Repayment Plans Under Review: What Proposed Changes Could Mean for Physicians

Daniel Wrenne: That’s the thing. I don’t want to go off on too much of a tangent, but anytime they start fiddling with this stuff, anytime the government starts making big changes like this, they inevitably create new loopholes. So there’s new strategies and new ways around it. And so when we talked through the first bullet point, I was kind of like, “Oh, that’s cool. That’s exciting, ’cause that’s simple and it’s gonna be straightforward.”

But the more bullet points we have on this thing, it’s just gonna add new strategies into the mix. So we still have to see how it shakes out.

Welcome to Finance for Physicians, the show where we help physicians like you use money as a tool to live a great life. I’m your host, Daniel Wrenne, and I’ve spent the last decade advising physicians on their personal finances with the mission to help them understand that taking control of their finances now means creating a future where they can practice medicine where, when, and how long they want to.

Daniel Wrenne: Jeff, what’s going on, man?

Jeff Wenger: Daniel, the world is blowing up again.

Daniel Wrenne: We’re talking, and I think what I said was, “I hope we don’t have to give back and talk about student loans again soon, and that everything stays more consistent and predictable.” Something along those lines. Yet, here we are. We’re gonna be talking about some student loan hot news.

Jeff Wenger: That’s right.

Daniel Wrenne: This is big-time stuff, though. We’ll try to get this show out pretty quick, too. So we’re recording. It’s May 1st, but this is new stuff. Actually, as we’re speaking, this is some student loan changes that are getting proposed. I’ll let you give us the layout, Jeff. So maybe break it down what we’re gonna talk about, and we’ll jump into it.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. Yeah. So I think maybe we should preface this with, right now everything that we’re gonna talk about is proposed. It has not happened. It’s not in place and is certainly subject to some changes here.

Daniel Wrenne: Or completely being tossed out.

Jeff Wenger: Or none of it could happen. Yeah. But at this point, the House GOP Education Committee has actually released their proposed texts that would overhaul a lot of student loan programs or parts of the student loan system based on this budget reconciliation that would be going through Congress.

It’s not a nothingburger. It’s not one senator or one house of representative, one representative proposing something. It is from the House GOP Education Committee and is part of what that bill will go to—for the spending bill to go to the Senate. But there are a lot of changes that impact student loans and PSLF in there right now.

Daniel Wrenne: Yes. Jeff and I were just talking about it before we hit record, and I was very surprised at how much change they’re proposing. And yeah, like we said, this is definitely not set in stone. It’s definitely more than just like a politician said this is an idea, or Trump said something, was an idea.

This is like like phase two in that it’s been ironed out to some extent and now they have to start fine-tuning it. So they do have to get votes and agree on it and pass it in both the House and the Senate. So there’s quite a bit left and then the president has—I would assume the president signs it.

But yeah, lots of big changes, so it’s good to have this on the radar. That’s the main reason we wanna share with you guys is just so people have it on the radar. We’ll share more details as they come out. What do you think is the biggest change? So we’re gonna hit four or five of the big bullet points we think are most relevant, but what do you think is number one, the biggest change? These are all big ones.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, there are a lot of big ones in here. I’d say probably the first one, and maybe it both answers and causes maybe a little tension for the current student loan payment plans, but some changes going on there with the actual plan options available.

So yeah, I think the first thing would be the payment plans. The proposal here is that basically we’ve been worried about the SAVE Plan or talking about the SAVE Plan and what happens to that. This proposal has basically every current payment plan, pay-as-you-earn (PAYE), new IBR (income-based repayment), SAVE, ICR (income-contingent repayment.)

All of those would transition to the old IBR plan.

Daniel Wrenne: Or the original IBR.

Jeff Wenger: Yes, the original, the OG IBR—that’s from back when Daniel said he was into student loans, man, in 2010 back then. How many plans were there?

Daniel Wrenne: That was the one. I guess ICR was around, I don’t know. Nobody ever did ICR.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, you wouldn’t want to.

