59. Meagan Landress, CSLP: Student Loans, Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Strategies to Minimize Debt Burden

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in healthcare. Our guest today is Megan Landers. Megan is a student loan consultant for Student Loan Planner. She obtained her finance degree at the Coles College of Business at Ken saw State University. After interning with a couple of CFPs, she realized that finance was her passion and started her own practice in March 2017 to help people who were beginning their financial planning journey with student loan debt in the mix. She was the first person in Georgia to acquire her CSLP designation as a certified student loan professional. Her specialized education around student loan debt allows her to guide borrowers through informed repayment decisions, taking into account their full financial situation and financial goals. In this episode, we discuss Megan's background and her desire to become a student loan expert. We talk about the various type of student loans, whether it's private loans or federal loans, and then, of course, dive into some of the subtypes of federal loans that many of us have. We talk about the differences between these loans and why some are more popular than others. We spent the bulk of the conversation talking about public service loan forgiveness. It seems that there is a great deal of discussion regarding PSLF, both for positive and negative, although the negative seems to be louder in terms of the volume of the discussion. And Megan does a great job dissecting some of the reasons why we spent some time talking about the student loans pause due to COVID over the past two years and what her expectation is with respect to repayment and the cessation of the COVID pause. Lastly, we discuss the future of loan forgiveness and Megan highlights some strategies to minimize loan burden, both for the medical student, but, you know, residents in terms of even attending level physicians who can implement some of these strategies and to reduce some of their anxiety and debt burden and try to increase the quality of life with respect to their financial health. Now this episode gets a bit technical at times, so you may have to rewind and listen again in a few of the parts, and particularly because of the acronyms, which if you're not familiar, it can be quite confusing. So we'll link a few resources in the show notes that are good for you if you need a primer on student loans, or if you'd like to dive deeper into any of these topics. Now, without further delay, please enjoy this discussion with Megan Landras. All right, Megan, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm looking forward to nerding out with you on student loans today. Oh, man, we routinely do that, although this is a topic that, you know, we don't give enough attention to, and it's very, very important, I think for me personally and selfishly I'm going to have a lot of questions because I'm going to try to pick your brain because it, like I said, deeply affects me. But you know, I suspect I'm not the only one, right? I mean, with the cost of higher education and particularly advanced yearning doctoral training, a lot of our healthcare colleagues have student loans of some sort, darshe obviously is a unicorn exception to that. But our hope is really to be able to kind of simplify or demystify some of the discussion around student loans that has been at the forefront, especially as of late. Before I do that, though, I am curious. How does one become a student loan expert? Yeah, that's interesting because this was not like a field of study, like even a couple of years ago. But so I'm what's called a certified student loan professional. And that is now a financial planning designation in our profession of financial planning that just tells you that I have the financial planning background, but the specialty and student loan planning specifically. And this, it came about, I want to say like four or five years ago now, but I came into this profession or this specialty because I started my own coaching practice back in 2017 and I was in financial planning, loved it, but I wanted to help people who needed help getting to the point where they had investible assets. And I liked helping people with budgeting and paying down debt and like getting those really like foundational pieces of financial planning in place. And I quickly realized that I was going to run into student loans a lot working with this group of folks because it's usually people right out of grad school. And so I learned, I started nerding out about student loans because I had actually a chiropractor client that had like a ton, 300,000 of student loan debt. And I was like, there's no way we could pay this down like a normal debt. So I'm going to do a little more research on our options. And that's, that's how I became like super like interested in this industry. And I found the designation and here we are. Now I talk about it all day, every day. I mean, you certainly doing you guys do an awesome job in your podcast and the website with all the articles and you've been a tremendous resource for me. Now you said you've been doing this. You've been certified for how many years again? So I got my designation January 20. Oh my gosh, 2019, I think it was. Yeah. So January of 2019 is when I officially got certified. But I had been doing student loan planning before then prior to that. Yeah, is this, is this what percentage of your practice is primarily student loan coaching planning? Now gosh, so it's getting more and more to student loan planning. So I'm working more and more with Travis at student loan planner because the need is just there. But every coaching client I have with the exception of literally one also has student loans. So my, my focus is everybody I work with, we're working on student loan planning together. Awesome. So when you are, so and I love that you're talking about the coaching aspect, I mean, that word is such an awesome word. And I think with every profession, there's some aspect of coaching and connecting with people that really comes in. I know you guys have talked about when you're making these decisions of which way to go, whether it's refinancing versus BSLF versus something else, right? You're looking at a bigger picture and Travis often talks about a holistic approach to that. And I have a sense that as we get deeper into this conversation, we'll see where that really benefits that coaching background for your clients. I'm wondering though if we could take a step back and, and define for people like what specific type of student loans that you do work with maybe just as a general thing, hey, when you're seeing people, they're coming with this type of student loans. Is it from undergrad? Is it, you know, for really from higher education, like what kind of stuff are you dealing with? Yeah. Yeah. So it's, there's really, if you break it down, there's two different types of student loans out there. There's private and there's federal. There's, you know, some smaller like state-based programs out there. But in our minds, we kind of treat those as private loans because they're typically not, they're not going to have access to the same programs that federal loans have access to. And, you know, within federal or within private loans, there's going to be undergrad loans and there's going to be graduate school loans or professional degree loans. And for the most part, repayment options are almost the same for undergrad and graduate school. It's just a matter of maybe how much we can borrow when we go to school and take out those loans. Undergrad, we can borrow far less than what we can do in graduate school. So typically, you know, the bigger balances come with greater education or higher education, I should say. And what are the qualifications like in terms of federal versus private, is it much easier to get one versus the other? Like how do, how do people go about that? Yeah. So, I think that's a good question. It is much easier to get a federal student loan. There's not, there is a credit check in the sense that they're just making sure that you don't have any outstanding federal loans and bankruptcy or collections or something like that. And you won't be eligible to borrow. But private loans, we do, it does run credit for purposes of being eligible to borrow that loan. So it will affect your interest rate and it will affect whether or not you can borrow. And you might have to have a co-signer with private student loans. Federal is a lot more easier or easier to obtain because we can borrow up to the cost of attendance when we're in a grad school program. And you know, as long as the school says it's, you know, X amount per year, we can borrow that. There's no limit on it, which also might tie into like the higher cost of education conversation we'll have later, but it's much easier to