American Psychological Association (APA)

Title: Budgeting and Repaying Student Loans in a Pandemic: What Stimulus and Stagnation Mean for YouDate/Time: WED, APR 15, 2020 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM EDT[Eddy Ameen] Hi everybody and welcome to our webinar today. My name is Eddy Ameen and I am joined by three distinguished colleagues who will be here to talk to you about student loans, student debt and sort of managing a budget during this unprecedented time. I wanted to share a couple of resources with you just as we get started.Our webinar today is Budgeting and Repaying Student Loans in a Pandemic. It's one of the first in a series that we're presenting to you from the American Psychological Association again, a few of us are from APA.Of course, we're speaking to you live from our bedrooms and this new world were in. I want all of our attendees to know that you're welcome to ask questions throughout this presentation. So something comes to your mind that it a panelist is asked discussing physical to the questions box and your go to webinar panel and that's just going to be above the hand and section of the dashboard copy of the recording will also be sent to all registrants along with the survey about this webinar.If you stay on the webinar long enough, you'll also be prompted to take a survey. It's going to help us understand a little bit more about the potential impact that Covid-19 is having on your personal and professional life. They'll also help us figure out what other webinars and resources APA should focus on developing. So we'd appreciate your feedback there. We're keeping this to an hour. We've got a tremendous set of resources that's recently been updated in organized into serpents different audience areas. Just if you go to the homepage and then click the Covid-19 topic page, you'll be taken to a great set of resources for students early career psychologists for faculty for practicing psychologists in for the General Public.One of the things that my office has the pleasure of developing is a webinar series that we're going to be featuring on successive Wednesdays at noon Eastern. It's called Staying on Track during a pandemic and it's mainly focused on the needs of students and early career psychologists, but open and welcome to all in in psychology and our allies. There is a typo on the website, but it pages with an s, pages plural.Page.staying-on- track that is where you can register for future webinars by the end of this week. We'll have additional registration top including one that we're almost certain will be next Wednesday at noon. It's going to be on completing your dissertation from your living room and then in successive webinars will have presentations on completing your doctor's internship and getting licenses to Health Service as a psychologist.Possibly talking about pivoting your research in a couple of other topics are also in the works. So we're really excited to bring that to you. We asked you when you pre-registered to tell us how Covid-19 was impacting you personally and professionally we hope to do an article that more carefully look with these responses, but just for the sake of normalizing this situation that you might be experiencing.This is a word cloud that we put together from those responses. The some of the bigger ones that indicating increase the frequency of concern including having a significant impact on your job on your life as a student on your income on your loans unemployment and making and meeting your bills on perhaps a limited salary given that many of us are in this boat right now.I don't want to waste any more time so I will turn it over to our first panelist. Let me introduce them all as a whole. Kenneth Polishchuk, he is senior director of congressional and federal relations at the American Psychological Association. I work with Kenneth of pretty regularly. He is my educated and it comes to what education policy issues are impacting our students and early career professionals. Well, then turn it over to Alex Macielak. He's the manager of Business Development and Partnerships at Laurel Road, Laurel Road is a new partner to apa and this provides financial resources and Loan products. We’ll then close out our panelists with Bobby Hoyt. He's a friend of APA has done several webinars and articles in the pan before he's a freelance writer. He's also the creator of millennial website.I encourage you to check out some of more recent content related to coping during Covid-19. Again, I'm Eddie and I oversee the offices early career and graduate student affairs, and I'll be your moderator today. So without further Ado, I'm going to invite Kenneth Polishchuk to talk about what we're seeing from Capitol Hill and how these new policies that have been signed into law will impact current students and current borrowers.[Kenneth Polishchuk] Great. Thanks a lot, Eddie. And thanks everyone for joining us today. So I will go over some of the provisions in the recently enacted cares act which are focused specifically on student financial assistance and federal student loans.I will also provide an overview of who's eligible how the Department of Education intends to implement the law and what the impacts will be on students and borrowers and finally I'll give a brief overview of what some of the Apps that Congress is considering so the coronavirus Aid relief and economic security or cares act provides 30 billion dollars for an education stabilization fund including 14 billion for higher education emergency relief, and the Department of Education has begun to disbursing some of these funds last week. The bill also provides protections for low-income students on federal financial assistance programs. That includes Federal work-study.and Pell Grants. It also include a provision that applies to employer assistant loan repayments and that would make them tax deductible for the first time currently that those repayments are only in terms of tuition assistance, and this would not be permitted. However, it expires in January 1st 2021. Unless Congress decides to Extended in any future legislation.And finally, the bill would also defer or federal student loan payments including interest for a period of six months, and that's what we'll talk about next, next slide, please.Great, thank you. So all of these actions are automatic, so you don't have to actually take any action on your own to receive these benefits and you shouldn't fact have already received notification from your loan servicer. If you have not I would encourage you to check their website for more information and see if these changes are reflected in your account. So in terms of timing is retroactive to March 13th, which is the start of the National Emergency associated with covid-19.And it will run through September 30th all loans that are eligible are all Federal loans that are held by the department of education. However, there are some loans that are not including some fell and Perkins loans the fell loans that are commercially held in the Perkins loans that are held by institutions of higher education and private loans in terms of