Episode 428: Student Loans in 2025: What You Need to Know Now with Travis Hornsby

Travis Hornsby 0:02

One thing I can tell people pretty confidently is, if you have a one party, completely partisan bill like that's reforming student loans, it's not going to last very long, because it's all done by one party with no bipartisan consensus. So that means that, like, borrowers are faced with like, more uncertainty than they ever really have been. And I would just suggest that borrowers just sort of like try to stay calm through the storm.

Welcome to the journey. To launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in 54321,

Jamila Souffrant 0:55

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calc you'll see all the information about the fire CALC tool, plus a link to the walkthrough so you can watch exactly what it is. And I hope I see you in the class. Remember, if you can't join live, there are replays. And plus, anyone that's signing up for this, I am including some cool bonuses. And trust me, you want to be in this group, so go to journey to launch.com/fire Calc, and I'll see you soon if you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. In the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned and so much more. Also, whether you are an OG journey or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through to reach financial freedom resources and so much more you can go to journey, to launch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode. Hey, hey, hey. Journeyers, welcome to the journeys launch Podcast. Today, I have Travis Hornsby, who is the founder of student loan planner, and he launched it after helping his physician wife navigate a ridiculously complex student loan repayment decision. Today, student loan planner, his company, has consulted on over 4 billion in student loan debt, and I'm pretty sure you did a few, I don't know how many 1000s, but of journeyers, so of people that I've sent to you to get just advice, because I just think you're really skilled and knowledge in this area. And so Travis has been on the podcast a few times before, and I thought it'd be a really great time to have him back, because every time you come on, you provided clarity about student loans and, you know, options for people to pay them back. But things have been changing. Things are different a little bit, and so I wanted you to come back on the podcast in real time, hopefully to help some people out to understand what's going on in the student loan environment. So. Welcome back to the podcast, Travis, thank you for having me. So I don't know where to start, but maybe a good place is to orient everyone from maybe what has changed recently, or what's different, maybe from the last times you've been on the podcast, which was a couple years ago, to now, and what's going on? Yeah,

Travis Hornsby 5:18

so the Biden administration came out with cancelation in the Save plan that was, that was his signature effort at helping student loan borrowers, right. Both of those it looks like are going to fail, because the Save plan is going to get overturned. For sure, just depends on who has the murder weapon, right. Like, game of Clue, like, who done it, right? The only question about when the Save plan will end is, who's going to kill it, and then cancelation, of course, got killed by the Supreme Court. So like the two big things the Biden administration tried to do on student loans, are going to be dead. The one thing that the Biden administration did do on student loans was the IDR account adjustment and the PSLF waiver. And what that did is just got people closer to forgiveness if you were going for forgiveness. So that knock on wood is still hanging around. So borrowers now are being asked to repay for the first time in like five years. So basically, during COVID, like, there was the pause, right, pause, interest, pause payments. And they said, Hey, payments are restarting. But they actually didn't enforce any kind of like delay collections or default like management stuff. They just sort of said, Hey, pay, but we're not going to do anything to you if you don't pay well, the Trump administration just announced, as of already now, in May, when we're recording this, that they are garnishing people, withholding benefits, garnishing tax refunds, garnishing wages. So student loans are on again, like emphatically, and there's new proposals coming out of the Republican controlled Congress to radically reform student loans that will have mostly negative effects on borrowers, but it does depend on the type of borrow you are. So like, basically, the picture I'm painting is, you know, borrowers are promised all these stuff, all these things by the Biden administration. Most of those promises were not fulfilled, in large part, because of Republican opposition, right and then now we have, like, a new unified party control of Washington that's going to be coming out with new rules, and people are really nervous and worried. And, you know, we're just, we can, like, try to allay some of those fears on today's show, but it's understandable the borrowers are concerned right now.

