Note: Transcript fully created by automated AI
[00:00:00] Angela Lin: Hey everyone. I’m Angela Lin.
[00:00:02] Jesse Lin: And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You really from this week, we are bringing you a. Live unscripted discussion on our episode, and what we’re gonna be talking about is student loans. So we originally already had this as a topic, but given the new news around the federal forgiveness of student loans up to a certain amount, , we thought it’d be really interesting discussion just to kinda like ping pong back and forth how we each feel about it.
Is it too generous? Is it not generous enough? Do we have objections to certain ways that it’s being fulfilled? So that’s what we wanted to discuss this
[00:00:41] Angela Lin: week. We’re gonna keep this to a mini because we did talk about like higher education in a long form discussion in a previous episode. So if very interested in those thoughts, go back to that episode.
But this is just a quickie based on. The new news that just came out. Justine, what are your thoughts? I think I have different thoughts
[00:00:59] Jesse Lin: from you, so yeah, I mean, okay. So I think on the surface level, for anyone that has C paid off their student loans, I have paid off my student loans. It kind of stings a little bit because you’re kind of like, well that sucks.
Like why didn’t I just be like, you know, paying off the loans like slowly and then just having it forgiven and it kind of feels a little bit, kind of like a slap in the face for the people who are able to pay off the. , but were not particularly financially like well off. Like I, I wasn’t making a lot of money after college, and I know my parents pay for some of it, but I still had a good amount of loans.
You know, out of graduation I was making like 40,000 the first year, 45, the next, and maybe like 50, the third. So it wasn’t like I had a ton of money and I was living in New York. So that out of the way, because of course everyone has nasty feelings about something like this. Like I have a lot of friends who are still struggling with stuff like that.
And from that perspective, I’m happy for them because I, I know how difficult it was because I was trying to make all of them off in a success we did. So, but like I, I can see the struggle for a lot of people and it feels good. that people I know don’t have to, to go through that. So it’s like, from a, from a feelings perspective, there’s like two balances where it’s like kinda like, oh, well that kind of sucks cuz like I put myself through a little bit more than I had to to pay them off.
It almost feels kind of like, oh, like why did I, you know, try so hard to pay them off. It was gonna be forgiven like later on. But on the other hand, like I do see some of my friends who struggle with student loans and like paying off their education and I’m kind of like, that’s really good for you. Like I, I feel.
like it’s a nice thing that you’re getting, um, and something to take like more worries off of your plate.
[00:02:37] Angela Lin: Yeah. Actually I don’t think we have as Differents. . I thought you were gonna be like, yay. Like
[00:02:43] Jesse Lin: I am. I’m happy for my friends. I’m also, but like, if you paid off your loans and you’re like, I’m only happy, I think you’re lying.
Like nobody is happy to pay something off that they might have gone for free, like Agreed.
[00:02:56] Angela Lin: Well, yeah, I have a lot of mixed. Mostly mixed into negative Felix, towards this announcement like you, I, it feels like a slap in the face because like you said, we both struggled pretty hard to be able to pay off our student loans.
It was not a quick like snap of the finger Trust fund paid it off, kind of bullshit. Love. You had a trust fund, you didn’t have to take out loans to begin with. Right. But like there was nobody. Paying off our debt for us. And so I and I made around the same money as you coming outta college too, like those low, low forties, which in New York means paycheck to paycheck.
It was not easy to pay off that loan. And then I took a second loan, which was substantially higher than my undergrad loan to do my master’s. And I only paid that off like a few years ago. So, and. Scraped and scripted. Even though I was making a much higher salary out of business school, I took on a much higher debt to go back to school
So it is like a slap in the face. They’re also just like a lot of technicalities that I don’t know that everyone who like hears us announcement is really paying attention to. So like first of all, you mention. In how you described it, which I thought was important. You said federal loans because anyone who hears, like the government’s gonna pay off everyone’s student loans, just like at face value sounds like, oh my God, wow.
Like, you’re gonna be helping so many people. But realistically, the federal government is a, a big loan provider, but is not the only loan provider out there. And if you really needed loans, like a lot of loans, Probably couldn’t get by just borrowing from the government because there are caps for how much money that they lent out.
And then especially if you took like Masters and Beyond education, the government gave zero shits about you. Like my interest rates were incredibly high to borrow from the federal government as a a master’s student. So I ended up refinancing. So if anyone refinanced their loans, even if you took out initially a government loan and you decide to go to like SoFi, You know, all those other, um, private lenders to refinance to get a better, lower interest rate, you wouldn’t qualify cuz you’re no longer a federal loan borrower.
