[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we are joined by an expert not only in the student loan space, but in the personal finance space at large. Robert Farrington of the college investor. Tune in after the intro to hear a little more about his story.
Are your student loan payments or loan balances a major obstacle in your financial life? Then tune in and let's escape student loan debt.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: My name is Brenton Harrison. If you're listening to this podcast, you have probably heard me on both the Escape student Loan debt podcast and the new Money New Problems podcast. We have shared for compliance reasons that those are two separate businesses. We have our financial advisory firm, new money new problems, and we have escape student loan debt. But there are times when the subject matter for both audiences overlap, and in those instances, we make sure that we post on both platforms. And today is one of those days because we have an expert in our ask the Expert series who has been gracious enough to join us. If you are familiar with the personal finance space, you know that I am a believer in finding whatever voice speaks to the way you learn. And the person that is joining us today has been in the space with thecollegeinvestor.com for a long period of time, and it not only has insights and expertise on how to tackle student loans, but also general finance. There's posts on there about tax planning, investing, just a wealth of resources. And with everybody focused on student loans, we wanted to make sure that we had him on to join our audience. So with all that, Robert, thank you for joining our podcast.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. And yeah, you nailed it. We're going to talk student loans, and I'm excited, too, because it's a crazy topic, and it came out of nowhere to be a crazy topic. Right? I never intended to talk about student loans, and here we are a decade later doing this. And student loans are dominating the financial conversation for a lot of Americans right now.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: I'm interested. Before we get into some of the tips that you are going to share with the audience, tell us a little bit about the origin story of why and how you started the site, because I do agree. I've known about your site for a long time. I've read on it for a long time. But there was, when you started it, like a very small group of people who are in the space, and it's almost like you found out five or six years before everybody else, this was going to be a big deal. How did that come into play?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Totally. So I started the college investor very much to how it sounds is I wanted to talk about investing, building wealth and the fun stuff, as I like to say. I wanted to make money and grow my wealth and things like that. But when I graduated college, I also had student loans because I didn't know, no one told us that you should minimize your student loan debt. I got this email from my financial aid office. It said like, hey, congratulations, you're accepted to college. Click this box and accept your award. So I just went and clicked and all of a sudden I had $42,000 in student loan debt. And I didn't even really think twice about it. And whatever. In the big scheme of things, that is not a lot compared to some of the stories that we see in here. I was blessed when I graduated. I had a job, I could afford my student loan payments. Everything was going along like it should, until one day I got an email from Fed loan and Fed loan said, hey, you're delinquent on your student loans. And I was like, what? There's no way I was set up for auto payment. There's no way I should be delinquent. But guess what? They screwed up my auto debit. They said I was delinquent and I had to go battle the customer service of Fed loan, which they're no longer a loan servicer, but I had to go battle this. And so what does any good personal finance blogger do? I wrote about it and this was one of my very first viral articles. And I think today it still has almost 1000 comments of people saying, oh my gosh, this is a problem. Nobody's talking about this problem. And this is back in 2011, so what, 13 years ago at this point in time, and no one was talking about this quote unquote, student loan crisis and not even talking about loan forgiveness issues and all this other stuff, just how terrible these loan servicers were in dealing with and how mismanaged they were and stuff. So I started writing about it and then learning about it. And like you said, there was only probably about four or five other people at the time talking about student loans. So I connected with them and I just started learning about what a mess this system was, how it worked. No one was talking about this. And I started writing about it and sharing these stories. And so fast forward, here we are a decade plus later, and I've learned a lot. I've helped a lot of people and really understanding why we're here, what we can do, and how the system works to help people navigate through it.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Well, there's never been a better time to be in the space in terms of the need for help than right now. And that actually brings me to a really big update that we haven't talked about on either podcast to this point. And that's the announcement that came out last week about the extension of the next date that you'll have to recertify your income for federal student loans. So if you could, could you speak a little bit about on our escape student loan debt platform? People are very familiar with the concept of recertification, but could you share more about recertification, what the announcement was and why it's such a monumental thing for people who are trying to navigate payments right now?
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Sure. So one of the best ways to repay your student loans are these income driven repayment plans. You've heard of income based repayment. Maybe you've heard of pay as you earn and the new one save, right, saving on a valuable education. Well, these payments are income driven, which means that your monthly payment is based on your income. Well, how does the government know what that is? Every year you got to recertify what your income is and also what your family size is. Maybe you had a kid, maybe you got married. Who knows? So you have to do that so they can calculate your monthly payment. Well, everybody that had one of these plans before the pandemic, well, their payments were paused. No one had to deal with anything since prior to March 2020. Right, which is, shoot, so long ago at this point in time.