Jamila Souffrant 7:16

Yeah. I mean, just that, you know, for so many years or past five years, people were kind of got used to not including student loan repayment in their budgets because there was no real recourse, or they had that pause, and now it's coming back. So do you know if they have started to enforce that like you have you heard from people whose checks or have been garnished to have to pay back anything they're right now notifying

Travis Hornsby 7:40

people that will be affected. So there's hundreds of 1000s of people they're going to start garnishing like immediately. And you know, in my experience, the most common time they are able to intercept people for defaults is, like, tax refund time. So like, that's especially for, like, lower income borrowers that struggle the most with making student loan payments, right, that have like, the most challenging financial situations. Like a lot of lower income Americans get a whole lot of their kind of windfall money at tax time, right? Like you get that big tax refund from things like Earned Income Tax Credit, child tax credits, those kind of things. And that money, often is like a few $1,000 so it's a major deal for a lot of American families, right? And that is a from the perspective of, like, the default collections machine that exists, that's like the perfect time to intercept that money is tax refund. So tax refund season, mostly, is already over. So a lot of people will notice it, like from wage garnishments, but like, even more people will notice it when they do tax refund seizures next year, if that makes sense, right? And that's definitely like a group of struggling borrowers, right is that people can't really afford to make payments at all. There's other borrowers that can't afford to make payments, but they're going to be impacted by just having, like, higher payments because of all this stuff going on with the Save plan, right? Like the six figure so student loan planner, you know, helps, like, our services are most applicable to six figure borrowers, our content is helpful to I think all borrowers, and the stuff that borrowers can do kind of depends on how much debt they have, right? You have different tools at your disposal if you've got different amounts of debt.

Jamila Souffrant 9:11

Let's go back to private loans versus public and we're mostly we're talking about public loans that the federal government subsidized. Correct? Like, the private loans are separate. They have always kind of been on a different track. That's

Travis Hornsby 9:24

right, yeah. I mean, the only good news about private loans is they only write those loans if you that they think you can pay them back. Now, sometimes that's not correct, but, like overall, usually private loans are underwritten, right? So that means that they thought you had the ability to pay them back. So a lot of times, what I see with private borrowers is they haven't thought about like restructuring their private loans, like they can refinance them, they can get them on a longer term payment plan to get some payment relief. They can try to work with their co signer, because it's in their CO signer's interest, to get the co signer off the loan right. So you try to work to get the co signer off the loan to. Like, ease your finances and stuff. So there's solutions for private loans, but the the better solutions are certainly for federal loans. So the better solutions like, so anyone struggling right now just go sign up for Income Based Repayment student aid.gov/idr, and get out of default. Like, because they will seize the amount of the idea IVR payment anyway. So if they're going to seize that money from you anyway, you might as well get onto the IBR plan and voluntarily pay it and not wreck your credit, right? Because there's additional fees and collections fees that get added on if you're not paying. So that's that's my suggestion for people who are really struggling, just go ahead and get enrolled in IBR. Your payment might even be zero for a lot of people, even, even with the current rules that exist. So

Jamila Souffrant 10:43

IBR, let's, like, take a step back. That's Income Based Repayment Program, correct? And that's going to be a percentage of calculation they do and say, Oh, this how much you can afford based on your income,

Travis Hornsby 10:53

right? And the most conservative proposal out there to reform student loans right now preserves this. So it's going to be preserved. Income Based, repayment is going to be preserved. And so borrowers can feel confident, if they're struggling, that they can get access to this right. And the question mark is going to be, what are they going to do to other borrowers? Like, because there's, you know, the majority of borrowers are not in default, right? Like defaults, a significant percentage is like, 10 to 15% but you know, the majority are like in the Save plan forbearance, which was that affordable repayment plan promised by the Biden administration. That's like in court, litigation, right? So millions of people are stuck in that, and then millions of people are actively making payments under different these different repayment plans. And so what Republicans are proposing, and it's still a long way from this bill being done, but what they're proposing is to consolidate every repayment plan from the past into just the old IBR plan. So the old IBR plan is just 15% of your income, and it's your discretionary income, which means you get a little bit of money you can make first before they take 15% and that plan's been around since 2007 so that plan has existed for quite some time. The impact on current borrowers, if that plan were to pass is a lot of people are paying 10% of their income, right? So essentially, like this Republican plan wants to take people from 10 to 15% of income, so that'd be like a 50% increase in people's payments, if that makes sense, right? And they're proposing a new plan. They're calling it the R, A, P plan, the repayment Assistance Plan, like wrap, and that's what they're abbreviating as, the student loan. Like abbreviations always, you know, silly or weird, you know, yeah, but that's the wrap plan, the GOP IDR plan, I'll probably call it because it makes more sense when you call it that, if you're listening to this, right? So the GOP IDR plan is proposed as 10% of income for 30 years if you want forgiveness. So essentially, what they're trying to do is make it pretty hard to get forgiveness. You know, like, if you're doing like, 10% of income for 30 years, that's gonna be pretty hard to get something forgiven, right? Like, compared to 10% for 20 years, which is some of the best repayment plans available today. So I think borrowers would have to make the decision, potentially, do I pay 15% of my income, or should I try to pay 10% of my income for a longer period of time?

