The Sugar Daddy Podcast
Ready to normalize talking about money? Then welcome to The Sugar Daddy Podcast. Every episode will get you one step closer to your financial goals. Whether that is learning how to invest, budget, save, retire early or simply make better money choices, Jess & Brandon have got you covered in a way that's easy to understand, and easy to implement. Tune in as they demystify the realm of dollars, so it all makes cents, while giving you a glimpse into their relationship with money and each other.
Brandon is an award winning licensed financial planner, and owner of Oak City Financial, with over a decade of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the United States.
New episodes published the first three Wednesdays of every month.
The Sugar Daddy Podcast
75: How to Navigate Student Loan Debt with Attorney Stanley Tate
Known for his practical and accessible guidance, Stanley Tate, an expert attorney in student loan law, has become an indispensable resource for student loan borrowers of diverse backgrounds. In this conversation, Jessica and Brandon dive into the complexities of the student loan debt landscape and its emotional toll on borrowers. From navigating federal, private and Parent PLUS loans, to strategies for finding relief through repayment options and bankruptcy, this episode is packed with expert insights and practical steps you can take to reassess your decisions regarding student loans, repayment and the ROI of college.
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Notes from the show:
https://www.youtube.com/@stanleytate
In today's conversation, you're going to hear us speak with attorney Stanley Tate, who focuses specifically on student loans. We talk about everything from the predatory loan industry to what you really need to consider before taking out student loans for yourself or as a parent, taking student loans out for your child. We dive into mindset as well as really understanding what you're signing up for when it comes to these loans and then his services around including your loans in bankruptcy, and understanding the intricacies and all of the student loan forgiveness programs. If you have student loans or know somebody who is drowning under student loans, this episode is for you.
Speaker 2:Hey babe, what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1:Today we are talking about student loans, which I know is a very daunting, hair-raising, anxiety-inducing topic, and I know we've talked about it in the past. But today we actually have an expert with us. We have Stanley Tate, who is an attorney specializing in student loans. So we're going to get into all the nitty-gritty about what's going on with the landscape, what kind of services he provides his clients and overall kind of best practices about what to know before taking out student loans, how to repay them, so that maybe you don't need to actually call Stanley's office for help later on down the line. So we're going to get into all of those things, because we know that this is a topic that affects millions of Americans. Unfortunately, we're not going to get away from it anytime soon, and then, with this turnover in administration in 2025, I don't know what's going to happen. So we're going to talk to Stanley about that. Stanley, thank you for being with us today on the Sugar Daddy podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Let's get into your bio so that everybody knows where your expertise lies, and then we'll get into your first money memory before we dig into all the juicy student loan goodness.
Speaker 3:I think you know, when we talk about bio, there's like you could start with your origin story, like where you come from, or like your educational background, training, whatever. But I think for me it's most important to know I'm from Chicago Southside, because that informs everything that comes later, just those lessons you get from there. But beyond that, graduated law school, been practicing student loan law now for a decade plus, got into this area of law after practicing consumer bankruptcy for a couple of years and realizing that we weren't fully addressing student loan problems. And this is back in like 2014,. People go through bankruptcy and still be stuck with student loans afterwards. And when is? Back in like 2014,. People go through bankruptcy and still be stuck with student loans afterwards.
Speaker 3:And when I looked at the landscape of who was trying to solve these problems, there were very few people who had a focus on this area of law in particular. In fact, it wasn't really an area of law and I was like this is a problem. You look at the time there were like 30 plus million people and no one's really focused on. Okay, what do you do with all of these programs? So that got me into it. I've been doing it since then, 2014, full time. One of the only practices nationwide that's all they're focused on is student loans.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I absolutely love that. Well, let's yeah, you just gave us the bio. I was going to do that for you and read your bio.
Speaker 2:Oh, my bad. I'm so sorry about that.
Speaker 1:No, don't even. It's great, but I want to make sure that we cover some of that other stuff that Chicago Southside that you just mentioned. I know that's very important to you, but what I have is Stanley. Tate is a distinguished attorney specializing solely in student loan law, a niche where few venture, which is exactly what you just said. His unparalleled expertise encompasses the intricate process of discharging student loans in bankruptcy. Known for his practical and accessible guidance, stanley has become an indispensable resource for borrowers of diverse backgrounds. A trusted speaker, he delves into higher education, financing and legal automation for his peers. His academic roots trace back to Southern Illinois University, carbondale, for undergraduate studies, followed by a law degree from Thurgood Marshall School of Law with honors. So you left that out. You got to give yourself those accolades. Stanley, his pedigree. You know what?
Speaker 3:I'm going to say, someone else will say it, you were doing my job.
Speaker 1:His pedigree also includes federal clerkships in Texas and Missouri. Stanley has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He's also been named a Missouri super lawyer rising star multiple times over. We just want to make sure we give you your props, you know.
Speaker 3:You know I never run it down like that. I sound like I'm trying to pick up some young lady at the bar on a Friday night, just running down the hall at late.
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe you don't read the bio to her when you're, you know, trying to pick her up at the bar.
Speaker 3:You know people, they like to sell themselves. But no, thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1:It's sometimes it really makes me blush when I hear the kind of uncomfortable because I just do the work in front of me I don't really worry about the results or how it all stacks up, so it's kind of cool to hear Well, we know that the best people doing good work rarely care about the accolades and care about the work and the people that they're helping, so we're going to put you in that camp. So thank you for the work that you do.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, going to put you in that camp. So thank you for the work that you do. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Before we get into all of those specifics, let's go into your first money memory, because we are a financial literacy podcast. The first real money memory is I remember paying. I got caught up in some type of criminal charge where I had to hire a lawyer and I hired this lawyer, paid him $5,000.
Speaker 3:And to me that was like an ungodly amount of money at that time but it was worth it because I believed he would make. Whatever the charge was, go away. And sure enough he did. And he did in what seemed like 15 minutes to me and I was like, wait, you can make that type of money doing that for that. And from then I became focused on how does that kind of inform the type of life I want to lead, because I didn't think that world was possible. Everyone around me they worked like you thought you had a good job if you worked a sunrise shift at UPS, right. So it's like that extra 50 cent interval increase. So having seen that and seen what was possible made me believe my world was a lot bigger than the South side of Chicago, that there were more opportunities other than being a postal man. No shade against it whatsoever. But it was just very blue collar type of work and it wasn't something where you can get paid an exorbitant amount of money in exchange for the time that you spent.