the fell and Perkins loans that are ineligible are about 10 million borrowers who have those loans.You can take advantage of the current action in the cares act. If you have those loans, you would have to consolidate them. However, and however, once this current period ends the interest rate may become higher than what you're currently paying for the on those loans.So it's something that you should keep in mind if you choose to do so in terms of interest rates, they will be set at zero for the duration of this period And in that in time period also interest will not accrue on those loans so all payments including any automatic payments will be suspended through this period and you know, if you made any payments between March 13th, and when the cares Act was signed into law in March 37th, you will be reimbursed for those payments how the department is doing that is that they will automatically apply any interest paid in that time period to the principal of your loan once all the interest that That accrued before March 13th is paid off and you can also request a full refund for the for the time. That was the aim payment that you made in that rich oh active period but you will have to do that by contacting your loan servicer next slide.So you are you can also opt to make payments during this time period and similar to the retroactive piece any payments that will be made during between March 13th and September 20th will be applied to the to your principal once all the interest is paid off prior to March 13th in order to do this you would have to contact your servicer and inform them that you would like to continue making payments and you can. All of these actions also apply to any defaulted loans. So the department cannot currently they can garnish wages or tax refunds or Social Security payment benefits on any of the defaulted loans during this period and any suspended payments will also count towards Rehabilitation of defaulted loans.Once it comes time to restart your payments your loan servicer should notify you sometime in August with the reminder that that they will be going back into effect on, you know, starting October 1st next slide.You know, I know that many of our students and early career professionals are either considering or in the Public service loan forgiveness program. And so the very good sort of benefit from this legislation is that any of the suspended payments that will occur during this six-month period will still count towards borrower's progress in pslf as well as any other Federal loans.So in some respects, this will actually effectively lower the number of payments that you need to make under pslf because all of these quote non-payments will still be counted. So for example in currently, you're required to make a hundred and twenty payments in order in order to qualify for pslf, but if these six months worth of payments are indeed counted which they will and should be you would only have to make then 114 payments under PSL. LF and so further than mm or any borrowers that are enrolled in income-driven repayment plans, which everyone who is in pslf will have to be enrolled in one of those plans. If your deadline for annual recertification of income comes up during this period that will also be suspended for six months.next slide so what can you do to stay proactive in all of these matters? What I would suggest is save any and all correspondence that you have either with your loan servicer or with the Department of Education in case there are any kind of discrepancies or any or a dispute will arise you will have that documentation saves to be able to use it to in the event of that occurring also, make sure to keep your contact info and up-to-date.Solar loan services will be sending out emails periodically any kind of actions that they're taking so you want to make sure that your contact info is current so they'll be able to to reach you if they need to I would also suggest checking your loan services website and the Department of Education website periodically in case you've missed an email or or any kind of mailing that you receive from them and they will be posting updates on their website.So it's good to just kind of keep up to date on on what is happening and lastly particularly if you're still a current student and if you're may be graduating during this loan suspension period contact your student financial aid office on campus. They're a good resource for you.They have a lot of information and they'll be you know, knowing full well that there probably stretched quite thin during this period because it does a lot of issues that they're addressing but there's still a resource for you and you should try to you them as much as you can next slide. There are other two other pieces that I wanted to go over and cares that aren't necessarily student loan related, but could have an impact on on many of you on the call. The first one is the direct payments to taxpayers. So they start you know that the payment started going out I think last week too.So just you know, the First cohorts in order to qualify for these payments you will have to be there US citizen or legal residents. You were have to have a Social Security number you will you could you cannot be counted as a dependent on anyone else's tax return and you would have to have filed the 2018 or 2019 tax return and in terms of eligible amounts of single filers with an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less will receive 1200.And married text taxpayers filing jointly with an adjusted gross income of $150,000 will receive $2,400. So the amount of the check will increase will decrease by five dollars for every $100 that adjusted gross income exceeds either one of those two amounts.And if you do have dependents you're able to also receive $500 for each dependent who's 16 years old or younger. And as I said IRS has began sending out the first payments this week.And if you have a direct deposit already set up with the IRS, it's you're going to probably receive that payment quicker because if you do not they will have to mail you a check but From my understanding the IRS is setting up a website this week that will allow you to go in and check the status of of the checks that are being mailed to you and also update any kind of mailing information. If you believe that it isn't up to date and then the second piece here is unemployment benefits. So what the cares act does is that it actually increases the unemployment benefit for individuals receiving unemployment compensation by six hundred dollars a week for a period ending July 31st 2020. And for those who have exhausted all of their benefits under the regular unemployment program will also be eligible to receive up to 13 weeks of additional benefits, and this will be all be retroactive to starting March 29.Next slide please.Okay. Yeah. So in terms of some of the next steps that Congress is considering a there's already a fourth stimulus bill being worked on as we speak. So to particular issues in terms of student loans that are being talked about is extending those the same cares act Provisions to those previous loans