Most of us sign the loan paperwork without really reading it. Travis Hornsby from Student Loan Planner would like you to read it.

He walks through the basics that matter before you borrow: the difference between federal Stafford loans and Grad PLUS loans, what happens when you borrow more than the tuition number because living expenses exist, and how forgiveness programs work if you end up at a non-profit or public hospital.

This is his expertise, not mine, and none of it is a recommendation for your specific situation. But knowing the vocabulary before you're signing something is worth an hour of listening.

The short version: the amount you borrow in school decides a lot about what your first five years as a PA feel like.

What we talk about:

• Stafford loans versus Grad PLUS loans
• Borrowing for living expenses on top of tuition
• How loan forgiveness programs generally work
• Non-profit employment and public service options
• Planning before you sign, not after
• Questions to ask your program's financial aid office

Resources:

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Free application timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

Pre-PA counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

CASPA GPA calculator: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-caspa-gpa-calculator

Mentioned in this episode:

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Everyone wants to know how they're gonna pay for school and what happens once you graduate to all of those loans you took out.

Today we're talking to an expert to give you some insight into some options.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

All right, y'.

All, Number one.

Merry Christmas.

This has snuck up on me, and I am kind of behind on presents and planning and decorating and everything else, but I think that is just life.

And this has been a very busy year.

But I'm very excited to see.

Thank you for joining me.

If you have never listened to the podcast, my name is Savannah Perry.

I am a dermatology penny and the host of the Prepa Club Podcast.

We're going on about a year and a half now, and it's been fun so far.

I haven't run out of things to talk about or people to talk to yet, so I guess we'll just keep it going.

But I'm very excited for today's episode.

And, you know, everyone when it comes to PA School really likes to talk about the money portion.

Well, they don't, but they do.

And that's a question I get a lot is how am I going to pay for PA school?

What does that process look like?

Look like?

And it's something that when I was in school, you know, you kind of just go with whatever you're told or I don't know that that's the best thing, but that's kind of what I did because I don't think I really knew all my options.

So when Travis Hornsby reached out from Student Loan Planner and wanted to share some insights, and I actually did an interview on his podcast as well about my experience, I thought that would be great for you guys just to hear and get some insights from someone who does this all day long, who helps people who are either going into school or have just finished figure out what to do about their loans and avoid making big mistakes.

So we talk about a lot of that, and I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Before we jump into that, I wanted to mention the sponsors of our podcast, which, if you've listened, you've heard this before.

But my PA resource is the go to service for personal statement revisions for PA School applicants, and I edit for them.

They only use PAs to edit, and I think it's something worth looking into if you are unsure about your personal statement.

Feel like you need that next step to make sure your grammar, content, mainly content and flow are all in the right place.

You can use the code future pa for a discount on those services from myparesource.com the other thing I want you to know about is PA School Prep, which is an online course that helps to make sure you're prepared in anatomy, physiology and med terms for PA school.

And that's a great refresher.

You know, honestly, I've been thinking it may even be good to study for the PA cat because we know that's coming up and I'm going to talk about that next week.

But if you check out paschoolprep.com and use the code futurepa, you'll get a discount on that as well.

And don't forget, you can use the code on the PA platform or prepacourses.com Man, I just threw a lot at you.

But it's all in the description, so don't even worry about it.

So let's jump in to talking to Travis and all of his information will be in the description.

You can always reach out to me if you need it as well and need some advice or guidance from him.

I'm sure he'd be happy to help you.

My name is Travis Hornsby.

I founded studentloanplanner.com and we've advised closing in on 800 million now in student loan debts, almost like real money, you know, and for about 3,000 borrowers.

And we've had a little bit everything.

We've had PAs, we've had physicians, lawyers, dentists, people who sing and worship services, clowns, air traffic controllers, basically anything you can imagine.

We've helped people with it.

And I used to be a bond trader, but this is way more fun helping people that aren't ridiculously wealthy try to figure out how they can live a really solid financial life.

So I really enjoy this a lot more and it's a team of me and a bunch of other folks now all dedicated to trying to help people not be in debt forever.