go federal. Well, it's interesting you say that right up to the cost of attendance. I remember, so this is a difficult thing because I think when most people are going, at least for undergrad, right, you're, I don't know, 17 years old, maybe 18, maybe 19 at the latest. And so you have to make these decisions of, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to sign on. And you, at that point, I thought I needed a co-signer when I was going for undergrad as well. I don't know. I don't remember. FASA ID and all that kind of stuff. They say, oh, hey, you can take, because if you say you're going to do the tuition and the room and board, because of course, every 18 year, I was like, oh, I'll take all the money I can get, right? You don't have that foresight at 17 years old of what that's going to look like, what interest is and how 15 years from the down the road, maybe some people who understand with delaying gratification means, but still most people, right? And so you take two X three times what actually cost, because I think about for medical school, right? I think my tuition, I went to private schools like 40 something, which was way too much, but that's a different conversation. But they gave us 70 plus, right? Yeah. And you would take it all out. You would take because, because why not? Right? And then fast forward 10 years, you're like, oh, God, why did I do that? Thankfully, PSLF, which we'll talk a little bit more about, but before we dive into the PSL aspect, I want to dissect the federal loans a little bit more, right? So people might have here things called direct loans, right? You have stuff like FFEL loans, which has been the news a little bit more lately. What are the major types that you think is worthwhile expanding on? So people understand, hey, these are the ones that matter when we look at loan-for-given type stuff and how are they different? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. So there's, I would kind of boil it down to there's three different types of federal loans out there that kind of matter. There's direct loans, which could be either unsubsidized or subsidized and subsidized loans that simply just means in these, you can only borrow an undergrad. So this is not a graduate school thing, but subsidized means that when you borrow the loans while we're in school, we're not accruing interest unsubsidized loans, that's the opposite. We are accruing interest as soon as we borrow that loan. And we can borrow unsubsidized loans also in graduate school, but the theme there is that there is a cap on how much we can borrow undergrad. There's a very small cap. And then undergrad, there's still a cap, but we can borrow more, or sorry, graduate school, there's still a cap, but we can borrow more. Because that's one section, direct loans. And direct loans have access to all of the different repayment options available, and they have access to forgiveness. There's two different types of FFEL loans. So direct is that first type I'd mentioned, the second and third type are FFEL, but there's federally held FFEL loans, which that stands for Family Federal Education Loans. So federally held, they're participating in that COVID forbearance right now. They have the 0% interest, they have the payment freeze due to COVID. And that's because they are owned by the Department of Education. The third type is that commercially held FFEL loan, which is kind of treated as a private loan. And whether or not you have one or the other, it wasn't something that you did intentionally during school. It wasn't like you chose which type of FFEL loan to borrow. It was just a matter of what you got handed to you at that time. But this was anybody could have borrowed one of these FFEL loans before 2010. And they are far more limiting. They only have access to one income driven plan called income based repayment. And they do not have access to public service loan forgiveness normally. There have been changes to that rule with the PSLF waiver, which we'll get into, but those are kind of the three kind of sections of loans that you should maybe be aware of. What about the parent plus or this, the grad plus loans? And where do they fall under? Yeah, so grad plus, you can look at them as unsubsidized loans, they have a larger. So you can borrow up to the cost of attendance with graduate plus loans. And that's just whatever the school dictates. So you can borrow the unsubsidized loans up to the limit. Then if you still need a need for aid, you can spill over into the graduate plus bucket for the rest. Parent plus loans, I didn't even mention that because it's not super common, but it is getting more common now. Undergrad is getting a lot more expensive. And there are not plus loans that a student can borrow as an undergrad. So there is something called a parent plus loan that your parent can borrow for the student. And it's similar to the plus loan in the sense that you can borrow up to the cost of attendance, but a parent plus loan always stays under the name of the parent that borrowed it. As long as it's in the federal system, it'll continue to stay under the name of the parent. But that's a newer, not newer, they've been around, but it is a bigger and bigger problem, I would say, because there's more and more parents having to borrow for undergrad, because it's getting more and more expensive, unfortunately. Yeah, I certainly is the case. And this goes back to the comment I made earlier about when you have to find a co-signer. And then a lot of folks, I have these conversations with my colleagues, and we just feel hamstrung when you take these loans out. And again, I go back to you're not making the best decisions. And then sometimes, unfortunately, of course, as a parent now being a newly minted father, you're going to make, you're like, yeah, of course, higher education. Like, yeah, I'll sign my name there. And then not only one person, but the second person's affected and credit, all that kind of stuff, could potentially take a hit if you're not making the appropriate repayments and whatnot. But let's stay focused on the main three loans that you talk about, right? Because when we look at loan forgiveness, which is such a hot, on top, it nowadays, right? It's all over the news and both for its pros and its cons, but I feel like a lot more for the negative side of things. We're going to get there, right? But I would love it if you could kind of explain to people what this loan forgiveness program is, right? So there's the public service loan forgiveness, or maybe who qualifies for PSLF as well, like just a general idea of what that is all about. Yeah, so kind of the two main forgiveness topics would be public service loan forgiveness and then income driven loan forgiveness. So public service loan forgiveness or PSLF for short is specifically for borrowers that work in a public service capacity. It kind of sounds like what it is. So we have to be either working in non-profit entity 501C3, a government entity, an employer that is just tax exempt. We have to be paid by that employer too. We can't be a contractor for them. So this program will forgive somebody's loans if they work at that employer and they make 120 qualifying payments. Whatever balance is left over after that 120th payment is then forgiven. And so it's a really unique program for public service folks, but there are requirements that we need to check the box for along the way. So that's one big section that's definitely being talked about now, because there's an executive order going on right now that's kind of open the door for access to this and then the other side of the equation, if we're not eligible for public service loan forgiveness because we work in private practice, or we were a business owner, whatever the situation, then there's also the income-driven repayment plans, what's called maximum repayment period. And each of the income-driven plans we could either pay for 20 or 25 years, depending on the plan that we choose, and then whatever balance is left over at the end of that term is then forgiven as well. So it's similar to PSLF, but there's no constraints on the employer and it's longer. So it's a longer timeline overall. What about, you mentioned tax exempt, right? So what about the tax implications for going for that 20 longer or 25 period? Yeah. So that we call this the tax bomb if you're going towards the longer term forgiveness. Now this does not exist for public service loan forgiveness thankfully, but for the longer term forgiveness, if a balance is forgiven on the income-driven plan, then it could be taxable to us. Right now, there is a temporary tax exclusion for any student-loan forgiveness until December 2025. So even folks who are hitting like that income-driven longer term forgiveness timeline is getting tax-free forgiveness right now. So some of our planning questions are like, when we're thinking out into the future about what