(Ep. 202) Student Loan Cancellation and Why It’s Not Too Late to Take Advantage of the PSLF Waiver

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Student Loan Planner Podcast. You have got me, Megan, and two of our newest consultants on the podcast episode today. I'm super excited to welcome Ben, who we did an intro podcast a couple weeks ago for, and Connor, who is not actually our newest consultant, but he slid under the radar and did not do an introduction podcast episode, so we are pulling him back into it. We're going to jump right in with introducing Connor. Thanks, Connor, for jumping on today. I look forward to it. Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. I've not been avoiding you guys. I'm very excited to do it. It's been a busy couple weeks here. It has been, and you've been thrown into it just like Ben was. What's exciting, I think, about y'all too, when you got hired, y'all were hired because you were extremely well-versed in student loan repayment. When we took you through the interview process, we gave y'all some really hard questions, and it's not just, you know, describe what pay-as-you-learn is or tell me about PSLF. It's, hey, we've got XYZ client who needs to do XYZ. Here's their numbers. Here's their situation. In a second, tell me what you would do for that scenario, and y'all both crushed it. So that's why y'all were joining the team, because we could throw you right in, and y'all swam really well when we did. So Connor, you're not even at like a couple consults now. You're at, I think you were telling me, 300 by now, right? Yeah, I just did my 300th consult yesterday. So I started with Student Loan Planner at the end of May, I believe. So I said it's been a busy couple weeks. It's been a busy couple months, really. Right. Yeah, and both of y'all, I mean you and Ben, both of y'all have hit the ground running. And Ben, do you know about how many consultations you're at now with Student Loan Planner? It's got to be close to 80, if not just over it recently, but it was definitely a lot right out of the gate, and as complex as the interview questions were, I had some wonderful cases starting off too. Awesome. Well, and I think as a team, I was just looking at our numbers, we're at getting close to 10,000 of consultations overall for just everyone on the team added up over the years that Student Loan Planner has been in existence, and we've consulted on 2.1 billion in student loan debt so far. So we have seen a lot, and we've seen a lot of changes, and we'll talk about those changes again today. We're going to continue to talk through what's been out, you know, with the PSLF waiver, with cancellation stuff, things we're hearing through the grapevine from clients. Before we jump into some student loan updates, I would love to hear, Connor, about how you got into financial planning and why student loan planning attracted you. So share that with us. Yeah, definitely. I appreciate it. I'll try and keep it brief. You know, my background is a strange one. So I was born in the UK, actually. I lived there for about seven years when I was a kid and moved back to Chicago where I've spent most of the time. And I actually went to school to become a commodity trader. That was kind of ran in the family. That's what my dad did for work. He worked at the Chicago Board of Trade. And, you know, so I went to school and I graduated and went to work as a commodity trader. I actually traded like corn and soybeans, worked with farmers. It was a really, really interesting job. But, you know, I always felt that calling. I always loved helping people and working with finances. So, you know, the opportunity arose in this was early 2015, late 2014, to take a financial planning job at what was then TD Ameritrade, which is now Charles Schwab. And not only could I do that, but also my girlfriend at the time who lived in Omaha, now my wife of five years, Izzy, she was she was working in Omaha. It gave us a chance to line up our locations. And that was right before we moved back to Chicago. So kind of several things aligned there. And I was able to change my career over to financial planning, which had been a passion of mine for a while. And really, the reason that I wanted to get into financial planning was, you know, my my family was well versed in, you know, in the finance business, but they never they were well versed in the trading aspect. Right. Anybody who's in that business knows that just because you're touching pieces of the finance world does not mean that you're good at personal finance. And I'm not to say that my parents were necessarily not not good at it, but they made several mistakes that that could have really set them up well for retirement. And, you know, they were the type that was always very cautious about investing and kept a lot of money in cash instead of, you know, investing that could have really, you know, changed their situation quite a bit. And so I've always thought about that, how they were so close to that business. You know, my my dad worked as a trader for for a long time and still was not familiar with the things that, you know, both of you guys and I do as well. We talk about with clients all the time. Right. So I always held that in my mind and I always wanted people to be aware of those things, how much they can benefit from investing or, you know, using the right tools that are at their disposal. So that's that really drove my passion for for financial planning. And then I started my own financial planning practice in twenty eighteen. I've been doing that ever since and then started with with student loan planner in May of this year. And the reason that that I moved, you know, that I that I needed to become better