that I had mentioned that aren't currently eligible.So that would impact like I said about 10 million borrowers and then also potentially Shooting some form of larger a larger loan forgiveness piece. So there's been talks of at least $10,000 worth of forgiveness. And that was you know, when the cares Act was being negotiated that was proposed and some have even proposed up to 30 that at least $30,000 worth of forgiveness Senators Brown and and Warren have also called on a private lenders to suspend a student private student loan payments that has not happened at the moment.Even although I believe this I saw some reporting this last week that in New York state that might be happening for New York State borrowers and there are also been several bills introduced that would.That would address some of the student loan and repayment issues one particular piece of legislation introduced by Mitt Romney in the Senate would allow students who graduated between January 21st, 2020 and December 31st, 2020 to defer all federal student loan payments for up to three years and the bipartisan bill has been introduced a companion one in the house as well.And so there is a possibility of that also being included potentially as a provision in the next stimulus package and there's also a Public service loan forgiveness related legislation in the Senate that would waive the requirement that a borrower make monthly payments under pslf during a qualifying emergency in the state within which the borrower is employed now currently under under cares, you know, any suspended payments also apply to pslf progress.However this Potentially could go longer than the six month period that it's currently in law in terms of timing and still unclear when this fourth stimulus bill will be considered mainly because it's it's still not exactly known when Congress will come back into session right now. They've pushed back their return dates and 1/4, but that could go even further.So if they don't return any kind of legislation that's passed would have to be done through Ooh, unanimous consent which with a bill this large would be difficult to really get everyone on board remotely. So most likely they will have to wait until Congress is back in session in Washington to to pass this legislation, but negotiations still continue in that period and a PA continues to be very active in pushing our priorities including a lot of these student related issues with members of Congress. Thank you.[Eddy] Thanks a lot Kenneth Polishchuk. I know that will got some questions for you that came in from pre-registration. So we'll be back in touch and just a short while after our next two panelists at this point. I would like to welcome Alex Macielak. Again. He's coming to us from Laurel Road, which is a partner with APA and is offering a reduced interest rate for for people that are interested in borrowing or continuing to borrow and repay their loans in the private Market.If you are here and you're able to share your slides, I'm going to go ahead and try to do that switch you over as presenter.[Alex Macielak] Great.Okay able to see the slides now. Yeah, uh-huh. Okay, great. Well, thank you Eddie for organizing this and thanks Kenneth for that that really detailed overview of how the cares Act is is helping student loan borrowers. I even learned some things at the end of the slide. So I'm sure that was really helpful for everybody.I'm going to talk about little road our partnership with the APA and some of the Tales of those federal repayment options as well as what we do at Laurel Road, which is student loan refinancing. So the basic concept here is outside of this interest waiver for the next six months as part of the cares act. Typically you have an opportunity to refinance your federal student loans to a lower interest rate. Once you graduate and become practicing obviously, this is a different time right now, especially with this zero percent interest waiver place for the next six months. So the likelihood that refinancing a Federal Loan right now is in your best interest is probably low. We'll talk more about that. But there's also probably never been a better time to refinance a private loan you may have as the ones you take out while you're in school generally are at higher interest rates, and we're at a historically low interest rate environment. So what you could qualify for right now may be a good deal lower. So I'll talk more about that.I don't need to go into much detail on what the care is act entails for student loan borrowers Kenneth did a really good job of that. I would just add, you know, if you were looking for some more information on it. There's a good deal on the link at the bottom of the screen here / announcements - events / coronavirus all the program details are there, you know, ultimately I this is unprecedented in the student loan world. So typically these programs do evolve fairly frequently over the years, you know, I'll show you some more slides here income-driven repayment has changed Leaps and Bounds over the last six or seven years, you know, but it's it's not frequent that you see something so generous to borrowers, you know, which is really necessary in light of the times but not during the housing crisis at no other point.In student loan history has the federal government taken a step to not only allow you to stop making payments but to not be charged interest as well. So, you know those of you who do have Federal loans right now, you're well positioned to take advantage of this this program. So I'll go into some more detail on the actual functions of you know, some popular federal repayment programs Kenneth mentioned direct consolidation.For those of you who have some fell loans or Perkins loans the Might be your first step to taking advantage of that six month interest in payment waiver any consolidation done at this point with the Department of Education is going to yield a direct loan and it's those Direct Loans which are eligible for the interest waiver and payment waiver. These are also the only loans which are eligible for Public service loan forgiveness. So if that's a program you're intending to pursue First Step would likely be to consolidate your federal.Loans, or at least the ones which aren't already Direct Loans in order to make them eligible for again. Both the cares act interest waiver as well as Public service loan forgiveness.Income-driven repayment is a really popular repayment option especially for folks coming right out of school. But also those who have been out, you know, potentially five ten years. It's these are programs which allow you to make payments based solely on your income and family size as opposed to what you owe.So instead of you know, paying based on your six-figure debt burden, you can pay on you know, what's perhaps a more modest starting salary, you know right at the school, so Three versions of income-driven repayment. There's income based repayment. That's the oldest of all these programs. There's pay as you earn and then revised pay as you are which are the two newest income-driven options. These programs are going to have you