But if you were one of those people, your payments have been paused. And when payments resumed last year, they said, hey, we're going to give you a six month grace period to recertify your family size and your income. Well, guess what? That six months has come and the government, as you've seen, has really struggled to get people back on payment plans. The loan servicers don't even know what to do. They're struggling to process them. And a lot of people's processing of these things, the people that even tried to do it were getting screwed up. So the Department of Education announced what, a week ago at this point in time that you now have until late September of 2024 at the earliest. I always like to put that asterisk on it at the earliest to recertify your family size and your income to calculate these payments. But there's a few things. One, if you didn't recertify yet, you get to stay on your same payment. If you already recertified and your payment went up, they're going to bring you back down to what you were before. So they're going to lower your payment. And if you recertified and your payment was lower, you win. You get to keep that lower payment until the next recertification deadline. And then there's this group of people that tried to recertify and got stuck in paperwork limbo, and they're going to give you the month of March for free. They're going to put you in forbearance, put you at 0% interest, and count march as a free month. And then they're going to get you back on track, hopefully in April, if all that paperwork gets processed accordingly. So it's a big news for people that had these income driven repayment plans before the pandemic and gives a little relief at this point in time.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: And it is very interesting because we've shared that they say things like the earliest, not only to give them that wiggle room, but because it doesn't mean that everybody has to do it in September. Everybody has a date that their particular loan has to be recertified in terms of the income. So to me, if you're looking at March 2020 being when the pandemic started, there's the possibility for these borrowers whose date doesn't come until 2025, that they could be in a position where they're still making payments until 2025 based on their 2019 tax return income. Is that accurate?
[00:08:49] Speaker B: You nailed it. That is completely accurate. And you have to realize, too, that these people also got three and a half years plus of 0% payments or 0% interest, no payments due. Maybe that counted for PSLF, too. I mean, you're getting people halfway to potentially getting loan forgiveness at low cost or no cost, which is pretty big deal.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah. We have gotten feedback from a number of listeners that some of the stuff you're talking about where the loan servicers have messed up their payment, it's taking hours for them to get it fixed. What would you recommend for someone who is reading all these press releases but their loan servicer doesn't seem to be, like, following the plan. Right. They weren't supposed to ask them to recertify. They did. They can't get a hold of them. What resources do people have in situations like that?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So a few things. First off, I want everyone to realize how this works. I think a lot of people don't understand the system. I like to rag on these loan servicers all day long. They do mess up. But remember, these loan servicers are contractors for the Department of Education. They are call centers. You call your loan servicer, you're getting someone that's making $18 an hour, that has had one week of training and knows nothing about your personal financial situation. Okay, that's what you're talking to. And I don't trying to be mean or anything, but they don't necessarily know the best place to help you. And they're using the words that you're telling them to try to make a decision. And a guess for you. Part two is when these press releases come out. We've seen this trend for the last two or three years, is that the White House and the administration are sometimes pushing things so fast that they're not giving these people time to even get training out to their call center. You know, this press release goes out on a Friday afternoon, and you call your loan servicer. They might not even know what you're talking about yet. So a few things that I recommend you do is, number one, most people don't need to call their loan servicer, and I highly recommend you don't call your loan servicer. I highly recommend that you do everything online. You send your documents through the secure portal, and you do it that way because a couple of things happen. One, there's no gray area like this is in writing. This is what was said. This is the document, and you have proof that it was submitted. Number two, if action is not getting taken care of in a reasonable period of time, which to me is about a month, at this point in time, I just say, go right to the student loan ombudsman. You can go there, you file a complaint. You say, I've submitted it. Here's my screenshot. Here's my paperwork. My loan servicer has not taken action, and. Or they have not put me in administrative forbearance. Because, look, the cool thing right now is if they're not processing your paperwork timely, they're just supposed to flip your loan into forbearance. You get 0% interest and no payment. So that's a win in my book, too.