Speaker 2:That kind of goes back to the whole concept of it's hard for someone to become what they aren't currently seeing, and that's so important when you're young.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely I mean, but for like a different world, but for that experience like that, where these kind of things start to compound on one another, you start to believe a world is bigger than the blocks that you track to and from school.
Speaker 1:right, to law school and like, okay, I'm going to become an attorney, because apparently that's not what you had in front of you as far as examples. So that must have been a tough road in and of itself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was, but it was just setting out okay, what does it take to become this thing Like? For me, it was never a question of smarts or brain power, just a question of smarts or brain power, it's just a question of focus. And once I realized, okay, to become a lawyer you have to go to law school, you have to pass the LSAT, yada, yada, yada. And then I set off on that path. And that path I didn't have the undergrad grades to do it. So then I had to think, okay, what else can I do? And I tried to find a job in the legal field. No one would hire me. Because I was like, oh, if I have experience, that'll help buttress my resume. No one would hire me.
Speaker 3:So one day I was talking to my boy. He was like man, you know what? Why don't you just join the military as a paralegal? And I was like I bet. And then I went down there and I signed up to the recruiter. I was like yo, I'm only joining if I get to be a paralegal. And they were like, okay, let's see what can be done. And I was like no, you don't understand me. It's not see what can be done. I'm only doing this. If this happens, right, let me clarify.
Speaker 3:And that happened. And then as soon as I got in the next year, I sat down for the LSAT, took the LSAT deployed to Iraq, turned in my application to law school when I was in Iraq got accepted. And as soon as I got that acceptance letter I was like, oh my God, this is real and I can do this. And then got out the military, went right to law school and realized, whoa, this is a whole new world. The skills that brought me there won't keep me there, won't take me to the next level. Now I got to learn some new skills here, but thankfully it was just like that level of focus of I want to do this. So what steps do I need to take in order to get there? Let's do that.
Speaker 1:Have you been listening to our podcast and wondering how am I really doing with my money? Am I doing I really doing with my money? Am I doing the right things with my investments? Am I on track to reach my financial goals? What could I be doing better? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it's time for you to reach out to Brandon to schedule your free yes, I said free 30-minute introduction conversation to see how his services could help make you the more confident moneymaker we know you could be. What are you waiting for? It's literally free and, at the very least, you'll walk away feeling more empowered and confident about your financial future. Link is in our show notes. Go schedule your call today. I love that. I don't know why that wasn't in your bio. First off, let's start there. Second of all, we just had Veterans Day, so thank you for your service and I love that you had a friend. That was like go to the military, do this one specific thing. And now you're sitting where you're sitting. I mean that's pretty incredible.
Speaker 3:Changes the entire trajectory of my life. For any person out there, any young person that comes from a background that has their wanting for resources, I think it's a great opportunity to change your stars. It kind of fast tracks your progress towards things.
Speaker 3:So for me, fast tracks progress towards changing my life. And it shows up in different ways because when I was in law school, people they treat you differently when they find out you're in the military right and it's like oh, you've served your country and you deployed oh my God right. And they start making up hero stories about you and you're like dude, I sat in a sandbox in Iraq. I didn't really do nothing, but let me be clear. But they treat you like it's Hurt Locker and I'm like all right, cool, if that's what you want to believe, let's go.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, my gosh. All right. So that was a whole story I wasn't even prepared for, but thank you for sharing that. And thank you also for sharing that first money memory of kind of having a little bit of a run in with the law, because I think people listening you know, nobody's path is straight and I think when you have these conversations and quote unquote, people have made it. You know, people think that you just were on the straight line and you had all the resources around you in the world, and I think that that's just not the reality from all the conversations we've had. And so thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that with us as well.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it. I think it's super important to share those things because, like, people will see you today and they can't even possibly think of another world in which you came from, and I was like yo, this is like I'm still trying to adapt to this world. I'm in now Like I can't believe this stuff is real, and but then it's cool too, because it's like that's one of the beautiful things about being in America is that you can change your stars like that If you just apply yourself and a lot of things go your way, because some things didn't have to go my way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. How did you go into student loan law? I mean, like you said, it's a niche. Nobody else really is in it. Take us through that journey.
Speaker 3:It did start off where I was a consumer law practitioner and we realized that I saw that there weren't people solving student loan problems. But then there's a difference between recognizing a problem and figuring out that there's a solution that could be monetized. And so I set out to say, oh, I want to help people with student loans. But OK, what does that actually even mean? And at the time there was one piece of material from this advocacy group called the National Consumer Law Center. They have a student loan Bible. So I bought that book and it's like 300 pages and I just read it back to front and I was like, okay, I got it, but now you have the math, you don't have the art of doing it right. You know the signs, you just don't have how to apply it in real practice. And I needed people to kind of help me do that.
Speaker 3:And I started working with my bankruptcy clients and said, okay, let me see what I can do with these student loans. But I still hadn't figured out a way to monetize it. Because it's like, oh, you could do a lot of this stuff yourself. And it wasn't until I was sitting in Jiffy Lube and I was getting oil change and I remember paying for the oil change. I was like wait, I could have did this oil change myself.
Speaker 3:Where they didn't want to deal with themselves, they wanted someone else to handle it for them. And I kind of made that pivot and kind of unlocked things for me to say, if I'm going to do this, the way that I position myself is to provide a superior customer service experience for that person. Experience for that person, and initially I was focused on solutions. But over time I learned student loan debt is such an emotional thing that really what you're solving for is how they feel about their debt, about their outcome and their possibilities in life. And if we focus on that part, you're really doing that person justice because you're unlocking the future for them.
Speaker 1:So we just had Adrian Heinzon, who's a bankruptcy attorney, and we talked about that unsecured debt, the credit cards, medical loans, et cetera. But we did touch on the fact that in most bankruptcies, the student loans do not go away, and so we'd love to understand, from your bankruptcy background and experience there, what was it about the student loans that, aside from just the vast amount of debt that people are carrying, that people were coming to you for, when it comes to that customer service aspect, were they just not getting good information on how to do repayments, not getting good information?
