Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Student loans.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I mean just the words give me anxiety. I mean
just a nightmare phrase. But now it looks like, yeah,
they're going to be coming after your wages if you
don't start paying garnishing of wages.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Evan Brown and here, Evan, good morning, welcome in, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
So yeah, it's time they're not you know, Democrats wanted
to get rid of student loans, but that's not real
responsible either. There's got to be some kind of medium
ground here because based on the interest rates that they
charge people, and believe me, I'm right in the middle
of a lawsuit with this, it's outrageous what these student
loan companies are getting way. I mean, they took care
of the payday loan companies and made them, you know,
start acting responsible.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yeah, this is a compounding problem. And first I want
to adrill the garnishment issue. Under the laws passed by
the Congress and President Obama back in two thousand and nine,
under a law that you know is Obamacare, which was
a healthcare law, what does it have to do with
student loans. Well, they wrap this into that. By the way,
(00:58):
remember you had to pass it before you could figure
out what was in it or whatever. Nancy Pelosi said,
this was what was in it. And they nationalized student loans,
and they gave the Department of Education power to administratively
garnish defaulted student loans or wages of you know, people
who had defaulted spread loans. So after two hundred and
seventy days of non payment, you are considered in default,
(01:19):
and they can legally, without taking you to court and
without getting a judge's order, they can take fifteen percent
of your paycheck. They send a letter to your boss,
your company, and they say, give us fifteen percent of
his pay and if you don't, you're in trouble. So
your boss has to go, well, I got to give
a fifteen percent of your pay, And depending on the
state in which you live, you may not have protection
(01:40):
against your boss saying I don't want to deal with this.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
You're fired.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
So that's a problem. However, you know you are going
to have to fork over fifteen percent of your pay.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
How do you avoid this?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And you want to avoid it because once it starts,
getting it to stop is a nightmare. So how do
you avoid it? Probably you have to make a payment.
You'll have to buckle down and make the payment. The
other thing I could tell people is talk to a
bankruptcy attorney. You cannot clear student loans in bankruptcy. Why
because going back to the nineteen nineties, both Speaker Gingrich
(02:15):
and President Clinton agreed they're going to get rid of
that protection run student loans from the bankruptcy codes. Every
other kind of loan, every kind of debt in this
country you can pretty much get rid of in bankruptcy
if you have to. You could run up one hundred
thousand dollars on a credit card going to the champagne
lounge at the Boom Boom Room, if you know what
I'm talking about, and you could probably get that debt
(02:35):
erased by a bankruptcy court. You can't really do that
with a student loan because of something called undue hardship
that you have to prove this somehow, and the thing
that no one really knows how to prove it, not
even the courts themselves because it's not defined.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
In the legislation.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So it's been a big, big, big, big big problem.
But I would recommend for most people talk to the
bankruptcy turn eight because if they can put you under
bankruptcy protection usually visa via Chapter thirteen payment plan style bankruptcy,
you could at least stop the clock on things.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, right, and that look, I hear you loud and clear.
It went through this whole scenario myself. I borrowed about
eighty grand for my two kids collectively over a ten
or eleven year period, started to make payments of one
thousand dollars a month. I called because I had a
dip in the income at some point after seven years
of payments, and I said, listen, I'd like to kind
of drop back a little bit, and you know, I'll
catch back up to the regular payment. Can you can
(03:32):
we reduce it down to you know, eight hundred dollars
a month instead of a thousand. Lady says to me, well,
we were about to call you anyway, because you know
your your thousand dollars a month didn't even.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Touch the principle. I said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
She goes, no, that's true, right, And I said, well,
I figured, you know, I borrowed eighty I'm probably after
seven years of payments of one thousand dollars a month,
I got to be at least down to like sixty five, right,
make it a little dent till the principal. I said,
what's what's my balance owed? She goes two hundred and
forty three thousand dollars. I said, what, So, yeah, I
went to the bankruptcy thing and filed it. And you're right,
(04:05):
you can't file bankruptcy on student loans. But it does
get the wolves off your front door. And then there's
you know, monthly payment you're making that Chapter thirteen, some
of it went to the student loans.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That was a five years I met that the contracted
servicer whichever one it was, was misapplying your payments and
put you in default at some point, even though you
didn't even know, and you were paying interrears and you
didn't even know that that scenario has happened.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I mean, Congress has to do something.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It might have been illegal had the law not been
crafted this way intentionally. And the thing is is that
I think all too often, especially in we'll just say
it conservative media, there's a real predilection to villainize the borrower,
to say it's a you know, it's an ivy league
(04:57):
brat that doesn't want to pay their six figure college debt. Well,
by definition, not everyone can be an ivy league brat,
because it's not that many Ivy leagues.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
As you've noticed, most people who borrow money for school
borrow the amount that it would probably cost to buy
a new truck.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Right it's expensive.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I mean, people are getting out of this for that
very reason, and you know, you get out and all
of a sudden, you've got a mortgage to pay back,
you know. And I went through, like I explained what
I went through, and then we came out of it,
and all of a sudden, you know, here comes the
notices from the student loan company again it's time to
start paying some more payments in. So then my bankruptcy
attorney said, listen, there there's another attorney that I know
(05:36):
that deals with student loan debt. Only would you like
to have your file sent to them? I said, one
hundred percent. So I talked to this student loan attorney
and he said, listen, here's what we can do.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So he filed a lawsuit. So that's where we're at
right now.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And the potential to get the thing, you know, under
control and reduced to a decent payment and make some
dent in the principle is underway. The courts have not
decided on this ship, but I'll tell you what you know,
DM me. If you want information about a student loan attorney,
turn you onto the sky and a heartbeat.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
He's really really good. So yeah, it's awful.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
My bankruptcy attorney said to me, listen, you're never going
to pay back. You know, you're in your sixties two
hundred and forty three thousand dollars a student loan debt.
So the only way you're going to pay this back
is if you die, okay, or if you hit the lottery,
or if Congress decides to do something about it and
change the rules. And it doesn't look really good in
any of those scenarios. We certainly hope you don't die
(06:34):
in the lottery. In the Congress, you know, basically about
the same thing. Of chance of hitting that in the
right direction pretty slim. So I talked to my senators
about it, and they're like blown away, and they said, look,
we please remind me to keep talking about this and
we'll get something going in.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Congress to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Because it's outrageous how people are getting raped by these
student loan companies on the interest, and it's compounded like
every five minutes, it seems.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Anyway,