everyone has their own unique views and needs when it comes to financial success if you'd like to leave your financial woes behind and live a life of Financial Freedom you've come to the right place Welcome To Die saving with Steve show hosted by Steve Sexton the show will help you with the ins and outs of money we talked about financial issues that could be costing you thousands of dollars and keeping you up at night we talked about money tax reduction saving more spending less 401K risk management retirement and everything under the sun that relates to you having a healthier happy relationship with money now here is your host of saving with Steve Steve Sexton hello welcome to the same with Steve shall we talk about the ins-and-outs of money pretty much everything under the sun release you having a happy healthy relationship with money my name is Steve sexy and I want to thank you for joining us today got a wonderful show at you know what I'm going to talk a little bit of hot update your emergency fund with inflation<br> but right now we've got a wonderful topic and it's top of mind because in the Supreme Court you know what we're President Biden is hoping to get his proposal to have a portion of the student loan debt forgiven and they're fighting it out in the Supreme Court down in one of the things that I think people need to realize you're still going to have<br> student loan debt and it's important to understand what's happening right now what happened in the past what's going to happen in the future and that's why we have Brian Cordura he's a certified financial planner discuss the past present and future what's going on I'm packed these entitlement programs and more so you really want to be here for that in fact it's right now so just to give you a little background on Brian besides having a master's and financial services from the American college a bachelor's in finance from the College of New Jersey he's got a number of degrees in economics he's a certified financial planner he's a retirement income certified professional he's has a life underwriter and so on but more importantly you've probably seen them on for CNBC in success entrepreneur Business Insider's news back in more he has his own podcast but nobody's got this wonderful book I think it's a great title is called what should I<br> with my money it just just got out last month sales are going great reviews are wonderful Brian welcome to the show<br> yeah thanks for having me Steve I'm happy to be here<br> actually I'm really happy you're here bit more so because of our topic so what I'd like you to do is just let's start by breaking down what's currently happening with the student loans and you know what what's what's the prediction for the future sure thing so just to kind of see no paint the landscape right now bring everybody up to speed right now there are over 1.7 trillion dollars in student loans outstanding which is just a start I mean it's just this exorbitant number that a lot of people once you get into a number with that many zeros does whether it goes up to 1.82 trillion and Beyond the average Joe at their to can't really tell the difference we just kind of get lost in the mix of that 1.792 per cent of all student loans are held by our federal government all right so this is been something that over the past several years it kind of the FED has been the number one provider of financing education<br> so when you break that down some more of a micro-level the average student loan balance per borrower is about $38,000 in okay now that's an average so keep in mind you know some folks out there might just have 20 grand remaining I do a lot with Physicians for instance that often graduate with three hundred four hundred thousand dollars student loans I have to take in you know undergrad med school and so forth so they can be a broad-spectrum but a lot of debt that young professionals are carrying right now so that's kind of the de landscape and of course was dominating the news is President Biden last year pushed powered his loan forgiveness program at this is a 400 billion dollar bill which would be forgiving either $10,000 of student loans or $20,000 in student loans to pending on the borrower's income in the type of woman that they carry and as you mentioned in the intro that's being held up in court right now<br> which we can get into if you like but like so many things you know in a minute emergency we try and come up with a bill or a measure to help the people and then not long thereafter it becomes politicized and I think that's kind of where we stand today yeah it's it it's nuts but you know what example my son is Sun Sun finished his master's program in June of last year and you know what he will fill all the other forms out and everything and you know he's going to have to start making some payments on those loans why does it make sense to refinance your student loan or you know what you know what what do people need to know if they're looking to refinance your student loan especially right now if she higher interest rates the holeshot I don't know how to fix student loans<br><br> yep and that's a great question Steve so when you're looking at possibly refinancing student loans there's a number of things that you have to take into account okay the people who would refinance to a private lender the first thing they have to realize they are taking 100% responsibility for those ones where is when they're with the FED when you have fed loans you can be eligible for these forgiveness programs like the one that President Biden's pushing for things like Public service loan forgiveness which is been around for some time now and then of course covid relief which we didn't even really get into quite yet but you know this is been 3 years now where these fed loans have essentially been froze now if you refinance with a private lender at your bank what's a day or so far I or any of the other ones out there you are moving away from the fed and you're taking 100% responsibility which means a lot of that Ruiz and a lot of his forgiveness program<br> are no longer available to you and I think that's the number one thing to realize so you say well why would you do it then is the impetus at least years ago was while I'm at 7% on my fed loans what if I can go to three or four percent with a private Wonder all right and if you knew you were going to pay your loans you didn't have some exorbitant balance that might make sense for some folks now if you want to go for forgiveness of course you probably wouldn't do that in right now with all the covid relief but still going on you're not