(Ep. 198) Fertility and Alternative Conception While You Have Student Loan Debt

Welcome to another episode of the Student Loan Planner Podcast. Today we have a really exciting topic for you. So often we hear from borrowers that they're putting off various aspects of their life goals because they feel crippled by the student loan debt. You may be listening and saying, yes, Lauren, that is me, that is me. People are choosing not to get married, sometimes not to buy a home, maybe to have kids or even as many kids as they would like, all because of their student loan debt. And there's this added layer of stress when you have to use an alternative method to conceive and a major part of that stress is the cost. So today we are talking about the cost and other considerations related to fertility and alternative means of conception while you have student loan debt and why having student loans does not have to stop you from starting a family. It is really hard to find resources that help people sort through this topic because it's such a private matter. But we also know that transparency is so valuable and I'm grateful to two of our newest consultants, Sim and James, for deciding to share their journey because I know that this episode has the potential to change people's lives. So without further ado, James and Sim, welcome to the show. Thank you, Lauren. Thanks for having me. All right, so let's just jump right in. What are some of the things that borrowers should consider before deciding to delay starting a family due to their student loan debt? Yeah, you just don't know how long this process is going to take and it may not work out the way that you think it works out. You know, when you get labeled as infertile, either because you've had multiple miscarriages or because you just cannot get pregnant, that's not a club that anybody expects to be a part of or wants to be a part of. And so when you're choosing to delay, you just don't know when you actually might be able to have a, if you're going for a biological child, you don't know when that might actually work out for you. Yeah, Sim, you bring up a great point because even before wading into the conversation about fertility challenges, it's important to think about the difference between life goals like maybe moving into a bigger house versus having children because biological children come with the biological clock, right? So there's kind of a deadline there that you don't have with other decisions. Then when you're talking about infertility problems, it's something that's just not talked about that often, right? So no one thinks it's going to happen to them, but it could easily add time to your timeline for when you expect to have kids. So let's say you're doing the math and you say, okay, I can pay off my loans by age 28 or by 30. And then six months later, we should be pregnant, right? Not necessarily because let's say you have some challenges and it's not even that complicated. There's a pretty simple fix. I know my aunt and uncle, when they were having kids years ago, my uncle just needed to take like a certain vitamin. They were able to turn their situation around and have kids that easily. Your doctor will refer you to a fertility specialist usually after a year where you've been trying to do it. So you've got that first year and then you think about the time it takes to schedule appointments. So there may be a delay until that initial consultation happens. And then another delay until you can take the recommended tests. And then another delay to discuss the test results. Now you could be adding a year and a half. If you actually have some fertility challenges that need treatment, then you're talking up to two years for it to actually happen. And so I think it's important to keep that in mind when making your timeline. That makes perfect sense, James. There's so many times where I think we don't consider how valuable time is and, you know, we kind of take it for granted. To be able to kind of have you lay out that timeline of like, oh, you know, sometimes things don't go quite as planned and it could be just another month or a couple months, but actually it could be a couple years is something that definitely I want you to, you know, as a borrower listening to this, like, don't wait if starting your family is something that's really important to you because you don't know what's going to be around the corner as it pertains to figuring out what's going to be best for you and your spouse. And, you know, actually putting on my, you know, financial planner hat, sometimes in the past I would get asked questions from some of my clients about, hey, is this, you know, a good financial decision? And sometimes my response would be, does it have to be a good financial decision? Sometimes they're just, they're not really asking for whether or not it's a good financial decision. They want my blessing, right? Because this is a life goal for them and they're scared. But sometimes you have to make a decision that maybe isn't financially as ideal, but there might be some strategies that we can implement that make it more feasible for you. When thinking about the trepidation that comes with having student loans and putting decisions off, I think it's important to go back to a point that we make a lot here at Student Loan Planner, right? Which is that worst case scenario, your student loan debt is a tax on your income. You can budget for that and ideally it should not prevent you from making these important family decisions. So