So it, it was like a double slap in my face to hear that cuz it was like, okay. So I was trying to get myself into a better position to not pay 10% interest to the government for no reason when I could pay three and a half interest to a private lender. But because of that qualification, I wouldn’t have qualified anyway, even if I, you know, had gone slower with my repayment and in fact, I paid off my loan so I don’t qualify at all.
So there’s like all these things. So n number one, if you didn’t borrow from the government or you ended up borrowing mixed with private lenders, or you refinanced, you wouldn’t even necessarily qualify for this amount of money. So it doesn’t matter. Other things is, like I read, So, to be fair, this is like hot, right?
Like we’ve literally, we, we had a guest kind of cancel slash reschedule last minute. So we’re literally just like talk, talking about this right now. But I off plug off script totally, but I saw a headline this morning that says something about like, I think it was cn B, C, and it said that on average, All taxpayers are going to be foot with a $2,000 extra bill essentially to pay for these, uh, loan forgiveness program thingies that they’re doing right now.
And that pisses me off because I’m like, you know how much money they already extract from us in taxes and like misuse in so many ways. I’m like, even if you felt like this was like a super worthy cause to spend money towards, can you not carve. Like some money that you would’ve otherwise given to, I don’t know, the military or like somewhere else that you’re just like bloated instead of making us pay even more money, especially the people like us who already paid off our own debt and now we’re going to be slapped with essentially more debt, other people’s debt, like I just, it that like pissed me off to see that it wasn’t even like we carved out existing budget to go here.
It’s like we’re gonna raise more money from. To pay
[00:07:11] Jesse Lin: for it. No, I agree with you in that perspective, and I think a lot of people have been pointing at the general budgetary splitting in the government and being like, why are we spend, like, your example is great. Why are we spending so much on our military?
Like, I understand we have to like maintain a certain show of force, but like the budget for the military goes up every year. I don’t think our military increases that much by every year and like we’ve wound down operations in a lot of places. Had a lot of troops, so like we shouldn’t be increasing the budget there.
It’s definitely this tension because like I said, I’m really happy for everyone who, who is struggling that I know is getting student loan forgiveness and like that for me is actually a good use of my taxpayer money, but, It’s kind of the point you’re saying like why is it extra money that is being paid into this as opposed to like money coming from other parts of the government that like, do not directly benefit anyone I know or a cause I’m interested in.
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[00:08:41] Jesse Lin: And I also feel like it’s just so one off, you know, like it’s kind of like a bandaid on top of a problem and it doesn’t really address the problem. And so like, really there’s only a, a small set of one time beneficiaries from this.
And so it’s kind of like, well, that’s great, but like we don’t wanna forget the problem that. Originally, which is like predatory student loans, shitty colleges that didn’t produce graduates that could find jobs. Colleges that are just way too expensive to begin with, with no limitations to how much they could charge for each student.
So like none of these problems are being addressed, which does not fix like the issue of student loans. It’s just kind of like this, like one time bandaid that helps a select swath of a population. But anyone else going to college now is not gonna. benefiting from this and like, it’s still gonna be, it’s gonna be worse for them.
Like, I feel like we did this analysis, analysis in college. That’s basically like how, how, how much has college increased like every single year for a four year college. And it’s always increased every single year. So it’s like, it’s just like these select people who are in debt right now that are helped, but then kind of.
Everyone else is still long-term screwed. I think it’s a, it’s a nice thing for everyone who’s getting it, but almost like, what are you doing to fix the problem? Because like this bandaid costs everybody money and it doesn’t put. The people who are responsible for creating this debt, which like in part is like people taking on the debt.
But it’s also like a lot of these situations where like if it was predatory lending and like schools misrepresenting what they could give to the student, so like, , why aren’t those people in trouble? Like, why aren’t they paying for it like they caused the problem? So that’s the part where I’m also kind of like, you’re not fully putting people who are accountable, accountable for the issue.
And it’s kind of like, well, it’s up to the tax paying public to cover the issue of like for-profit education and like even non-for-profit education, uh, providers like taking advantage. Loans and stuff like that, and like inflating their costs and things like that. So it’s just like, I, I like this, but like, can we fix like the real problem
[00:10:49] Angela Lin: here?
I could not agree more with everything you that you just said. That was like the other main qualm I had with all of this was just like, this is literally just so that you guys look good before the election because this is not help anyone in the long run. First, I’m gonna put aside what you said about the like, Colleges and the broken system to begin with.
The other piece is like $10,000 is not that much money, honestly, in the grand scheme of like how much debt most people have to take on. I think the last time I saw any, like average number of student loan debt, um, was a hot second ago, but I believe it was around 40,000 was kinda like average. Right? But like if you went to a.
