(Ep. 260) Smart Money Moves for Parents: Understanding FMLA, Retirement, and More

Welcome to another episode of the student loan planner podcast. I am Lauren Williams, one of the senior consultants at student loan planner, and I am joined by a fellow senior consultant today that you haven't heard from in quite a while, but she's back everybody. And I can't wait for this episode today. Sim, welcome back to the show and welcome back after maternity leave. Hey everybody. I'm so thrilled to be here today. It's been quite a while for really, really good reason. You had not one, but two kiddos since the last time I've been in touch with you. And in fact, I think the last time we did a podcast together, we were doing an episode on fertility, right? Yeah. So Lauren and James and I, another consultant here, we recorded a podcast on fertility and student loans. And that was, we recorded that I think back in March of 22, it aired in September. Since that time, you know, I unfortunately did end up having a fourth pregnancy loss and then number five twins surprise, we were not expecting twins, double trouble and double the joy. And, uh, it's been a ride. I would say it has must, it must have been a ride, but congratulations on, like you said, not just one, but two. Uh, did you have a boy and a girl, identical, fraternal, all that? I have identical boys and they are all their father. It makes me sick that they got nothing from me. Everyone always says, Hey, they look so much like their father. And I want to tell them to go to heck, but you know, it is what it is. Well, you know, like the ugly duckling turns into the beautiful swan. Maybe they start out looking like their father and then they turn into looking like your replicas as they get older. You know, what's funny is I've heard from a lot of, uh, shall we say my, my mature mom friends who, uh, there's this anthropological joke that babies start off looking like their fathers, so father doesn't leave and it's sad, but I don't know if it's true or not. We shall find out. We'll check in from time to time to see what happens. So today we are going to talk all things, parental leave, FMLA, short-term disability. I'm sure that these things have been, you know, relatively top of mind with you just coming back from after, after being off for a bit. So I'm going to say that Sims, the resident expert, and I'm just going to be the interviewer today. Let's jump into the episode. Here we go. So I did some research for today's episode and let me tell you, FMLA is complicated as heck. If you're reading through it and you're like, I don't understand it. It's not because you're dumb. It's because it's confusing and we're going to kind of try to keep it very high level today. So FMLA stands for the family and medical leave act. It was intended as a way for people to be able to take time off from their jobs, to care for their families, different things, right? Which they were talking about, you know, parental leave. Um, but it's a way to take time off from your job. It's unpaid, unfortunately. You can get up to 12 weeks and the rules kind of vary, right? So it's 12 weeks. Sometimes it's in the calendar year and sometimes it's 12 weeks from year to year. So for example, sometimes you can take FMLA 12 weeks, you know, end of, let's say 2023, and then you can do another 12 weeks beginning of 2024. Sometimes it'll be structured. It's, you know, if you do 12 weeks now, it would be the next 12 weeks would be the end of 2024. So you kind of have to read the fine print there, what your employer is going to let you do. Oh my goodness. It's already sounding a little bit complicated. And I know as a certified financial player, it's like, this is one of the things they didn't teach us in CFP school. So I'm always looking at my clients, like employer benefits. And like you said, trying to make heads or tails of what's going on. So you said you all are not alone in trying to figure this out on your own financial planners as well, while this is a part of our work also are trying to like sort through what exactly is going on here and how do we make the most of these benefits? Yeah. And I will always say, if you're ever confused, it's, it's not bad to ask someone else to review the benefits with you. We do that all the time as planners. We ask people to upload their documents because FMLA is one of those programs that they don't cover in the CFP material. And actually neither are student loans for that matter. For sure. So as we think about FMLA, you said there's either this 12 week period. And it's also, like you said, if, if you're having a child, that's one reason you might use FMLA, but maybe you have a sick family member. So it's, you know, family and medical leave act. There's lots of different reasons. You know, you said we're sticking to the family planning piece of the puzzle today. Uh, but do be aware that this is something that you might want to look into if you have, like you said, a sick relative that you need to go and care for, for a period of time, um, without your job being put into jeopardy. And usually before you can use FMLA, if you have like a short-term disability policy, usually they'll want you to use that first. So short-term disability, if