Jamila Souffrant 13:14

Right? And you're saying, These are the only Well, this is what is being proposed. You know, this is what's being proposed. This can all change. Um, someone's listening to this in 2027 or even 2026 but right now. So what about the loans for federal workers, like, if you work for like, a non profit or public

Travis Hornsby 13:33

service, right? Yeah, yeah. So Public Service Loan Forgiveness right now is still alive and well they are talking about kind of reforming it, instead of completely eliminating it, which, you know, if you're looking for glass half full, that would be the glass half full is that it's still going to be around. The question is, and how, in what capacity, right? And, you know, to be honest, like, in some ways, so this, like Republican plan for student loans, like they actually are making some changes that would result in reasonable payments for people with smaller balances. So I'll give you an example, like this new GOP IDR plan is actually one to 10% of your income, depending on how much income you have. So if you make over 100,000 a year, it's 10% of your income. But if you make 50,000 a year, it's 5% of your income. So in some ways, like lower income, lower balance, borrowers might have payments that are similar to the Save plan actually, which offered, like, really, really good payments to a lot of people. And there are interest protections in this new plan that they're proposing. So you know, people's interest, their payment doesn't cover their interest. The government would cover all their interest that's accruing. There's also a $600 per year principal subsidy as well. So if you make your payment like certain borrowers below certain income levels, would get 600 a year towards their student loans. So pair that with the higher loan limits that are in the bill where undergrads are able to borrow like slightly higher loan limits as well. This bill proposal would probably. Help undergrads some, but it would hurt graduate and professional borrowers and borrowers that have Parent Plus loans a lot. So hopefully that kind of makes sense, right? There's like, winners and losers pretty much in most bills. And if I was going to, like, make it try to make it simple, it's kind of like, if you're an existing borrower, this bill is probably bad for you if it passes, you know, if you are a new borrower at the undergrad level, it's probably like mildly positive, and then if you are, you know, a parent, it's probably also a negative for you. So, I mean, there's all kinds of uncertainty right now. I think one thing I would tell borrowers right now with student loans is, like, the overall rules for student loans actually are not going to change that much. When I say like, overall rules for student loans, if you have less debt than your income, you probably need to pay it back. So the only question is, how do you do that the most efficiently? And if you're planning to pay back your student loans, you need to make sure you get loan interest subsidies first see if you're eligible for anything. A lot of people are, and they don't even realize it. So for example, for example, if you're like, a new borrower, you might be able to get a low payment for a couple of years, get some interest subsidies before you try to pay a lot of