Right.

Which is the goal.

Okay, so to kind of figure out what we need to talk about for this episode, I post some questions on social media and or basically I said, what do you want me to ask?

What do you guys want to know about?

I'm talking to a loan expert.

I am not that.

Which we all know.

So what do you guys want me to ask him?

And some of the responses I got were really good questions and some of them Indicated to me that we really need to kind of start from the beginning and kind of break down what the options are when it comes to loans.

But also understand that for PA school, unless you are, in my opinion, unless you are, I mean, have someone who, you know, gave you a college fund, whatever, parents are able to help you out, amazing savings, whatever, like, you're going to have to take out loans.

And so that's just kind of a given.

When you ask, how do people pay for PA school, it is loans that is the answer.

So we can talk about kind of where those come from.

So the questions that we will not answer is, why is this process so complicated?

What are all of your financial secrets?

I don't know that they're.

I mean, yeah, I have no idea where to start and not enough savings.

I think we could all kind of go with that.

So to start, can you just start with what kind of loans are out there for grad school?

What are you seeing pas come to you?

Like, what kind of loans are they having?

I mean, pretty much Stafford and Grad plus loans.

Those are your two options for PA school.

The Stafford loans have a cap.

You can't take out more than, I think about 20,000 a year.

And then above that level, if you need more than that to pay for things like rent and books and, you know, tuition, then you have to take out Grad plus loans.

So those have no cap, basically.

And so that's how a lot of the private PA programs have charged so much, is because there's no limit on borrowing at all.

You can just borrow as much as you want, and the schools know that.

And you can pay based on your income for as much as, you know, a big.

As big of a loan as you want.

So that's why it's so expensive, is there's no kind of underwriting.

There's no, like, banker sitting across from you at the table being like, no, you're going to earn 75 to 85,000 starting salary, and this is going to cost 200,000.

And we can't possibly give you that loan.

There's none of that for PA school.

So you can take out federal loans.

And to a lesser extent, some people that are going to come out with, like, a small balance might consider replacing some of those Grad plus loans with private loans, just ones that offer lower upfront fees and lower interest rates.

Generally.

You want to be kind of careful with those, though.

Okay, so that's a question that I get a lot is, you know, federal loans versus private loans.

So most People are taking out those federal loans initially.

So you said Grad plus doesn't have a cap on it.

One of the questions we got was, what about for people who already have loans from either undergrad or doing another graduate program?

How does that pay into getting money.

For PA school for federal loans?

It doesn't.

You can still borrow as much as you want from the federal system, regardless if you've previously been a lawyer or chiropractor or something totally different.

You can still go to PA school and take out as much as you want in terms of the grad plus loans.

So they cost 7% interest and there's an upfront fee of basically a little over 4%.

So, you know, you're kind of think about it, your first year interest rate for Grad plus is kind of like 11% and every one thereafter is 7.

That's kind of how expensive it is.

So the danger though is forgiveness is usually a really great option or a lot of times is a great option.

And private loans offer no forgiveness.

Right.

Okay.

So I had a PA that took out like private loans for about half of her education and it was like 6% or something like that.

So a little bit cheaper.

So she thought she was doing a smart thing.

But then she went to work at a not for profit employer.

She was eligible for public service loan forgiveness.

The whole thing would have been eligible to be forgiven and it wouldn't have required any extra payments to get it forgiven.

So she literally just borrowed like 100 grand when she could have just not paid that.

So that was a really unfortunate case where the lower interest rate is not nearly as important as getting forgiveness.

So if someone doesn't know exactly where they're going to end up working, could they take out federal loans and eventually switch them into private loans if they end up in kind of a private employer?

Or would that just make no sense?

No, they sure can.

That's a good option.

It's called refinancing.

So basically you start off with all federal loans.

You only take federal loans while you're in school, when you graduate.

Basically, you know, PAs float around a lot for the first couple years.

So you get your employer, you pay based on your income, you know, one of those income driven repayment plans.

And maybe you end up and get settled at an employer that is a not for profit.

And then you are going to get loan forgiveness if you set things up right.