Daniel Wrenne: But yeah, IBR was the option. The only option really. And PSLF existed then, too. So originally the whole structure is it was old IBR, or it was IBR at that time. And then whether or not you do PSLF, you qualified for it.

So essentially, it sounds like they’re just transitioning back to the original OG PSLF structure.

Jeff Wenger: Yes. And so everybody that’s on those plans would be transitioned to that original structure as part of that proposition. Daniel, what would that do to most people’s payments? Is it a good thing, a bad thing?

Daniel Wrenne: I have no idea. And when I start thinking about scenarios, I have no idea ’cause there’s a lot of questions that are probably unanswered yet, not answered yet, but generally speaking, it would increase ’em. But I could come up with a scenario. I’m wondering like, let’s say somebody—did the SAVE Plan have a cap?

Jeff Wenger: No SAVE Plan had no cap.

Daniel Wrenne: So SAVE’s in jeopardy either way. But if I say I was on the SAVE Plan, so it has no cap and I have an ultra high income, IBR was capped out at 10-year standard payment, so I have no idea how that’s gonna work because are they gonna just say you’re unable to get into old IBR because your income is so high?

That’s a question I’m sure we don’t have the answer to. But if they did still allow you into old IBR, in theory, your payment could go down quite a bit, relative to what it would’ve been in SAVE. But…

Jeff Wenger: That would be like the magic answer a lot of people with a SAVE Plan and not sure if they can get onto another income-based repayment or income-driven repayment plan.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, that could be a good thing. That could be a really good thing. But yeah, for the majority people, it’s gonna mean quite a bit higher payments. I know they’re changing some of the formula stuff.

Are they using the same for this one? Are they using the same standard like income minus the poverty threshold times 15%?

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. So the IBR would remain unchanged, so that’d be the formula for it. It’s 15%.

Daniel Wrenne: Same formula is the original IBR.

Jeff Wenger: After taking away that protected income, which that always gets confusing, but it’s a benefit to borrowers when you take away that income, at least for the payment calculation.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, it’s basically income minus poverty threshold, 150% of poverty threshold, and your poverty threshold changes based on the size of your family and sometimes the state that you live in. So that’s where it gets complicated. But they do the math for you when you do it. But the big thing is it’s 15%.

So a PAYE is 10%, new IBR is 10%. SAVE is I don’t even know. It’s 10%-ish.

Jeff Wenger: 10% for our most of our audience. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. So 10% versus 15%, that’s a huge pretty substantial difference.

Jeff Wenger: Yes. 50%. Payment might go up 50% or get to the cap. So I think that would be what you might expect would be your payment’s gonna go up for most people if that were to occur.

Daniel Wrenne: But then, I don’t know if they let you in, if you’re over the cap though. That’s a question ’cause they might—technically, they enter into that, like back in the day, back in the OG PSLF days when there was just IBR, you couldn’t just get into IBR. If you had a really high income, you couldn’t get into it.

If you were above the threshold, you couldn’t get into it. So I don’t know if they pull that, bring that back or not, but that could cause problems.

Jeff Wenger: But yeah, I don’t have the language of it memorized yet. My understanding is that basically everyone would get transitioned to IBR, which would be a good off ramp for whatever other plan you’re on, that’ll at least—we’ll have to see how the mechanics of that would work again, or if they do apply that partial financial hardship criteria where you have to be able to actually benefit from the income-driven plan to get on it. So we’ll see.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. So bad news is. If this does play out, there’s probably a lot of you guys listening, the payment that are gonna see big, decent-sized payment increases. Also, the other bad news with this is if you’re going for the 20-year or 25-year forgiveness, everybody gets switched to 25 years, right, Jeff?

Jeff Wenger: Right. Yeah. So on pay-as-you-earn or new IBR, you can get your loans forgiven after 20 years.

But the old IBR, what everybody would switch to, is only 25 years. That’s not the PSLF, that’s just regular old forgiveness. Not as enticing, but valuable for some.

