Biden forgives more student loans, but who's really paying for that?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Been doing shows in the Moine fromone of our studios here the last couple
days. Yeah, so I've it'ssix hours of radio a day, but
I got a little block in themiddle to like do stuff. Went to
my birds store and got some seed. Nice the birds by the way,
Orioles, We're gonna talk about thata little bit later. I'm a big
Oriole guy. I love to watchthe Orioles, but you have like a

(00:23):
very small block of time to catchthem so they don't miss your house on
their migration. So yeah, it'skind of one of my things. It's
like we're gonna help each other outwhen we start seeing those bad boys.
But yeah, it got a liftin, pumped some iron nice, you
know. I got myself like showeredup and everything here to have a fun,

(00:44):
fun Friday, And then I gotreally excited. Biden administration cancels another
seven point four billion dollars in studentloan debt. Wow, that's awesome,
right you still paying student loans?Oh yeah? Really? Yeah? How
much you could you possibly have leftat this point? Where did you go?

(01:06):
Harvard? I went to a coupleof places, got myself a real
rounded education, you know. Unfortunatelyyou were looking for the square degree.
I guess, so, yeah,I'm still paying it's I so mine?
Did you pay it all during thepandemic? Like the three year old they
had on student loan debt? Youknow what, I took a break for

(01:30):
part of that. I didn't paya dime during that entire time. And
you know why, because these aregenerally low interest loans, and I could
just like pay off other stuff Ihave. I owe zero dollars to my
resort package. I owe zero dollarsto my car, now you know what
I mean. I'm caught up onmy credit cards, you know that stuff

(01:55):
a little extra money on, likethe mortgage, and then when these fired
back up, you're just kind oflike, Okay, well, unfortunately I'm
not one of the two hundred andseventy seven thousand borrowers that got forgiven at
least this time. And I sithere and I think, selfishly, of

(02:19):
course, about what not having toworry about paying the four hundred fifty dollars
a month that I am paying inmy student loan debt. How do you
mind if I ask how much thatyou're paying? It's on a month to
month's basis, pretty close to thatare you overshooting it to try to pay
it off faster? Are you justdoing the minimum to get by? I'm
just doing I'm doing what I gottado to get by. Yeah, so

(02:42):
I'm kind of there. I'm alittle higher than normal. But again they're
not high interest, right, They'relike three to five interests of percent of
interest usually. Well, the ageold question, is this a good idea?
I got the answer. No,it's not. It's not a good

(03:07):
idea. You know who the dummiesare, the people like us who went
to college and had to pay aton of money. Did you get are
you working? Did you get adegree in radio something? Did you educate
in radio? I did? Okay, so yours came in useful. Mine
generally did not. Now I don'tregret going to college. Went to a

(03:27):
small college Southeast Iowa, William PennUniversity, shout out. I had a
good four years there. I metmy wife there. I met a lot
of great friends there. I hada lot of good times, broke a
lot of rules, learned a thingor two, got put on academic probation
one semester, but still rallied tofinish with over a three point zero grade
point average over my four years andgot into grad school nice. But my

(03:49):
major was sports administration, which islike a combination of like sports management and
coaching and and PE teaching and howto you know, administer first aid and
stuff like that. You got yourcoaching certificate things of that nature. And
then the other thing other part ofthat is the business side of it.

(04:11):
I took a business law of class, had to take some accounting, had
to take some other stuff that youknow, would help you understand economics and
economic science and things like that.And it was fine. I went through
with it. I found out Ilearned about myself about halfway through that I
kind of wanted to get into themedia and be a broadcaster because I seem
to have a talent for it.I just started doing it as a summer

(04:32):
job, and when I started toget better at it, I kind of
like doing it. So fast forward, here I am fifteen years after I
started college, and I'm still payingmy student loans off. But you know
what, Matt, I was toldwhat I was signing up for when I
was signing up for it. Youapply for FASA. Did you do FASA?

(04:56):
I did? You basically have tounless you're rich, you want to
go to a school you don't haveenough scholarship money or enough money in the
bank to just pay for it semestersemester year to year, Well you need
FAFSA, that's Federal student Aid.They will have some forgivable loans, which
is nice. Where my college actuallyhad one where if you were a resident

(05:18):
of Iowa and you went to WilliamPenn University and you graduated from William Penn,
they would knock a thousand dollars offper year that you owed back.
They would just like cut it.And if you left for any reason or
you owed anything beyond that, Imean, you would have to pay one

(05:38):
thousand dollars that they had as aforgivable loan. But little things like that.
William Penn kind of has a loopholebecause they're in AIA. They can
offer athletics and activity scholarships. Sothey charge you like twenty thousand dollars per
year for your tuition, but youcould get like an eight thousand dollars scholarship
to be on the bowling team.Now, again that doesn't cover everything,
and then they add another five orsix thousand for room and board and the