And then if you're not, let's say you're working at some private practice or an orthopedic center.

Or something like that.

Then you would probably just want to go ahead and refinance and get an interest rate that could be like 4% instead of 7 and then try to get out of debt as fast as possible with those traditional debt repayment methods.

Okay, probably a dumb question.

Is refinancing different than consolidating loans?

Not a dumb question.

It is different.

And like the word consolidate means moving a bunch of things into one thing.

Right?

So that's like the kind of the English language word consolidate.

To me, consolidate doesn't mean that though.

To me, consolidate means taking a bunch of federal loans and turning it into a direct federal consolidation loan.

So that's what I think of when I hear consolidate.

And you know, people talk about refinancing as consolidating, but it's really not the same thing.

Because refinancing is just taking a federal or private loan or loans and just moving them into a new private loan with a private lender.

Right.

No forgiveness, no income driven repayment, none of that.

Just the only thing you're getting is lower interest rate, which benefits you if you pay it down to zero and does not benefit you if you needed to do forgiveness.

Right, Consolidating.

Here's the reason why you should do consolidation.

So when you graduate, you get a six month grace period.

That's how long you get to wait until you have to pay.

If you consolidate though, you can get a grace period of two months.

And why is that helpful?

It's because you can get payments of $0 a month based off of your tax returns as a student.

That's no income.

So your payments are zero.

Right.

If you happen to be working at a qualifying employer, that's four extra months of credit towards the 120 months of credit you need in the PSLF forgiveness program.

So those four months of $0 payments replace four months of payments when you're 10 years into your career making really good money, hopefully.

So that could save you a couple thousand to a few thousand dollars.

That's just one example.

The main benefit of consolidating is just accelerating the payments and it's also organizing it where it's a little bit easier to track for programs like forgiveness.

Okay, so there is kind of a difference.

There is.

So at what point should someone consolidate?

Like as soon as they graduate or should they wait till the end of that grace period?

Generally as soon as you graduate, there's, you know, like you should do it as soon as you graduate.

And if you don't, if you miss that boat I probably wouldn't.

There are some exceptions.

Like if you have ineligible loans for certain forgiveness programs, you might want to do it later.

But like when you consolidate, it's kind of like taking all the old loans and wiping it all away completely and then starting over again with a brand new loan.

So if you haven't done anything with those old loans, then no big.

But if you have done a lot of stuff with those loans and paid a lot of money into them, then basically, as far as the government's concerned, none of that ever happened.

Okay, so something a lot of people have concerns about is how they're going to pay for living expenses.

So these loans are not just for tuition.

You can take out loans for living expenses.

Do you have any advice for someone?

I know you work with people on the other side and you've seen how much they've taken out.

What would your advice be for someone who's trying to figure out what that number looks like and because like you said, they'll give you as much money as you want.

How do you live comfortably and realistically while not being too crazy?

Well, here's a terrible thing to say.

If you're planning on working at a not for profit, it actually doesn't matter if you're too crazy.

I mean, because it forgives the loans tax free, regardless of the size of the loan amount, right?

That's one of the reasons why this loan program probably will eventually either get reformed or replaced.

Because it's just like kind of a really stupid program.

The way it's designed, it doesn't encourage like limited borrowing.

You know, it doesn't encourage responsibility.

It's literally like just borrow as much as you want, but, you know, pretending that you're not sure that you're going to do that.

Like, basically you should probably target about $1,000 a month for rent and then probably $1,000 a month for other.

And depending on if you have, you know, a family, maybe an extra thousand a month for, you know, 1,000 to 2,000amonth for like family expenses.

So I would just say like, if you can't live on 2,000amonth in school, you know, probably there's something you're doing that could be changed.

So I mean, you know, if you live like a student, you're living pretty carefully, right?

Like you're living on a budget, you're driving an old car, you're living maybe with roommates, or if you're, you know, you have a significant other, you're splitting rent with them.

So I would say like you know, probably in places like California and New York, maybe you would need to do more like 2,000amonth for, you know, kind of rental living expenses, but instead of a thousand.

But I think, you know, 20 to 30k is the range that you typically see schools use for cost of living every year that you're in school.