you don't know what that is, there's long-term disability and short-term disability. These are insurance policies that you can either purchase, you know, on the marketplace, or sometimes your employer offers them as a group policy. And these are policies that are intended to cover some of your pre-disability earnings if you have a disability. And for more, most, uh, short-term disability policies, that does include maternity leave because, you know, giving birth happens to be a medical event. And so that can be covered, um, depending on your policy, 60 to 70%, like I said, of your pre-disability earnings and the short-term piece refers to how long you will get that policy paid out. So usually it's a period of six weeks is what tends to be standard. If you don't already have a short-term disability policy and you're kind of thinking, Hey, I might have kids in the next few years and your company offers one might be good to sign up for it. Because if you try to sign up for it while you're pregnant, they will big fat deny you because as a preexisting condition. Ooh. And that is not exciting at all. I don't like that piece of the puzzle, but one cool piece that you said, like, Hey, disability first FMLA second. Um, the good thing about short-term disability though, is that it's usually a percentage of your income. So if FMLA is going to be unpaid, it makes sense to use the short-term disability so that you have some income coming in, you know, like I said, if it's a good employer, it's usually around 60% of income. I've seen 66 and two thirds as like the best. And then afterward you might use your FMLA, which is the unpaid piece of the puzzle. So strategy is going to be a big part of this as well. Now, some of this also depends on the generosity of your employer, because if you have PTO or sick days, sometimes they make you drain the whole thing before you can use your short-term disability and then you can use FMLA. So sometimes you have to stagger these things and some of them will actually let you keep your PTO separate from all of this. You kind of, again, have to read the rules. Yeah. And as I think about this, somebody's probably wondering already, this is the student loan planner podcast. Like, why are we talking about maternity leave and disability and all these different things? But when you think about it, this is relevant to your student loan situation, because what do I do when I get pregnant, I have to decide if I'm going to be able to pay these loans. If I'm not earning money and I still have this payment kicking in on a monthly basis, it can be a little bit frazzling. So one thing you can do is request the forbearance. That is not going to count if you're going for PSLF. So you want to be mindful of that, but also your timeframe in FMLA, like while you're a registered doing FMLA, that timeframe will count toward PSLF payments. You're still working at your job. So if you've not been fired and you're off on a leave, and even if you have lesser payments, they will still count toward public service loan forgiveness or towards your IDR payment. Another thing you might want to think about during this timeframe is like you said, if you're using that short-term disability and it's now 60% of income or you're completely unpaid, you know, maybe you recertify your income and say, hey, I'm not working right now. Could you adjust my payment accordingly? And they drop you down to as low as a $0 payment. So now you're on a payment plan. You've dropped the payment to something more affordable based on how your income is in this particular moment. And then you have your time to be able to return back to work. And every 12 months you update your income. So, you know, we'll go back to normal when they request your information and you give them your most recent tax return or your most recent pay stub, depending on what you were previously doing. So this is very much relevant to like, how do I optimize my situation in light of my student loan situation in light of the fact that I'm getting ready to have a child or be on leave if I'm the parent of a child that's coming into this world. Yeah. And that's a really good point, Lauren, because a lot of people think, well, I'm only supposed to update my income like once a year. And it's like, yeah, you have to update your income every year, but there's nothing that stops you from doing it more frequently than that. If it's ever in your benefit to do so, which, you know, you're getting a lower payment, it benefits you to do so. Another reason that this can tie in with your student loans is because, and this is more forward looking, but usually they're calculating your payment based on your AGI, your adjusted gross income. If you don't know what that is, pull out one of your old tax returns and go to line 11, that's your AGI. And one of the tools that we have to manipulate your AGI is your pre-tax deductions. And so, you know, often we'll talk about like your retirement savings, right? Your 401k at work is a big one for most people, or 457b, 403b if you're working for a non-for-profit. But there's other ways that you can manipulate your AGI too, that are available to parents. So there's something called a dependent care FSA. So a