might happen, we're thinking, is this tax implication going to exist? Well, we plan as if it will to be safe, but it's possible that it could be permanently, this temporary change could be made permanent. So that's an interesting conversation too about the future of student loan repayment. You know, I hadn't heard that before. Is that part of the waiver? No, it's not part of the waiver. It was part of the CARES Act. They had just implemented some language that said that any student loan forgiveness between now and December 2025 will be tax-free. And there's a lot of reasons, maybe why they plugged that in there. One reason was because they were talking about, you know, widespread forgiveness for a while or like $10,000 of loan forgiveness for people and they realized, oh man, if we did that, everyone would get taxed on that forgiven amount if they're not in public service. So, you know, that might be one reason. It expires December 2025 because a lot of the tax changes that were made in 2018 expire December 2025. So they kind of looped it all into that timeline. So it's going to be revisited. And the question is, are they going to lock it in as something permanent going forward? Because people are getting the loan forgiveness tax-free right now. And it could set the expectation or the precedent that student loan forgiveness overall is tax-free. So we're very curious as to how that's going to look over the next couple of years. But we're still recommending folks save for it proactively if we're going that path. That's a very good thing to do just to cover our backs if it does exist in the future. What's your sense about that? Do you think it will get locked and extended? I think it's probable, yes. I think I am optimistic about it. I'm usually very pessimistic about student loan stuff. But I think signs are pointing to that being the case. And if that's the case, we're going to have a huge student loan party. So you'll be invited. I love that. I love that. Not a lot of people, you mentioned the CARES Act. Would you care to elaborate a little bit about what that is? Because I suspect some people don't have an heard of it. Don't know what it is. Yep. So the CARES Act, this was implemented back in the heat of COVID. So March 13, 2020 is when all the changes that are relevant to student loans kicked in. And what happened is our nation got hit really hard with COVID. People were really struggling out of work, sick. And so they paused all federally-owned student loan payments. So this is where that FFEL, commercially held term comes into play. And this is what really shined a flashlight on what loan types people had. But they paused all interest. So they froze interest at 0% and they paused all payments for federally-held student loans. And it was going to expire not too long after March. We had no idea what COVID was going to look like. So I think they did it for three months at that time, or maybe until September of 2020. And then they've continuously extended this payment freeze since then. And so interest has been at 0% payments have been frozen for almost two years now for federally-held student loans. And unfortunately, those commercially-held FFEL loans got left out. Because the language was very specific saying that they had to be federally-held loans. And those FFEL loans, they are federal, but they're treated as private because they're commercially-held. And so that was a big topic too, like early on. People were confused as to why they still had monthly payments, even though their loans were federal. And that was exactly why. That was of course corrected there, right? October of last year, they included those as well. Or is that part of something different? No, so the FFEL loans still have interest and still have payments due right now, unfortunately. Now, you can convert them into federally-held loans. That has been an option. And there's pros and cons to doing that. It involves a consolidation, which means combining the loans or converting them into a direct federally-held loan. So people were able to take advantage of the 0% interest and the payment freeze if they did previously have FFEL loans. But they had to take action. It wasn't something automatic. Gotcha. Now, coming back to this, the IDR Maxure payment period. Now, is this, so from the PSLF, it's all loaned that the repayment that started after 2007. Is that correct? Yeah. Like that's for qualifications that you mentioned earlier. So is the IDR held to the same criteria to meet the IDR repayment period, the 20-year, 25-year plan? It technically, no, there's no like hard set date for that. But some of the repay came about in 2016. Pay as you earned was 2014 when it started. Income-based repayment was before 2010. So a lot of people haven't even had a chance to be on an income-driven plan for too long, because these plans haven't existed or they didn't have loans before. Well, I'm wondering the tax exemption, the tax bomb, right? That's the example of the 2025. Is that even benefiting anybody? Because nobody has had, or nobody's been in a repayment plan for 20 years as far, right? If it all started in 2007? There is. So there's one plan that almost no one is on. It's called income contingent repayment. It started in like late 90s. So there are people, those are the only people who are eligible for the income-driven forgiveness right now, because they've had their loans around long enough to be able to. But it's not a lot of people. Gotcha. So I think that you touched on some of the criteria that's required, right? The tax exemption, and that's synonymous with 501C3. Is that correct? For public service loan forgiveness. Yes. And for the trainees who might be listening for the medical students, stuff like that, what type of organizations qualify as 501C3? Is it most hospitals and residency programs that when you wouldn't deal with, they qualify under the 501C3 program? Is that fair to say? Most do. Yes. Yep. And if you're not sure there is a way to check, you can, what you need to do is find your employer's EIN number or federal identification number, and you can run it through, there's a portal on studentaid.gov where you can put in the EIN number under the public service loan forgiveness help tool. And it runs it automatically. And it'll pull it through the IRS system to determine if it is a tax exempt or not. And so that's an easy way to check if you're not sure. That part of the tool is a new thing, right? I don't remember that being something like two years ago. Yes. I think it came out just about two years ago, if not a little earlier. Gotcha. So what are other basic, absolute requirements, right? There's a certain time period that people have to make payments to. They have to be continuous, that kind of stuff. Yep. So there are five basic requirements you need to know about. So the first we've talked about already, which is just working at an eligible employer. And again, this means we have to be paid by that, that qualifying employer. We can't be a contractor for that employer. It doesn't matter. So this is also what's confusing to folks is, it doesn't matter what kind of work you're doing either. So if you're a contracted physician, let's say, in your doing your work in a nonprofit hospital, if you're paid by the contracting company or a partner's group, then you don't qualify. And that's what's very confusing is you're doing the exact same thing is another like colleague that's employed by the hospital, but you're not eligible for PS left in that case. So the employer on your W2 is important there. Second is we have to work full time, which is the employer's definition of full time. You can also get part time credit if you work at two different public service entities at the same time for at least 30 hours or more a week. So let's say you work part time at an academic setting. And you know, it's a public university and then you work part time in a clinic that's 501 C3. So as long as those hours together add up over 30 a week and you're doing those jobs at the same time, then that does qualify for PS left as well. You just have to submit both employer certification forms. Third requirement is we have to have direct loans. So we talked about those loan types direct loans are the only ones that qualify for PS left. Those FFEL loans, you can convert them into direct loans also Perkins loans, which don't really exist anymore. They were like instant like the school would issue these loans, but if you have those, they can also be converted into direct. Fourth, we have to be on an income driven plan. So there are four different income driven plans pursuing forgiveness. You want to pay as little as possible to maximize how much you can get forgiven. So you'd want to go on one of the cheapest income driven plans, which would probably be revised pay as you earn or repay for short or pay as you earn or pay for short. So one of those two is probably going to be the