The Truth About Student Loan Forgiveness w/ Travis Hornsby

Traps hornsby from Student Loan Planner. He is the expert on everything student loan forgiveness and so whether you are on the route to forgiveness, want to be forgiven, haven't taken it up with the Lord yet? Uh sorry, it sounded like that's where it was going, but it's not. It's actually going to your student loans. So we had a really great conversation with him about things to know, things to watch out for, and then also probably some things you won't hear on any other It was new

to my ears, but they're not illegal. They're not illegal, so were we included them. We didn't edit them out. We only include the truth and legal things in this podcast. Correct, Yes, and we're only passionate about one. So before we get into before we get into those, we're going to share our sponsors, and we got some new ones today. Well, this is also brought to you by waking up early. It's the lesser known sponsor to sleeping in and usually

as preferred. But think of all the frugal things you can accomplish in the early hours of the day, like meal prepping, making your own coffee at home, or even starting that side hustle you're always talking to your friends about. Stop talking about it, just do it. Waking up early. Initially it sucks, but the payoff is good. Try it tomorrow. Yeah, sleeping in wouldn't sponsor the show because we're not big enough. Someday, someday sleeping in the sponsor. We'll come up with the

reason why. Yeah. All right, y'all, let's dive into this interview with Travis of student loan Planner dot com and also the Student Loan Planner podcast if you're more into podcast, which you might be if you're listening to this one. Hey guys, we are with Travis Hornsby from Student Loan Planner. Thank you so much. For coming on, Travis. Thanks having me on, Jen and Jill. Yeah, it's so exciting to have you. I know, this is a big topic on a lot of people's minds. I think a lot of

our listeners as well. So we're really getting into the weeds today with you. So just to dive right in, Travis, can you tell us a little bit about what you do at Student Loan Planner? How you got into it. Why is student loans something that's on your radar even? Yeah,

I mean it's because of love. So my wife had a bunch of student on debt and we started have that money conversation you have when you're kind of getting serious about somebody and you're like, hey, I wonder if you have fifty thou credit card debt you're not telling me about, right, So that conversation and then oh, by the way, she had six figures of men school debt,

which you know, I mean that is normal. Like I didn't know that at the time, but that's like super you married a doctor though, Oh yeah, I'm rolling in it, you know, because right, yeah, So it's it's really funny actually, So so because that's tied into how Student Loan Planner

became like even more legit of a thing. So I started trying to use my bond trader Excel skill because I was a bond trader in my prior life and so managing money for very wealthy people, right, and like for one of the world's largest investment companies, so like super into like you know, VBA programming all those things. I was like, okay, this is like I'm gonna make a spreadsheet. It's gonna show her all the different options she can pay back her debt with and it's gonna

be so easy. And so I did that, and I was like, wait a second, there's this like loan forgiveness thing. You can like refinance all these different companies you know you can go for like you know, different programs count for this loan forgiveness in different ways. Don't like what is this? Right? So I realized it was like way more complex than I thought it was. And then we sit in our certifications and like they didn't even count

like a lot of her credit. And then I found out that she consolidated and made like an eighty dollar mistake, and I was just thinking, this is this is terrible, like this is ridiculous, Like why should she have gotten you know, screwed over with like this whole loan stuff that this is wrong. And then I kind of got thinking, well, you know, I don't really love like helping rich people get a bunch of more money anyway, so I'm gonna

just quit. And at the time, like wanted to do early retire rant thing, right, So I traveled for about a year and a half on and off different places,

like forty different countries. And the thing that caused student long Planner to happen initially was I made that spreadsheet and I shared it on and got picked up on Business Inside or the front page of Yahoo, and all these people started downloading it and asking me questions, even though I didn't really have like a full time consulting business at that point, because they were just there was such a big need. And then you know, I started doing that just like for friends and family and random

people that reached out after seeing that email. And then I like asked permission for uh, you know, from her dad to like to marry her, because you know, I'm raising the cell's kind of like Holly thing's right or wrong. And so I'm sitting across room, like can I marry your daughter. And he's like no, I'm like wow. I was like, oh, shoot, yeah, exactly yeah, because it's not how it went in the Lifetime movie. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, yeah, exactly a hallmark. Yeah. So I'm like,

so why right, So what's your reasoning? And he's like, you don't have an income like she's you know, they're her parents are for you know, first generation immigrants from Hong Kong. He's like, you know, we call uh, you know, men who who don't have an income when their wife works. We call them eaters of soft white rice. And I didn't know what that meant, but I thought it was pretty bad. So that sounds bad. That doesn't sound like the type of person you want to be. But it

sounds better than hard white rice. It doesn't sound super bad. I mean, I don't know. I think Rice is pretty tasty personally. So so so I'm talking about me and saying, okay, so what's your problem? Like, you know, I have a very positive net worth and your daughter has a very negative net worth. I love her anyway, so like together, maybe our net worth is like, you know, merely positive. And you know, so yeah, I don't have an income. Yeah, I don't have an income, like a big income, because

that's my choice. Like I don't want to make an income, right, I don't need an income, uh, you know, because I was very lucky to have saved a whole lot, have like a seventy percent savings right back when I was a bond trator. So anyways, he's like, well, if you if you want my blessing, you know, you'll prove, you'll prove that you know, have the potential to make a high income to kind of, you know, be an economic security blanket for my daughter just in case you needs it.