little different from the regular FSA. This is a bucket where you can put up to $5,000 per year if you file your taxes jointly. Now it is use it or lose it, but you know, if you have childcare expenses, you're going to use all of it probably because if you never had a kid, you'll find out it's very expensive. So with the dependent care FSA, you can put $5,000 a year in there and that's pre-tax. So that's going to come off of your AGI. So you're literally saving money on your taxes while saving, you know, setting money aside for childcare expenses. And you can use that dependent care FSA up until the youngest is 13 years old. These are some really good hacks using the dependent care FSA, all of that information. What are you going to do now that you have twins, you're back to work? What are the hacks that you're using? Or what are your plans for making sure that they're cared for while you're helping people figure out their student loan life? Yeah, I'm going to give you the really boring answer, which is I'm going to save for retirement. And here's what I mean by that. I've worked with a lot of parents as a lot of us have here at Student Loan Planner with Parent PLUS Loans. And, you know, people borrow a lot of money for their kid's education to the detriment of saving for retirement. And I feel like one of the best gifts I can give my children is for them to not be worried about me in my old age. So I can take care of myself because I can always help them fund their education later if I want, if they borrow student loans, you know, I can help them pay them back. But you can't borrow for your retirement. So I'm going to save more for retirement. I'm also going to contribute to what's called a health savings account, which you're eligible to contribute to if you have what's called a high deductible health plan. I know back in 2020, the definition was if you're deductible for yourself was fourteen hundred or more and for a family twenty eight hundred or more, probably a little bit higher now in 2023. But the deal is you can put money aside pre-tax, which also lowers your AGI. You have student loans, you're not on an IVR plan. That's one of those hacks we talked about. And then you can invest the money and it grows tax deferred by the time you're in your 60s and you probably have more medical bills in your 60s. Well, you've been letting that money grow the whole time and then you're pulling it out for your medical bills and it's all tax free. Wow. OK, we got to stop and break some of this down because all the things here. So first of all, the HSA is going to help you save for health care expenses. It's going to help you lower your adjusted gross income, which is the number that is used for calculating your student loan payment. But you said kids are always sick, so you're going to be using that thing up regularly. Actually, the 2023 numbers, if you can contribute up to thirty eight fifty if you're an individual and seventy seven fifty if you are a family. So a good bit of money can get put away there. But you're like, I'm not done yet, Lauren. I'm also going to save for my own retirement. And I love that answer as people think about like how to better organize their student loan situation. They're also thinking about how to better organize education for their kids' future and things like that. And so not only do these things lower your adjusted gross income when it comes time for financial aid, these are things that are going to make your income look lower on paper and maybe make you more eligible for financial aid as well. So I'm thinking about this and you're like, OK, I'm going to put the whole twenty two thousand five hundred into my 401k or my 403b. That's twenty two thousand dollars I didn't make this year. Maybe the thirty eight hundred as well. We throw that in. We're like twenty five, twenty six thousand dollars that have been set aside that now is not counting as part of your income. That's helping you get ready for retirement, making sure that your family is covered for medical expenses. And to your point, you're like, I'm in better financial health so that when I am able to look at my overall financial picture and say, hey, what's important here? What's the next thing that I want to tackle? I know that my kids are not going to have me like living in their living room during my retirement. I don't want that for my retirement. And my kids absolutely aren't wanting that. So as you think about, you know, your itty bitty baby and how your job is to care for them now, you're caring for them later by making sure that you prioritize yourself and making sure that you're financially stable. Yeah. And then, you know, to add to the HSA piece, I know that a lot of people are thinking, well, you know, I don't have seventy seven fifty to just invest right now. But if you're going to end up spending on medical bills, you can still put that money in the HSA and pull it out. Granted, we're not letting it grow, but you'll still get the tax deduction that and you're going to use those funds anyway. And some people don't have an HSA. You don't have a high deductible health plan. You might have what's called a regular FSA, a flex spending account. That one also is use it or lose