versed in student loans is because I found that my clientele was shifting, you know, to to the younger generations, to people in their 20s and 30s and 40s that, you know, were working and they had these huge student loan burdens. And I had always thought, you know, treat student loans as traditional debt. Right. You want to pay these off. How do we do that most efficiently? Right. We want the lowest interest rate. We want to pay, you know, as as quickly as possible. And then I started getting more into the weeds and I started getting more of these questions. What is income driven repayment? Right. What is forgiveness? Are there better ways to go about these federal student loans than just treating them like traditional debt? And the answer was absolutely yes. Right. There's there's so many more effective ways to get rid of the loans and different strategies, you know. So these things started to become really clear to me. And I realized, oh, this is this is no longer a niche. Right. So many people consider it's a niche with so many borrowers in the U.S. and so much debt out there. You can hardly call it a niche. This is a problem that affects so many people. And so I realized that, you know, that was I needed to to buff up my knowledge on that. It became a really big part of my business. And then I found student loan planner through that. I think a lot of financial advisors can say that they've had that moment where they've looked at a client case that had lots of student loans and they're thinking about it like we were taught, you know, in our training, like through either college, through finance classes or how we were taught growing up from our parents or from some of the, you know, financial talking heads out there. And, you know, we start to panic. Like we look at that situation, we start doing the number crunching for treating it like a regular debt and pay it down to zero kind of that approach. And we start to panic when we're thinking, no, this this can't be it. Like this can't be the only option. And that is what I think drives a lot of us to like, you know, a lot of the folks in the CSLP space that go and get their designation or go and at least learn more about student loans where it's like, oh, thank goodness there's there are other options, you know. But I think all of us have had that moment at some point in planning. So I love I love your story. And I think, you know, your passion is also something that we looked for when it came to finding another, you know, consultant on the team, like the people on student loan planners consulting team, like we have to have the passion. We have to have the natural curiosity because and as we're going to talk about again today, things change so fast in this student loan planning world right now. And if you just kind of you're like, you know, maybe just good at math or good at, you know, reading the language of student loans, but you're not super interested in it enough to want to keep up to date with what's going on, then you're going to be left in the dust real quick with especially with our environment right now. And you've already had some really interesting cases with student loan planner as well. And you've been on a team long enough now to where you've probably seen some really interesting things with with a consultation to show how you know, student loans are not traditional debt. Can you think of a fun example? Maybe Connor? Oh, absolutely. This was just a couple days ago, actually, I had a consult with, with a teacher, she was so nice to work with. She had come into our call with, you know, her original plan was to pay her loans to zero. Now, she had been working in the public school system for a long time. She had fell loans, FFL loans. And so obviously, those didn't qualify for public service loan forgiveness. And she hadn't even heard of PSLF before, she didn't even know what that was. And so we were talking about this. And we looked at her work history. And we looked at her repayment history. And she had about $80,000 worth of debt left. And her intent was to pay these off. And she reached out to us to figure out if there was a better way. And we found that due to her significant work history in public schools, she had enough PSLF credit under the waiver on loans that didn't previously qualify, right? She was making fixed payments that previously didn't qualify for PSLF either. And all of that was made to qualify and she got she's going to have her entire balance forgiven. And so we were very clear on the steps on how to do that. But I mean, talk about, yeah, talk about like, if we thought about that as traditional debt, it could have cost her, you know, $100,000 principal and interest to get rid of. And, you know, we found a way to get that forgiven completely. Yeah. And that that goes to show just like how, you know, of course, we all know, everyone listening to this podcast knows that student loans are a different beast, but you know that even the most recent changes that have come out like the PSLF waiver, like how significant it is. And if you have that, just that same mindset about, you know, debt is just debt, pay it down like that, that is really going to cost somebody. And if we're not up to date with just what's been going on with the PSLF waiver as a financial professional, you could be giving really outdated, bad advice. So, gosh, that's a really cool story, though. And we have a lot of those. And those, you know, we have really quick impact that warms all our hearts. I know. Well, Ben, Ben is on this podcast episode, too. Do not forget about you, Ben. I'm going to throw it to you because you had a really cool question or you had some fun questions you wanted to throw at Connor. I know