Speaker 2:on how to do repayments or yeah, kind of like what's your like, what is the avatar that's coming to you for these types of services?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the avatar has changed over time as historically it was someone that was in default. They were trying to deal with a private student loan. They were struggling with the student loan payment. So they have this pressing need that they're trying to solve financially Over the last four years with Biden's forgiveness programs and kind of the roller coaster there. It's what the hell am I missing out on? Because I feel like I'm missing something because my loans have not been forgiven.
Speaker 3:And that is more of an analysis of okay, where do your loans fit into all these available programs. And also not just putting that person in the right position, but helping them find the signal inside of the noise because there is a lot of noise out there and they see their classmates or their friend on Facebook getting their loans forgiven and yet they feel like they're in the same situation but their loans aren't and helping put in context what's happening, what the problem is. And they're not getting great information from the servicer or the Department of Education. But I tell them a lot of times you're not talking to a highly skilled individual, you're really talking to someone who is fundamentally different, like the same as the person who handed you your takeout order. They're just following what's on the screen in front of them. And this is the most complex consumer loan product in the world, bar none but the people navigating that, the people piloting it for you. They aren't skilled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's such a hard thing because with the clients I have that still have student loans, when we're going over certain things and I'm saying like hey, you do need to call into your area of service, I'm like I know it's going to be a headache. I'm prefacing this. I know you're probably it's the worst. You might want to do it twice because to make sure you get the accurate information or we schedule a time where I'm on the call with you. But you're right, like it's just so hard and from my experience as well, as far as like what I see, like a lot of people are consuming information off of social media and I've only ever seen maybe one social media account that provides, you know, good, accurate information and everything else is just like crap.
Speaker 3:It truly is. And there's a lot of apples to apples belief comparison and when I tell people one small fact can change the entire analysis of your situation. But we don't want to believe that. We just want to believe oh, I have this debt, I've had it for a long time, it should be gone. And it doesn't work like that. And I want to say this one more time this federal student loan system is the most complex consumer loan product in the world. You have all this interest capitalization with forbearance. You can change repayment terms anytime you want. You can consolidate and reset everything, you can take out new loans freely and add to that as well, and you can carry that debt forever. And it changes hands from servicer to servicer and details get lost. Oh, and, by the way, we have all these different forgiveness programs that have all these other requirements and tripwires inside of there as well. How do we begin to deal with this? I don't know. It feels so complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so complicated and, like you said, there's so many programs, we all feel like we're missing out on something. Did we miss the deadlines? Why do the deadlines change so much? I mean it's really. I mean I understand why people just stick their head in the sand and say, oh, I'm just going to die with these loans, because it almost sounds like the better option than to face it head on and have these terrible conversations with people who don't understand why we're calling in. And I mean it's really just a terrible system.
Speaker 3:It is, and I think the hard part is and the people with student loan debt are. Often they tell themselves, hey, I'm really smart, I'm good at my job, I can figure out all of my other part of my life. I can't figure out the student loan thing. And they begin to think something is wrong with them. It's kind of like Lord of the Rings Frodo didn't just go on his journey by himself, he had to have Gandalf with him. You need someone that understands how to navigate the system. And that's not like a plug for me or any other professional, it's just.
Speaker 3:The truth of the matter is that this is not like your mortgage. It is not like your car note those have very simple amortization schedules that you pay off over time. This is the only debt that you know of that has all these different repayment terms, forgiveness programs associated with them and, by the way, different loan types, depending on when you went to school. If you don't have those right loan types, for example, there's a bunch of people who got left out of the public service loan forgiveness program because they had these older federal student loans made under a different loan program. They didn't know that they're like I work in public service. I got federal loans. My loan should be forgiven. No, actually you're in the wrong repayment plan. You have the wrong loan type. You didn't do this, this or this. And yeah, we made it clear to you, but you're not thinking about that because you're just putting your head down working, doing your job.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Jess has no know what you just said, but that one was missed.
Speaker 3:You have seen other hero journey stories where the hero always starts off not knowing what to do and some old dude comes along and is like yo, just do this. And gives them the courage along the way.
Speaker 1:Yes, no, I totally got the metaphor of like you're holding people's hands, guiding them into, you know, the new galaxy of no student loans.
Speaker 2:Honestly, it's the same thing with just like a lot of finances in general, because I have clients that I consider infinitely smarter than me. You know like I have clients that are surgeons and stuff like that, and they're like I don't understand this. I was like, well, you were never. We were never taught this, so that's the only reason it's like you're not. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
Speaker 3:It has to just do life. But this, I'm like Neo, I just see the ones and the zeros.
Speaker 1:I know how to navigate this Well, it sounds like you're going to have a very long career in this field, because student loans are not going anywhere. What do you anticipate for I mean student loans back in kind of our day I'm going to do air quotes. There was a lot of predatory lending that people are still trying to get themselves out of, and have you seen a positive change in the way student loans are made available for students coming in now or like? What do we need to be aware of?
Speaker 3:I think the hard part is well, to answer your question directly. I have not seen a fundamental change in how loans are issued. If there's a loan product, if there's a financial product, there's going to be predators there, right? That's just the nature of the thing. Is going to be predators there, right, that's just the nature of the thing, the world we have set up.
Speaker 3:But I think what people truly need to be aware of, and where we have to have really challenging conversations with ourselves, at least from parents' standpoint, is what are we allowing our children to sign up for? And oftentimes, parents, they want their kids to go to the school of their dreams, of the kids' dreams, and that school may not be the best fit for them financially. They're traveling to a school out of state. Now they have to pay double for that education, right, because of how tuition works. Then they are signing up for federal student loans and private student loans to offset those costs and they have this belief that, oh, it'll all work out on the back end.
Speaker 3:But with the rising cost of school, where you have some schools charging $100,000 a year, there's no way you're going to see the return on investment for that education. And so if you are going to go to school, you have to have a hard conversation about where am I getting the greatest value at? And then for parents, I think also another thing they need to focus in on is parent plus loans are a huge problem and parents should sign up for them because they're there to offset the cost of the child's education. But parent plus loans don't come with the same repayment options as other federal student loans. As a matter of fact, they come with the most expensive repayment options because theoretically, you should know better as an older person about what you're signing up for.
Speaker 2:Could you quickly explain the Parent PLUS loan for those individuals who aren't familiar with that?