pay either 10 or 15% of your discretionary income towards your loans.So discretionary income is calculated by taking your adjusted gross income from your tax return and then you subtract a hundred and fifty percent of the Poverty line for your family size and that's how they arrived at discretionary income. So either 10 or 15 percent of that is what's going to go towards the loans on a monthly basis. So generally yields a more manageable monthly payment, you know to give you some context if you let's say earn the seventy thousand dollar salary in the prior year 10% of that you could expect to be paying somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars a month depending on your family size.So I'm more manageable amount then, you know a standard payment if you had a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt, it's probably something more like $1,500 a month. So some good liquidity relief is available through these programs. Obviously, that's not the primary concern right now with the payment waiver. But you know once were past this these programs can provide you some some additional liquidity. They do have a forgiveness component built in and of themselves.So separate of that Public service loan forgiveness if you pay in These for either 20 or 25 years depending on the program at the end of that time, whatever is remaining on the loan gets forgiven the caveat with this forgiveness is its taxable so, you know, theoretically you pay for 20 years and pay as you earn and there's 50 grand left on the loan. It'll get forgiven but it will be as though you earned fifty thousand dollars in that tax year. So you have to pay a bill tax bill on it that year so it doesn't necessarily negate its value, but it's definitely a consideration in determining.Do you want to try and stretch this loan out and get it forgiven, you know over 20 or 25 years another Federal program, which is particularly pertinent to a lot of Health Care Professionals. Frankly is Public service loan forgiveness. So the idea here is if you work at a non-profit or government entity for 10 years, you can make qualifying payments and at the end of that 10 years whatever is left on the loan gets forgiven and this is totally tax-free.There's no tax implications whatsoever. The debt is just wiped clean off of your balance sheet. I think there's a lot of misconception out there about this program that you have to work in a rural or underserved area to qualify. In fact, it's all about positioning your loans and your employment such that you're eligible for the Forgiveness event. So four boxes, you got to check number one only Federal Direct Loans are eligible private loans. Do not qualify.That's something to be aware of and then you Use those income-driven repayment programs to pursue Public service loan forgiveness and thirdly work full-time at a 501 c 3. So that's a non-profit or government entity full-time. They classify is 30 hours a week and then a hundred and twenty monthly payments. You can't accelerate payments. You can't pay ahead and get to the Forgiveness earlier. It does have to be the full ten calendar years in order to reach the Forgiveness point so incredibly valuable.Especially if you are working and you're confident you're going to continue to work at a qualifying facility, ultimately nothing better than making minimum payments based on your income and getting whatever is left forgiven after 10 years. So I would certainly, you know look into if you're working at at a facility that would qualify for this.I'm so now. I want to talk a little bit about Federal payment versus refinancing similarities differences and I'll try and be concise here given the time Federal loans in general are more flexible and certainly right now, you know, you have that interest waiver and payment waiver for the next six months, which is not available from private lenders. So given the times Federal loans.Are particularly attractive and like I said at the beginning of this presentation most people are going to be best served to keep their Federal loans federal but refinancing can be really attractive for those who have private loans or who have you no other types of loans which might not qualify for those interest waiver options. So I won't talk through every one of these differences again just based on the time, but I'll give you a second to sort of digest here again.The overall message is when you refinance your you're giving up a number of federal benefits in exchange for a lower interest rate on the loan. So, you know, if your federal rate is six and a half seven percent. Well, you know a good refinance rate is probably four or five percent so you can shave to three percent off of that rate obviously things are complicated now again with the federal interest waiver, but in more normal times, you know taking that that lower interest rate is going to save tens of thousands over the life of the loan.And likely will be a really attractive option once that you know 6 month interest waiver ends.So talk a little bit about refinancing with Laurel Road. We do offer APA members a quarter point rate discount. So whatever rate you would receive coming to us, you know without being an APA member it's going to be reduced by a quarter points 0.25 percent from that. So if you would have gotten five percent off the street, you know, you get 4.75 by virtue of being affiliated with the APA. I mentioned the savings opportunity we do offer up.Twelve months of forbearance on all of our loans and we're actually offering an additional three months in light of the covid pandemic. So if you had a loan with us currently you can call very streamlined process more so than it typically is and we'll put that loan on hold for an additional three months on top of the 12 that come with the loan. This is totally free to do there's no application fees. No closing costs nor are there prepayment?Maltese so if you wanted to pay the loan back quicker with some overpayments you're certainly welcome to do that.Don't wrap things up here before turning it over to Bobby and hopefully we'll have some time for questions. I know there were quite a few but the historically low interest rate environment is definitely something to be aware of generally as the economy goes. So too does interest rates.So when the economy is doing really well interest rates tend to go up as the economy struggles like we might have lost the screenshare there but interest rates go down, so When you have the economy struggling as it is right now, we see rates go down to where they are right now with at historical lows. The 10-year treasury is near zero percent. And so if you were thinking about refinancing a private loan or in some cases a Federal Loan now would be really an optimal time to do so, there isn't much room for interest rates to go any further down. So you can you know, feel good degree of confidence that you're getting about as good a rate as you could qualify for. So with that I will turn it back over and I think Bobby is going to talk a little bit about some optionality as well. [Eddy] Thank you so much. And thanks for giving us some great