I kind of hazed you last time when we introduced you. So I'm going to let you haze Connor a little bit this time. Well, thanks so much, Megan. And hi, everyone. I'm excited to be back. Connor, for you, I think what we're really excited to know, funniest thing your dog has done while you're trying to work from home, because I know since you started your practice four years ago, you haven't been in an office. So my dogs are always causing chaos. I want to hear about yours. Yeah, I think you and I have talked about this a little bit. We both have some rascals at home. So I have one. I only have one dog. She's a black lab. She's about five years old now. And you would think she's out of her puppy phase. But I think it's kind of perpetual at this point. And yeah, she causes trouble all the time. I have to preface sometimes in my consults that I have to apologize in advance if she makes any noise. She has a tendency to let anybody walking in front of our house know that she's there. And so we call them her motorcycle barks, where she doesn't fully bark because we've trained her not to, but she does everything up to the limit. She likes to push the lines in our house. So she'll make her noises sound like an engine revving, but she'll never actually bark. But now the first thing that comes to mind in this was about four years ago. I was working in my office, had a jam packed day. And I'm in a call and all of a sudden I hear this rubbing outside. It sounds like wood on wood. Something's breaking in our house. And I always usually keep my door closed. Lucy, our dog stays outside. And I walk outside into the hallway and she's clearly angry at me. And she's gnawing a hole into our drywall, but not a corner. I've heard of dogs that find outside edges and they chew on them a little bit. No, she picked a spot flat in the middle of the drywall and just pushed her face so hard against it and just like moved her mouth up and down that she carved a hole into our drywall that we actually had to patch. So yeah, she can be a terror sometimes, but I love her to death. We've got a lot of wild animal stories here that we definitely should mostly keep off the podcast. I know Megan missed my interview because there was a mouse in her house or a rat, mouse, fur. Yeah. Yeah. We had, it was, I was unfortunate because Ben, I really advocated for Ben to get interviewed because he, he had asked me really, really complicated questions before, like before he even, I even knew he had applied with student loan planner. He was asking me very complicated student loan questions in my LinkedIn DMs. And so I was like, this guy knows stuff. We should interview him. But I really wanted to be on that interview. But yeah, we, so we just bought a house a year ago. I'm still getting used to the home ownership lifestyle. But I must've left my garage door open one night and one night or one day or something. And I must have realized it and closed it. And I didn't realize that we trapped a little rat in our garage. So it had just enough room between the garage door into the house to climb its way into the house because it was trapped. Otherwise it probably would have died if it, because I don't drive, I work from home, so I don't drive a lot. I don't open the garage door a lot. So it was probably like life or death for that thing, trying to get into the house. And it did, it got into our house right before our interview. And so I hopped on, told Connor, I said, Hey, I have a situation right now. Y'all are going to have to go with this alone. So you and Dan were able to interview Ben. I was so bummed I missed out on it, but I almost did a backflip seeing that thing like run around. It was, it was creepy. Like you don't expect that of course. And so took some time to get that thing out. A couple of really nights where we did not sleep at all because we didn't know where it was for a while, but thankfully we have, we have resolved the issue. I do not leave my garage door open anymore, but that's a maybe funny house ownership story. Well, anyways, I'm glad you were understanding Ben. I'm glad you're joined, you know, joined the team. We're really happy to have you, happy to have both of you guys. Oh, and it was really fun actually. So we just got back from a big conference, FinCon. This was in Orlando and it's for financial content creators. And this has been an opportunity, like last year was the first year we had done it as a student loan planner team, but it's been kind of an excuse for us to go network and meet each other because we are all virtual. Everyone on the student loan planner team is virtual. So we got to meet everybody at FinCon recently. So we just got back actually, and I finally got to meet these guys in person. And the running joke, when we started to meet everybody who we hadn't met yet, all of the men on our consultant team are over six feet tall. Like no joke, you walk up to them, they are towering over you. Every single one of the men on our team, including Travis. Travis is very tall too. I think, who did we decide is the tallest? Travis or Abel? Who did we decide? I can't remember. If Abel is six foot five, he's gotta be. Yeah. So gosh, so the joke was, you know, not only do we look for consultants that are killer at student loan planning and know their stuff, but they have to be over six feet tall. And that is totally a joke, but it just felt like that with all the guys that we have on our team. It was really fun meeting everybody. But well, enough of personal stuff, enough of house woos or pet stories. Let's jump into some student loan details. And I'm actually going to throw this one to you Ben. We learned recently from Heather Jarvis, who is a celebrity in the student loan planning