Daniel Wrenne: Potentially good news is that IBR could offer a payment cap that could be helpful. And so if you have the qualifying issues, ’cause your income is really high with SAVE Plan especially, it could allow you potentially to transition into IBR without—you could essentially get back into qualifying for PSLF.

And that’s the other good news too, is that it’s qualifying, so IBR qualifies for PSLF. So they’re not canon PSLF.

Jeff Wenger: I think one big benefit of this that you mentioned off camera earlier was just we’re down to one plan now, right?

Daniel Wrenne: Oh, the simplification. That’s a big benefit.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. Like we don’t have five or 12 or a million plans to choose from. It’s IBR. Does that work for you or not? You don’t have to do all the mental gymnastics.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. When I started…

Jeff Wenger: Except…

Daniel Wrenne: When I was looking at it in 2010 and all in that timeframe, it was pretty straightforward. It was still complicated.

There were some complicating factors, like I think you can still do married filing separately. The payment cap and projecting payments was always complicated ’cause they got all the poverty calculations and they’re confusing. And at the time, I remember thinking it was complicated, but then when they added REPAYE, PAYE, SAVE Plan, new IBR, forbearance during COVID and all these buyback programs and blah, blah blah.

Then it just blew up. It was like exponentially more complicated. So that is a big benefit to the masses. I guess when you complicate things, big advantage for the people that are in the know or can afford advice.

But for the overall population, it’s definitely, I would say it favors the average person when it’s simpler. So that’s a plus.

Jeff Wenger: So they propose simplifying it by taking away all the plans and then the next bullet point we had was they want to add a new plan.

Daniel Wrenne: I know. Jeff explained this first bullet point to me before we started.

I was like, “That sounds great. It’s simple.” And then he is like, “Yeah, and they’re adding a plan.” So.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. So taking away all the options and then adding another one.

Daniel Wrenne: I don’t like this one.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. You kind of do.

Daniel Wrenne: I mean, I like it, but I don’t. I don’t like the complicating factor, but break it down for us.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, so the proposal introduces a new repayment plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan or the RAP. That’s why I thought Daniel would like it, because—

Daniel Wrenne: I do like to rap.

Jeff Wenger: Yes. And we gotta get one of our other team members in here to lay down a beat for us for the Repayment Assistance Plan.

Daniel Wrenne: That’s an inside joke, by the way. Sorry, you guys don’t get it.

Jeff Wenger: Oh, all right. But anyway, this plan, it’s actually kinda complicated, kinda not. For our audience, it’s gonna be 10% of AGI is what you’re gonna pay if you’re earning under $100,000 dollars. You get a sliding scale of 1% to 10% of your adjusted gross income.

Daniel Wrenne: So in training, that would be advantageous.

Jeff Wenger: Certainly advantageous in training.

Daniel Wrenne: Does it qualify for PSLF?

Jeff Wenger: I believe it should. Yeah. If it’s an IDR plan, it should qualify. I have to double check. Again, it’s new, I haven’t memorized the language yet, but.

Daniel Wrenne: What?

Jeff Wenger: I know. High expectations, but yeah, we’ll keep reading through it and understand it better and better as we go.

But if it’s a new IDR plan, PSLF should count it. The difference here is it’s gonna be a higher 10% payment than any of the payments that we’ve expected or we’ve we’ve worked on so far with the pay-as-you-earn or anything like that because Daniel, you made reference to that protected-income level. So under all of these old plans that we’ve had, you take your income of basically from your tax return. And then you subtract a certain portion of the poverty level.

And then you calculate the payment. So it’s 10% of that. So it’s not 10% of your actual income; it’s 10% of your income, minus some. This one would just be 10% of your income, or whatever that percentage is if you are on that sliding scale. But no deduction for poverty level.

