you mentioned to me that some of my listeners had called you and that you've been able to help some people and you've been able to make some money, serve some clients, and you said, "Hey, let's talk about sponsorship." And immediately I knew that this was exactly the fit that I've been looking for of how to bring sponsors on because you are a subject matter expert and what I believe, if I were still working as a face-to-face financial advisor, every single one of my clients who had student loans, I would send to you because this is the way that we should work with professionals where we should talk to professionals and find out exactly what the options are.

And if you do a review for them or if it costs them 100 or 200 bucks, however much your initial, and we'll talk about that in a moment, but however much your initial packages run for people, then knowing just the idea of, hey, why don't you leave this $50,000 job at a for-profit company that you don't like, move into a $50,000 job at a not-for-profit company that you do like, learning a skill that you want to learn, this will allow you to help have your student loans paid down using a repayment plan while you enhance your expertise and credibility and serve this cause that you really care about, become a world-class employee in X skill, and then after the loans are taken care of, you'll be able to transition back to the for-profit world and you'll have spent that time building that skill set where you can now switch from 50,000 bucks of income to $250,000 of income and you've had a better experience along the way.

One idea like that is incredible, has incredible options, and so, but it's really hard, you know, for me, I'm a generalist in most things and I have a little bit of general knowledge. I can't have, I'm so confused about the 10 repayment plans that you said. I wouldn't even know where to start.

And so this, I believe, is gonna be, I'm hoping that our business relationship is gonna be a long-term scenario, and I believe it's really gonna serve listeners in my show who have student loans to go through and check, and even if they go through and they check on what, on their situation and they find out, oh, okay, there's no magic formula, I just need to pay this thing off, then still, at least you've got the confidence of knowing that that's the right path, and that is such a big thing for people to be aware of, and it's hard to get really good advice on this area because it's not mainstream.

- Right, yeah, absolutely. - And that certainty is what allows you to sleep at night. At least you know where things are going, right? - Right, and I mean, Proverbs says, "In a multitude of counselors, there's wisdom." So I've always believed, get as much input as possible, and I, as an individual, I'm always able to be at the center of my situation and look at all the different options, but I should be getting as much info as possible.

I learned, I'll tell you, one thing I learned in sales when I originally got in the life insurance business, I thought, when I started in the life insurance business, that the easy people to get in front of would be the broke people, and the difficult people to get in front of would be the rich people.

And in general, in any aspect of financial services, you usually want to get in front of the rich people because the rich people can write bigger checks, and you're paid a commission that's based upon the size of the check they're writing, and so you want to get in front of rich people.

Well, what I found was that the broke people, here I am, really just a knowledgeable, caring person wanting to help them with a debt snowball, and to get out of debt and pay off their credit cards. The broke people would not take my meetings. They would generally tell me no, and the rich people would say, yeah, come on by.

I'll be in the office Monday afternoon, come on by. Now, the rich people were very careful with their time. I couldn't sit there for an hour and a half and drone on and on, but they always wanted to hear from me. And I learned, and I couldn't prove this with data, but I proved it with personal experience.

I learned that I think one aspect of people who are rich is that they always are open for an idea. They're always looking for something. So, anytime, that's why I go to conferences, I listen to podcasts, I read books, 'cause one idea, just one, one little idea that you find in the most interesting corner of the world that you were just looking, rooting around in for a few minutes can make a massive difference in your life, and so some of these aspects of student loans, I think, can be that.

So, let's talk about your actual services, because you have some consulting, which is what we're primarily bringing you on for. Then you have the podcast, and I want us to talk about the podcast, 'cause that's where I want my listeners to go if they're interested in more details, is to also listen to your podcast, to reach out to you, and then you also have the attorney thing, but you're a little bit limited on who you can serve there.

So, talk about your services, the offerings that you provide, the offerings that your firm has, the media outlets that you have. Walk us through everything that you have to offer for my listening audience. - Sure, so if somebody is in the state of New York, or in the state of California, we're licensed in both places, and can really give a full range of services in terms of legal representation.