best for PS left. And then lastly, we just have to make 120 qualifying payments. And so this is a big misconception for folks. I think people think PS left is a 10 year program. And it could be it, you know, if you were completely consecutive with your payments, that's the shortest you can get loan forgiveness within. But it's down to the payment. So 120 qualifying payments. They don't have to be consecutive. So if you take, you know, a year off, go private practice, paid it, come back into public service. The payments that you make during that private sector employment won't count towards the 120. But your payment count will pick back up where it left off if you re-enter public service. So that's sometimes something people don't know either. Yeah. Now, thank you for sharing that. I think that, you know, most of those things are pretty intuitive. And people like when they're planning their future through a residency and looking for that big first attending job, they can kind of they have four side under that. The contracted portion, that's the one that could be a bit finicky right? I think there are certain professions, particularly the ER physicians are often contracted employees and they're not employed by the hospital. In your experience, are there other specialties that might get begin paid as like a, you know, a contractor, like or not through the five one safety program? So it's there are certain states where we find this being more common. So Kaiser is a very prominent in California and in Texas. And Kaiser has a rule to where it cannot hire physicians directly. They have to go through some kind of partners group or contracting company. And so, you know, where Kaiser might be an eligible employer for someone in Oregon, they might not be for a physician who's working and living in California because the law says they can't be hired directly in California. So that's, that's an interesting thing we've run into over the past couple years. But I'm trying to think of other professions really, really any physician or any professional that gets hired through a partner's group. I'm trying to think, I think, well, I feel like I messed up on that one. No, no, I'm because I'm again, I think you are, but I think anesthesiology as well. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, there's not a ton where like they have to be. It's really just like the state that's dictated it. Interesting. Yeah. That's a big, big issue, but there's a lot of opportunities to be hired either directly by the hospital or go through a partner's group. So, you know, it depends. Is that thing in your experience when you're seeing somebody who is, you know, in that employment period, is that something they can negotiate? Like, is that something that's even on the table for negotiation? Hey, look, I'm going to sign on, but I understand institutions like Kaiser and stuff like that. I'm sure that those are just like in the bylaws. That's not happening. But like other places, have you seen that in your experience? It's not often. If it is possible and they do go directly to the nonprofit entity, usually there's some kind of pay cut associated with it. So that's like the push, like there's, you know, you have to balance that. Yeah. And that's where we hire you and crush the numbers for us, right? Whether or not. Right. Yeah. You touched on the different type of plans, right? We talked about repay. I like to call it pay. Yeah. That's how we read it. Exactly. I think it would be worth it. Because I think, you know, it's, for me, it's springtime usually may, may time when I get the email that I have to be certified. And for every, every single person is a little bit different, right? And then when you jump in, you'd fill out your application and ask you, I said, hey, do you want to be on, you know, I be our repay, pay, like what do you want to do? And they're pros and cons to every single one of them. I think it would be just worthwhile just to kind of just highlight the main differences. And maybe as a general rule, with the most popular ones or the top two probably most popular ones are repaying pay. It's fair to say. Yeah. And what the maybe the differences between that, because I think people wouldn't see that they kind of freak out like, I don't, I don't know. And you just accidentally click one and that could cost you thousands of dollars if not more, right? Yeah. So I think people get confused a lot with the term IDR as well, which stands for income driven repayment. And that's not actually a repayment plan. It's kind of the blanket term for all of the plans that are based off of a derivative of your income. So that's not a plan you can choose. So when I say IDR, I'm kind of talking about all four of them. But of the four, repay and pay are both the cheapest. They're based on 10% of discretionary income. The differences between that's like the only similarity. The differences between the two are pretty significant though outside of that. So repay has a maximum repayment period of 25 years. If you're doing the longer term forgiveness, if you have graduate school loans. Undergrad, it's still 20 years. But that's not as as common most most folks who are going towards long term forgiveness. They went to grad school. So 25 years for repay pay as you earn is 20 years. So it's five years shorter. Repay is a plan that's always going to include spousal income. Even if we don't want it to, if we're married, the payment calculation will include spousal income unless we're legally separated. Pay as you earn allows us to exclude spousal income if we file our taxes separately from one another. And this is an interesting thing with federal student loan, like no other debt cares about how you file taxes with your spouse. Federal student loans do. So if we file jointly, pay as you earn is going to be based off of your joint income with your spouse. If we file separately, then pay as you earn allows us to exclude spousal income from the payment equation. And then that's also the same for IBR income based repayment and I see R. So repay is the only one that like mandates that spousal income is included. What was the reason for that the repay, like, why did that come up and why did they change their rules? Because pay, pay came first, right? Yeah, so pay was by executive order. Repay was through legislation and repay just it took a long time to get repay push through an Obama by executive order put together pay. So there are two years apart and the one one benefit that repay has that pay does not is what's called an interest subsidy or think about it as an interest discount. And we do use this strategically for for folks, especially in residency, who maybe we're not going towards forgiveness. But we just we cannot pay a very high monthly payment when we're in residency because our income is the lowest it's ever going to be. So repay is interesting because if our payment is lower than what the interest cost is per month, it will waive half of that accruing interest because if our payment is lower than the interest cost that means that our balance is growing interest is just accumulating on on its you know on itself. So repay will waive half of that accrued interest or our balance is still growing in those environments when we have that negative amatorization. But it's growing a lot slower than it would be on a different plan or definitely than it would be in forbearance. So one of the biggest missteps I see physicians make is putting their loans into forbearance during residency if they don't think they're going to do forgiveness. And what you should be doing is considering repay because the payment is still going to be very low. It will be proportionate to your residency income. And it it'll give you a very nice interest discount in those three four or five years when you're in training that will make the payback a lot cheaper in the future if you're not doing forgiveness. But does that make sense how I explain that? It does to me because I went deeper and deeper and deeper I'm going to ask to follow questions though that I would have asked you in 2017 when I didn't know anything about this is what how does one calculate discretionary income. Oh yeah, that's a yep. So discretionary income is the term I use because that is legitimately what the 10 15 or 20% of your payment is based off of so that is derived starting with adjusted gross income. And adjusted gross income is your gross pay not including anything pre-tax. And this this number is something you can find on your 1040 of your federal tax return. It's is line 11 on the 20 20 tax return if you wanted to check. So they take that at AGI then they subtract 150% of the poverty line based on your household size. And so that number changes every year the changes with inflation but generally for a household size of one it's about 20,000 150% of the poverty line is about 20,000. So they subtract that from your AGI