(06:00):
food that they you know, giveyou in the cafeteria and everything, and
all of a sudden, now you'relining up, you know, twenty five
twenty six thousand dollars a year,and you know what, I don't have
any of that money, so it'sall scholarship. And by the time I
got done with my collegiate career,I ended up having to owe something like
fifty five thousand dollars without interest.And you know, they do the math
for you. There's a few websitesthat you know they've they've deferred the website

(06:25):
to and you try to pay thatoff. But every single time that I
applied for FAFSA, every single timethat I was approved for student loans,
they walked me through the loans.They asked which ones I wanted, if
I didn't need them all, ifI could still take them all if I
wanted to, because they qualified forthem. But if I had enough money,
or enough scholarship money not to havethem all, I could opt out

(06:46):
of one or two of them,and that's fine. There are a lot
of people that took all that moneyand then they got a refund check for
a few thousand dollars and guess whatthey spent it? All right on whatever
they needed, and then they owethat money as a student loan, right,
and there are strategies to that.If you're smart about it, you
could probably do that because of thelower interest rate. It's a lower interest
in like a car payment. Forinstance, Hey, I got eight thousand

(07:10):
extra dollars from my student loan FAFSAapplication and I don't need that money,
but I'm going to take it anyway, use it to buy a car with
cash, and then instead of payingyou know, seven percent interests on this
thing, I'm paying four percent interestson this thing. There's ways that you
can game the system. When you'reeighteen nineteen years old, you're not thinking
about that. But guess what whenyou go to college, this is something

(07:32):
you have to deal with. Andnow instead of this happening, well,
the loan company is just like,yo, we need our money. We've
already given our money to the collegeto help these kids get through school.
Who's going to pay us? Andthe answer is we are em Maurice Stunger
on news radio eleven ten KFAB.Let's get to the lines. We have

(07:57):
John there. John, thanks somuch for the call today. What you
on your mind? How are youdoing good? Hey, I've got a
question, a theory, and asuggestion. My question, if student loans
are so bad, so predatory,and so confusing, then why is the
government still backing them and handing themout. My theory is government backed student

(08:22):
loans, it's like the mortgage crisiswill give unqualified people and some people that
may not need to go to collegewith the ability to pay it back.
That allows more money for kids togo to college and universities to raise their
tuition in order to get the moneyknowing the government will hand it out.
And my suggestion is, if theywant repayment, what would they think about

(08:46):
just dropping all of the accruing interestsand allow everyone currently to pay back their
principle. You've broke up there alittle bit, John, What was that
last part? If they allowed everyoneto just pay the principle back on their
current student loan interests or student loanagreement instead of capitalizing and making money off

(09:07):
of it, instead of forgiving it, let us pay back to principle without
all the accruing interests. Yeah,yeah, Okay, that's a good question.
So I think John, you thefirst question of the government continuously like
having federal student aid available to kidswith the idea that those are loans that

(09:28):
they'll need to be paid off.It needs a system overhaul. This is
we should be starting with the systemoverhaul before we start with the forgiving of
the loans. But John, guesswho's voting. You guess who's voting in
the election in November, right,Like, it's it's not the kids that
are sixteen thinking about going to collegeand having the system fixed for them.
It's all about trying to coerce peopleunder the age of thirty five years old,

(09:50):
you're still paying their student loans forthem to be like, oh,
awesome, Biden did something for me. I'm going to go vote for him.
That's the kind of thing that we'relooking at here. Second thing,
as far as like what you justsaid about a good compromise there is to
forgive the interest and just let thempay on a regular basis for however long
it takes. Regularly you can stillhave like a minimum payment to make it

(10:13):
paid off in a certain amount oftime. But yeah, or remove the
interest. Isn't that a good compromise? And I'll be honest, like,
it is very confusing for a lotof people who've never done this. When
I was eighteen years old applying forfederal student aid. I didn't know what
I was doing, but guess what, I had advisors at the college that
walked me through line by line whatall those things were, and they would
tell me what I needed price wiseand how much I qualified for all that

(10:37):
makes a difference, you know whatI mean. And I can't speak on
everybody's college experience or if they gotthe proper advice from either their parents or
co signers, the people at theschool that they eventually went to. But
it's a We are told to goto college because that's what our society has
taught us how to do it.But we do it way differently than anybody

(11:00):
else in the entire world does they. I had a friend that was a
roommate that went to college with me, but he said, you could go
to university in Scotland where he wasfrom, or in the UK, and
it was like an extension of highschool essentially, and they would teach you
skills that were very pertinent to everydaylife for a lot of people as they
became adults. And then you couldkind of like veer off into like a

(11:22):
major, if you will. Wewould call a major for our degree.
We do it, and it costus one hundred thousand dollars for us to
get through four years of school.Generally at least that much. Sometimes it's
a lot more, depending on whatyou're going for, and we don't get
the proper advice that. Hey,by the way, it's going to take
you like twelve years to make thatmoney just doing the job that you're doing.

