July 17, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer® podcast, I chat with Scotty McDonald, a Certified Student Loan Professional (CSLP®), CFP®, and Financial Planner at SLP Wealth. Scotty brings a unique perspective and deep insight into the world of student loans, having also worked as a commercial photographer and environmental scientist. He now uses his extensive knowledge to help attorneys—and especially those in public service—understand their options and reduce the stress of student loan debt.
Listen in as Scotty and I explore:
- What makes student loan debt so different—and so misunderstood—compared to other types of debt.
- Why attorneys face unique challenges with student loans and what you can do about it.
- The difference between public and private repayment strategies—and how to know what’s right for you.
- How your career path (public vs. private sector) can dramatically affect your repayment options.
- Why managing student loan debt is not just about paying it off—it’s about financial strategy and future freedom.
- The surprising ways owning your own law firm can be a powerful tool for student loan optimization.
LINKS TO LOVE:
Learn more about Scotty and his work by clicking here.
Few of us are born knowing how to lead—but as your law firm grows, leadership becomes non-negotiable. This course is designed to help law firm owners like you step fully into the role of leader and manager. Whether you’re building a team or struggling to get the best from the one you have, you’ll gain the skills, mindset, and practical tools to lead with authority, inspire performance, and scale with intention.
If you’re ready to stop managing by default and start leading by design, this course will show you how. Click here to get started.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:01):
Welcome to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast. What
you could hang out withsuccessful women lawyers, ask
them about growing their firms,managing resources like time,
team, and systems, masteringmoney issues, and more? Then
take an insight or two to helpyou build a wealth generating
law firm. Each week, your host,Devina Frederick, takes an
(00:22):
in-depth look at how to thinklike a CEO, attract clients who
you love to serve and will payyou on time, and create a
profitable, sustainable firm youlove. Devina is founder and CEO
of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and hergoal is to give you the
information you need to scaleyour law firm business from 6 to
7 figures in gross annualrevenue so you can fully fund
(00:43):
and still have time to enjoy thelifestyle of your dreams. Now
here's Devina.
Davina (00:49):
Hello, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer
podcast. I'm your host attorneyDevina Frederick, and my guest
today is Scottie McDonald.Scottie is a financial planner
at SLP Wealth. He also is acertified student loan
professional, CSLP, holds aFINRA series 65 license, and is
a CFP professional. Scotty has agreat passion for helping others
(01:12):
realize the peace of mind thatfinancial clarity can provide.
He has a deep empathy andcuriosity for each individual's
circumstances derived from hiswide range of life experiences
as a small business owner,commercial photographer, and
environmental scientist in thepublic sector. Scotty has
firsthand student loan expertisefrom community colleges,
(01:34):
private, and publicuniversities. When not helping
folks with student loans achievefinancial freedom, Scotty is
very likely going on long trailruns near his home in Santa
Cruz, California. Please join mein welcoming Scotty to the
Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast.Hi, Scotty.
Welcome to the Wealthy WomanLawyer podcast. It's so good to
have you here.
Scotty (01:54):
Devina, thank you so much for having me.
Davina (01:56):
Good. So why don't you start out by telling us a little
bit about, your background andwhat led you to get into this
work?
Scotty (02:05):
Got it. Such a specific weird little niche of the
financial planning world. So, Iam a, a financial planner with,
SLP Wealth and with Student LoanPlanner. And Student Loan
Planner has been around since2017, and we do a whole bunch of
different stuff. The bread andbutter of it is, like, kind of
(02:26):
one on one deep dive consults tohelp people, like, figure out
how to balance and optimizetheir student loan repayment
strategies with the rest of yourlife, you know, because you're
not just a person with studentloans.
You probably have other thingsyou'd like to do with your life.
And so we've been around since2017. I think we've consulted on
close to, like, 19 or 20,000different individuals, student
(02:49):
loans, couple billion dollars ofstudent loan debt over that
time. And and then the bulk ofmy time now is helping folks
figure out, like, what is lifelike after student loans and or
with student loans doingcomprehensive wealth planning at
at at SLP Wealth. I'm also sortof the default attorney adviser
(03:11):
at SLP Wealth, mainly becausewhen we were divvying up the
teams two years ago, nobody elsewanted to do it.
Turns out, like, people are,like, scared of lawyers. They
find lawyers intimidating. Wecan't be.
Davina (03:24):
We're we we mean to be.
Scotty (03:26):
Yeah. I also have a couple of very dear friends that
are public interest attorneysthat I've kind of helped with
their stuff over the years. ButI kind of I love my attorney
clients, and I'm very happy tolet my clients or my colleagues,
like, believe that they're all,like, really scary. I I don't
know if this has been the casefor you, but, like, oftentimes,
people that are in position ofpower are attorneys. And so they
(03:49):
have this, like, sense of agencythat I find really unique
Davina (03:53):
to work with that particular demographic.
Interesting.
Scotty (03:56):
They feel like they can actually, like, affect change,
and they're just not a passengeron the bus. You know?
Davina (04:01):
Right. Right.
Scotty (04:02):
Yes. Yeah. It's a really fun group.
Davina (04:04):
We're very passionate about whatever we're passionate
about, we can we can make a goodargument for it if we want to.
So yeah. So I can see that. I'msure that and probably whoever
drew the short straw got doctorsreally has a challenge because
Scotty (04:19):
The problem the so let me tell you about doctors. As
the brother of a doctor and thisthe brother-in-law of another
doctor, the beautiful thingabout attorneys in my experience
is that attorneys very muchvalue the advice of other
professionals. Right?
Davina (04:36):
Right.
Scotty (04:36):
Whereas doctors, for better or worse, are so well
educated that they'repotentially overeducated and
think they kinda know everythingsometimes.
Davina (04:45):
Yeah. And what I if you can save a life, you know, like,
you you kinda feel like there'sreally nothing nobody else has
done that good. Right? And, so II totally understand that. Let's
talk about student loans.
Is your air of I thought itwould be a really great time to
have you on for this discussionbecause a lot of lawyers got
(05:07):
them and there's been a lot ofchanges happening over the last
few months with the newadministration, out with the old
administration and with the newadministration for better or
worse. Whatever your opinion isabout it, it is what it is, we
gotta deal with it and play inthat arena. What have you seen?
First of all, before we get intothat, give me an idea of the
(05:29):
average amount of student loansyou're seeing lawyers. Is there
an average amount that you'reseeing that lawyers are coming
out of law school with startingtheir own business or getting a
job, and they're having tocontend with this?
What amount what number is that?
Scotty (05:42):
You know, it's pretty rare to see somebody with less
than 200 k, and it's pretty rareto see people with more than,
like, 3 to 400. So it's like ifthey have more than, like, three
or four hundred k of that, itmight have been, like, a second
career or a second degree or,you know, or they had a really
expensive undergrad for somebizarre reason. So, yeah, it's
(06:05):
actually kinda hard to borrowthat. Yeah. I mean, you
physically can't borrow thatmuch in undergrad.
So, or it's people that havetaken on debt for their kids in
the form of, like, parent plusloans, which are currently you
know, we should talk about thateventually. But, like, one of
the areas that are is reallygonna be hurt if the current
(06:27):
legislation that's being debatedin congress passes in the form
that it is currently in. So but,yeah, somewhere in that kinda
two to four kind of range.
Davina (06:36):
And that's not nothing. I mean, that's a
Scotty (06:39):
That's
Davina (06:39):
not nothing. That's a lot of money. Yeah. That used to
be now I don't think it is, butit used to be the amount of a
house. You know?
And now I'm you'd be hardpressed probably to find a house
for
Scotty (06:49):
Yeah.
Davina (06:50):
For 2 to 400, but that's a that's a lot of money. And I,
as somebody, I just paid off mystudent loans from law school,
and I was nowhere near thatamount of money. And I've been a
lawyer for eighteen years, so Ihad a really great interest
rate. So when I hear these someof these amounts with these
interest rates, I'm imaginingthat a lot of your clients,
(07:13):
they're either one of twothings. They are kind of
avoiding thinking about it, orthey just have a belief that it
will work itself out.
This will work itself out. Iwill I'm gonna get this high
paying job, or I'm gonna startmy business and make a lot of
money, and it will all workitself out. Or they have the
flip side of that, which is, ohmy god. What have I done? Right?
(07:34):
And they don't realize thatuntil they get out and they
start wanting to do some otherthings, like have a family or
buy a house or whatever. Sure.What kinds of experiences are
you hearing? Well, you
Scotty (07:46):
know, I always tell people that, like, you don't it
kinda depends on theirsituation. Student loan debt is
really different than any othertype of debt that people kind of
normally encounter for a couplereasons. Functionally, it
operates differently. Studentloan interest is simple
interest. It doesn't compound inthe same way that a credit card
(08:07):
or a car payment or a mortgagekinda does.
Interest on the interest is onlybeing charged interest on the
principal original principal.The other thing that makes
student loan debt really, reallydifferent than other types of
debt is that there are incomedriven plans. Right? So IDR,
income driven plans, is thisterm you get thrown a lot in the
(08:28):
news, and there's a handful ofdifferent plans that are sort of
under that umbrella, which wecan talk about in in more
detail. But because of thoseincome driven plans, student
loans function much more like atax than they do like a debt.
So, you know, you'll payanywhere from 10 to 15% of your
discretionary income, and you dothat for a certain period of
(08:51):
time, ten years if you're in apublic service job, fifteen or,
you know, twenty or twenty fiveyears if you're in a a private
sector position. And then thebalance is forgiven with
potentially or not potentially aa tax implication. So what I
tell people is like, okay. Forthe privilege of being an
attorney for the rest of yourlife, dentist, veterinarian,
(09:15):
physician, whatever, would youpay an extra 10 to 15% of your
income for, like, you know,fifteen to twenty years. And
almost all of them say, wouldyou take that deal?