and then that's what that's where we get the discretionary income number that is what the 10% or 15% is based off of when they calculate your payment. Gotcha. And so a lot of us are not financially savvy. In fact, that's the knock on a lot of the physician. So when you when you talk about the term you know negative amortization a lot. Some people don't know what the heck does that even mean. You explained it a little bit but just to define that a little bit more. Yeah. So simple terms that means our balance is going backwards. Our payment is not enough to pay off the interest that's accruing on it per month. And so our balance is growing. And if we're trying to pay off the loans, that is bad because that means it's getting more and more expensive. And we're going to have to run two steps to catch up. So that's that's what negative amortization is. Awesome. Yeah, it's like you can't stop the bleeding fastener right the blood is accumulating in the cavity. If I may use a medicine analogy. I love it. So we we talked a little bit about the current events right we talked about the carries act. We talked about some of the freezes and how that might have benefited some folks. I think in October of 2021 there was this alluded to there was more of an inclusion. So a lot more people started qualifying for public service load forgiveness. What was that about and who did it help? Yep, yeah, you've got it right. So October 6, 2021 there was another executive order by power of the cares act that president Biden implemented where basically what it did is it opened up the door to public service loan forgiveness for people who may not have qualified previously. Because either they had made payments on the wrong types of loans. So for those out there who had FFEL loans and they're thinking, ah, you know, it's too late for me. I did not consolidate or I didn't fix them in time. Maybe check on it because now you can fix that you can now have those those prior payments count similar same same story for for people who were on the wrong repayment plan. It's like a second chance for people who didn't check those two boxes of the requirements. The two requirements that still remain is that we still had to have been working for a qualifying employer full time and we had to have made payments. So that's the key. But that I think they way underestimated the like benefits of this program or of this waiver because it's going to allow people to go back and get any past payments to count towards public service loan forgiveness that otherwise would not have. And so it's making people either get immediate loan forgiveness or getting a lot closer than than where they had originally thought they were. But this is not relevant to folks who had just graduated, you know, that doesn't have any payment history. This is more so for people who didn't know about PSLF previously or maybe didn't check one of those boxes and missed out on years of payments, kind of pushing back their timeline. Now it's a second chance to kind of true up if that makes sense. Gotcha. Now to the listeners out there. I'm going to sound like a new comparing to ultimation you guys. So I'm trying to learn here. So I don't think there's any medical student who probably hasn't heard of PSLF even in my case, right? I think it's something that's constantly talked about now those 120 payments, which I didn't know I always thought it was your based rather than payment based. Those can like that counts and residency. As long as we're in repayment. Gotcha. Okay. So from my perspective, you know, I've always heard a lot of students say, oh, I would never do PSLF. It doesn't make sense to me because quote unquote 99% of people get rejected. You know, what's your what's your take on that? Why is there that sentiment, you know, from a large crowd that at least I've heard. Yeah, gosh, I hate this phrase because this is honestly this is based on a media title from 2017. And there's been an echo chamber with the media about the statistic since then. So in 2017, that was the first year we could have ever seen anybody get the loan forgiveness because this program started October of 2007. So no one would have ever been eligible before 2017. So that 99% statistic came from I think it was like 800 people who had applied to PSLF initially. So 800 people, but to further break down the numbers like going forward because the percentage didn't seem to get better. And that was what was scaring people. It was like why are so many people getting rejected. And the reality was there's a lot of reasons, but the main reasons were because people were getting rejected because they weren't they hadn't hit 120 payments yet. So reasons for that were because they, you know, they thought it was a 10 year program. Maybe they didn't make maybe they were on a payment 118. They weren't quite there yet. So it doesn't mean that they weren't on track. It just means that they weren't quite there yet. And then the second reason for the that being such an issue was because previously, previously, previous to maybe two, three years ago, there wasn't really a way to check where your payment counts stood with PSLF without applying for forgiveness. And so people would apply not because they thought they had made the timeline yet, but because they wanted that report back on how many payments the that Fed loan thought they had made towards PSLF. And they got looped into that rejection number. So I don't think that that's fair to have in that. Yeah, exactly. So those were the biggest reasons when you look at the data. And of course there were folks that weren't on the right repayment plan or didn't actually have an eligible employer. So that was far like blown out of proportion as far as like why people would be getting forgiveness. And so people really did think it was just Fed loan was like picking and choosing who who got the forgiveness and who didn't. But I think there needed to be a little more elaboration on those rejection numbers. And so the payments every month, correct. So like 120 by by 12. That's where we're getting the 10 years from. So. Yep. And you know, it was interesting. I recently read an article I think in the white corner investor website and where they're talking a lot about this and. And the gentleman who wrote the article had the graph and what was encouraging was that the number of applications is increasing obviously over the year because more people are in that bucket after done seven who are falling into it. I'm actually before I ask you that question. I want to know if somebody does take a crack at it just because they want to see how many payments they've made. Is there any consequences to that except getting rejected of course or like can you just come back and apply four months later when you do qualify like are there any. Yeah, you absolutely can check now and there's actually a separate for well it is now the same for there's a lot of confusing process stuff I will not get into but now there is one document that you can submit that has a box that you check that says that you just want to check your payment count. Or you thought you made 120 payments so now you can decide you tell the system like hey I want you to check me for forgiveness because I think I'm there or you can say I just want to know what my payment count is and then they won't be counted in the rejection number now. I'm wondering though if you've interacted with any people let's just you know back in 2017 who did take a swing at it and only they apply it only because they wanted to check and then got rejected. Did they have any consequences for it or the you know they just got fed alone said no just come back after five more payments and simple as that exactly that. Yep just as simple as that so if you apply once and you get rejected it doesn't mean you can't apply apply again when you're you're eligible. Gotcha yeah cool so so you know as I was mentioning earlier and I was looking at this graph and we're looking at the show notes for people that the number of applications is going up at the application approval is also going up but the success rate. It's it's more encouraging but it's the numbers are only you know better but meagerly like the success rate in September 2019 according to this was 1.66% 2020 went up to 2.54% and then 2021 was 4.03%. Again the grand scheme of things like it's going to continue to increase because as you mentioned it's such a new program interesting interestingly though December 2021 it jumped all over 13.21%. I don't want to put you in the spot here but does that a court I mean you guys deal with thousands of people doing this do those numbers seem appropriate to you or in your in your experience like is it better than that like what what's been your experience. I would say it's a little better than that in the sense that 2021 in my mind makes sense why there was a spike because that's when they made a lot of adjustments