Speaker 3:that? Yeah, absolutely so. The way Parent PLUS loans work. They're a federal student loan that the parent borrows on behalf of the child's education, and so your child will have an opportunity to borrow up to a certain amount for their education from the government, and whatever is left over you have to either pay through private student loans or, if you're the parent, you can try to take out Parent PLUS loans to offset that cost. And so this is a loan that is for your child's education, but it is legally in your name and everything is tied to you as the individual.
Speaker 3:So it's not uncommon for me to run across parents who owe $300,000, $400,000 of student loan debt for two or three kids, and now they're 55 years old and they're like the payment is $3,000 a month. I only make $5,000 a month. What the hell do I do? And they didn't realize they signed up for it because it's kind of like frogging and boiling water. It just kind of heats up over time, and so when you get there you're like oh, this is really a problem and there's very few things that can be done at that stage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's hard because you have to have those hard conversations, like you said. As far as what is the ROI? And I kind of like use an extreme example where I'm like you know, we're located here in North Carolina and I'm like, if your child wants to be a teacher, which is an honorable profession, but the reality is that you're not going to make a lot of money. But the reality is that you're not going to make a lot of money, you don't send your kid to Duke University to become a teacher because you're going to be paying, you know, 60, $70,000 a year and they're going to come out making 40, $50,000. Like, that is a sad reality.
Speaker 3:I see where people are over leveraged. I have a lot of social workers they owe $200,000 teachers who they believe that their way to increase their income is to get more education, borrow more loans. Now they have a master's and a doctorate. Also they can have an incremental increase. Now, thankfully, those professions come with public service loan forgiveness built in. But that means you also have to be monitoring those programs to make sure you meet all those eligibility requirements. And historically that was a much more challenging program to take advantage of until the Biden administration came and kind of took a weed whacker to those rules to open it up for people. But I just think those are the real conversations we need to have.
Speaker 3:Is what is that ROI? But it's hard to say because you're 18, 19 years old, 17. You're not thinking ROI. You're thinking, dude, I'm going to have the greatest freaking future ever of all time and I'm gonna be able to pay this back because why not? But then reality hits and you realize you don't really get your stuff together until you're like early thirties, mid thirties at the you know roughly is when your life finally starts to stabilize, and as it does. Oh, by the way, now you're in a relationship. Now you're buying a home. Now you're sending kids to private school. Now you have a nicer car and it's like wait.
Speaker 2:I still have these student loans. What do I do? Yeah, and you're talking to somebody who did a year of law school and is not an attorney. So I have the student loans from that one year of law school and nothing else to show for it. So I completely understand that.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's the crazy part about it, too right, there are many people who go to school that should not have went to school, but only because they were told they had to go to school. That now they're stuck with something from a bad decision, but it's following them like a bad X and it won't go away and it's like damn, this is impossible. But I don't know that there's a better system out there that doesn't involve free education, where we treat it like a public utility, where we say, as a society, we need to educate our society, because if not, we have to have a federal student loan system or some type of Pell Grant system that covers the cost of education for those who don't have the resources, because if we didn't have federal student loans, people like me may not have been able to go to school, because how are my parents going to pay for it, right? So we have to have some system that offsets that, unless we're going to replace it and treat it like a public utility. But I don't see that happening in our world here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes too much sense.
Speaker 3:You know, the vast majority of the world over has free or subsidized education. Yet we choose not to do that. Also, you know, people don't have the same discretionary income in other countries that we do here. So we are prioritizing capitalism, a lot of other things, versus these kind of public goods, and that's a decision we make as a society.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a cousin. So I'm originally from Germany, my mom's German and I grew up there, and I have a cousin who's a radiologist. And I remember when I was at the College of Charleston, which is where we both went to school. In South Carolina parking is really scarce and so you pay an arm and a leg. So I was paying like $600 to park in a garage a semester and she joked with me when I went and visited one year that her entire education for her to be a radiologist, a specialized physician, was less than you know 600 euro and I was paying that to park my vehicle. And you know, when you hear those stories, it just enrages you that people who, like you, said you're trying to improve your life, you're trying to do good in the world, especially if you're in that public service space, and then you just come out of it and you just feel like you got screwed. I mean, it's just disheartening.
Speaker 3:It is, and the fact that we are allowing 17, 18-year-olds to sign up for this incredibly complex financial product is ridiculous at its core. And yet what is the actual solution here?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Yeah, tell us, I don't know what I'm preparing for. I'm like that's what you're here for, Stanley.
Speaker 3:But I don't know what the solution is because, like, are you really ready to commit to 44% taxes, right, like, or higher, as some of these other countries are? I don't know that we're ready to make that type of financial commitment to the betterment of overall society.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I think in the US we know that we're not.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly. I mean, when you have your health care system, that's a for-profit system, and the prison system is a for-profit system, and you have all these systems that should be, like you said, for the betterment of the country, for the betterment of the states, et cetera, like they are in other countries when we're still focused on profit, profit, profit. It's just never going to happen.
Speaker 2:So how do we, since we're not going to fix the system, Well, I also want to say that, like as far as when it comes to just building wealth, individuals who have large student loans because the parents didn't have the money for them to pay to go to college and they wanted to take off student loans in order to better their lives, they're now even delaying the process of being able to build wealth because they're having these large student loan payments.
Speaker 2:They're crippled underneath their debt as compared to somebody whose family was able to pay for it. They get a good job coming out of school and they're able to continue to add on to it right away as far as building their wealth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you know, looking at the rules as they are today, probably the most radical thing you can do as a parent is to be the martyr for your child and take out the debt in their name and you eat it and give them the free kind of path of education, or you knuckle up and you send them out of the country to go to school. Because the reality is, with Parent PLUS loans, we can't find a way to manage the overall monthly payment amount and as you near retirement age if you're retiring, say, like social security your payment could eventually drop down to less than a hundred bucks a month, regardless of the balance. I have one client. He owes like $800,000 in federal student loans for parent plus loans and his monthly payment is $57 a month.
Speaker 1:Right, but is he ever going to come out of that?
Speaker 2:No, he's never going to pay it off.