Like that was his kind of thing. It was kind of like old school a little bit, but it's super dad, super super He basically gave me like I don't know if you'll watch The Bachelor last night, but it's you know, like the Cassie's dad treatment, like I don't think you're ready, and I'm like, oh, shoot, you know, and you know, but it was just Asian American style, right, so like you don't have a high enough and Cup, I don't know. So I'm just sooing. Now now we have like this

amazing relationship. They love me, I love them. You know, but it's uh so that's to anybody listening, you know, if you if you're trying to win over your future in laws. But yeah, so that just motivated me to basically say, okay, like the student loone thing, like I want to really treat it like a business. And so I really started focusing on what is the value? You know, how can I help people in a way that's transparent, that's that's affordable that you know, it's just it's very

consumer centric. And so then I got so busy where I was doing like ten or eleven consults today, you know, so I was working, you know, like fifteen sixty now is a day, just doing long consults. I didn't have any time to produce any content. So it's like this isn't sustainable. And I had, you know, some people that I knew CFP kind of folks. I was like, hey, you know, why don't you come and help me out

with this and you do consults with me. And so then I started hiring other consultants with with the business. And so we make custom plans for people who owe fifty a million and student loan debt, and we figure out how they get out of debt. The best way, and we charge a flat fee for that. So that's what the business is. The other piece of the business is for people that obviously need to refinance. We're not trying to charge them fees for getting an answer that's obvious,

like if you know they need to refinance. Like most of the business, the way they do it is they just have you just like click on their links and they get a big commission out of it. Right, So we give anywhere from half to of the commission to the reader if they go through the links in our sites. That's a cash back bonus instead of taking all of it. So I do that basically because I want to have the best links for people to use, so the conflict

of interest isn't heavily there. So so we have that's awesome. Yes, we have two parts of our business, giving away a lot of that commission back to the readers a lot of the people who don't even hire us, and we have the part where we make the plans for people. I would say probably those people and hire us are people that you know, really need to be going for some sort of forgiveness strategy and are just trying to get you know, confirmation that's the right thing to do.

So that's that's a business overall, and and actually it's exciting. So I have a consult writer for this interview and it's gonna help us. We're going to pass the half billion of student loan mark that we've made plans for. So that's pretty exciting. Wow, that is exciting. I mean very depressing, but exciting. Yeah, it's it's it's excite pressing. I don't know what's the word, you know, it's that's it.

That's excited pressing. Yeah, it's it's terrifying that you know, a group of relatively small number of people could within a couple of years, you know, impact that big and wan amount, because that's about the problem is out there, right, And the flip side of that is those are people, about two thousand people that are going to have a way less anxiety, you know, late in future because of us giving them the knowledge based they needed to live their lives in a freeway. Yeah. Yeah, so you are

undoubtedly in my mind, the student loan forgiveness expert. I was vaguely familiar with what student loan planner did and so normally when we get pitched by PR firms, for people, I'm like, that's you don't listen to the show. You have no clue who comes on here. But when I heard that you wanted to be on our show, I was like, I don't care if he doesn't know what

our show is. Like, this is something that we need to talk about because there are so many options for student loan forgiveness that it's hard to decipher, Like what are the main types that are going to be most available to most people for federal student loans and like how do they differ? I guess there's maybe like four or five main ones, but like which ones are going to be most available to people that should focus on? Yeah,

I mean that's a great question, Jen. So so like here's how I think your listeners can think about this. There's the one for the public servants, and there's the one for everybody else. Right, So the one for public servants is the one called public service loan freak goodness. So that's the one that's heavily in the media because that's the one that's starting to happen now. So that's

the one people are paying attention to. Right, The media is very like what's happening today, Right, And so that's that's the one that's happening currently. Because you need ten years to get it, and the loan program passed in two thousand seven, it wasn't really set up to even be possible to get it until like two thousand and eight. You need a minimum of ten years of credit to get it, so two thousand eighteen is the very first

year you really could have got it. And you know what you're seeing is like before two thousand and ten, the program was just it was almost impossible to get signed up for this thing. It was very, very difficult. So you know, for that reason, that's why you're seeing such a high rejection rate right now, is because the program was set up to fail basically before like two thousand ten, when things kind of got ironed out and

people figured out how to use it. So everybody until two thousand ten that's getting it, you know, and say everybody and told because that's ten years after two everybody up until that point just gonna be like somebody who have like a PhD and student long bureaucracy that's just like new how to do everything perfectly right, and so like most people don't. Most people are just like, hey,

it worked somewhere ten years. It's like public service, like I'm gonna and so that's why people are getting rejected in mass right now. So there's this big misconception that this program isn't going to be around. It's absolutely going to be around. It's it's definitely going to be there for the people that you know, follow the rules and

followed directions. But the problem is you have to follow directions, and so the what's gonna happen is if you work at a not for profit or government employer full time, you just need ten years worth of cumulative income driven payments that that's equal to Hunter twenty monthly payments. Basically, you can't rush it. You can't you know, kind of get there faster. You have to do Hunter twenty monthly payments.

It doesn't have to be consecutive, it can be cumulative, so you can, you know, go back and forth between different jobs. Right but when you hit that mark, your loans are very given. Text for that is wonderful, isn't it. It sounds wonderful. Yes, yeah, it's it sounds wonderful, and people are getting it. I've gotten multiple emails from people that have gotten this program. I've gotten people that actually

overpaid and they got refunds from the government. So one woman in particular, she got sixteen payments refunded to her in sixteen checks that she got to deposit at her bank, like from the U. S. Treasury. That's pretty amazing, right, So so there's this is a thing. It's happening, and the reality is is if you're set up to benefit for it, you're gonna get it. And if and if you're not that you won't. It's in your promise ory note.