And they say, yes. I'm like,well, good. Because that's the
deal you took. Right? That's thedeal you actually took
functionally.
(09:35):
Right? So when you see these bignumbers,
Davina (09:38):
yeah, technically, you owe $400,000 in debt. And, yeah,
technically, if you want it
Scotty (09:42):
to all go away, you
Davina (09:43):
could write some giant check for
Scotty (09:44):
$400,000. But functionally, it operates much,
much more like a tax than itdoes like a debt. And so for
clients hold a lot of, like,shame about this. Like, debt is
like in our society, you messedup. Right?
You messed up, and you're, like,less worthy because you have
this debt or this whatever. Youknow? And it's just like getting
(10:07):
people to reframe it, at least,like, to have an entry point
into the conversation of whatcomes next, and let's manage
this, and let's actually runsome numbers and some
calculations to see, is thisreally holding you up from doing
the things that you wanna do, oris it not in the grand scheme of
things? You know? Right.
So framing it in that way, Ithink, is really helpful for,
(10:27):
like, the starting point. Yeah.
Davina (10:28):
Yeah. I I certainly I certainly there are certain
financial gurus out there whogive advice about getting out of
debt and the importance ofgetting out of debt, and there's
a lot of shame around. You'llhear a lot of people calling in,
talking about I have x number ofstudent loan debt, and there's a
lot of, well, my god. What areyou? A neurosurgeon?
You know? And you're like, well,no. But the reality of it is for
(10:51):
most of us is that we wouldn'thave been able to go to college.
We wouldn't have been able toget advanced degrees. We
wouldn't have been able if wehad not had some sort of way of
paying for it, through a loanbecause we come from families
that don't.
Yeah. And and I think there'stremendous value in the
education that comes from itbecause it changes the
trajectory of your life when youhave when you have a law degree.
(11:15):
Certainly, it does. Right? Itchanges everything.
Right? Yeah. So, regardless ofpeople's thoughts or opinions
on, you know, whether that was agood whether Aunt Jenny thinks
that was a good decision or abad opinion bad decision. It's
really none of our business. Shecan think what she wants.
Here we are. We've made it. Nowwe have student loan debt.
Scotty (11:35):
Now we have student loan debt.
Davina (11:36):
Yeah. And we're wanting and we also have a degree, and
now we need to go move forward.So talk to me about how you guys
help your clients. What whatwhen they're coming to you, what
are they're coming to you? Whatare their concerns when they're
coming to you?
Scotty (11:52):
Yeah. So a lot of the folks that we deal with are
folks that are kind of freshlyout of law school or kind of,
you know, first job, and nowthey're actually, like, having
to start to pay the stuff back.And so and a lot of, you know,
public interest attorneys andgovernment attorneys and DAs
and, you know,
Davina (12:11):
other stuff,
Scotty (12:12):
public defenders. And we start by, like, looking at what
the debt is, how much it is, andkind of what their debt to
income ratios are. So for thekind of the current plans left
standing, if your debt to incomeratio is, like, two to one, like
twice as much debt to income,Even in the least generous of
(12:34):
these plans, a lot of times,you're a forgiveness candidate
still. Right? So the paymentwill be based on your adjusted
gross income with a deductionfor the federal poverty line,
and you'll make that payment fora certain amount of years, and
then the balance is forgiven.
If your debt is 1.5 times, thenit's an edge case, and there's a
(12:58):
little more strategery to dowith it. And if your debt is
less than one x your income,you're probably gonna end up
paying it off. And so in thosesituations, we would run through
the pros and cons of, like, dowe keep these loans in the
federal system even though wecould get maybe a slightly lower
(13:19):
interest rate if we were torefinance them? Or do we kinda
just wait and see with all thevolatility in the world that's
going on right now? Is it worthjust keeping things in the
federal system that has a lot ofserious protections?
You know? Death and disabilitydischarge is a protection.
Cancer deferment is aprotection. Like, things that
just don't exist in the in thepublic sector I'm sorry, in the
private sector for for loans.You gotta pay them, you know,
(13:42):
whether you you're whetheryou're a hospital bed or not.
You gotta pay your student loansif they're private student
loans. It's not the case forfederal student loans. So
sometimes it can be worse evenif you are one of those edge
cases to kinda hedge to stay inthe federal system even if it's
ever so slightly more expensive.And then we dive into, like,
(14:03):
what are all the ways that wecan optimize for your student
loan payment? Right?
Which turns out like, so forthinking about student loan
payments as if they are a tax,well, if someone's living in New
York or California and they'remaking, you know, $250,000 a
year upwards of that, then, youknow, you're probably already in
(14:23):
a 24 to 32% federal tax bracket.Call it another eight to 10%
sometimes for state and localstuff, plus another 15. It's
like we're scratching at 50%effective tax rates for a lot of
these folks. You know? No joke.
And so everything that we can doto reduce taxable income
because, like, that's what allthis stuff is tied to becomes
(14:43):
really important. So there's,like, some really interesting
planning opportunities for howto reduce taxable income. Right?
Davina (14:49):
So that's kind of interesting because that's a
little bit like, you know, Ithink a lot of people think,
well, the only way I have so Iborrowed so much. The only way
that I'm going to be able to paythis off is to do public
interest work. And my goal mydream was to go open my own firm
(15:10):
or work for somebody orwhatever, and then they're kind
of faced with this decision ofdoing that. Do you have you had
conversations with people aboutthat like that?
Scotty (15:18):
Every single every single client that is going
through public service loanforgiveness, I always run the
numbers for them because peoplefeel trapped. I did and this is,
my my story specifically,actually, that I had student
loans of my own. I was at thetime working as an environmental
scientist for a big water agencyhere in the Bay Area. And, you
know, part of my whole plan waslike, I'm gonna get public
(15:41):
service student loanforgiveness. Now my personal
loans were not so much that itwas worth making life decisions
Yeah.
Over them. But but if I had$350,000 worth of, you know,
Davina (15:53):
law school
Scotty (15:53):
debt or something, it might maybe we'd feel
differently about that. And so,yeah, it's a calculation that I
always run with folks to showthem, like, okay. If you were
going for public service loanforgiveness and you were gonna
be completely done with this inten years, a 120 payments.
Right? And maybe I should just,like, step back.
The public service loanforgiveness program has, like,
four main criteria. You have tohave the right type of job. So
(16:16):
working for a government entityor a five o five zero one three
c, you gotta do it at leastthirty hours a week while you're
making student loan paymentsthat are in the right type of
plan with the right type of loantypes. So direct loans, any of
the income driven plans qualify.Right?
So if all those criteria aremet, then you're 120 of those
payments, and then you're outthe door. They do not have to be
(16:37):
consecutive. Right? So it's likeif you were working and then you
got a job in a private practiceand then you decided to go back
and teach or something afterthat, that time in the private
practice wouldn't count, but thetime on either ends would. Okay.
Davina (16:51):
Oh, interesting.
Scotty (16:52):
So they don't have to be consecutive. And so what I'll
always do with people is belike, okay. Well, what's the
balance of your loan that wouldbe forgiven? And then what is
that annualized? Right?
So if we think you're gonna get$200,000 worth of loan
forgiveness and you would stillneed to work in your public
sector job for another, like,four years to be able to do it,
(17:13):
then the value of that loanforgiveness is the forgiveness
divided by the time left youhave to do it. Right? And then
so we just see, basically, it'slike, okay. If you can make over
the course of that time, sayit's like $200,000 worth of loan
forgiveness and you're doingover four years, so that
basically a $50,000 a yearbenefit to you, could you make
(17:35):
more than that in a privatesector, like your public sector
plus the 50 k, that's what yougotta do to be able to beat
PSLF. Right?
Davina (17:44):
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Scotty (17:45):
Or vice versa. So it's something I do, like, literally
with every single PSLF client.Yeah.
Davina (17:50):
Yeah. Interesting. I have a friend from law school
who has in the number you'retalking about, the higher range
of those numbers because she hasmultiple degrees and advanced
degrees and things like that.And she, started a nonprofit to
be able to have, have someadvantage Uh-huh. For her
(18:12):
student loans.
So what have you had have youhad many clients
Scotty (18:17):
to do? This is like this is yes. So this gets into the
sort of the the the the squishyareas, the gray areas of student
loans. So, if please don't dothat just for student loan
forgiveness. Please have alegitimate nonprofit.
Please abide by the legitimatere
Davina (18:35):
she had a legitimate nonprofit, but that was
Scotty (18:37):
part of the motivation. She was legitimate. I would be
very I I always advocate forclients. Do not be the person
signing off on your own forms.Right?
So if you're gonna have anonprofit that you've created,
good for you. You know? CatRescue of Southern Florida or
whatever. You know? Have aboard.
Have a a chief operatingofficer. Do not be the one
(18:59):
that's signing off on your ownform. Right?
Davina (19:02):
Right.
Scotty (19:02):
It's just like not that anybody has, to my knowledge,
ever been audited for a forfalsifying a student loan
employment certification form.But we live in uncharted water,
folks. You know? And it's like,don't give anybody, you know,
access to Any yeah. Any reasonto to come at you, especially if
(19:24):
you have, you know, like a youcould have your license pulled.
You know? Like Right. Right. Soyou got stuff to lose, you know,
more than a lot of other peopledo.
Davina (19:36):
Yeah. So tell me what well, I started out this talking
about the what's going on in infederal lending world and with
the federal government. Tell uskind of where where we are right
now because I think there's alot of change that seems to
happen fast, but then maybe thewheels are moving a little slow
(19:58):
and there actually haven't beenlaws passed. But give us an idea
of where we were, where we are,and where we may be headed.