information. Just now. I've got some questions for you as well that we will be coming back to after Bobby gives us a presentation do without further Ado our third of three panelists today.Everybody is Bobby who he's going to be providing some Financial expertise and telling About some of the things that he's been looking into to help people who have really significant and pressing Financial questions during this pandemic. Go ahead Bobby, you will be your slides. [Bobby] Yeah. So, you know, hope everybody's doing well. I hope you're ready staying safe. Yeah. Thanks Alex, Kenneth great information. So my goal here for everybody that's watching is really just to give you some tools to use right now.As far as I know a lot of people looking through the the questions that We received before the webinar and a lot of you are struggling right now. I feel for you. You're definitely not going through this alone. There's a lot of people struggling. So before I kind of get into it. I just want you to know that you shouldn't feel bad about being caught off guard by this. I think there's you know, just from a lot of things. I've seen on Twitter and news stories and things like that. There's a lot of you know, what people should have been more prepared. I don't think that anybody could necessarily prepare for this.I don't think anybody saw this coming obviously and to the depth that we Seen so that's the first thing I just want you to know. You should not feel guilty about being caught off guard by any of this and there are tools that can help. So that's that's my goal here just a little bit about me. I've been writing for the APA for several years now personal finance content you if you check out the site you read any of the content. You've probably seen me around. I also have been running Millennial money man. It's a personal finance website. I've been doing that professionally since 2015, and I'm also a Forbes contributor and then have been a lot.Different places so you're more than welcome everything that I'm going to talk about. I've there's content on where we've covered this in depth. Either me or somebody from the team where we've written about stimulus checks or what to do. If you can't make your if you've been furloughed and so if you just go to money on my team blog you're going to see all the content that's kind of coronavirus related.So let's let's go ahead and get into it at my main goal here is to give you again some tools to help you through this time and help you manage your money through this time, so, If we could go to the first slide.So the first thing, you know, we talked about budgeting a lot in the personal finance world, but this is the time, you know, I know a lot of you are probably feeling like you don't want to look at your bank accounts and you don't want to look at your the bills that are coming in but I would really encourage you to take this opportunity to really dial in what is going on with your personal finances. And if you haven't made a budget this is the time to start one and I'm going to give you some tools for that.But if you are in a position where you really need to cut things quickly you start with an emergency budgets is a little bit different than your normal, you know kind of monthly budget when things are good the emergency budget. We're just going to focus on cutting things that we don't need right and so some just to give you some ideas first subscription Services if you and this is for convenience items, right? If you know, I'm going to say food delivery services. If you have you know, some kind of food allergy or if you have some kind of dietary need that you get a service, you know, obviously use your discretion don't get that.But you know if you use food delivery services for convenience or shave club's or you know clothing boxes. This would be the time to cut those and you can always go back to them later. You know, it's not something that's going to be forever. So I always start cutting those if you can and kind of looking at your expenses and seeing where you can you can save some money there take out as a big one. And I know that this is kind of like a catch-22 for everybody because we all want to support our small businesses and the local restaurants. We love going to but you can't do it at the expense of your own finances, right? So You know, if you if you can you know do takeout and all that great, but that's one of the things I would try to cut out immediately just because you know, if you're doing door - or anything like that you're paying more money just for the food to come in. So that's something I would take a look at entertainment cost. I would look at if you're paying for what's a Netflix and Hulu at the same time, right? I would start trying to cut streaming services where you can you can definitely check out the free streaming concerts. Check out what your library offers a lot of free things to do, right?Now so I would encourage you to do that. I know that something my wife and I are doing we're taking away more walks than we have ever taken in our life. So, you know, it's start trying to look for free things to do and just to get outside a little bit more if you can and then you know groceries in this is kind of a no-brainer sometimes but I think you need to look at what you're getting at the grocery store really meal plan it out.Don't go don't go in there without a plan cause you're going to spend more money and then the big thing, you know, after all of that being said one of the things and one of the issues The most people have with their personal finances. They don't really know exactly where all their money is going especially right. Now if you've had you know your pay cut or if you've lost your job you need to know what is on your credit cards that you might not remember the site the service that you signed up for the thing you're paying for every month that just kind of is like a like a vampire drain on your bank account. So my recommendation if you haven't started budgeting or if you're looking for a place to do that I use mint and you can go to .Um, it's a free tool and basically what it does is it connects to your bank accounts? It pulls all of your transactional information in and you can see and all in one place every single transaction that is happening every month and you can you can start to look through and cut some of those things as needed and you'll learn a lot about your finances and will help you a lot. So that's the tool I use again. It's 100% free. There are some other budgeting tools like you need a budget or YNAB.If you go to they have a 30 Or day free trial after that it's paid. It's one of the only paid tools that I recommend for budgeting but it's really really good. There's also every dollar which is a kind of like a Dave Ramsey. If you've heard of him that's his team put out every dollar. It's also a great budgeting app and then there's also Excel spreadsheets quick in right? There's lots of different ways to do it pen and paper, you know, it doesn't really matter how you like doing a budget or you know, what what appeals to you.There's something for everyone and if you