If you're being sued, we can help you defend that lawsuit. If bankruptcy is an option for you, we can help you file for bankruptcy, and that could be either to wipe out the student loans, which, no, it's not impossible, or it could be to restructure those student loans, which is what a lot of people do.

So, in the states of California and in New York, we can do those things in addition to the things that we can do nationwide. Nationwide, I work with people with respect to their federal student loan issues, helping them determine which is their best repayment option, helping them determine whether or not consolidation is in their best interest, helping them with a rehabilitation either by working directly with the debt collector, or giving them the tools to do it on their own.

All of those things, the full range of services with respect to the federal student loans, and a lot of people find that useful because the way that I structure my analysis is always because you're paying me for the analysis. So, I'm gonna give everything that there is to give.

Not only here's what you need to do. For example, you're in a position where you may want to go with public service loan forgiveness. Well, in order to do that, you've gotta be in the direct loan program. So, you've got five loans, three of them are field loans. You're gonna need to consolidate them.

Most people are gonna stop there and say, "Okay, great, consolidate the loan." And by the way, I can do that for you for X amount of dollars, not how I do it. As far as I'm concerned, it's a waste of money to hire anybody for consolidation because it's a form.

It's a two-page form, and half of the form is check boxes. So, I'll give you a link to the form. It's a federal form, there's no magic involved. I'll tell you what form to use. I'll tell you what to do with it, and I'll tell you where to send it.

I'm giving an entire roadmap, and I do that for a couple of reasons. First of all, I realize that there are too many people who are getting taken advantage of by these private companies and I would love nothing more than to put all of them out of business by doing what I do, by just giving reliable information.

Second of all, the people who don't have the ability to, say, do their own consolidation or do their own rehabilitation, either they're afraid of the bureaucracy, they don't have the time, they're busy, they travel, they've got big families, maybe it's worth it for them to hire somebody else to do it.

Sure, we'll do that, and yes, there's gonna be an additional fee, but it's not gonna be nearly what you're gonna pay for any of these private companies. And quite frankly, I would say maybe three or 4% of the people who call me up and talk to me about a federal student loan issue are going to need to hire me for anything else.

It's just not something that happens all the time. So I give you the tools to do everything that you need to do for your federal student loans. With your private student loans, I am more in the nature of a coach. It is a discussion of what the collection process is going to entail if you do fall back, a review of your promissory note with you so that you can better understand what your rights and responsibilities are and how to structure that, a discussion of maybe there's a refinance option that you hadn't thought about, talk about that a little bit and talk about how that process works, talk about the impact on your co-signers, guarantors, tell you what the collection process looks like, as I said, but also talk to you about the ways that you can make that process easier, how to stop the phone calls, how to stop the letters, how to make sure that the negative impact on your credit score is not as bad as it could be because there are ways to actually minimize the hit that your credit score takes.

Most people don't realize that. Reviews of your credit reports to ensure that what is there is accurate and to work with you to help you get rid of the inaccurate things. By law, you can't get rid of anything that's accurate. It's not the way that the law is working, but anything that is not accurate or is out of date, we can talk about ways for you to get that off of your report, and I will help you work through that process.

So it really is the full range of the federal as well as the private student loan work. The only things that I can't do for people who are outside of the states of California or New York is I cannot help you file for bankruptcy. I can't really tell you very much about that because so much of that is local.

Bankruptcy is federal law, but so much of it is local. What you get to keep, what you have to give up, qualification levels, a lot of that is gonna be local. - But you do teach, don't you teach at the consumer, like in the Bar Association, don't you teach a lot of lawyers around the country that you could refer people to?

- Yes, absolutely. So, and that's really the last piece of the puzzle. To the extent that you're located someplace where I'm not, I've got people everywhere around the country. They're friends of mine, they're people that I've trained, they're people who understand the lay of the law exactly in the fashion that you need them to understand it.

