Ryan Schulte is a financial planner and student loan consultant that has been working with dentists all over the country since 2005. He is married to his wife Tracy and together they have 5 boys. Ryan and his family live in the exact center of California near Yosemite in a little mountain town called North Fork. When Ryan isn’t with his clients, he can be found spending time with his family, coaching baseball or volunteering on a community development council where he works to redevelopment on old lumber mill into affordable housing and a biomass power-plant.
http://www.ryanschultecfp.com
http://www.studentloananalysis.com
VIDEO - DUwHF 981 - Ryan Schulte
AUDIO - DUwHF #981 - Ryan Schulte
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Howard: It's just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Ryan Schulte, who came here all the way from Yosemite, California to talk about student loans. He is a student loan consultant that has been working with dentists all over the country since 2005 - that's thirteen years. He's married to his wife, Tracy, and together they have five boys. You beat me by 25%; I have four boys. So, you have five boys - you have to be Mormon or Catholic. I'm Catholic. What are you?
Ryan: Neither.
Howard: Neither? My gosh, is there a new religion I haven't heard about?
Ryan: I do drink whiskey from time to time.
Howard: So, Ryan and his family live in the exact center of California, which is North Fork, California near Yosemite, in a little town called North Fork. When Ryan isn't with his clients, he can be found spending time with his family, coaching baseball or volunteering on a community development council where he works to redevelop an old lumber mill into affordable housing and a biomass power plant.
Howard: That is so damn cool. I'm so glad you came to that show because finance is emotional. When people make so many decisions in life, it's analytical. Should I do this or should I do that? But man, when it comes to money and love, the logic goes out the window.
Ryan: That is very true.
Howard: Oh my God, so whenever you talk about money- And I think men are more emotional about it than women because men, it's a big part of their identity. That's why they have a Mercedes and not a Ford Explorer. That's why they have to get into a bigger house and have to get letters behind their names and all that stuff like that. But back to your student loans.
Howard: I lecture at A.T. Still. A couple of Sundays ago where I went down there and there was one kid in the class, the Mormon, who's going to graduate $400,000 in debt because he already got married and had a couple of kids in school and he thinks that $400,000 is just like the end of the world when I know that half my friends that are dentists, their divorce cost them over a million. Mine cost $3.8 million and I graduated $87,000 in student loans. Take three point eight million divided by eighty-seven thousand and you get forty-one, so they're all crying about their student loans, but there is some real issues about it in the news because I always wondered if I declared bankruptcy, the student loans didn't clear, but now they're starting to revisit that.
Ryan: Yeah, I think somebody- I forget who it was; it might have been somebody that's looking at coming on one of the Federal Reserve Board said, "Well, I don't see why we can't bankrupt student loans." Now as of the moment, you cannot bankrupt them.
Howard: Because in insurance, it's always an actuarial risk analysis versus moral hazard, meaning- The funniest thing in the world was when France decided that if you had lower back problems and couldn't work, you got 80% of your income and within an hour…
Ryan: Right. Yeah. Everyone’s back’s hurting.
Howard: ...10% of French men could no longer work.
Ryan: That’s right.
Howard: So that's the moral hazard. You have fire insurance on your house. I've lived in Ahwatukee with eighty-five thousand people for thirty years; I've only seen three houses burn down, but look at businesses that start to go bankrupt. No names mentioned in Wichita, Kansas, but there was an IGA grocery store when I was a little kid. The guy had three locations and one of them burned down during a thunderstorm. It turned out later that that one was losing so much money and was going to bankrupt the other two, then they did an investigation and found out indeed the owner had burned it down. That's the moral hazards, so I imagine if you could walk out of school $400,000 in student loans and declare bankruptcy-
Ryan: Right, just wipe it off the map. Who wouldn't do that? Everybody wants to pay their debt back, I think to a certain extent, but if you could just wipe it away, everybody would do it.
Howard: I can see the moral hazard argument because now what I'm doing is I'm advising if they're- Because sometimes you meet them where they're over $500,000 in debt because they go on to become specialists, like oral surgeons...
Ryan: Yeah, ortho’s.
Howard: ...and then they marry another orthodontist. So, then they get married and they're $1,000,000 in debt, and that's when- I'm not a lawyer, but I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express. That's when I recommend that they just moved to like Sydney, Australia, Sweden, Hong Kong, and change your name to-
Ryan: I have one couple that has $1,300,000 in student loans.
Howard: If they move to Sydney - like my brother Paul just picked up and moved to Sydney - would they lose that $1,300,000?
Ryan: I think it'd still be there. I'm not an international law expert, but-
Howard: Could they actually come and get it in Sydney?
Ryan: Government would have to find a way to go after him, so-
Howard: But would they?
Ryan: Probably not, would be my guess, but-
Howard: So, you heard it first here on Dentistry Uncensored. If you got $1,000,000 in student loans or debt, move to Sydney, because when I go visit my brother Paul, it's the only- I've lectured dentistry in fifty countries. It's the only country where when you get on the plane to fly back, you're like, "Now why am I flying back in? Oh yeah, because I have four kids and four grandkids." That's the reason. I get on that plane and I think, "Okay well if I didn't have four kids and four grandkids living in Arizona, I'd stay in Sydney." And the reason is you don't need a car. If I walk out my front door, which you just walked in and went and laid down in the middle of the street, probably no one would know it for three days. You walk out my brother's front door and there's bars and restaurants and this and that. If he wants to go anywhere, he just jumps on a subway. The life in Sydney is so much cooler than Phoenix, Arizona.
Howard: But anyway, we're just kidding. We're not recommending you go to Sydney, Australia. If I had $1,300,000 and no family in Arizona... So, what are his options?
Ryan: Okay so it depends. There's really two sets of student loans, right? You've got the ones that come from the government and then you've got the private ones.
Howard: Go slow because that big assumption, I mean, you're talking to a lot of people, they might not know... So, there's two types of student loans, government or private. Is that what you called them?
Ryan: Yeah, private loans from a private lender. For the most part, the ones that they're getting while they're in dental school are usually all government loans, direct loans, Grad PLUS loans.
Howard: And what are these loans called or known as?
Ryan: Grad PLUS loans are kind of the main ones from dental school.
Howard: When I was at school, they had HEAL loans.
Ryan: Yeah, and they use to have FFEL loans. They kind of redid it all around 2010, so for the most part, their Stafford loans and Grad PLUS loans.
Howard: Stafford loans? And is the Stafford loan a government loan?
Ryan: It is. It is a direct loan-
Howard: From the government.
Ryan: Yup.
Howard: So, they have Stafford loans and Grad PLUS loans. Those are the government programs. And then who's doing the private?
Ryan: Well, there's a bunch of them. SoFi - you've probably heard of SoFi - DRB, LendKey... There's a bunch of different banks that will refinance- Usually they're refinancing the government loans, and the reason for that is the government loans tend to have a higher interest rate.