you can get on an income-driven repayment plan to try to minimize your payment and pursue forgiveness. And with the lowest monthly payment possible, that should hopefully give you some room in your budget to afford fertility treatments. And then the only other route that we talk about that makes sense besides just paying as little as possible in your loans is an aggressive payoff route. We talk to clients all the time, right? Who are like, I want to pay these off. I want the monkey off my back and I can do it within a couple years or so based on the amount of positive cash flow I have. So for those people, you know, if you really want the debt off your back, it could make sense to do that before you start the journey of starting a family. But like we said earlier, keep into account that it might take longer than you expect. And from a strictly financial perspective, it may not be necessary to aggressively pay off your debt, right? If you refinance at today's interest rates, they're still at two, three percent for fixed rates. You can lock in that low rate and once you do that, that actually makes that debt a lower financial priority versus other places you could be putting your money and earning money on your investments. And so that makes it a lower priority because the interest is so low. And then in that case, maybe it does make sense to wait a little bit longer to pay it off so you can prioritize starting a family. The other thing I think about as you mentioned that, James, is the idea that as you look at your cash flow, it may be such that you can make these aggressive payments, but you're also maybe not really clear on the cost associated with your alternative means of conception. So to throw fifty or sixty thousand dollars at this debt on an annual basis or even more, you know, your whole bonus or some other, you know, cash flow that you could be using for these alternative methods, you've now given it all to the student loan debt company and you can't call them and say like, hey, we're having a hard time getting pregnant and it's going to cost X, Y, Z dollars. Can you give us that money back, please? Exactly. Wouldn't that be great if we could do that? Right. You know, this is a phrase I think I've used in another podcast, which is opportunity cost. There is an opportunity cost to giving up that fifty, sixty thousand dollars that you may actually have wanted to allocate towards some of these fertility or assisted technology treatments because there are things that insurance doesn't cover. From my own experience, you know, there are a lot of fertility treatments that aren't covered, but maybe doctor visits are. And I'm kind of in a battle right now. I'm actually getting a reimbursement because I fought for it. I was told that my visit with this doctor was not covered. And I said, well, yeah, it actually is because he's a network provider for OB services. So we went back and forth and lo and behold, insurance agreed with me. And so I am getting a refund for that. But that certainly took some advocating. And I don't think we talk about the emotional burden of advocating for yourself enough. But when you're in a situation where you are pursuing fertility treatments, that's already stressful enough. But then to have to fight billing and insurance as a whole other layer of complexity to it. And so what you might want to do if you're at that point in your journey, cut out the middleman, call your insurance company, ask them what's covered, read your policy. Hey, maybe they don't cover IVF, but maybe they cover diagnostic things like ultrasounds, saline sonograms, whatever testing is required to maybe give you a diagnosis of why you're having the problems that you're having. Excellent. And I think that's a great place to be able to segue into talking about insurance in general. With insurance, I think it's important, like you said, that you don't take no for an answer. Tell us a little bit more about like some of the considerations people should be thinking about as they decide like what insurance, you know, is it possible to get like supplemental insurance, like paying out of pocket, like what are the considerations as it pertains to insurance? When you're going into testing for infertility, and by the way, I just want to kind of add a caveat that the word infertility is super insensitive because they apply it for kind of everything. Even if, you know, like me, I've been pregnant three times and have had three miscarriages and yet, you know, I still have to look at the word infertile. I'm like, dang it, that's so mean. But anyways, with insurance, so there's different things you'll go through, right? You're going to meet with doctors or nurse practitioners. Those are like in-office visits. Those actually do tend to be covered if they're in-network providers, right? Because they are providing you OB services, which is usually covered. Things like testing for dad is not always covered. They call that, what is it, andrology. James, you probably know more about this than I do. Andrology studies, those tend not to be covered. Some labs, like blood work, some of those are covered and some are not. I had to learn that the hard way because my first visit there, and I kid you not, they drew 26 vials of blood and that was not the last time they were going to stick me like a pincushion. Some of those labs were covered and some were not, depending on what insurance thinks is medically necessary. And I can give you an example, actually, for women at least, they're going to