space. She is an attorney who's been very pivotal in student loans, student loan planning, because she helped develop the CSLP program. But share with us a little bit about what we learned from her recently, Ben. Yeah, absolutely. And it's about the Biden cancellation announcement. So specifically they said the income test per the Department of Education says that your AGI, Adjusted Gross Income, for single borrowers has to be under $125,000 and for joint borrowers has to be under $250,000. The language on the site and what we've heard from our favorite expert in the space, you know, seems to lead to believe that it's 20 or 2021's income. And I think previously a lot of people were assuming it would just be based on whether or not they have your 2020 or 2021 income info on file. If you in fact have the choice on the application, a lot more people are going to qualify for forgiveness than they were thinking if you just were considering your 2021 return. And also on top of that, for people who haven't submitted their 2021 tax returns yet, if your 2020 AGI was over those thresholds, you know, consult your tax professional. But maybe there are some opportunities if you haven't filed a return yet to get a reduction in your AGI that could otherwise lead to that forgiveness, because that would be a really big deal. So you might have control over which year you're choosing. And in that case, if you could reduce your AGI for 2021, that'd be awesome. And this, I don't think this is speculation. That's not the right word. But we're also, we haven't seen this completely written out, because they also haven't come out with this application for cancellation yet. So we, I don't want to say this is speculation, because Heather Jarvis is also, again, like a celebrity in our space. If anybody was going to say this, I would completely trust her. But so we also don't have that language in hand. But we, you know, we think the best approach with the cancellation that's coming up, if you're unsure whether or not you're under that threshold or not, I don't think there's any harm in applying when that application comes out early October. So that's supposed to be through studentaid.gov. You should be able to apply. No harm in applying. Worst thing that can happen is you don't get the cancellation. But the best thing that can happen is, of course, you get it when you weren't sure, you know. So I think that's our standard advice right now. Great. Okay. Well, let's spin into some PSLF waiver topics. This podcast is going to air sometime in October. So we are getting closer to the deadline. October 31st is the expiration of this PSLF waiver, which is extremely important, because a lot of the benefits that are available right now, as we're speaking, as you're hopefully listening to this podcast in October, they're about to not be available. So we wanted to talk about some last-minute tips that you can take advantage of if you are someone who needs to be looking at the PSLF waiver. Connor, lay it out for someone who just heard about the PSLF waiver, they're panicking, they need to know as much as they need to, like, right now. Like, what does that person need to do before October 31st to be able to take advantage of the waiver? What do they need to know? Like, who needs to pay attention to this? What first steps do they need to do? Yeah. So the PSLF waiver, what it does is it's opened up a window, a temporary window, where we can certify for PSLF credit things that otherwise wouldn't have counted, right? Periods of time that wouldn't have counted. So the original requirements of PSLF are that you're working for a qualifying employer, which is any non-profit 501c3 entity, or a state or federal government entity, and you're working full-time for them. That requirement still stands. But then you previously needed to be making income-driven payments, you need to be making full payments, you need to be paying on the right loans, all these different, you know, little requirements that are no longer present in the waiver. And so really anybody who's had that work history should take a look and see if, you know, had at any point in time had they been paying on FFEL loans or Perkins loans, because those would not qualify for PSLF ordinarily, or had they been making fixed payments instead of income-driven payments, then you might be able to get additional credit under the waiver. So if you're able, if you find that that's the case, and you want to take advantage of the waiver, let's say if you have anything except direct loans in the federal system, if you have FFEL or Perkins loans, you're going to want to consolidate those together into a direct consolidation. And that needs to be done before October 31st. And the other part is that you need to certify your PSLF qualifying employment. I would certify any PSLF qualifying employment that you've had in your past, and you want to submit those PSLF forms also before October 31st. Perfect. Diving a little deeper into just, we did some digging on the studentaid.gov website. We're continuing, continuously uncovering things that they can, they add to the website. So always reference studentaid.gov. Just type in PSLF waiver. You should see a studentaid.gov link that pops up that will give you the nitty-gritty details about this program. But they do add stuff to this pretty regularly, and we're trying to keep our best to just catch any changes that happen. But one thing that came up that I thought was interesting is, so we know that we have to take action before October 31st. So we have to submit the consolidation application by October 31st. So that doesn't mean it has to be done. Consolidations typically take 30 days, 30, 30, maybe 45 days. And you're going