There is a small deduction for dependence, but nothing like the poverty level deduction. So that’s part one. It is a simpler plan probably to calculate for yourself. You can still file separately and only have it count your income. So that’s a good thing, in most cases, when we’re thinking about strategizing for PSLF, and then it also offers forgiveness.

So if you have a balance remaining after 30 years, that balance would be forgiven as part of this plan. It’s gonna be unlikely that many people have a balance after 30 years based on this payment structure, but certainly if you have low income, it’s possible.

Maybe you got a degree and then you came in a stay-at-home spouse, that could factor into that too. Something like that. So there’s that forgiveness option, and then it does have an interest subsidy as well. Very similar to the SAVE Plan, where if you had unpaid interest on the payment you’re making, it goes away.

Poof, vanishes. So it’s not accruing. So that’s—

Daniel Wrenne: But like in training, it would—Did you say it counts for PSLF? It does, doesn’t it?

Jeff Wenger: It does. It would. It’s an IDR plan. It would count for, but you might don’t wanna pull away the curtain on the other changes.

Daniel Wrenne: My strategic mind is already thinking. I’m like thinking that.

Jeff Wenger: So yes, it would count. Why don’t we skip ahead to a PSLF for residents and fellows, though?

Daniel Wrenne: Oh yeah.

Jeff Wenger: So the plan should count for PSLF. However, PSLF would have some changes to the criteria of what counts as qualifying employment a little bit—not a little bit—for our audience, a major change. And why don’t you tell us that one, Daniel?

Daniel Wrenne: Alright. Yeah. So they’re proposing that residency and fellowship would no longer count. And I don’t know how they’re defining that exactly, if they’re just explicitly saying residency or fellowship or are they saying raining or? I don’t know.

I’d be curious to see exactly how they’re wording that, but I guess the most direct scenario or worst case scenario would be that it explicitly says residency and fellowship. Physicians training in residency or fellowship does not count towards PSLF credit.

So that’s a bummer ’cause historically that’s been a home run. So if you’re a physician making a million a year and you’re at a hospital that happens to be a nonprofit and you go through 8 years of training, you’re gonna pay a tiny fraction of your student loans back, even though you’re gonna be making a million a year.

I am sure that’s probably what they’re trying to get rid of. And you could imagine why they would be targeting that, at least based on the intent of the program in the beginning. It was a social program. It was intended to stimulate public service jobs and intended for lower-paying positions, and hence the income-based aspect and the fact that it was public service-focused.

But there’s always loopholes. That’s the thing. I don’t want to go off on too much of a tangent, but anytime they start fiddling with this stuff, like anytime the government started making big changes like this, they inevitably create new loopholes, so there’s new strategies and new ways around it.

And so when we talked through the first bullet point, I was like, “Oh, that’s kinda cool. That’s exciting ’cause that’s simple and it’s gonna be straightforward,” but the more bullet points we have on this thing, it’s just gonna add new strategies into the mix.

So we still have to see how it shakes out, but yes, at this point it’s looking though the proposal is that no residency or fellowship time or payments would count towards PSLF at all.

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Daniel Wrenne: I wonder if they keep the forbearance option available still. There’s currently still a forbearance option for residents and fellows, so if they do keep that’s just gonna be way more popular.

Jeff Wenger: I would imagine so. I don’t think that’s even addressed. So I would imagine that would be a provision that would stick around.

Daniel Wrenne: And then if you do enter a repayment during training, I think that’s just gonna make the RAP plan pretty popular consideration too ’cause if you’re making less than a hundred, it’s like, well/

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, if you can afford the payment—yeah, whatever that payment sliding scale is how that applies to you, ’cause you won’t be charged the interest then. And forbearance, you have interest. But.

Daniel Wrenne: This is also a home run if this goes through. This is a home run for student loan refinance companies.

Jeff Wenger: Oh, yeah. Oh, I think Daniel’s got a reason that’s gonna be a really big home run, not just for refinance, but for lenders in general.

Daniel Wrenne: Yes.