Scotty (20:06):
So let's talk about, like, on January 19, where we
were, and then I can kinda,like, catch you guys up to to to
where we are now. So the Bidenadministration did a lot of
stuff. They were very aggressiveabout trying to get relief to
student loan borrowers and totry and, like, fix a lot of the
problems that had plagued thestudent loan system for a really
(20:28):
long time. One of those thingsthat's probably you know, folks
remember, it seems like ancienthistory now with as much as news
comes out on a daily basis. But,like Right.
The one time cancellation thatthe Supreme Court shot down.
Right? And then they said, okay.No one time cancellation. So
they were gonna put forth thissave plan, the saving on a
(20:48):
valuable education plan, whichis one of those IDR plans that
we talked about.
And it was much more generousthan any of the other plans that
went for it, and it kind of madeforgiveness an opportunity if
you were, like, one x more Imean, it's like if your income
was slightly below your debt,then you were probably getting
(21:09):
forgiveness. Right? Much moregenerous calculation for the
poverty line deduction. In fact,so generous that it got sued.
The Biden administration gotsued by a consortium of of
Republican AGs, and, it'scurrently enjoined by the eighth
circuit.
Right? So, everyone that was onan older plan from the Obama
(21:32):
administration called REPAY hadbeen pushed on to this new save
plan, and then a whole bunch ofother people jumped onto it
because it was like, oh my god.Finally, some relief. Right? So
there's, like, 8,000,000 ishfolks that are currently on the
save forbearance while that kindof works its way through the
court.
Okay. So there's a bunch ofpeople that are like, their
(21:53):
loans are paused. They're notable to make a payment even if
they wanted to, and they'recurrently not being charged
interest, but they're also notmaking any progress towards loan
forgiveness. Right? Becausethose forbearances don't count
currently.
So that's thing one. The otherbig thing that the Biden
administration tried to do anddid actually do is this thing
(22:16):
called the IDR accountadjustment. Right? So for the
last whatever twenty years, loanservicers had been giving really
sort of crummy advice for avariety of different reasons to
borrowers, putting them intoforbearances when they should
have been steered into incomedriven plans, not telling them
that they needed to consolidatetheir loans so they'd have
(22:37):
access to these other morepreferential programs, all these
different things. So the Bidenadministration said, okay.
We're gonna say if you've hadany time in repayment with any
type of loan in any type ofrepayment program, if you
consolidate your loans, we'regonna give you credit for that
entire time, whether you're inforbearance that was greater
than twelve months orcumulatively greater than thirty
(22:57):
six months. Awesome. And so thatwas, like, an unbelievable boon
to a ton of people that didn'tlike, thought that they were
these lost causes. You know? Andespecially people that had loans
that had different time framesin repayment.
So say you had a couple ofthousand bucks worth of
(23:20):
undergrad debt, and then youwent to law school and you have
a couple $100,000 of law schooldebt. If those time frames were
different, if you consolidatedthe loans within the right
window, the whole portfolio gotthe history of the oldest loan.
Right? So I had clients I hadclients that had hundreds of
thousands of dollars of lawschool debt that was much newer,
nowhere near twenty years,twenty five years of repayment.
(23:43):
But because they had a couple ofdumb thousand dollar loans from
undergrad that had been inrepayment for eighteen years,
they made, you know, twenty fourmonths of payments and got,
like, a massive amount forgiven.
Davina (23:53):
Wow. Wow.
Scotty (23:54):
Super, super powerful. When the Trump administration
came into power in in January,that tracker that the Biden
administration put on wasremoved from the website. So,
like, the account adjustment hadhappened. People's, like,
accounts had been, like,adjusted to reflect those
(24:14):
forbearances and other timesthat didn't count. And they'd
posted a tracker on the website.
That's been taken down. And andliterally as of this week,
they've said they're gonna putit back up. Thanks, Elizabeth
Warren.
Davina (24:25):
So
Scotty (24:28):
so that's something to look forward to. If you had this
account tracker up and now it'sgone, it doesn't mean that
credit is gone. It just meansthat they took it down as part
of, like, a revamping of thewebsite, and they're and they're
moving it back up. So those arethe two big things that are
currently, like, working theirway through it. The other
really, really big thing is thebig, beautiful bill budget
(24:48):
reconciliation that's kind ofworking its way through
congress, which would, like,fundamentally change the student
landscape the student loanlandscape in America.
Davina (24:57):
Tell me about that.
Scotty (24:58):
Yeah. The big beautiful bill mainly has a couple really
key components when it comes tostudent loans, and it's
different between the house andthe senate. So most of what
they're talking about doing isgetting rid of all of the
student loan repayment plansexcept for potentially two,
(25:20):
something called IBR, incomebased repayment, and this new
plan, the Republican plan that'scalled RAP, the repayment
assistance program. And soanybody and everybody would be
forced either onto one of thosetwo options. And for borrowers
post 2026, July 2026, the wrapplan would be the only thing
(25:41):
available.
And sort of the, like, the sortof TLDR on the wrap plan is that
it'd be a much less generousplan. The payment would be based
on your adjusted gross income,not on your discretionary
income. So there would no longerbe a deduction for the federal
poverty line for folks. Right?And it's basically a very a much
(26:04):
less generous interest subsidy,and you're in repayment until
you've paid back the equivalentof your original balance.
Right? Even if your loaninterest is, like, ballooned to
a gazillion dollars, it's like,you borrow $200,000, you're
gonna be in in that paymentprogram until then. So the very
(26:25):
small $50 per child sort ofcredit for for family size, but
that's kind of it. They wouldalso take all of the other loan
repayment programs and throwthem out and only have IVR. And
the way it's currently writtenis only IVR has two different
versions of it.
One that is for folks that ispre 2014, which we call old IVR,
(26:51):
and one for folks that are after2014, which we call new IVR.
Such clever thing. And the thethe interesting thing about that
IVR plan is that it's actuallyin statute. Right? So congress
actually passed.
This is the thing. This is theIVR plan. This is what we
intended to do, and it saysforgiveness at the end of it.
All of the other plans thatfolks might be familiar with so
(27:14):
ICR, income contingentrepayment, the pay as you earn
plan, and the newer version ofIVR were created by executive
order and and negotiatedrulemaking. Right?
So so they can take them awaywithout an act of congress. And
so since the only thing that isactually in statute is the IBR
plan, that's what they're goingto force it onto, which is like
(27:37):
I said, if you're still two toone debt to income ratio, still
a pretty good deal for a lot offolks. You know? It's like
you're not totally out of thewoods, but not as generous as
the other plans. And it's kindalike changing the rules on a lot
of folks kinda midstream.
You know? It's as if you, like,bought a house on you know, with
a mortgage that said it was x,and then the bank says, just
(28:00):
kidding. We're gonna be
Davina (28:01):
changing it. Yeah.
Scotty (28:02):
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So I I can't imagine that there's
not class action lawsuits aboutthe sort of revoking of the
promissory notes of, you know,tens of millions of people that
thought that they had signed upfor one deal, and now they're
getting another one. Yeah.
Yeah.
Davina (28:19):
And they have no say in the deal. It is it's the deal
that's being forced upon them.
Scotty (28:25):
The deal is being forced upon them. So, yes, they do have
so this is something that's,like, really interesting in my
work with folks, like individualborrowers. One of the secret
little sneaky sneaky weaponsthat we have is the constituent
services folks at your localcongressperson and senator's
(28:45):
office. They listen to people.And so, like, being that squeaky
wheel, like, letting folks know,letting your representatives
know that, like, this is gonnahave a really material impact on
me being able to, you know,leave that, like, super
stressful public interest joband start my own firm where I
(29:05):
can hire 14 different people andcreate value for my community,
you know, all these differentthings that you're being held up
from doing because of theseproposed changes.
You know?
Davina (29:14):
Yeah. Being a job creator.
Scotty (29:16):
Yeah. So it really makes a big difference.
Davina (29:19):
Talk to me about the before we I wanna do I do wanna
talk about the parent postloans. Before we get there, talk
to me about are you are youworking with very many people
who start their own firms? Andhow does that how do they, and
how are we taking student loansin consideration we are starting
there's not a public interestjob, we're starting our own law
(29:39):
firm, this is what we're doing,or other things like you know,
we're not in a public interestjob. We're in a private firm.
We're wanting to buy a house.
We're wanting to have kids.We're wanting to do whatever.
What kinds of situations are youseeing, and how are we how are
you able to help people withthat?
Scotty (29:56):
Yeah. So I have I have a lot of folks that are public
interest folks. I have a lot offolks that are, you know, solo
practices or, like, threepartner practices. I have a
handful of folks that are, youknow, in house counsel at
national brands that you haveheard of, right, for clients. So
for the folks that are startingtheir own firms or thinking
(30:16):
about starting their own firms,being a business owner gives you
a whole lot of control over yourtaxable income.
Right? So for instance, like, ifyou are an associate working at
a firm, and it's a decent firm,they probably have a four zero
one k. Right? You can put$23,500 into your four zero one
(30:37):
k. Right?
But if you are a solopractitioner that started their
own firm, well, now you can do asolo four zero one k, and you
can do $23,000 and anadditional, like, up to $69,000
total into the four zero one k.That lowers your AGI for this
year, sets you up for a goodretirement, and it lowers your
student loan payment. Right?Making sure that you're kind of
(30:59):
optimizing your income to takeadvantage of QBI deduction that
further lowers your AGI. Youknow?
So for small firms, there's alot of interesting ways of
making sure a lot of the taxoptimization stuff is is dialed
in, mainly on how do you reducetaxable income. Yeah. So that's
like the main thing that wereally work with folks is like,
(31:19):
what are the levers that we canpull to reduce taxable income?
Davina (31:23):
Right.
Scotty (31:23):
Yeah. Right. So making sure people have those small
plans set up is, like, thebiggest lever for most people.
Yeah.