to MoHELA, because that's the servicer for PSLF. So it doesn't have to be done by October 31st. It just has to be submitted. And you can do that online through studentaid.gov. Your spouse needs to sign off on this application if you're applying for the income-driven plan, regardless if you filed married separately. So that's sometimes a confusing thing, where if you're filing separately, you feel like your spouse shouldn't have to sign off on the application. But they do, because they're confirming that you are in fact married. It does have an impact on your family size still when they calculate your payment. Their income may not be included in the payment calculation, but it will be for your family size. So that's why they sign off, or your spouse would have to sign off on this. So make sure you take time to do the consolidation application, which if you're applying for the income-driven plans, you have some time to go. Make sure you allocate some time for your spouse to sign off on this as well. And if they don't have a studentaid.gov account, you know, maybe they never borrowed, or it's been a long time since they've had loans, they're going to have to create one. And that takes one to three days for the system to verify their social security number. So it's, that's something to know is that it does take some time for your spouse to sign off on this as well. But going back to the initial point, we just have to have the consolidation submitted before October, or by, I think it was just like literally the end of the day, October 31st, by 1159 p.m. They specify that it's that it's Eastern time. So go team Eastern time. Yeah. Yep. Now, the other thing we thought was interesting on the the frequently asked questions or their their details is that you have to submit your employment certification form as well, which we have stressed that it is a big deal to do it through the PSLF help tool. But the language right now says that you just have to have the, you know, that application saved within the the PSLF help tool. So the PSLF help tool is on studentaid.gov as well. You go through a series of questions, you put in the EIN number for your employer or your employers, whether or not you're full time, and it saves a PDF document in there for you. So that has to be done by October 31st. It's also important to get it signed as soon as possible and submitted as soon as possible. But we thought that was an interesting development as well, to where if you hear about this October 31st, all you have to do is just, you know, get it saved within the PSLF help tool based on their guidance right now. Get it signed as soon as possible. It does not say right now, I don't believe, and Ben or Connor correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't say when you have to have it in by, but I would assume very soon. But that was also something that I thought was worth noting. Anything y'all would like to add to that? I just hope none of our listeners push it to the 11.59 p.m. Eastern time deadline of only opening the PSLF help tool and not having it signed off on. But that is the backstop they've laid out for us. We just, you know, kind of encourage action sooner, as we've been saying. Right. Don't go for the, what do people say about procrastinators, that they, like, enjoy the thrill? Like, don't go for the thrill in this scenario. It's going to make us sweat for you. It would work. But if you find out that your spouse has to sign or you can't sign into your account and conceivably you've missed out on five digit or six digit savings because of that, it's not worth putting off. And as Connor said, I'd say 99 times out of 100, and maybe you two could weigh in if you feel differently. If you have those older loan types, you know, you really know you need to consolidate. I would say in a few obscure cases, maybe one I'll actually mention just because it's pretty interesting. I had a borrower who was a physician, and through most of training, they were in forbearance. While it wouldn't have been PSLF credit normally, as we all know, this borrower has mostly direct loans with about 10 grand on an FFEL loan. We were going to consider consolidating, as they were. They were in a standard 10-year repayment plan, and if we consolidate loans, some of you might know this crazy complexity, but direct loans, if they're not consolidated, have access to a standard 10-year repayment plan, which can qualify for PSLF. Once consolidated, it's not necessarily a standard 10-year plan and won't account for PSLF. So this physician had to weigh, do I consolidate my loans to get the PSLF credit put on the FFEL loan and then enter an income-driven repayment plan that would have been quite unfavorable for him based on his income? And he could have done that, and he could have gotten forgiveness on the FFEL loan through consolidation as the waiver dictates. But instead, he kept it separate, and now cash flow is different. He could pay off his FFEL loan in full and keep the direct loans in standard 10-year payment for his next three years of PSLF qualifying payments. And although he was in forbearance through all of training, he's able to save a considerable degree onto the student loans because of the waiver. And he still would have done that if he consolidated the FFEL loan, but this was a really obscure kind of one-off case where you still have to look at all the details, and there can still be some complexities in there. And I know a lot of the people doing consults with us lately have been asking about one particular strategy that is a bit complex and is a little leery with this timeline. So why don't you segue us into that, Megan? Yep. So parent plus loans and the double consolidation. Y'all who