So let's say you're in Dallas, Texas. I can't represent you if you're being sued, but I know a couple of really great lawyers who can. And so the end of our conversation with respect to the private student loans is going to include, okay, well, why don't you call this person and they can take you that last mile if you want them to do so with respect to the private loans.

Of course, with respect to the federal loans, if you're in Dallas, I can still help you there. - So what about, tell some of the people that, and obviously individual's information is private, but you had mentioned, you mentioned to me that some of the listeners of the show had reached out to you after the previous episode.

What were the different types of ways that you were able to help some of those listeners, speaking in general terms? - Speaking in general terms, a lot of those listeners had questions about, I mean, look, you got confused about 10 repayment options. It's not-- - How am I supposed to know what I'm talking about?

By the way, I want to come, next time you do a bar association, like workshop or something, let me know. And I want to come, 'cause I just realized how much I don't know in this area. And I've been listening to your show to learn more, but your show is consumer-focused.

So I want to come to one of your attorney education classes, or have you record it for me so I can listen to it after the fact. - That sounds great. We're actually going to be in Florida in either the end of January or right after Super Bowl Sunday, the next week after that.

- All right, we'll see if we can make that happen. - Yeah, exactly, that'd be awesome. But so a lot of people called me up and said, hey, look, I've got all of these repayment options. I don't understand what's going to work for me. And I want to make sure that I'm getting into them in the right way.

And one just hits me off top of the head. One person had a whole bunch of loans, all federal. One of them was a Parent PLUS loan, wanted to do a consolidation of all of their loans and get into income-based repayment. I said, well, that's a great idea, but for the Parent PLUS loan.

If you have a Parent PLUS loan that is part of a federal consolidation loan, that federal consolidation loan does not qualify for income-based repayment, pay-as-you-earn, or revised pay-as-you-earn, and in fact will therefore cause you a lot of problems. So there was this one client that I counseled them specifically on consolidating these loans, not putting that Parent PLUS loan into the consolidation, handling that separately so that they can lower their overall payment.

I had clients talk to me about the husband and wife, and one had loans, one didn't have loans. Should we file separately? Should we file jointly? Let's run the numbers. Let's see what it's gonna be. I had people who were in default, didn't know if they should rehabilitate or whether they should consolidate.

The list goes on and on. On the private student loan issue, should I continue to make payments? Should I intentionally default? 'Cause some people do that. Strategic default is a big deal in private student loans. Is there a way for me to get my cosigner off? What about refinance?

We talked about all of those options. So those are just some of the things in general terms that I've talked to listeners of Radical Personal Finance about. - Yeah, that's perfect. And again, I'm excited about our getting this going because this is the perfect value-add sponsor where you add tremendous value to the audience.

You add tremendous value to the message of Radical Personal Finance, and it really provides a resource that I'm really, really thrilled about. So we have a number of packages that you offer as far as student loan analysis, details of all of those things at, basically three things that we want people to do.

Number one, sign up for Jay's podcast and listen to the show. So sign up on iTunes for the student loan show with Jay Fleischman, and I'll make sure that there's a link in today's show notes. Sign up for Jay's podcast so that you can get more specific information from him.

That's free for everybody to listen to. And do you publish that on a schedule? How frequently do you publish new episodes of that show? - That's weekly on Tuesdays. - Okay, perfect. So every week you can listen to that. So I want people to do that. That's free. Number two, if you have student loans, go to the special link for the show.

It's studentloanshow.com/radical. So studentloanshow.com/radical. And there you'll find some information on the different packages that Jay has to offer as far as consultations. And we're doing a special for listeners of the show on a student loan review by email. They get 25 bucks off that package. So instead of 75 bucks, it's 50 bucks for listeners of the show who use that link.

Is that right, Jay? - That's correct. - Okay. So you've got, that's the silver package, that's the entry-level package that is a student loan review by email. Then you've got a gold package, which is, excuse me, that would be the federal student loan review. You've got a gold package, which is a federal and private student loan.