Even if they're taking their sweet time and not doing what they're supposed to be doing, you should not be on the hook for it. So if that's not happening, you just reach out to the ombudsmansman, you send that email and said, I submitted my paperwork to Mohila or whoever. They did not do it. They've not taken action. Just put me in administrative forbearance and just wait it out. You don't need to waste hours and hours of your time calling them, because almost everything that you're calling them for is fruitless. It's not going to help. You can do it online or you can reach out to the ombudsman and you follow up that way. One of the biggest things that you can do with our government, these loan servicers and the Department of Education, is paperwork. Phone calls don't help. Paperwork helps. It's the same thing with your tax return. It's the same thing with everything. Like you don't need to call them, just send the paperwork.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: So save yourself that 3 hours on that 800 number you're saying. Exactly. Well, you mentioned it being election year, they just released this last week. There's new payment plans. There's all type of deadlines. In your opinion, what are some of the things that are on the horizon in the student loan space that are like the big things that people should be paying attention to?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: The biggest thing, I think there's three things that are on my mind and it's really pressing because I see this all the time. Number one on my mind and what I'm talking to people about and I still see people having are FfEl loans. So federal family education loans. Basically, if you have an old student loan from before 2009 and you have not taken any action on it, you got about a month and a half left that you need to consolidate that loan. Okay, please, I am begging you. And the hard part is this goes against like ten years of people saying, don't do anything to these loans. Don't do anything to these loans. So if you have these old loans, the Biden administration has what's called the IDR waiver or the IDR payment recount or all these things, everyone has a different name for it because there's no official name for it. But if you have these old federal family education loans, which is all these loans from before 2009, you need to consolidate them before April 30. Like just go out and consolidate them. I know it sounds scary because you're like, oh, but on my past payments and all this stuff, well, if you do it before April 30, they're going to count all the old payments. You get access to these new plans, like save and different things, and you might even get loan forgiveness sooner because they're just going to count at 20 or 25 years of payments.
The scary thing is there's still like two or 3 million of these ffels out there.
So what are you doing out there, people? And so that one really scares me a lot. Number two is all the PSLf stuff. Like when you do consolidate these loans, you have to resubmit your PSLF certification form. So I see a lot of people freaking out because they consolidate. They're doing all these things that they're supposed to be doing. But you got to resubmit your pslf form for all the ten years or however many payments you have, or else the payment record is not going to be right. So if you consolidate, you do this work, and then you're like, oh, my gosh, you got to submit the PSLF form. So you get the credit. And then, number three, the big thing that I think is going to benefit a lot of borrowers is this summer, all the other provisions of the save plan go into effect. So save the saving on a valuable education is President Biden's new student loan repayment plan. And one of the big parts of it is it's going to set your monthly payment at 5% of your discretionary income. But that 5% kicks in on July 1. So it's coming up this summer is when you're going to see, people are going to like, they're going to freak out. I think there's going to be a lot of wins because all of a sudden your payment is getting cut in half because right now it's 10%, and this summer it's going to drop to 5%. And that's a huge win for a lot of borrowers. You're saving on your monthly payment, and that's going to be a big deal. So I think for people that were on the fence of, and you probably see these conversations, too, like, save is not saving me any money yet. It's going to start saving you some money. It's just going to start this summer. And so I think that's going to be a big win for borrowers.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Those are three things to definitely pay attention to. I'm glad we were able to go through some of the current events. We're going to take a quick break, and then after the break, we're going to get into some of the tips and tricks that you've seen be useful in hacking your student loans. We'll be right back.
This is the Escape Student Loan Debt.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Podcast, a show for established professionals whose student loan payments or loan balances are impacting their marriage, their business, their credit, or their dream of achieving home ownership.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: We'll be right back.
Are you interested in learning the tools and techniques we use to get student loans forgiven, reduced, reorganized, or expedited? Well, great news. We're currently updating our flagship course, escape student loan debt, to reflect the current changes in the student loan landscape to stay up to date on the launch of the course and opportunities to sit in on our live recording sessions. Head to escapestudentloandet.com and join our email list. Now.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: You'Re listening to the Escapestudent loan Debt podcast.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Subscribe
[email protected].
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Welcome back.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Welcome back. For the break we have our ask the expert series and we have Robert Farrington of thecollegeinvestor.com. We are going to put all of his contact information so you can go to his wonderful site in the show notes. And we will also put the contact information for your student loan ombudsman and how to figure out how to contact that person as he referenced in the first half of the episode. In this half of the episode, we're going to talk about some of the things that Robert has seen in terms of benefiting your payment. Unique strategies that people who just kind of take a surface level look at student loans never really come across. So we wanted to make sure we exposed you to them. Robert, we were talking offline about just how big a deal some of the changes to the income driven repayment plans have been in terms of giving you the ability to save and contribute to other parts of your finances while also tackling your student loan debt. Can you share a little bit more about the structure of these plans and how some of these changes can give you that incentive?