The thing that you signed that you know, agreed to the terms of the loan has public service loan forgetness in it. So you know, every expert that I talked to saying that it's pretty well impossible for them to take this away for people that currently have, for people that are not in a program yet, for people who are not in medical school or dental school, whatever they're you know, going to law school. If you're not in

a program yet, they could take it away. So that's something that I would really kind of think about, is before you go to a grad school program, know what's in your promise right now I just literally reading, so look in there and see if it's in there. So that's the first kind of one forgiveness, right, and that's the kind that's for about the workforce. That's the percent of people that could use that. Now, that's always a better option than refinancing in most cases for anybody that

has more than like thirty thousand of loans. You know, if you have less than that, probably you just pay it off. But that for the people that are not in that world, right, Like that's most of us, right, you know, like the you know the podcast Entrepreneurs of the World. You know your your private you know, private employee employers, right, and you know your your small business owners,

and what about for them? Like what if I have a small legal practice and I'm just trying to run myself and I've got like two hundred thousand of law school det right. So so for people who are not employed by a government or not for profit, then that's the it's called I d R forgiveness, Income driven forgiveness,

And this is the one for everybody else. So this one you're using the same repayment plans as the first one forgiveness option, but you just have to pay for twenty or twenty five years is stead of ten okay, so that's fairly straightforward. The other catch is that at the end of the twenty twenty five years, you have to pay income tax on the forgiven balance as if

you've got a bonus on that entire forgiven balance. So if you have a five thousand dollar loan balance, you're gonna get taxed is if that's a five K bonus, and you'll have to pay the I R S two grand years from now. That sounds terrible. In reality, most people could prepare for that by putting five dollars a month or more away into a brokerage account. So there's ways to manage this, and that's when we obviously specialize in figuring out But you know, for forgiveness, what we

find is that the ps LEFT thing is amazing. If

you qualify for that, you should do it. And then for the non version, than the non PSLF version, the one that's available to everybody, you should generally do that if you're household debt to income ratios above one and a half to one, so if you have more than one point five times your income, if you're making a hunter k you have more than a hundred fifty K, and student loan debt than that forgiveness thing, and the private sector is a good option, right if you if

you us than that refinancing, it's probably better. And then for the ps left option, you know you you probably want to go for that unless you just owe a really tiny amount of money. Those are the two big one forgiveness programs. There's obviously other ones that are out there. Um, I'll say that a lot of them are duplicative, like in particular, like that there's this teacher one forgiveness one.

It's like almost useless and yet and yet like it's so terrible because like teachers sign up for it because it's literally called Teacher Love Forgiveness, but the max they can get is like five thousand or seventeen five hundred, and the max of PSL left is unlimited, and you can't count time for both programs simultaneously. Yes, that's terrible, right, So it's like, you know, there's there's other one forgiveness programs.

In my experience, you really like you need to start the conversation by talking about those first two that I talked about. The other ones a lot of times can not even be in your interest to do, right. It sounds very daunting, and for you, someone who's an expert in the field, who has spent so much time I'm researching this and creating programs around it. I mean, imagine for the person who's just like I just graduated, I

got my degree. Oh my word, that was real money that I now have to pay back, Like, how would so what would be some of those first steps that somebody could take in figuring out the loan forgiveness but also like just debt repayment. What would be some first steps people can take. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, so the first thing you need is an emergency fund. If you don't have an emergency fund, that you're going to wreck your finances. So it's that's the point, because

something's going to happen. If you don't have an emergency fund. You're eventually going to have a transmission blowout, or you're gonna have a ruth that needs to get repaired, or you're gonna have, you know, some sort of daycare expense that you gotta pay for. And if you don't have an emergency fund, then you're gonna be turning to credit

card debt. And hey, student loans is seven percent, but yeah, right, so I would just say this that as soon as you graduate with your student loans, you're probably gonna have mostly federal student loans. If you go to student Loans dot Gov, all you gotta do is log in. It's it might be a little confusing, but like you know, like anything that you know says like forgot my password,

Like you can figure it out. Like it just might take a little while of like passwords, right, So just force your way, force your way into st to loans dot gov. Once you're in there, you'll see a spot where you can consolidate your loans. So if you are graduating and you know you just finished that, you can consolidate those loans and get signed up for the revised pay as you are in plan, so that plans in most cases can you can get a zero dollar a month payment if you do it right after you graduate,

So zero dollars a month. I think people can afford that. Right, So for like twelve months, like after you graduate, and during those twelve months, you have no excuse why you can't get an emergency fund of at least three times

your monthly expenses. Get a job, get an emergency fund, get the emergency fund you got the emergency fund, things are going to work out okay now, So you can either refinance, you're you're comfortable refinancing because you've got the emergency fund to take care of anything bad that happens, or you're gonna go for forgiveness because you should be going for that anyway, right, So that would be the first thing that people can do to set themselves up

on the right foot. And I love that before we were kind of turned on the recording, we were talking about, like how y'all talk about limiting the big expenses. That's you know, and and you also joked about not being experts that that sounds like the most expert vice ever because because let me tell you, like, out of the like twelve pans have done personally, the two biggest problems I see your car and housing expense, and it's not

even closed. Like those two things will singlehandedly wreck someone's budget. And if if people want to live without a budget, it's pretty easy, like have a paid off car and have a house payment. That's like where the price is less than two times you joined income. So if you do those two things, what what I have found is that if you're frugal in the big areas that frugality is going to trickle down to, like other other parts of your life. I don't know, like trickle down frugality.

Maybe I should like coin that f And you can find links to our housing and transportation episodes in the show Notes You So, so trickle down frugality is the thing. And and so what I also joke about is like, hey, you know, you could drink Starbucks and Latte's until your liver fails. You're not gonna save as much money as if you cut your car and housing payments flower you know. So, so that's just where the big you know changes happen.