it. But that's a way to save pre-tax for those medical bills, because that first year with the kids or even just for yourself recovering from, you know, delivery or whatever, you're going to use it. Absolutely. And the FSA is going to be three thousand and fifty dollars this year. So FYI, if you're going to do the FSA, that's the use it or lose it. One three thousand and fifty dollars is the maximum amount that you can contribute there. OK, so let's talk about your emergency fund. So you have everything planned out. You're like, I'm going to take X time for leave. FMLA, short term disability, whatever your employer offers, maybe your employer offers some parental leave. A lot, you know, a lot of the bigger companies are starting to offer that. But what if, you know, you get to the end, maybe you took 12 or 16 weeks and you're like, well, I can't leave. I don't want to leave my kid. I'm not ready yet. So some of them will let you take more time unpaid. But how are you going to pay your bills? That's something where your emergency fund is going to really come in handy. And if you had that up, you know, you might be able to buy yourself, you know, a few more weeks of not having an income. I love that you don't usually think of having a baby as an emergency. But the point of the emergency fund is to think ahead for things that you can't really plan for. And so this is something where you're like, oh, I had this much leave. I had this much time. Now they're telling me I need to come back to work. I'm not quite ready yet. If you can figure it out without getting fired and, you know, the next big piece of the puzzle is like, hey, OK, I'm not going to be fired, but also I'm not going to have income during this time frame. What am I going to use? And that's when the emergency fund can step into place. And one of the things I like to tell people when I think about my emergency fund is three times your take home pay is my minimum emergency fund when I'm talking to clients. And so three times your take home pay is obviously going to be more than three times your expenses because everything you're bringing home, you know, let's say you bring home $10,000 a month, you usually save $2,000 a month. You might say, oh, the other 8000 is expenses. Eight times three is 24. It makes a lot more sense instead of going by just expenses to go by what you're bringing home. Ten times three is 30. You've got extra money already built in because obviously if you're having an emergency, you would probably put your savings on hold and it just gives you a little bit more wiggle room to be able to say like, OK, and now, you know, you have a little bit more than at least three times expenses during that time frame. The other thing I like to think of when I'm thinking about my emergency fund is like, what if I'm an entrepreneur? Well, three months might not be enough if I'm an entrepreneur because I have fluctuating income. I need to ramp back up. You know, I can only do a little bit of calls or, you know, speak to a few clients at the beginning. I have to start my marketing over again. That's when you need a much larger emergency fund. So three to six months is the general recommendation on the Internet. And it's usually three to six months of expenses. I like to go three to six months of your take home pay. And if you're an entrepreneur, I push that out even more between nine and 12 months. Because like I said, there's a lot more uncertainty when you're an entrepreneur for how your business is going to fluctuate, how things are going to play themselves out. And like I said, how long it might take you to ramp back up if you're coming off of a parental leave. Yeah. And the emergency fund can also cover a lot of like little conveniences or things you didn't expect. Like for us, I had no idea how many burp cloths we were going to need for twins. You know, I bought one pack and it's like, oh, that's cute. That made it to lunch. So we keep burp cloths literally everywhere. We keep them in our car. We keep them, you know, in my office. They're everywhere. Everywhere is a burp cloth. Yeah. I have a nine month old nephew and I totally understand why you have one everywhere, because I get caught without one and I regret it every single time. It can be other things, too. Like if you're feeding with formula, you know, once you open that can, you can't return it. But what if your kid doesn't like that formula? Now you have to buy another can. What if they don't like that? Because sometimes your formula hopping, that can be another expense that adds up quickly. Or, you know, my husband and I, I thought we had everything planned ahead, Lauren. This is what I do for a living is I plan things. So I thought, let me make we have a deep freezer. So we made a bunch of meals ahead of time. We have those Mason jars. We did the Pinterest hacks. We made so many meals. Let me tell you, I got sick of it and all I wanted to do is eat out. And you know what? It was not a hardship for us. I'm like right now we're just in survival mode and we're paying for conveniences and that's OK. Absolutely. And also starting a baby fund. So if you're listening to this episode and you're you're planning ahead, you know, you're a super planner