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So with these income driven repayment plans, since your payment is based on your income, what it's actually based on is your adjusted gross income, your AGI from your tax return. And so when you keep that in mind, the lower your AGI is, the lower your student loan payment is. So now, I'm sure you got some financial planners out there in the audience or some people, and they're like, well, I can lower my AGI a whole bunch of ways. Right? You could contribute to an IRA, you could contribute to a health savings account, you can contribute to a 401 or a 403 B.
There's a lot of ways that you could lower your AGI, especially for, I think we were talking before the show, you got a lot of people going to grad school. You got a lot of people that might be in healthcare or different things. Maybe they're self employed, and you can take advantage of like a sep IRA or solar four hundred and one k and just really bring down that agi level. Well, guess what? At the same time, you're going to lower your income driven repayment plan payment amount. So it's like you're saving for yourself and you get to have a lower student loan payment as a result. So for individuals that are making $80,000 to $100,000 a year, where, okay, I contribute to my IRA, I put five grand in there, and maybe I save a little bit on my student loan payment. You're at this cusp where you could maybe bring yourself from having a student loan payment to not even having a monthly student loan payment by saving for yourself. And that's where it makes a big deal. Because of these changes, you might really see a big difference in your monthly budget by saving for yourself and not having a student loan payment or a significantly lower student loan payment.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So definitely an opportunity there. And to me, part of the reason that I like your site is there are student loan sites, and they give excellent student loan advice. But you have information beyond student loans on your site. And I think that that speaks to the importance of not just only addressing your student loans. Right. Like, you have to be growing your finances while you handle the debt well.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: And you nailed it. I mean, I'm a big believer that.
What's that chinese proverb? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. But the real crux of that is that we can't go back in time. And so a lot of people have this mindset that I got to eliminate my student loans. I got to eliminate my student loans. And it's like, maybe you do, but you know what you really need to do is when you're 22 years old, is you need to start saving for retirement and investing. If you can start, then even if it's like $1,000 or something small while paying off your student loans, that money is going to go a lot further, because here's the other thing with these plans. So we didn't talk about this yet, but, like, save. And all the income driven plans include loan forgiveness built in. So let's just say your financial life just doesn't work out to pay off the student loans. Okay, that happens. But after 20 years on the save plan, the balance is forgiven. So if you graduate at 22, by 43, you could be student loan debt free. The question I have for you is, do you want to get to a $0 net worth? Or if you put, like, a little bit in your IRA every year, by the time you're 43, you might be debt free and have a positive net worth because you were able to invest a little bit along the way.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: And there are some graduate school borrowers who, it might be 25 years for them, but even still, it's like that payment plan is so generous that I think eventually it's going to kind of cancel out the other plans. Eventually, I believe.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Well, even the Department of Education thinks that. So some other data is that they estimate within five years something like 85% of all student loan borrowers are going to be on the save plan. But I also want to remind everybody why they pick 20 and 25 years. So the average graduate school borrower pays off their student loan in 23 years, and the average undergraduate borrower pays off their loan in 18 years.
So the government knows. Come on now. They're not doing this for free. They're not doing this out of the generosity of their heart. It's just that they know how long it takes and they're picking a time that's just past it because they know most borrowers will pay it off and some will struggle and they will forgive that debt. But they're betting that you will grow your income over the next 20 years, which is why you went to college, it's why you did all the things right. They're betting that that's going to happen. And maybe it doesn't happen in year two after graduation, but by year ten or so, they're expecting you to start making some good money and paying the stuff back.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: To me, that brings to mind the idea there was this article that came out about like, there's like a peer reviewed study that talks about the monetary value of being financially literate. And it was over six figures, right? Just the dollar value to you of taking an interest and being knowledgeable about your finances is worth over six figures. And to me, what you're talking about, that ability and interest in reading a little more about the rules kind of just brings to mind the idea of you can't just go borrow this debt, not pay attention to it, not learn more about how it works and think that everything is going to work out for you.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: You nailed it. No one's going to care more about your money than you. I also like to tell everyone that a lot of people think like, oh, you're getting something for nothing, or why am I signed up for this? These are the rules of the game, guys. Learn how to play the game and you learn how to play the game. But then you can also learn how to play the game to your advantage. It's no different than monopoly or anything else. Read the rules, learn how to play it to your advantage. Right?
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Let's follow that thread and let's talk about something you said that kind of kicked up a dust cloud, but it is well within the regulations. It is a viable strategy, but a lot of people just conceptually are finding it tough to tackle. And that is the borrow and die strategy with parent plus loans. So if you could, because the new money, new problems audience is not as familiar, could you first set the stage for parent plus loans why they're so tricky? And then give some details of the borrow and die strategy.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Totally. Well, this is a strategy. Financial planners love it. I'd say a lot of Americans are like, this is a little crazy. So first off, parent plus loans are loans that parents take to pay for their children's undergraduate college education. So these loans, they're federal loans, but they are in the parents name and only the parent's name, and they are used to pay for a child's undergraduate education.