Speaker 3:He's never but like he's either going to die or he'll reach the finish line of his income driven repayment forgiveness. But his child, his children, are free to do whatever with their earnings, right? So he's carried that burden for them. And that is kind of like a crazy thing to think about is that you foist yourself onto this debt. You foist yourself onto this debt, but that may be the best thing you can do in this society under its current rules. Because, yeah, sure, you can send your kid off to community college and you can send them off to a state school and those can work, but then you're still I don't know how you for everyone else, how do you truly avoid racking up a ton of debt throughout this process?
Speaker 3:Because not every situation is going to call for a community college, not every system is going to call for that. They may want to go to higher education, medical school, post-grad degrees as well, and when you have a doctor and you owe $300,000, $400,000, maybe PSLF, depending on where it's at, or maybe you're like they're going to make so much money, but the reality is all physicians don't make a bunch of money. Some do all this and only make $100,000 a year. I say only, but in relation to what they borrowed to get it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Right, I do want to hone in on two things. I want to end on a positive note and make sure that people hopefully have some sort of a takeaway of how to avoid these disastrous situations.
Speaker 1:But when people come to you and you've talked about your avatar changing, you know, over the years and with the changing landscape but when they're coming to you now, what is it that you're doing for them? I mean, we talked a little bit about getting rid of the debt with bankruptcy. You're helping them navigate these complex systems, like what is a consult or, you know, an initial client meeting with you consist of yeah, so everything starts with figuring out what type of debt they have federal or private.
Speaker 3:If it's federal, they send us over a copy of their student aid file which shows the entire record of things, and prior to the change in administration, a lot of that was just looking at. Okay, of all the Biden initiatives, which one is going to benefit you the most? And for the vast majority of people, that's this thing called the one-time account adjustment that looks at their time in repayment forbearance and deferment and gives them credit towards this thing called income-driven repayment forgiveness. When people think about their loans being forgiven after 20 or 25 years of paying, they're referring to income driven repayment forgiveness. And so we were looking at those programs and saying, ok, if you take these steps, you can get your loans wiped out. And over the past couple of years, we wiped out, you know, over 50 billion dollars in student loan debt for people through either directly helping them or through our newsletter help, et cetera. And yet, you know, is that like? Did we even make a dent in the problem? Right? There's $1.6 trillion, which is an insane amount of number when you think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But so we start there and then we try to figure out what is your universe of options whether it is focusing on a forgiveness path, focusing on a pay it off path, or if you have private student loans which are much trickier to deal with and you're not able to refinance, your interest rates are ridiculous, what a settlement or a bankruptcy look like to solve that problem. And we just go through those different paths to figure out what's the best solution for this person. Now people think of bankruptcy or settlement as these negative things because they have quote unquote disastrous effects on their credit report or their credit score. But credit score is one of the most easy, manipulated kind of financial things you can have. You can recover from it in a year, two year, three year time frame. But what about student loan debt that can haunt you for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, right?
Speaker 3:So sometimes we have to have that conversation where we're going to make a short term decision to do something that will hurt your credit score but will lead to a better path for you long term, and that's the tough cause we have to make. There are very few things that are instant You're out of this, you're done with this debt. That's usually not the case for people. It's usually having a really tough conversation and saying, okay, what are all the things you want to do? How do we achieve those things? Because I believe you can have a lot of this stuff you want, but it's just a question of when it's going to happen and what are the steps we need to take to get there. I think it goes back to how I even got into this. Practice is kind of how the hell do I get to law school? Okay, this is what I got to do. Let's work backwards from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Is there for our audience who might be considering this again? We had that bankruptcy conversation as well and we know that it's such a it can be a life changer, right? I mean people think, oh, my credit's going to tank and the stigma around it is terrible, but again, people are getting their life back through this. It's a financial tool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Let me give you a perfect example. I have a mother and a son in Chicago where the son borrowed $200,000 for film school in private student loan debt and the mother co-signed these loans and she has a house and they were struggling, trying to pay the loans for two years, but then the interest rates were variable. So their interest rates went from 3% and they jumped up to like 12% and now they're paying us like $4,000 a month and they're like we can't do this combined. The son has moved back in home and he's living in the room he grew up in because they're trying to figure out a way to pay it. And they come to me and I said you know what, Honestly, the only way out of this is bankruptcy.
Speaker 3:Now, people, their first thing was I thought bankruptcy couldn't get rid of student loans, Kind of your normal chapter 7 or chapter 13. Bankruptcy will not eliminate your student loan debt. But there's a second process called a student loan adversary proceeding, which is a lawsuit, where you sue the lender and you say this is an undue hardship, I can't afford to pay. And then people say well, I heard those cases were hard to win. Absolutely correct, the law is stacked against you.
Speaker 3:However, this isn't a binary decision. It's not win or lose. It's win, lose. Or maybe I bring the lender to the table to negotiate a settlement with them, and that's exactly what we did for this mother-son combo. We used that process to take this now $280,000 debt and we used it to negotiate a settlement of $80,000 at 0% interest over 10 years with monthly payments. Now is that like them getting rid of that? No, but it is a clear path for relief and they can actually breathe and plan for the future and save and do all these other things. But they had to go through bankruptcy to get there and that may feel like a loss when you do it like you're admitting defeat, but really it's probably the most powerful thing you can do in that moment to regain your life back.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a life vest.
Speaker 2:Well, it's also definitely changing your thought process around bankruptcy in general, because rich people don't view bankruptcy that way. They have no problems using it as a tool to go ahead and reset things and protect them.
Speaker 3:It's a tool in your toolbox, but we have these hangups about things where we're making these like moral proclamations about something versus what are all the tools available to me to solve my problem and I'm not saying bankruptcy solves everyone's problem. It's the last tool I use because I don't want you to have to do that, but it is a tool that's out there to solve your problem and it can be really effective in the right hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've now had two attorneys on our podcast tell us debt is morally neutral. Right, having debt does not make you a bad person. So again, we need to shift that mindset and then also saying that bankruptcy is a tool in the toolbox, right, it doesn't make you bad, which is why because the companies you invest in they have debt, they take out debt and there's a question just good debt, bad debt, and what does that actually mean?
Speaker 3:But I have clients on the fire journey and everything like that, or they're following a Dave Ramsey type approach. But I think the problem is actually much more nuanced than that and if you just take this all or nothing thing, I think you're actually doing yourself disjustice there.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, in a disservice right, Because you're-.
Speaker 3:There we go Disservice, we'll take that one.