Okay, so this is a, I think this is a controversial question.

I think I know my answer.

But can you pay for things like credit card debt and your mortgage with your loans?

And is that wise?

Well, they give you cost of attendance, right?

So basically the loan limit, I say there's no limit.

The technical limit is like whatever they came up with for the cost of attendance.

Right.

And that cost of attendance can be slightly higher if you were say, like a single parent or something.

But in general it's like that cost of attendance.

And so, yeah, like if you had credit card debt or like a bad car loan or something that you needed to pay off, and they say you can take out X amount and you take that out, they're not going to go and monitor if you spent that on food at the grocery store or if you put it into buying the pair of $500 boots you've always wanted for the winter, they're not going to monitor that.

So, yeah, you could definitely get away with polishing off some bad credit card debt and giving yourself money in the bank for an emergency fund in the future.

And to be honest, for a lot of people, that's probably a good idea.

I mean, the, the bad.

You know, it's a kind of a bad situation to come out with less student loan debt but a lot more credit card debt.

So if people were graduating with a lot more student loan debt but money in the bank and no credit card debt, that's almost something that I would view as better.

Yeah, those interest rates just scare me, which they could be less than a credit card though, so that may be be the argument there.

Okay.

So thinking about the people that you've worked with and like, I think if someone knows that they want to, you know, do like try to do the loan forgiveness and go for that program, they can kind of start that course right out of school.

But for someone in private practice, which was me, how fast do you see people realistically paying off PA school loans?

And is it something where, you know, you just kind of.

Do you recommend setting maybe a monthly amount to put towards them and do it kind of on the long haul and take a little bit longer or like pay really aggressively and kind of throw all Your money at loans.

So the thing that I found for PA loans is if you owe more than 1.5 times what you're earning, then you might want to set it up for forgiveness.

So like take whatever you're earning, say it's like 80,000, right?

And take 1.5 and multiply it by 80,000.

So that's equal to 120,000.

So if you had more debt than 120,000 with the government, then you might want to consider taking the long approach, which means paying based on your income, focusing on your retirement and paying as little as possible so that you can benefit from like the 20 year forgiveness where you have to pay taxes on the amount that's left over after 20 years as if it were a bonus when it's forgiven.

So that's a little catch is you have to pay taxes on the loan balance if you're in the private sector.

So that's what I would tell somebody that's kind of like got a large debt to income ratio or it just owes a lot relative to what they're making.

For somebody that's got say like they have 100,000 of PA loans, but they're making 100,000.

Right.

The reality is it just depends on when you want to retire.

It's really that simple.

If you want to pay it, if you want to retire in your, you know, early 60s or late 50s, then you need to pay it back in less than five to seven years.

So that means you need to pay approximately like 2% of the balance every month.

So really, does that make sense?

Yeah, people just need to.

I think the way you phrased it is really good because it makes me think like, I think people get really caught up on I'm borrowing all this money, I'm in debt, blah, blah, blah.

But really like you've got to look at your long term plan and look at when you want to retire and what you need to have saved.

And there's a lot more involved than just I'm having to borrow this amount of money and pay it back.

It's, it's more, there's more to it than that.

Which I'll be honest, as a new grad, that was not in my mind.

My mind was I have this huge sum of money.

It is a black cloud looming over my head.

I want it gone.

I just want to be done.

Which is why I took the approach of throwing everything extra at my loans, paying them off in about a year and a half and just awesome being done.

And did you refinance?

I did not.

So I only, I went to a public program and so I only had to take out Stafford loans.

Luckily my parents helped me with the.

It was usually about $1,000 a semester that they didn't cover.

And I was living at home until I got married during school and so they covered that.

So I only took out Stafford loans and I had about 75,000 by the time I graduated.

Okay, okay, well, so I took out.

45 And it had grown to 75.

Yep.

So those staffer loans probably had an interest rate around five and a half or six percent.

Six.

Yeah.

Yep.

So if you had refinanced.

So one of the, one of the things that you do is if you type in refinance student loans online, most every website makes money on that.

