Real Money, Real Experts Live! Student Loan Planning with Ryan Law, CFP®, AFC®

Real Money, Real Experts welcomes Ryan Law, CFP®, AFC® for another Facebook Live!  Student loan policies have gone through a lot of changes this past year. Check out this Real Money, Real Experts Live for and overview of these changes and what comes next for borrowers. 

Show Notes:

00:02 Ryan Introduction
01:00 COVID-19 Student Loan Updates
02:20 Temporary Suspension of Federal Student Loan Payments & Debt Collections
05:36 Temporary 0% Interest on all Federal Student Loans
07:13 Getting Ready for Repayment
08:45 BIG Update for Approximately 10 Million Borrowers
10:40 Public Service Loan Forgiveness
12:54 Have Loans with FedLoan or Granite? Take These Steps!
14:18 Question from the Audience
15:15 Avoiding Student Loan Scams & Reliable Forgiveness Programs
21:27 AFCPE®’s College Finance Essentials Course
24:59 Ryan’s Two Cents

Show Notes Links:

More about Ryan & how to contact him: Ryan H. Law Student Loan page
To get more information on all student loans: Studentaid.gov
Public Student Loan Forgiveness Information
Federal Student Loan Servicers
Ryan’s book: Student Loan Planning: A Borrower’s Guide to Understanding and Repaying Student Loans
For more information on College Finance Essentials, check out: https://www.afcpe.org/educati.../college-finance-essentials/ use code CFE2021 for 25%! This code expires December 31, 2021

Want to get involved with AFCPE®?
Here are a few places to start: Become a Member, Sign up for an Essentials Course, or Get AFC Certified today!

Want to support the podcast? We love partnering with organizations that share our mission and values. Download our media kit.

Transcript

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 0:02

Welcome to Real Money, Real Experts Podcast. I am Mary and Rebecca is out this week. Today, we are doing a special Facebook live segment, and we're going to focus on student loans and we are delighted to have Ryan Law back. He's gonna share his personal experience and just for our background, it helps both the AFC®and the CFP®designations. He teaches at the Personal Financial Planning Program at Utah Valley University, and he is the Director of the Money Resource Center there. And he's authored the book Student Loan Planning and is a co-editor on the book, Financial Counseling, which by the way, is one of the three main books we use for the AFC®. He's also helped develop content for AFCPE's College Finance Essentials Program, a professional development course that covers all aspects of college finance. Stay tuned at the end to get a special discount on this code. Welcome everyone. And we're glad to have you Ryan.

Ryan Law: 0:58

Thanks, Mary. I'm happy to be here.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 1:00

So Ryan talk to me. There has been so much change in this last year in so many different things, but we're going to stay really focused today on student loans and really specifically on COVID and legislation that's really helping to end, or really combat the effects of the economic downturn from COVID. So I know with student loans there had been some specific COVID-19 emergency relief majors that have been implemented. Can you tell us more about, I think it started with the Cares Act in 2020, but tell us what it is, what it does, and what we're talking about now.

Ryan Law: 1:32

Yeah. Thanks Mary. So, as you mentioned, it all started with the Cares Act, which was a massive piece of legislation that was passed in March of 2020. So it was a stimulus bill that was meant to, as you mentioned, deal with some of the economic downturns of COVID-19. So provide some relief there. As part of that, that legislation, there were three major things that, that dealt with student loans in there. So the first one you mentioned already was the suspension of the payments. The second one was 0% interest on loans. And then the third one was stopping all collection efforts. So this was all supposed to end in September of 2020, but, several legislative and administrative actions have now pushed this out. So all of those things are still in place through January 31st, 2022.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 2:20

And let's break those down even more. So, so let's start with the first, suspended payments. Tell us more, what does that mean? And what does that look like for someone who has student loans?