go to my team and I come you can search Any of the things I just talked about mint YNAB Excel budget spreadsheets. We have all of those and we've done reviews on everything so you can get a good look at how all that works. But again, this is the time to do a budget if you haven't been doing it.I know it's gonna be painful to kind of look at some of the things and it's uncomfortable sometimes but this is when you really need to know where the money is going from your bank account next slide, please So obviously mortgage rent right? Those are the for a lot of people that's their number one expense every month. Fortunately. There are a lot of things that are happening to help people right now. So the biggest thing that I can stress is that you need to pick up the phone. You need to start calling right? I'm going to say that again for for credit cards here in a little bit.This is the time where you really need to reach out to your mortgage lender or your landlord and ask what they're doing to help people right now and a lot of companies for example Wells Fargo is granting an immediate three-month mortgage payment suspension. They're not reporting past due payments to the credit reporting agencies Ally Bank is offering payment deferrals for up to a hundred and twenty days without late fees. BMO Harris is deferring payments for up to three months city has they have a hardship program.If you go to their website, you can find out more about that and that's just a couple of the banks but a lot of the lenders are really tweeting out some good programs to help people and kind of give them some Dieter in this time and then same thing with landlords. There's plenty of stories that are coming out of landlords through one. I heard yesterday. Was that somebody that owns a 12 building multi-family unit has waived all whole rent until July which is incredible now, obviously that might not be happening for everybody.But you want to call your landlord your apartment company and see what they're offering for you and see if they can defer payments and then I've got some resources again, you know, all this stuff is on Millennium money man that calm but we have If you've been laid off or furloughed, we have a full list of what you can do resources things. You should look into and then also if you're having trouble paying bills, we have a whole list of government resources and non-government resources to help you get help. So that's not my Pilates reminder. I know I can't do what I would hurt myself. I did Pilates. So next next one contact your credit card companies, right?This is a big one credit card debt is is one of the main factors for Kind of putting people in a bad situation because of the interest rates, right? You're talking 15 20 percentage interest rates are more. So again pick up the phone and call your credit card company. A lot of companies right now are doing things to help American Express is waving interest in late payment fees Bank of America has a request form for payment deferrals. Now remember a deferral just pushes it down the road, but it can give you some immediate liquidity if you need it as far as not having to make payments Chase is helping customers by waiving fees.They're extending dates city is letting people pause credit card payments and extending lines of credit, which I would recommend you try not to use if you can but and then Capital One has an assistance program to waive interest and fees and discover can help with payment timing. So whether you bank with a credit union or you know, one of the big box Banks, I would I would definitely call or look at the website and see what options you have for credit cards and to continue on with credit cards next slide, please.I saw a lot of questions about how can I use this time to pay off debt right now? I know some of you, you know, obviously a lot of people don't have that ability. But if you do have the ability to continue to pay and you you want to kind of you know chip away at your debt while you can one thing I would consider is a transfer to a zero percent interest card zero percent interest balance transfer.Basically what this is is you're taking your current balance and your Get over to a credit card that has zero percent interest. Right? And so that will allow you to make a bigger chunk or take out a bigger chunk of your debt with your payments, but there are a couple things to keep in mind with this you want to look for a car that offers 0% interest for a long period in mice a long period I mean somewhere in the range of 12 to 18 months because the way that these work if you move your credit card debt over to a zero percent interest card, and it's only let's say six months after that period is over you're going to be looking.NG at probably a variable APR of like 15 to 22 percent so it's going to go up after that introductory rate. So you want to see if you can get something that's longer 12 15 18 months. You also want to make sure that it's not going to cost you more to move over to a balance transfer card. Some cards have high transfer fees and interest rates that kind of negate that short-term benefit of zero percent interest. So you want to make sure you really look at the cardholder agreement. You'll need to make sure you know what you actually need to do to make the minimum payment.Each month to qualify for the 0% interest if there's late payments or you have you know, a cheque bounces or something like that. They can revoke that zero percent interest fee and go to the higher rate. So you want to know exactly how it works and then you know, the unfortunate reality you will have better options if you have a higher credit score and I know you know, if you don't have a higher credit score right now, you're probably thinking that doesn't help me what my advice would be to everybody that's listening right now is to start tracking your credit score.Because it does make a difference when you're trying to get these credit cards or you know, personal loans or anything like that. You can get better rates. I personally use Credit Karma. I'm not endorsed by them or anything like that. But that's who that's what I use to monitor my credit and you'll if you haven't ever done that before you have never looked at your credit, you might be surprised to find some things on there that are maybe delinquent payments that aren't correct or somebody tried to steal your credit card information. There's a lot that that looking at a free program like Credit Karma or Credit Sesame.Really helpful. I can help you build your credit score over the long term. So I would certainly recommend that next slide, please.So we also saw a lot of people wondering about side hustles, right? You know, that's one of the things that I cover in depth on millennial money man. That's one of the the areas of expertise that I do have and right now I'm not going to lie to you. It's a little bit limited as far as what you can do to make extra money. If you had asked me two months ago, I could have listed 50 or 60 different things that you can do, but there are still options right now. If you're looking for a way to make extra money