So whenever you click and apply through their links, they're going to make a lot of money.

And so what we tried to do with studentloanplanner.com is basically do a deal where we take a lot lower payout to give our readers welcome bonuses for refinancing.

So for example, if you had refinanced 75,000, say through like common Bond on our website, that's a $550 cashback bonus.

So you would have gotten $550 for refinancing.

The actual bigger benefit than the welcome bonus is you probably would get around a 2% variable rate for a 5 year long term.

So variable, because if you're going to pay it back in that short amount of time, you might as well just go ahead and pick like the variable rate because there's really not that much risk with those if you're going to pay them down in that short of a time frame.

So the interest that you were dealing with was right around like 4,000 a year or about 350amonth, something like that.

So with the 2% variable rate, you'd be looking at saving like 200amonth in interest.

So that would be the kind of one of the benefits of doing a little bit different approach.

I think you did great.

It's just like that's like maybe you know, 2,500 bucks plus the $500 bonus that you could have put back in your pocket and gotten out of debt sooner or taken like a really nice trip to, you know, vacation in Europe or something like that.

Well, that, like that like kills my frugal soul.

But it Just goes to show that, you know, because I was, you know, I, I was what, 23 when I graduated?

24.

24.

And I was trying, like, it's.

For me, it was very difficult trying to research all this and understand it.

And I think I was at that point where I was confused between refinancing and consolidating, because all I read was, you can't consolidate federal loans.

You can't consolidate when you only have one type of loan.

But I don't even think I considered refinancing.

I don't think that was even on my radar.

And I think part of it was you start reading about variable rates, and that scared me away, and I just left it.

So that's interesting that like, honestly, having even an ounce of guidance would have been so incredibly helpful.

So.

Yeah, well, you know, another, another thing you could have done, say you were.

You told me that you're just terrified of variable rates or like private lenders, and that just freaks you out.

Yeah.

So, like, what you, what you could have, could have done besides that is you could have consolidated with the government and signed up for the revised pay as your plan.

It's called repayment.

And that plan gives you a 50% interest subsidy and all the interest that the required payment isn't covering.

So what that means for you is, say you have 6% of your staffer loans.

That means you could have paid a lot extra on your, on your loans on that plan, and it would have covered half of your interest while you were doing that.

So in other words, it could have been like a 3% interest rate, you know, with the government for at least that first year, and you would have saved a lot of money on interest on that way, too.

And then you could have taken the federal only approach, but saved a lot more than just paying on the standard plan, which is what they usually sign people up just as the default option, which does not have any interest subsidies.

So that's just an example for somebody who's paying their loans back about how you could save.

That's actually a very small amount of savings, as big as like 2,500, plus a $500 bonus is three grand.

That's actually very, very small.

With the mistakes that we see people make when it comes to, you know, forgiveness.

So those, those mistakes are really an order of magnitude larger than that.

Usually 10 times or even 20, 30 times greater than that $3,000, you know, lost amount that you could have saved.

Let's talk about mistakes.

What mistakes do you see people making that just make you cringe?

Well, a lot of people kind of get freaked out by the loan forgiveness stuff.

Like they think, oh, I mean, like, I could tell you just all kinds of crazy things about what people have said.

Like, oh, you know, so and so is going to win the election, it's going to go away, or, oh, they're going to limit it for people because they don't like PAs and we make too much money.

Or I saw something online that said that 99% of people got rejected, so why would I even try to do it?

And so there's just a lot of misinformation in this space.

And so here's what people need to know.

You have all direct loans that are qualifying for all the forgiveness programs.

So just send in this form called the PSLF ECF form.

Just Google it and pull it up and mail it in and they'll tell you if you qualify for pslf and if you do, you need to pay based on your income.

And you asked me what mistakes people make.

So when you can pay based on your income, you can sign up for programs that allow you to pay based on just your income.

And some of those programs include your spouse's income.

So that's kind of like putting a tax on your spouse.

And if you want to avoid that, you can avoid that.

But you have to be set up with the right tax status and you have to be set up on the right plan to avoid including your spouse and your loans, which is a lot of people don't like doing.

