$230,000 In Student Loans Forgiven: A Conversation with Kyle Landis-Marinello - youramericanmoney
Author: Michelle
Description: Welcome to Michelle is Money Hungry, a podcast focused on having real and empathetic conversations about the intersection of money, policy, and politics. In my view, personal finance and money isn’t just about working hard. I’m spending the ENTIRE SUMMER talking about the potential for student loan forgiveness, the cost of education and is this […]
Date: 2022-06-21T09:00:00+00:00

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# $230,000 In Student Loans Forgiven: A Conversation with Kyle Landis-Marinello

posted on 21 June, 2022

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Welcome to Michelle is Money Hungry, a podcast focused on having real and empathetic conversations about the intersection of money, policy, and politics. In my view, personal finance and money isn’t just about working hard. I’m spending the ENTIRE SUMMER talking about the potential for student loan forgiveness, the cost of education and is this policy an overreach or necessary?

With inflation rising and thousands of students about to have their loans come out of being paused due to financial policy enacted during the COVID pandemic, this policy is living rent free in my mind. What will happen if Student Loan Forgiveness actually happens and what will happen if the Administration decides to move away from this policy? My guests and I will talk about everything that gets lost in all the noise of politics, tweets and everything in-between. Is college really a part of the American dream and is the cost of college a problem?

And with increasing chatter about the potential of a Recession, I wanted to talk about a financial issue impacting hundreds of thousands of borrowers across the U.S.

I hope you will enjoy the conversation that I had about student loan forgiveness with Kyle Landis-Marinello author of the book Personal Finance and Investing. He also participated in the PLUS program and had a payoff of 200k in student loans recently.

In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*

## CashFreely

As a result of my debt experience, I was really skittish about ever getting another credit card. I hate to admit that when it was finally time to sign up for my first card in years-I chose badly. I hate this new credit card and I wish that I had known about CashFreely when making this decision. What I love about this free tool is the following. It helps credit card users stay organized when using different cash back programs.

You don’t have to worry about leaving cash on the table. CashFreely helps credit card users optimize the different cash back rewards programs that may be a part of current cards you’re using or future cards that you may be considering in the future. And just maybe, that extra cash can be applied as an extra payment on your student loan. Again, this is a free app or you can use the website and I think you should check it out. Click on the link in my show notes

Disclaimer: This show and series is for entertainment purposes only. Do your own research and communicate with your student loan service provider.

## Listen to the Show

## Show Notes

Kyle-I’m an environmental and energy lawyer, I’ve been doing public interest law my entire career and wrote a book called “Personal Finance and Investing.” I spoke a lot about student loans, investing and his experience with loans.

Michelle-What was your student loan experience like if you took out loans.

Kyle-I’m an open book on this. I was very fortunate in that I made it through Undergrad with a scholarship-debt free. But, then I went to law school and ended up borrowing I racked up $200,000 in loans. I then took public interest jobs and couldn’t make the minimum payments and put them into forebearance and when I was able to pay I was around $230k

Michelle-What was it like for you to have this experience of having this debt and being focused on being in public service

Kyle-It has a huge impact it was more than some houses. I did have a plan of doing public service work and working through the public service plan. I knew I could combine those programs to help me with this debt burden and I think it actually affected how to deal with money generally. It really ups the ante for your commitment to do public interest work. I did well at my law school and law firms are flying out from all over the country to interview top graduates. Some would have paid over $200k a year. The job that I took paid $40k a year with a interest in public interest. I saw a lot of people drop out of this track because they couldn’t imagine carrying this amount of debt for 10 years or more.

Michelle-Was this experience why you started creating content in the PF space?

Kyle-Yes. I avoided thinking about money for a long-time and it ended up being almost 12 ½ years before the forgiveness actually happened. I was pretty confident I would get the forgiveness and I realized that I could think about money in a much more positive light and even think about FI.

Michelle-When I lived in Europe I realized how affordable college was there. Is there a way out of it being so expensive in the US? Or, it is what it because we let the market decide? Or, is there a way to reimagine the cost of university.

Kyle-I think that it’s tough to make college to cost less and the reason that I say that is the expense of the professors and salaries and they do need to be paid well. My 11 year old didn’t understand why people had to pay for college?

Michelle-Kids are interesting in terms of what they observe and think about. Could you share the forgiveness program that you were involved in and how you were able to leverage this resource.

Kyle-Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program-10 or more years working for the government at the state or Federal level. This passed around 15 years ago to encourage people to go into public interest work. When I graduated I decided to do something different. But, as we had a 2nd and 3rd kid, it was really tight and tough. If this program hadn’t been available, I wouldn’t have done it. There was one year when I met with my boss about a raise.