Howard: Why? You'd think it'd be the opposite?
Ryan: Yeah, you would think that. I think that a lot of the student political associations are trying to push for that. I think the default rate is pretty high on student loans right now.
Howard: Is it? Do you have any numbers on (unclear 00:08:00)?
Ryan: I don't, not at the top of my head, but I just read recently that they're pretty high.
Howard: Ryan, can you find any googling on student loan default rates?
Ryan: Actually, Trump just came out saying he was going to start enforcing the laws because one of the things that happened is that-
Howard: Hah, does that mean anything? That guy has said more- Yeah.
Ryan: There's a lot of directions we could go, but I think it illustrates the point that they really have- Because you know, as a dentist, if you default on your student loans, they can take your dental license-
Howard: Are you serious?
Ryan: Yeah, which makes perfect sense, right?
Howard: Ryan has sent us a telegram. The US Department of Education today released the three-year federal student loan cohort default rate. The rate increased slightly from 11.3% to 11.5% for students who entered repayment. I've had three of the biggest lenders to buy a dental office on this show, and the default rate is about 0.4%, and the only people who default usually had their license taken away for moral hazard, drugs, cocaine, so it's not even 1%, it's not even half percent - it's 0.4%. I had no idea that 11.5% of student loans default and that is a high default rate.
Ryan: I think that might be one of the reasons- And I'm not exactly sure how they quantify some of this, but there's really no reason to default on a government student loan because of all of the government programs that are available for financially-distressed borrowers. So those are things like income-based repayment, which those programs have ballooned particularly for dentists in the last ten years. I think there's a lot more information out there nowadays.
Howard: Ryan, what's total student loan debt right now in the United States? And then give me the total student loan debt-
Ryan: I want to say it's one and a half trillion, but that's a total guess.
Howard: No, that's about right. And I also believe total credit card debt is less than student loan debt. I think student loans one point five trillion, I think credit cards is one trillion. And then also give me, Ryan, total mortgage. In 2014, there was approximately one point three trillion. You were off by point two, man, come on.
Ryan: It happens.
Howard: You must've drank a beer at the baseball game. You're a big baseball fan; you like The Angels, The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and their spring training is out here. Isn't there a lot of spring trainings out here?
Ryan: Yeah, most of the teams west of the Rockies are here.
Howard: And then east of the Mississippi...
Ryan: It's down in Florida.
Howard: Okay, so forty-four million students had borrowed one point three trillion, who had an average outstanding loan balance of- Oh I don't want to tell dentists this. The average is only thirty-seven thousand.
Ryan: I know, that hurts so bad. It's always fun to say that when I'm speaking at dental school.
Howard: That's what you borrowed senior year. The average US household is $16,000 in credit card debt, the average mortgage is hundred and seventy-two thousand, average auto loan is twenty-eight thousand but total debt owned by US consumers on credit cards is now under a trillion so it's seven hundred and fifty billion, outstanding mortgages on their house is eight trillion, auto loans is one trillion and a student loans is a one point two eight trillion. Thank you, Ryan, for all those numbers. Total consumer debt of all things is twelve point three five trillion and your stupid insane government is $19,000,000,000,000 in debt. When your economy's doing good, that's when you pay down debt and when your economy's horrible and the consumers aren't buying, that's when you want to have the government starts. So, in the depression, the government was building Hoover Dam and all these projects trying to get you employed so you get a paycheck so you could go to the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker. And right now, after a nine-year expansion, what does our government decide to do?
Ryan: Deficit spending.
Howard: Give a tax credit and go another $1,500,000,000,000 in debt. Every year I get older, I see less faith in democracy, and then I go where they're not allowed to vote, like Singapore. China has gotten more people out of poverty to the middle class in the last thirty years in any country that ever has in the history of the world, and Singapore is the most well-managed society. Every year I get older, the United States is like, my God, I'm almost losing faith in democracy. I mean, there's no level of stupidity they can't stoop to. If someone said, "Let's have a system where the dumbest guy in the room has the same vote as you. Democracy."
Howard: Anyway, enough of that and you're not supposed to talk about politics. The consumer's twelve trillion in debt, your insane government's nineteen trillion in debt, the student loans are one point trillion in debt, credit card is point seven five trillion in debt. What is the deal? You're just doing dentists for 13 years. So, educate me. What are you doing? What needs are they not meeting? What do they need?
Ryan: I started my career in 2005 right before the financial crisis. That was awesome timing.
Howard: Great timing.
Ryan: Financial planning. I guess I like getting hit in the face by a two-by-four so I stuck it out. I was working at the time with people that were mostly dentists that were buying practices. I was kind of helping that transition, just doing some of the insurance for them and then some of the employee benefits and that stuff on the practices, and I started realizing and noticing that there was a lack of education on financial matters in general for a lot of these dentists buying practices.
Howard: It's all med schools, law schools. The funniest thing about when I came out (unclear 00:14:32) came from a letter from a priest. You know what he said to me? He goes, "I went to the seminary for eight years. All we did is read the Bible for eight years. I graduate. They sent me to this small town and it's a church and it has an elementary school, which is like a $1,000,000 in debt, the teachers haven't had erasers, all these complaints and guess who's in charge of the whole damn thing? And the priest and I didn't know the difference between a statement of cash or a balance sheet. I had no financial training, I've never done an HR evaluation, I never dealt with upset customers and he keeps calling back (unclear 00:15:06) saying, "Could we have covered some of this?" And then I graduated from dental school and I start my office - I graduated May 11, 87 - got it open September 20, 1887 and Friday, my staff for some reason, wanted to be paid.
Ryan: Details, details.
Howard: And then I'm like, "Could they have showed us how to do payroll?" And that was when it was all paper on pegboard. They didn't show us the pegboard. I asked this lady. She says, "Well, on your pegboard-" I'm like, "What is a pegboard?" She goes, "Your accounting," and she goes, "You don't know what a pegboard is? You own a dental office, you don't know what a pegboard is and you don't know how to do payroll?" Oh my gosh, so they have no financial- You know what percent of dentists graduate dental school and they can't even rectify their bank statement? What would you guess?
Ryan: Pretty high percent?
Howard: It's actually a 112%.
Ryan: From a dentist. And that's kind of what I noticed. I think the challenge for owning a dental practice too is that it's unique in that you kind of have to fulfil three functions of a business. You've got to do the marketing, you have to be the technician and then you have to be the manager as well. Most businesses have different departments for those three things, but you're fixing the teeth, you're trying to get the patient in the chair and then you're also having to manage staff and hopefully, the manager's kind of the first role that you'll hire somebody for, but if you're just new and started out- Nobody necessarily describes that those things all need to take place in a business and so I just noticed that maybe I should start getting involved in some educational pieces and then at the same time as this was going on, they opened up a dental school in Pomona, Western University of Health Sciences School And Dental Medicine.
Howard: That's the newest dental school. Pomona, the sixth one. So, you have what? USC...