So if you can limit your housing and car expenses, then at the very worst scenario, your your debt is kind of like a tax, and it's attacks where you lose ten percent of your income. Well, hey, if you if you're gonna go to bachelor's degree and make like fifty so adding like ten percent on top of that,

so now you're at fifty five. Like if you went to a graduate program that you're making over fifty five K, then that was a good financial decision even if you took out like a bazillion dollars because you're just paying a percentage of your income and then you're gonna have

to pay the income tax bomb in the future. But like if you want to just kind of account for that too, then set of ten percent more, say it's like fifteen or twenty are So instead of making like fifty five K, maybe need to make sixty K with your grad degree. So if you're gonna make like even a little bit more with that grad degree, you can go to a program that like by traditional standards, looks like a freaking scam and you can actually make the economics work. Now, I want to, you know, say that

I do not at all recommend you do that. Like, you know, I get I get people the time that are reaching out and I'm like, like, you know, I want to be you know, I want to be a chiropractor, and and I'm gonna make a lot of money, And I'm like, okay, first of all, like you'll probably make fifty to seventy thou dollars and you're gonna graduate two K of debt. You know that work out? Like could I probably like finagle that into being a financially sustainable

good life. Yes, but it's probably a terrible decision. To do that, you know, And so that's one thing that's kind of really frustrating is UM. You know a lot of schools just like blatantly lie, you know, like it's it's kind of been real. I don't know if you'll have any thoughts about that. Went to one of those schools. I just I'll put my hand up right now you can't see it, but I went to one of those schools.

I had a girl reach out to me yesterday on Instagram saying she saw that I went to UM, this acupuncture school and what I thought about it, And I was like, the school is great, but you're not going to make enough to pay back your student loans. You're not going to make what they tell you're gonna make. I had to do so many other things besides acupunculor to pay back the loans that I took out to

get the degree. Yeah, I've always thought that there should be like a sliding scale for what you're getting your degree in, Like why does a social work degree cost as much as a business degree? Right, we're not making

the same thing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was. You know, it's just like so, so this is some of the stuff that I hear, so like they'll use old statistics, so like part of it as like administrators will like why with that actually lying, you know, like they can claim plausible deniability right, Like it's kind of like a Reagan Ran contra lie, like oh I didn't know like you.

I mean. So, so it's kind of like a as a thing where you know, if you use statistics from like two thousand and seven, and you use those average debt statistics and then you use the incomes from back, then yeah, you can possibly say like, oh, yeah, our grads are paying it back, right, and so yeah, people pay it back in like seven years, like for example,

this one dental school. Like I know for a fact, like so many people have told me, the administrators tell them that they people pay back the debt and the average of seven years. But to pay back the debt the average debt and ten years would take incomes that are greater than a hundred percent of what people earned after graduation. So I know flat out that that's a lie.

But the reason why I think that they're able to like mentally say that is because they're using data that's old, so then they can just kind of like in their minds, I guess get away with, you know. And so if you look at like some of these other schools, like there's tons of pressure that these schools are under to perform. And the deans in the university presidents get large bonuses now they didn't used to get and a lot of those bonuses are dependent upon revenue and performance for the college.

And I've even had conversations with like high level administrators and I can't say their names because they asked me to be off the record. They're basically like, yeah, like the money is there, and you know, we can charge the tuition because there's no cap on on on borrowing now, so since two thousand and six that you can borrow in amount, there's no there's no cap with the new federal loan system. So the schools figure that out and there they can borrow up to the cost of attendance

for schools now. So the schools are like, okay, well, so then we'll just raise your cost of attendance to like infinity and beyond. And so that's what's happening. And the reason why you know, students haven't like freaked out yet is because you have capped payments that are percentage of your income. So if your payments are percentage of

your income, you're never gonna feel the full cost. Right, So if you graduate from macupunctre school two or fift debt instead of paying month where you have like mass protests and pitchforks and like burning torches, right, you have like payments of like five month, And so that's kind of why nobody is like freaking out yet. And so the only thing that would stop this would be what's

happening in like pharmacy right now. So like, for example, pharmacists, their acceptance rate for pharmacy school went from thirty one in two thousand five to about three percent today. So now if you have a pulse, you can get into pharmacy school. But that's done to incomes. Is incomes have gone from like hutter twenty k too, like an eighty

or ninety k average, so incomes actually falling. Yeah, So, like thinking about what happened to law schools, right, Like law schools, you had that big like legal recession where like way more people were like, Hey, you're not gonna get a legal job, don't go to law school. So it's the salaries in the job market that prevented people from going in right now, like the job markets pretty good, like the economic expansions hopping right. Everybody can get jobs,

or a lot of people can. It's like everybody just kind of running into all these programs. So it's it's pretty wild out there, and like, I just hope that some of these schools eventually get held to account for what they're doing. Yes, wow, now that we're sufficiently depressed, Yes it is. It's a it's a whole problem. Thankfully, there's people who are like seizing the occasion to really get serious about their debt and get rid of it.

But yeah, for those thinking about going to school, this is a big deal to consider in what you want to do with your future. If you've already done it, you're in it, and now you're like head down gazelle pace trying to get at it, then it is possible.

But yeah, it's a problem. Yeah, we have some listeners struggling with um they're in like an income driven program, they're set up, they're at a PSLF qualified workplace, and they've got you know, those loans, maybe not like two fifty dollars, but uh, god bless you if that's you. But they know that they could be making more if they weren't working for the government or for a nonprofit like doing the same thing in the private sector. So how do you balance that, Like, like what do I do?

Do I stay for the PSLF make a little bit less or do I go out into the private sector and make more? Like how do you counsel people on dealing with that decision? I mean, I'll give the one size fits all answer, which is actually, like in my experience, a really good answer. You should do what makes you happy.

So if you're like, man, I want to make more money and have more dynamic career opportunities, and man, I'm tired of using this like you know, email database from like two thousand and one, you know, and like you know, like all the stuff that you know, the government kind of jobs come with, right, then like, yeah, you should

do the private sector job. And if you're like, hey, I love doing public service and I love helping people and having great vacation and sickly even you know, all these benefits and I love my coworkers and the fact that it's not high pressure and like really focus on you know, profits and everything, then you should continue in that job. And you shouldn't feel bad about making less money.