seeing a lot of RI finances and touring and as interest rates obviously have spikes over the past year it it's just taking away more of the reasons to refinance because you might be moving laterally from 7% with fed arbitrarily over to maybe a similar number with a private lender so there's not as big an advantage as there may have been 23 years ago<br> it's gone the way of used cars people aren't buying because they don't want to pay 10% so why why why why are laterally refinancing it it lets you talk about covid relief programs I didn't know about those could you share those With Their audience cuz I think it's very important because many people on this call they have kids in the same positions that my kids are and they're just getting out of college and all that stuff<br> a certain way so once you know unfortunately covid came ashore here in the states and when we were in March of 2020 in the pandemic really hit us hard the federal government went out and said okay we're going to offer a lot of relief stimulus packages so on and so forth and one of those things was for student loan borrowers and they say that we are now no longer collecting or mandating student loan repayments okay so effective where you went into if you were on an income-based for payment that was costing you $500 a month it immediately went to a $0 payment and in addition to that they were not accruing interest on those fed one so if your balance was $100,000 it has sat there at $100,000 since March of 2020 and now here we are in March of 20 33 years now have transpired since you know the pandemic first hit us and so there has been 0 inch<br> accruing on those fed one and that's another thing to notice you know the whole point of Vicodins loan forgiveness program is to give relief amid a national emergency and now here we are three years past covid we've had no accruing interest or mandated payments for three years which estimates show is cost the federal government about 150 billion dollars are ready in Lost revenues so it's kind of a mess argument is this is becoming more than just a quote-unquote modification to student loan repayments and and that's still going on it it's set to expire in the summer of this year but you know we'll see that certainly become a bargaining chip on the student loan forgiveness and then the Public service loan forgiveness how does that work<br> yep so that's something that's been around since 2007 and so what it says if you have fed Direct Loans and you go on to work for a federally qualified Dougherty what that would be is typically a nonprofit working in the public sector like for the VA or referred another state or something like that then you could be at this qualified institution and while you're there if you're making income-based repayments on the FED Direct Loans after 120 payments or 10 years the balance of that one could be forgiven and so that's something that started in 07 so you started to see your first applications in 2017 and now that's starting to kind of pick up steam in each ear you're seeing more of the pslf program be used<br> that's wonderful do you know what this is some great information so far you definitely want to stick with us for the second half of the show we're going to be right back with more shaving with Steve<br><br> more expert advice for having a happier relationship with money still to come on the saving with Steve show<br> don't let your financial woes keep you up at night and prevent you from living a life of Financial and personal freedom hi I'm Steve Sexton post of the saving with Steve show where to be talking about the ins-and-outs of money was Financial issues that could be costing me thousands of dollars causing stress keeping you up at night we're going to talk about money tax reduction saving more spending your investment risk management retirement and everything is so sweet with you having a healthier happy relationship with money soon as you've ever dreamed of living a life of Financial and personal freedom you owe it to yourself and your family to tune in to the saving with Steve show join me Steve sex and out of saving with Steve show as we talked about everything under the sun when it comes to money to learn more about the show visit saving with Steve. Us that's saving with Steve. Us saving with Steve. Us will see you soon<br> welcome back to the show that is here to help you achieve your financial goals it's the saving with Steve show now here's your host Steve Sexton<br><br> hello welcome back to the shaving machine show where were talking about the ins-and-outs of money pretty much everything under the sun relate to you having a happy healthy relationship with money I want to really thank you for tuning in to show appreciate you sharing this with your friends and families they all the replays are available at saving with Steve. 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Can you can check out the inside and check out all the behind-the-scenes stuff guest gifts the whole shots with your talk with Frank order know all about the past present and future of the student loan business but you know what he's got the greatest book called what should I do<br> about my money Brian thank you for being again for being part of our show here today I have a whole bunch of questions for you I hope we have enough time to talk about a few of them one of the things that a lot of people don't do especially in the financial planning area is a keep their college loan separate what why is it so important for people to folder College loan into their overall financial plan and you know how to get started with do it how to how do I understand how to do that how should I get started doing something like that<br> yeah I think it's it's critical I mean ideally if you can go into college what's a wee-wee your son or daughter and have a game plan of what college going to cost how are we paying for college and then never okay when you graduate in four years from today this is the balance you'll carry if you have that type of foresight of course it's going to put you in a much better spot but if we're on the back and we're like Hey we're here now I got a lot of student one that I you know I didn't think it was going to be this bad for me I better or worse whatever that situation is immediately we need to factor that into the budget in the financial plan and okay to not do that would be akin to saying I bought a house I got a big mortgage now who cares I'm not even get a really factor that into anything I'm doing nobody would ever do that so you have to take kind of a similar approach with the student want that and you