have been listening to this podcast know that that's my bread and butter. I like helping people with that. It's a very complicated process, but it is now unfortunately too late to do this double consolidation process. So if you don't have parent plus loans, this is not something that you need to worry about or maybe tune out for a second, but I'll throw it to you, Connor, for those that do have parent plus loans to talk about just an overview of what this process is again, and then why it's too late to process this, and then what someone should be thinking about if they're in this situation and they're thinking about the PSLF waiver. Yeah, definitely. So it's not too late to take advantage of the waiver for people with parent plus loans that also have loans from their own education. Certainly we can still take advantage of it. It just changes a little bit how we do it. So double consolidation, the whole reason that we would use this process just to give a high level overview is again, that we have just parent plus loans that we want to open up some more repayment options on, right? We want to have lower payment options because when you consolidate parent plus loans together, once you get access to one income driven plan called income contingent repayment, it's certainly not the nicest one. It could be still very advantageous, but it's not the nicest plan. If we want more options and access to the nicer repayment plans, income driven plans, then we have to do the double consolidation, which is effectively combining two separate chunks, I call them of parent plus loans, and then combining those two resulting pieces again. And that loses all ties to those loans having ever come from, or those consolidations having ever come from parent plus loans. And it loses all the strings attached to parent plus loans. And nicer, when you say nicer, you mean like cheaper repayment plans, right? Right. Asking for less of your income, possibly with favorable forgiveness programs. Yep. Which is significant for anyone with parent plus loans who could be a good candidate for public service loan forgiveness, or even the IDR longer term forgiveness. So somebody starting in that double consolidation process now, if they wanted to take advantage of the PSLF waiver, we would have to have all those consolidations done before the, well, not done, but submitted at least by October 31st. Now, if we were to submit a consolidation today, it's, it's taking, depending on the servicer, it seems to be taking about a month to two months at the moment with some of the servicers a little bit longer with others. So we would, that would push us that, that first round of consolidations where we consolidate the two separate chunks together, that alone would push us over October 31st. And we would have had to do that second or the rather the third, the last consolidation before October 31st, we'd have submitted so that we can turn in our PSLF forms. So we're, we're past that deadline, unfortunately, but that doesn't mean that we can't take advantage of the PSLF waiver if you have parent plus loans, right? So this is specifically for people with parent plus loans, but also loans from their own education where, where they may be able to get PSLF credit under the waiver. Those loans can still be consolidated once, right? So you can still consolidate your parent plus loans with your loans from your own education, if you have both of those, and you can possibly get PSLF credit under the waiver on the entire consolidation, right? Effectively giving PSLF credit to your parent plus loan balance. Now there's one limitation that comes with that, and that, that consolidation loan, the only income driven payment you'll have available going forwards is ICR, right? And that's the only way that you would work towards getting more PSLF credit in the future. So it's, you know, like everything with student loans, the answer is, it depends, right? You have to, you know, figure out what would those ICR payments look like. It asks for a little bit more of your income than, than other plans. It has a little bit less favorable calculation for your income than other plans, but it could still really work in your favor and save a heap of money if you get a bunch of PSLF credit. But on the flip side of that, if you aren't able to get much credit or if your income is very, very high where your ICR payments would be very, very high, it may be in your best interest to pursue the double consolidation to open up other options and not take advantage of the PSLF waiver, right? So that's, that's something you have to run the numbers on or work with us, you know, and we'll run the numbers with you. Yes. So to kind of reiterate what you're saying and maybe put people into a bucket that this might be relevant to, if someone has, you know, seven, eight years of credit on their own loans. So again, this is if you're a parent plus borrower for a child, you have parent plus loans, but you also have your own loans from your own degree and you have payment history or credit that could go towards PSLF on your own loans. If you have some, if you have seven, eight, nine years of credit, but there's no time to do the double consolidation, it still probably makes sense to do the consolidation just once to take advantage of the PSLF waiver, because then the whole balance, including the parent plus loans, will get access to PSLF. The payment count will be rounded up to that highest payment count that your loans carried. They're the anchor of this situation with the PSLF payment credit. And even though you only have access to ICR with that one consolidation, you may only have a couple years left. So that mathematically could make a lot of sense. But if