So the reason for that is I calculate like a break even for clients, and so like the break even, I try to tell them, like what PS left is worth is as if it was like an annual bonus. So for example, I can say they're like, hey, this is gonna be like earning an extra ten k a or and you know with your government jobs, so like a private sector job would be like seventy K plus ten so that'd be a d you know, And so

those two jobs you'd be financially indifferent between. So if you can get an a D K private sector job, you're exactly the same place you're at. And what I typically find is like the extra income you can make in the private sector is often quite similar to the income you're making adjusted for that one for you giveness benefit and the public sector for a lot of people out there, and so then you just have to pick

the one that makes you happiest. And you know, too, I'd say that you want to make sure that you adjust for the hour's worked too, because I've had some scenarios where it was kind of like a wash. But one private sector job would ask this guy to work like fifty five hour speaking the government job, you'd be working forty, So you know you kind of want to adjust it for like number of hours lifestyle and then make the decision that's best for you and your family.

And I promise you, like nine of the time, you know you'll you'll be able to choose either one. That's good advice. Mhm. I didn't think you're going to give good advice on that one, but you surprised me. Again, I'm just kidding. Oh yeah, no, bring it, you know, actually I got I got even better advice. So let's say, like you want to just totally dodge your suit of loans, right and you're just tired of America and you're like screw this, Like I just want to get the heck

out of here. So the best thing you can do is marry like an Australian or like a New Zealander, or you know somebody in like you know, a foreign country. Like So I'll give you an example, like this one guy, he's living in Dubai right now, and he's a dentist, and so Dubai they have no income tax there, and too, there's something called the foreign earn income tax exclusion, which means you can exempt like a hunter k of income and not put it on your taxes and it's totally legit.

So if you live in like France, right and you're being like a social worker in France, then your US income could be zero and then your payment is based on your US income, so it could be zero. Right. What I don't have to do you have to marry somebody from at place? Or can you just move there? You can move there. You don't have to marry somebody. It's just a lot easier. I already have a husband. I don't think I can do more than yeah, well you know, I mean, if it's worth it now, I'm

just kidding. She could handle more than one. Yeah, so so so it's like, you know, but what you could do is get permanent residency, right, or you could get like another you know, like passports somehow like figure out some sort of special program and immigrate somewhere. Like actually have a group of clients in Australia and New Zealand that like a lot of them are like weirdly, it's

like veterinarians or something. I think like they meet people in that school and they're like take me away from like my giant and so like you know, so they go so they go down there and like, yeah, they have like four hundred a death, but they're paying zero mondy. This is going to be the new trends. I mean, they're they're living over there with zero payments. Do they have to come back and deal with it one day? Well, if you're legally ndling it, then you don't have to

write and so eventually the debt would be forgiven. You'd have to pay income tax on that. But then there's something called the insolvency exclusion. So if you have what forgiven death and your assets are less than your liabilities, then under current i r S code, you're dead is forgiven text free. So there's all kinds of ways to deal with this. You don't have to default, you don't have to freak out or just feel like trapped. You know, there was this case in CNBC. This guy was like

talking about how students made him so stressed. He just like moved to a jungle in India and like he had a picture of him like writing an elephant and he's like I feel so great, even though I know my credits trash, Like I don't want to come home because I wouldn't be able to even open like a

bank account, you know. And I'm like, dude, this guy not only could he not be trashing his credit and like compounding his interests and all this stuff, he could be getting zero dollar on payments and his interest would be cut in half if he was on the repay program. So there is a way to run away from your problems. And I have for your problem to solve itself. Yeah,

we have. We have like an hoping to find out. Yeah, it's like how to flee the country with student loans, and it's notes that someone's going to take this option. It's legal. Well, you completely support it, so yeah, I mean they might you know, they might close it, in which case you might have to adopt your new country. Right. But hey, you know, probably my ancestors were probably like locked up in like you know, an Irish poorhouse or something.

They're like, I'm tired of being in debt. I'm gonna go to America, right, So maybe, you know, maybe maybe some other people need to start thinking like that too, Right, I'm just joking around, But like the thing is is, you know, debt can cause tons of anxiety and tons of stress. Yeah, you know, like I get I get like and some of the extreme examples, like I get people that are contact to me that I have to

refer to like the National suicide online you know. So it spans the gamut of like hey, this is stressful to like this is destroying my life, right, And so the thing that people need to realize is like, hey, there's all these creative options, right, Like who knew that you could just literally move to like New Zealand and like never have to deal with your debt? Right? I mean, you know, who knew that you could get on an encombent and program and pay like way less, you know,

And it's actually okay. And the main thing that's going to determine your financial success is just the fact that you you know, you actually have a high savings rate.

So like I've been building this tool to try to like show people this too within my calculator, that's like, hey, if you go for forgiveness and you make sure you have a high savings rate, then what will happen is your assets will be like three times your your student lawn debt, and then at some point they'll like kind of solve the student low debt crisis, right, you know, and and then you'll have a really positive net worth. And so I even have like a strategy to where

people die with their debt. That sounds like really depressing. I hate to say it like this, but like, let

me just paint an example. So say someone's got a hundred fifty thousand or two hundred thousand apparent plus loans and they're seventy years old because their kids like went to like private Catholic school, right, so that mom or dad like, instead of just like delaying retirement just forever to pay like fifteen hundred a month under loans on the loans until like eighty, what you can do instead is if you max social Security, then you can use

like this loophole where social Security is not really considered, you know, in your income. If it's you know, below a certain level, it's actually really high. It's a lot higher than you think. And then you can pay zero a month on that for twenty five years and you have to pay income tax. And if you pass away,

then the debts forgiven tax free. So what you could do is if you're frugal and you listen to the Frugal Friends podcasts, right, and you're just like the one seven to year old that listens to happen in podcasts. I don't. I don't want to offend anybody that I don't. We got a couple of seven year olds and hard yeah yeah, well yeah yeah, Stage twenty at hard seventy year olds. But you know, so that person could you know, if they live until and pass that they probably get

a disability discharge. If they pass away before that, then it would be discharged text free. And that hundred fifty two K is something that now can get forgiven instead of paid back. So there's like, you know, this this loophole with like the moving overseas, the dying with your debt and taking it with you, you know, because you don't take The thing is you don't take your assets with you, but they don't tell you they don't. You don't take your debts either, so you have to you know,

you have to be creative with it. We joke about some of this stuff, but it is it's important to note that there's such an emotional, like in mental aspect to paying back debt because I had that, I had that severe anxiety when I had my debt, and just to know to be assured that it's not the end of the world. You can always move to Australia and maybe just keep that in the back of your head and it just makes a little makes it a little lighter.