Speaker 1:You're eliminating a powerful tool in that toolbox that can help you see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the amount of people that are like, oh, I'm going to grind my way out of this thing and now you're going to spend six, seven years.
Speaker 1:Not at 12% variable interest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm like man bro, you could have just been done with this if you'd done this thing Right. But I also understand the value of having done the work and you get to tell yourself I did this Right. I think there are much more effective ways to get that type of therapy that you need?
Speaker 1:Yes, Well, and two, how long is it going to take you right? What's on the other side of this? That is, your energy is drained. This is a constant thing on your mind. You're losing sleep. You aren't enjoying the money that you are making because you're just throwing it at your student loans, hoping that they're going to go down. And we know when the interest is compounding on a daily rate. You're never going to come out from under it.
Speaker 2:I mean, it comes down to that mindset where people are like, oh, I took out this debt.
Speaker 1:It's my responsibility.
Speaker 2:It's my responsibility to pay it, and they look at it as a lack of their self-character, not being able to pay it back, even though the odds were stacked against them to begin with.
Speaker 1:Well and like you said, Stanley, you're 17, 18, 19 years old. You don't understand the loan you just took out. Your parents don't understand you took the loan that they just took out. I mean it's just awful, absolutely.
Speaker 3:But there is value in a society that says I incur this obligation and I'm going to honor this obligation, and I think that's 1000% true. That's how we should look at these things. But at a certain point you have to ask yourself wait, what did I sign up for and what is my likelihood of actually being able to tackle this problem on my own, given my income and given what I'm? What's stacked against me? And there are a few people that actually really understand how much of the student loan payment is going towards principal and how much is going towards interest.
Speaker 3:I had a couple that met with me the other day. They were making payments of $3,700 a month towards a student loan. Of that, only $300 was going towards their principal and they're like wait, how long do we keep doing this? They're in their 60s, the peak of their earning potential, and they're about to retire. They're like, wait, how long do we keep doing this? They're in their 60s, the peak of their earning potential, and they're about to retire. They're like we can't keep this up. Yeah, no, no, no, duh, like you can't.
Speaker 3:But you're trying to do the right thing and I respect that. But we have to look at what's on the other side, what is the long-term plan here? And those are hard conversations to have with people, but I really enjoy having them because over time, as I shared with you, I learned that it's not really the solution, is not what people are really looking for, because they already kind of have an idea what that solution is, what they're really. They're looking for someone to solve that emotional thing that tells them you're not stupid, you're not a bad person, you didn't do the wrong thing, person, you didn't do the wrong thing. We just had to figure out how do we deal with this impossible problem and put you in the best situation possible to live your dreams, because all those things can happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about that, because for anybody listening, I mean that is dealing with, like soul crushing student loan debt, we're going to link all of the ways to get in touch with you and your office in our show notes. But for people listening who are like, oh, my kid's a couple years away from college, how do I avoid this? What would you say to parents or grandparents, or even people who are going to be putting themselves through college, about student loans, what to know, what to look for, so that they don't end up in this position?
Speaker 3:Well, I think you should always look towards federal student loans first. But before we get into borrowing, I think if you're a couple of years out, you have an opportunity to do a 529 plan. Great, We'll do those. Max out your other benefits and really take a hard look at whether or not school is right for you right now. What is it that you're getting out of it? You have to have a much more challenging conversation about what am I going to school for? Am I actually going to take this seriously now, or am I just kind of exploring, because I don't know what the next thing is for me and I'm really using this as a transitional phase and that's a very costly phase to go through. So I would have that discussion first. Then, once I nail in okay, no, this is for me. Okay. What degree am I going for? Okay, I want to do this as a career. I think, what is the? What can I expect to earn over the next 10 years upon graduation? Is this the right school for me to go to to maximize my odds of that Right? How much is that school going to charge me? Okay, great, Once I know all those things and I can make a better kind of understanding of is this the right decision for me? Because too freely we just focus in on I like this dorm, I like this school, my friends are going there and that's not a good decision to go to school at all. It's such a huge financial commitment that you really have to look at. What am I doing Now? I preface.
Speaker 3:I start off by saying federal student loans is the way to go, only because in the side of this complex student loan problem we have it's only complex because we have so many different repayment options and so many forgiveness programs, and so you may be able to leverage those to your benefit, especially early on when you're graduating. Your income is not stable. Income-driven repayment plans are great. They will let you pay what you can truly afford to pay.
Speaker 3:Private student loans won't let you do that. They're going to want their money. They're like family guy. They're like Brian beating up on everybody like where's my money, Where's my money, Where's my money, and so it's like that's how it goes. So choosing federal is the way to go because it has greater flexibility. That comes at a difference of your interest rate may be higher than what you can get from the private market, but that kind of difference. I think it's worth it to you because you're getting greater options of repayment, and so that's how I look at it. I think very few people should do private student loans because often you're not going to have the flexibility you need to be able to pay that debt back, because they're going to want their money immediately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are great call outs. We talk a lot about college isn't for everybody and every career doesn't require a degree, and there's so many studies coming out now, too that talk about which careers legally actually require a degree, versus a license, versus certifications. And then we also just recently had a conversation with somebody who focuses on the PMP for her clients, so getting that professional project management experience and that certification, because she, with an MBA, was getting passed up by people for promotions that didn't have a college degree but got their PMP. And so what you said about you know exploring well, what do you want to do? What's going to be that ROI? What does this look like in 10 years? I think not enough people are having that conversation with their children because they also want to be the one saying, oh, my kid goes to this college, right, and it's like, oh, they're doing the right thing, they're in college.
Speaker 3:There's some brand association that you want to happen and it makes you feel like you did a good job as a parent. You want to be in church on that Sunday where your kid is shouting up and my baby went to Harvard, right, harvard, I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it. That said, I think the cost of those things are so great. Let me ask you do you plan on, like, sending your kids to college right away after high school?
Speaker 1:Well, so we have 529s for them and we're very much of the mindset, I mean, like our daughter's a very creative person I mean our son is five, so who knows but we're very much of the mindset of we're going to talk to them about all of those things. Right, You're not just going to go to school because your besties go in there. You're not just going to pick a college. I mean, I picked my college because my best friend was there and I liked the campus. So you totally hit the nail on the head, right.