Jamila Souffrant 16:09

it back. How would you figure out if you had loan subsidies? Yeah,

Travis Hornsby 16:13

so, like, here's an example. So this new plan that they're proposing would give you all of your interest that's accruing above your required payment that would the government would the government would just pay for it, right? So if something like that was in place, first of all, a lot of people are on the Save plan forbearance due to these court litigations things, and those people are getting 0% interest currently. So if you're getting 0% interest currently, write that out until that's gone. Right? If you're a new borrower, though, and you have access to something like the RIP plan that does subsidize interest. A lot of people can file a tax return in their final year as a student, and their income is going to be pretty close to zero. And then, if you time it right, you can use that to prove your income for your first year of payments, and get very low payments that would result in you getting a lot of interest subsidies, if that makes sense, right? So that's an example of how you know, a recent grad might be able to get a pretty close to 0% interest rate if some of these proposals pass for a full year after their graduation. So if you get a 0% interest rate per year, why would you go refinance with a private company? Right? Get that 0% build up your finances and your emergency fund, and then go refinance it and deal with it like, you know, in a year or two. And so that's like people wanting to get interest subsidies. People do need to think in general, Okay, I gotta pay down my debt if I have less than my income. And then if you've got double your income in debt or more. So like, you know, you make 100,000 but you got more than 200,000 debt, your forgiveness case, no matter what happens, like, no matter what happens in Washington with the rules, like, you're still going for forgiveness. The only question is, how much will you have to pay? And if you will have to pay 15% of your income instead of 10 that you're going to want to do some things to moderate how much taxable income you report, right? So there's some things you can do, like putting more money into retirement instead of your brokerage account, like doing pre tax contributions to stuff instead of Roth contributions. And there, you know, if you have a business, make sure you're, like, taking advantage of absolutely everything that you can write off humanly possible, right? And so there's ways to, like, minimize that taxable income that you show to pay less money. So those things are things you should do no matter what. And you know, the urgency of doing those kind of planning things is more if the payment percentage of your income goes up, right? And then if you're somewhere in between, like, if you have one to two times your income and debt, the reality is it depends, it depends on kind of, like, your goals, what you what risk tolerance you have, how ready you are to be done with all this mess. You might need to think about like, well, do I want to roll the dice and see how the 2028 election goes before I do anything? Maybe that's a good idea for some people, right? So you might like look into forbearance. You might look into the most affordable repayment option, and just try to buy time to figure out, like, what the heck is going to happen long term? One thing I can tell people pretty confidently is, if you have a one party, completely partisan bill, like that's reforming student loans, it's not going to last very long, because it's all done by one party with no bipartisan consensus. So the next time, like, the Democrats are in charge completely, they're just gonna completely undo everything the Republicans did. So that means that, like, borrowers are faced with, like, more uncertainty than they ever really have been. And I would just suggest that borrowers just, sort of, like, try to stay calm through the storm, right? Like, and remember that there's, like, broad rules that still apply about, you know, people that are extreme forgiveness cases before all this mess are still forgiveness cases. The only downside and problem that you could face is just, you know, higher payments, which you can plan for if you're careful about it.

Jamila Souffrant 19:37

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Travis Hornsby 21:32

I mean, like, go to student aid.gov, and log in, and everybody can do this if you have a social security number. So go log in and then see what amount of debt you have. And you know, at least you'll know, at least she'll be like, Oh, that's how much I have, right? And if it's below $50,000 I would go to student aid.gov/idr, and I would apply with that tool based off your current circumstances, and just see if the payments affordable, if the payments affordable, then just sign up for it. Like, that's pretty straightforward, right? Less than 50k you, you go to student aid.gov, you apply for IBR, you see how much they're telling you you owe, and if the payment looks okay to you, if the payment wouldn't bust your budget, just be like, Sure. Sounds good. At least you're not in default. At least you're not wrecking your credit. At least you're not going to cost yourself a ton of extra money in mortgage interest and car interest when you buy stuff because they're considering you a higher risk because you're hurting your credit from your student loans, if you don't make if you don't make payments at all, right? So that's like the person who doesn't know what the heck they're doing, you know, if you owe like, 50 to 100k i would say same thing, like, go to student aid.gov, follow the same pathway, and just see if, like, you can afford that IBR payment. And if you cannot afford it, and you have 50 to 100k you know, then I would, I would think about, like, Well, why, why can you not afford it, right? Oftentimes, if you cannot afford it, that probably means you're making like, a middle class income, because if you made a really low income, your payments would be zero, right? So if you're, if you, like, go and apply, you have like, a modest amount of debt, like 50 200k of student debt, and you have a payment that's, that's not affordable. It's probably not affordable. It's probably not affordable because you have a middle class or income, but you, like, have lots of expenses, and those expenses might be totally legit. It might be, you know, mortgage, it might be childcare, it might be car loan, right? Like it might be real expenses, but, but ultimately, you have to make a decision. Do I want to figure out a way where I can turn over the amount of money that I would have to pay under the IBR plan, or do I want the government to take it from me? And that's like, always better if you just turn it over instead of the government trying to take it from you, because they'll get it right. But there's a lot of creative things that that borrower could do to, like, help themselves. Like they could see if they could refinance their mortgage to, like, a longer term to get a lower payment right. They could maybe see if they have some some cash somewhere, maybe a home equity loan, that's longer term they could use to pay off their car loan, to free up some cash that way. You know, maybe child care, expense wise, maybe they there's a creative option for child care they haven't thought about, like having somebody with, you know, that already has a child that would be willing to watch your child, for example, you know, for a lower rate than what you'd pay, like a nanny that doesn't have a their own child they're watching, I don't know. So you're just coming up with ideas, right? You just gotta be creative to think, how do you possibly carve out some additional money to make that student loan payment? And then, if somebody's got more than 100,000 of debt, they fall into, usually, one of two categories. Usually, if you have more than 100k of debt, you have a lot of education, and usually you are a lot more aware of, like, you know your rights and what you can do because you have that education level. And so I would just say, like, if you have over 100k of loans, like, you could still follow that student aid.gov, path, slash IDR, and apply for IBR and see if the payments okay. And if, for the most money, avoidant people listening to this, I think that's probably good enough. Like, that's probably good enough at least for a while. Like, you'll probably pay more than you need to, but at least it protects your finances. But for people that have 100k and up of debt, that you know have decent incomes and could afford a few $100 like, that's kind of our sweet spot of where we can help people, because we can only. Always, not every time, but almost always cover our few $100 consult fee by, just like, finding things people are missing, like filing an extension on their taxes, or, you know, filing separately instead of jointly, or redoing, like, retirement contributions to where there's more pre tax contributions instead of after tax ones. So those are some like, kind of different levels of help that people could get. And if people still want the the free help instead of the paid help, like we also have the student loan planner podcast where we go into some of these strategies that people are, you know, they really can't afford anything at all. Yeah,