It doesn't have to be something that rules your mental capacity. Yeah, Travis, you've taken us through some a lot of non traditional ways of dealing with debt. Are there any other even lesser known but more understood programs that could offer a loan forgiveness something maybe better than p PSLF programs or Yeah, I mean there's there's something called n h SC Loan Forgiveness.

This is a program where if your health professional work in an under certain area, they'll pay I think it's like twenty a year towards your loans or something like that. I had to look up to be sure. But then there's another one called National Institute of Health you know, LONG for you and it's there just's like a whole bunch of them for health professionals in particular. Uh, there's like there's Perkins lung cancelation. UM, there's some various programs

for specific states. So we have like a list of some of them on the blog that are out there that you know, if you are a you know, a teacher in a certain area, if you're you know, a certain kind of professional a certain area. A lot of them are tied to some sort of you know, serving underserved populations, which kind of makes sense. You know, your your employer might have an employer assistance program to pay student loans. That's becoming more popular. Yeah, so there's there's

definitely options out there. I think that the best path though, is to kind of rely on your own self to get out of debt. If you're not gonna get forgiveness, like the probably the majority of people are not going to get any forgiveness. That's one thing that I think we should kind of say, because the majority of borrowers actually have you know about well, the majority have less than forty debt, and the population that has you know, six figures is actually only about five to six percent

of the total student loan borrowers. So if you have that like typical undergrad debt, you probably need to pay it back. Like I'm apologize, I don't want to be the very bad news, but yeah, you probably gotta get rid of it. And then the good news is like fort k is a lot, but it's kind of like uh an F one fifty purchase you wish you could take back, you know what I mean. It's like it's a card nayment. It's not like it's a mortgage, and

people pay car payments all the time. So for for that situation, you know, you can refinance, and you can refinance twice, right, so you could do like a refi and get a five hundred dollar bonus, do like a tenure payment and like four a month that you can pay more than what you oh and then that will knock down your balance faster than what the stated loan skye Jel says, and you'll knock down forty k to like twenty k. And then you could refinance again with

a different company and get another five hundred bucks, and then you could do a payment that's four hundred bucks. But then that would get you at a debt in five years instead of ten years. So you know, if you're making those extra prepayments, you get down from forty to twenty, now you could cut down that ten year schedule down to like six or seven years total. So

like there's that's called a refinancing ladder. So refinancing ladders when you refinance multiple times to keep your payment manageable, but always keep lowering the interest rate. And the other flip side to it is just you know, live on you know the old live on rice and beans means rice until you like, hey, if you're like if you got k, you're coming out like I paid two like I think three D a month living in like the Philadelphia area for my first job, because we had a

guy living in the attic. Was it great to live in the attic? Probably not, But I've got some great memories from it, you know, like trying to white. Yeah, you just gotta live that frugal life, you know, like getting the We had to climb the roof with the mattress to fit it in through the attic, and that was probably really stupid, you know, So I gotta do

what you gotta do. Yeah so, but you know, but in reality, like paid off car like three a month, Like you're making fifty k, which is like a typical after college income. You got twenty cave debt. Okay, Like suck it up and pay it off, right, I mean, if if that's you, I don't want to sound like kind of mean or anything, but like empower yourself to like just pay, Like, if you pay two percent of your dead amount every month, you'll be done in five years.

If you pay four or four percent, you'll be done in like less than probably around two years, you know. So that's that's like a good rule of thumb. If you pay one percent of your dead amount every month, then you'll be done in ten years. So like you know when you'll be out of debt. So just like throw tons of money. I didn't get rid of it, you know. I think that the only thing that comes before getting rid of your student low debt, if you know you need to get rid of it, is putting

money into your reversity find and getting your retirement match. Yeah, another bumper sticker, Suck it up and pay it off. See what you gotta do? Yeah, dot dot except when you need to move to Australia exactly. Oh my word. Next best thing to moving to Australia, though, is our favorite time of the definitely the bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name

is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That build buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week, Travis. Every week we invite a listener or guest to share with us their favorite bill for the week, whether that's lower case, upper case whatever. Bill Travis, do you have a bill of the week for us today? I sure do, And it wasn't even my bill. So this is kind of what happened.

So we started tracking or spending on you need to budget dot com. So maybe some of your listeners are familiar with that. And so I used to be so frugal that I did not need to budget at all, because again I was I was seeing my software Rice.

I know you could buy that in bulk for like, you know, a dollar for thousand pounds, and so like I didn't need to budget, right, But then I got married, and hey, you know, you know you you kind of start spending more money, like things that you were willing to do when you were like nineteen or like twenty one or whatever. Suddenly like naughty Light doesn't taste as good, right, so, uh, it's something on top of that Rice exactly. So I noticed,

I noticed we were spending a lot more money. So I'd like we started tracking or spending more so we can know exactly like what we were spending in each category. And and that was like good too, because like I don't know what she spends and she doesn't know what I spend. So now it's like a place where we

can communicate with each other what's going on. So one of the parts of this budgeting app is you have to like add in all of your expenses, you know, even if they're like brought out automatically, you have to like match them up to what your categories are. So I was doing that one night and I was like, dang, like we really spent a lot of money in uber

eats this month and uh. And I was like looking at the expenses and there was like five different charges and I was like, I don't even think we've ever used duber eats. And so then I asked, you know, I asked my wife. I was like, did you order anything? And you know, uh, you know, and I checked kind of my history and I didn't order anything, And I asked, are So it's kind of weird. Our best man lives with us right now, our roommate, you know, save money, right,

save that money. So I was thinking, okay, maybe he took my phone and you know and in order dubered, so I asked him to he didn't do anything. And so we found two of somebody's you know, career and barbecue charges or whatever on our on our cards. And if I hadn't tracked him a United budget, like I'm gonna be honest, like I would not have noticed it. Because credit card expenses, it's just like this long list. You don't have to like think about it that much.