Davina (31:28):
Are you seeing a lot of a lot of people coming in with
their own loans, and thenthey're signing loans for their
kids?
Scotty (31:37):
Yes. And those are some of, like, the most heartbreaking
cases by, like, a long shot.Right? Because the people that
need parent plus loans are bydefault not terribly wealthy
people. You know?
Mhmm. And the parent plus loansare particularly sad because,
one, there's no limit on howmuch you can borrow. Right? So I
(31:58):
have clients that, like, havelarge families. We're working
their whole, you know, childhoodfor these the kids.
And when it's time for these,like, kids to go up to college,
they're, like, all relying onstudent loans, and undergraduate
borrowing is capped at, like,you know, $30,000 ish. And so if
they're going to grad school,then they're taking out parent
plus loans or they're doing gradplus loans. So the bummer about
(32:21):
parent plus loans is thatthey're only really eligible for
one of the income driven plans.This thing called ICR, income
contingent repayment. And youhave to consolidate to be able
to get access to that.
That is the, like, the leastgenerous of any of the plans. So
we've been talking about, like,a 10 to 15% of discretionary
(32:44):
income. ICR is 20% ofdiscretionary income. Right?
There had been a process bywhich you could consolidate your
loans in a couple of steps, adouble consolidation process
that helped people that was aloophole that helped people get
on to the more generous incomedriven plan, save, pay, new IBR.
(33:07):
That loophole is very muchclosing. And it looks like in
both of these proposed billsthat people that are in that
have had loans be repaid had hadcurrent consolidation loan that
repaid loans that containedparent plus loans could
potentially be kicked off of allof it if they're not in ICR
(33:29):
currently on the day the loanthe big beautiful bill passes.
So we've seen in the last, like,week when we, like, read and
reread and reread the actual,like, proposed text of the
legislation, 1,100 pages of it.Well, we didn't read all 1,100
pages, to be perfectly honest.We read, like, you know, a
couple of dozen pages that hadpertained to student loans.
(33:52):
And it looks like there's somevery scary stuff in there for
parent plus borrowers becausethat thought that they were out
of the woods, thought that theyhad done all the stuff that was
recommended to get on to thesemore generous plans. And now
they could just be, like, bootedoff of it. And these are folks
that are like, I have clientsthat are in their sixties,
(34:12):
seventies, you know, that have
Davina (34:13):
Right.
Scotty (34:14):
Hundreds of thousands of dollars, $700,000 plus of this
one family I'm thinking of. Youknow, they're not probably
paying that back. And so it'smorbid to think about, but one
of the main benefits of federalstudent loans is death and
disability discharge. Right? Soit's like, maybe we just pay the
(34:36):
little as we can, put this intoforbearance three years, and
because you can do three yearsof forbearance for most loans.
If you're in your seventies,maybe just kinda run off the
clock on this thing. Die withyour loans. We have an article
about it on the website. Iwouldn't I wouldn't die on
purpose just to get rid of yourstudent loans, but if you have
some other good reason to die
Davina (34:56):
But if that happens, gig for the kids.
Scotty (34:58):
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is there's some strategic
retirement planning that cancome to effect with Parent PLUS
borrowers. Because if they areon an ICR plan that's tied to
their AGI. Right?
And if, like, we can push thatpayment out a couple of years by
using strategic forbearances,for instance, and we can get
(35:19):
them into retirement whenthey're gonna have a much lower
income perhaps than theirworking years. And this is
probably not the case so muchfor for your audience because I
don't know very many lawyersthat retire. So but for people
so just for your audience. Soretirement's this thing where
you stop working and then you doother stuff that's presumably
(35:40):
more enjoyable. Like, somepeople, like, interact with
their families.
Some people go travel. You know?Yeah.
Davina (35:47):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because it depends
because there it's just thelawyer answer. It depends. It
depends because I got somepeople who tell me that, oh, I
wanna retire at 40. I only wannado this for x number of years,
then I don't wanna do itanymore.
And so Yeah. The urgency of sortof dealing with these student
loans so that we're not carryingthem beyond into whatever else
(36:08):
next phase of life. Sure. I'veI've had conversations with
people who just kind of said,just stop paying it. I don't
want to think about it, dealwith it.
And then when they went to buy ahouse, they were like, okay, now
I need to do what I need to do.And they were able to jump
through some hoops, make somenegotiation with the student
(36:29):
loan, and then get it back ontrack and and Yep.
Scotty (36:32):
So there was specifically during the
pandemic, there was a programcalled Fresh Start, which helped
people that were in default getout of default so that they
could then, you know, start tomove forward with their credit.
But, like, because there are nothere's no collateral for a
student loan, we can't, like,take back your, you know,
education. The they are the mostdifficult to discharge not
(36:54):
impossible, but difficult todischarge types of debts.
Davina (36:58):
Bankruptcy is a he it's it's it's available for
everything else but studentloans and taxes. I mean, like,
you to try to Yeah. Dischargeyour student loan in bankruptcy.
Like, you know, you gotta be inan iron lung or something. Like,
there's no Basically.
Scotty (37:15):
Yeah. Yeah. The good news for people that are buying
houses is that a decent mortgagebroker will know to use the
income driven payment as part ofyour debt to income ratio and
not the total balance of theloan. So if by default, they
just see some debt on yourbalance sheet, they'll use 1% of
(37:36):
the loan balance per month asthe obligation for that loan,
which is not what the actualobligation is if they're on an
income driven plan. So that's apretty, like, useful, like,
practical tip for folks is thatif your if your lender is not
using your IDR payment as aspart of your debt to income
calculation, make sure they aredoing that because they're
(37:58):
allowed to, and and a lot don't.
The good ones will, but a lot alot don't. Yeah.
Davina (38:04):
Right.
Scotty (38:04):
So for that person, it might not have been as scary as
they would have thought it was.So yeah.
Davina (38:09):
So my advice is that this I am sitting here listening
to this, and, when you starttalking numbers, my eyes start
glazing over. And I think it'sthe way it is for most lawyers,
who say things like, I don't domath. That's why I went to law
school. As we're sitting heregoing, oh my god. What?
What did he say? So my advice isif you are if you have some
(38:32):
hefty loans, would be good toconsult with experts who do this
all day every day like studentloan planner, the financial,
advisor who specializes instudent loans, because you might
be leaving money on the table,you might be in a plan or in a
situation where you're notmaximizing your strategies that
(38:56):
you can be maximizing to sort ofminimize the impact that this
student loan will have on yourfinancial life.
Scotty (39:01):
For sure.
Davina (39:02):
Fair to say?
Scotty (39:03):
Fair to say. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. Like, you
know, we do comprehensivefinancial planning for folks in
addition to doing one offstudent loan plans for people.
And there's not many areas offinancial planning where I
regularly make 6 figure impactson people's financial lives.
I do it all the time. All thetime optimizing people's student
(39:26):
loan situations. So it's, like,pretty life changing for people.
Davina (39:30):
Yeah. That really is It's
Scotty (39:32):
really fun.
Davina (39:32):
When you're when you're looking yeah. That's gotta be
very rewarding to
Scotty (39:35):
Yeah.
Davina (39:36):
To know that you're having that impact on somebody's
life because that makes a hugedifference in the long term. I
know a lot of people whenthey're young, they don't
they're not thinking the longterm consequences of things. I
know I didn't. And now that I'molder and I look back and go,
man, look at all the stupidmistakes I made. And I wish I
(39:57):
had gotten more advice frompeople who were experts in
certain areas.
So this would be one of thoseareas. If you're carrying
student loan debt, I think thatit would be really smart and
wise to do that. Tell us how wecan learn more about what you
do, get in touch with you,
Scotty (40:10):
connect with your team. I'm happy to put my you know, my
my email is justScottie@studentloanplanner, s c
o t t y, or Scottie at SLPWealth, s l p u l, if you wanted
a more comprehensive approach.And subscribe to our newsletter.
It's, like, literally the mostup to date information on
student loans that's out there.We have a podcast that comes out
(40:32):
twice a week.
The Tuesday podcast is morefocused on, like, the current
craziness of student loans, andthen we've kind of transitioned
the Friday podcast to be moresort of, like, general sort of
wealth planning and financialplanning stuff. And we do one
off consultations with peoplewhere we take a deep dive into
(40:54):
your actual student loan datafile and do some projections
and, you know, run thosecalculations like I was telling
you. Like, what is PSLF actuallyworth to me? Could I be doing
you know, does it matter? Andthen, like, what I really,
really always try to do withpeople is put that number in
context of, okay.
Student loans is just one partof your financial life. But in
(41:15):
the grand scheme of things, whatI really care about for you is
when are you financiallyindependent. Right? Right. And
putting putting the financialputting student loans as one
piece of that journey is, like,crazy powerful because you'd be
like, well, I have $800,000 ofstudent loans, but it only makes
it one year longer for me to befinancially independent if I do
this optimized plan.
Right.
Davina (41:36):
Okay. Maybe I will do why I think it's so important is
because I I guarantee you peopleare not thinking about, I mean,
it's complex. It's complex toeven understand. A lot of what
you've shared today, I thinkthere are a lot of people who
are going, oh my god. What didhe just And so meeting with
somebody who specializes in thatarea can help you put it in
context.
(41:56):
And that really does a lotpsychologically for people as
well if you say integrating.This is just part of my and when
I actually look at the numbers,here's the reality of it, and
here's what and it may not be asbad as you think it is. But I
think that's what you're gettingat. Right? May not be as bad
Scotty (42:10):
as you believe is. It's often not as bad as you think it
is. And if you end up payingyour student loans back
completely, well,congratulations, that just means
you're making a boatload ofmoney. So good for you. It's a
great great problem greatproblem to have that I've that I
would love to, you know, takeoff your plate.
So
Davina (42:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful.