Ryan Law: 2:29

Yep. So first of all, the important thing to understand right off is that it does not apply to all student loans. So there's some that are specifically excluded. So that would be private student loans, those older FFEL loans that are owned by financial institutions, and then any loans owned by your school. So like Perkins loans or others, but anything that's owned by the Department of Education is included in this. So as you mentioned, yeah, that first part is that suspension of the payment. So you can, it automatically happened when the Cares Act went into place in March of 2020. So you, a lot of people out there that are listening or their clients, you saw your student loans, go on pause at that point. So no more money was being drafted from your account. So you can choose to continue making payments during this time. You can log into your servicer and you can say, Hey, I want to make a payment. One important thing to note about that though, Mary, is that it doesn't all go to principal automatically. So the thought is, Hey, it's on pause. I can just make extra payments and it's going to go towards the principal[ balance]. However, a lot of loans have accrued interest that built up prior to March of 2020. So if you make a payment, that accrued interest is going to be paid off first, and then it will go to principal. So that is something that you want to be aware of is if you have, you know, two or $3,000 worth of accrued interest, which a lot of people under those income driven repayment plans do, they've got a lot of accrued interest, any money is going to go to that before it goes to principal.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 3:57

Oh, makes a lot of sense. Okay, good to know. And if someone has a question, they don't know what kind of student loan they have, what you recommend? How do they find that out?

Ryan Law: 4:06

If you go to studentaid.gov, then you can log in there and it will show you all of your student loans. And it will say Department of Education or Department of Ed. So it will indicate, or if it says the word'Direct'. So if it says'Direct' loan, then they know that it is owned by the Federal Government or owned by the Department of Education.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 4:25

And at this point you will have known because it's already been paused for quite some time. This started back, what was the first point that it was paused at Ryan?

Ryan Law: 4:33

Um, March of 2020 is when that first one happened. It was late March. So you probably didn't see it hit until April.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 4:39

And I think if I remember correctly, it was only going to be about six months long and then just has been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back by multiple administrations. I mean, it's happened over the course of time. So you've seen a pause there. Let's go to number two though. And, you tell us more on the strategic pause on the debt collection. Was that number two?

Ryan Law: 5:00

Yeah, the, the debt and then the 0% interest. So yeah, looking at the debt collection. So the, the thing about this is they didn't just stop payments. So those who are making their payments on time, they also stopped anyone who was defaulted on their loan. So typically in the past, you know, they might've been garnishing your wages, they might've been taking your, your tax refunds. There were various things that they were doing to collect on those loans that went into pause as well. So any, like I said, any wages that were garnished, those have been replenished. Now this can all start back up and it probably will in February, but, it's, it was a chance for them to have relief as well.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 5:36

And this last one, 0% interest. Tell me about that.

Ryan Law: 5:39

Yeah. So this applies to all loans, all, all of the ones that qualify. All those Department of Education loans. So it doesn't matter if you're in school right now, if you're in this administrative deferment or forbearance, if you're in the grace period. So no matter where you all are, all of those loans owned by the federal government are 0% interest. So basically if you owed$25,000 in March of 2020, when it gets back to repayment time, you're still going to owe$25,000. So it doesn't doesn't change at all.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 6:09

And anyone who had the accrued interests that you had mentioned before that is not collecting interest on top of interest. That is also paused at the moment, but you still owe that accrued.

Ryan Law: 6:20

Correct. Yeah. So nothing more is accruing since March of 2020 until February, until January 31st, 2022. But anything that accrued prior to that is still there and is going to have to be paid off at some point, or, or it could be part of forgiveness. In fact, there's another portion of that suspension of payments. That's important to recognize. So there's, there's two types of forgiveness with student loans. So the first is with those income driven repayment plans. So things like, you know, income-based repayment, REPAYE, pay as you earn( PAYE) et cetera, all of those after 20 or twenty-five years, everything that's left is forgiven at that point, same with Public Service Loan Forgiveness(PSLF). So you make payments for 10 years, everything's forgiven after that point, however, all of these skipped payments count towards both of those things. So you might have 20 to 22 payments that are skipped, but they count towards forgiveness under both of those programs.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 7:13

Good to know. Good to know. Well, and let's also talk about what are some of the actions that are being taken right now to help some of that debt relief. And what is it going to look like when the debt relief ends?

Ryan Law: 7:27

Yeah, so right now the Department of Education, they just recently sent an email to all borrowers. So you should be getting that soon. If you haven't received that already, they're also sending letters out to all borrowers and they're saying, Hey, just be aware. This is the final extension. It is not going beyond January 31, 2022. So you are going to make payments in February. So you should be getting, information from your servicer. You should be getting information from the Department of Education. And you will be over the next several months. There's going to be a barrage of information, various ways. They just want to make sure after, you know, 22 months of non-payment that people know starting in February, these payments are going to start again. So, so watch for that communication, they should also tell you as part of that communication, how much your payment is going to be. So all of that will be part of that communication coming out.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 8:19

Well, there shouldn't be any surprises coming in January again, if you're, and it's really going to come by mail, is that where most of this will come from? Or should you be getting emails? How does this get communicated?