Jeff Wenger: Yay. Go big banks. We love them. But before we get there, the way this is proposed, so if you are already in med school, have started med, school and up until starting med school in 2026, or before or after, is who this would affect. So if you’re currently a resident, this would still grandfather you in. So you don’t have to lose your mind, just your friends and colleagues that’s coming up.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, I’m glad you pointed that out. That is super important.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. There’s a lot of things that are not grandfathered in here, like every proposal pretty much that we’ve seen in the past keeps all the old payment plans and just adds its own spin. Grandfathers in, if you had your plan, you can stay on your plan.

So there are things that are definitely not grandfathered, but current residents, current fellows, current med school students would still be gaining that credit for residency and fellowship.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. The people that are gonna lose it, if this goes through, are the ones you said starting entering the fall?

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, entering the fall of 2026.

Daniel Wrenne: Or after, so entering residency in the fall of 2026 or later.

Jeff Wenger: I believe it is med school. So med school.

Daniel Wrenne: Okay. So there’s gonna be a pretty good batch of people that are…

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, still doesn’t apply to right now.

Daniel Wrenne: So if I’m like a sophomore, if I’m second year medical student, I’m good.

Jeff Wenger: It should be good under this proposal. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. Okay. That’s better. Okay, so the last big one we were gonna—this is the last one, right?

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, I think the last one, probably the biggest overall, I don’t know, just theoretical policy standpoint is actually, there’s a lot of pros and possibly cons to it, but that would be that professional school borrowing would actually be capped at $150,000, not per year total.

Daniel Wrenne: Inflation-adjusted, hopefully.

Jeff Wenger: No.

Daniel Wrenne: No!?

Jeff Wenger: No, it’s not. We have right now, the cost of med school, the cost of dental school is certainly higher than that. But maybe Daniel, what do you think the intent of this might be? So I think there’s a definitely an argument.

There’s some good intent for why we’d want a cap on borrowing ’cause right now we have no cap on graduate borrowing.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah.

Jeff Wenger: You can take out an unlimited amount.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, we can do pros and cons or I can play both sides of this coin. But like on the pro side, supply and demand. So when you have unlimited borrowing potential, federal borrowing.

Federal borrowing is particularly key because they have zero underwriting. They’re like, “Sign here, you get the loan.” If you’re in professional school, sign here. You get the loan. There’s no financial qualification, like they don’t check your credit. You could be a train wreck, you could have a zillion credit cards. You still get the loan.

So it’s very easy. I don’t know if easy is the right word. I guess it’s very easy to qualify for unlimited professional school loans federally. There are some caps, but they’re extremely high. And so what happens when you have a really high borrowing caps, especially when they’re federal loans is, or anytime you make something easier to buy. ’cause this is a purchase ultimately.

You’re buying education. So anytime you make anything, you make access to money to buy things easier, it increases demand for that which when you’re looking at supply and demand, economics, that kind of thing.

When you keep the supply the same and increase demand, the price goes up. Basic economics. So the economics professor, I don’t know. I would think they would argue that a big factor in why tuition is so high, especially for professional schools, is because of these super lenient lending standards for the federal government, for federal student loans over the past, however long it’s been around.

And the prices have gone up over that period of time. So if I’m taking the economic standpoint, the argument would be that by putting a cap in it, you’re gonna put a cap on that supply aspect of funds available, which should start to get the price more in check.

I mean, if we really wanted to see what market price was for college, we would eliminate student loans. ’cause then that’s just gonna be a pure free market, I guess, so it’s just gonna make it much harder to find capital per dollars or supply, it’s gonna affect supply. But this is like a step in that direction.

It’s let’s see if we can reduce prices of tuition. Now this is like theoretical economics theory. But I can talk about the other side of the argument too. Or you can talk about it if you want. Maybe you could talk about it.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. I don’t know what side of the screen we’re on. Are we on the right or the left? Am I on the right and you are on the left or, because yeah, just jokingly which side we’re taking here. But I guess to sum that up, so basically if you have unlimited access to money to fund your graduate school degree, the schools then have very little incentive to reduce costs ’cause they can always point you to, “Well, you have the option to borrow,” like you can get the financing to come here. It’s okay. Is that kind of what I’m hearing?