you're someone who does not have a lot of credit on your own loans, maybe you'd only have like a year or two, and you know, you're going to be in public service, the income driven payment, the payment being smaller matters more when we, when you do that math to crunch it out over that timeframe, then just like you said, Connor, then it might be the situation where okay, well, it's all right. If we forego the PSLF waiver, it stinks. Maybe we could have been a couple years ahead or a year ahead, whatever it is. But mathematically, it is more advantageous for you with that much time left to have the lower payment. So that's hopefully helps put someone in a bucket if you are someone that has parent plus loans, and your own loans that needs to figure out, you know, we're in the home stretch here, little time to do the double, you know, no time really to do the double consolidation for the PSLF waiver, how you should be thinking about it critically, one way or the other. Now, if you're someone who just has parent plus loans, not none of your own loans, then the PSLF waiver is not applicable to you at all. So that's, I think that is a misconception right now that you need to be paying attention to this deadline as well. But that is not true. If you only have parent plus loans, if you only have parent plus loans, then the question is, do we look at the double consolidation? Is there a reason to or should we be paying the loans to zero? So that's, thankfully, you know, you don't have as much of a time crunch, but still probably good to get a plan together for it regardless. But so that's a little bit about the timing, a warning about what probably won't happen or won't work before October 31st. Now, now that we're in kind of mid-October. So anything else you want to add to that or any other quick tips about timing to help people who are in the home stretch? You know, I think as much as we can provide general education and guidance around that these waivers are important to folks on the timeline, there are a lot of individual circumstances. And if you're feeling like your questions are complex, you know, we're happy to look at everything with you. I had a consult this week that fit the bill of exactly what we were talking about. And she did a consolidation to go into income contingent repayment on the parent plus loan. She's a teacher. She borrowed for her kids because it's really great thing to do and help them out. And the stress of the loans was so real for her that it was unfortunately made a bit worse when I said, hey, your monthly loan payments going to go from like 400 a month to like a thousand a month. Can you afford that if we do ICR and get everything forgiven in two years, which is going to save so much long-term money would be so costly right now. Can you afford that? And it would have been stressful, but fortunately asking all the right questions, she paid during CARES Act on direct loans and was able to get over $11,000 refunded that she can now use to help with those ICR payments and save considerably in the long term. So it was, it was very unique and it could have went either way, but in this case, you know, it's all, it's all, it's all individual circumstances with the PSLF waiver forgive people a lot of money. There are. Yeah. And I think that's the consultations. I mean, they really are just one-on-one completely customized advice to your situation, which gosh, and we've seen so many cases, not one case is identical to the other. They're just not, there's too many variables that go into student loan planning, too many things on the line to, you know, to risk just giving cookie cutter advice for, you know. So I say, I said this in a webinar recently, you know, you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes for this education and, you know, it might be worth a couple hundred dollars to, to get some advice on how to tackle your loans, how to make sure you're taking advantage of everything that you can to, to have the most efficient repayment plan that's going to work for you and save you the most time and the most money. So it, it is an investment, you know, our consultation is not cheap. It is an investment, but you know, oftentimes we're saving people, you know, 10, 20, you know, maybe sometimes 30 times what our fee is. So I, you know, if you are someone in that that's just confused, not sure about where to go, there's, there's just too much information and there is like, and I think Ben, you were talking about this before we started the podcast and Sam and I touched on this in our last podcast recording. There's just, it's overwhelming with how much information is out there. So it's hard to know like what to pay attention to. Yeah. We really, we really feel for everyone is listening to, you know, maybe you've, you've had a plan and whether the plan changed because your life changed or now it feels like the plan's changing because there's a lot of legislation looking at student loans. It's, it's tough to pick to something and commit to it and have the decision fatigue of what are all these changes, which changes impact me exactly? How did they impact me? And while it's one of the best times to be a student loan borrower we've ever seen, in my opinion, I think it can be one of the most stressful. And I hope a lot of that stress leads to positivity and leads to forgiveness, but it's, it's tough out there right now for, for a lot of people trying to figure out what they can do and trying to figure out the answers specific to them. Not that their friends said they got, or their colleagues got, because maybe you don't have the same loans your colleagues do. Maybe your payment history looked different. And there are a lot of things that happened