like Sim, don't be afraid to have your emergency fund and also a baby fund. So starting to redirect dollars on a monthly basis toward getting ready for that baby so that when baby is here, there's a bucket of money for that miscellaneous. Oh, I wasn't thinking about this because we had the baby shower. We ordered all the things, you know, your bestie helped make the registry and they they told you all the cool things that they needed. And then it's like, oh, like you said, but my baby has different needs. And now I need this thing urgently, like get it here today or yesterday. You might want to have the baby fund and the emergency fund. You just don't know until you're in the thick of it. I never knew that we were going to be a Costco family or a minivan family. And yet here we are. Now, where's a good place, Lauren, to keep an emergency fund or that baby fund? Where do I open that? I would say a high yield savings account is a good bet. We get so many clients reaching out to us and they're just like, what do you think about the high yield savings? Where's the best high yield savings account? Absolutely. With interest rates being as they are right now, you want to consider a high yield savings. I think I've seen four point two percent most recently is kind of the standard. But I like Ally Bank because they have these little envelope buckets. So you can say like, oh, baby fund, emergency fund, home down payment fund, et cetera, et cetera. You don't have 50 different bank accounts. You have one account, but they're kind of separating the money out into different buckets for you. So I love that it's very user friendly. But any high yield savings account will do. You want to make sure that you're getting that little extra money, that your money is making money on your behalf. But I wouldn't stress myself out. Don't spend three hours doing research because your hourly rage, your hourly rage, your hourly, your hourly wage is probably much higher than what you're going to earn an interest on the amount of money that you're putting into this high yield savings account. So pick one, open it up, automate it, set it and forget it. That's a great point. I'm a big fan of the envelope system, too. I usually tell people Ally or Capital One, you can probably go rate chasing all day. Hey, this one did, you know, four, four or five. Like, that's fine if you're into that. But I think anything over 4% is reasonable right now as long as there's FDIC insurance. Absolutely. One thing I was just thinking about that I did with some clients recently was, you know, we kind of stagger. We were talking about strategies related to maximizing the types of leave that you have available is like making sure that you stagger it with the different benefits that are available for both parents. So paternity leave is a thing. You know, there are same sex couples and they both get the same sort of leave. You want to make sure that whatever leave you're available for that you think about like, hey, maybe one parent takes leave or I start my leave so we can do it together. Then I go back to work and then I take the rest of my leave after parent number two has taken all the leave that is available to them. So that allows you to be able to stretch leave out in the time that someone is able to be at home with your child as opposed to both of you using up both all of your leave at one time. Everybody having to go back to work and now child care expenses kick in automatically. Yeah, that's a great point. My husband has paternity leave at his job and it's six weeks, but he had the option to flex it. So what he did was he did like a halftime thing. So instead of it being six weeks, he was working halftime for about 12 weeks. And by the way, I have a funny story to share with short term disability in case anyone is like my husband is confused about it. So short term disability is for the birthing parents. I'll never forget when he came home one day all excited. Hey, Sam, I get short term disability for for our pregnancy. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He just assumed that that was like her family. No, it is. It is for the birthing parents because pregnancy is a medical event. And by the way, speaking of short term disability, if the premiums are paid by your employer, then you do pay taxes on the disability. It's like income to you. But if the short term disability premiums were paid by you, then all of that payout is after tax. Ah, that is a good thing to remember and to know that on the front end, even for regular life events. So short term and long term disability. How am I paying into it and what would happen if because that that affects your overall financial planning as well. Some of the money you've got to pay taxes on, you're like, oh, this is not actually all mine. So I got to adjust accordingly. Like this was 60 percent, but 60 percent less taxes. So definitely something good to be thinking about. All right. So we've talked about FMLA, you know, parental leave in general, maximizing the benefits of short term disability, how all of this relates to the initial part of planning your student loan strategy. What are the other key things we need to be thinking about, Sam, as it relates to, you