Jamila Souffrant 25:32

and I think ultimately it's you do have to do. You can't not pay them anymore. Basically, yeah, you can't get away with that anymore. So you do have to figure out what's going on and make some sort of payment, or make the payment based on whether it's like you said, the Income Based Repayment Program. Just want to also go back to the people who are working as teachers, as service workers, or federal workers like I want to go back to make sure that if they're in that scenario, they are using the forgiveness that's available to them. So can we just quickly touch base on that and what those people should be doing? Yeah,

Travis Hornsby 26:11

so you want to go to student aid.gov/pslf, and apply if you haven't already, and if it's been a while since you've told the government about your work, you go do it again, student aid.gov/pslf, and there's a lot of people because of those adjustments the Biden administration made that are a lot closer to forgiveness nowadays than there used to be. And a lot of people have been stuck on this save plan forbearance that are eligible for PSLF, the forgiveness the public workers that have not been able to get onto a plan that will allow them to get forgiveness. They've been stuck. They've been literally unable to switch plans to get something that could count. And so those people need to think about switching plans. So go to student aid.gov/idr, to switch into the Income Based Repayment Plan, IBR, right? And then that'll get them additional credit towards forgiveness and get the clock started again. And the other thing they need to consider is whether or not they're eligible for something called PSLF buyback. So this is another Biden era program that came out that allowed people to buy back periods of time they were stuck in forbearance instead of repayment. And there's a lot of rules that are going about to come out that we don't know yet what they're gonna say about what the new administration will respect that but they haven't, you know, initially said some positive things about maybe respecting that program. So, you know, a lot of people should at least throw their hat in the ring and try to apply, just to see if they might be able to qualify, if that makes sense, right? And

Jamila Souffrant 27:37

again, you have to be a public worker. So the examples I gave like a teacher or work like, get a nonprofit,

Travis Hornsby 27:43

right? And the problem is the new administration is kind of like coming after certain kinds of public workers that qualify for PSLF, right? So there's gonna be litigation over this. Luckily, it to me, so far, sounds like mostly like headline grabbing type of restrictions versus things that would make a huge difference to a huge difference to a huge number of people. What I mean by that is like they're trying to target folks that work at, like immigration nonprofits, right? Like things that don't, don't align with their policies. And so far, it seems like that would affect a fairly limited number of public workers over compared to the overall number of public workers. But that's something that's like, worth monitoring, right? Like, there are some proposals out there to like, eliminate hospitals nonprofit status, for example, that could have a hugely negative impact on people getting PSLF. You know, another group of people that would be big losers for this bill, if it passes, would be physicians in particular. Like, the bill would like, pretty much eliminate the ability of physicians in the future, not current physicians, but future physicians would be completely unable to get public service loan forgiveness in the future. So there are, like, some pretty interesting changes that they're proposing, and if I'm a borrower, that one of the few like, comfort points that I'd have is that the Senate has no idea what they want. So the Senate is, like, really far apart from the house. And there's not been a lot of like, discussion about, like, how those two different sides come together, and both of those bodies are held by Republicans, but the Senate Republicans are subject to a little bit more, a little bit more moderation in the house, right? Because the typical, like, House member, and, you know, for Republican Caucus, comes from a very, very conservative district, like, you know, 20% more Republicans than Democrats, or something like that, right? And the typical like Senator in the Republican caucus maybe comes from, like, a, you know, 5% more Republicans than Democrats type of place, right? So I would expect the Senate version of the student loan reforms coming out to look more moderate than the house, and then the two sides have to negotiate over what they want to do. And so it's just going to be a wild like, few months for borrowers. And