test you for a bunch of autoimmune diseases. That's generally going to get covered. They may also do like a genetic carrier screening. Hey, Sim, you're an Ashkenazi Jew. Do you have possibly a genetic predisposition to pass on Tay-Sachs, right? They check these things. Insurance tends to be iffier about those, so you may have to pay a portion or all of it out of pocket. Then you get into diagnostic imaging. So ladies, they might start you off with just a basic ultrasound. That's usually going to get covered, at least a portion of it, if not all of it. If that one is inconclusive, like, hey, this is fine, they may do more advanced imaging like a saline sonogram or an HSG, which is like an x-ray. And again, those can get covered a portion or not at all. And then as things ramp up, and if you're kind of looking at in vitro fertilization, huge array as to whether or not insurance is going to cover a portion or all of it. Maybe they don't cover the actual egg retrieval process, but maybe they will cover pre-genetic screening. So it really is worth the effort to read your policy carefully and see what aspects of it are covered as opposed to being told just point blank, hey, infertility is not covered in your policy, because that's not always true. One point I want to make from earlier, you said how you can't get, if you pay $50,000 extra to your student loans, you can't get it back out. But guess what? If you instead added that $50,000 on a monthly basis to a high-yield savings account, you can always put it into your student loans in a lump sum payment later, right? But then you reserve the right to use it for something else if that ends up being a better use for your money. So you maintain that flexibility. Oh, that's such a good point. And of course, we recommend that to clients all the time in our consults. But then going back to what you just said about insurance SIM, yeah, I mean, the first sort of layer of this that's just a crapshot is just what insurance do you have? There's such a wide variety of experiences you'll have in terms of what your insurance will cover, just depending on what insurance your employer has. That's the part that you can't help. But like you said, SIM, checking the summary of benefits page is a good place to go to see what's covered. It's important to keep in mind, once you know what the plan covers, it may be a matter of upgrading your plan. So the current plan that you have that doesn't cost as much may not have coverage for fertility. That was the case for me and my wife. We were on the basic plan, which worked for us for some time. We found out that we needed the select plan in order to get coverage for fertility. But then you have to be careful with this because you can generally only change your plan during your annual enrollment period in the fall. So what if you're like my wife and I, where our one-year mark, where we're trying and had yet to get pregnant, that one-year mark came up in the summer. So then what do you do at that point? Well, one thing that can be encouraging is if you want to start the process before you can up your insurance and pay out of pocket, the initial visits and tests might actually be more affordable depending on the clinic that you go to. And so you may be looking at $200 to $400 for the initial consultation, $100 to $300 for sperm tests, $150 to $500 for pelvic ultrasound. A lot of these tests that Sim just mentioned that they're going to use first to try to see what could be causing all that time passing and not getting pregnant. And one thing that really worked for me and my wife is we asked for the self-pay price, and that's something that you should do if you're paying out of pocket. Because some clinics will actually give you a discount if you aren't using insurance. As an example, we asked for the self-pay price for the initial consultation and that cut the cost basically in half from $395 to $198. Wow, that's a huge difference. And like you said, Sim mentioned earlier, being able to advocate for yourself, to even know to ask for a different price, or to say that you're paying out of pocket, can you do anything to help, is a key thing to be able to save you money. Yeah, it not only saves you money, but it can allow you the peace of mind to really know what you might be up against before waiting for the fall enrollment period. So actually another interesting thing that we did is in October, we upped our insurance and we had another three months right before the insurance would kick in in January and we could actually use it. And so we had already done all the tests except for this one last test, the HSG test that was recommended before starting treatment. And all the tests that we had done, we just hadn't really uncovered any problems. They all looked pretty normal. And so we actually had a choice of do we take the test now and pay for it out of pocket, it was about $500, or do we wait until insurance kicks in? And I'm the financial planner in my family and my wife is worried about spending the money. And I told her, look, if it would give you peace of mind, allow us to enjoy the holidays more, to do the test now, let's just do it now. We've prepared for this, we saved the money, just go ahead and do it now. Because it's not just about fertility, right? Like some of these tests, especially for the woman, I would say, it lets the woman know about her personal health also. So my wife had some real anxiety about it. Do I have any blockages? Am I okay? And so I said, you know, let's go ahead and just do it now. But we know that once the insurance kicks in, if we do need to do IVF or IUI or any of these more expensive treatments, we have the money to do that. James, that's such a good point. And I want to add a note from my personal experience, which is don't skimp on any of the tests if they're offered to you. Because I know there can be a temptation either, you know, to save money, or you're just really tired of all of these, especially if you're a woman, you're tired of the invasive tests. You can be like, do I really need that? In my situation, having three back-to-back pregnancy losses, they tell you even without doing testing, statistically, the number one cause of that is a chromosomal abnormality. And in my case, that was true for all three. None of my pregnancies were healthy or viable. But when you're working with a fertility clinic, they're not just looking at, hey, why did this happen? They test you for everything to make sure, hey, are there any reasons that caused this? Is there anything that can contribute to a future miscarriage? And so that's also part of the reason why they're doing all of these tests. They're not doing it because it's necessarily fun for them. And I'll tell you from my own experience, after I had had a bunch of testing, I was just so done with it. They wanted to do one more, right? They said, Sim, let's go ahead and do the saline sonogram. And I have a super low pain tolerance. I was just so unenthused about this test. I almost canceled it, but I went ahead and did it. And lo and behold, they found something, nothing serious, but something that I needed to have surgery for two weeks ago. So I almost missed out on that, right? I almost missed out because I'm like, hey, do I really need to do this? But they know what they're talking about. And when you're going through this difficult situation, when you're part of the club, you didn't ask to join. You kind of, at least for me at this point, you want to do a let's throw everything at the wall. And so if they're offering you tests, it's probably a good idea to take it, even if it is going to come with additional costs because you want to make sure you've been very thorough. Absolutely, Sim. I mean, it's just amazing what modern medicine is able to do and what they're able to uncover with these tests. I agree a hundred percent. We've talked a lot and you guys have been super helpful in breaking down some of the real life costs related to this. But what about some of the hidden costs that happen outside of the clinic? Are there things like medications that you need to cover or alternative treatments, yoga, things like that that are necessary? Can you talk a little bit about other costs that people might not be thinking of? Oh, yeah. Let me jump in here. Okay. So for me, like I shared, my issue was that I had, you know, chromosomal abnormalities, but I also for a long time have had some autoimmune struggles too. And so for me, even though that was not why I had miscarriages, that is still for me a miscarriage risk in the future. I do a lot to try to mitigate that as much as I think is reasonably possible. One is I'm on a diet, which for me has been actually very helpful and very anti-inflammatory, but there's a cost with that, right? My grocery bill is higher and I have to spend more time cooking. And actually, there's also a third kind of social cost, which is, you know, my friends used to know me as a foodie, but now I have to be a lot more careful with what I'm eating. And so eating out, I have to be the annoying guy who either asks the waiter a lot of questions, or I just have to look at the menu ahead of time and come up with a plan. That's one aspect of it. Another is supplements. There've been some supplements that have been recommended to me to kind of help with my immune system. Those add up super quick, but are still in the longterm cheaper than doing something like IVF if it actually helps me. There's also medications that they give you kind of prophylactically to help. And some of them are cheap, right? Like low dose baby aspirin, even if you don't necessarily have a blood clotting problem, you never know, right? And it's a cheap, modern technology, right? It's great that we have options like that, but those things can add up too. That might just be something you have to work into your budget if you're able to do that. I've tried some alternative things as well. And I'm going to put in a disclaimer here that I don't know if this is scientific or not, and I'm not claiming it is. I'm just kind of personally taking a let's throw everything at the wall approach. I have done acupuncture for almost three months now. And again, don't know if it's done anything, but at the worst case scenario, I'm like, it's an expensive nap. So it's kind of treated like self-care time, but I've done that. There are free things you can do, right? I do yoga at home, turn on YouTube. That's a free resource, you know, just getting some really gentle movement can kind of calm down some of that stress and is also just good to move your body. But those are just some things to think about when it comes to like other costs outside of paying your doctors and all those tests and whatnot. James, are there any hidden costs that you want to share outside of what Sim shared? One that comes to mind is therapy, which I think therapy is a good idea for a lot of people in today's modern world in general. But obviously going through infertility can lead to all sorts of feelings that arise. You're in a much better position to work through those feelings if you're going through therapy, which of course insurance coverage for therapy is a whole nother discussion. But that's, I would add that as another hidden cost. Seems like there's a lot of different considerations to take for borrowers out there that are interested in figuring out the best plan for themselves. I know one thing that comes up frequently is I'm trying to save money on taxes. You know, when we're doing student loan consultations, people are always like, well, what can I do to save money on taxes? Do you have any tax tips? Taxes is something we're all very sensitive to. Are there any tax considerations related to this overall process that people should be thinking about? One thing that people may not think about because it happens sort of behind the scenes before they get their paycheck is the power of pre-tax deductions. My wife and I, I mentioned earlier that in the fall, we upped our insurance to cover infertility treatments. But for a period of time, we were actually wondering, should we increase it? It was like another 200 a month for health insurance. And there was a period of time where we said, look, we've already done these tests. You paid this money out of pocket and nothing really major has come from it. There haven't really been any big red flags. Maybe we'll actually be okay and not need any of the more expensive treatments. And I'll admit a lot of that thought was based on, I've talked about how I'm starting my own financial planning firm and I'm not making the same income as before. And we're being very cost-conscious. And so we were just wondering if we really need to sign up for this. Ultimately, we decided to for a couple of reasons. One is I realized that we're actually not increasing our costs by 200 a month because that's 200 a month pre-tax. And so what that means is $200 every month that we were being taxed on before, we're not going to be taxed on it anymore. So we're actually saving, a lot of people could end up saving about 35% on that $200. And you may say 35%, that's a big number. And I would like to remind people, not only are you saving federal income tax on that amount, you're saving state income tax. You're saving FICA taxes, that's social security and Medicare. A lot of people don't realize that when you add money to, for instance, your 401k or 403b, you're only saving federal and state income tax. You're not saving the social security and Medicare tax, which I guess is good for adding to your social security benefit. But when it comes to health insurance and other types of special pre-tax deductions, you save all of those taxes. So instead of paying 200 a month, we were actually paying about 130 a month after taxes or 1500 per year. And we said, why don't we limit our downside risk in terms of out-of-pocket costs to $1,500 for the year, with a little bit more out-of-pocket if we needed to do IUI, for instance. Whereas if we didn't have the insurance, IUI out-of-pocket is about 1000 per round. And so if we needed several rounds, our downside risk is much larger than if we just pay that insurance and know that we're limiting the amount we need to pay out-of-pocket by a lot. So it's definitely important to think about the taxes when thinking about what your true out-of-pocket cost is for the insurance. That's a great point, James. And I have a few to add as well. One is we can talk about HSAs. Those are health savings accounts. Now, as a financial planner, I would not necessarily be quick to say, hey, let's use this right away for the purpose of funding some of these goals because HSAs have a very powerful triple tax benefit, meaning you put the money in there on a pre-tax basis like James just talked about. The funds grow over a period of time. And then when you pull the funds out for a qualified medical expense, you don't have to pay tax on the growth. Again, that's a very powerful account to have in retirement when we don't know what medical costs are going to be like then. But if you're in a situation where you're like, hey, I can't get blood from a turnip or whatever, an HSA could still be useful for you if that's an account that you have available, right? You're getting a tax deduction. If you've let it grow at all, you might have some funds that you can use for these expenses. There are some other tax considerations too. And I would always encourage you to talk to an actual tax professional, a CPA or an EA. But if you save your receipts and you're accumulating a lot of medical costs during this time, you might be able to itemize them on Schedule A if your costs exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Now, of course, you wouldn't necessarily itemize if your standard deduction is larger than that, but that can be an area where, again, save your receipts and just see how things shake out for you in your situation. And we haven't gotten quite yet to talking about adoption or surrogacy, but there is also a tax credit available for that if your AGI is below a certain limit and you can get some of those expenses offset on your taxes. Super duper helpful. I know that Uncle Sam is always playing a part. So many aspects of our financial life are intertwined. And so, you know, we get on student loan consultations and we often bring up things like fertility or home buying or taxes because our financial lives don't happen in a silo. And I knew that there was going to be some aspect that we needed to consider as it pertained to taxes. So that is huge. So helpful from both of you. Yeah. And flex spending accounts are another option. Unlike the HSA, you have to use that each plan year. You may already be contributing to it and not really thinking much about it because, again, it just comes out of your check. But if you anticipate having some more out-of-pocket expenses for fertility treatments, even if you do have the additional insurance, you know, you're still paying some out-of-pocket for medications. IUI as an example, one round, like I said, could be up to a thousand dollars without insurance, but around 250 with insurance, still with co-pays and medications and things like that. So you'll still have some out-of-pocket. It may make sense to actually increase how much you're already contributing to your flex spending account so that that out-of-pocket money will also be tax-free. It'll also be an additional deduction from your income that allows you to spend tax-free money on those out-of-pocket expenses. And you can contribute up to, I think it's up to $2,850 for 2022 is how much you can put in the flex spending account. So if you're already not maxing that out, it could make sense to increase that contribution. Are there any other tips or tricks that you can think of as it pertains to keeping costs low? Is there, you know, grants, scholarships, ways to get some of these services completely for free? Something based on income that you all know of? Maybe employers offer benefits? What else is out there? There might be a few options depending on your situation. A lot of tech companies, because they're so competitive, want to offer competitive benefits. And so a lot of them, and I actually think this might be true for my husband's new job, but I'm not sure. I believe they offer either unlimited or a certain number of rounds of IVF, but it obviously varies from company to company. But that's an incentive, right? If you're in that kind of situation, again, that won't apply to everybody. You obviously have to have the right job experience or the right degree. But if that does apply for you, that's part of your compensation package. Your compensation package is not just your salary. We all like to think about that, right? Because that's something that's tangible. I get money, I can buy things, I can pay my bills. But there might be other ways that you're getting money, right? So maybe they're, again, covering some rounds of IVF. Maybe you just have really good health insurance. And so a lot of these visits and diagnostics are covered. Another benefit, obviously, is 401k matching. Maybe the company has super generous profit sharing. These are things you can maybe negotiate when you get a job offer. And that's for the employment side of things. There are also some adoption and surrogacy grants I know of for specifically LGBT couples that you can apply for. I do believe those are usually capped at a certain AGI. But if that's part of your situation where you need that assistive technology, just honestly go into Google and just type in grants for LGBT adoption or whatever it may be. There's quite a bit out there. Yeah. Sim, you and I recently did a podcast where we talked about the idea that knowing is half of the battle. So one of the resources is actual monetary resources. But another resource in and of itself is just the knowledge. So knowing that things exist or trying to figure out what things exist is a huge deal when you're trying to kind of operate in a silo. Like you said, so many people are not talking about this at all. They don't even know where to begin or where to look or where to start. But Google's a good place if you don't have someone to talk to about it. Yeah. And I will add that there are a lot of support networks and fertility education and support groups online that you can go to, to not only read maybe an article written by an expert, but actually hear from other people's personal experiences. Oh, that's a great point because it's so important that you don't feel alone in this process. I know for me, I am always worried about what not to say. I have quite a few friends and clients that are in, you know, various stages of different fertility treatments. And, you know, I've learned some of the what not to say by just like good old fashioned Google. So, you know, you probably shouldn't say like, isn't it so fun trying? I don't know what to say. You can just try again is something else that, you know, I'm sure that is not the most fun thing to hear. When are you having kids yet? From family? Why don't you just adopt? Oh, man. Yeah, that's exactly what my question was going to be. What are some of those jerk things that some people who may not know what to say or just like, maybe they're just jerks do say during the course of all of this? Sometimes it's the unsolicited advice that is maybe wrong or just like insensitive, maybe as if like, let me say it like this. If you're at this point of your fertility journey, I'm guessing that you've probably already amassed a lot of resources. You've talked with medical providers. You've talked with really close friends. You've Googled. You probably know more about this subject than the person who is offering you unsolicited advice, unless that person has also been in your shoes, in which case maybe take some notes. I don't know. But Lauren, my encouragement to you and to other listeners, you know, if you have a friend who is in this situation, just ask them, ask them what's OK and what's not OK. You know, for me, I didn't want to be treated with kid gloves. I had some girlfriends who were pregnant and they didn't know how to tell me they thought I'd fall apart or I'd be upset. And I'm like, honestly, I just don't want to be robbed of the experience of being your friend and walking alongside you and your pregnancy journey, because that's your journey. That's not my journey. And, you know, I guess that might be hard for some people. But for me, I just don't want to be constantly reminded of my loss or like in a state of grief. I kind of wanted to experience a sense of normalcy. And if I needed to grieve, I could do that. But that was my encouragement to them was, you know, let's be normal. It's, you know, if I need to talk about it, I will. Oh, that is so comforting to hear, Sam, because like you said, sometimes you're like, I don't know what to say. It sounds like, you know, just acknowledge that even with a friend, because there's a certain amount of transparency that exists within a friendship in and of itself. And, you know, one of the things I've always worried about is like, well, trying to be like a motivator, because that's kind of my instinct as an athlete, like, come on, you can do it. It's OK. Or maybe to share success stories. But I don't want to share success stories in a way that's going to, like, depress the person. So to just simply, like, treat them normal is great advice. What you just said is great, too. Like, you can say, hey, I don't know what to say. Like, how can I walk alongside you with this right now? Like, what what would you like for me? Would you like encouragement? Would you like me to listen? And by the way, that works in marriage, too, with your spouses, asking them what they need. That's just, I think, good relationship advice in general. Just ask the person what they need. Absolutely. You'd be surprised how well that can work, how many situations that can work. Just asking. James, any final thoughts as we start to wrap this up? Well, this is a student loan podcast. So making sure that we bring this back to student loans, the takeaway is there are resources, there are strategies out there to deal with your student loans in a intelligent way. Like we said earlier, whether you're slow walking it, paying as little as possible into it in order to get forgiveness or you are taking on a more aggressive pay down approach. Either way, it doesn't have to keep you from your important life goals. I think we talked about last time we were on the show, you only live life once and starting a family, having children for a lot of people is one of the most meaningful things they'll do in their whole lives. And you have a limited window of time of when you can do it and then you'll never have it again. And so there are just too many strategies and resources out there when it comes to student loans that you really don't have to let your student loan debt keep you from pursuing these goals. Just make sure that you're continuing to do what you do, listening to this podcast, educating yourself about the options that you have. If you continue to do that, you should be in good shape. Yeah. And my encouragement to our listeners would be just maybe a gentle reminder that one, you are not broken. If you are in this situation, it is not your fault. Sometimes these things happen. You are not stuck. You have options. And I mean that both with your student loans and with fertility struggles, you have options and you are worthy. You deserve love. You deserve to have meaning in your life and you don't need to have every single piece in place. Your life does not have to be perfect. You don't need to have every single, you know, financial goal met just to have a family. I love it. What a great way to close this out. You are enough. And as with so many decisions that we have to make in life, they are made easier by having a plan. We know that life does not always go as planned as this episode was about. Something didn't go as planned. Usually when, you know, you find yourself being a part of this club that you didn't ask to be a part of, but it is so much easier to move through things when you have a plan and you can pivot versus, you know, having to react because there is no plan in place. James, you gave me, you know, a whole new outlook on the word YOLO. You said we only live once. You know, it's a popular trendy saying, but if we really take that to heart, you want to make the most of the right here and the right now. And I would say that, you know, prioritizing planning a family definitely is going to come in front of paying off my student loans aggressively, but the two things can work together by simply just getting expert advice and understanding what is the best way to proceed in light of the information that we know right now. Absolutely. Well said. This has been another episode of the Student Loan Planner podcast. If you don't know where to find us, it is studentloanplanner.com. We do 60 minute consultations to help you get a plan for your student loan life. Sim is now doing consultations and James is just around the corner. So if you're looking for them on the calendar, Sim, actually, what days are you working? I am actually available every day. I like to open my calendar up three slots a day, and that does include weekends. Excellent. So she'll be pretty easy to find. I'm Lauren Williams and you can find me on Thursdays. And like I said, James is just around the corner to being added to the Student Loan Planner consultant schedule. So don't hesitate to reach out if you're looking for a student loan plan. That's all for today, folks.