Well, like all federal loans, they have a bunch of rules. You can have certain repayment plans. You can do things like deferment and forbearance. If you had a parent plus loan during the pause, your payments would be paused. Right.
And then also one of the things that happens with all federal loans is when someone passes away, the loan is forgiven. All right, well, this is where it gets a little controversial. And this really works well for older parents. And I like this strategy because it actually builds family wealth. So parent loans I have a real problem with because they cause a lot of problems in families. And I don't know if you've seen this, but a lot of parents take them out and then they're getting close to retirement and they're like, how am I going to pay this loan? Like I want to retire, but I can't afford it. So then they go talk to their child and their child's like, you want me to pay it back? And so it causes family drama and it just causes problems. But this strategy, you can kind of avoid these problems, but you can also make your whole family wealthier as a result. So what I recommend, and like I said, it works for older parents only. It doesn't work if you're like a 42 year old parent. This probably isn't going to be the strategy for you. But if you are in your late 50s or early sixty s and you are getting kids into undergraduate, you borrow these loans and guess what? You don't have to pay the loan when the kid is in school. So there's four years, maybe five years where you're not making any payments on that loan. Right. And then after they graduate, you get six months of a grace period. You're not paying the loan. But then you can defer the loan, and you can defer that loan for 36 months. So there's three more years, boom, you can kick that loan down the road even farther. And then at the end of 36 months, they're going to say, hey, knock knock. You got to start paying your loan. Well, you can consolidate that loan, and then you can have a new loan, and then you can repeat the 36 month process again. So here we are. You're at four, five years plus three years, plus another three years. You're ten plus years of not paying this parent plus loan. Now, you might be getting close to retirement or in retirement. And guess what? Your income will probably drop substantially.
So if your income has dropped substantially, we talked about this earlier in the show. Your AGi is going to be low. You can sign up for things like ICR, where you might have a zero dollar payment or a very low payment if you have one, especially for families that are just on Social Security, maybe a small retirement pension, your payment will be very low or nothing. And then you take that until the loan is forgiven or you pass away. But what I'm getting at here is that this is one of those strategies where it doesn't make sense to pay extra on your student loan. It makes sense to actually delay, delay, delay, get to low income, pay as little as possible. And it also makes sense to not ask your child to help you if you are. You're basically throwing away wealth that your family unit, parent and child together could have, whether that's inheritance, whether that's just their own income, whether that's your income that you could live off of. Don't give the government extra money that they don't deserve. It's the rule of the game that you can do this. So that's a viable financial planning strategy. But it does freak people out because the end of it is either loan forgiveness or death of the parent. But that's just what happens. It's going to happen one way or another. You're either going to live for 20 years, wonderful, and the loan is forgiven, or in that period of time, you're going to pass away because you're older. That happens as well. But either way, you're not burdening your child with these loan payments. You're not paying extra money to the government. It does bring a win win financial situation.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: The reason I wanted to end with that one is because both audiences, we work mostly with first generation or second generation high income earners. And you get to this point, I call it having one arrow. But having to shoot at multiple targets where they're trying to save, they're trying to repair their credit, they're trying to tackle equity compensation. They're trying to save for retirement. And then they're also like, oh, and I have these kids, and I don't want them to have to deal with the same student loans that I had to deal with. And it's hard to do all of those things and also save for college. Right? So we end up with these parents who their kid says, oh, I don't want to go here, I want to go there. And that school is $20,000 a year more. And that parent is trying to figure out, do I sacrifice the stability of my finances or do I jeopardize the future of theirs? And strategies like that that you just articulated speak again to the value of knowing how the game is played, like you mentioned.
So these tips have been phenomenal. I thank you for joining us. I want to, at the end, give you some space to make sure people know exactly how to reach you. Obviously, I've been familiar with your brand for a long time, but we want to make sure that everybody who listens to us is familiar with it as well. So tell us how we can reach you.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you want to know more about student loan debt or anything related to young adult money topics, you can find
[email protected] we also have our podcast, the college investor audio show, and we're on your favorite video channel. You like YouTube, you like TikTok. We're there at the college investor. Come check us out.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: That is excellent, Robert. Thank you for joining us.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for having me. This has been fun.
Bye.