Ryan: USC, UCLA, Loma Linda...
Howard: Loma Linda, that's the southern part. Then up north in San Fran you got...
Ryan: UOP and UCSF.
Howard: And now Pomona, and where's Pomona? In a state called Pomona?
Ryan: Inland Riverside.
Howard: Oh Riverside! That's kind of by Loma Linda.
Ryan: It's not far. They're not far apart at all.
Howard: Okay, so Loma Linda is in Riverside. Is Pomona the name of an actual city?
Ryan: Yeah.
Howard: So, it's in Pomona?
Ryan: Yeah.
Howard: And Pomona's next to Riverside?
Ryan: Pretty close. There might be a city or two in between; I think it's about maybe twenty-five feet apart.
Howard: Do they have a graduating class yet?
Ryan: Yeah, they graduated their first class in I think 2012 or 2013.
Howard: Okay. It's the only dental school I haven't been to down there. Is it private or government?
Ryan: It is a private one.
Howard: I want to podcast the Dean.
Ryan: Oh okay. Dean Friedrichsen. He's really nice.
Howard: Well tell him-
Ryan: I'll be there in May, so I'm happy to-
Howard: Okay so, California's 10% of the US population. It's the same population as Canada and they have six dental schools. Okay so anyway continue about...
Ryan: I had some friends that were in the first class and then I just started doing some educational stuff. I started getting involved with the American Student Dental Association and then actually now I write for their blog so you can see my stuff out.
Howard: Yeah what's their blog called?
Ryan: Mouthing Off.
Howard: Mouthing Off. I love their blog.
Ryan: Yeah, they're great over there So I write for them a few times a year, five or six times a year and-
Howard: When you write for them- Dentaltown has a blog section, so if you've already done the work, you should post that on Dentaltown.
Ryan: Absolutely.
Howard: You're just getting more use out of (unclear 00:19:00) But if you ever do a blog, email me the link - Howard at Dentaltown dot com - and I'll push it out my social media because I got Facebook dot com at Howard Farran and I got three hundred thousand dentists, Twitter - at Howard Farran - I got twenty-five thousand, LinkedIn thirty-six thousand, Instagram fourteen thousand, Google Plus five thousand, and Pinterest fifteen thousand. So, when you write the blog, you can share it to your own social media on Dentaltown, so the (unclear 00:19:27) there, but if you email me the link, I'll open the link and I'll push out mine so I can push it out to half a million people.
Ryan: I appreciate it.
Howard: And if you ever do a blog on Dentaltown and want me to push it out to a half a million people on my personal stuff just email me Howard at Dentaltown dot com.
Ryan: Okay.
Howard: Mouthing Off, the reason they're good is students- You know, when we were young it was called talking back to your parents or talking back who when you weren't supposed to do it, but I love their fresh, their energy, their perspective. I'm a grandpa with four grandkids. I love hearing the- For me it's not even the next generation; it's already the next next generation.
Ryan: Right, and I like working with them and I think part of the problem of the student loan thing is that, I don't know how many applicants for- I think a Western university has maybe eighty seats per class and there's probably a thousand applicants for those seats, I would guess. So, if you're one of the-
Howard: Ryan, can you find how many total applicants for dental school versus acceptance because a lot of those are applying to multiple schools.
Ryan: Multiple schools, that's true. Yeah, I do know that. I feel like at one point there were three thousand applicants, but I don't know, don't quote me on that.
Howard: One thing: price elasticity. Price has a very lasting effect on the (unclear 00:20:43). You sell more Chevys than you do Cadillacs. The greatest car in America I assume is a Lamborghini, but it's three hundred thousand, so they only sell about a hundred and a lot of dentists are always saying, "Well why do the dental schools keep raising their tuition?" Well think about it. They raised their price ten thousand a year and they don't have a decrease in the applicants. When the dental school start figuring that out ten years ago, they go, "God, we could raise ten thousand, build a new school." So that's why-
Ryan: That's exactly where I was going with that.
Howard: A dozen schools are now at $100,000 dollars a year and they still fill all their seats with qualified applicants.
Ryan: And have a waiting list. And that's part of the problem. This goes back to your comments on government and I don't know what the solution is to this, but there is an unlimited supply of money if you're borrowing dental school.
Howard: There's no cap.
Ryan: There's no cap. So, the student goes, "I got into dental school." They're not looking around thinking how much is this going to cost me for the most part, they're going to dental school if they got accepted. I have never heard of anybody getting accepted and saying, "Oh no, this cost too much. I'm not going." The financial aid department is really good about getting them the money they need to pay tuition.
Howard: Because they're paid by the student's debt.
Ryan: And again, the student really wants to go to dental school. It's an amazing way to move up. It's a very cool way of-
Howard: Especially if your dad's a dentist and he's paying for your dental school.
Ryan: Or you've got mom and dad that are breathing down your neck, "You need to be a doctor, you need to be a doctor, you need to be a doctor." And then they get through dental school and there they are. And so now the deficiency that comes into play is paying that back. So, I probably have a disproportionate amount of higher debt just because of the line of work that I'm in. So, these students get in, they get accepted, no one's telling them how to pay the money back and each year that goes by, they're racking up more and more debt. There's a lot of students that are legitimately taking anxiety medication while they're in dental school for a variety of reasons, I think. I mean, dental school's tough, but I've met some people very stressed out about their debt.
Howard: Dental school also - I'm know I'm repeating myself in my show - but it also has a very adverse selection process, so it's not a normal person. The best example of that was bipolar in the United States. Do you ever hear about that big dilemma there? It used to be called manic depressive and the American psychiatrists clear back in the fifties said consistently that America was 4% and the Europeans said they were 0.5%. So, everybody's assume everybody's measuring differently because Europeans - how could it be different? And then in the sixties and the seventies, they start talking about this law. So finally, in the eighties, some guy said, "Look, let's get this right." Went over there. He's the head psychiatrist Johns Hopkins. He wrote a book on this and he said, "Damn, you're only 0.5%. We're 4% - that's eight times as many." So, everybody thought about it. Well then, they realize for five hundred years, who is the most likely person to say, "Screw this country," get in a boat and row six weeks over when one in eight boats sunk and show up on the beach with nothing but the shirt on your back. That was a person in a manic phase. And sure enough, through natural selection we had 4% and then this guy went even further and started asking all of his cohorts, "Do you see anybody in the Fortune 500 CEOs? And they started. They put together that sure enough, who is crazy enough to start a new business or go to dental school? So, they figured out that by income, by the time you got to- So 4% for the poor and middle class. By the time it was ten million, it was like 25%. By the time you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, it was a third.
Ryan: That's really fascinating.