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And it’s supply demand too, ’cause the school doesn’t have incentive to—I mean, they have incentive to raise prices always, most of the time. But also there’s plenty of people willing to go to school because they have such a free act. They’re so easy access to money. So those two factors make it prone to have price increases.

Jeff Wenger: Oh, gotcha. Yeah. So I think maybe the con or the flip side to that is maybe the social aspect of it that you referenced with some of the other points we had too, is just the actual access to these schools or to a medical degree, to a to be a dentist, to be a physician, potentially, that would be actually limiting who can even attend if you can’t get the financing to go there, if it’s—

Does that limit it to only people with the resources to pay for it? So that’s the con possibly, right? The argument against there, that issue.

Daniel Wrenne: If you didn’t agree with the economics argument I was just talking about. Or you thought it wasn’t gonna be very substantial, like maybe you agree with it but you’re like, yeah, I get you?

But like, when they make it harder to get money, the schools are only gonna lower their tuition some. If that’s your stance, then the result potentially is that a bunch of people can’t afford it. There’s already a physician shortage and whatever, and so it’s only gonna get amped up worse; it’s gonna get way worse ’cause it’s already difficult to be a doctor and that’s just gonna make it impossible for some people.

But now going back flip-flopping, I’m flip-flopping on both sides, going back to the economic side. The schools have to have students, like it’s gonna kind of force change if that does play out.

So that’s just gonna be an inevitable consequences if they couldn’t let their, like medical schools couldn’t let their tuition numbers go down, even, I would think 10%. Because that’s just gonna be a huge hit to their bottom line, even if they kept tuition the same. So they’re gonna have to come up.

I think what it would do is it would force these schools to come up with a new way of doing business, and I don’t know what the outcome would be. I know that they would have to come up with a new way of doing it if they made a big change to the standards on lending. So I’m super curious. To me, this one’s I’m the most curious about.

I’m curious to see how it would shake out. Oh, and the other thing too is I was mentioning this earlier, if I’m a private student loan lender, I’m like cheering this baby on. I’m like, this is gonna be great for business because they’ve always been in the background, like as the alternative to public, to federal student loans.

It’s like Bank of America, all of them are gonna be like, there’s already a bunch of private student loan lenders, but everybody’s gonna be getting into that game. ’cause they’re gonna be like we’ll give you money. We’re just gonna make you do underwriting. They’re not gonna just hand it out to everybody.

They’re gonna be like, here’s the standards check you have to do. You’re gonna have to verify your, I don’t know, citizenship. Maybe even it might be, so it might be hard for international students and then like credit check, they’re not gonna wanna lend to people that can’t make the credit card payments.

That kind of thing would be more common.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. But what I hear is the point would be, there are willing lenders ready to step in and take on a lot of that. SoFi would love your business, I think, right? Mohela’s public ARMs. All those things that funnel into Mohela, they would love your business.

Daniel Wrenne: SoFi and those guys, they’re loving this already, even before we mentioned this last point because what’s gonna happen is it’s gonna force people to refinance away from PSLF. If I’m a resident, I’m like, now I’m paying 15% and they’re not gonna cover training. I’m refinancing ’cause they’re charging me 7%.

So it’s gonna increase the volume of refinancing away from federal loans. Plus if they do provide, pass this professional school cap, it’s gonna increase the level of private loan lending. So there’s refinancing and there’s new loans. I think that would just amp up the number of private student loans going out, which could conflict with the thing we were just talking about with the free markets.

It may be that tuition stays the same because of that.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. I wish this was as simple as going down to one repayment plan too. But I think there will be an impact where there are some that cannot get the financing that they would need. That would.