and I would recommend once we come out on the other side of this multiple income streams.I can protect you and in situations like this. I hope we never see something like this again. But if you do have a situation in the future where maybe you lose your job or you had you have to take a cut in pay having these multiple income streams. It's really really important. And there's a lot of different ways to do it. So some of the things I would be looking at you. There are a lot of people that are just doing retail therapy right now and they're buying a lot of stuff online eBay sales are still very strong so you can be you could sell your stuff online if you have furniture.In your home things like that. You can go to Facebook Marketplace eBay. It's a lot of free resources out there. A lot of free courses. I've actually got some resources. I'm only a money man run Facebook ads for small businesses, but really more digital marketing for small businesses is going to be a really really popular side hustle. Probably in the next few months obviously small businesses are hurting right now. So this isn't going to help, you know, right right now, but my prediction is that there's going to be an explosion in the amount of small businesses that need help getting people in the door.So Are plenty of courses you can take and even Facebook has a blueprint course on how to run Facebook ads for local businesses. So that's a potential side hustle that pays very well work as a proofreader drive for instacart deliver for door - right now is one that's highly In Demand, right and then teaching English online with VIP kid. That's a very popular one with APA readers when we talked about it in the past on the website, and essentially what you're doing is you're working with children overseas and you're doing lesson plan. You actually don't even have to do this.Lesson plan. There's a premade lesson plan for you through VIP kid and you're working one-on-one with students to teach them English. So it's the the barrier to entry is very low you have to have teaching experience. But it that's a very very wide-ranging definition. You know, it could be if you ever taught a Sunday school class that is teaching experience and they're looking for plenty of people still right now. So I do have two resources best side hustles from home and side hustle that you can go to on the website and going to go through all of them.Possible side hustles out there right now that you can use and then lastly I think.So I'm available for any questions that you guys have and others, you know, several hundred people that signed up for this webinar. My systems grow not going to be super happy that I'm doing this but feel free to send an email to Bobby ammonia money, man, and we will point you in the right direction if there's a resource or an article on the site, if you have a specific question, we're happy to help you with that. And then the one thing I would recommend for everybody here. There's actually a millennium money man community on Facebook.It's got about 13,500 people in it, and I highly recommend that you join that It's free. Anybody can join. All you have to do is go to slash group / Millennial money, man. And any money question that you have any money question you have is all you have to do is post it in there and the community will answer it for you. And it's a very safe place. We don't allow people to bully people or make fun of people for different situations that they have financially everybody's in this together. And I think you'll really enjoy it if you joined the group so you will have to answer a couple of entrance questions so we can make sure that you're not a spammerYou know, but outside of that then our admins will let you in and again, I'm sure they'll be really happy with me for pointing a couple hundred people to it. But we're happy to have you there. So just some resources for you and that's that's all I have guys.Well, this is really a tremendous. So we've got about seven minutes we will end on time. It has received a number of questions both from our registrants. And from our people that joined us today that we had question based on some of the things that that Bobby Cannon and Alex were saying so I will start with a couple that I think are probably more related to the Federal Loan.Is there and I believe the answer is yes, but both undergraduate and graduate loans will be sort of well as during this period of time. Yes, that's correct.And can you speak again? Because a number of the questions came up even during the webinar any chance of debt being erased all together there have been certainly a lot of calls from advocacy coalition's for it all together. On that's unlikely.As I said there have been some conversations of potentially, you know at least $10,000 worth of debt or at least $30,000 worth of debt, but I have not seen anything beyond that and even That is going to be a difficult lift, but altogether just can't be being completely Frank. That's unlikely.Thanks. He's there any so a couple of questions where about what are the cons here? Right sometimes when they when you get something for free, we're taught to always know that there could be a string attached and some of the questions have to do with that. Very notion. Is there anything we should be wary of is there is there a cons of accepting this pause? Should we continue to pay on principle if we have money that we can afford?Pay on our loan during this time speaking about Federal loans, and then maybe I'll turn it to Alex after you can if there's any implications for private paying during this time.I don't necessarily think there's a con to taking it. But if you feel like you want to continue making payments, I'm not really here to give Financial advice and that regard but if you feel that you're comfortable making payments and you want to go ahead and do it and do it. You can like I said, this is an automatic action that's being taken by the department. So if you do want to continue making them you would have to contact your servicer.Let them know that you want to want to continue doing it and then once the once the interest that Crude before March 20th, March 13th is paid off. The rest of the payments will be applied to the principal. So that's something that you think you're comfortable with doing in this six-month period that is really your choice, but I don't think there's necessarily a con to to taking this, you know, and and hand using this this waiver.Thank you. Alex are about to do you want to add on to that or have any related thoughts about making loan payments during this time? I guess just on the private side. I mean we are offering the additional three months of forbearance. So you certainly do not have to make payments if you're under Financial duress, but we certainly would welcome them. If you wanted to, you know, like kind of said it's it's really at the borrower's at your discretion. I'm sure.Bobby has some thoughts on whether that's a prudent move at this point or if you're better off, you know building that emergency savings account. So I'll let him comment on that. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean really that's what it comes down to if you do have an emergency savings account if you have an emergency savings fund and it's fully funded you have three to six months of expenses, you know, and if you do have that sure, you know, go ahead and continue to pay off debt if you want to try to advance advance that debt payoff date, but if you don't this is a time where we don't know how long this is.Going to go on you know, we hope it's over shortly. But my recommendation would be if you are feeling like you're pinched and you don't have enough money right now. I would be trying to put it into a savings account if you can and take advantage of some of these some of these waivers.Thank you. I'm and this is a question for somebody who's already repaying private loans. Is there any federal benefit that one can take advantage of right now?Not currently in terms of private loans. So these these loans are you know, totally separate of any federal entity. So there hasn't been any legislation passed Kenneth. I know you mentioned there's been some talk about like a wide sweeping pause on private loan payments, but to this point it really varies by your lender. Like I said, we're currently offering the three-month added four Barons, but you have another 12 months that come on.Alone, but no currently there are no federal benefits associated with private loans. Yeah, that mean that that's correct and some members of Congress have asked a private entities to delay payments, but they haven't actually legislator on that at the federal level and I don't believe that's going to be the case. I do know that in like I said in New York state, I believe for New York borrowers. They some those private entities are delaying payments.But that is really in that state and that's really up to the discretion of the private lender. So, I don't know if that's going to extend to other states but at the moment there is no federal action on this other than calls on these these private organizations to Banks mainly to potentially delay payments, but they would have to decide that on their own.Thank you a question for Alex. One of our listeners was looking on Lola Rhodes website and wondering if there's any consultation awkward grape a members to reduce the feeling of all these different student loan options out there.Yeah, so you're welcome to contact our customer service team. I mean they are to be totally clear. They're not financial advisors, but that would be more than happy to chat about your options. The phone number for our customer service center is eight five five two, four five. Oh nine eight nine.Thank you. And the question perhaps for Bobby is there there's a lot of information being put out there to help people deal in the times of covid and one of the secondary effects of this is people feeling overwhelmed with options. You have any any advice to speak to that?Yeah, I think you know as far as just being overwhelmed like with too many different things to choose from what I would do is just make sure you're going to trusted sources of information going to Is that are legitimate we're working really hard at the APA to make sure that we're getting out content for you to help you during this time and something that we've been talking about back and forth a lot. So what I would suggest is keeping an eye on the APA website, we're going to be putting out more content. They're really, you know, just as an outside kind of like an outsider and working with the APA what they're doing I think is incredible with these webinars and with the information that they're putting on the website.So I you I ink that not just saying this because they pay me to write for them. I think that the it's an incredible resource and I really think you should lean on that because they do a great job and it's very detailed information. Thank you. I appreciate all of our panelists for joining us today. Certainly. We appreciate our audience members for being a part of this webinar for the whole hour.We've reached the end of our time just go down the line and see if anyone has any final thoughts or reminders for those that tuned in today I just think you know, as others have said you know that you're not alone in this that that that everyone is struggling in various different kind of respects and that you know to you know at the federal level at least in terms from APA side, we are advocating on your behalf. You are a priority for us and we want to do the right thing and we want to encourage the people in power to continue doing the right thing.Yeah, I would say just you know, like everybody said here. This is something nobody really saw coming and it's been kind of an extraordinary thing that we hope never happens. Again. My recommendation would be to take what you learn from this because all of us are learning a whole lot and from the personal finance perspective try to apply it once we get on the other side of this.I know a lot of people were probably living with less of a cushion of cashed and they ever thought they would need so I would recommend, you know, if once we get on the other side starts Saving more start budgeting more start start doing what you can you know, we obviously can't prevent things like this from happening, but you can certainly work on being more prepared next time and I think all of us are going to be, you know, looking at doing that. So try to look at this as an opportunity at least on the other side when we do get there.David I would Echo that I mean obviously this is unprecedented as everyone has said and it's creating a lot of financial duress, but there's also been some opportunities that have have come in light of it like this student loan interest waiver, you know, nothing like that has ever happened. So again, you know going back to what Bobby said do your research go to credible sources, you know be prepared to capture some of these opportunities which which exists right now.[Eddy] Thanks again to all of you for your time want to remind folks to check out the website that's listed on your screen. Now. It's sort of A Pas homepage for all things related to this pandemic and the resources that were amassing and putting out there for the students that have attended. I've also pasted in a Facebook group that you can join to support one another during this time. We've got one webinar in the works that might be especially relevant to you. It's coming up on May 20th.It's about entering the job market or Aging job during the pandemic. So we're excited to be putting that together as well as a whole webinar series with this one kicking up today. I'm really grateful again that we could be able to provide this to you. I wish you a lot of luck. If you didn't get your questions answered we're going to do our best to Fan out the questions to those experts and they'll be in touch with you directly and the recording will be made available and emailed to you shortly after most likely later today with that.I say thanks again, and I wish you all a good day. Stay healthy.Thanks everyone. Thank you. ................
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