Scotty (42:27):
Thank you. We also do I was also gonna mention we also
do group webinars and thingsoccasionally for organizations
and groups. So if you have your,you know, local bar association
or your, you know, youngattorneys group or whatever,
we're happy to come and talk togroups and things as
Davina (42:43):
well. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I will share
any all those links that youtalked about. When you send
those to me, we'll share them inthe show notes.
Everybody can click on them. Iappreciate you being here and
sharing with me. This has beenreally interesting conversation.
Scotty (42:57):
Happy to be here. Thank you for the
Intro (43:00):
If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in
your business and your life,then you'll want to us at
wealthywomanlawyer.com to learnmore about how we help our
clients create wealth generatinglaw firms with ease.
Welcome to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast. What
you could hang out withsuccessful women lawyers, ask
them about growing their firms,managing resources like time,
team, and systems, masteringmoney issues, and more? Then
take an insight or two to helpyou build a wealth generating
law firm. Each week, your host,Devina Frederick, takes an
(00:22):
in-depth look at how to thinklike a CEO, attract clients who
you love to serve and will payyou on time, and create a
profitable, sustainable firm youlove. Devina is founder and CEO
of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and hergoal is to give you the
information you need to scaleyour law firm business from 6 to
7 figures in gross annualrevenue so you can fully fund
(00:43):
and still have time to enjoy thelifestyle of your dreams. Now
here's Devina.
Davina (00:49):
Hello, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer
podcast. I'm your host attorneyDevina Frederick, and my guest
today is Scottie McDonald.Scottie is a financial planner
at SLP Wealth. He also is acertified student loan
professional, CSLP, holds aFINRA series 65 license, and is
a CFP professional. Scotty has agreat passion for helping others
(01:12):
realize the peace of mind thatfinancial clarity can provide.
He has a deep empathy andcuriosity for each individual's
circumstances derived from hiswide range of life experiences
as a small business owner,commercial photographer, and
environmental scientist in thepublic sector. Scotty has
firsthand student loan expertisefrom community colleges,
(01:34):
private, and publicuniversities. When not helping
folks with student loans achievefinancial freedom, Scotty is
very likely going on long trailruns near his home in Santa
Cruz, California. Please join mein welcoming Scotty to the
Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast.Hi, Scotty.
Welcome to the Wealthy WomanLawyer podcast. It's so good to
have you here.
Scotty (01:54):
Devina, thank you so much for having me.
Davina (01:56):
Good. So why don't you start out by telling us a little
bit about, your background andwhat led you to get into this
work?
Scotty (02:05):
Got it. Such a specific weird little niche of the
financial planning world. So, Iam a, a financial planner with,
SLP Wealth and with Student LoanPlanner. And Student Loan
Planner has been around since2017, and we do a whole bunch of
different stuff. The bread andbutter of it is, like, kind of
(02:26):
one on one deep dive consults tohelp people, like, figure out
how to balance and optimizetheir student loan repayment
strategies with the rest of yourlife, you know, because you're
not just a person with studentloans.
You probably have other thingsyou'd like to do with your life.
And so we've been around since2017. I think we've consulted on
close to, like, 19 or 20,000different individuals, student
(02:49):
loans, couple billion dollars ofstudent loan debt over that
time. And and then the bulk ofmy time now is helping folks
figure out, like, what is lifelike after student loans and or
with student loans doingcomprehensive wealth planning at
at at SLP Wealth. I'm also sortof the default attorney adviser
(03:11):
at SLP Wealth, mainly becausewhen we were divvying up the
teams two years ago, nobody elsewanted to do it.
Turns out, like, people are,like, scared of lawyers. They
find lawyers intimidating. Wecan't be.
Davina (03:24):
We're we we mean to be.
Scotty (03:26):
Yeah. I also have a couple of very dear friends that
are public interest attorneysthat I've kind of helped with
their stuff over the years. ButI kind of I love my attorney
clients, and I'm very happy tolet my clients or my colleagues,
like, believe that they're all,like, really scary. I I don't
know if this has been the casefor you, but, like, oftentimes,
people that are in position ofpower are attorneys. And so they
(03:49):
have this, like, sense of agencythat I find really unique
Davina (03:53):
to work with that particular demographic.
Interesting.
Scotty (03:56):
They feel like they can actually, like, affect change,
and they're just not a passengeron the bus. You know?
Davina (04:01):
Right. Right.
Scotty (04:02):
Yes. Yeah. It's a really fun group.
Davina (04:04):
We're very passionate about whatever we're passionate
about, we can we can make a goodargument for it if we want to.
So yeah. So I can see that. I'msure that and probably whoever
drew the short straw got doctorsreally has a challenge because
Scotty (04:19):
The problem the so let me tell you about doctors. As
the brother of a doctor and thisthe brother-in-law of another
doctor, the beautiful thingabout attorneys in my experience
is that attorneys very muchvalue the advice of other
professionals. Right?
Davina (04:36):
Right.
Scotty (04:36):
Whereas doctors, for better or worse, are so well
educated that they'repotentially overeducated and
think they kinda know everythingsometimes.
Davina (04:45):
Yeah. And what I if you can save a life, you know, like,
you you kinda feel like there'sreally nothing nobody else has
done that good. Right? And, so II totally understand that. Let's
talk about student loans.
Is your air of I thought itwould be a really great time to
have you on for this discussionbecause a lot of lawyers got
(05:07):
them and there's been a lot ofchanges happening over the last
few months with the newadministration, out with the old
administration and with the newadministration for better or
worse. Whatever your opinion isabout it, it is what it is, we
gotta deal with it and play inthat arena. What have you seen?
First of all, before we get intothat, give me an idea of the
(05:29):
average amount of student loansyou're seeing lawyers. Is there
an average amount that you'reseeing that lawyers are coming
out of law school with startingtheir own business or getting a
job, and they're having tocontend with this?
What amount what number is that?
Scotty (05:42):
You know, it's pretty rare to see somebody with less
than 200 k, and it's pretty rareto see people with more than,
like, 3 to 400. So it's like ifthey have more than, like, three
or four hundred k of that, itmight have been, like, a second
career or a second degree or,you know, or they had a really
expensive undergrad for somebizarre reason. So, yeah, it's
(06:05):
actually kinda hard to borrowthat. Yeah. I mean, you
physically can't borrow thatmuch in undergrad.
So, or it's people that havetaken on debt for their kids in
the form of, like, parent plusloans, which are currently you
know, we should talk about thateventually. But, like, one of
the areas that are is reallygonna be hurt if the current
(06:27):
legislation that's being debatedin congress passes in the form
that it is currently in. So but,yeah, somewhere in that kinda
two to four kind of range.
Davina (06:36):
And that's not nothing. I mean, that's a
Scotty (06:39):
That's
Davina (06:39):
not nothing. That's a lot of money. Yeah. That used to
be now I don't think it is, butit used to be the amount of a
house. You know?
And now I'm you'd be hardpressed probably to find a house
for
Scotty (06:49):
Yeah.
Davina (06:50):
For 2 to 400, but that's a that's a lot of money. And I,
as somebody, I just paid off mystudent loans from law school,
and I was nowhere near thatamount of money. And I've been a
lawyer for eighteen years, so Ihad a really great interest
rate. So when I hear these someof these amounts with these
interest rates, I'm imaginingthat a lot of your clients,
(07:13):
they're either one of twothings. They are kind of
avoiding thinking about it, orthey just have a belief that it
will work itself out.
This will work itself out. Iwill I'm gonna get this high
paying job, or I'm gonna startmy business and make a lot of
money, and it will all workitself out. Or they have the
flip side of that, which is, ohmy god. What have I done? Right?
(07:34):
And they don't realize thatuntil they get out and they
start wanting to do some otherthings, like have a family or
buy a house or whatever. Sure.What kinds of experiences are
you hearing? Well, you
Scotty (07:46):
know, I always tell people that, like, you don't it
kinda depends on theirsituation. Student loan debt is
really different than any othertype of debt that people kind of
normally encounter for a couplereasons. Functionally, it
operates differently. Studentloan interest is simple
interest. It doesn't compound inthe same way that a credit card
(08:07):
or a car payment or a mortgagekinda does.
Interest on the interest is onlybeing charged interest on the
principal original principal.The other thing that makes
student loan debt really, reallydifferent than other types of
debt is that there are incomedriven plans. Right? So IDR,
income driven plans, is thisterm you get thrown a lot in the
(08:28):
news, and there's a handful ofdifferent plans that are sort of
under that umbrella, which wecan talk about in in more
detail. But because of thoseincome driven plans, student
loans function much more like atax than they do like a debt.
So, you know, you'll payanywhere from 10 to 15% of your
discretionary income, and you dothat for a certain period of
(08:51):
time, ten years if you're in apublic service job, fifteen or,
you know, twenty or twenty fiveyears if you're in a a private
sector position. And then thebalance is forgiven with
potentially or not potentially aa tax implication. So what I
tell people is like, okay. Forthe privilege of being an
attorney for the rest of yourlife, dentist, veterinarian,
(09:15):
physician, whatever, would youpay an extra 10 to 15% of your
income for, like, you know,fifteen to twenty years. And
almost all of them say, wouldyou take that deal?
And they say, yes. I'm like,well, good. Because that's the
deal you took. Right? That's thedeal you actually took
functionally.
(09:35):
Right? So when you see these bignumbers,
Davina (09:38):
yeah, technically, you owe $400,000 in debt. And, yeah,
technically, if you want it
Scotty (09:42):
to all go away, you
Davina (09:43):
could write some giant check for
Scotty (09:44):
$400,000. But functionally, it operates much,
much more like a tax than itdoes like a debt. And so for
clients hold a lot of, like,shame about this. Like, debt is
like in our society, you messedup. Right?