And then you've got an ongoing monthly package as well. So people can, and you'll consult with them. And then listeners can start with the simplest package. And then if they move up to some of your fancier consulting deals, then you'll roll that price in for them. And then you also have, once they start to get connected with you, if they need help from you with any further work as a lawyer, then you can service them if they're in New York or California, or you can at least point them in the right direction.

And one thing about the pointing in the right direction, it's my understanding that in the lawyer business, you guys don't, you don't get commissions for referring business. So in real estate, if I were a real estate agent and I were referring somebody across the country, I'd get a split of the deal.

My understanding in the lawyer business, you don't do that. - Okay. - I don't do that. - Okay, good. - Yeah. Anybody that I ever refer anybody else to is always done without a financial motive. I think that it just makes the most sense for me that I'm sending you to the right person, not because the check's gonna be big enough.

And you know, so yeah. - And as long as the listeners, I mean, and the important thing is that they're paying you up front. And I think all service providers should always be paid up front. You can provide some level of information as kind of a getting to know you, but listeners who sign up for your consulting packages, they're paying you up front.

And so as such, you have an incentive to go ahead and help them to the extent of you can with the consulting work. And then also, if you need to send them to somebody, then that can be helpful. And there's no kind of backdoor, behind the scenes stuff going on.

It's straightforward and clear. - That's correct. - So those are the three things. Sign up for Jay's Student Loan Show. Listen to that. If you're interested in his podcast, check out studentloanshow.com/radical. And you'll find links to, with a special offer for listeners of the Radical Personal Finance podcast. And then listeners can consume your content.

And if they need to go deeper, they can get in touch with your law firm through that. Anything else, Jay, that you'd like to make sure people know about as we kick this sponsorship off? - Tell your friends. - Exactly. - Student loans are not a death sentence. And if you face them head on, and you understand your options, you're gonna be able to sleep better at night.

And you're not gonna look at it as this albatross that's gonna hang around your neck for the rest of your life. 'Cause it's just not the way that it is. - And one idea that comes to mind, I didn't think of this as we launched this here before the holidays.

But if you wanna give a gift of Jay's consultations, that might be a good gift. Many of you who listen to this show, you guys are nerds, financial nerds. I mean, you gotta be to listen to me rattle on for an hour a day. So you guys are not normal people.

And I say that with a firmly compliment. I'm not normal either. But what that means is that you know a lot of people who are often struggling. And so some of the strategies and ideas here, many people have student loans. Maybe those people are not gonna go ahead and get on the financial independence in five years bandwagon.

But, and also many times people who are struggling or have problems with debt and money, they're not gonna listen to you 'cause you're just a friend. But it's possible that if you wanted to give them a gift, give them a gift of Jay's consulting services and let him see if there's something that they can do that's gonna make a big difference.

And you might be able to give them a 50, 75, $150 gift. And that might make a difference in their life of thousands of dollars. So this might be a really great way for you to help some friends of yours. Even if you don't personally have student loans, it might be a good way for you to help some friends of yours who do so that they can save some money overall.

'Cause I tell you, we do have an epidemic in this country of student loan debt. And I hate it. I despise student loan debt. And so if you got it, we got it. I borrowed money when I was in college. I was one of the fortunate few that paid it off before I graduated.

Although in retrospect, maybe I sometimes wonder if that was a good idea. But at that point I was on the Dave Ramsey plan. I was getting out of debt no matter what. (laughing) So at any rate, it's done and done. But if we have the debt, we can work through it and get it squared away.

So Jay, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for sponsoring this show. I'm excited about this. - And so am I. - I look forward to a long and profitable business relationship with you on both of our ends. - And so do I. Yeah, it's gonna be great.

Thanks for letting me be a sponsor. I know that you don't take everybody. And look, this is a great show and I am so pleased to be a part of it in any way that I can be. So thanks for that, Joshua. - Hope you enjoyed that and I hope you learned.