You just see it, just pay it off. I liked to log in every couple of weeks and pay it off. And if I hadn't been tracking a United budget, then I would have we would have literally just like given like some you know bro like two forty dollars of like Korean barbecue and or reads for a bill that like I didn't even seriously, yeah, you didn't even get to enjoy that Korean barbecue. It's terrible. And like I think that that would buy you quite a bit, because

oh my gosh, that's great. That was a big lesson learned that you know, how are you going to know if somebody is out there like using your card if you're not even tracking and the budget apt like where it's going, so they get your info. So I'm a little scared that it could have something to do with me being a public more public personality. But I think, I think probably really what happened was just like somebody kinda was making fifteen dollars an hour, we were kind

of chilling at their restaurant. They might have taken a picture of our card, like real quick, right, Like, I think that's probably what happened. I think somebody just kind of like little pretty and just took a quick, you know, picture of it, and you know, and like St. Louis Police has got bigger things to worry about than somebody getting a little bit of free chicken, you know, so you know, if it was like thousands of dollars, they

probably would investigate it. But I mean, it's like it's not a big deal because credit card companies obviously just you know, give it back to you pretty pretty easily.

They don't charge you for it. Um, it's nearly as bad as like I got money stolen from my debit card when I was in Mexico, and I actually had to go to like the Mexican police station and file a formal report because you know, debit cards, you have to actually have the money deposited back at your account, which is way tougher than getting a charge canceled on your credit card. So you know, that's that's like a different rodeo. But that's my favorite bill. One one more built.

That's like an actual bill. It's a bill the Congress. Yeah, so this this bill is the Higher Education Act, and it's being reauthorized as we speak, and it's going to change a lot of things about student loans. There's a really high probability that it passes. I think that will grandfather everybody in on the current programs as they expectation, but there's a real good chance that it's going to dramatically alter the landscape for student loans for the next

ten years. So if you're you're a student lombar where now and you want to protect what you have, reach out to your congress person or your senator. If you're going to school and you're like thinking about being a doctor and you're like the PSLVE program going away would be ruinous for me, reach out to your person that's you know, and tell them, like, this is a very

important program for me. Because whatever they write in the bill is going to be what's gonna happen in the next ten years, and it's probably not going to get changed, you know, for another ten years when they do it. So that bill is just the Higher Education Act. Uh, it's just getting you know, every ten years it gets reauthorized. They put it off for like twelve years or ten or eleven, twelve years now, so it's overdue. So definitely kind of keep tabs on that. If you're interested in

student loans man double bills, and double greatness. Those were two really good ones. And y'all, if you think you can top that or get anywhere close to it, visit us at Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill and leave us your bill of the week. We got a few. If you haven't heard yours yet, it's coming, I promise. We got a few in the queue. It's coming down the line. But now it's time for our lightning round, yes, or lightning round the night like just didn't prepare for today.

It's gonna be fast, just like lightnings, because I don't fully understand what the lightning round is yet we changes everybody does, and nobody knows that the lightning round is, so just shorter than the first part. That's it. It's shorter than the first part than the thunder round. Yeah, I have a lightning question for you guys. Oh yeah, even turning the tables. Okay, would you would you rather have an m D degree with four thousand of debt or a j D degree with two hundred thousand of debt?

Mm hmm, Well, I don't think that I would want to ever be a lawyer, so I think I would just have to go with my heart and take the mp D. Um. Yeah, less debt always, but you have to so much and argue all the time. So, Jim, that's exactly what you want to think about graduate degree is is like that you should go not for the money, right, you should go for what you wanted. But sorry, but but think about it this way. It's like, what is

your income going to be? I had somebody with like four or five thousand of debt, but she was an OBG and in a rural area, she's making four year. And then I have a lawyer over here that's working as an associate, like a decent law firm, making nine dek a year and he makes has two thousand of debt. Right, so if you have a lot higher income than having

a lot higher debt. It's totally worth it. Okay, flipping the tables again for the lightning round, Travis, you said you traveled for a year to like forty different countries. What was your favorite where? I mean, you obviously probably don't have time to list all the places that you went, but what were your favorite explorations? Ukraine was my favorite because anybody in America is a one per center in Ukraine, and being a one per center gives you a very

different perspective on life, even if it's very temporary. It's like only for ten days, right, That's how long I was in this one particular city in Laviv, and I loved it. I mean Laviv and and um in the capital of we're just amazing cities to be in. Because a hostile a super nice hostel, was very clean, everything, great internet, five dollars a night and dinner at a place with like a swing band that was like playing in the mood. It's like four level brewery. You know.