(11:43):
So it's pretty insane, man.The whole system is just really screwed
up, and I'm glad that we'readdressing it. But I think we're doing
it backwards so we can win anelection. I think that's what we're doing
a lot of pandering. Yeah,it's all panduring. I mean it really
is. It's grandstanding. I appreciatethe calle John, thanks for being a
part of the show. Let's goto Joe. Joe. Appreciate you for
calling in. What do you goton your mind? Yeah? I listened

(12:05):
to this, and the taxpayers ofthis country shouldn't be on the hook for
a bunch of college graduates loans.And if they want to get money to
pay off their loans, it oughtto come from the endowment funds from all
these colleges and universities because they've gotbillions of dollars in their little cash funds
that that's where that money out ofcome. Well, well, here's taxpayers.

(12:28):
Here's the thing, Joe. Mostof these schools operate as like institutions
that generally are trying to make money. They say they're like nonprofit institutions or
whatever. There are some like GrandCanyon University, who they make no bones
about it, they are for profit. But the whole thing is they're praying
on a society that has told theirchildren that when you graduate high school,

(12:48):
you're supposed to find something you wantto major in and then go spend more
money, a lot of money anda lot of time going to college.
Now, the experience that I hadin college, and I think the experience
a lot of people had in college, that's worth as much, if not
more than the actual degree that youmajor in. And I would guess a
fair amount of people that go andget their college degree like me, don't

(13:09):
even end up doing a career withinthat major. It's kind of a waste
of the education part of the entirething. Yet I'm still on the hook
for the fifty five thousand dollars Icouldn't pay at the time plus interest for
four years at a tiny university oflike twelve hundred undergrads in a tiny town
in small town Iowa. Take mystory and multiply that across millions of people

(13:31):
across America, and you can seeit's a system problem and not necessarily a
people problem. You took off theloan, I didn't go to college.
I started working. And every pennyI've ever borrowed for cars, trucks,
houses, yeah whatever, I paidthat. Okay, Yeah, And I'm
saying we should, Joe, Joey, anybody else, I'm fine with that.

(13:54):
Joe, Okay, we agree toI don't want you paying my loans,
but I'm telling you it's a systemproblem that we're not addressed. A
lot of people. There's a lotof people out there that want me to
pay their loans and all of ustaxpayers to pay their own. Yeah.
You know the people that want todo that, Joe. It's people that
are selfish. It's people under theage of thirty that are acting like they
are a victim of the system whenthey're not victim of the system. The

(14:16):
system just sucks, but they playedalong with it. You are given you're
given all the tools to know whatyou're doing in the process, like I
was given. You know what you'redoing, you know how loans work.
You should talk to an advisor oryour parents. If you're not sure about
what you're doing. You can't goto school, get your degree, and
then five years later complain that it'sjust too much money for you. You
knew what you were doing at thetime. Apparently you can when somebody needs

(14:39):
votes exactly. And that's that's thebottom line here. The reason this is
happening isn't to forgive sudent loans.It's to buy votes from people under the
age of thirty. That's what thisis, bottom bottom line, point blank,
make no bones about it, Joe. This isn't about forgiving people's loans
and helping Americans. This is abouttrying to get the younger people who are
now starting to get away from theJoe Biden administration for one reason or another.

(15:01):
This is a reminder, Hey,this guy looks out for you.
If they're getting away from the Bidenadministration, maybe they aren't as dumb as
as we think. Well, butthe numbers, the numbers are definitely getting
startling for the Biden administration. There'sno way that this is a coincidence the
timing of of this forgiveness here.But it's buy and votes, Joe.
That's all it is, point blank. But I do think we need to

(15:22):
change the system of college here.The Supreme Court rule that he couldn't do
that. There are workarounds there therethey found und Why should we be any
laws or ruins from the well,you know the answer to that, Joe.
We're not into elected office and wecan't change how the DOJ rules stuff
because we're not in power. That'sright. That's the only the guys that

(15:45):
are in power that can do that. Hey, I appreciate the colleg Joe,
have a good rest of your Friday. Yep, you too. I'll
tell you. You know, wetalk about this. This is pretty crazy
stuff. Yeah, the student loandebt relief and all that stuff. It
is what it is, folks,It is what it is. I guess
we'll see how that affects our economy. But you know what I don't think
is gonna go down are prices foreggs or milk when we go to the

(16:07):
grocery store. Just to just toguess, just just just a friendly guess,
two thirty. We'll have a Fridayfor coming up soon. Stick around
News Radio eleven ten kfa B