Jamila Souffrant 29:47

when does this bill go up? Or when do we will we have more information about if it gets passed? I

Travis Hornsby 29:52

predict that we'll know for sure by September 30. That's like when I think we'll know for sure whether or not we're going to see any big legislative reform. Programs, and I think that we will probably see a bill that we think might go forward, probably in July. So that's probably kind of like the timeline. But, you know, I do want to encourage borrowers, like, if these changes that I'm talking about would hurt you, like, contact your elected representatives. Right? A lot of people are asking me, like, what can I do right now? Like, one of those things is like, share your opinion on legislation. This is like, You're right as a voter, contact your congressperson, your Senator, maybe, maybe both senators and your congressperson. That's all three people who represent you at the federal level, and tell them how you'd be negatively impacted if these things changed. Right? One of the things that I'm really concerned about is the loan limits proposed in this new legislation, they're only going to let loan limits be $150,000 for professional school, like, total lifetime limits, right? So if you think about somebody coming from like, you know, first generation family that's trying to go to medical school, living expenses alone are, like 30k a year for medical school, because you got to pay for rent, medical insurance, right? Like, food, all these things, right? So 30k times four Well, that's 120 grand. And so does medical school cost 30k over four years? No, like, medical school tends to cost, like, you know, 40k per year or more. And so you're talking about, you know, needing to borrow way more than the loan limits they're proposing. And so that could really, seriously, negatively impact first generation, second generation, lower income families from being able to attend the most, you know, prestigious degree programs like law school, medical school, etc. So that's like, one of my biggest concerns in the bill's proposal. But that could change as the Senate takes up the bill. Yeah,

Jamila Souffrant 31:36

and I just wonder, just as an aside, like, does that force the universities to rethink how they are charging and how much they're charging if they don't have people who can afford even through loans and can't even get loans, it's because of these limits, the tuition.

Travis Hornsby 31:54

Yeah, I mean, there's legit conversations to be had about that, though, right? Like, I mean, it's very silly to have a loan rule that says, like, schools can set the price and they can charge you as much as they want. Like, that's, like, that's dumb, right? Like, you know, at a minimum, like, if we're trying to preserve access, like, there should be some regulations on the schools, so we're so, you know, if they're going to do federal loans, they can't charge you anything. Like, right now, I was like, visiting New York with some friends, and we were walking down, like, near Times Square, and there's this, like, university, private university, that has a gorgeous campus, like right near Times Square, and it's huge and enormous. And it's like the only reason that that that campus is like in prime office, real estate, beautiful location, is because they're charging borrowers like, two or 3x what they should be charging them for their degrees, because they know they can make the borrowers pay it on an income based plan, right? So that's not good for anybody. It's not good for the borrowers. It's not good for the you know, the taxpayers, of course, who include student loan borrowers. Student loan borrowers are taxpayers too, right? So, like the current system we have, is definitely not optimal. But you know, the concern is, how do you balance, like, having some regulation on the schools, having more reasonable loan limits without, like, hurting first generation, second generation students that just frankly, aren't going to be able to get private loans, like, in the same way that, like, you know, a wealthy family would be able to right, like, if you have to go through a private underwriting, a lower income student might not qualify for enough private loans to be able to attend in the first place. So those are some of like the big questions that I'm that sort of make me wonder or be concerned for for folks, for the future