Speaker 1:I didn't go because I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I knew which degree program. And I mean I had a total breakdown two weeks before graduation because I literally was like what am I going to do with my life? And so we are very flexible and open with hey, if you want to work, you know, get that work experience, get that customer service experience, Understand how projects work, Get your feet into the workforce. If you're not prepared to be in school and you don't know what that path is going to be for you, because we're not here to just waste money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the conversation is going to be a lot more nuanced. So for a little bit of background, my mom is a college professor, so the idea of me going to college was, you know not even the second thought Like.
Speaker 2:I'm going to college and I think the landscape has completely changed, because I think our generation was told that, hey, you go to college, you're good, you're going to have a good job, you don't have anything to worry about. And we obviously know that's not the case. So, when it comes to our kids, I think one, I think you have to see a change in how much school costs, because it can't keep going up the way that it is, because people are going to stop going because they're not going to get that ROI. So I think it's definitely having a more nuanced conversation as they get older. And like what is it that you see yourself doing? Like what?
Speaker 1:I think we need a degree, you need a degree to do it.
Speaker 2:Or, like you know, I think somebody was always. I heard somebody say start asking your kids what problems in the world do you want to solve? Not what do you want to be when you grow up? Because the reality is that probably the job that our kids are going to have doesn't exist at this point in time.
Speaker 3:I thought a lot about that because I have a two-year-old down there and I meet so many people that take out debt and I wonder what would my advice truly be. Would my advice truly be and I think where I'm at, at least today, is that I'd want to give my kid as many problems to solve as possible along the journey so they encounter different problems to solve and find out, oh, I like this thing. And also, if you learn to solve problems, you can pretty much do whatever you want in this world. The degree part doesn't actually matter, right, because when we look at things, a lot of professionals I meet, all they're really good at is solving problems. You give them a problem, they find the resource to solve it and I value those things.
Speaker 3:So should someone you're saying, oh, I'll talk to my kid about going to school or not, and you're also saying there may not be the jobs tomorrow as they are today, like what's the future? Look like man. And I feel like my conversation has been a lot of doom and gloom apart. Like student loan debt, it's a bad thing, but I think at the end of the day, I do believe in the quality of education. I just think in kind of the worthwhile value it gives you.
Speaker 3:Going away to school and living in dorms is the most transformative thing you can have for yourself sometimes, and like learning that independence especially like now with kids who are like have helicopter parents over them at all time and don't give them the independence to walk around, like the idea of a kid just being gone at 10 years old all day is like wild. And yet what I want that for a kid only within the context of they have something they can truly afford to pay back, that they're not hamstrung and that may mean that they need to sacrifice on the schools they go to. They may not know what degree path they want, but they know what, as you said, what problems they want to solve in this world. And how do you get them prepared for that? Tough question, bro.
Speaker 2:It's very interesting you say that, because I think one of the biggest things I took away from going to college was the experience of, like you know, my freshman year living in a dorm with like six, seven other guys that, like, we're all different people from all different backgrounds and we had to figure out how to interact with each other and get along with each other to a point where you don't need to be best friends, but we are living in close quarters.
Speaker 3:We just don't need to be a Lord of the flies either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need to coexist.
Speaker 2:So, like understanding all the differences and nuances, because, you know, luckily I was in a scenario, even with our college not having a ton of black people. I had another black guy in my dorm but we were one of like seven and we were the two out of the seven. So, you know, I had a roommate of mine who only, like, basically only went to school with one black kid before because he went to private school. So, you know, navigating those different nuances is is is life changing, you know, in regards to dealing with the world.
Speaker 1:You don't have to get $200,000 in debt to do that right, you can do that you know working outside of the home as well and getting you know getting your feet wet in that job experience as well, I mean, but again, that intentionality.
Speaker 3:The hardest part, the one hard part to replicate is the idea of extricating yourself from your neighborhood and your family that you're familiar with and going to a totally new world and trying to figure out how to survive there. And there's so much value in that part and I don't know how you actually replicate that in the job world where, like, oh yeah, sure, but you still live at home or you live in a neighborhood you grew up in, you're not really associating with different people. You're not really associating with different people and the only way I can think of is, like you know, military.
Speaker 3:AmeriCorps, peace Corps type situation, some type of mission or whatever, and I think there's real value in those type of programs. Or if you're going to send your kid to school, I think I strongly encourage you to look to study abroad in those schools, and there's so many ways to do that Not as scary as hell, because we don't like sending our babies someplace that we can't get to within a car drive. I get that, but, like you know, if you're trying to set your kid up for success, I think we really have to look at what we're actually like signing them up for with school overall in our current system.
Speaker 1:No, that's a great call out. I love that, Stanley. This has been a great conversation. You were going to say something.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. I'm like over here, deep in thought, just thinking about how do? I feel about all of this.
Speaker 1:Cause these are really tough problems.
Speaker 3:Yeah, these are really tough conversations to have, and usually I'm not on the front end of the conversation, I'm on the back end, trying to solve a problem that already exists, and so thinking about the front end is refreshing, but, man, there aren't any great answers.
Speaker 2:I think it's also very hard because I think a bulk majority of the population like, for example, with a parent is that they're trying to provide a better life for their child. So they don't know this because they haven't experienced it firsthand. So in their mind they're just thinking best school that equals the best opportunities.
Speaker 1:And whatever it takes.
Speaker 2:That's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 3:Nah, man, I got a. My bonus daughter goes to a damn private school that costs $32,000 a year bro.
Speaker 1:And what grade is she in?
Speaker 3:Fifth grade. Fifth grade why? Because her father believes that that's going to set up your trajectory to make it to the school that he ultimately wants her to go to, which is an Ivy League institution. I don't know that. That means that the return on investment there is going to demonstrably increase your odds, right Like to making it happen.
Speaker 2:Or can you just take?
Speaker 3:that money and hire a private tutor and get some other stuff going on.
Speaker 2:In my mind as the financial advisor, I'm thinking like $30,000 plus a year. Why don't you just put that in an account and it grows compound interest and she's going to be a multimillionaire beforehand and she can write her own path.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but that's not the problem that that person may be trying to solve, though, right, a lot of times my child went here and that's what we're really trying to solve, not actually financial success or that security there. And that's so tough about all of this success or that security there and that's so tough about all of this. You, I don't know that we're actually clear on what thing inside of us we're trying to solve as we go on this journey, which is much more deeper metaphor, you know, kind of this ephemeral question that we have to answer.