Ryan Law: 8:29

Yeah, a combination of the two they did as part of the, one of the legislation that was passed, they said you needed to notify people by mail. So that, that was an important piece that they said not just email, but make sure that we're also sending some physical mail. So watch for both of those.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 8:45

Okay, good to know. Good to know. And I think that's an important thing because we, like I mentioned before, it was six months. It's been extended and extended. Many of us have been thinking, oh, it's just going to continue to be extended, but this really is expected to be the final. I mean, Congress can always do something. The Executive could always do something, but I think even the Administration has already said, they will not extend it beyond this. So just know that that time period it's coming to a close quickly, and those will be due once again. Good to know. So Ryan, there's been a lot of changes that have happened in this last year and a half, especially in this world of student loans. In fact, one of the big things that you wrote about recently was that many of these federal student loan services, have decided to get out of the student loan lending business. Talk to us who are these players, and what does this mean if you have a loan with them?

Ryan Law: 9:31

Yeah. So there's two big servicers that have recently decided that they did not want to renew their contract. So basically their contract ends on December 31st and they just said, we don't want to be part of this anymore. So the two companies are Granite Sate Management and Resources, and, and they've already said that they're transferring all of their loans over to Ed Financial Services. So that that transfer is already starting to happen. But the big one is FedLoan Servicing. So collectively those two servicers service about 10 million borrowers. So that's it, that's a massive group of borrowers. And this has happened before. Services have gotten out of the business or they haven't renewed their contract, or maybe the Department of Education has decided not to renew their contract. It's been a mess. Transferring has not gone well before. So, and the big issue here is that FedLoan Servicing, they, they handle all of the student loans that have public service loan forgiveness, the people that are applying for that. So we're, we're losing that servicer who has been handling all of the payments and the tracking of that. And they have not yet announced who they're transferring their loans to. So, so it's all kind of up in the air right now.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 10:40

Hey, Ryan, give us a quick overview on public student loan forgiveness for any listeners out there who aren't sure what that is. Can you do a quick high level overview of what that means?

Ryan Law: 10:49

Absolutely. So if you work in the, in the public sector, so that can be for the federal government, the state, tribal, it can be local, it can be county government, or if you work for a nonprofit organization. So if you, as long as you have direct loans and you work full time, after 120 payments, everything is forgiven tax-free. So, so that's a program that's been available. Now, people are just starting to see forgiveness from that program, there are some other provisions in there, but that's kind of the, the high level overview is forgiveness after 10 years of payments, if you work in one of those qualifying positions.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 11:24

One key caveat on that, forgiveness is not automatic. You have to be the, if you are the borrower, you're the one that has to be proving your certificate, I think you call it certification of employment every year. There's many things you have to do along the way. So tell us about what those things are and what that's going to mean when FedLoan servicing gets out of the business.

Ryan Law: 11:44

Yep. So we don't know exactly what it means right now, except that hopefully whoever takes it over is going to do a better job at tracking payments and things like that. There's been a lot of complaints about FedLoan servicing and how they've handled the loans in the past. And I wouldn't say it's all their fault. It's a very complicated program. And it's something that, that you've got to be aware of. And there's a lot of tracking that's going on. So yeah, basically you, you want to file an annual certification form. So it's an employment certification. And when you fill out the form online and it's all available through studentaid.gov or, or studentloans.gov, they all linked to the same place. And, and you can, you fill out a Public Service Loan Forgiveness Employment Certification form. They'll tell you whether or not all of your loans qualify. And then your employer signs that form and you send it in. And then they say, okay, Mary, this year you qualified for 12 payments that were, that count towards your 120 payments. So yeah, it's just as that form that needs to be filled out. And then at the end, once you reach that 120 payments, you actually need to apply for forgiveness. So that's a separate form, also available on that page. So you have to apply for it. It is not like you said, automatic.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 12:54

And one important caveat is you're having the one to do all the work on this. So let's talk about anyone that currently is on that plan and is with FedLoan servicing. What would you recommend they do during transition time?