I had like a flight of beers and food and appetizers dessert A dollar fifty for that, you know, and it was good food. You didn't get sick. It was amazing. It was just like really really high quality, and I was Ukrainian food. Nothing was imported, right, like, so anything that was important you had to pay, like the foreign currency price, but anything that was in Ukraine dollars specifically, Like the economy was a wreck at the time I was there, and you know, the exchange rate which is

out of control because of the war with Russia. You know, so I stayed in the part obviously that wasn't in the conflict area. It's just it's just an exciting place to be. I really love the foods on the people. I love that You're like your standard was like how cheap the place was for being Yeah, my husband and

I figure out where we're going to go. I think that's the secret, like slow travel and being able to afford to travel like for a super long time and just pick a place, like spend more time in the cheap places exploring nose and then the more expensive places, but just like let's spend there. Yeah, yeah, that's a good time. And Travis, lastly, what do you have going on at student loan Planner? Where can people find more about you? What's happening another? Yeah, so help at student

Loan Planner dot com. We'll get you in touch with one of our cps or cf a s and you can just like spill your guts out and just tell us what's going on and what your stress is, and we'll tell you if we think that you should work with us or not. And then if you just want to learn more, I would just go over to the student planter dot com site and just click on the blog and you can literally type in the search bar like what you're interested in, where you can see all

the categories we have. So anything you know, any kind of profession imagineable, we should have a category dedicated to you that you could read and get a lot of free stuff from. And of course there's the calculator that you can don't you even have an acupuncture section, which nobody does, so you literally have that resection. I mean, if you're not there, send us an email tell me. Yeah.

I mean we have almost everything like emphasis on almost like every now and then pilots like real flight flight air traffic will have like two hunder granded debt, or like people that are like professional clowns like I'm not I'm not kidding, Like any profession that you can imagine that could have a graduate degree attached to it often has a lot of debt, So I'm trying to think of like at the top of my head, like I've had like Jewish canterists have like three K and debt,

and we're trying to figure out if they were like proselytizing at all, because if you're proselytizing, you don't qualify for PSLF. And there's just so many weird, interesting professions that I've run across doing this that have a lot of debt. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for hanging out with this, Travis. This has been super fun. Off the rails. On the rails, so so good, and I think people are going to get a lot out of it. Thanks Jill. That was real good. That was so good.

And if I still had a ton of debt left, honest to goodness, Jen, I would have been the crazy one saying, yep, France, Australia, I don't care, throw the dart. We're going this is ridiculous. So that's fantastic. But also for those people who aren't going to be as traumatic as I am, there's some great aces in there for you too. I would not have done that. I did not do that um and and even I didn't go

with student loan forgiveness. But I thought his insight on how to more easily discern what's going to be right for you was good. And I'm try to remind people that paying off debt is so much more than math and income. There's a mental and an emotional aspect to it, and it never ever should make you feel hopeless or anxious, are like you just don't want to live anymore. And if that is what you're feeling, then definitely talk to

somebody about it, like Jill, Yeah, because I'm a social worker. Yeah, And and there's always hope and light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully that's what people can walk away from this episode with because it can feel so overwhelming and then to feel like there's so many different options and you've got to read all the fine print and what does this mean for me, and all the lingo and the jargon that there are experts out there who can help you, But then there's also just the chipping

away at it. It can happen for you. So yeah, it's it is a broken system. We recognize that, but there are there's a whole community of support and friends around you to help you pay off that debt and live a really fantastic life with your finances. And if you need more friends that are trying to pay off their debt, head over to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash group. There's a whole group, a big group, and we're all frugal and supportive and there are no dumb

questions in our group. So come hang out with us. And if you want to hear more from Travis again, check him out on Student Loan Planner podcast or on his website. And if you just need something else to do after you've done all of those things, we are reading Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill this April, and

we're still doing the given away free copies. So if you want to enter to win a free copy of this book, Think and Grow Rich, leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, Screenshot the review and email it to us at Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com. We will select the winners at the end of the month.

One in every five reviews for the month gets a book those goods Yes, yes, And if you want an example of a very helpful review that will help strangers figure out if they want to be our frugal friends or not. Here's a really good one. It's from Sarah and it's topped with five stars, and it says like frugal soul sisters. I decided two thousand nineteen was there

I finally get my finances in check. One of the ways that helps me is listening to smart personal finance podcasts that align with the choices I need to make. Listening to these ladies dish about all the different ways I can change my spending and be frugal without giving up the fund in my life, It's been a lifesaver and has helped me stay on track. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to make their money work for them. Thank you so much. There we are audition

that that makes it sound juicy too. It makes it sound like we're getting together, we're addition on stuff and we are. Yeah, we definitely are a good point. So give us a review, get us some more friends, get yourself some more friends by leaving us a review, and we'll see you next week. Bye guys. Bye. Frugal Friends is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Serria um Jen what is the craziest thing you have done to get

rid of your debt? Craziest, craziest. I'm not a very crazy person, right, so for you who once the craziest, gosh, I wish I was more fun crazy out here. You are fun and crazy. You responded to a random Facebook request invite and that's how we met. Yeah, I think, so this may not be crazy, but to some it wasn't crazy to me, but to some people it might be crazy. But I worked in foster group homes for years.

I remember that was that part was that considered like a side hustle for you, That was a side job for me. Like every weekend I was at one of one of four smaller group homes and one like large kid group home. And sometimes I would get punched, sometimes kids would run away. Uh, sometimes they would be the most precious humans on the planet. You just never knew what you were going to get. And then yeah, sometimes I would get shingles with physical abuse in order. It

was never paid. Actually think that I had to break up a fight once and I left and I went home and I had like a fist sized bruise on my thigh, but I didn't feel it. In the moment, so, um, because your adrenaline was going because you were in the middle of a crisis, right right, So that was pretty I mean I don't think a lot of people would do that. No, No, that's definitely crazy. So you did it, You're crazy. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that's like the bar we want

to set. But yeah, and it's still I still want foster and adopt, So it didn't change my view on that. Fantastic. Should I ask you the same question, Jill? Have you done something crazy? Should we? Should I ask you this while we're still recording? Yeah, um, I mean you already know. Probably the most dramatic is living in a trailer, you know, like that, that was the reason. I mean other reasons too.

We like the minimalist lifestyle and all of that, but that's why you know, downside and you're heading back in there, heading back into square feet. Yeah, it's adorable, horrible. Yeah, we're gonna have to do an episode on that. I'm getting people as me about it, so we will. It's coming, all right,