to the paperwork and the paperwork has been the biggest well I say my biggest struggle with like the numbers is because that you know I feel like the numbers are skewed there's no. Like there's not a clear understanding of who is actually intending on applying for forgiveness and who wasn't until more recently so now there's a better breakdown. And now we have the PSLF waiver going on right now which is definitely going to skew a lot of numbers so I think I think things are looking really a lot better than they have historically. And I think with the PSLF waiver we're going to see we're already seeing like lots of numbers of where you know just people immediately getting loan forgiveness who thought that they never would. Because they they had the wrong loans maybe they had a small balance left but now all of their prior payments count so it's just a very interesting thing because I think. The numbers just there's there's lots of lies in the numbers in my mind because I think there's a little more to read between the lines therefore. So I think it's short short answer to that is I think the numbers are better and I think the PSLF waiver is a lot is adding to that too. Yeah I mean that's that's super encouraging so I'm going to ask you to take out that crystal ball again for me and let's look fast forward we talked about in 2025 maybe you said that you're optimistic that the you know the idea or max repayment or that portion is going to be extended. So a lot of folks will talk about and I think you know political parties and both sides have you know viewpoints on what they want to do with PSLF. And so a lot of my colleagues and close friends who I think it would be a great idea for. But they're like I don't really know I don't know if it's PSL is going to be around for the reasons we just talked about because the clickbait headlines say 99% 97%. It's not very encouraging right and of course the people are just sometimes not invested in digging deeper or reading between the lines as you just said. So when you look at the future of PSLF and in terms of its stability where do you stand what are your thoughts. Yeah so I so PSLF is it's woven into the fabric of folks like people who already have loans it is woven into the fabric of your promissory notes and the income driven applications you signed and the consolidation applications. So for people who have loans and who are pursuing the program or who want to pursue the program there's not a risk to it disappearing on you I get that question all the time like what if I do this and you know my balance balloons and it disappears. And we don't think that that could happen I could they change it for the future yes I think they are underestimating how expensive public service long forgiveness is going to be in the sense of there's going to be a lot of people who can be eligible and who can get the forgiveness in the future especially with this PSLF waiver people who probably never would have gotten the forgiveness with the original rules. So am I concerned about it disappearing in the future not so much I think it's it's hard to say that you're because the headline would read if they did away with PSLF the headline would read that you know they're canceling a program that helps teachers and police officers and you know public servants and that doesn't sit well with anybody. No one wants to sign their name on that that said yeah we did away with that program because it saved us a lot of money for the nation no one wants to be on that. So do I think it's going to go away no is it possible for it to be changed in the future maybe but it wouldn't negatively affect anybody now who has student loans that's what's important to know is that it would be effective for people in the future. Who have not borrowed or signed on that that dotted line I guess you could say. Yeah and the deadline that you reference the MPN note right that's an important piece of it I mean that's a contract that we have with the federal government right like that that starting 2007 any loans that qualify for all the boxes that you mentioned earlier. Now and it's important and anybody who is listening who has that I would track that down and keep it for your own records you could find it on the student a dot go website. It's it should be in your MPN notes and all other notes in there and that's something you want to hold on to in multiple places I haven't saved just in case you needed I'm not encouraging anything. However there is a precedent for it right if I'm not mistaking a story comes to mind where there was a group of lawyers who at least qualified but then it was it was taken away from them and then do you know could you clear clear that up like what happened there. Well I'm wondering if you're thinking about maybe the initial story of how PSLF came about because it was kind of stream it was pushed forward by attorneys because these attorneys were graduating from the same school with the same amount of debt but those that chose to go a public service direction versus a private sector like private practice direction made vastly different incomes. And so the public service folks had a harder time paying back the loans that they're calling early their classmates with the same balance you know or the same you know went to the same school so that is that what you're talking about though or am I totally off based on what you're thinking. So I mean it might it might be one of the same you know I thought that at least that they had applied they had been rejected and then they took the case up to maybe not at some level a higher level of the court where they had sued the government and then the judge had agreed is that not I'll have to look it up I might be completely ruining the story right here yeah that's okay sorry I don't know that up the job in my head. That's okay the point that I'm trying to make it is this contract is binding right and and again the intention behind it was to encourage folks to maybe not pursue the private sector where the the income is going to be far greater there's just no doubt about it maybe not a hundred percent of time but but certainly most of the time as somebody who is now graduating fellowship very soon and looking for the first starting job. You know I've got this criteria as I'm looking for a job and it's you know my needs my wants and and my nice to have and in my needs five or one see three is a component of it because I crunch the numbers and that's very very important so every time I interview and as I have these discussions of where my features going to be that's a big piece of it and if I end up making a decision and then the rug gets pulled out under me. Myself and lots of other people are going to be upset and I think that's kind of where you're getting at and that's where the MPN and the contract part is super super important. Yeah. All right so so I think that that puts us at ease right where we have a little bit more peace of mind that this is here to stay and we've been grandfathered in. I want to shift gears and talk a little about strategy and tactics right because certainly coming in there are some there are a lot of awesome things that you can do we want to minimize payments as much as possible right you mentioned that. And so you can get the biggest forgiveness and there's nothing better than zero dollar payments because they count. And you know most of the time it's it's talked about one way to do this is internear when when medical students are graduating and and they're coming down well actually before we get there. I want to take a step back I think when medical students graduate there is a pathway they want to go down right there's this pathway of refinancing right to private loans or consolidate. And going down the PSL of pathway. What's the conversation that you're having with new residents about hey which might be more appropriate like what does that look like that framework for you. Yeah so I think when we're talking to a resident maybe a first year resident. Yeah we're talking about the potential of whether or not PSLF is going to be a reality or could be it does your path take you to a place where you would naturally be working in a nonprofit or government setting. If it is then we're definitely talking about how to minimize our payments getting on the income driven plan maximizing our path to forgiveness. That's a pretty in some some folks know that they know that they're going to be working in a nonprofit setting because that's that's where they're driven that's where their heart lies that's that's what they want or that's what the numbers say maybe. Now the second part of that is someone who will go into a profession or a practice that just typically does not qualify for public service. So dermatology is an example. There's a few other professions where it's just you're not going to be working in a nonprofit setting you're going to be in a private