Ryan Law: 13:08

Yeah, there's three specific steps that I would recommend and everybody should take the first two. So the first one is to make sure your contact information is up to date. People move all the time. And, and, you know, we, haven't heard from our, our, our loan servicers now for almost two years. So log into their website, make sure all of your contact information is up to date. So that's the first one, your name, your address, phone number, that type of thing, so that they can reach, reach you when they need to. Second one is to download everything. So emails, records that they've sent you. Uh, any, anything that they've sent you, I would download all of that, especially those who are applying for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Get all of those documents downloaded. But again, those first two steps, everybody should take that. The third step I would recommend specific for those applying for public service loan forgiveness, do one more certification right now, like before we get to the end of the year, when they're out of the business, do one right now, I would get it done. That would be at the top of my priority list was doing that certification, especially if you didn't do one last year, which a lot of people didn't because the payments were on pause. Make sure that that gets done before FedLoan servicing is out of the business on December 31st.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 14:18

Great advice. Great advice. Thank you. We've got some questions coming in from the audience. So let me ask you a few of those to you. Arethe Franklin asks us can any of these loans be challenged with regard to your credit history? Is there a statute of limitations that allow this to fall off?

Ryan Law: 14:34

So as far as student loans go, there is not a statute of limitation so they can collect as long as you owe on those loans. So, so they're not going to fall off at any point that they're going to continue on your credit report. Now, negative information most of that's going to fall off after seven years, but far as collecting on your loans, they can do that, as long as you're alive, they're going to continue collecting on those.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 14:58

Yep. And Ryan, can we be specific there is that public or private or both?

Ryan Law: 15:02

That is, that is both. Yep. That applies to both the Direct Loans owned by the Department of Education and private loans. Those are all, they, they don't have a statute of limitations on them.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 15:12

Again from Aretha, is there any protection for fraudulent loan forgiveness programs that contact the borrowers? Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the forgiveness that's been happening and..

Ryan Law: 15:22

Yeah, so, so let me deal with her question a little bit more first. So she's asking about scams, there's a lot of scams out there. I've seen things that say, you know, Trump Loan Forgiveness, or, or click here for Biden Loan Forgiveness, or Cares Act Forgiveness. I, all of those are scams. They're trying to collect people's information, they're trying to scam them. So you really should only be dealing with your servicer and reliable information from the Department of Education on that studentaid.gov website. So all of that's reliable ignore any other communications. Like if you see an ad saying, Hey, everyone gets$50,000 worth of student loan debt relief. It's not true. So, so unless you've been contacted by your servicer, or the Department of Education, just ignore all of that out there, which kind of leads us into the second part of your question, Mary. So there, there was hopes early on in the Biden Administration that we'd see somewhere between$10,000 and$50,000 of student loan forgiveness. I don't think that's going to happen because it's been very targeted so far. And President Biden has used that word. He said, we want to use have targeted relief on these student loans. So that there's, there's three that I can talk about that we've seen so far. The first one, the first group that's received some type of relief is those who have been defrauded by their schools. So this is typically for-profit schools. There's been about$1.5 billion forgiven there. And then for students who went to the school ITT Tech, which some of our younger listeners may not know about that, but there used to be a lot of ads for ITT Tech. You know, back in the day, there's about 1.5 billion additional that's been forgiven for that school specifically. So that's the first group. So, so students that have been defrauded by their schools. Second group: disability. So there has been about$5.8 billion forgiven for just over 300,000 borrowers who are disabled. So if you are totally and permanently disabled, you don't, your, your loans are wiped out. So you don't make payments. You don't owe on them anymore. However, there was an application that you had to fill out to get that and what they've done instead, so President Biden and the Department of Education, they've now tied that in to the Social Security Database, the disability system. So it's automatically happens now. So if you, if you are disabled and, and you've continued to make payments on your loans, those should be wiped out now, or they will be in the near future. So that's the second one. Third one then is for current and former active duty military, especially those who have been in war zones or danger zones. So there's about 47,000 military members who are having some past interest that's being retroactively waived. So that's the third group, but basically that, that's what we've seen so far, that it's very targeted. You can see it's for students that have been defrauded, people who are disabled and military members. If you're hoping that your loan is going to go down by$10,000 or$50,000, I wouldn't count on it. I, I don't foresee that happening. It could. And that would be obviously a relief to a lot of people, but right now it is being very targeted.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 18:29

Okay, good to know. And when you, let's go back to this idea of scam, because I want to get really specific when your servicer reaches out to you, how do they contact you? Did they call you by phone and ask for a pin number? I mean, give us a little more.