know, making sure you're properly prepared related to your new kiddo that might be joining the family soon? Well, make sure you take advantage of all the tax credits that are available out there as long as you're below the AGI limitations. Notably, there's the child tax credit and that's 2000 per qualifying child, which is great because that means I get 4000 this year because I had twins. There is also the child and dependent care tax credit where you get back anywhere from 20 to 35 percent of expenses paid for like different child care things. The first 3000 of expenses are what's counted for the first child and then the first 6000 for two or more dependents. And you get a percentage of that back. Oh, that sounds pretty cool. There's a lot of things that I said I didn't know exist because I don't have children. But I think a lot of other people don't know because, like you said, you you find out one day like overnight, OK, we're pregnant. What do we do next? And these are like the opportunities that you miss out on, you know, in the same way, like you said, when we're doing student loan planning, people don't realize like, oh, saving for retirement is not just saving for retirement. It's saving money on taxes and it's also saving money on my student loans. There's a lot of little hacks out there that if you're not aware of them, you can't take advantage of them. So also, if you're not working with an accountant, they might not bring this up. You know, your TurboTax might miss it. You want to stay on top of these things. So glad you're listening to this podcast so that you can get these things from Sim. Now, this is important to note, too, with that credit, I just mentioned the child and dependent care tax credit. You can have a dependent care FSA, but you can't double dip, meaning for the dependent care FSA. We talked about that five thousand you can put in. So that has to be a different five thousand dollars from the, you know, six thousand of expenses you're using for the dependent care tax credit. So that works if you have at least eleven thousand dollars of child care expenses. All right. Perfect. The other thing I was thinking about is, like you said, this is the student loan planner podcast 529 plans as a way to save for your kids education so that they're not ending up in a student loan situation similar to the one that may be prompting you to reach out and listen to this podcast right now. What do you think about 529? Well, it's not just a way for the kids to avoid student loans, also the parents. Right. So you don't have to take out those high interest parent plus loans or, you know, God forbid those private loans that come with no federal benefits. 529 is part of the tax code. It's a way to save for qualified higher education expenses. And a lot of states actually will offer a tax deduction on your state taxes. Not all states offer this, but a lot of them do. And they're actually becoming a little bit more flexible. Like now, if you want to, you can use like ten thousand a year for a private school, you know, K through 12. So they're a little bit flexible. But the intention is to on a tax advantage way save for college expenses. So the deal is you put the money in, maybe get a tax deduction on the state taxes. It grows and grows and then you pull the money out. And as long as you're using the money the way it's intended to, you don't pay taxes on the growth. Yeah, 529s are super duper awesome. And like you said, it's the thing that I kind of sometimes ask parent plus borrowers. Did you know what a 529 plan was? And ninety nine percent of the time they had no idea. Financial literacy is such an important piece of the puzzle because even just putting, you know, 50 bucks away on a monthly basis can make a huge difference over the course of 18 years when it gets time for you to try to figure out how to best afford your child's education. So I will say that 50 bucks a month for a private out of state institution is probably not going to cover it depending on what your income is. There's a lot of grants. There's a lot of scholarships. You know, we we would love it if we didn't have a job at Student Loan Planner, but we do because of the way the education system is set up. The cost is absorbent and anything you can do on the front end to be ready. Your future self is going to thank you for that. So as Tim mentioned, the parent plus loans are a big deal as well. That is probably the bulk of the consultations we have coming in now because the parent plus loophole is closing in July of 2025. So if you have parent plus loans, we're not going to make it a whole episode about parent plus loans right now. But if you have parent plus loans, you can do this thing called the double consolidation and take advantage of the other income driven repayment plans that aren't otherwise available to you. So you absolutely want to consider the strategy if you already have parent plus loans and you 3000 percent want to consider your strategy if you are getting ready to think about how to pay for your kids education, because she also mentioned private student loans. So undergrad, your child is going to be able to take about thirty thousand dollars over the course of four years. And