So I would say that's a real common mistake as people include their new Mr. Or Mrs. And they include their income and cost themselves like 10 grand a year that they could have avoided if they had done a program that allowed them to exclude their significant other's spouse's income.

So that's one problem they do.

I mentioned the problem about people who've taken out the private loans instead of taking out all the federal ones.

Right.

That was $100,000 mistake that that person made.

Another, I guess another mistake is feeling like you're putting just enough money on your loans to cover the interest.

That's a real common one.

I call that the spend your tires in the mud approach to paying loans.

Because you're paying something and it's kind of significant.

It's kind of, kind of like, maybe even like a rental payment at times like that level of Money for some people and you're not watching your balance really fall.

And it's so frustrating and it's so stressful because the loan balance just doesn't change.

And meanwhile you put like 5, 6, 7, 10,000 of good money into these things and it's still the same thing, still the same balance.

So why isn't it going away?

So people will do that typically for like several years after school.

And then they'll just kind of get so frustrated they'll send us an email because they don't understand how this could be the case, that they've sacrificed so much and it's still not going anywhere.

Those are the most common mistakes.

I guess a couple other ones are just like just not realizing that you can do forgiveness outside of the public sector.

A lot of people are not aware that you can make your loans kind of like a tax and basically just lose a percentage of your income for 20 years.

And that's a lot better deal than paying your debt back in a lot of cases for people that, especially the ones that go to those private PA schools.

Can I ask a question about that?

So what if you don't end up working for 20 years?

Or what if you go part time?

Or how does that factor into something like that?

That's a great question.

So the 10 year one, you got to work full time and it's for a not for profit and it's cumulative payments, not consecutive.

So if you took time off for kids or something like that, it wouldn't matter.

Now for the 20 year version, it's not tied to your employment at all.

You could be working part time, not at all.

You could be living in a tent in a foreign country somewhere with no access to mail or the Internet and it wouldn't matter.

I guess it would matter because you have to certify your income.

So I guess that's, you know, that's the only thing.

But I mean, you can even qualify for the 20 year option if you're in prison.

You just need to give agent authorization to somebody so they can submit your proof of income, you know, assuming you can't do it yourself.

And literally those $0 a month payments would count towards the 20 year total.

So hopefully none of your listeners will have that problem.

But you know, just in case.

That is so interesting.

Yeah, I can see how people would think this program probably won't last.

Yeah, interesting.

Okay.

Oh, I liked this question.

Does your credit score affect if you can get loans for PA school for federal loans?

No, it doesn't.

Okay.

You can get literally anything.

Like, I mean, literally anything you want.

I mean, the only credit score impacts the private loans.

And that's it.

Interesting.

Okay, good to know.

There you go.

You can go get.

Get some money for PA School.

Okay.

And then so I liked this question too.

Like, what is your just like one piece of advice?

I mean, like, probably the one thing that you just tell people almost every single time you talk to them as far as paying off your loans, getting rid of this type of debt.

What's kind of your mantra?

I guess.

Okay, so your savings rate's a lot more important than, you know, figuring out exactly what the right thing to do with your loans are.

So.

And your savings rate is really mostly determined by two things.

What kind of car do you drive and what kind of house do you live in.

Interesting.

So here's a reason for that.

So how many.

How many Starbucks lattes could you drink in a day?

Savannah?

Me?

Probably at least three.

Three.

So let's say you buy three a day.

Let's say it's like, I don't know, 20 bucks a day, something kind of crazy, and you do it every single day.

So that's like $600 a month.

And that's like a super extreme scenario, right?

If you limit your house price to two times your income instead of three times your income, that's probably going to save double that amount on your mortgage monthly.

So it's kind of like you can drink Starbucks until your liver fails, and it's still not going to come close to having nearly as big of an impact as you being careful with that house decision.

And a lot of people kind of think of their house as an investment, and so they're like, oh, well, an investment.

That means I should buy as big of a house as I can.

Because investments you want to buy more of, right?

So houses are really not investments.

They're really just lifestyle decision.