Ryan Law: 18:44

No, no. They should never call you and ask for a pin number. Now, if you call them, you may need to give them your password and pin number, but hopefully you're, you know, you're logging in and you're seeing the exact number to call or you're contacting them through a secure email system or something like that. But yeah, they're never going to call you because you are going to get calls like that, right? Just like you get the scam calls for the, your car warranty is running out. You're going to start getting those. If you haven't already, where they're going to say, Hey, you, you qualify for this forgiveness. We just need you to verify your login. And that's, those are going to come over email. They're going to be phone calls. I think it'll be a combination of things. So your servicer will contact you through direct mail, they'll contact you through email and then you can go onto their system. You can go onto that servicer's website and verify that the emails from them, because copies of all emails that they send should be in your, there should be an inbox on that, on that page as well. So you can verify that it's actually from them. But if they're asking you to verify something by email, it's, it's just not true. And I think Mary, with the two big servicers getting out, I think we're going to see more of that, where people are going to say, Hey, we're taking over all of FedLoan Services, servicings loans. So contact us and we'll make sure your loan gets transferred over. None of that is true. It's going to happen automatically. Yeah.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 19:59

And it's kind of treacherous right now, given the fact that we don't know where FedLoan servicing, so just to put it in perspective, FedLoan is one of the big four, largest four that owned what 75% I believe, or roughly there about three quarters of all student loans. It's huge. And so it's not just those four, but they are one of the major players. So this is a huge transition. And with that, I would say, absolutely, Ryan, you're probably one of the key people to be following in this. So you can follow Ryan on LinkedIn or other places, but know who that's going to. And that way you can reach out just like Ryan has said, and this goes for banks or credit unions or any other type of spam. Never, never, never accept mailings or emails or phone calls until you reach out. And again, if you have any questions, go through the Department of Education's website, don't try to go rogue on that and make sure on everything that you've got a secure access going in there. Cause that's going to be really important. Especially with this FedLaon Servicing. I believe Great Lakes was a little bit smaller. Didn't have quite as many, but FedLoan servicing is going to be big. And that's unfortunately, that's this ripe with, with crime and opportunity. There's been Ryan, it looks like there's quite a bit of questions on the PSLF. And so those that have more questions we can bring. If you've got more specific questions, please put them in the chat. If we haven't answered them already, I think we've answered everything here. I do want to remind listeners while we have your here, feel free to continue to ask questions, but I do want to remind you that right now we are offering, for Real Money, Real Experts, listeners 25% off of the College Financial Essentials. The code for this is CFE2021. And it's good through the end of the year. Ryan, you helped write this course. Can you tell us more what's in this course and why would help financial professionals?

Ryan Law: 21:55

Yeah. So the idea behind this course was we didn't want to just talk about student loans. So student loans is definitely a big part of it, but we really wanted to talk about the entire college experience. So how do you, what do you do to prepare for college when you're, when you've got young children, if you're in high school now, what are some ways that you can save for college? So we talk about all aspects of how to choose a school. We talk about majors. Uh, we talk about making sure that you're getting involved in the appropriate things to be able to get a job after school. So career training is, is part of that. We talked about housing. I mean, there's so many aspects prior to even going to school. And then once you're in school, we talk about things like study abroad and making sure that you're, you're taking it the right number of classes to get out as quickly as possible. And then student loans is a big portion of that, where we dig into in, in depth over a couple of, of modules on here's, what student loans are, here's all the different repayment plans. So yeah, it's just the whole college experience. How do we help finance that, that college experience both before and then during, and then after. So we deal with the tax breaks that you get, we deal with all the financial planning issues. So it's all in that course.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 23:07

We'll make sure and put that code in the show notes for anyone that's interested. Ryan, who would this best serve? Who would you recommend take this course?