then everything else above and beyond that is going to have to be paid for by some outside source. So like I said, whether that is school financial aid, grants, scholarships, work study programs. But what a lot of people do is they don't know they're not educated about how the system works. And they're like, OK, you take out what you can and then the rest of it you go take out from a private company. As long as we can get you to school, it doesn't matter. The hardest cases we ever have to do is someone who is 21 years old, just graduated college, has three hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt from a very fancy school education that they went to because they weren't eligible for the various financial aid packages and didn't take advantage of scholarships. And now they're trying to figure out how they're going to make their monthly payment. They have an absorbent interest rate, like a credit card, like 19 percent on this three hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt. And they have an entry level salary of about thirty thousand dollars. There is nothing more gut wrenching or more horrible to have to sit through for an hour than to work through that with someone because the options are so limited. With private loans, you don't have a lot of options. With parent plus loans, you have more options. You know, I started on this soapbox because we were talking about 529 plans. What I'm trying to encourage you to do is say for your kids education, get ready for it. Use those 529 plans. Take advantage of those tax benefits as well so that you're not having to talk to us about parent plus loans and you're definitely not strapping your kids with private debt. And actually speaking of the 529s, Lauren, I don't know if you recall that there's a new benefit now where you can actually take out, I think it's ten thousand from the 529 to pay off student loans after the fact. So that could be useful if you like maybe save too much for one kid or you have some money in there. Maybe you just wanted like your kids to have some skin in the game. Maybe you're like, I want to see how you do in school first and then I'll help you pay off your loans. You can actually use part of the 529 for that now. I love that. And that is yet another thing that comes up frequently. Actually, I just had a parent plus call the other day where the woman took out the loans and she she told her daughter, he said, if you get a three point seven, these loans are ours. If you get less than that, you graduate with less than a three point seven. These loans are yours. And the daughter graduated with a four point. Oh, so here was like, I will happily figure out the strategy to pay not just my parent plus loans, but also the loans that my daughter took. So there are different things like that that you can be thinking of to make sure that like you said, there's some skin in the game and that your child realizes that there's a value attached to education, because I think often when we're going through like the elementary high school, it's just like we have to go to school. Our parents send us there every day, even if it was costing money. They don't really know that like this is money coming out of your pocket. They don't understand that the connection between the two. So this is a great way to teach that. And I feel like this is a good time for me to get on my mom's soapbox, which I've been doing a lot lately, and just to kind of put a little self-care plug out there that maybe you're in a situation where, you know, you're dealing with your student loans and you're knee deep in diapers and you're like, you can't even think about funding your kids college right now. And that's OK right now. Just kind of focus on your family life and, you know, getting them to age 18, helping them, you know, with their studies in school. Maybe they can get scholarships like that's really what's important right now is to focus on on doing the best you can, just raising them. And that's OK if that's what your extent is. Absolutely. Don't be afraid to meet yourself where you are. Don't feel shame about where you are in your situation. Also, don't feel afraid to get help. Don't be afraid to ask someone, you know, what options exist for me so that you're at least aware of what can be done when you're ready. So there is no pressure on you to do any of these things that you're probably already feeling the way the world. I got to keep this thing alive. I have to, you know, do normal things like brush my teeth and shower like the way of the world is just like, oh, my goodness, what am I going to do? Never fear one thing at a time, one day at a time. The world won't end if 529 plans are not open in the first couple of years of their lives. So take care of yourself first. I love that, Sam. And I think we forgot to mention this. I know this is a little bit of a non sequitur, but I just want to make sure we mentioned it on the podcast today, that when you are updating your income from an IDR plan, you can actually include unborn children in your family size because they use your family size as part of the calculation with that formula, you know, the federal poverty line, all that. So make sure you include your unborn