2 Comments / debt help / By Amber Masters / October 8, 2018
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A few weeks before I graduated from law school, someone in our financial aid office spoke to our class about choosing a student loan repayment plan.To be perfectly honest, I don’t recall what was said in that meeting. But I do recall exactly how I felt afterwards–completely lost, confused, and stressed out about my student loans. After that, I started talking to similarly situated friends and reached out to some financial advisers. I was given a lot of conflicting advice regarding what student loan repayment plan I should choose. It was overwhelming. I’m not exaggerating when I say I lost sleep over it. I started doing my own research, and I even started this blog to create a space where similarly situated people could come and share their experiences so that we could all learn from each other. [Related: Our Student Loan Debt Story]
Around this time, Travis from the Student Loan Planner reached out to us and said that he would crunch our numbers to help us in choosing a student loan repayment plan that was best for us.We didn’t really know if we could trust him. But we also had a lot to gain and not much to lose by giving him a try.He explained that he was a former bond trader and that after his wife had recently graduated from veterinarian school with six figures of student loan debt, he helped her and many of her friends figure out what student loan plan was best for them. He realized he could also do this for other people, and Student Loan Planner was born. Now he’s advised over 1300 student loan borrowers and has saved those borrowers over $70 million! (combined, obviously). Travis and the people on his team are also all Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA’s) or Certified Financial Planners (CFP’s).
We gave him some basic information such as our income and current student loan balance and he ran the numbers and then we discussed the pros and cons of the best choices available to us for choosing a student loan repayment plan that was right for us. In the end, he basically confirmed the decision we’d already made– to refinance our student loans with a private lender and pay off our loans as aggressively as possible. [P.S. if you are interested in refinancing your student loans, you can check what kind of interest rates you qualify for without impacting your credit score by clicking here. You’ll also earn $200 if you choose to refinance with this link!]. He did, however, strongly encourage us to at least consider other repayment plans, such as utilizing income driven repayment through the REPAYE program (many of our similarly situated friends with +$500k of student loans are doing this). What took us literally MONTHS to figure out on our own, took him less than an hour phone call with us. If we’d known about the Student Loan Planner when we graduated, we could have completely avoided all of the sleepless nights and stress around our student loan debt. He gave us SO much peace of mind.
If you don’t listen to any of the other advice offered around here on Deeply in Debt, listen to this. If you have over $50k in student loan debt, you need help choosing a student loan repayment plan. You NEED TO CONTACT THE STUDENT LOAN PLANNER. Even if you think you’ve made the right choice with your student loan repayment plan, having an expert confirm (or deny) that will bring you so much peace of mind. Our consult with Travis saved us literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. That is pretty mind blowing.
HOW IT WORKS:
1. Contact the Student Loan Planner by clicking this link here. Based on how much debt you have, you’ll be assigned to a phone consultation with an expert: Travis (if your student loan balance is above $400k), Rob (student loan balances between $200k-$400k), or Lauryn (balances up to $200k).
2. You’ll provide some basic information.
3. Travis, Rob, or Lauryn will talk to you for an hour or less and walk you through each of the best options in choosing a student loan repayment planbased on the kind of job you have/will have, the balance of your student loans, your income, family size, etc.
4. After the consultation, you’ll pay a flat fee of a couple of hundred bucks. That small change will save you THOUSANDS in student loan debt costs (for us, hundreds of thousands) and you’ll have the peace of mind that you’ve made the best choice with how to deal with your student loan debt.
5. THAT’S IT. You can move on with your life without stressing out about student loans! (other than making your payments of course :))
Have you used the Student Loan Planner? What did you think? Is it worth it to pay someone to help navigate your student loans?
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