At the same time, the hope is that it would also reduce the cost of education. And then you have the lenders in the middle that are like, yeah, maybe they’ve still prop up the cost of education.

Daniel Wrenne: Right.

Jeff Wenger: It’ll be interesting, but the impact there being that bullet point of $150,000 to federal total lending for graduate school, that’s a big change.

Daniel Wrenne: Huge.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: That’s definitely not enough. If at the current rates, obviously that covered—I don’t know, I wonder what the average cost is of, I think the average medical students coming out with $250,000, something like that. Federal.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. In that range.

Daniel Wrenne: It’s about a hundred thousand short.

Jeff Wenger: Yes, but to recap all of that, there are a lot of changes in this proposed bill that it’s on its way to the Senate to then have the Senate reconcile. They propose their own changes to it. So nothing that’s in here has happened.

Daniel Wrenne: They’ll go back and forth. There’s gonna be changes.

There will for sure be changes, and they’re gonna whittle things down. Or they’ll be like, we gotta add inflation to the one $150,000, or we needed that to be $200,000 or whatever. Yes. That’s normally how it goes.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah, so we would expect to see changes, but I think those examples are very realistic. One would be now that limit’s too low and we need to have inflation with it, or else we have to update this every single year or every couple years.

Daniel Wrenne: You can ask us or anybody.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. But yeah, expect there to be changes from this, things to be thrown out, things to be added and updated.

And probably when you were talking about going between the house and the Senate, for there to be not—so consider this like the most extreme option that’s proposed right now. And to expect it to not be as extreme in some respect, whether that’s lending limits or grandfathering in more things or whatnot. We’ll see.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, we’ll see. I guess you never know. It could get thrown out completely, or it could become more extreme. It’s just that’s unlikely both ways, but right now it’s looking like it’ll probably end up something will shake out, and it’s probably gonna be pretty major, and it probably will be watered down from this, but who knows in what direction?

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. So I guess action items?

Daniel Wrenne: No, stay tuned is the action item.

Jeff Wenger: Stay tuned

Daniel Wrenne: You don’t want to do too much until this thing gets passed. As soon as it gets passed though, that’s when it’s game time. We’ll go to the drawing board to start strategizing.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. You’re right. I think with your student loan, nothing here is real yet. Nothing’s changed. If you’re passionate about this, it is right now, the time when these budgets are being sent back and forth. If you’re passionate about it one way or the other, you could contact your representative or your senator, though, and let ’em know your opinion.

Daniel Wrenne: There you go. That’s a good one.

Jeff Wenger: You won’t change your student loans right now, but it may have an impact on policy.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, and especially if you have, you could contact your senator or the house, but especially senator, either way.

But especially if you have a really good case, I guess, and they do take that into consideration. So that’s a good point. I wasn’t thinking about that.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: It’s always good to have an action item.

Jeff Wenger: Yeah. So I think that’s one. And it’s one that you can do whatever your view is.

‘Cause I think all of these from one side or the other. There are pros and cons to everything in here. There’s silver linings and negatives, and you might be passionate about one versus the other. Yeah. Get your voice heard. Tell your representative or your senator what you think about it or if you feel like.

Your student loans, you agreed to the pays, you were in payment plan, and it’s going away. Be like, “Hey, I signed up for this. It was promised to me, and you want it back?” Let ’em know that too. Whatever it might be.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. “Here’s my promissory note. You see my signature here? “

Jeff Wenger: Tell ’em you signed it, you read it. So if they could also read it and keep what was in there, that would be appreciated.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. Cool.

Jeff Wenger: Alright. That was a goofy end, but yeah, talk to your representative if you have anything.

Daniel Wrenne: Yep. All right. We’ll keep you guys posted as we learn more. Jeff, thanks for coming on to update us on the student loan chaos.

Jeff Wenger: Of course. What a ride.

Daniel Wrenne: I’m sure we’ll have to be talking about this soon.

Jeff Wenger: Well, see you then.

Daniel Wrenne: All right.

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