College or master’s program and you had to take out like fully loans, you would have a six figure debt. A hundred thousand dollars plus. Yeah. Of debt. Getting $10,000 off is nothing because you’ve accrued interest during all this time. And if you really are not making a good salary, then you’ve barely tripped away at any of that.
You probably have even. Owed right now than like you took out. You know what I mean? Even with paying back gradually over time. So it’s just kind of like, number one, this doesn’t even mean anything because $10,000 is not gonna make a significant difference for people who are really, really struggling with their student loan repayment.
And then number two, to your point, it’s just like literally, this is nothing for like, Fixing the actual problem. And Ramon made a good point when he first read these headlines. He was like, you know what this is gonna do? Guess what? All those colleges are just gonna raise their tuition by $10,000 to like match what was given.
Because now it’s like, oh, well we’ll just make it up because it’s free money. Yeah,
[00:12:30] Jesse Lin: for sure. They have to like reign in that piece of it and they, and they can because they offer loans to the. . Like that’s, that’s not an insignificant part of the money that the school is getting. Like the money is coming from the government.
They should be able to use that money to be like, you cannot raise the price in this manner unless you can justify why you’re raising the price in this manner. So that is definitely one of the things where I’m kind of like, that’s student debt is a huge amount of money, which is means it’s a huge amount of leverage that the government can be like, no, no.
no money for you unless you can prove to us like why your educational costs are going up every year. So that’s one of the things I’m, again, I’m happy this is happening for everyone, but I also don’t want it to become like, oh, we like gave you this forgiveness and now we’re not gonna do anything else about what is happening.
I will say like, I think there are a few other things that they’re doing. I think they’re delaying repayment for the last time on student debt until the end of the year and they’re doing some, um, I believe there’s like an income based repay. Max now it’s like 5% of your discretionary income. So there are some like additional guardrails in place to try to like help people manage their debt a little bit better.
So it’s like not such a crushing thing for them. $10,000 is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. It’s not nothing though. So I’m like, it’s like you, it’s. You know, it’s something, but I also just like, same thing as you were saying, like I just don’t think that we wanna like do this and then forget that there’s still this like huge educational like complex thing that is like eating people’s money and let’s face it, at this point, it’s almost kind of just like a mandatory thing as opposed to like, Added value, like you’re just kind of going to school because you have to at this point, because everybody has a bachelor’s degree.
And so when that becomes like the baseline, you have no choice. You have to get it somehow. I, I think it is, it is predatory in a sense because you’re forced to participate in this thing in order to find a job in certain industries.
[00:14:23] Angela Lin: So T L D R, happy. The few, select few people who actually benefit
[00:14:30] Jesse Lin: from this ver very truly, like I am, I’m very happy for my friends.
I’m, I’m not, and, and I’m not in any way saying that. Like, they should not benefit from this or like, this is not good for them. Like, I’m very happy for all the people who are benefiting. It’s happening
[00:14:44] Angela Lin: either way. So I’m not unhappy for those people. So I’m happy that’s the select few. I’m choosing those words carefully.
It is a select few. It just really is not representative of like a large number of people in the grand scheme of people who’ve taken out debt. So that’s really what I mean is like happy for y’all, but you aren’t even that many people. So if this was gonna be this big gesture, it just like isn’t even that big of a gesture to bh.
But let’s focus on fixing the actual problem, which. The crazy system we have set up for just milking young people for Alder worth to get baseline education to be taken seriously for
[00:15:20] Jesse Lin: employment. Yeah, and honestly, I’ve, I’ve said this before, but I think. That, at least for me, I think it just really starts with like showing people the options that they have when they’re in that age range where they’re deciding on what they want to do.
Because there have been a lot of times where I’m like, why didn’t I do a trade? Like, I don’t think it would’ve been as expensive. And to be honest, like trade stuff is always like, you’re always gonna need like electrician, plumber, you know, like electrical engineers like these. People who are always also have jobs, but you don’t necessarily have to go through like a four year liberal arts school to learn all of those skills.
So like it, I think it also is just about emphasizing that education is much more than this four year liberal arts program. It’s like, it could be a trade, it could be anything else that’s like adding value. And I think that overall everyone needs to do like a much better job of being like, you have all these different options as opposed to like, you must go to this and you must do.
[00:16:12] Angela Lin: Well, those were our thoughts, so let us know what you guys think. Let us know in the comments wherever you’re watching this, we wanna hear what your hot takes are, because this is pretty fresh and I think people are surprisingly more split on it than than you’d think they’d be given that it. Spun
[00:16:30] Jesse Lin: is something, it’s a gamut.
Some people are like, it’s not enough. Yeah. Other people are like, this is great. It’s like a big rage.
[00:16:37] Angela Lin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So let us know what you think and uh, come back next week cuz we’ll have another fresh episode for you then.