Howard: And he wrote a book and it's called 'How a Little Bit of Craziness Leads to a Lot of Success'. Normal people are risk averse. Normal people don't post on message boards and Facebook and Twitter. Only 1% do 80% of the posting to social media. They're called super users. Normal people don't take risks. Normal people don't want to draw attention to themselves. Normal people don't want to post a root canal because what if you come on and say, "God, that root canal sucks." A normal person would cry and run off into the backyard and bury themselves and delete their post, right? It takes a different person to say, "Thanks for the feedback. Why does it suck?" "Oh, you missed a canal. You're short." Very, very (unclear 00:25:27). So, in dental school, in college, join a frat, have a girlfriend, put back some beers, join a bowling league - you'd never get to medical school, dental school, law school. Who's the freak that got As in geometry, calculus and physics. So now this guy is a dentist, a physician and a lawyer and they're not normal people and there's nothing about a lawyer or a physician or a dentist that's representative of the middle class. You can't say doctor and then median mode or mean in the same sentence. They're freaks. And I love them because I'm a freak.
Ryan: Maybe that's why I didn't fit in well.
Howard: Like I'd rather pull four wisdom teeth than go golfing at what is it? Pebble beach or whatever. So why didn't you fit in well? Are you a freak too?
Ryan: I think so. I'm a little crazy myself.
Howard: Well, five kids. There's nothing normal about having five kids.
Ryan: Who does that? Yeah.
Howard: If you were normal, you'd have one point nine children.
Ryan: Yeah, and filling my calendar up with a bunch of community service stuff.
Howard: Hey, you have five kids and you're trying to turn an old lumber mill into affordable housing and a biomass power plant. You're probably manic. So why are my manic homies calling you?
Ryan: There's a lot of stress and anxiety about the student debt. I mean there are literally students in paralysis and if they graduate dental school and they don't do anything, the standard repayment is ten years, so you pay your debt off in ten years.
Howard: Standard on the government and the private?
Ryan: Well you probably wouldn't have a private loan unless you decided to refinance and then you could pick whatever term you want in.
Howard: But the standard government loan is a ten year, hundred and twenty-month payment.
Ryan: That's right. Which is roughly five grand for a dentist with $450,000 in student loans.
Howard: So, the people only calling you probably aren't the ones whose parents both worked and graduated a hundred, a hundred fifty. The ones that are calling you are probably on their own. So, what do you think the average dental graduate student loan is? Like what percent (inaudible 00:27:47)?
Ryan: I can tell you what it is. I think the average dental student has two hundred and seventy thousand in student loans.
Howard: But the thing I hate about average is-
Ryan: It's not good measure because you have a lot of students who have zero debt. I shouldn't say a lot, but there's a percentage that have zero.
Howard: And their dad was a dentist.
Ryan: Right, exactly.
Howard: Or orthodontist...
Ryan: Or oral surgeons (inaudible 00:28:06), yeah.
Howard: What percent of the kids do you think are in that boat?
Ryan: I don't know. Two out of ten, maybe, one out of ten? Something like that?
Howard: So, 10% to 20%?
Ryan: Ah, that might be high. I don't know.
Howard: And you call them the lucky sperm club.
Ryan: You know what's funny is this particular group usually lies about having student loans. So, they tend to pretend that they do. It's kind of funny. You know who you are.
Howard: But they shouldn't lie about it because they should motivate their kids, their classmates, “You survive this and your children won't have to. You do this, so you know...”
Ryan: Yeah so basically-
Howard: When I was a little kid in Wichita, Kansas, both grandparents, grandma and grandpa, lived in Parsons, Kansas three hours away, and when we would go and visit them, they both still had outhouses. And to this day, my brain wants to call it indoor plumbing because my parents used to say, "Yeah, that was great. Your dad moved to Wichita and got a good job so he could have indoor plumbing and people don't realize that you have seven and a half billion people on Earth and three billion still don't have indoor plumbing. And in China - which has a billion and three hundred million and we have three hundred and thirty million - they have more people than Americans do that don't have indoor plumbing, electricity and sewage in their house. So, you always think of China as the Apple plant in Shanghai and Beijing and Tokyo. Drive inland. They have three hundred and fifty million people that don't have the three basics: indoor plumbing, toilets, sewage, running water, electricity. But anyway...
Ryan: Yeah, so you know, you look at these grads. They step into this situation of having a $4,500, five thousand a month student loan payment. I tend to see new grads making between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and forty.
Howard: So, they make a hundred and twenty; sixty thousand of it needs to go to student loans.
Ryan: Right, it's just not feasible.
Howard: Well it is feasible. Why can't you live off the other sixty?
Ryan: Well remember taxes, so Uncle Sam takes their cut.
Howard: Okay so you gross one twenty...
Ryan: You're going to give up, depending on where you live, maybe 30%, 35% between income, payroll, (inaudible 00:30:21) percent-
Howard: So, what would one twenty be after taxes?
Ryan: Multiply times 70%. Let's just say it's thirty, because remember they pay payroll tax on it too.
Howard: So, they gross one twenty. What's their after-tax?
Ryan: Let's call it eighty-four.
Howard: We'll make it eighty-five. And then they're going to give sixty to student loans. Well they still got twenty-five thousand left over. What, did they lose their recipe to ramen noodles and they want to cook (unclear 00:30:51) hotpot?
Ryan: Who needs a car? And that's for a hundred and twenty thousand based on five hundred a day, which is kind of a lot of the corporates' daily minimum. I don't see people making less than that generally-
Howard: So, the average person works five days a week.
Ryan: If they're working five days, yeah.
Howard: So, a hundred and twenty thousand, divided by two thousand days a year- Oh I was doing hours. I was doing forty hours... So, it'd be divided by two hundred. So that's six hundred (inaudible 00:31:20).
Ryan: I usually assume a couple of weeks off.
Howard: So, a hundred and twenty thousand a year, six hundred a day. And by the way, they need to all start paying. A lot of people pay percentage and I'm telling you the big guys aren't doing this mistake, but the little guys are doing this all day. They say, "Well I'll just pay my associate 25% of production or 30% production or 33% production." But you don't have a base there, and they say, "Well I don't need a base because I have a successful office." Yeah, but the media is going to start invading you, saying, "Well this doctor had to diagnose four cavities and he went to another dentist, he had no cavities, and Dr. Bad only pays them on production and if he doesn't do anything, he can't feed his family. So, you need to have the base pay because the media is never going to like.
Ryan: And throw that on top of somebody who has $450,000 in student loans, has never had a job before and now they're on production trying to figure out how to diagnose without their professor looking over their shoulder and they're on their own. Everybody's calling them doctor - it's a pretty stressful situation to walk into.
Howard: And one last example that the media is already going after - some of these big air conditioning and heating companies. And (unclear 00:32:38) paid straight on commission for when they install a new unit. Now everybody's making a good wage because they're so busy. They sell enough heaters and air conditioners. It's all good, but when they have an undercover hammer and some guy comes out and says this needs to be replaced and it couldn't be fixed and he genuinely believed that, but then the media shows that while he did it because it was the commission and if he didn't do that, he wouldn't make money. So, you got to have a commission versus base pay.