You messed up, and you're, like,less worthy because you have
this debt or this whatever. Youknow? And it's just like getting
(10:07):
people to reframe it, at least,like, to have an entry point
into the conversation of whatcomes next, and let's manage
this, and let's actually runsome numbers and some
calculations to see, is thisreally holding you up from doing
the things that you wanna do, oris it not in the grand scheme of
things? You know? Right.
So framing it in that way, Ithink, is really helpful for,
(10:27):
like, the starting point. Yeah.
Davina (10:28):
Yeah. I I certainly I certainly there are certain
financial gurus out there whogive advice about getting out of
debt and the importance ofgetting out of debt, and there's
a lot of shame around. You'llhear a lot of people calling in,
talking about I have x number ofstudent loan debt, and there's a
lot of, well, my god. What areyou? A neurosurgeon?
You know? And you're like, well,no. But the reality of it is for
(10:51):
most of us is that we wouldn'thave been able to go to college.
We wouldn't have been able toget advanced degrees. We
wouldn't have been able if wehad not had some sort of way of
paying for it, through a loanbecause we come from families
that don't.
Yeah. And and I think there'stremendous value in the
education that comes from itbecause it changes the
trajectory of your life when youhave when you have a law degree.
(11:15):
Certainly, it does. Right? Itchanges everything.
Right? Yeah. So, regardless ofpeople's thoughts or opinions
on, you know, whether that was agood whether Aunt Jenny thinks
that was a good decision or abad opinion bad decision. It's
really none of our business. Shecan think what she wants.
Here we are. We've made it. Nowwe have student loan debt.
Scotty (11:35):
Now we have student loan debt.
Davina (11:36):
Yeah. And we're wanting and we also have a degree, and
now we need to go move forward.So talk to me about how you guys
help your clients. What whatwhen they're coming to you, what
are they're coming to you? Whatare their concerns when they're
coming to you?
Scotty (11:52):
Yeah. So a lot of the folks that we deal with are
folks that are kind of freshlyout of law school or kind of,
you know, first job, and nowthey're actually, like, having
to start to pay the stuff back.And so and a lot of, you know,
public interest attorneys andgovernment attorneys and DAs
and, you know,
Davina (12:11):
other stuff,
Scotty (12:12):
public defenders. And we start by, like, looking at what
the debt is, how much it is, andkind of what their debt to
income ratios are. So for thekind of the current plans left
standing, if your debt to incomeratio is, like, two to one, like
twice as much debt to income,Even in the least generous of
(12:34):
these plans, a lot of times,you're a forgiveness candidate
still. Right? So the paymentwill be based on your adjusted
gross income with a deductionfor the federal poverty line,
and you'll make that payment fora certain amount of years, and
then the balance is forgiven.
If your debt is 1.5 times, thenit's an edge case, and there's a
(12:58):
little more strategery to dowith it. And if your debt is
less than one x your income,you're probably gonna end up
paying it off. And so in thosesituations, we would run through
the pros and cons of, like, dowe keep these loans in the
federal system even though wecould get maybe a slightly lower
(13:19):
interest rate if we were torefinance them? Or do we kinda
just wait and see with all thevolatility in the world that's
going on right now? Is it worthjust keeping things in the
federal system that has a lot ofserious protections?
You know? Death and disabilitydischarge is a protection.
Cancer deferment is aprotection. Like, things that
just don't exist in the in thepublic sector I'm sorry, in the
private sector for for loans.You gotta pay them, you know,
(13:42):
whether you you're whetheryou're a hospital bed or not.
You gotta pay your student loansif they're private student
loans. It's not the case forfederal student loans. So
sometimes it can be worse evenif you are one of those edge
cases to kinda hedge to stay inthe federal system even if it's
ever so slightly more expensive.And then we dive into, like,
(14:03):
what are all the ways that wecan optimize for your student
loan payment? Right?
Which turns out like, so forthinking about student loan
payments as if they are a tax,well, if someone's living in New
York or California and they'remaking, you know, $250,000 a
year upwards of that, then, youknow, you're probably already in
(14:23):
a 24 to 32% federal tax bracket.Call it another eight to 10%
sometimes for state and localstuff, plus another 15. It's
like we're scratching at 50%effective tax rates for a lot of
these folks. You know? No joke.
And so everything that we can doto reduce taxable income
because, like, that's what allthis stuff is tied to becomes
(14:43):
really important. So there's,like, some really interesting
planning opportunities for howto reduce taxable income. Right?
Davina (14:49):
So that's kind of interesting because that's a
little bit like, you know, Ithink a lot of people think,
well, the only way I have so Iborrowed so much. The only way
that I'm going to be able to paythis off is to do public
interest work. And my goal mydream was to go open my own firm
(15:10):
or work for somebody orwhatever, and then they're kind
of faced with this decision ofdoing that. Do you have you had
conversations with people aboutthat like that?
Scotty (15:18):
Every single every single client that is going
through public service loanforgiveness, I always run the
numbers for them because peoplefeel trapped. I did and this is,
my my story specifically,actually, that I had student
loans of my own. I was at thetime working as an environmental
scientist for a big water agencyhere in the Bay Area. And, you
know, part of my whole plan waslike, I'm gonna get public
(15:41):
service student loanforgiveness. Now my personal
loans were not so much that itwas worth making life decisions
Yeah.
Over them. But but if I had$350,000 worth of, you know,
Davina (15:53):
law school
Scotty (15:53):
debt or something, it might maybe we'd feel
differently about that. And so,yeah, it's a calculation that I
always run with folks to showthem, like, okay. If you were
going for public service loanforgiveness and you were gonna
be completely done with this inten years, a 120 payments.
Right? And maybe I should just,like, step back.
The public service loanforgiveness program has, like,
four main criteria. You have tohave the right type of job. So
(16:16):
working for a government entityor a five o five zero one three
c, you gotta do it at leastthirty hours a week while you're
making student loan paymentsthat are in the right type of
plan with the right type of loantypes. So direct loans, any of
the income driven plans qualify.Right?
So if all those criteria aremet, then you're 120 of those
payments, and then you're outthe door. They do not have to be
(16:37):
consecutive. Right? So it's likeif you were working and then you
got a job in a private practiceand then you decided to go back
and teach or something afterthat, that time in the private
practice wouldn't count, but thetime on either ends would. Okay.
Davina (16:51):
Oh, interesting.
Scotty (16:52):
So they don't have to be consecutive. And so what I'll
always do with people is belike, okay. Well, what's the
balance of your loan that wouldbe forgiven? And then what is
that annualized? Right?
So if we think you're gonna get$200,000 worth of loan
forgiveness and you would stillneed to work in your public
sector job for another, like,four years to be able to do it,
(17:13):
then the value of that loanforgiveness is the forgiveness
divided by the time left youhave to do it. Right? And then
so we just see, basically, it'slike, okay. If you can make over
the course of that time, sayit's like $200,000 worth of loan
forgiveness and you're doingover four years, so that
basically a $50,000 a yearbenefit to you, could you make
(17:35):
more than that in a privatesector, like your public sector
plus the 50 k, that's what yougotta do to be able to beat
PSLF. Right?
Davina (17:44):
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Scotty (17:45):
Or vice versa. So it's something I do, like, literally
with every single PSLF client.Yeah.
Davina (17:50):
Yeah. Interesting. I have a friend from law school
who has in the number you'retalking about, the higher range
of those numbers because she hasmultiple degrees and advanced
degrees and things like that.And she, started a nonprofit to
be able to have, have someadvantage Uh-huh. For her
(18:12):
student loans.
So what have you had have youhad many clients
Scotty (18:17):
to do? This is like this is yes. So this gets into the
sort of the the the the squishyareas, the gray areas of student
loans. So, if please don't dothat just for student loan
forgiveness. Please have alegitimate nonprofit.
Please abide by the legitimatere
Davina (18:35):
she had a legitimate nonprofit, but that was
Scotty (18:37):
part of the motivation. She was legitimate. I would be
very I I always advocate forclients. Do not be the person
signing off on your own forms.Right?
So if you're gonna have anonprofit that you've created,
good for you. You know? CatRescue of Southern Florida or
whatever. You know? Have aboard.
Have a a chief operatingofficer. Do not be the one
(18:59):
that's signing off on your ownform. Right?
Davina (19:02):
Right.
Scotty (19:02):
It's just like not that anybody has, to my knowledge,
ever been audited for a forfalsifying a student loan
employment certification form.But we live in uncharted water,
folks. You know? And it's like,don't give anybody, you know,
access to Any yeah. Any reasonto to come at you, especially if
(19:24):
you have, you know, like a youcould have your license pulled.
You know? Like Right. Right. Soyou got stuff to lose, you know,
more than a lot of other peopledo.
Davina (19:36):
Yeah. So tell me what well, I started out this talking
about the what's going on in infederal lending world and with
the federal government. Tell uskind of where where we are right
now because I think there's alot of change that seems to
happen fast, but then maybe thewheels are moving a little slow
(19:58):
and there actually haven't beenlaws passed. But give us an idea
of where we were, where we are,and where we may be headed.
Scotty (20:06):
So let's talk about, like, on January 19, where we
were, and then I can kinda,like, catch you guys up to to to
where we are now. So the Bidenadministration did a lot of
stuff. They were very aggressiveabout trying to get relief to
student loan borrowers and totry and, like, fix a lot of the
problems that had plagued thestudent loan system for a really
(20:28):
long time. One of those thingsthat's probably you know, folks
remember, it seems like ancienthistory now with as much as news
comes out on a daily basis. But,like Right.
The one time cancellation thatthe Supreme Court shot down.
Right? And then they said, okay.No one time cancellation. So
they were gonna put forth thissave plan, the saving on a
(20:48):
valuable education plan, whichis one of those IDR plans that
we talked about.