Michelle-How did you know about this program? I feel like I would just miss the information on a program. Walk me through how you got connected to this program.

Kyle-I was in law school when this program came into being. The law school and my university put together a presentation and worked through the law and shared it with the students. That first group hit the 10 year mark and got rejected. In the last year the Department of Education has been working on clearing this up. I got good information but I even messed it up. Not realizing that putting my loans into forbearance not realizing that zero payments could have been credited.

Michelle-What are some of the things that you’re observing with this program (good and bad) to give people forgiveness vs. denials.

Kyle-It seems to be serving the purpose to allow people to do public interest work. One criticism it’s lawyers/doctors/dentists and maybe those folks didn’t need that forgiveness. There is some truth to this. There are doctors who may qualify even though they have higher wages. But in law you would see a higher percentage of people going into public interest vs. going into corporate. People have an option to follow their passions.

## What is Student Loan Forgiveness?

Michelle-What do you think people think Student Loan Forgiveness is?

Kyle-Some people think it’s a handout or transferring a financial burden to taxpayers. A lot of the nuances get lost in the conversation. When I took out these federal loans, the federal government charged me 7.9% interest the same year I had a credit card that charged me 4.9% and that it was better to pay for the books on my credit card than taking out more loans because the government was charging me more. I wasn’t making payments during forbearance the loans went from $200k to $230k. When you look at the total balance due it’s the interest versus the original loan amount. There’s a disproportionate impact on POC and lower-income students that would benefit from this program. The Federal government doesn’t necessarily have clean hands in this.”

Michelle-For profit schools are partnered very heavily with the Federal government and a lot of that problematic lending is happening in that space. How do we get the government to hold these educational partners accountable for their lending and how they’re complicit in this problem?

Kyle-For profit and state universities and colleges can be a problem as well. Failure to explain to incoming students the issue of cost and there’s a lot of blame that could be spread around. One criticism is that you agreed to take on this debt. My response but you’re talking about 18 year olds. I don’t know about you but I was an idiot at that age.

Michelle-Why are people so angry about SLF as a policy vs. bailing out of Banks and Automotive. I share why decided to stay in my job. I had a strong feeling that I should stay. So, instead I bought a place instead and bought conservatively. I remember closing on my place and then right after the housing market death spiraled. Why does it feel like people are angrier about SLF vs. the bank and automotive bailouts.What’s your read on this?

## Why Are People Angry About Student Loan Forgiveness

Kyle-There are two groups of people who are vocal about this. People who never took out student loans. I remember talking about when our loan checks were coming in and this other student looked so confused about waiting for their loan check. If you never had student loans it could be hard to relate to this experience. There are also people who would have attend college if it would have been free. Then there is a second group of people who took out loans and paid them off. I feel for this group too and I think this grates on them.

Michelle-If you were to redesign this program what would you do?

Kyle-I would streamline and simplify the program and the Department of Education is working on this. There are some things that would get widespread support. Let’s cut the interest rate to 0 percent. We should be looking seriously at the European model where you’re not charged in the first place and not make it this all or nothing program. You could do 9 years and 11 months and get no forgiveness. Maybe each year you get a percentage forgiven.

Michelle-For me this program and students are Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom and you step in the wrong place and you’re out. The program feels unnecessarily complicated and that’s what part of what upsets so many people. I don’t like that it’s 10 years because so much can happen in 10 freaking years and that I would lower the number of years that people would need to participate in the program.

Kyle-The critical moment really does occur in law school when deciding which path you will go into. By about year 5 you’re pretty committed to it. You would see many people continue to do public interest work well past 5 years. It would be comparable to private sector loan repayments.

Michelle-What was it like when you logged into your student loan portal and it was Zero.

Kyle-I wish this was on video and you could see my big smile. It was around 5:30 am and the day before it was $230k and I physically collapsed to the ground and started crying. It was such a relief. I knew it was supposed to happen but I had doubts. What a relief it was. I’ve found that I have a much more positive mindset about my money. I wrote most of my book with a six figure net negative net worth. We’re not rich by any means, I still have moments when I realize I could make more money on a different path and it keeps me on this path.

Kyle-I still have over $30k in private student loans. On the day of forgiveness I actually owed $260k

## Connect with Kyle

Kyle-@PFAuthor on Twitter

Website: https://personalfinanceauthor.com

Book: Personal Finance and Investing How Anyone Can Make More, Spend Less While Investing

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#### Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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