Ryan: Or base pay versus-
Howard: Base pay and commission. You can't get rid of the base pay cause nobody's going to trust your diagnosis and treatment plan on your air conditioner, your auto repair or your two cavities because you're selling the invisible. I know what the iPhone is. I know what a bottle of water is. I don't know if my air conditioner needs a shot of Freon or not. I don't know if I have four cavities. You're selling invisible, so the incentive's got to be clean.
Ryan: I'm not a dentist, so this is coming from my clients, but you know there's some dental cases, they're gray, right? Like one dentist might do one thing, another dentist might recommend another thing you know, it's not-
Howard: Might?
Ryan: Will?
Howard: No, no, we have research. Let's be frank about this. I mean, I love my homies, but Reader's Digest, thirty years ago, sent out a journalist and this was at a time when my parents and grandparents all had Reader's Digest on the deal??? It's very solid journalism, wasn't fake news or gray journalism. Got to FMX, study models, went to thirty different dentists, they got thirty different treatments. So, when the government saw that, they thought, "Well it is Reader's Digest. That's not the tabloid; that's serious journalism." So, the government said, "We're worried. We're going to do a hundred. Guess how many different treatments the government got. Ninety-nine, because two dentists said you needed nothing. And on both studies, it went from $0 to thirty thousand. And you can see it on Dentaltown all day long, like some lady, you'll have a chip and someone will say, "Well, I just buff it out." Next guy, "I'm filling composites there." Next guy, "I do eight veneers." Next guy, "I do invisalign, bleaching..." Yeah, I mean it's like, "Dude, I mean dentistry is more art than science."
Ryan: Right, that's what I've gathered being outside looking in. That is my impression.
Howard: Absolutely. (unclear 00:34:51) dentist gets caught up in, say Sleep Apnea. He'll stop paying attention to all the other deals and going into sleep medicine or implants or cosmetics. So, if you go to a TMJ dentist, guess what percent of their patients are TMJ?
Ryan: 100%.
35.08 Howard: All of them. Are you stressed? Do you ever wake up and fart or grind your teeth? Or you know, look at this word. So, they go into TMJ, my God, it's all TMJ. If they go into perio, it's all, you know. You talk to a periodontist, they'll say, "112% of all Americans have gum disease." Really? 80% have it? Really? Four out of five have gum disease? I'm interrupting you way too many times.
Ryan: No, it's okay. We're having fun. So anyway, just all adding to the financial stress. There are government programs that allows the students to make a payment based on their income rather than- it's a little weird, but their payment is completely disconnected from how much debt they owe. So, someone that owns a trillion or someone that owes four hundred thousand will have the same payment because it's based on their discretionary income, which is a function of AGI.
Howard: What is AGI?
Ryan: Adjusted gross income. There's a couple of adjust- So let's say they're making a hundred and twenty thousand a year. They might have a couple of adjustments. They put money into a retirement plan, it'll bring down their AGI.
Howard: Retirement plan (unclear 00:36:16)...
Ryan: IRA... HSA account is another example of something that reduces AGI.
Howard: What's HSA?
Ryan: The health savings account.
Howard: Health savings account, IRA... And is IRA also the 41k?
Ryan: Yeah, 41k I think would affect that as well.
Howard: But what I don't understand is what if my minimum interest only payment is a dollar a month and the adjusted gross income payments is only 80%. Does my balance get bigger?
Ryan: It does, it grows. Yeah, negatively amortizes.
Howard: Negatively amortizes - those are two words you'd never want to see in the same sentence.
Ryan: Generally speaking with financial planning, that's a word we don't want in the plan if possible.
Howard: Wow, negative amortization. That sucks.
Ryan: They used to have mortgages that did that. I don't know if you remember before the financial crisis, shocker, that you could actually pick what you wanted to pay. You could do a fifteen-year mortgage, a thirty-year, you could do an interest-only payment or you could not even pay all the interest - Pick-a-Pay Mortgages is what they call them. Shocker that that imploded.
Howard: What was that movie that analyzed that so well?
Ryan: Oh, I didn't see the movie, but I read the book: The Big Short. I read the book; it's amazing.
Howard: As an MBA from Arizona State University, I knew that Hollywood was going to screw that movie up. I knew it'd just be like a love story and they butchered the economics. My God, they got an A in the deal.
Ryan: I didn't actually see that.
Howard: My instructors from ASU said, "I cannot believe Holly- And it was weird creativity, like they were at a casino and then they were making a bet and then people in the back - famous people. I mean, it was a great lesson in economics.
Ryan: And the book was amazing. I think I actually did it on audio book. That's one of those books that I would sit in my car and be late for meeting so that I could finish the chapter before I would go in. Just amazing.
Ryan: So, going back to the student loans, there are a variety of different government plans that allow them to make a payment based on 10% or 15% of their discretionary income. So, the government takes their AGI from their tax return or a pay stub and then they subtract out a poverty level factor. So, someone that's making a hundred and twenty thousand, their payment might be eight or nine hundred bucks a month on their student loans regardless of whether they have half a million or two hundred and fifty thousand. At the end, if they stay in this program the whole time, fulfil the requirements of the plan, once they get to the end of either twenty or twenty-five years and assuming their loans qualify, that debt gets forgiven on a taxable basis, taxable income in that year.
Howard: God, I'd hate to have that over my head for twenty, twenty-five years.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Abosulutely.
Howard: Because I was saying with a kid like, "Let's say your student loans are four hundred thousand. Well, shouldn't there eventually be a year where you make four hundred thousand in that year?"
Ryan: Right.
Howard: And then when they don't do that, it's a whole lot of other reasons. I always say this to a kid, "You should at least have a plan that whatever your student loan debt is, that one day you make that in a year."
Ryan: Right.
Howard: What is your business? How do you make a living to feed five boys? Whom I’m sure barely eat a thing at all.
Ryan: Right, yeah. It is amazing what they can put down. So, I have my financial planning career, which we'll do another podcast on one of these days. I do retirement planning, I manage assets, I do insurance and all that fun stuff. My student loan planning businesses is separate; I charge a flat fee. That's not really a huge money maker for me. That was more something that I did because it was demand-based. I had so many people that are like, "Hey, I just want to talk to you about my student loans."
Howard: So your website is student loan analysis?
Ryan: studentloananalysis.com.
Howard: Okay.
Ryan: Numbers are on there. What I do is I have a software program, I can actually import their loans, we’ll do an analysis on the debt. We got to make a lot of guesses about the future. How much you're going to be making for the next twenty years, which is tough, and then we can kind of see when it makes sense to start aggressively paying off debt - if ever. Most of the specialists will all pay their debt off. There's a subset of general dentists that don't ever make more than two hundred thousand or a hundred fifty a year. It may make the most mathematical sense to run these repayment plans (inaudible 00:40:41).