know figure out where does it fall on the priority list are there other things were trying to do do we have credit card debt were working through a re trying to build our emergency funds<br> you know it is our student loans at 3% from way back or are they at 8% so there's a lot of different variables there but you need to come up with a plan and then once you have one you can move forward with confidence and not have to feel like you have this enormous burden on your shoulders that is just inescapable it's really interesting you say that you don't like a lot of people don't realize Finance in college is like financing a house cuz it's not cheap anymore around my kids were together even with Scholars singer are still a couple hundred thousand dollars so he it's really important that people realize that you want to plan for this it's it's unbelievably important now the other question I see and you see this all the time where people they went and got the college degree<br> brother doing nothing related to that college they like working with their hands or all that so when we talked about you know she calls me the gulf everybody you know what I'd love to hear your take on their brine<br> sure another great question in the simple answer is no and that's not to say anything against College I mean I went to college I have a bachelor's degree I have a master's degree but I think you really need to understand what is the value you're getting out of that piece of paper out of that diploma and if you can't identify exactly what that is and even from a monetary standpoint what's the return the rate of the return on that investment then you really need to give it a second thought so I think college of course is suitable for people pursuing stem subjects you're going into engineering you know you're going to be a statistician you want to be a physician someday you're going to be an attorney those things we know you need scoring you can't just show up and get on the job training you certainly need some bass knowledge to do any of that<br> but there's a lot of things out there where you can get on the job training and if you want to go into the trades if you're going to do something blue collar if you want to go into sales if there's so many different things out there that don't necessarily require that 4-year degree and maybe that's $150,000 debt that you'll take on so the short answer is no it's not for everyone they can be great for some but you need to know why you're going there and what your expectation is and I think all too often nowadays you see it is I'm graduating high school I have to go to college that's what everybody's telling me and then we follow that knee-jerk reaction not really knowing why we're showing up there we go through those four years hoping to pass and then that's like you alluded to a lot of people graduate and say what what do I do now and that's kind of a scary thing to do now when you're in Cumberland<br> if I was just thinking when you were saying that to really figure it out my monetarily and we did it for my son cuz he has a degree in engineering and he was looking at his master's we actually did the math of for the discipline that he's in and said you know how much more could you get if you got the Masters and how much would it actually cost you we didn't factor in the fact that he actually got more scholarships to his master's degree grade point average 40% more starting and he actually end up making about 40% more starting then his other guys other friends at so we actually did the mass I think it's important that people see than that and the other part is understanding what is a viable degree for you is the key because there's a lot of people with degrees and Masters and stuff like that there still are, there's nothing wrong with Starbucks there's still doing the Starbucks thing cuz they're trying to find their way with that degree<br> so yeah like I totally agree with you there now let's talk about the sustainability of the US entitlement programs such as Social Security Medicare Medicaid I think this is a topic that everybody's concerned about whether they're going to be around here for the future what's going on with it and I really love to hear your take and I know my beers beers what is well you sure yeah so this better it's a big question and it's certainly a big concern and it's funny in my box I just want to do this up here again it anyway or you see it it's this bright golden book called what should I do with my money and the second chapter is on entitlements and that the chapter so there's these 9 domains of Economics that we go through in the book and they're in chronological order for a reason and I think economics or skews me entitlements come so early in the book because it is kind of the Bedrock of our economy today so you mentioned Social Security Medicare Medicaid<br> you know right there you're seeing the two biggest expenses for our government number one is Medicare Medicaid number to Social Security right behind it these systems are enormous in there or what retirees are banking on to be able to retire in with comfortably so as far as kind of a state of both of the programs just to give us some contact Social Security. Came about you know right around that around WWII era in 1945 there were 42 tax paying workers per beneficiary okay I see a lot of people paying their taxes to support the the recipients in the normal retirement age at that time was 65 right in 1945 people did not live that long so there are a lot of people putting in the system and then the system didn't have to pay out benefits for all that long.<br> now we fast-forward to today in 2023 there are roughly 2Pac Pacs paying workers per beneficiary so if we simply look at the math there's much less going into the system and much more taken out in that the normal retirement age has been moved up to 67 depending on your date of birth but if you want it that you know okay we bumped it back 2 years the folks are living a lot longer today than they were back in 1945 so there's a lot of pressure on the system just from a pure Matt standpoint and I think that's why it goes without saying Social Security probably needs to have some updates to do remain viable now Medicare Medicaid these things came about that you know during Lyndon Johnson's presidency Medicare was created in 1965 and now is you know something that we're all counting on when we turn 65 to provide for our health care and then if you will get Medicaid<br> we think it's just kind of almost a form of welfare it's for a while our income individuals Medicaid is the number one payer for