And now I would just simply encourage you to take action. And remember, there's those three things that I'd like you to do. Number one, subscribe to the Student Loan Show podcast. Jay does a really good job with that podcast. It's very focused and he's an expert in that area.

So if you have any interest at all in student loans or you wanna learn about strategies or you have student loan questions, go and do that. And I think you'll enjoy the content. You can find it in iTunes or probably in whatever podcatching program you use to listen to it or on his website.

And check out episode 31. That was the episode that we referenced with the owner of the brothel, a man named Dennis Hoff who owns a number of brothels, including the Moonlight Bunny Ranch out in Nevada and how he's offering discounts to his employees, the girls that work for him.

He's offering a matching program where he's paying for their student loans. Very interesting, very interesting perspectives. Number one, subscribe to the Student Loan Show. Number two, go to, if you have student loans or if you know somebody who has student loans, go to studentloanshow.com/radical and you'll find there that special discount link.

If you use that code, he, knocking $25 off the review by email where it's normally 75 bucks and at this point in time, he's offering it for 50 bucks. So a $25 discount for listeners of the show. But use that link, studentloanshow.com/radical. And then you can see there the other options if you have further detailed needs.

And he'll offer, he'll apply that money over towards those other packages as well. And then if you have need for attorney services and you have questions on bankruptcy or student loans, reach out to him with that. You can easily email him on the show or connect with him through the consultation and he would be a great resource for you with that.

As I'm sure that you heard from the content, there's a lot of different options. And if you've got questions, if you're going through bankruptcy, if you're in a difficult place, especially as regards student loans, Jay would be a good guy to reach out to. Hey, he's the one who's teaching all the other attorneys.

(laughs) Why not work with the person who's teaching all the other attorneys if you can? And if not, then you can work with some of the attorneys that he's taught. So check out that information. And Jay, thanks for sponsoring the show. I'm really proud of this sponsorship. I've gotten some questions from some of you guys about how am I doing the sponsors.

What I've been working to do on Radical Personal Finance, when I do a sponsor, I don't want you, on a podcast, you can always skip commercials. That's what's cool about podcasting. So I don't see any point in playing irrelevant commercials for you. At some point, who knows, maybe I'll do it at some point, but I don't intend to.

Rather, I want you to gain as much value from the sponsors and from the commercials as even you do from the normal content of the show. That's my goal. Now, whether or not I can execute and complete that goal, that remains to be seen. You're the judge. But that's what I'm working on.

I don't want you to have to feel like you've got to skip every time when I talk about a sponsor. So Jay is a perfect example of somebody who can serve a subset of you in the listening audience. And I'm really thankful that he agreed to sponsor the show.

And then there are other people similar to him, or I want to bring on other consultants and things like that who can use the Radical Personal Finance platform, and they can go and provide for you the individual services that you need. So if you've got student loans, connect with Jay.

Thank you all so much for listening to today's show. I really, really appreciate each and every one of you. I appreciate your support. I'm working hard to make the show better for you. I hope you can see that. I had a comment from a listener the other day that just talked about how much better the show's gotten since episode one.

They referenced some of my early interviews. They said, Joshua, you've gotten a lot better. Thank you. For those of you who've made nice comments like that, I've been working hard at it. And obviously got a long ways to go still, but I am working hard at it. And that was what I promised in the beginning was to improve and to do it publicly so you can see the journey that I'm going through.

If you'd like to support the show directly, please do that as a patron of the show. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. By the way, if you sign up there at minimum the $10 level, that gives you access to all of these conference calls that I've been doing here in the month of October and November.

And for any of you who have wanted my personal opinion and feedback on any of your situation, that has been an absolute steal for you. We did a call last night on Monday, and there were a total of three participants who joined that call. So all of those three participants were able to get basically a long period of time with me.

So that's been an absolute steal. So check that out here during the month of November. We're doing weekly calls for my role of serving you, the patrons of the show. You can find all those details on the Patreon page at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. I ran out of music, but I'm done.