Howard: So, they only know themselves. They're driving to work alone, they're on the stairmaster alone. Give us a breakdown of who's calling you. You said the average person is four hundred and fifty thousand?
Ryan: Yeah.
Howard: Your average client is four hundred and fifty thousand.
Ryan: In student debt, correct.
Howard: So, the four ninety-five you should charge four fifty so you could tell them it's $1 for every $10,000 you're in debt. So, you have to pay him $1 for every $1000 you borrowed. $450,000 in student loans. What percent are specialists?
Ryan: Probably 10% or 15%, And those are usually people in residency. They're calling me, "Hey, I'm in residency. What's the best way to deal with this while I'm in residency?"
Howard: And you're saying the specialists have a very low default rate?
Ryan: Yeah, well specialists just generally make a good chunk more.
Howard: Twice as much. Your average general dentist is one seventy-four, oral surgeon four ten, endodontist three eighty-five, pedodontists three ninety until they drink themselves into the table from the (unclear 00:41:47). You said there's a subset?
Ryan: Well I was going to say there's a subset of general dentists, because not everybody graduates dental school and wants to work five days a week for the rest of their career. I do talk to dentists that don't want to work on patients, which is particularly unfortunate if you borrowed $450,000 to do that.
Howard: What percent is this subset?
Ryan: I would say I probably talk to a few of those a year. I don't know, 1% or 2%.
Howard: There was probably an anxiety thing to graduate from dental school (unclear 00:42:25).
Ryan: Yeah, it could be. I think some people like the research more, they want to do educational type things, which doesn't always pay as well as perhaps owning your own practice might. And so, there are some people that it does make mathematical sense to stay on these repayment plans, pay as little as possible and save up for the tax bill down the road, and I kind of help navigate and help people with a decision tree on how to decide whether that's them.
Howard: Now do you give out your email on the podcast?
Ryan: Yes, absolutely.
Howard: Ryan at student loan analysis dot com versus Ryan at Dentaltown dot com.
Ryan: Not to be confused.
Howard: Not to be confused. Two different Ryans in the room. That's right. Ryan at student loan analysis dot com, Ryan at Dentaltown dot com. Who are you talking to you right now? Who's should be calling you? You're saying 10% to 20% percent don't have any student loans because their dad is a dentist.
Ryan: Yeah, and I'm happy to work with them in my financial planning side, but for the student loan piece, anybody that's graduated in the last five years and has three fifty plus student loans, they're probably in a situation that's making less than two hundred and fifty thousand a year. And then there another option that we actually haven't even talked about, which is public service loan forgiveness. That's a whole other area of someone's looking at doing community clinic, any reservation, educational stuff-
Howard: Well, you can't go on (inaudible 00:44:01) because you're all dry. You can't buy booze on (unclear 00:44:06), The hell you going to do? You've got loan forgiveness and can't drink. So, the people who should be calling you- This is 2018, so you're saying if they graduated in the last five years... What is 2018 minus five? That's 2013. If they graduated past twenty...
Ryan: Yeah, they can still call me. Reach out.
Howard: If you're over $350,000 in student loans-
Ryan: If you're stressed out about your student loans and you don't feel like you've got a good plan and you don't understand the various options available to you with repayment, give me a call.
Howard: You say that but you give out your email; you didn't give out a phone number.
Ryan: Phone number's on the website.
Howard: Are you going to give it out on the podcast?
Ryan: Yeah, sure.
Howard: What is it?
Ryan: Nine four nine three three six two five nine three.
Howard: I could have sworn I saw that number on the Circle K bathroom wall. The hell was it doing...
Ryan: I hope not.
Howard: It said, “For a good student loan time analysis...”
Ryan: Awkward.
Howard: Awkward. So, if they're over $350,000 in student loans or they're having stress or anxiety about their student loans.
Ryan: Yeah, or they're only working one or two days a week. I have had clients that have wanted to be a stay-at-home mom or dad and so they're only working one or two days a week with $450,000 in student loans. Well, you need to do some unique planning if that's you, and these government-
Howard: Well, it's really weird because I came from a different generation. I mean our generation, like when I opened up my dental office, I had $87,000 in student loans. So, I guess what my hours were for like the first year here? Monday through Saturday, seven to seven. You know where the name 7-Eleven comes from?
Ryan: I guess I don't.
Howard: When they opened up 7-Eleven, all the old small-town grocers had banker's hours, so they were open seven AM to eleven PM. In fact, now it's a branding issue because now they're all twenty-four hours a day. And then the dentists will tell me, "Well this area is crowded." Well, when I opened up my corner, it was crowded. It was crowded Monday through Thursday, eight to five, but Friday, there was only four of us open. Saturday, it was only me and the other Catholic dentist who had four kids (unclear 00:46:15).
Ryan: I was going to say something about lots of kids.
Howard: And it was amazing because I was excited to go on Friday because I just lost 75% of all the dentists. So, you get more emergencies - broken tooth, $1000 crown, toothache, $2000 root canal crown. Saturday, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. And what is the urban myth? "Oh, well no one will come in on Saturday. They'll cancel their appointments because they're all going to go fishing at the lake or go to the..." It's like, "Okay dude, well this is what I want you to do. Go to the mall on Tuesday at nine o'clock and then go on Saturday and then tell me which one is more busy. So, a lot of people just say things they want to believe based on no facts. So, if I had $350,000 student loans, I would just work my ass off for...
Ryan: Yeah, and I've got lots of people that do that. And so, then we'll talk about private refinancing, when does it make sense to private refinance, do we try to get a lower interest rate, and the pros and cons of doing that.
Howard: Rant. Rant for us. When should they do it?
Ryan: The cons to private refinancing is that once you do that, you lose all your government benefits and you enter a fixed-repayment schedule that you are forced to repay regardless of any change in your life and you cannot bankrupt it. If something goes wrong, you have less flexibility.
Howard: But you can't bankrupt anything now anyway.
Ryan: For some reason your income went away, well if you're on the income-based repayment, your payment just drops to zero and then gets forgiven after twenty years. So, you can't bankrupt it, but there's a lot of flexibility if for some reason you got disabled or you lost your license or something to that effect. So, there's just a lot of flexibility with the government-repayment plan.
Howard: Why is the fly only flying around me and not Ryan?
Ryan: I got some of it too.
Howard: Do I smell like shit? Is that what it is? But anyway...
Ryan: There's just pros and cons and the thing that concerns me on private refinancing is that there's a dozen banks that are marketing to these new grads like crazy, making them feel dumb for not refinancing. You'll save thousands and thousands of dollars in interest and that's potentially true, but there are some consequences to private refinancing.
Howard: And let me just say one thing about advertising. I've advertised as much to dentists as anybody who had. I mean hell, I've had a dental magazine going to all the dentists and orthodontists since 94, but the one thing when I was in MBA school, they always say, people always advertise their biggest weakness. So, like American cars suck, so what do they always advertise? Oh, we have a bumper to bumper warranty for ten years. You'll never hear a Japanese or German car manufacturer saying that because their cars work. Raisin bran, the only thing that you won't find in raisin bran is a raisin. So, what did they say? Two scoops of raisin in every box. And here's the reason why. So, their competitors, like if you're selling a Japanese car or (unclear 00:49:30) car, you'll be saying, "Well, those American cars are full of shit. They're crappy." So, what do the American say? "We have bumper to bumper warranty, five-year warranty." When you're going to a dental convention and this booth knows what that booth is talking shit about his product, so what is he going to focus on? What's wrong with this product? What's wrong with this product? You go find out at the booth across (unclear 00:49:54). When you're getting bombarded with all these advertisements, if they're saying you're going to save thousands of dollars on interest, that's probably most likely not going to happen. Or am I just too jaded (unclear 00:50:11)?
Ryan: Well I think they're not going to tell you the consequences of refinancing, that you're going to lose all of those government benefits, and there's a very small fine print on the bottom with an asterisk next to it and for a certain amount of people, I don't know what that percentage is, they're really going to regret having refinanced their loans. And every once in a while, I meet somebody who is making a hundred and twenty thousand a year that has refinanced all of their debt and they're barely surviving.
Howard: The funniest one is with politicians. They don't want to say that they voted for this because you gave him $100,000 because that would be a bribe, and the only way you get a law passed, the only way you get a bill passed is with the (unclear 00:50:54) bills. I give you a bunch of bills and you pass the bill, so it's all bribery and corruption. So, what does the politician say, "Oh well, I'm very happy to see that Ryan bought into my ideas and campaigns." They're saying you bought into my ideas because what really happened. You bought my ideas. I didn't have an idea on this. Ryan showed up with $100,000 campaign contributions, so it's bribery, so I can't say that because that's go-to-jail shit, and that's how our entire country's run. So, I say, "No Ryan, he bought into my ideas. He bought into my agenda because my opponent didn't say that." And you're like, "Okay." So, everything is (unclear 00:51:38).
Ryan: Yeah. And again, one is not necessarily better than the other. It's just people need to understand the consequences of both, and when you're talking to the bank, they're really going to talk up how much interest you'll save because they (unclear 00:51:48).
Howard: Could you mention by brand name, who are the big banks trying to redo (unclear 00:51:54)?
Ryan: SoFi's one of the bigger ones.
Howard: SoFi. Could you send me that Ryan? What is that? S-O-F-I?
Ryan: Yeah S-O-F-I. It stands for 'social finance'.
Howard: And where are they out of?
Ryan: They might be out of California actually, and they're now like a bank with all kinds of other services. They started purely on refinancing private loans.
Howard: Now is this a regulated bank or is this peer-to-peer lending?
Ryan: I think they might be a regulated bank now. They started peer-to-peer.
Howard: Yeah, and when you're fifty-five and you've seen all these crashes, they always come from where you're not looking. Like nobody was looking at the 2008, no one was looking at the subprime lending. Right now in autos, in 2008 they sold nine thousand American autos here; now it's up to seventeen thousand. But if you break down that seventeen thousand, five thousand of those cars were leased and who has to lease a car? People who can't get financing. What is that? Subprime. So now subprime in auto is called a lease. And right now, after that 2008 crash, they did all this regulatory reform. So, what are they all do? They all said, "Well, we're leaving the banks. We're going peer-to-peer lending." What does that mean? It means that this isn't a bank regulated by the Federal Reserve. We're going to go get people worth over a million - they're called high net worth investors. We're going to say, "Well, if you bought bonds- What are they? 2%, 3%? Give me millions of dollars, I'll loan it to these subprime people, and you loan at 10%, we'll split it, so I'll be making..."
Ryan: I think that's how (inaudible 00:53:34) finance started.
Howard: Leasing in auto and peer-to-peer lending is probably one of the highest places the next disaster will come from because it's all flying below the radar.
Ryan: It may, and like I said, I think now SoFi, they've actually become a bank. I think they do like retirement planning now, they have taken that student loan- And they were doing student loans on physicians and dentists in particular because they have high amounts of debt.
Howard: They're out of Healdsburg, California.
Ryan: Okay, it was California, there you go.
Howard: Where's Healdsburg at? Where the hell is Healdsburg?
Ryan: I think that's Bay Area maybe?
Howard: Is that Bay Area? I'm not sure that'd be a high-tech...
Ryan: As far as I know, I think they're great people. I mean, the government loans were sitting at 8%, eight and a quarter for some of these Grad PLUS loans. So, they were coming along at 4% and 5% and refinancing people's debt. DRB is another one.
Howard: What's DRB?
Ryan: Darien Rowayton Bank. I think they actually give a quarter percent discount if you're a member of the ADA.
Howard: How do you think they got the ADA benefit, if you're a member of the ADA? Do you think they gave the ADA any money?
Ryan: I would hate to speculate, but-
Howard: Well, just go out on a limb. This is Dentistry Uncensored.
Ryan: I'm going to say that there was probably a sponsorship I would guess?
Howard: Bob Ibsen used to just rant until I thought he was going to have a stroke about whenever he tried to get the ADA seal of approval, how much they would try to shake him down for.
Ryan: By the way, I don't usually see them with the lowest rate, so if I get a dentist who's going to refinance, I usually recommend you go check out a couple of banks. DRB is usually not lower. You still check them out if you want to. There's a bunch of them now, even credit unions and stuff will do it. Everybody wants to lend to dentists. Everybody wants to lend to dentists and doctors - physicians, I should say.
Howard: And you know why that is?
Ryan: It's those low default rates, right?
Howard: Well, it's very, very interesting. So many people talk about, “woulda, shoulda, coulda” or my philosophy or this or that. Whereas business is what the hell works. And when you go to free dental clinics, what is their number one problem? 50% don't even show up for their appointment because they have no skin in the game. So, when you try to tell Barry Sanders- What's Sanders' first name?
Ryan: Bernie.
Howard: Bernie with free healthcare. Free healthcare. You try to tell, "Well, how about that they can't make an appointment? It costs them $10 to make an appointment." The same amount of money as if they go buy a pack of cigs every single day. How much is a bag of weed?
Ryan: I don't know.
Howard: Oh, he's quick, he's quick. He was just about to say $50 a bag then he realized, "I can't say that." But you say, "Well Bernie, they buy a pack of cigarettes every day for $10, which causes (unclear 00:56:35). Why don't we have $10?" Because if they paid $10 to make an appointment. Guess what will happen? They'll all show up. So on the student loan default rate what do you see? The people with the least amount of student loans have the highest default and the people with the highest amount - doctors, dentists, physicians, lawyers - have the lowest default rate because when you become a doctor of jurisprudence, law, medicine, and dentistry, you swallowed it - hook, line and sinker. So, the higher the amount, the better the repayment, because this monkey has skin in the game. Just like with your five boys. I'll tell you this. Ryan, cover your ears. If you buy them the bicycle, they'll leave it in the front yard and it gets stolen. But if you take them the store and say which one do you want, and they'll say, "That one right there, the one that cost the most." And say, "Okay, I'll go half on it with you." Now they don't want the (unclear 00:57:31) one, they want the one in the middle. If they have to pay half, they'll take it to their bedroom. When they get out of the shower, they'll take their towel and clean it.