long-term care tonight all right so you just think of of the systems in the expenses inherent to them and I mentioned the second chapters you know entitlement the first chapter is population and why population comes first is if you just look at the changing demographic that's what kind of spells you know how can all of the systems continue to thrive or survive depending on the changing demographic and pointed may try not to get too into the weeds here we look back at likes play the 1960s all right about 5% of the world was over 65 that number is about 9% in America now in 2023 those numbers are about double okay and they're expected to go up exponentially you know as long jevity continues<br> and so it's become a whole nother phase of life this kind of retirement phased it's no longer just a year or two for many folks it could be as long as their career but we have to find ways for that to be affordable agreed that Brian I want to thank you for joining us like that could you share your book with this one more time and let people know where they can go and get it yep sure thing so it's called what should I do with my money economic insights to build wealth amid chaos it's available wherever all books are sold there's the paper back with him holding up here you can get up Barnes & Noble Amazon anywhere Thursday ebook you can get on your Kindle or any device and there's also an audiobook so if you like to listen on Audible or any of those you're also able to listen to the audio book<br> hey Brian I want to thank you for joining us today if somebody needs to reach out to you is there a website they can go to yes sure thing so you can follow me and in all the things I post and great content we share it's at ww.w. Brian kudrna. Calm that's Brian with a Y and in my last name kedarnath cam so you can go there you can email us at info at Brian kudrna. Calm I'm trying to get back to everyone and do time and also feel free to check out my podcast which we've had for a few years now the kids are in a podcast have a lot of a great content in guests on there as well be safe be healthy and be back again<br><br> more expert advice for having a happier relationship with money still to come on the saving with Steve show<br> don't let your financial woes keep you up at night and prevent you from living a life of Financial and personal freedom hi I'm Steve Sexton post of the saving with Steve show where to be talking about the in an ounce of money does Financial issues that could be costing me thousands of dollars causing stress keeping you up at night we're going to talk about money tax reduction saving more spending your investment risk management retirement and everything is so sweet with you having a healthier happy relationship with money soon as you've ever dreamed of living a life of Financial and personal freedom you owe it to yourself and your family to tune in to the saving with Steve show join me Steve sex and out of saving with Steve show as we talked about everything under the sun when it comes to money to learn more about the show visit saving with Steve. Us that's saving with Steve. Us saving with Steve. Us will see you soon<br> welcome back to the show that is here to help you achieve your financial goals it's the saving with Steve show now here's your host Steve Sexton<br><br>hey welcome back to the shaving with Steve show when we talked about the ins-and-outs of money now today my little Takata is how to update your emergency fund for inflation emergency funds you don't they can help you stay in Good Financial footing space in a specially when you're facing unexpected costs like medical bills car payments you know what if you want in Destiny's phone so you can earn money also want to make sure you have easy access to them so liquid assets like money markets high-yield savings account see you these are some of the ways you could get a mess in your emergency money you just really want to shop around to make sure that you have the ability to earn a little bit so like right now you could sing money markets in the 4% range if you still got one of them 1% rain 4% range would be better you know what the benefits of liquidity when you're looking at emergency van in fact that you can to quickly converted into cash if there's a problem<br> things like real estate stocks things that take a long time to get you your money it doesn't work out too well or you're going to have a significant penalty if you're utilizing it for an emergency fund one of the things that you want to think about here is some people say hey Steve what if I invest my money in the stock market well let's think about that if you're investing your money or emergency money in the stock market in the stock market goes down then you have the emergency have a less than come to take from one of the big things you want to look at it with an emergency fun is you want to have at least six months worth of expenses I'm not talking expensive getting by making sure those things work so if your expenses are $2,000 a month you want to get it to the point where you have $12,000 if you have that $12,000 a month you're not going to have to jump into the two credit cards that makes it so much easier for that and one of the easiest ways to start<br> is set up a separate savings account we have one we just called Aria count and all we do on a monthly basis<br> is refund so much money in there if you start with $100 or $200 at 3 or 4:00 whatever it is just start going to forget about it but it from your paycheck whatever it is just keep it going and keep it going in there look at it once every 3 or 4 months to see what the value is and then you want to keep looking for the best way for you to maximize the return on in the make sure it's liquid now I want to thank you all for joining us today here on saving with Steve Brier could dream was awesome he went to the past to present the future student loans Winnington Tyler program got a wonderful book what should I do with my money want to check that I can get on Amazon by the way you'll have the link on our website as well for that again I want to thank you for joining us stay stay stay healthy we'll see you next time right here on saving with Steve bye-bye<br> thank you for joining us for the saving with Steve show hosted by Steve Sexton to learn more about the show and how to become a guest or sponsor visit saving with Steve. Us that's saving with Steve. Us join us again next time as we continue to talk about everything under the sun that relates to you having a healthier happier relationship with money this has been saving with Steve show hosted by Steve Sexton<br><br>