beneath the surface. So it's a great time, but there's a lot to pay attention to. Yeah. Ben, you said something really interesting that, that a client brought up to me recently. They had found some guidance on, it was maybe somewhere on a forum online, people talking about student loans and somebody had mentioned that they turned in their PSLF form. They basically, they gave a timeline, right? They were giving a timeline of here, like I got loan forgiveness, look at what I did. And they turned in their PSLF form at, I think it was the end of July. And then they got their first communication from Mohila about their account being updated second week of August. And then they got full forgiveness, like first week of September. This was very recently. And I looked at that timeline and I thought, there is no way. There's absolutely no way. Mohila is taking months to process these right now. The forgiveness, you know, even once they start processing them, takes another several weeks. So, you know, you, you hit on something like people's situations can be very, very different. There's also a lot of information online and you have to be very careful what sources of information you trust. So, you know, we, we certainly try to put out a lot of information to help people as much as possible. Definitely be careful. Stay tuned to our newsletter that we send out every Thursday with this updated information. Travis is back writing those. And then our free content on our website as well. If, you know, a consultation may not be right for you at this time, then we've got a ton of free content on our website. Of course, the podcast that you're listening to, or on YouTube if you're watching. Also, just a quick side note, this is totally unrelated to student loans, but I just want to address maybe, and I should, I don't have to address this, but I am all dolled up right now. I just want to say that for those watching YouTube. And this is not normal for me, but I am getting married in October and I did my hair and makeup trial this morning. So, I look extra fabulous today. Usually I've got like my beach waves going with no makeup, but if you're watching YouTube and you're like, that's Megan, it's because I got a ton of makeup on today. So, just wanted to address that for those on YouTube. Connor and I thought that was because of the waivers. I, yeah, I thought it was for the webinar. So sorry. I, you know, sometimes I do dress up a bit sometimes, but no, this is my hair. I don't wear this much makeup usually. So, but anyways, we've got a ton of free content on our website through blog posts, free calculators. We're updating those calculators all the time to include the new proposed IDR plan, which we won't touch on too much today just because there's still so much unknown about that. It's just a proposal at this point, but we do have a calculator, a draft calculator, I would say on our website that you could use to, if you were curious to see how that plan would change your current situation, like how it might change your payment because it might very well reduce many people's payments if that plan goes into force the way it's proposed. We just, we don't know if that's going to happen. So take that all with a grain of salt, but that's also on there just as an FYI. And yeah, I think get a consultation if needed. But thanks, thank you guys for both hopping on the podcast today. Anything y'all would like to touch on before we wrap up? No, I want to thank the listeners. I know a bunch of people who use the same terminology I do in terms of that we're religious followers of student loan planners content and me being new on the team, I still say that's kind of how I got here. So I just love that we have such an enthusiastic audience and I've of the maybe 80 plus of you, hopefully I gave you enough info that you're not back on the consult, but it's just been really pleasurable meeting the whole team, going to FinCon and really getting to help so many student loan borrowers. So it's been a life changing month for me and I hope it is for a lot of the listeners and everyone we give our advice to and get to help out. I agree. Yeah. Thank you for having us, Megan. And all those consults that, you know, I'll put it this way, several times a week I tell people, man, I love my job. Yeah. You know, I just, I'm so happy we get to help people and put out as much information as we can so that they can navigate these, you know, like Ben was saying, all these new things coming out. Yeah. It can be, it can certainly be a stressful job with things changing on us all the time, but it is so rewarding. And I tell, I tell my clients this on my consultations, like send me the screenshot when you get the forgiveness, like, I want to see it. And I do get them every week I get them and it makes my, it makes my morning, it makes my day. It's so fun being part of y'all's wins, you know, even if it's not forgiveness, but even if it's, you know, just saving money on your plan or feeling confident enough to now go tackle, like saving for retirement or buying that house or whatever it is. Like, it's so fun to be part of that. And I know, you know, not to speak for all of us, but I know all of us really do find joy in seeing everybody else win as well. And student loan planning is just a unique profession where we could see that really quickly, really instantly and, you know, in a lot of circumstances. So it's a pleasure working with you guys and it's been, you know, a pleasure on this podcast today. Gosh, we got a little heartfelt right there towards the end. Oh my goodness. But I guess we will wrap up there. Well, thank you guys for hopping on today and we will see you in the next one. Thanks so much, Megan. Thanks.