Jamila Souffrant 33:31

Travis, please tell everyone more about just like your services. I know you have an affiliate link that people can use student loan planner.com/journey to launch if you're interested. But I want you to talk a little bit more about what those services are and what you can do for journeyers who have more questions, and who it this would be best for, yeah, if you're a journeyer

Travis Hornsby 33:52

with more than 100,000 of student loans, we're the spot for you. If you want clarity, less anxiety, understanding what's going on, you know, in terms of, like, when is a good time to book? Like, you could book, really at any time, I think, up to, like, 60 days out. So if you wanted to just, like, reserve a spot for July where we'll have a copy of that final bill, that'd be fine. If you know that you're super confused right now with your recertification date and your payment with your servicer and your you have no idea what you qualify for anymore. Like, now would be a good time. You know the cost is a few 100 bucks. It's it's 595, on our website, but journey to launch, folks get it for $100 off that with your affiliate link. So it's student loan planner.com/journey to launch. And that's all one word, journey to launch. And if you wanted to kind of double check that we are good at what we do, you could just like Google, like student loan planner reviews, and you'll see a lot of stuff from like Reddit. You'll see like 3800 reviews from the past nearly 10 years we've been doing this. And so I think that, you know, reading some of those reviews might give folks comfort that, like, you know, besides the fact that you're willing to have me on your podcast, you know. I can't say 100% of the time find savings, but you know, 90 95% of the time, and the savings, when we find savings, are pretty enormous, like, you know, five figures on average, because we're dealing with people with a lot of debt. So yeah, people are interested in getting a clear plan and understanding all of the potential things that might happen with student loans, and to understand how it would impact you and your finances and your financial plan. Financial Planning. That's who we help. So it's just a one hour consult with our expert team and and then they get several months of email follow up after that where they can ask follow up questions if anything like happens with like a new bill, a new plan, something like that. So yeah, the link again, is student planner.com/journey

Jamila Souffrant 35:40

to launch. Yes, I will link all that in the episode show notes. I mean, but really, like, you've been on episode, and we've known each other for quite some time now, and I, you know, I value your expertise in this, and there's not, like, a lot of people that like, I like doing affiliate stuff with, but I'm like, no Travis also he's doing and every time that I've had someone go to you and use the link or just say, Okay, I need more information, and take the investment. And you know, want to do that like it works out for them. So I would encourage you, if you do fall into this category of you need the help, and you're willing to pay an expert to help you to look more into Travis's work, and please tell everyone more about the podcast, where they can just follow you in general for general tips and overall information on student loans. Yes, student

Travis Hornsby 36:26

loan planner podcast is the number one spot if you're super anxious as a Student Loan Borrower. You're freaking out of all these changes, you want to follow along weekly with what's happening with all the proposed changes and how it's going to impact you. So you know, if you are looking for, you know, a podcast that'll keep you up to date on student loans. That's a great spot also on student loanplanner.com if you sign up to our email list, we send out a once a week email explaining what's happening with student loans. If you're not as much of a auditory person, I'll assume most of the people listening to this or love listening to podcasts, right? But you know, you can also get the the updates that we send out via the email list as well. So you've got pretty much I would, I would recommend to people who are not wanting to just hit the easy button and say, figure it out. For me, the two free options is the student loan planner podcast, which is available anywhere you found this podcast, right? And then the email list, which you can sign up for@studentplanner.com we actually give out, like, some freebies, like, you know, repayment calculators, things that model the new GOP plan, things like that. All right.

Jamila Souffrant 37:23

Excellent. Thank you so much, Travis for coming back on the show and giving us all this great information. Thanks for having

me. You Hey, journeyers, I want to remind you that the fire CALC tool and workshop is now available for you right now go to journey to launch.com/fire Calc. That's f, i, R, E, C, A, L, C, to get more information about the tool that can help you map out your journey to financial freedom and independence no longer is everything in your head or understanding or not understanding what it's going to take. This tool allows you to figure out and put into action the things that need to be done. And you can join me for the live workshop on May 22 and I'll see you then go to journey to launch.com/fire calc Don't forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this and you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch.com/jumpstart

you if you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this in Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and I love, love, love interacting with journeyers. There three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here, so show them some love for supporting your girl. Four, and last but not least, share this episode, this podcast, with a friend or family member or coworker, so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. All right, that's it until next week. Keep on journeying. Journeyers. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai