{"id":99479,"date":"2018-05-28T00:02:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T06:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=99479"},"modified":"2023-04-26T05:18:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T11:18:09","slug":"biggerpockets-money-podcast-22pay-6-figure-student-loans-pursuing-financial-independence-travis-hornsby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/biggerpockets-money-podcast-22pay-6-figure-student-loans-pursuing-financial-independence-travis-hornsby","title":{"rendered":"How to Pay Off 6-Figure Student Loans While Pursuing Financial Independence with Travis Hornsby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Student loan debt is a HUGE problem facing millions of people &#8211; and it continues to grow every year. Today we are joined by <strong>Travis Hornsby<\/strong> from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.studentloanplanner.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Student Loan Planner<\/a> who shares several options for paying back your student loans, including loan forgiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Travis shares his rule of thumb for deciding whether to pay off your loans or take the forgiveness route, and tips for refinancing your student loan debt. He also gives future college attendees a few things to consider BEFORE choosing a major.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode is for anyone with student loan debt &#8211; or anyone with kids facing this choice. Travis also shares how you can still pursue Financial Independence while paying down your student loans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Packed with actionable advice, this is an episode NOT to be missed!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biggerpockets-money-podcast\/id1330225136\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0to listen on iTunes.<\/p>\n<h2>Listen to the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=BIGPOC9421517480&#038;light=false\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Read the Transcript Here<\/h2>\n<div style=\"overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 400px; background: #eee; padding: 20px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Welcome to BiggerPockets Money Podcast, Show Number 22.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>\u201cThe takeaway message is that somebody who finds out about this financial independence stuff like later in their life after they made all these decisions, that they wished to High Heaven they could take back. You can still actually get out of that hole, which is so exciting. So it\u2019s just really fun to be able to deliver that message sometimes to people that feel trapped\u201d.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>It\u2019s time for a new American dream, one that doesn\u2019t involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you\u2019re looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth\u2019s creation, you\u2019re in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more, this is the BiggerPockets Money podcast.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>How\u2019s it going, everybody? I\u2019m Scott Trench and I\u2019m here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Scott, I am doing fantastic today. It\u2019s a beautiful day out, as you said earlier\u2014\u201cSun\u2019s out, guns out\u201d. I\u2019m gonna show you my guns here. Okay, you win. Today\u2019s show is so fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Yeah, we brought the big guns out with today\u2019s guest so we\u2019re having a long episode coming up and we\u2019re going to briefly introduce his story for the first five or ten minutes and we\u2019re going to launch into probably a 45-minute straight discussion of strategies that you can use to pay down student loan debt. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One of my favorite episodes of this podcast of all time, a perspective-changing podcast from my point of view but I\u2019ve always viewed student loans as an obstacle to getting back to the starting point of financial freedom. You\u2019ve got to pay off the student loan debt or find a way to work around it in order to begin building wealth. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But Travis kind of completely turn that theory on its head, I think, and has given a variety of options for how to go about it. And don\u2019t expect these options to be for if you have $50,000 in student loan debt because this is for if you have significant student loan debt. Student loan debt that\u2019s more than 1.5 or 2 times your annual income. You\u2019re going to hear some kind of mind-blowing strategies and options that exist for you maybe that you have no heard of before. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yeah, and today\u2019s show came about from several people e-mailing me asking me, can you interview somebody who can cover student loan debt repayment? And that\u2019s something that I think that we both really want to present to our listeners is what they want to hear. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So if you have a question that you\u2019re struggling with, if you have a money topic that you\u2019d like to see covered, please e-mail me, <a href=\"mailto:Mindy@BiggerPockets.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"s2\">Mindy@BiggerPockets.com<\/span><\/a> or e-mail Scott at <a href=\"mailto:Scott@BiggerPockets.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"s2\">Scott@BiggerPockets.com<\/span><\/a> and we would really like to present topics that you want to hear about because that\u2019s who we\u2019re making the show for, is you personally. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Absolutely. And I think that if you have student loan debt and it\u2019s a big part of your financial position right now and you\u2019re really struggling to get through it, this episode\u2014we could not have found a more perfect guest that can kind of go right into how to attack that problem and begin approaching financial freedom today, even with all that student loan debt. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yes, and this is really just an amazing episode. But before we bring Travis in, let\u2019s hear a word from today\u2019s sponsor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Betterment is an online financial advisor that can help you strive for higher returns. They combine a low transparent fee structure with advice that\u2019s in your best interest. When you sign up for the platform, you\u2019ll be asked about goals and given recommendations and advice about how and where to invest. They will present with investment options that they believe are well-suited to help you meet those goals. Remember, investing involves risk. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But Betterment might be great for someone that wants to invest passively in an index fund portfolio for the long-term and it can also be great for folks that want to help at saving for shorter-term purposes, like for example, the next down payment on the next rental property you\u2019re going to buy. They\u2019ve got advice and plans for all of that and more. And BiggerPockets Money podcast listeners can get up to one year manage-free. For more information, visit Betterment.com\/BP. That\u2019s Betterment.com\/BP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">All right, big thanks to today\u2019s sponsor. Mindy, should we bring Travis in?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yes, please.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Okay, so Travis Hornsby, welcome to BiggerPockets Money podcast. How are you doing? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Doing great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Yeah, we\u2019re very much looking forward to hearing your story today so let\u2019s start from the beginning. Where do you believe your kind of financial journey began and when did you kind of discover financial independence?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Well, I think this is a little bit similar for you, too, Scott. But I found Mr. Money Mustache. That was like that first formal launching point. I was sitting in my cubicle working for a very large company, investment company, and just was not feeling energized every morning, getting up out of bed just feeling like what is my purpose? It\u2019s not being fulfilled and then I found this idea of early retirement and financial independence. I thought heck yeah this is what I need to be doing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I was very lucky in that I had set myself up very well up to that point so I graduated from college without any debt. I actually got paid to go to school, got a bunch of scholarships, and had a positive net worth leaving college and had always been very frugal. So I had been in a very fantastic position to work towards financial independence. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yeah, I want to know how you got paid to go to college. Let\u2019s talk about that for a minute because my parents paid for my college and the subject of today\u2019s show is student debt in general. I didn\u2019t have any. How did you avoid it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>So one thing that my parents did which was very smart is they bought prepaid tuition for our state university, so they did that. And then I knew that I had two brothers\u2014my dad was a teacher, my mom didn\u2019t work because of some disability issues so we had a very limited budget and I knew that if I wanted to go to college, I needed to be responsible for it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I found out about a scholarship program that the flagship state university in my state, University of Florida had, that would pay you to go to school, would pay you to travel around the world for like summers abroad. It was really amazing. Yeah, I get living expenses and everything and you had to be like, number one in your class to get apply for it. So I had a lead time to know that I needed to work towards this goal. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I found out about this scholarship maybe like sophomore or junior year so I just worked my tail off to make sure that I was the clear choice for the nomination because each school got to nominate one person and then got that scholarship. And I had other options like Vanderbilt was on the list, Scott. They gave me a half scholarship. It was still going to cost me like a Mercedes a year, I think. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So comparing that to the offer, basically I was able to stack all these scholarships that weren\u2019t means tested and I was very fortunate for that. I maybe made about similar to a graduate assistantship type of income while going to school, so like $10,000-$15,000 and I worked part-time. I was really fortunate for sure. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Yeah, yeah. Very fortunate to decide to graduate at the top of your class to get a bunch of scholarships from great universities all over the country. Lucky you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, I know. And that part\u2019s not relatable. But what is relatable, I think is, a lot of people have parents that help at least.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Well what it is, is you chose to do that from a hard work and ethics perspective. That\u2019s not a luck thing. That\u2019s, you made this decision early on to do it that way. Sorry to interrupt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yes. No, I\u2019m going to interrupt, too, and say I had every opportunity to be the top of my class and I did not take advantage of any of those opportunities. But it\u2019s not, like a learning disability, and even then, you had the opportunity to be top of your class if you\u2019re working hard. And even if you have a learning disability, to a certain extent, you just work harder and that\u2019s just what you have to do to become tops in your class. I mean, you didn\u2019t just magically be like, I want to be tops in my class. Boom, there I am.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, and maybe to make this more relatable for listeners, too, let\u2019s say that you\u2019re maybe top 10% or top 20% in your class, right? Then you can basically do something where you go to the school that\u2019s good. You\u2019re not like barely getting in. Do you know what I mean? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So that\u2019s another way that you can basically get some decent scholarship money or get a better cost of education because I think a lot of these state universities, they have fantastic resources. If you actually want to have a good education, you can have an equivalent experience, I think, to a lot of elite institutions simply by trying to take advantage of what\u2019s available to you. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So where did you end up going and what was your position graduating and where did you go to work?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>So I probably graduated college maybe with about $40,000 in net worth. So that was a great position to be in. I actually got a job off of the local head forum so I posted that I wanted to work for Vanguard because I heard all this stuff about how Vanguard was wonderful and my granddad who was an investor had a high opinion of them, so I just basically posted that and I got a private message from that and I ended up getting a position there. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I got my dream job. I thought that I wanted to work at a big company, be a manager, rise up the ranks, maybe manage a portfolio or lead a division or something. That was the dream, right? And then I got there and decided oh wow, I\u2019m like a round peg in a square hole here trying to fit into a big company culture. And that was just something that I had never thought about or anticipated and I think that some people who fit in really well with big company life and some people fit in terribly. And I was one of those latter people. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So how much were you earning at the time when you got this job? And where were you located?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, so it\u2019s $50,000 a year with some bonuses and I was in the suburbs of Philadelphia and I lived in a house my first year with four other guys. We had one bathroom for five guys, which I do not recommend. Probably splurge for the second bathroom, at least. But we had somebody living in the attic, somebody living in the kitchen. Like the extra room\u2014not the kitchen itself but the addon room to it. And we had our rent down to like $300 a month. And hell, my first year, I think I saved like 80% of my take-home. It was pretty fun. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>What year was this, by the way?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>2012. So I got super lucky there because I had a super high savings rate and you know, the S&amp;P 500 was just on a tear, right? And so there was a couple years where I\u2019m saving over 100% of my income just because in 2013, the market went up 35% or something like that. Talk about right place, right time. It had a lot to do with it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>What were you investing in?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Index funds but not as simple as a lot of people. So I believe in like the small value thing. So I put some money in that. I had a little bit of fun money where I\u2019d buy individual stocks, like small percentage to portfolio, basically that kind of stuff, to just index funds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>I was trying to get you to say Vanguard because you worked there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Oh yeah. Mostly Vanguard index funds. It was difficult. You had to get everything pre-cleared for trade so I didn\u2019t do any wild stuff. So I actually ended up getting to a point in my career where I felt like my skillsets weren\u2019t being used to the fullest potential that they could be because a big company culture, things move slowly for good reason. Like nobody wants a very successful company that\u2019s doing a lot of things right to take big risks. That just doesn\u2019t make sense. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So when you\u2019re young and want to work hard and have all these ideas, a lot of times, that can kind of be a frustrating experience, having some of these ideas not be immediately accepted, right? Because I thought arrogantly, oh my gosh, my ideas are so great. Why isn\u2019t everybody listening to it? So I actually found an ad on Facebook for a Wow airline ticket to Iceland for like $69 bucks so that combined with reading Mr. Money Mustache was the trigger point for me and it made me realize, wait a second, I\u2019m not completely FI yet but I have enough money to not work for a pretty long time because I don\u2019t spend it very much. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So what if I just straight up quit my job and just went to Iceland without a plan? So that\u2019s what I started to plan to do. I saved up for that specific goal, went to Iceland, and kind of right before I left, after I bought the ticket, I met the woman who is now my wife. And so, that was really interesting. We kind of started our relationship while I was travelling around the world and that has been kind of the launching point for like the second phase of my working life. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>So how long were you gone in Iceland and I don\u2019t want to dwell on this for too much time but what language do they speak in Iceland and do you speak that language or did you just like go because it was $69?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>I just went because it was $69. I did something very stupid without a plan. A lot of 20something people do it, right? So I went there and then I bought like the tickets to mainland Europe and then I just like went all around Europe, so like 30 countries in Europe and then I came back to the U.S. to spend some time with my girlfriend. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then I went to Latin America for a little bit with one of my friends who is actually our roommate now. We basically just wanted to do a celebratory trip because he beat cancer and he had a really terrible time with cancer and he made it through and survive and we just wanted to celebrate so we went to all these Latin American countries. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">After that point, obviously if you\u2019re travelling around the world but you\u2019re in a relationship, that doesn\u2019t necessarily line up perfectly unless the person was with you, right? So she\u2019s in a traditional career in medicine and I had to choose between kind of this nomadic lifestyle of just travelling all the time and actually being present with her and I made that decision to be with her. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We got married and I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she\u2019s working now and that\u2019s how everything happened where I went from this very aggressive type of lifestyle to more where I\u2019m in one place for the most part. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So can we back up and take a sec here? And talk about the timeline and numbers here? So how much did you save? So you got out of college and you got this job making around $50K a year at Vanguard. You save up money during this period. How much do you save up and at what point do you leave? How many years into your career did you leave and how long are you travelling before you get back? I\u2019m sorry I\u2019m asking six questions in a row there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>That\u2019s okay. So the one thing that I was frustrated by when reading the Mr. Mustache stuff was that he was always talking about the Four Percent Rule. I have to have 25 times your annual spending to be FI and that\u2019s what you needed. And so I was thinking in my head, do I really want to work in a place where I\u2019m not completely happy every day until I hit this magical 25x number? And I didn\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so to answer the question that you had, I had maybe about a little bit over $200K total in assets when I left so based off of about an $18,000 a year spending total at the time, I was maybe like 50% FI. So I was not at that point 100% and I didn\u2019t have a plan. I didn\u2019t have anything that I was going to, to get those extra amounts of dollars that I needed to be fully FI. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So in terms of the number of years, it was three years. So that\u2019s how long I spent to build that up and that was a combination starting with money, saving a lot, and having this massive bull market that propelled me to having that amount of money. And so I had that plus a big cash position so I could feel psychologically secure with the travels. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you know, when you\u2019re a single guy travelling around Europe, travelling these different countries, some of the countries are super expensive, like Sweden and Norway. So I just went really fast through those. And then other countries in Europe like Ukraine, I could live pretty good on $10 a day. So I like spent 10 days there, kind of doing that geographic arbitrage with my travel, I was there about four months total in Europe. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe I spent about $4,000-$5,000 including airfare. So I think if you\u2019re willing to be extreme, you can hit that lifestyle that you\u2019re kind of hoping for sooner. And I didn\u2019t really have a plan. I guess I was thinking maybe I would go back to work at some point or maybe I\u2019ll do something to make some money, but for now, I\u2019m just mentally in a place where I need this time, to reset my life, to be transparent about what my path was. I was actually trying to become a PhD Economics professor while I was in college and then I had some things that happen that made me realize wow, this isn\u2019t what I need to do. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So that\u2019s what pushed me to get the job in corporate America. And then so I thought, okay, my job and my life ambition is to stay at this company for 20 to 30 years and be CEO of Vanguard and help all these people invest in index funds and I\u2019m going to save the world. And then I realized that that wasn\u2019t the thing that I was meant to do. And so, rather than just reach for the easy path which would have been to go to like a Wall Street firm, I just decided to take some time. That ended up being an incredibly fortuitous development. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>So how long were you travelling total? You said four months in Europe. You quit your job, you were gone for four months and you came back to America and then you went to Latin America and then you came back again? How long were you unemployed?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>So I was unemployed for about a year and a half ago. Something along those lines in the sense that I didn\u2019t have any formal thing that I was trying to do to make money. And I was in Latin America for like two or three months and then I came back, spent time with the girlfriend, and then I went back to Europe with my little brother to kind of show him around and then I came back. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I was kind of like back and forth between all these different places for that year and a half and mostly just took advantage of the fact that you can get super good deals at international airlines if you\u2019re willing to fly on a Tuesday. So I just did that for a year and a half and had that frank conversation with my significant other. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">She was basically like, I completely respect that you like to travel and you enjoy doing this alternative lifestyle but hey, I work in medicine. I\u2019m a surgeon. I have all of these patients that I have to operate on. I\u2019m like, I\u2019m not allowed to go work virtually from Germany or something while my patient\u2019s bleeding and I need to stitch him up, you know? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So she said basically, I want to be with you and we have a future together. So I thought, that\u2019s more important than doing this, what I want to do right now. And so that\u2019s kind of what led me to move to St. Louis and what was interesting is, I decided that this was the woman I wanted to marry. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so she is Asian-American and her parents are immigrants from Hong Kong and I had that conversation that you always think about, especially as kind of a little boy raised in the South, you go ask the girl\u2019s father for permission to marry her and he looks at me and he\u2019s like, no. And I\u2019m like, whoa. This went way different than that Lifetime movie that mom made me watch. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I said, what do you mean no? And he said, you have no job. You have no traditional source of income. You have no way of supporting my daughter in case something happens to her and she has to take time away from the workforce. So if you want my blessing, you have to prove that you have a reliable source of income. And I protested. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I said wait a second. Your daughter has six figures of student debt. And I have six figures of assets. I said, that should be enough. And he said, no. Assets is not the same thing as income. If you love her, you\u2019ll prove it. And so my choices were I had to either get a traditional job for kind of a weird reason, trying to impress your in-law to get his blessing. Or I had to start my own thing and make that successful. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I had this very intense desire to be successful for that reason because the alternative was going back to this cubicle lifestyle I hated. And when we had the money talk, she mentioned that she had a lot of student debt. I built a spreadsheet with my skills from being a bond trader at Vanguard. And the spreadsheet was pretty good because of all the different options that you can use to pay back your student loans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I shared it online and it kind of went viral and all these people started asking me about it because so many people had student debt problem. So my now wife, Christine, was like, well you should just like charge people to tell them what to do with their student loans. And I was like okay, that kind of sounds interesting. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I started doing that on a one-off basis for friends. And then when he told me I had to get a reliable source of income or else, that\u2019s when I decided to start my now company, Student Loan Planner, because I needed to do something that could get an income that I could do on my own terms and now we\u2019ve advised over a quarter of a billion dollars of student debt. So that was probably a good decision. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So one of Mindy\u2019s favorite questions she likes to ask is, did you talk about money before you got married? So we\u2019ll skip that one for now. But no, that\u2019s incredible. So you started this business and at what point were you successful enough to go to your father-in-law and say hey, I\u2019m ready to go here? I mean, it\u2019s such a unique reason to start a business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>So I think that my initial thought process was well, if I can make more money than I\u2019m spending on the business, then that\u2019s success. Because I have a very low spending need because I had the assets saved up so I didn\u2019t have a gun to my head saying, you better meet rent this month or it\u2019s going on the credit card, right? So I was able to have that breathing room. So that was the mindset that allowed me to say as long as I\u2019m profitable, that\u2019s all that matters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so the first few months, I made maybe like $3000-$4000 in those months and then I took the business results back to the father-in-law probably when I passed the $10,000 revenue mark on a monthly basis and I said hey, this is pretty decent. This is a lot more than I would maybe make in a traditional corporate type employee and especially since the job market in St. Louis for investment folks is not fantastic. And so he kind of agreed and he gave his blessing. And I joked that every time my quarterly profit statements go up, my in-laws love me even more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>So how long did it take you to get to $10,000 a month in income?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>It happened pretty quick. Maybe like four to six months. I\u2019d have to go back and look but it was pretty rapid. Because I just hit a nerve. This business, I was just uniquely situated to help it because I love talking to people, I love helping fix problems. And I love doing it with math and numbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And the student loan space is so volatile and it changes so much and there\u2019s so much going on that a lot of people like your traditional financial planners or big banks, those big companies, they\u2019re not interested in investing money into the space because it\u2019s probably not a billion dollar industry. It\u2019s not even a $100 million dollar industry. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So with the upside being limited, the big players were not interested in competing, I just stumbled into this as being this huge need where people have $100,000 or $200,000 or even a million dollars of student loan debt and they have no idea what to do and they\u2019re paralyzed, and nobody has any answers for them because of just figuring it out for my wife and I, I was able to develop a system that helps give them answers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Wow. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on was because so many people have student loan debt. As we talk to people on this show and even outside of this show, we get a lot of people who say I have no debt except for student loans and mortgage. Or I have a little bit of credit card debt or when I was in debt, I had student loans and credit card debt. That you were able to ramp up to $10,000 a month so quickly confirms that this is a really big problem. What is the biggest problem that you see in the whole student loan industry today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>I personally think that there is massive fraud going on, just to be frank. A lot of times, if you think about somebody who doesn\u2019t know what to do in their lives, the next step. Like think about me. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life\u2019s next step. The only reason that I had this awesome experience is because I had saved up a bunch of money. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But if that hadn\u2019t been the case, if I hadn\u2019t been blessed with all of these natural interests in financial topics and matters, then maybe I would have gone to grad school. Maybe I would have actually gone to try to get some sort of career where people will tell me, it\u2019s super stable, it\u2019s high income, it\u2019s going to meet all my needs. And a lot of people do that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The problem is, the price of graduate school has skyrocketed in the past ten to 15 years but the incomes people are making have not. And so you have this situation where people can graduate and become a veterinarian and they\u2019re making $70,000 a year. But oh by the way, they have $300,000 in student loan debt. Or somebody can be a physician and to be a primary care family doctor but they\u2019ll have $450,000 of debt and they\u2019re making a resident salary, making $150,000-$200,000 a year. So that\u2019s a really big issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So as your typical person you kind of\u2014the strategy that you\u2019ve put together and the way that you approach student loan debt, that\u2019s typically more for the folks that have six figures plus in student loan debt or student loan debt that is a significant multiple of their annual income. Is that fair to say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, I mean if you\u2019ve got less than $50,000 of student debt, that\u2019s actually pretty straightforward what you need to do, right? You need to house-hack. You need to live with roommates. You need to not take on a car loan. You need to have extremely frugal habits. When you go out to eat, eat at Chipotle. Don\u2019t go out and eat at fancy restaurants. And just throw all your money at the loans and pay them off as fast as possible. If it\u2019s less than $50,000. And for a lot of people graduating undergrad with that amount of debt, that\u2019s possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Now, you can do things like refinance that debt and get a lower interest rate to pay it back a little bit faster. But it\u2019s fairly straightforward and people don\u2019t really need extra advice to do that. But when somebody is facing a gargantuan amount of debt, they have a lot of options. They can pay it back. They can go for a loan forgiveness type path and there\u2019s tax implications to that where you go for loan forgiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so if somebody is to make that decision, do I go for loan forgiveness on $300,000 or do I pay it back and pay 50% of my take-home pay on the debt, that\u2019s a massive decision. And what\u2019s amazing to me is all these flat fee financial planners, even, which are the most kind of ethical people out there, they\u2019re even kind of in the dark a lot of times with how to advise people because these rules are so new and they change so much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So basically, it\u2019s just trying to figure out for that person, do I pay the massive debt off or do I go for loan forgiveness strategy and then answering the second question which is like, what\u2019s the most optimal way to do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Can you give us maybe a case study of both of those options real quick, like maybe a minute or two on what\u2019s an example of where I want to go for loan forgiveness and what\u2019s an example of I just want to pay off my massive debt?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Sure, let\u2019s say we have a dentist. Let\u2019s say John\u2019s a dentist and he\u2019s got $550,000 of student debt from graduating from NYU. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>That seems soul-crushing. Did John go with the loan forgiveness program? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>He\u2019s probably going to but when you\u2019re looking at that situation, he\u2019s got the $550,000 when he graduates. He makes $130,000 working for a corporate dental group. So $130,000 is a great salary. That\u2019s almost more than double the median income in America. But the problem is he\u2019s got the $550,000 of student debt. And so to pay that $550,000 off, he\u2019d have to pay $6,000 a month to pay it down within ten years. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And is that practical? Is that a reasonable thing to do to neglect retirement savings, emergency fund, preparing for other financial goals like saving for kids\u2019 college. They don\u2019t want to end up like that. Is that a practical thing to do to put $6,000 a month towards debt and the answer is, it\u2019s not really practical. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so is there ever a situation where he\u2019ll eventually make enough money to pay off his debt? Well, even if he makes double what he\u2019s making now, $260,000, that still represents a massive percentage of his take-home pay. And so what probably makes sense instead is to use something called Pay-As-You-Earn. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In John\u2019s case, he paid 10% of his income towards Pay-As-You-Earn, so that\u2019s maybe roughly about $800-$900 a month. And he would pay that for about 20 years and it would adjust upwards with his income. At the end, that balance is going to be even higher than $550,000 because it\u2019s grown because his payments aren\u2019t covering the interest. So now, let\u2019s say he owes a million dollars at the end of the 20 years when the loans are forgiven. Now, he\u2019s got to pay taxes on that million dollars as if there was a bonus to his income on his W-2 in the year of forgiveness. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So all at once, in 20 years, he\u2019s got to pay taxes on a million bucks. So that\u2019s probably $400,000 and so what the math is behind is that you would figure out, does it make sense to pay the debt off aggressively like this or do the cash flows make sense to pay that 10% of your income over time and then have that tax bomb in 20 years? And if you do like a present value calculation, you just figure out what the cost is in today\u2019s dollars and you can answer that. So for John\u2019s case, he\u2019d have to make a massive amount of money to pay it off. So it\u2019s very unlikely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I\u2019ll give you a flipside case study to see the alternative approach. So let\u2019s say that Susie is a pharmacist. She makes $110,000 a year. She\u2019s not going to have much of a deviation from that. It\u2019s going to go up by inflation for her career and she has $130,000 of student loans and she works for CVS. So that $130,000 of student loans, she could pay that off with like a $1200-$1300 payment in a ten year time frame and if she can pay it off in five years, if she pays maybe like $2000something. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So the loan forgiveness math is going to result in her paying that balance off in full before she receives any loan forgiveness at all. So that doesn\u2019t make any sense to pay that loan balance over a long period of time, to have a really high interest rate. So she needs to refinance her loans and move them with a private lender that\u2019s going to give her a lower interest rate based off her credit profile and her debt profile being an attractive thing for a private lender to lend for. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we would probably save her a couple of thousand dollars by moving that debt from public debt to private student loans and just have her pay it off as fast as she could. So that\u2019s an example of two of the kind of opposing cases. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So you just laid out two cases, one where you basically pay a percentage of your income and then get that forgiveness. And then you have a tax penalty as a result of that. And the other where you just basically pay off your debt as fast as possible with the lowest interest rate. Are there any other major cases or does that cover the typical choice that these folks have to make?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Unfortunately, there\u2019s more. So another case, another big case is this thing called Public Service Loan Forgiveness and you can work for ten years for a not-for-profit or a government employer and make these income-driven payments based on your income. And then at the end of those ten years, your loan balance can be forgiven in full without any tax consequences. So that\u2019s a very generous program. And who qualifies for that? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A common example is a government lawyer would qualify for that. Most physicians qualify for this. So if you\u2019re a physician, you\u2019re probably working full-time at a not-for-profit hospital during residency and many people go on to work at academic hospitals or hospital systems that are not-for-profit when they\u2019re attending physicians as well. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So there\u2019s these crazy loopholes where physicians can actually pay $80,000 over ten years to have their balance forgiven in full and then maybe a veterinarian who doesn\u2019t have that same opportunity working for a not-for-profit, actually has to pay loans for 20 years and then have all these tax consequences. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>So I think this is the program that my sister-in-law is on. She has some hefty student loan bills because she has a master\u2019s in speech therapy and she\u2019s now working in a school. How does she best use this repayment program? Is there a minimum payment you have to make and it sounds like it doesn\u2019t make sense to make a higher payment on these loans when they\u2019re totally forgiven at the end and you don\u2019t have to pay taxes on it. What\u2019s the best way to pay that back? I\u2019m assuming there are loopholes and I\u2019s to dot and T\u2019s to cross.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, there\u2019s a boat. The very straightforward thing to say is that she needs to be on a income-driven plan so paying based on her income. So you want to pay as little as possible, so you pick the income-based plan that has the 10% of your pay instead of 15% because there\u2019s one that does 15% of your pay instead of 10%. So that\u2019s one thing to do. The other thing would be to minimize her taxable income. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So a lot of people are not aware that there\u2019s these things called retirement accounts that you can put money into and not have taxes on their contributions with the pre-tax retirement accounts, right? We hang out with financial nerds all the time so it seems like why wouldn\u2019t somebody understand that? But you know, $18,500 is what you can put into that. So if you can put that money into the retirement account, then that comes off of the calculation for the 10% of your income and so it\u2019s like adding an additional 10% in marginal tax savings to someone\u2019s retirement account contributions. So that\u2019s\u2014yeah. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s kind of like an indirect match for people who are going for that program. So making people aware of that often makes them able to save for a really high tax rate on the return of the contributions and then HSAs are also eligible for that. So then it becomes a game of like, we\u2019ll minimize the payments using every available loophole and trick you can. Make sure that you\u2019re on the right income-based repayment plan. Make sure all your loans are in qualifying status so making sure they\u2019re all setup right. They\u2019re all direct loans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Like you don\u2019t have any old loans in an old program that don\u2019t qualify or like a Perkins Loan that doesn\u2019t qualify. Make sure it\u2019s all the right status and then make payments for the ten years. At the end of it, it\u2019s all tax-free so if you wanted to protect yourself, take that money that you would have been paying towards student loans and put it in a side investment account or a savings account just to have a fund available for a backup plan. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But it\u2019s crazy to see people that are depending on this program. Because I\u2019m a member of these Facebook groups and people are so anxious about this program. People are just losing it. People are so worried that this is just going to go away and Congress is going to eliminate it or President Trump is going to eliminate it and so a lot of it is just doing therapy with people and helping them walk through all of Plan A, Plan B, Plan C kind of stuff. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>This is brand new information to me. I had no idea, literally, 20 minutes ago, that any of this existed. I should probably have done more research. But is that what you find, that a lot of these graduate students kind of come in with? Do people have these loans? Someone who has $550,000 in debt just has no idea how to begin approaching the problem at all? Is that at all typical or are they generally aware of these types of things coming into the conversation?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>It\u2019s a mixed bag. I mean, people that don\u2019t have a high level of financial literacy in general don\u2019t tend to have a good idea of these loan options but I would say that the majority of the people actually have a pretty good idea of the programs or at least, they think they do. It\u2019s just an extremely complicated system and so a lot of times, it\u2019s interesting, especially with a lot of the physician clients. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Physicians are super intelligent people and so they like to think that they should know it well enough to do it on their own, and a lot of times, I\u2019ll point out things that they didn\u2019t even think about like oh, by the way, did you know you have a 457 Plan that you can put an additional $18,500 into? And reduce your marginal tax rate even more. Or did you know that maybe you should be filing separately for taxes and excluding your spouse\u2019s income to lower your PSLF even more, and save even more money? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So a lot of times people will be making all these mistakes even when they think they\u2019re doing the right thing. And this is just because you have a student loan system that Congress has created that instead of taking old programs and eliminating them and coming out with a new program that everybody has to follow, they just add it on as a layer. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Like think of it as soil, right? There\u2019s all these different layers of soil from different eras and stuff? That\u2019s basically our student loan system where they started off with the oldest rule set and they just keep adding on like more options and so if somebody\u2019s got like 12 different options to pay their student loans, oh, and by the way, they can go answer this mail thing that they get from all these private banks that wanted to refinance, that\u2019s extremely confusing to most people. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yeah, I can\u2019t imagine navigating this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So it sounds like there\u2019s just a huge rabbit hole for all of this. And I assume that we\u2019re going to link to some resources in the Show Notes where people can kind of begin just digesting this and learning a little bit more. By the way, the Show Notes will be at BiggerPockets.com\/MoneyShow22. And then maybe kind of moving onto like, these are options for people that already have a lot of student loan debt or already are set to graduate with this and kind of go on this career path. That\u2019s when they need to go and figure out these resources and what their correct path or repayment is. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What would you kind of recommend to someone who\u2019s considering going to medical school, dental school, grad school and knows that they\u2019re going to have to take on some level of debt other than maybe like try to minimize that debt, what are some strategies or ways they should be thinking through this problem ahead of time to set themselves up for better options than a ten years of getting 10% of your income syphoned away? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>I love that question, Scott. So the first thing that I would say is that think about who\u2019s giving you advice, the schools and the programs that you\u2019re trying to go to and is that advice in your best interest or in the school\u2019s best interest? So a lot of places, I\u2019ve heard, have said outright lies to their students about how fast their students pay their loans off, how successful their graduates are, what the graduates\u2019 incomes are after graduation. So a lot of times, people will just like take it for face value. The person at the Financial Aid office is telling the truth. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And the answer in a lot of cases is especially if it\u2019s like a private or for-profit school where the tuition\u2019s super high, they may be, at least not giving the whole story, even if they\u2019re not lying or anything. Maybe they\u2019re not giving you the information that you know what? Actually, we have a quarter of our students that couldn\u2019t get great jobs or our incomes are way less than we expected. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I think just having a healthy dose of skepticism would be the first thing and then the other parts would be if you\u2019re sure you want to go into this field and become a veterinarian or a doctor or whatever you want to do, like just make sure that that is the only thing that would make you happy professionally that you can think of. And maybe even see if you can defer your acceptance for a year just to take some time off, the thinking time that I was so blessed to have. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Take some time away. Just make totally sure that is actually what you want to do. Go to Europe and travel for a year like I did and if you find yourself reading medical journals and still being interested in medical stuff and reading all the latest health news and stuff, then yeah, that\u2019s probably a great indication that you should be a doctor, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so, I think a lot of times, too, people think that the only thing I can do with this $200,000-$300,000 of student loans is just invest in myself and get a degree. Well, what if you took that same amount of money and invested in real estate, like the BiggerPockets community? That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. What if you took that $200,000-$300,000 and invest it in a business and start a business with it or you paid off your mortgage or something like that? Is that the best piece of capital that you can be making? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so if you can get over those hurdle questions, like is this the best use of my money? Is this career the only thing that can make me happy? Am I just looking for something that\u2019s going to be like that next step in my life and I feel like I\u2019m going to miss out if I don\u2019t do this, if that\u2019s like the answer, then you really have got to take some time away. And also don\u2019t think that like, you\u2019re not a successful person if you don\u2019t end up becoming the pinnacle of all these different careers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I have a lot of super financially successful people that are veterinary technicians or dental hygienists that realized, they didn\u2019t want to take out $600,000 of student loans or something to become a dentist or a veterinarian. So now instead of having all that debt and being stressed out, maybe they have $100,000 in net worth and they have no debt and they have flexibility over their lifestyles. So they have options. So I just want to tell people, take a step back, pause, and ask themselves, is this the right decision for my life?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Yeah, it seems like you are trapped if you come out of college or grad school with the student loan debt to the level that you were kind of mentioning right here, like $300,000 plus dollars. Several multiples of your annual income that you\u2019re going to earn pre-tax. And your advice, I think, is fantastic. It\u2019s like hey no, if you\u2019re going to do that beforehand, that is exactly what you want to do because you\u2019re going to be doing it even though there are ways to kind of have that forgiven and stuff. I mean, this is kind of like very overwhelming of a problem to kind of tackle. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>One thing I just wanted to say real quick is that just about the financial independence, it\u2019s actually possible even if you have that massive amount of student debt. So that\u2019s part of what I\u2019m helping people figure out, too, is how do you get from that point of feeling trapped and feeling overwhelmed and having no options and transforming it where you have all the options in the world and that\u2019s mainly possible because of these complex government programs that you can take advantage of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yeah, I have a comment going back to the advice you gave, are you sure this is the only field that would make you happy? Make sure this is what you want to do for the rest of your life. I am significantly older than Scott and probably significantly older than you as well. So I have\u2014you guys have been out of college for what, five or six years? And so a lot of the people you went to school with are still working in the same field that they went to school for. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I would say at least 60% of the people that are my age are not working in the field they studied. I surely am not working in the field of fashion design which was my brilliant career choice. And I think it\u2019s really unfair to force these 18-year-olds to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Oh, I like dogs so I\u2019m going to go be a veterinarian. And then you discover, hey, I really don\u2019t like dealing with animals all the time or you know, I don\u2019t like being bitten by cats or you know, whatever the reason is for not wanting to be a veterinarian anymore. But they do feel really stuck. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I think that\u2019s such great advice to take a step back for a minute. Is this really the field that would make you happy? And so many people that I know are not working in the field that they studied for. And being saddled with $100,000 worth of student loan debt, I think, would not allow you to leave the field that is making you this high income. Oh, I can\u2019t just go be a vet tech because they don\u2019t make enough money. I have to stay as a veterinarian. That\u2019s a really, really, really important point that I just want to hammer home. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>And actually, the veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates of any professions in the country. And a lot of these heavily indebted occupations have significantly above average suicide rates and one of the big reasons is because of that psychology of having all of this debt, feeling like they gave so much of their life, their best years, studying to do this one very specific thing and then they feel like they have no options. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">They feel trapped. They are dealing with all of the stress, the incomes, as more and more people go into these professions, a lot of the fields are becoming more saturated and the stories of working four days a week, making great money, are not really the economic reality for a lot of people anymore for a lot of these professions. And so the goal I guess I have, too, is now I feel like maybe in a couple cases, maybe I\u2019ve even contributed in a small way to saving someone\u2019s life, which is really exciting. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Like you know, when I was working at Vanguard, I was part of the mission. I felt like I was contributing to the goal of like lowering investment expenses for people and enabling them to use their own money for better things. But at the same time, I wasn\u2019t actually getting to touch any of the problems, like specifically. I was just kind of helping in a very small way, in a high level, and now it\u2019s like actually being able to talk to that person who\u2019s maybe their marriage is falling apart because of this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe they\u2019re thinking about not having kids. Maybe they\u2019re thinking about how do I just even get up out of bed every day and go into work? And make them realize okay, first off, if things are so bad that you have to go for the loan forgiveness, at least they only take 10% of your income. That means, after taxes, maybe you still have 70% to do whatever you want with. So if you live this frugal lifestyle that a lot of us like to preach, then you can take that and maximize your retirement accounts. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So now you\u2019re going to have a really solid retirement one day. And then also you can put a little bit of money away every month for this big tax bomb in the future that\u2019s way off because we can invest that in index funds at Vanguard and you\u2019re going to have $100,000 one day if you put $300 a month into that account. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so now all of your student loans are actually totally covered based off of doing those two things. So now we still have money to play with. We still have 20-30% of your income to do something with. So instead of buying this big fancy house and this nice, new car that was advertised to you on TV, what if you put that money away for your financial independence one day and then actually, it\u2019s the same calculations, somebody who has $500,000 in student loans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s the same calculation to become financially independent than somebody that has no student loans except that you just have to say, I have to have enough money to pay the tax penalty one day. Once you get enough money where you\u2019re going to have that tax penalty covered, like with projected future investment earnings growth, then you can say okay, I\u2019ve got that set up, how much do I need in my portfolio or cash flow every month to meet my expenses? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And then it\u2019s the same calculation because 10% of zero is zero. Right? So you could actually be paying zero dollars a month and getting credit towards your loan forgiveness. And I have some clients doing exactly that, that are living in like Australia and New Zealand and taking advantage of the foreign-earned income exclusion. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I mean, I\u2019ve seen all kinds of stuff. I guess the takeaway message is that somebody who finds out about this financial independence stuff like later in their life after they\u2019ve made all these decisions, that they wished to High Heaven they could take back. Like, you can still actually get out of that hole which is so exciting. So it\u2019s just really fun to be able to deliver that message sometimes to people that feel like they\u2019re trapped. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>I just want to throw out how I love what you\u2019ve just done for our listeners. The people listening to the show. There\u2019s going to be people that have a lot of student loan debt, right? And there\u2019s a path to repaying that. They understand now there\u2019s a couple of different options and there\u2019s a way to repay that, that\u2019s going to make the most financial sense. It\u2019s going to be a complex calculation that you have to go through and know the nuances of these government programs and all of your options available. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But there\u2019s going to be a choice that makes sense, or several that make sense, given the set of assumptions you have about your future. And you can achieve financial independence same as anybody else. 10% of your income is not very much, right? Especially when you\u2019re earning a huge amount of money. You have that ability to potentially save for retirement. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I love that. Not only is there a way to pay them off but there\u2019s also a way to begin moving towards financial independence, which can seem impossible to people, except to graduate and maybe go to residency where they\u2019re either going to make money for the high salary they are expecting for a couple of years. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we have\u2014at the beginning of the episode, you gave us this offhand remark that hey, $50,000 and below, it\u2019s pretty straightforward. Refinance at lowest rate, pay it off, right? Do you have a rule of thumb or a sliding scale based on potentially income of where it begins to make sense\u2014what are some rules of them where I just know, hey, these options aren\u2019t really a good bet for me and I just need to focus on paying down the debt. And then where do I begin to cross that maybe grayish line of I need to begin assessing these options?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, that\u2019s a great question. So I say 1.5 times your income and below while working in a private sector job, just refinance your debt and pay it off. 1.5 times. So if I have $100,000 of income and I have less than $50,000 of student loans, I should pay them off. I should refinance them. Get rid of them. If I\u2019m working in a for-profit kind of sector where I\u2019m not eligible for the special PSLF program. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So when you refinance, I would highly suggest that you get a cashback bonus, too. Most of the companies will give you like $300-$500 bucks. If you find one of those links to refinance and shop around a couple of different places. So that\u2019s the rule of thumb for that. And then if you have less than two times, your debt to income ratio is less than two, then you can think about it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Like okay, if it\u2019s less than $200,000 and I\u2019m making $100,000 of income, then I could have the conversation. I could decide, I really hate debt. I\u2019m really not interested in loan forgiveness type programs. So that would be okay. So there\u2019d be kind of like the discussion between 1.5 and 2 debt to income ratio. And then above 2 to 1 debt to income ratio, so if you owe more than $200,000 on that $100K income, then it\u2019s a discussion of are you eventually going to have a bunch of income relative to your debt? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In which case, you\u2019d want to figure out how to set your stuff up for eventually paying it off. Or is it very unlikely that you\u2019re ever going to cross that 2 to 1 debt to income ratio within the next few years? And if that answer is still no, if you\u2019re probably not going to cross that ratio, then you probably need to go for one of these loan forgiveness programs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>So you\u2019ve mentioned a couple of anecdotes about a dentist and a veterinarian. And you\u2019ve mentioned doctors a few times. Are those the typical professions that you see kind of in these 2x or 1.5x income their total debt? Are those typically the professions or do you see it in other professions as well? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah, any profession that requires more than a year of postgraduate study is going to have this problem at some level. So some of the universities that are low-cost, maybe they\u2019re going to have a pretty easy debt to income ratio to handle it. So like, the low-cost, in-state public universities providing these professional school programs are going to be in decent shape. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But I would name a couple more. So, chiropractors, pharmacists, attorneys, air traffic controllers, nurse practitioners, physicians\u2019 assistants, teachers to a lesser extent. There\u2019s a massive number. Basically any program that you can think of that has a \u201cCollege of\u201d major university has a problem because politically, undergraduate tuition is a lot more difficult to change and increase than graduate school tuition. And the programs allow for unlimited borrowing for graduate school but they cap it for undergrad programs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So the schools figure this out and they want to make profits. They want to make big revenues so they can build that beautiful research hospital, right? Or hire a bunch of new faculty and rise up the U.S. News Rankings. So the graduate schools have become the profit centers for most universities. Any grad program, you just have to be super cautious and just make sure it\u2019s what you want to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>You\u2019ve mentioned refinance your debt a couple of times. How do you refinance a student loan and at what point do you refinance? I know that there\u2019s different interest rates and are they locked in like a mortgage is locked in? Or does your rate vary? Talk to us a little bit about how you can refinance your debt?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Sure. You can do variable or fixed. In today\u2019s interest rate and environment, I would recommend fixed. You can do anywhere from 5, 7, 10, or 15-year terms. And sometimes, you can do 20. I typically do not suggest 20 because if you\u2019re going to do 20, you might as well go for the loan forgiveness program and see what happens, if you\u2019re going to take that long to pay your debt off. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So the way to do it is you basically just, it\u2019s a pretty fast application in all these different places and there\u2019s a lot of different companies that you could check out. My site has like a refinance page that you can look at a bunch of different cashback bonuses to check it out. There\u2019s other sites that might have other ones but you just apply\u2014I\u2019ve actually got a refinancing quiz to help people figure it out because it\u2019s kind of complicated to figure it out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Do I need to check all of these? I always suggest yes, because it\u2019s like five minutes. You might as well, right? It doesn\u2019t hurt your credit to do that, to do a soft credit inquiry and see if you\u2019re even getting any offers and if you are, then you can actually submit for like all of your income information and all of that to actually get some finalized offers. And as long as you do that within 30 days, it only counts against you one time, like applying for a credit card. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So it\u2019s a very easy process and I just want to make sure that when people do it that it\u2019s definitely the right decision because once you do it, you cannot undo it. And so you lose all that loan forgiveness. You lose access to this PSLF program. You lose access to extended forbearance periods. So refinancing is a great thing. It can save you thousands of dollars of interest that are instead going to pay down your principal. I would just suggest to anybody that\u2019s interested, shop around at least two places, preferably three and try to shoot for a 10-year or less repayment period. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you can refinance again, too. You don\u2019t have to refinance only once and then you\u2019re done. You can refinance as many times as you can get a better rate. So I know a lot of people from like reader activity on my site, I know that they will refinance and get a bonus and then they\u2019ll like refinance again and then get another bonus. It\u2019s kind of like the credit card hacking game. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so, the really smart way to do that is do a 10-year to start and then pay down your debt, and then refinance it again and do a 7-year. And then pay down some more of your debt. And then refinance it to a 5-year. And each time you do that, you might be knocking down some of your interest rate. It\u2019s probably going to be somewhere between like 3 to 5% for most of the refinancing interest rates these days. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Do you notice that a lot of people have bad credit going into this process because they\u2019re not sure about the payment plans or anything like that? One of the things that struck me as a comment was should you be preparing yourself credit-wise for a little bit of time before applying for these refinancings? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>So most of the people that I\u2019m working with actually have pretty good credit. Especially the ones that are refinancing. Like the ones that don\u2019t have good credit, that\u2019s usually an indication of maybe some other things going on that push you to use forgiveness. But most of your credit score, it\u2019s actually mostly based off of your capacity to pay, not necessarily like how much debt you have or how scary it looks with all of your income. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I mean, I\u2019ve had some people that have had $400,000 debts with $70,000 incomes and still have really good credit scores. So they should refinance, right? I mean, I think that most of the people that will be successful refinancing have something above a 650 credit score but it\u2019s really nothing to worry about too much. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The only exception to that is if you\u2019re trying to buy a house or you\u2019re trying to buy a business with business debt, that you lock that in first before doing the student loan refinance. Because once you do that, the banks are going to look at your cash flow that\u2019s required out of your pocket every month and they\u2019re going to penalize you more, if you go for a really aggressive refinancing and you\u2019re trying to buy a house, for that debt to income mortgage calculation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So they are going to want to see an income-based payment that\u2019s required of like $500 a month, so their mortgage underwriting can feel super confident giving you the mortgage for the house of your dreams and then once you get the mortgage, the student loan refinance companies only care about your monthly mortgage payment. So then they\u2019ll give you a good Refi deal. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>You know so much about this topic. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Yeah. So I\u2019ve advised close to a thousand people with an average debt of about $280,000 each and I\u2019ve seen anywhere from $20,000 in debt to a million in debt and so when you do something a thousand times, like you learn a couple of things along the way. And yeah, I mean it\u2019s cool. I\u2019m super passionate about this and I just want people to get the right plan because the consequences of not having a plan are really, really bad because the average person, I\u2019d like to track this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So 10% of the people that I\u2019ve worked with haven\u2019t really saved any money. We\u2019ve just kind of confirmed like yeah, this is the right path. When you\u2019re doing all the right things and 90% of people do save money and their average savings is around $70,000 projected over 20-25 years from correcting the mistakes. So you know, $70,000\u2014that\u2019s like a whole year of you having to work that you could have back in your life. And to do something else with. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So you know, whether you\u2019re going to do this on your own, do this by yourself, and read all the free content out there that exists or hire somebody to do it, I think is just really, really important to have a clear plan. Exactly what you\u2019re going to do with your student loan debt and not put your head in the sand and pretend that it doesn\u2019t exist. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Well, awesome. Do you have anything else to add on this topic of student loan debt or story or anything like that before we transition to the <i>Famous Four<\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>I think I\u2019ve covered it. Get a plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Get a plan. That\u2019s a really good bit of advice because yeah, I think the kids just go into this, oh I want to be a veterinarian. Well, what else? Is there anything else you can do? That\u2019s just such a great piece of advice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>People don\u2019t think about that. If you\u2019re smart enough to get into dental school or medical school, there\u2019s a ton of other things you could do. But you just maybe haven\u2019t thought about it yet. I\u2019ve worked with people that manage like social media accounts. Like that\u2019s their job. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Who would have thought that would have been a thing back even like, Scott, you and I are pretty young guys, like back when we were in undergrad, who would have thought that people would literally make money posting things on Facebook and like getting all these things optimized for Pinterest and stuff? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Just you know, be creative and have a lot of cash and reserves to like weather downturns and maybe you could do something that you haven\u2019t even thought about. I mean, I still want people that are passionate about being a veterinarian or a dentist or doctor or whatever, lawyer, to do that stuff. But don\u2019t do it just because you think it\u2019s a path to an easy life or you\u2019re going to have an easy income and it\u2019s going to be stable. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The economy is just moving, I think, very far away from all these formal, highly trained kind of fields to a more gig economy type of world. So just have skills and be flexible with your finances so that you can be a part of it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>That\u2019s great. Okay. Scott, shall we move to the <i>Famous Four<\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Let\u2019s do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Travis, these are the same four questions that we ask everybody. There\u2019s actually five but we don\u2019t know how to count so we call it the <i>Famous Four<\/i>. What is your favorite finance book?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>I\u2019m going to take a different approach to this book and go with <i>Grant<\/i> by Ron Chernow, the guy who wrote the <i>Hamilton<\/i> book that the musical is based on and it\u2019s not explicitly a finance book but it\u2019s a biography of Ulysses Grant, the guy who won the Civil War for the Union and why I think it\u2019s interesting from like a financial perspective is this guy was fantastically brilliant in warfare, but he was a complete idiot when it came to money. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And they talk so much in the book about all of the things that he would do with his money, like he was one of the first victims of a massive Ponzi scheme that left him bankrupt as a former U.S. President at the end of his life when he was relying on money from strangers to live. He had no sense for business and when somebody told him to go buy a horse and to offer the guy $10 bucks, and if he won\u2019t accept any less, then give him $20. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And Grant goes up to the guy and says, my dad gave me $20 to go buy a horse with and he said I was supposed to offer you $10 first, but if you don\u2019t take it, I\u2019m supposed to pay you $20. And so this guy was just so fascinating that he achieved this massive level of success in life while also having this huge lack of financial knowledge. I guess I like it just because I think anybody can be successful coming from any level of financial gifts or intuition and you know, you just have to, I guess realize where your blind spots are, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I don\u2019t know. I just got so many funny anecdotes out of that, that I keep pestering my wife with, because I think they\u2019re so funny. I read all the typical ones like <i>Millionaire Next Door<\/i> and <i>Enough <\/i>by John Bogle where he talks about how he had $50 million of assets instead of $50 billion if he had kept Vanguard a private company. And so I just thought I\u2019d mention that one just to be a little different. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>That\u2019s a great answer to that question. Can I modify that book question with a second follow-up here which is, what is your favorite student loan related resource beyond your own site, that people can go and check out and learn more about how to come up with these strategies?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Sure. There\u2019s a guy named Ben White who\u2019s a physician. I think his site is like BenWhite.com. But he is a physician that\u2019s super brilliant that just had an extreme interest in student loans and he wrote a book about them. It\u2019s pretty cheap. It\u2019s online. You can buy it and it\u2019s got a lot of the tricks and the tools that I use to help people in it. So if somebody is like hey, I don\u2019t like the idea of paying somebody for help, like they should just go read that. I think it\u2019s pretty good. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Awesome. What was your biggest money mistake? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>So I was in college and I wanted to try and impress people so I was trying to get a new car and I wanted a car that\u2019s going to be really sleek and cool and like, it had to be something that I could actually pay for, and so, at least I knew don\u2019t take out a car payment. At least I had that much sense at the time. But I decided I was going to buy an $11,000 used Chevy Equinox and I don\u2019t know if any listeners that own Chevys can relate but mine had a ton of problems. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so the issue with it, really, was that I got all the bells and whistles, like a sunroof, like this nice grill in the front. I was thinking, it looks so cool. I\u2019m a college kid that\u2019s got its own car, a nice big car, and then the sunroof started to leak. And I had massive repair bills and it was just a total money sink and I wish I just had some sense and bought like a $2000-$3000 used car on Craigslist from the beginning. But luckily that wasn\u2019t too terrible of a mistake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Do you still have that car?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>No, I sold it. Actually, this is a true story. I sold it to a one-eyed rapper off of Craigslist for about half of what I paid for it before I left for my Europe trip. The guys in the bond trading desk had a bet that there would be no way that I\u2019d sell the car for any less than a certain price. And so I took the bet and this guy, he actually was a really nice guy. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He paid me in cash and we did the transaction at like the title office and I actually looked up a story about him and the reason why he had one eye was because somebody shot him. It was a home invasion. They invaded his home and like shot him and he like, I don\u2019t know, I felt like wow, this is a pretty good guy. That\u2019s crazy. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It just shows you, you shouldn\u2019t judge a book by its cover, right? So that was a funny story because that\u2019s his full-time job, is he\u2019s trying to make it in the music industry and he wanted a car that was kind of bigger and affordable and you know, his dad helped him pay for it, I think. But weird story, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Get $10,000 in the bank as rapidly as possible and live like a broke homeless person until you have that. If you get $10,000 in the bank, you\u2019re always going to be operating from a position of financial strength, be it needing to buy a new car because your car collapses or car repairs or you know, I need to put down a big payment for a rental contract or I need to take a couple months off from work because I\u2019m about to lose my mind and I can\u2019t take this anymore. So I think that the $10,000 in the bank is a great starting point for a lot of people that are new grads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>That\u2019s an excellent tip. I\u2019ve never heard anybody say that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>I love that advice. I mean, that\u2019s like, just the concept of getting to wherever a position of financial strength means to you and that\u2019s as good as anything because if you have $10,000 in the bank, you\u2019re not going to be facing an immediate problem in the near future unless you have some sort of truly once in a lifetime disaster come in and wipe you out. So, I love it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">All right, the most difficult question here of the <i>Famous Four<\/i>\u2014what is your favorite joke to tell at parties?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Oh boy. So, my wife accuses me of being longwinded but I\u2019ll try this one. So, the pope flies in to New York for a meeting at one of the buildings. So he\u2019s late, he needs to get there in a hurry, and so he takes this taxi. And this joke is from before Uber or Lyft so maybe it\u2019s old. I need to update my jokes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But he takes a taxi and he\u2019s driving through traffic and the taxi guy is not super aggressive so the pope is like, this is ridiculous. You\u2019re not going fast enough. I\u2019m late to this meeting. Get in the backseat. I\u2019m going to go up to the driver\u2019s seat and I\u2019m going to drive us because I\u2019m a better driver than you. So the pope is driving and he\u2019s going really fast, weaving in and out of traffic and one of the NYPD guys sees this taxicab being really aggressive. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So he pulls him over. And the guy goes up to the window, and he backs away and freaks out and he gets on the radio and says, I need backup. I need backup. This is a big deal. We\u2019ve got a big VIP celebrity in New York. And I need you to come down and see this. And then all the bodies on the radio are like, well who is he? The governor? And he\u2019s like, bigger. The president? Bigger. And he\u2019s like, who the heck is he if he\u2019s bigger than the President? And the guy goes, I don\u2019t know who he is but he\u2019s got the Pope driving him around. My wife would slap me if she heard me tell that joke. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>I like that joke. It\u2019s way better than Scott\u2019s crappy jokes. Scott likes the dad jokes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>I can\u2019t top that one. That was pretty fantastic. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Where can people find out more about you, Travis?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Well, they can go to my site, StudentLoanPlanner.com and then I\u2019m also happy to have anybody that wants to send me an email so my email is <a href=\"mailto:Travis@StudentLoanPlanner.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"s2\">Travis@StudentLoanPlanner.com<\/span><\/a>. They can reach out with whatever they want to. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Awesome. I think you\u2019ll have some people reaching out. This has been a fantastic episode full of information. We went very long. We\u2019ll make sure everyone knows that we went very long in the intro but I think this is going to really help a lot of people that are struggling with this problem so thank you very, very much for coming on today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Travis: <\/b>Thanks for having me on, Scott and Mindy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Travis, again, thank you so much for sharing all of your information with us. I know that I learned a lot. I know that Scott learned a lot. Because we didn\u2019t know much before you got on. This was amazing. This was super fantastic and I just really appreciate you coming on the show.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Thanks for having me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>So with that, we will say goodbye and we\u2019ll see you around. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>All right, that was Travis Hornsby with StudentLoanPlanner.com. Mindy, that was one of my favorite episodes I have ever recorded with you on our podcast. What a mind-blowing wealth of information. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yes, this is amazing. I didn\u2019t know about the student loan repayment or debt forgiveness. I thought the debt forgiveness program was just for government workers, specifically teachers. I didn\u2019t realize that there was a whole host of professions that you could use with the student loan forgiveness program. It seems like you could do this with any student loan, just depending on how you want to pay it off and the taxes involved and all of that and you know, I think that we really just scratched the surface of student loans and student loan repayment in this show. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But I really like how it gives people options and it gives people a path to follow or you know, places to go for more information. We have all of the links that Travis mentioned and I have sent him a note and asked for, what are the most important links on your site, that we are going to put in the Show Notes. You can find those at BiggerPockets.com\/MoneyShow22.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Awesome. Yeah, I love how he has all of these great options for people with the student loan debt. Yet his biggest piece of advice in the show or one of the things that was really powerful to me, at least, was that he was like, really reflect before you go out and take out those debts and get that degree that\u2019s going to cost you all the money because you better be darn sure that you\u2019re going to love doing that profession for the next couple of years because while there\u2019s ways to work around them with these income rules, the fact of the matter is that if you want to earn a good living, is that you\u2019re going to have some consequences from these loans in the first place. But if you do have them or you\u2019re on your path, there are ways to work around them and still build an awesome financial position. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>Yeah, but they\u2019re not the nail in your FI dream\u2019s coffin. Or they don\u2019t have to be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>Love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy: <\/b>All right. Scott, shall we get out of here? We\u2019ve been asking a lot of our listeners to stick around with us for so long today. We really appreciate you listening. So for the BiggerPockets Money Episode 22, this is Mindy Jensen, over and out.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Watch the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How to Pay Off 6-Figure Student Loans While Pursuing Financial Independence | BP Money 22\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Nmr_jXbi1pY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Help Us Out!<\/h2>\n<p>Help us reach new listeners on <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biggerpockets-money-podcast\/id1330225136\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iTunes<\/a> by leaving us a rating and review! It takes just 30 seconds.\u00a0Thanks! We really appreciate it!<\/p>\n<h2>Podcast Sponsor<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"no-display appear alignright wp-image-97545 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/betterment_logo-300x68.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"68\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/betterment_logo-300x68.png 300w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/betterment_logo-768x174.png 768w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/betterment_logo.png 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><strong>Betterment<\/strong> is an online financial advisor that can help you strive for higher returns.\u00a0Don\u2019t let high 401(k) fees drain your savings. Rolling over an average 401(k) to a Betterment IRA could mean 60% lower fees.<\/p>\n<p>Get a clear view of your net worth by syncing your outside accounts, such as bank accounts and other investments. You can also see how much your outside accounts are costing you in fees and uninvested cash. Visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.betterment.com\/bp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Betterment.com<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>In This Episode We Cover:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Travis&#8217; financial journey<\/li>\n<li>His career after graduating from college<\/li>\n<li>His first job and how much he earned from it<\/li>\n<li>Living with 5 guys and only 1 bathroom in the house<\/li>\n<li>What he was invested in<\/li>\n<li>His travel journey and a period of unemployment<\/li>\n<li>How long it took him to get $10,000 a month in income<\/li>\n<li>The biggest problem he sees in the whole student loan industry today<\/li>\n<li>A case study example of loan forgiveness and paying a massive debt off<\/li>\n<li>Public service loan forgiveness<\/li>\n<li>Having an Income-driven plan<\/li>\n<li>What are the strategies and ways students should be thinking ahead of time to set themselves up for better options<\/li>\n<li>How to refinance your student loan debt<\/li>\n<li><strong>And SO much more!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Links from the Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/forums\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BiggerPockets Forums<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Email Scott: scott@biggerpockets.com<\/li>\n<li>Email Mindy: mindy@biggerpockets.com<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrmoneymustache.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mr. Money Mustache<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/renewsblog\/biggerpockets-money-01-surprising-scientific-truth-successful-with-mr-money-mustache\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BiggerPockets Money Podcast 01: The Surprising (Scientific) Truth Behind What Makes You Successful with Mr. Money Mustache<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.benwhite.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fourth Year &amp; The Match &#8211; Ben White<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.studentloanplanner.com\/refinance-student-loans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Refinance Student Loans and Get Bonuses You Never Knew Existed in 2018<\/a>\u00a0(Post)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.studentloanplanner.com\/public-service-loan-forgiveness\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Top 40 Tips to Save Thousands<\/a> (Post)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Books Mentioned in this Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2ITB9x5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Grant<\/em><\/a> by Ron Chernow<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2L2VSLH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Enough<\/em><\/a> by John Bogle<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2LB4qKW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Millionaire Next Door<\/em><\/a> by Thomas Stanley and William Danko<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2LAMkbG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Medical Student Loans<\/em><\/a> by Ben White<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Tweetable Topics:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Take a step back, pause, and ask yourselves, &#8216;Is this the right decision for my life?'&#8221;\u00a0(<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Take%20a%20step%20back,%20pause,%20and%20ask%20yourselves,%20&#039;Is%20this%20the%20right%20decision%20for%20my%20life?&#039;%22%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2022%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow22%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I just want to make sure that when people do it, it\u2019s definitely the right decision because once you do it, you cannot undo it.&#8221;\u00a0(<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22I%20just%20want%20to%20make%20sure%20that%20when%20people%20do%20it,%20it%E2%80%99s%20definitely%20the%20right%20decision%20because%20once%20you%20do%20it,%20you%20cannot%20undo%20it.%22%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2022%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow22%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Just have skills and be flexible with your finances so that you can be a part of it.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Just%20have%20skills%20and%20be%20flexible%20with%20your%20finances%20so%20that%20you%20can%20be%20a%20part%20of%20it.%22%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2022%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow22%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Anybody can be successful coming from any level of financial gifts or intuition.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Anybody%20can%20be%20successful%20coming%20from%20any%20level%20of%20financial%20gifts%20or%20intuition.%22%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2022%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow22%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Connect with Travis<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.studentloanplanner.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Travis&#8217; Company Website<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"mailto:travis@studentloanplanner.com\" target=\"_blank\">Email Travis<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Student loan debt is a HUGE problem facing millions of people &#8211; and it continues to grow every year. Today we are joined by Travis Hornsby from Student Loan Planner [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353007,"featured_media":99503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6473],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biggerpocketsmoney"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/353007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}