And it was much more generousthan any of the other plans that
went for it, and it kind of madeforgiveness an opportunity if
you were, like, one x more Imean, it's like if your income
was slightly below your debt,then you were probably getting
(21:09):
forgiveness. Right? Much moregenerous calculation for the
poverty line deduction. In fact,so generous that it got sued.
The Biden administration gotsued by a consortium of of
Republican AGs, and, it'scurrently enjoined by the eighth
circuit.
Right? So, everyone that was onan older plan from the Obama
(21:32):
administration called REPAY hadbeen pushed on to this new save
plan, and then a whole bunch ofother people jumped onto it
because it was like, oh my god.Finally, some relief. Right? So
there's, like, 8,000,000 ishfolks that are currently on the
save forbearance while that kindof works its way through the
court.
Okay. So there's a bunch ofpeople that are like, their
(21:53):
loans are paused. They're notable to make a payment even if
they wanted to, and they'recurrently not being charged
interest, but they're also notmaking any progress towards loan
forgiveness. Right? Becausethose forbearances don't count
currently.
So that's thing one. The otherbig thing that the Biden
administration tried to do anddid actually do is this thing
(22:16):
called the IDR accountadjustment. Right? So for the
last whatever twenty years, loanservicers had been giving really
sort of crummy advice for avariety of different reasons to
borrowers, putting them intoforbearances when they should
have been steered into incomedriven plans, not telling them
that they needed to consolidatetheir loans so they'd have
(22:37):
access to these other morepreferential programs, all these
different things. So the Bidenadministration said, okay.
We're gonna say if you've hadany time in repayment with any
type of loan in any type ofrepayment program, if you
consolidate your loans, we'regonna give you credit for that
entire time, whether you're inforbearance that was greater
than twelve months orcumulatively greater than thirty
(22:57):
six months. Awesome. And so thatwas, like, an unbelievable boon
to a ton of people that didn'tlike, thought that they were
these lost causes. You know? Andespecially people that had loans
that had different time framesin repayment.
So say you had a couple ofthousand bucks worth of
(23:20):
undergrad debt, and then youwent to law school and you have
a couple $100,000 of law schooldebt. If those time frames were
different, if you consolidatedthe loans within the right
window, the whole portfolio gotthe history of the oldest loan.
Right? So I had clients I hadclients that had hundreds of
thousands of dollars of lawschool debt that was much newer,
nowhere near twenty years,twenty five years of repayment.
(23:43):
But because they had a couple ofdumb thousand dollar loans from
undergrad that had been inrepayment for eighteen years,
they made, you know, twenty fourmonths of payments and got,
like, a massive amount forgiven.
Davina (23:53):
Wow. Wow.
Scotty (23:54):
Super, super powerful. When the Trump administration
came into power in in January,that tracker that the Biden
administration put on wasremoved from the website. So,
like, the account adjustment hadhappened. People's, like,
accounts had been, like,adjusted to reflect those
(24:14):
forbearances and other timesthat didn't count. And they'd
posted a tracker on the website.
That's been taken down. And andliterally as of this week,
they've said they're gonna putit back up. Thanks, Elizabeth
Warren.
Davina (24:25):
So
Scotty (24:28):
so that's something to look forward to. If you had this
account tracker up and now it'sgone, it doesn't mean that
credit is gone. It just meansthat they took it down as part
of, like, a revamping of thewebsite, and they're and they're
moving it back up. So those arethe two big things that are
currently, like, working theirway through it. The other
really, really big thing is thebig, beautiful bill budget
(24:48):
reconciliation that's kind ofworking its way through
congress, which would, like,fundamentally change the student
landscape the student loanlandscape in America.
Davina (24:57):
Tell me about that.
Scotty (24:58):
Yeah. The big beautiful bill mainly has a couple really
key components when it comes tostudent loans, and it's
different between the house andthe senate. So most of what
they're talking about doing isgetting rid of all of the
student loan repayment plansexcept for potentially two,
(25:20):
something called IBR, incomebased repayment, and this new
plan, the Republican plan that'scalled RAP, the repayment
assistance program. And soanybody and everybody would be
forced either onto one of thosetwo options. And for borrowers
post 2026, July 2026, the wrapplan would be the only thing
(25:41):
available.
And sort of the, like, the sortof TLDR on the wrap plan is that
it'd be a much less generousplan. The payment would be based
on your adjusted gross income,not on your discretionary
income. So there would no longerbe a deduction for the federal
poverty line for folks. Right?And it's basically a very a much
(26:04):
less generous interest subsidy,and you're in repayment until
you've paid back the equivalentof your original balance.
Right? Even if your loaninterest is, like, ballooned to
a gazillion dollars, it's like,you borrow $200,000, you're
gonna be in in that paymentprogram until then. So the very
(26:25):
small $50 per child sort ofcredit for for family size, but
that's kind of it. They wouldalso take all of the other loan
repayment programs and throwthem out and only have IVR. And
the way it's currently writtenis only IVR has two different
versions of it.
One that is for folks that ispre 2014, which we call old IVR,
(26:51):
and one for folks that are after2014, which we call new IVR.
Such clever thing. And the thethe interesting thing about that
IVR plan is that it's actuallyin statute. Right? So congress
actually passed.
This is the thing. This is theIVR plan. This is what we
intended to do, and it saysforgiveness at the end of it.
All of the other plans thatfolks might be familiar with so
(27:14):
ICR, income contingentrepayment, the pay as you earn
plan, and the newer version ofIVR were created by executive
order and and negotiatedrulemaking. Right?
So so they can take them awaywithout an act of congress. And
so since the only thing that isactually in statute is the IBR
plan, that's what they're goingto force it onto, which is like
(27:37):
I said, if you're still two toone debt to income ratio, still
a pretty good deal for a lot offolks. You know? It's like
you're not totally out of thewoods, but not as generous as
the other plans. And it's kindalike changing the rules on a lot
of folks kinda midstream.
You know? It's as if you, like,bought a house on you know, with
a mortgage that said it was x,and then the bank says, just
(28:00):
kidding. We're gonna be
Davina (28:01):
changing it. Yeah.
Scotty (28:02):
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So I I can't imagine that there's
not class action lawsuits aboutthe sort of revoking of the
promissory notes of, you know,tens of millions of people that
thought that they had signed upfor one deal, and now they're
getting another one. Yeah.
Yeah.
Davina (28:19):
And they have no say in the deal. It is it's the deal
that's being forced upon them.
Scotty (28:25):
The deal is being forced upon them. So, yes, they do have
so this is something that's,like, really interesting in my
work with folks, like individualborrowers. One of the secret
little sneaky sneaky weaponsthat we have is the constituent
services folks at your localcongressperson and senator's
(28:45):
office. They listen to people.And so, like, being that squeaky
wheel, like, letting folks know,letting your representatives
know that, like, this is gonnahave a really material impact on
me being able to, you know,leave that, like, super
stressful public interest joband start my own firm where I
(29:05):
can hire 14 different people andcreate value for my community,
you know, all these differentthings that you're being held up
from doing because of theseproposed changes.
You know?
Davina (29:14):
Yeah. Being a job creator.
Scotty (29:16):
Yeah. So it really makes a big difference.
Davina (29:19):
Talk to me about the before we I wanna do I do wanna
talk about the parent postloans. Before we get there, talk
to me about are you are youworking with very many people
who start their own firms? Andhow does that how do they, and
how are we taking student loansin consideration we are starting
there's not a public interestjob, we're starting our own law
(29:39):
firm, this is what we're doing,or other things like you know,
we're not in a public interestjob. We're in a private firm.
We're wanting to buy a house.
We're wanting to have kids.We're wanting to do whatever.
What kinds of situations are youseeing, and how are we how are
you able to help people withthat?
Scotty (29:56):
Yeah. So I have I have a lot of folks that are public
interest folks. I have a lot offolks that are, you know, solo
practices or, like, threepartner practices. I have a
handful of folks that are, youknow, in house counsel at
national brands that you haveheard of, right, for clients. So
for the folks that are startingtheir own firms or thinking
(30:16):
about starting their own firms,being a business owner gives you
a whole lot of control over yourtaxable income.
Right? So for instance, like, ifyou are an associate working at
a firm, and it's a decent firm,they probably have a four zero
one k. Right? You can put$23,500 into your four zero one
(30:37):
k. Right?
But if you are a solopractitioner that started their
own firm, well, now you can do asolo four zero one k, and you
can do $23,000 and anadditional, like, up to $69,000
total into the four zero one k.That lowers your AGI for this
year, sets you up for a goodretirement, and it lowers your
student loan payment. Right?Making sure that you're kind of
(30:59):
optimizing your income to takeadvantage of QBI deduction that
further lowers your AGI. Youknow?
So for small firms, there's alot of interesting ways of
making sure a lot of the taxoptimization stuff is is dialed
in, mainly on how do you reducetaxable income. Yeah. So that's
like the main thing that wereally work with folks is like,
(31:19):
what are the levers that we canpull to reduce taxable income?
Davina (31:23):
Right.
Scotty (31:23):
Yeah. Right. So making sure people have those small
plans set up is, like, thebiggest lever for most people.
Yeah.
Davina (31:28):
Are you seeing a lot of a lot of people coming in with
their own loans, and thenthey're signing loans for their
kids?
Scotty (31:37):
Yes. And those are some of, like, the most heartbreaking
cases by, like, a long shot.Right? Because the people that
need parent plus loans are bydefault not terribly wealthy
people. You know?
Mhmm. And the parent plus loansare particularly sad because,
one, there's no limit on howmuch you can borrow. Right? So I
(31:58):
have clients that, like, havelarge families. We're working
their whole, you know, childhoodfor these the kids.