So I tell folks that have big loans, like, if you limit that house purchase to two times your household income, it's going to work out pretty good because you'll be buying less house than you'll get approved for.

And it's going to give you more money left over for things like loans and retirement.

And then the car thing, a lot of people don't realize this, but you could buy a really reliable car online for like five to $10,000 on Craigslist.

And yet people go to the dealer and they pay like 50% more.

And then they finance it and pay even more.

And yeah, that's fine if you're Broke and you have no money.

But like you got to get out of that cycle, otherwise you're just going to be, you know, that 65 year old PA that's like, you know, just doing their best and kind of might like to work part time but can't afford to.

Like, you don't want to be that person unless you just love being a PA and like that's your calling, right?

Yeah, I think everyone kind of wants to have some, some money in the bank at that point.

And also I'm not letting my husband listen to this episode because I want a new car.

But that's okay, that's okay if you,.

Hey, if you can, if you can try to buy it in cash.

Right.

Then go for it.

Like, and also, you know, like most people don't drive like 100 miles a day, right?

I mean, and so like you can buy one that's got over 100,000 miles and you can get a really nice car.

Like, like for example, if you wanted like a BMW or Mercedes or something really fancy or a Volvo or something like that, you can find a ton of like 2, 3 year old, you know, cars like that with over 100,000 miles, which are mostly highway miles for like probably 10, 15K or something like that, you know, 20K maybe.

And so yeah, like if you want that nice car, like just save up for it and try to pay for it in cash.

And that's kind of a test as to how badly you actually wanted it, you know, versus just the easy decision is going and financing it.

And that's nothing wrong with that.

You just have to be prepared to work maybe a little bit longer than you would like to.

Yeah, and that's actually speaking of cars, that's one thing that I noticed when I graduated PA school was a lot of my classmates went out and bought like a brand new super nice car, which I thought was really interesting.

And I think a lot of them bought it with loan money that they had kind of like leftover.

So they probably should have talked to you first.

But yeah.

Any last minute advice?

Where can people kind of find you?

Follow along and get help.

Yeah, I mean, so helpudentloanplanner.com is our email and then just studentloanplanner.com is OUR site.

You can hit the contact button and learn about how to hire us.

And that's in the menu.

So if you're like, wow, I really need help on my PA loans, like that's probably where I would go.

Is that just the hire us button?

On our, on our website, the, the cost for it, everybody always likes to know the cost.

Right.

The cost is like a few hundred bucks.

It's like 400 to $600, depending on how much you owe.

And then the value is, you know, the biggest value is you're not going to feel anxious about your loans anymore.

I can guarantee that part.

With maybe about 90% chance, I can say that you'll 90% find a lot of savings.

Right.

So just kind of like that conversation we had earlier about how you could have done that differently and saved like $3,000.

So probably 90% of the time we're finding savings like that and we just charge that flat fee, you know, no matter what, so that people know exactly what the cost is and it's not like a percentage of this, you know.

You know, the savings that we find people, which would probably be a lot more money.

Okay, and one last question about that.

When, when would people come to you for guidance?

Is it before they start PA school?

When they're ready to graduate?

Right, when they GR graduate.

So we have services for both.

Okay.

I would say most people should hire us after, you know, because that's when the biggest savings happen.

But if you're that kind of person that likes to plan ahead and wants to borrow smartly, we do have a pre debt consult that's also on that hire us button.

You'll see the, the link for before you have debt that you can click on or the link for after you have debt that you can click on.

Awesome.

Okay.

And I'll put links to all that in the description so everyone can find you.

This was extremely informative.

Could have saved me some money, but that's alright.

Thanks so much.

Thanks, Savannah.

So go check out studentloanplanner.com even if you are, you know, at the beginning of your journey or in the middle of it, I think it's good to go ahead and start looking at these options.

Don't do what I did and don't look at your loans until the very end of school.

Go ahead and start thinking about a plan.

But thank you so much to Travis for taking the time to come on here and I will see you guys next week and the next and the next.

But if you haven't left a review for the podcast, I would love if you could just, you know, wherever you listen, leave a review, leave a comment, and I'll check those out.

Bye, guys.

Sam,.