practice setting. So that's the case we talk about because you do have an option to refinance while in residency. And there are programs where it will make the payment more affordable for you during residency and then it'll have kind of like a time stamp where it'll jump up on you when your income is hitting attending or higher and you know that that time frame. So that that's an option but what I talk about with folks is like if if we know that that's the path or if we're unsure more importantly if we're unsure. I talk about keeping our foot in the door for these options that's kind of like the term I use because that's what it feels like we're keeping our foot in the door just in case things change. But also making sure that we're not hurting ourselves one way or the other so for someone who's not sure or thinks that they're going to be going private practice. I'm still talking through the benefits of staying in the federal system during residency and that's where repay comes in a lot of times because repay has that interest subsidy that can make your effective interest rate. It's just as good or maybe even better than what you can get with refinancing right out the gate. And that's that's what that interest discount we talked about earlier. And the benefit I think to taking advantage of maybe repay and its subsidy is you know we're reducing our balance size growth. It's not growing as fast as it could maybe that it would be as a private loan refinanced. But we're also locking in our options to change gears if we need to because once we refinance and maybe I should have started with this refinancing is a permanent decision. So if we take our loans to a private company we can't go back. So I like to talk folks through that that like thought process because there are some folks that still are very adamant about going and refinancing which is fine. You know that is this is your plan. But I always like to just make sure that we you know we think about exactly the consequences of that decision. And not to say refinancing is a bad idea for folks it definitely can be a great option for folks who where it makes sense. But it needs to be something that we feel very confident about before we go and do it. And the repay subsidy being in the federal system like during residency can help just protect ourselves and give ourselves options in case we need them in the future because private loans typically are less less generous. So I would say I love that. Yeah. So you know I think it'll also be worth mentioning or explaining the term consolidation. I think sometimes people hear that like oh consolidation like what does that mean is that synonymous with refinancing. I know that's not the case you know that's not the case but some people might not can you explain that. Yeah that's a good yes and I hear this all the time like consolidation refinancing those terms get used interchangeably. So consolidation means combining the loans within the federal system so it keeps them federal. It does not change your interest rate it takes the weighted average of your existing interest rates refinancing is taking the loans to a private company. And the reason you would do this would be because you're committed to paying the loans off but it's also beneficial to get a lower interest rate in doing so. So those are the differences but you'll you'll hear those words being used interchangeably all the time. Yeah all right so let's come back to these tactics that these zero dollar payments that I talk about I'll often tell people that about how they can do that. And they just look at me and disbelief like that there's got to be a trick a gimmick that can't possibly the case you're trying to pull a fast one on me. So maybe if you could explain how that could possibly happen and why that qualifies. Yeah so a zero dollar payment this is something that can be generated if your income falls below that poverty line that deduction that we had talked about when we discussed how to get to discretionary income. So how someone can implement this or how this is possible and what we typically recommend is you know in your last year before graduation. When it comes to student loan repayment planning it makes sense to file a tax return for the year right before graduation and why because you might not be earning income. Well when you apply for an income driven plan it links back to the most recently filed tax return to base your next 12 payments off of. So let's say you graduate in May you know you have a tax return on file from last year where you made no income your payment is going to be zero for 12 months right after graduation. So and this is also great because a lot of folks say well I couldn't afford payments and residency well you can afford a zero dollar payment. So this is a great way to get credit for PSLF because it counts since it's based off of income and it helps you know budgeting in that first year of residency too because we literally don't have to make a payment but it's setting you know it's helping us get to that forgiveness timeline very efficiently. So I want to ask in general then you know we're thinking about you know this is something we should be thinking about as pre-med students right and a lot do a lot come to me actually through social media and try to ask me and I say hey I'm sorry I have no idea but now after this talk I will so thank you for that but you know what are some of the things at least pre medical students medical students early on that we should really be thinking about in order to decrease that loan burden and then maximize forgiveness. Yep so I think this file attacks return trick is a number one number two is consolidation right after graduation so you will have a six month grace period right after graduating from school and it's automatic you don't even have to request it but that time period it's six months does not count towards PSLF and the only way to forego that grace period is by consolidating post graduation and it kicks us into repayment but if we filed a tax return with no income then our payment is going to be zero so that's the second trick is consolidation right after school going forward. So one way to kind of dictate your payment or adjust your payment is you can contribute more to pre-tax buckets and this is sometimes hard for residents to do still because our income is is is still pretty low. But if you have access to a 403 B or you know a pre tax retirement account through work go ahead and try to opt into that especially if there's a match you know if that if that entity is going to give you a percentage for contributing start contributing towards your retirement and that can reduce your adjusted gross income which reduces what your future payment can be. And another bucket you can contribute to is an HSA or health savings account which is kind of just exactly what sounds like money that you can use for qualifying health expenses that's something else that lowers your adjusted gross income. So those are some quick ways that you can you can reduce things and we did talk a little bit about how marriage impact student loans so also talking through like tax filing status with your spouse in those years when we're in repayment. And it might make sense for you to consider a filing separate status to keep the the borrower you know of the two keep their payment based off of just their own income and not the household income. So those are a few few things off the top of my head that could be really prudent to look into. Yeah I'll add on to just drive home the point about the consolidation immediately after graduation I think most medical students will graduate for your maybe April may depending on your school. And of course you start residency July one and if you wait till June to start applying for consolidation there's no chance it gets approved by July and you're going to miss that first month of zero dollar payments. It's kind of what happened to me right and I'm really upset about it because you know in short site you're like whatever one zero dollar payments not a big deal but if you think about it on the back end you're paying that 4,000, 5,000, $3,000 a month so that's that's a lot of money and so just the principle of it still eats at me every single day so hopefully you got to be right on the ball the day that graduates you get this in try to or try to get it in. Another issue that people complain about I know we're coming up on time here is dealing with loan servicers man is that a challenge and something that you guys talk about routinely what might be some strategies and I know there's a there's a lot of movement in terms of loan servicers switching over fed loans is kind of really handing off the reins to everybody else. What are some strategies for people when they're picking up the phone and trying to get information and calling and and they're getting answers that they they know might not be the