And when it's time for these,like, kids to go up to college,
they're, like, all relying onstudent loans, and undergraduate
borrowing is capped at, like,you know, $30,000 ish. And so if
they're going to grad school,then they're taking out parent
plus loans or they're doing gradplus loans. So the bummer about
(32:21):
parent plus loans is thatthey're only really eligible for
one of the income driven plans.This thing called ICR, income
contingent repayment. And youhave to consolidate to be able
to get access to that.
That is the, like, the leastgenerous of any of the plans. So
we've been talking about, like,a 10 to 15% of discretionary
(32:44):
income. ICR is 20% ofdiscretionary income. Right?
There had been a process bywhich you could consolidate your
loans in a couple of steps, adouble consolidation process
that helped people that was aloophole that helped people get
on to the more generous incomedriven plan, save, pay, new IBR.
(33:07):
That loophole is very muchclosing. And it looks like in
both of these proposed billsthat people that are in that
have had loans be repaid had hadcurrent consolidation loan that
repaid loans that containedparent plus loans could
potentially be kicked off of allof it if they're not in ICR
(33:29):
currently on the day the loanthe big beautiful bill passes.
So we've seen in the last, like,week when we, like, read and
reread and reread the actual,like, proposed text of the
legislation, 1,100 pages of it.Well, we didn't read all 1,100
pages, to be perfectly honest.We read, like, you know, a
couple of dozen pages that hadpertained to student loans.
(33:52):
And it looks like there's somevery scary stuff in there for
parent plus borrowers becausethat thought that they were out
of the woods, thought that theyhad done all the stuff that was
recommended to get on to thesemore generous plans. And now
they could just be, like, bootedoff of it. And these are folks
that are like, I have clientsthat are in their sixties,
(34:12):
seventies, you know, that have
Davina (34:13):
Right.
Scotty (34:14):
Hundreds of thousands of dollars, $700,000 plus of this
one family I'm thinking of. Youknow, they're not probably
paying that back. And so it'smorbid to think about, but one
of the main benefits of federalstudent loans is death and
disability discharge. Right? Soit's like, maybe we just pay the
(34:36):
little as we can, put this intoforbearance three years, and
because you can do three yearsof forbearance for most loans.
If you're in your seventies,maybe just kinda run off the
clock on this thing. Die withyour loans. We have an article
about it on the website. Iwouldn't I wouldn't die on
purpose just to get rid of yourstudent loans, but if you have
some other good reason to die
Davina (34:56):
But if that happens, gig for the kids.
Scotty (34:58):
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is there's some strategic
retirement planning that cancome to effect with Parent PLUS
borrowers. Because if they areon an ICR plan that's tied to
their AGI. Right?
And if, like, we can push thatpayment out a couple of years by
using strategic forbearances,for instance, and we can get
(35:19):
them into retirement whenthey're gonna have a much lower
income perhaps than theirworking years. And this is
probably not the case so muchfor for your audience because I
don't know very many lawyersthat retire. So but for people
so just for your audience. Soretirement's this thing where
you stop working and then you doother stuff that's presumably
(35:40):
more enjoyable. Like, somepeople, like, interact with
their families.
Some people go travel. You know?Yeah.
Davina (35:47):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because it depends
because there it's just thelawyer answer. It depends. It
depends because I got somepeople who tell me that, oh, I
wanna retire at 40. I only wannado this for x number of years,
then I don't wanna do itanymore.
And so Yeah. The urgency of sortof dealing with these student
loans so that we're not carryingthem beyond into whatever else
(36:08):
next phase of life. Sure. I'veI've had conversations with
people who just kind of said,just stop paying it. I don't
want to think about it, dealwith it.
And then when they went to buy ahouse, they were like, okay, now
I need to do what I need to do.And they were able to jump
through some hoops, make somenegotiation with the student
(36:29):
loan, and then get it back ontrack and and Yep.
Scotty (36:32):
So there was specifically during the
pandemic, there was a programcalled Fresh Start, which helped
people that were in default getout of default so that they
could then, you know, start tomove forward with their credit.
But, like, because there are nothere's no collateral for a
student loan, we can't, like,take back your, you know,
education. The they are the mostdifficult to discharge not
(36:54):
impossible, but difficult todischarge types of debts.
Davina (36:58):
Bankruptcy is a he it's it's it's available for
everything else but studentloans and taxes. I mean, like,
you to try to Yeah. Dischargeyour student loan in bankruptcy.
Like, you know, you gotta be inan iron lung or something. Like,
there's no Basically.
Scotty (37:15):
Yeah. Yeah. The good news for people that are buying
houses is that a decent mortgagebroker will know to use the
income driven payment as part ofyour debt to income ratio and
not the total balance of theloan. So if by default, they
just see some debt on yourbalance sheet, they'll use 1% of
(37:36):
the loan balance per month asthe obligation for that loan,
which is not what the actualobligation is if they're on an
income driven plan. So that's apretty, like, useful, like,
practical tip for folks is thatif your if your lender is not
using your IDR payment as aspart of your debt to income
calculation, make sure they aredoing that because they're
(37:58):
allowed to, and and a lot don't.
The good ones will, but a lot alot don't. Yeah.
Davina (38:04):
Right.
Scotty (38:04):
So for that person, it might not have been as scary as
they would have thought it was.So yeah.
Davina (38:09):
So my advice is that this I am sitting here listening
to this, and, when you starttalking numbers, my eyes start
glazing over. And I think it'sthe way it is for most lawyers,
who say things like, I don't domath. That's why I went to law
school. As we're sitting heregoing, oh my god. What?
What did he say? So my advice isif you are if you have some
(38:32):
hefty loans, would be good toconsult with experts who do this
all day every day like studentloan planner, the financial,
advisor who specializes instudent loans, because you might
be leaving money on the table,you might be in a plan or in a
situation where you're notmaximizing your strategies that
(38:56):
you can be maximizing to sort ofminimize the impact that this
student loan will have on yourfinancial life.
Scotty (39:01):
For sure.
Davina (39:02):
Fair to say?
Scotty (39:03):
Fair to say. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. Like, you
know, we do comprehensivefinancial planning for folks in
addition to doing one offstudent loan plans for people.
And there's not many areas offinancial planning where I
regularly make 6 figure impactson people's financial lives.
I do it all the time. All thetime optimizing people's student
(39:26):
loan situations. So it's, like,pretty life changing for people.
Davina (39:30):
Yeah. That really is It's
Scotty (39:32):
really fun.
Davina (39:32):
When you're when you're looking yeah. That's gotta be
very rewarding to
Scotty (39:35):
Yeah.
Davina (39:36):
To know that you're having that impact on somebody's
life because that makes a hugedifference in the long term. I
know a lot of people whenthey're young, they don't
they're not thinking the longterm consequences of things. I
know I didn't. And now that I'molder and I look back and go,
man, look at all the stupidmistakes I made. And I wish I
(39:57):
had gotten more advice frompeople who were experts in
certain areas.
So this would be one of thoseareas. If you're carrying
student loan debt, I think thatit would be really smart and
wise to do that. Tell us how wecan learn more about what you
do, get in touch with you,
Scotty (40:10):
connect with your team. I'm happy to put my you know, my
my email is justScottie@studentloanplanner, s c
o t t y, or Scottie at SLPWealth, s l p u l, if you wanted
a more comprehensive approach.And subscribe to our newsletter.
It's, like, literally the mostup to date information on
student loans that's out there.We have a podcast that comes out
(40:32):
twice a week.
The Tuesday podcast is morefocused on, like, the current
craziness of student loans, andthen we've kind of transitioned
the Friday podcast to be moresort of, like, general sort of
wealth planning and financialplanning stuff. And we do one
off consultations with peoplewhere we take a deep dive into
(40:54):
your actual student loan datafile and do some projections
and, you know, run thosecalculations like I was telling
you. Like, what is PSLF actuallyworth to me? Could I be doing
you know, does it matter? Andthen, like, what I really,
really always try to do withpeople is put that number in
context of, okay.
Student loans is just one partof your financial life. But in
(41:15):
the grand scheme of things, whatI really care about for you is
when are you financiallyindependent. Right? Right. And
putting putting the financialputting student loans as one
piece of that journey is, like,crazy powerful because you'd be
like, well, I have $800,000 ofstudent loans, but it only makes
it one year longer for me to befinancially independent if I do
this optimized plan.
Right.
Davina (41:36):
Okay. Maybe I will do why I think it's so important is
because I I guarantee you peopleare not thinking about, I mean,
it's complex. It's complex toeven understand. A lot of what
you've shared today, I thinkthere are a lot of people who
are going, oh my god. What didhe just And so meeting with
somebody who specializes in thatarea can help you put it in
context.
(41:56):
And that really does a lotpsychologically for people as
well if you say integrating.This is just part of my and when
I actually look at the numbers,here's the reality of it, and
here's what and it may not be asbad as you think it is. But I
think that's what you're gettingat. Right? May not be as bad
Scotty (42:10):
as you believe is. It's often not as bad as you think it
is. And if you end up payingyour student loans back
completely, well,congratulations, that just means
you're making a boatload ofmoney. So good for you. It's a
great great problem greatproblem to have that I've that I
would love to, you know, takeoff your plate.
So
Davina (42:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful.
Scotty (42:27):
Thank you. We also do I was also gonna mention we also
do group webinars and thingsoccasionally for organizations
and groups. So if you have your,you know, local bar association
or your, you know, youngattorneys group or whatever,
we're happy to come and talk togroups and things as
Davina (42:43):
well. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I will share
any all those links that youtalked about. When you send
those to me, we'll share them inthe show notes.
Everybody can click on them. Iappreciate you being here and
sharing with me. This has beenreally interesting conversation.
Scotty (42:57):
Happy to be here. Thank you for the
Intro (43:00):
If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in
your business and your life,then you'll want to us at
wealthywomanlawyer.com to learnmore about how we help our
clients create wealth generatinglaw firms with ease.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.