Ryan Law: 23:15

Yeah, I think that there's two big groups. I mean, I think anyone who is going to college that this would work well, or if you've got a child going to college, so you can really understand all the aspects behind it, but it's, it's written for financial professionals. So financial planners, financial counselors, and coaches. If you've got clients who are dealing with student loans or what the college experience coming up in the next, you know, 10, 20 years, this course should really help solidify some of your knowledge so that you're able to communicate that it's, it is complex. I mean, the reality is do loans, repayment, all of these things that they're complex topics. So as a financial professional, I think it's vital that you understand them a little bit better so that you can answer questions about these various areas. It's also can be a great value add where you can say, Hey, this is a service that I offer to my clients that I help you with understanding your student loans or something like that.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 24:10

Yeah. And I think that's really important. It's not just something you buy for your clients to take. Cause there's so many nuances I think in this where maybe some, a parent could take it if they've chose, but really it's for those financial professionals that are wanting to find specifically a niche. If you're wanting to carve maybe an expertise out in a specific area and you have a client, or maybe you teach at a college, this could be a really great course for you to be able to hone in your skills. And it sounds like it serves on both ends, not just the payoff amount after, but even the whole way through, from the beginning, preparatory before you go in all the way through to after. Thanks. We'll take a few more minutes for any other last questions. And as people are thinking of those questions and we're getting in those last comments, Ryan, we always ask at the end of our interviews, we'd like to get the guests two cents or biggest takeaways for our listeners. If you had one piece of advice for financial professionals, what would it be?

Ryan Law: 25:09

Yeah. So it might be a little bit more than one. I'll tie it all up into one thing. And then I might expand on that a little bit if that's all right. So, but just keep up to date with what's happening. There's a lot of changes that, that have happened starting in March of 2020 and continuing through. And I think we're going to continue to see changes happening in the future. So keep up to date with what's happening, whether it's with, with me on LinkedIn, whether it's with, with other people on LinkedIn, following that, following the Department of Education website, they put announcements up there. So make sure that you're staying up to date with all of that information out there. And Mary, if I could, I'd love to share just a couple of final tips that I think everybody should do, especially if you're struggling. So there there's two things that really the Department of Education. So we talked about Public Service Loan Forgiveness already and filing a certification form now. They just came out with something a couple of days ago and said, yes, file one now, but do another one in February. So, so that's something to be aware of is after the payments, start back up February, March, do another certification form. So that that's kind of the first piece and that tying back into Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The second thing is, if you're struggling, don't just ignore your loans. So they're not going to get better just because they've been on pause for a year and a half, almost two years now, it's, it's doesn't mean that everything's going to be better for everyone. We recognize that there's people struggling with, with making their payments, with maybe they've got their kids home a lot more than they intended to before, work has shifted. All these things have changed. And, and that's part of the reason that student loans have been on pause, because it was a way to say, Hey, we know you're dealing with a lot of other stuff. Just don't worry about your student loans, but they are starting back up. So don't ignore them, contact your servicer if you're struggling in any way, you might be able to switch over to a different payment plan for a little while. Or if you need to, you could go, go on deferment or forbearance. But just again, I plead with you don't ignore those loans once they come do. Start talking to your servicer earlier, early, if you need to.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 27:10

Yeah. And that's a great point, Ryan, some of the forgiveness that we've been talking about, if you do go into forbearance, you actually can't participate in the forgiveness. So you need to be, I always compare it to an ostrich with their head in the sand, keep your head above the water, even though it may seem overwhelming and reach out. That's one of the great things right now. And I do want to mention the yellow ribbon program that we have ongoing during this ongoing crisis. We have Accredited Financial Counselors®that are here to answer your question. So anyone that's out there that just feels overwhelmed, reach out, get up, get help, get that professional help to be able to go through these muddy, crazy waters that we're in right now. We sh- we do want that. Well, Ryan, we sure appreciate all that you're doing for us. And especially as financial professionals, I think it's really important to stay on the cutting edge of what's happening. You know, all of us do this book learning and we get done with the test and we're so excited, but the thing about personal finance is it's always changing. And so it's really important to stay up to date. How can our guests find you and stay up to date on the latest on student loans?

Ryan Law: 28:16

Yeah, so I put together a page it's https://ryanhlaw.com/student-loans. Again, that's https://ryanhlaw.com/student-loans. So on that page, I've got my LinkedIn profile that you can just link right to that. I've got, I've got information about my book, Student Loan Planning. I've got an article on there about all of the, all of the changes that have happened in student loans over the past almost two years. So all of that is available right on that website there.

Dr. Mary Bell Carlson: 28:46

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