right thing to deal with these loan servicers. First suggestion I have there is to do most anything you can through student aid dot gov so student aid dot gov think about it as the servicers boss they you can apply to consolidate through student aid dot gov you can apply for the repayment plan through there. You do the application on that website and they they tell your service or to do it for them basically is what the servicers purposes is to to be you know bossed around by the Department of Education so I would start there because that that solves a lot of maybe of the confusion about paperwork and student aid is just direct to the source gets the job done. Now other other ideas on communicating with your servicers so if you have a problem with your payment count for example for for public service loan forgiveness. I typically recommend like doing your own audit of your own payments first this is a common you know thing that I hear this is why I bring it up with the PS left payment count. But I would do your own audit of your payment history just to see like did you file an employment certification form for all of your employment history if there's any gaps make sure that you file you know your your paperwork needed on your end first and then then start the communication with with the servicer about your issue. But so that that's one thing I see commonly another thing I would suggest is just making sure that you're also organized like you retain documents correspondence that you get from your loan servicer and the Department of Education because you'll get correspondence from both. So make sure you retain that information you refer to it before you call because you and just so you know to if you are contacting your loan servicer it's possible you could be sitting on hold for a while. So you want to be very direct to the point with what you're trying to get accomplished on that call with them. And then maybe the last thing I would mention is you the servicer is not there to help you maximize your plan. So they're not going to be there to help you figure out the best plan for you and to talk through tax filing status questions or to you know they're really just there to collect payments track payments for the Department of Education and you know try to solve any technical problems that they can. But they're not going to be a planner for you so don't go to them with that assumption that they're there like sitting in your corner helping you try to maximize PSLF or your repayment plan because they're they're just not unfortunately. But we know someone who can't right and that is you. I swear that was not a shameless plug. It's just the reality. That's right. So where can our listeners find you then and what kind of resources do you have for them? Yeah, so studentloanplanar.com we've got a ton of free content on our website we have calculators you can use we have a podcast we have blog articles for your profession not only your profession but maybe your special T2. So check check out our website for information and then we also provide one-on-one consultations so if you would like help building your customized plan that is exactly what we do. And you'll have a one hour consultation with me or want someone from our team to walk through your most optimal plan stress test it because I know life is on a straight line so we'll talk about like what could change the plan. And our goal too is to help you feel very confident in your plan of action. That way we're not relying on the service or for everything and we feel very confident managing and maintaining our plan over time. That's a big goal of ours too. But you can book a one-on-one consultation straight through our website. Awesome well Megan thank you so much before I ask you the last question really I just want to say thanks I know student loans is really a daunting topic for a lot of people and for me to just hear you kind of gracefully break down the detail very clearly has really been educational but also just super super valuable so student loans isn't just about money either right I think a lot of people are hearing about NYU Columbia these medical schools starting to give tuition free right and that's going to change the choices that a lot of residents make whether it's specialization through primary care so it's such an important topic that I think is not only just about money again but also changes the climate of health care. So with that our last question that we ask everyone is how do we put the health back in health care. Man and I asked you all too before we started the recording I was like are you all going to ask me this. Man so can I can I ask first what just give me like a general answer that some folks say to make sure I'm like on basis because I'm not in the health care industry of course I don't want to make sure I'm totally off course. So so again I think the one of the biggest reasons we want you on right is financial health is such a huge determining factor in terms of physician health right I think as we talked about something at least a burnout is thinking about money thinking about family life thinks about money thinking about what your career choice you're going to do is think about money and when we put that into this bucket of overall health again it can really determine the way we practice so currently we live in a sick care system you know I don't think there's much. That thinks about putting the wellness into making sure that physicians are kind of taking care of in different pathways so from your perspective I guess. Why why is financial health so important you know in terms of the overall system of health care yeah thank you that was a great breakdown and it makes me feel better about my answer so. So what I would say what and I'm speaking in in terms of you know student loans and how I can see student loans being so impactful maybe with someone's mental health and there is always going to be a student loan plan that's going to fit whatever you want to do with your career. So and I say that because we did talk a lot about PS left today and so sometimes I get on the call with someone who feels like they absolutely have to make a nonprofit job work even though they they hate the specialty or they hate their job you know that they they just they're counting down literally the seconds until they get to that 120 payment so. What I like to tell folks is you know that public service loan forgiveness serves its purpose it can be a very great program compared to you know maybe paying the entire loans off but that could come at a health cost a mental health cost so what we like to do to is talk about how like you know PS left doesn't have to be the answer. You know paying the loans off aggressively doesn't have to be the answer so we like to talk about how you know let your career path and what you truly want to do with your career dictate the student loan plan not vice versa don't let the student loan plan dictate what you're doing with your career because there's just so many more downsides to going doing the reverse. And there truly is like a path for no matter what that situation is so if it's not PS left maybe we're still going towards the longer term forgiveness which is fine at the end of the day maybe it doesn't truly affect like the bigger picture of your financial independence goals and maybe it helps you you know threefold by just being happier in your day to day life. So and that's what I like to tell folks is you know don't don't let the student loans dictate you know your career path it should be the opposite hopefully that's in line with what you were looking for. That's beautiful and we can we can definitely get behind that so thank you so much again. Yeah thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the conversation and hopefully you guys were able to follow along as I mentioned earlier there are several links in the show notes for you to expand on what we discussed. If this is an area of interest and you want to know more now if you're not interested you could always hire a student loan expert like Megan of course to help you along the way. Considering the large amount of debt burden many of us have and the complexities of the student loan landscape it could be a worthwhile investment. Now before you sign off please run more on the important disclaimer that everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only it does not constitute the practice of medicine nor should it be considered as medical or financial advice of any sort. No physician patient relationship has formed anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician or your personal financial planner financial coach whoever it is regarding any specific health or financial issues that you have. But if you enjoyed the show please be sure to subscribe review share with anyone who you think will gain value from this and until next time thank you for listening.