Speaker 2:I think for people of color there is definitely that extra like. I want to prove that I belong as well. So you know, trying to go to some of these institutes.
Speaker 3:Bro, you know what's wild is. How many times has anyone asked you like where you went to school at?
Speaker 1:I mean maybe right out of college, when you're like early 20s, exactly like your professional journey.
Speaker 3:Can you solve my problem? Yes or no, that's all, anyone cares about yeah nobody's like oh, where did you go to school?
Speaker 1:Right, Nobody's asking where you went to school before asking. Can you solve my problem?
Speaker 3:It's so true. Yeah, no one's like. Did you graduate with honors? Were you on law review? None of that stuff comes up. Did you do these clerkships? My parents don't even know what the hell clerkship means Most people don't know what law review means.
Speaker 3:Right, you know what I'm saying, but that's the thing is like, what problem are you actually trying to solve? And get clear with that as a parent, are you really trying to solve some inside yourself where you felt like you didn't perform up to where you wanted to go or achieved your dream? So now you're pushing that on your child, or do?
Speaker 1:you feel like you're being a bad parent because you tell your child.
Speaker 3:No, you can't go to that school for these financial reasons that I'm trying to protect you from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are questions we're not going to be able to answer. I know we're not going to be able to answer that on the pod, but I think what I'm hearing is you need to, especially as a parent. You need to have some introspection of why do I want my child to go to this institution, what is it actually going to cost and what is the ROI in the long run? And then understanding if your child is not ready, if they're not committed, if they don't understand what they want to do with their life, right, like, do we need to go and get a business degree or communications degree or do we just need to go and get some work experience or some life experience? And making sure that we're not putting these pressures on the kids to have it all figured out by 19, 20 years old, because it could end up costing you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I didn't have my stuff together till I was 26, 27 and by together enough to kind of understand what I wanted to do with my life. And that was later in life. I didn't truly have everything together till maybe 35, but you know, some things happen in my life, reason where I learned oh, I'm still on a journey of figuring out my life at 44 years old. It is a journey.
Speaker 1:It is a journey and that's okay. I think, if we show our kids that, like you, don't have to have it all together by your early 20s and that most of us didn't, I think that's probably very comforting to them. But this analysis of understanding what do these loans really mean for their future, or your future as a parent, I mean those are vital conversations and thoughts that people need to have before signing on that dotted line.
Speaker 3:Do you find that you talk to your friends about this type of stuff, about school and how they think about it?
Speaker 1:We do.
Speaker 2:We do.
Speaker 1:I think we're the odd ones. Yeah, we're the odd ones, though, because we really are trying to understand how people feel about it. You know, we have kids. We have friends who have kids in college, and we also have friends who have toddlers with that weird age younger younger than our kids, and so you're kind of in that mix of like.
Speaker 1:Do you have a 529? How did you pay for college? Oh, the grandparents are covering the. You know, like everybody's kind of in a different boat, but opening up Right, but so that's the financial consideration part.
Speaker 3:But like just the conversation about what's driving the kid to go to school or what's driving you to want them, do you find that you're able to have those conversations, everything kind of transactional based?
Speaker 2:We have both of those. Only reason, I would say that's because, as I can speak to myself as far as being fortunate enough, that college was. You know, like I said, it wasn't even a second thought I was going my mom paid for. You know, I had some scholarship money but my mom paid anything else for me to go to college, so that wasn't an issue at all. And I understand, as someone who was privileged, that college is not the end, all be all and that you need to figure out what it is that you want to do and what that looks like and what it takes to get there. Because I always say I've met extremely intelligent people that have just a high school degree, maybe barely got out of high school, and I met people who have doctorate degrees that are idiots. So there's no direct correlation.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and even for your career. Now you don't need to have a bachelor's degree to get your licenses.
Speaker 2:Technically no.
Speaker 1:And so have any of your clients ever said, well, where did you go to college?
Speaker 2:No, right, because again nobody cares, but they also kind of just assume you went to college.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's important to have those conversations of like, looking inside yourself and being like, well, am I trying to maintain this legacy? Am I trying to maintain this legacy? Am I trying to get the shout out at church on a Sunday that my kid goes to Harvard? You know, whatever it is, I mean, figure out what it is and why that's important to you and is it going to actually be worth it in the end?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the thing. I just wonder how those conversations go, especially as we've become more and more siloed in our relationships through COVID and beyond, where we may be needing to get back out there and starting to engage more and have these type of conversations because I'm hoping we have moved past the you need to go to college, because that's what's next after high school part and having a much more exploratory conversation about, okay, what do we need to do? Because, dude, this is like the promise to loan debt it might as well be tobacco with the skull and bones on the package. At this point, like you know, what you're signing up for like is a sentence of pain. So what are you going to do about it? How are you going to help mitigate these things?
Speaker 3:I just I wonder how people are having this conversation, cause I, truthfully, I don't have them. Um, the people in my kind of direct path. They are generally sending their kids to legacy institutions, and so I went there. My kid will go there, to Duke or to Hampton university or to Howard or to Penn, right, and there's not a thought of it other than that's what's going to happen, because that's what's supposed to happen. Also, we're supposed to summer in the Hamptons, which is wild that I know people that summer in the Hamptons. So whatever.
Speaker 1:This is like a crazy life journey.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, stanley, we could talk to you for hours. This has been a really great conversation. Hopefully, people are going to walk away from this conversation having those thoughts especially if they have younger children about why is it that I want my child to go to this school or that school or college at all, et cetera. So hopefully you have sparked that thought in our audience and thank you for being a resource to people who are struggling under this. You know crushing student loan debt and you're helping give them the much needed resolve that people are not finding, so thank you for the work that you're doing as well.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I hope your audience can get through the unstructured nature of this conversation and peers through kind of the mental model of it all, which is, I think, that's the more valuable thing. We want a checklist of stuff like do this, do this, do this, but I don't think this problem is one of those. Do this, do this. It's not a step. It's really kind of thinking through what problem am I actually trying to solve here and what is the most efficient way to get it done?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for walking us through that.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Don't forget. Benjamin Franklin said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. You just got paid, until next time.
Speaker 2:Sugar Daddy Podcast. Yo Learn how to make them pockets grow. Financial freedom's where we go Smart investments, money flow.
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