children because it counts. That's one of the things I think that people are usually super excited about as well. I'm like, oh, like you mentioned your family size is three, but you also told me you were pregnant. They're like, yeah. And I'm like, yep, family size is four. And they're like, really? And I'm like, and here's what it does to your student loan plan. So cool little tidbits we get to help people with when we're doing consultations. Are there any other hacks that you can think of, Sam, related to parental leave that anybody should know about, you know, even if it only applies to like a small group of people or any kind of things you've come across as you've been doing your research and getting life experience as a new mom yourself? There is this type of deferment I found out exists. I don't know if it's going to apply to a lot of people, but I will mention it. There's this parental leave deferment. The deal, though, is that this is only available for borrowers who first borrowed like a Stafford or SLS loan that was dispersed before July 1993. Oh, wow. Back in the day, day, day. Yeah. So I don't know if this will apply to a lot of people, but there may be a few listeners out there who this does apply to. And so that's a type of deferment that you can qualify for for your student loans. OK, so that might help one or two people. It might be relevant to you if it is. Don't be afraid to look into that information. All right. I think we've covered all things parental leave, FMLA, short term disability. Hopefully our borrowers are a lot more educated about what to be thinking about if they have a bun in the oven, something. What else do people say besides bun in the oven? I don't know the hip sayings for when you're pregnant. Oh, I don't know. All I know is that everyone feels entitled to touch your belly, though. Oh, so to that point, if you are an expected mom, what is your, you know, one tip for them? And then as a new mom, what is your one tip for the new moms? Do not be afraid to ask for help. And that applies to expecting and new moms. You know, I remember some of us at SLP were we're meeting up a few months ago and I just made different people carry my laptop bag. I shouldn't say made, but I asked nicely. I'm like, hey, can you carry this? Just little things like that. Don't be afraid to do that. And also just keep in mind that your your kids value you. They don't understand right now in this first few months of life. They don't care about toys. They just are developing bonds with people. So quality time. Don't feel like you have to spend a lot of money on things. They don't value things. They just value you. I love that on my podcast. One of the questions I always ask is like, you know, something that you do for fun that doesn't cost anything. And that sounds like one of the the pieces of the puzzle is like you don't have to spend a lot of money to be really happy in life. And your new bundle of joy should be making you really happy. But you should also be focused on, like you said, creating that bond and making them really happy as well. And it's not stuff. It's not material things. And they're not going to be like, oh, look at my new Bentley. My mom got to put, you know, put my car seat in. That's not going to be the most important thing to any baby. They they don't appreciate any of that. And, you know, don't be afraid to like get hand-me-down stuff. Like I got a bunch of things from my sister-in-law who has boys, like a lot of clothes. They're going to grow out of it real fast. You don't need the latest and greatest. And, you know, it's kind of special. Hey, your cousin wore this. Now you guys get to wear it for like a week. Until you grow out of it next week. What about your what about your one favorite item? What's that lifesaver? Every mom has their thing that like you got to get one of these. It works so good. Oh, yes. The swing, the little like it's like a stationary swing for us has been a lifesaver. I have one that was actually two were gifted to us. And so I didn't have to buy one because they can be kind of pricey. So we have two. And, you know, if they're crying, there's just like nothing you can do. Pop them in there and they fall asleep. Ah, and so both of your boys like it. Both of them like it. Super, super cool. Which I guess is maybe unusual. I know maybe I have a couple of unicorns, but that seems to be the secret sauce for us. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, congratulations on your two new bundles of joy. This has been an excellent episode. I feel like a lot of people are going to be a lot more educated on how to better organize themselves to get ready for the various types of leaves, get themselves back to work, get their student loans taken care of in the midst of all of this, or, you know, they're not worrying about this in the midst of all of this. This has been another episode of the Student Loan Planner Podcast. I am Lauren Williams. And I have been joined today by Sim Terwilliger, the new mommy that has all the information. You can find both of us with open schedules, ready to take on your student loan planning consults. And we look forward to talking to you again, but also maybe seeing you on the calendar.