Ryan: We just did that. We did it with our oldest. We made him pay for half his bike because I got sick and tired of seeing him out in the rain.
Howard: Exactly. So, you have so much skin in the game once you're over $100,000 in student loans. You're not going to default.
Ryan: And they have professional licenses that-
Howard: Now I did not know that. That was news to me. I have learned more on Dentistry Uncensored. First of all, I'm the only person who listened to all one thousand shows - Get it? Cause I was running the show. - and I had no idea that you could-
Ryan: Yeah, there are all kinds of funny consequences.
Howard: We'll talk about that again. So, with the government loan program?
Ryan: Yeah, it's the same thing as not paying child support or not paying your taxes. The government has full recourse in a variety of areas to come get their money and-
Howard: That's why I was afraid to do that twenty-three in me because I thought, "Well, they have my DNA out there. I'm going to start getting child support checks from..." Bad joke, bad joke.
Ryan: Yeah so SoFi, DRB's another one, LendKey... I need to get this on my website, but credible dot com - Credible is a broker of banks.
Howard: Credible with a 'C'? Just like it sounds? Credible dot com?
Ryan: Yeah, they're a broker of banks which I kind of like (unclear 00:59:05)-
Howard: I'm on the SoFi Twitter account and it looks like they do a lot of-
Ryan: They do everything now. They started off with this private refinancing of student loans and then they moved into all these other areas. Servicing, probably they work with everybody now, but I think at the time they were particularly going after the-
Howard: Let me ask you a very uncomfortable question, but very, very true. When you're $350,000 in debt or your average client, and your lover is $350,000... Is there any marriage advantage, any marriage penalty? So that means something where we should stay single? It's a weird question but I need to ask you.
Ryan: It depends on how old their loans are. Even if they've graduated in last four or five years, you can file separately. See that gets complicated depending on what state you're in. If you're in a community property state, it’s a little bit different, but sometimes I do have clients that file separately the lower the payment because it is based on the adjusted gross income so that is something that we will look at, analyze in conjunction with their CPA to make sure- Because usually if you file separately, you're going to pay a little bit more tax.
Howard: Is SoFi the biggest one?
Ryan: I think so...
Howard: Can you find DRB, Ryan? DRB incredible dot com.
Ryan: SoFi is probably one of the largest private refinancing lenders if I had to guess. They were one of the first ones to start doing it.
Howard: They're making it hard to see if this is peer-to-peer lending or if it's a bank.
Ryan: And there's new banks popping up. I mean, it's hard for me to keep track of them. Actually, on Dentaltown, there's a lot of guys that are posting their rates that they've seen recently-
Howard: How come you don't post back? You haven't even posted yet.
Ryan: I have five boys (unclear 01:00:56) all the non-profit boards. I'm working on it.
Howard: But you must not need new clients.
Ryan: No, I need to get on there and post. I need to start doing that.
Howard: Because what's neat about Dentaltown is that there's no spam because you're answering the question. If you answer the question, "If you'd like to know an answer to this, contact me at Ryan at student loan analysis dot com, that's spam and it will get deleted by our moderators." And by the way, some of you guys think that the moderators are too hard on people. The moderators are all volunteers, and when you're abusive and say rude things or spam, go to Facebook. We don't need you on Dentaltown. We get a thousand new dentists a month, we got quarter million dentists from every country on earth and some of you think you can just come there and be a troll and make people feel bad and spam and all that stuff. I know I get all kinds of emails, "I can't believe you banned so and so." I've never banned anyone. Volunteers do. There's the report abuse button. If you think this is spam, the moderators will look at it. We have our own message board where they talk about it. I don't participate in that because I don't have time and volunteers decided if that post should be deleted, or we play baseball. You like baseball. It's strike one, two, or three. So, the first one would say, "Ryan, that's spam. We deleted your post. Don't say, to answer the question, "Email me, Ryan at student loan analysis dot com." Answer the damn question, but in your signature, it says, "I'm Ryan."
Ryan: Contact me.
Howard: "North Fork, (unclear 01:02:20) the student loan.” What do you call yourself? The student loan...
Ryan: Student loan analysis dot com.
Howard: But no, your name was student loan shark, student loan guru. SLG. I loved it. Student Loan Guru, that's totally unique. You're the only student loan guru. That's why I asked you to be on this show. Is there anything that you were trying to say, but I interrupted you too many times or anything? Any questions I should ask or wasn't smart enough to ask?
Ryan: The question I get asked a lot is, "Is the government going to take these plans away? These income-based repayment plans, is the government going to take them away?" No one knows the answer to that. We know how crazy our government is, they can do anything they want. All of the proposals have preserved existing borrowers. It does look like there will probably be some changes in the near future for new students enrolling in 2019, but that remains to be seen as guesses at this point.
Howard: Well, American people can't be $750,000,000,000 debt in credit card unless someone gave them credit. The one thing we know with young kids in school is if you gave- Your oldest is what, twelve?
Ryan: Ten.
Howard: Well, ten is too young, but when he turns sixteen, if you gave him a credit card with $100,000 line of credit, he would go buy a Ferrari that night and then when he defaulted on the Ferrari, you'd have say to yourself, "Well, why did he buy a Ferrari? Did someone (unclear 01:03:51)?" So, I go to those dental schools and I know they get mad at me when I say this, but it looks like a new car lot for Honda. I didn't have a car in undergrad. I didn't have a car that first three years of dental school. Five of us boys lived in a $500 a month apartment and walk eight blocks to school. They're flying in jet airplanes for spring break. They're taking cruises. They're getting married, having stay-at-home wives and have kids. Why? Cause someone's loaning them all this money. So, the best way to decide if something's wrong- Like take real estate bubbles. Everyone says that that aren't even close right now. They'll say, "Well, what goes up must come down." Really? Explain Neil Armstrong standing on the moon to me. They'll say, "Well, you know, you don't want to rent a house for thirty years. That's stupid. You want to buy a house.? Well actually, you can rent any house over a thirty-year period for 85% of the mortgage payment. So, if you rented a house for thirty years and you took that 15% difference and put it in a SPDR, an SP five hundred index fund, guess who has more money at the end of the thirty years? The idiot who bought a house? So, when you look at the rental rate of the mortgage and the mortgage payment starts to go higher than rental rate- But if you could rent this house for a thousand or eight hundred and fifty, but the mortgage payment - the average mortgage payment now should be about a thousand - starts getting to two thousand, but you can only rent it out for eight hundred and fifty, we're in bubble territory.
And so, everything gets faster, easier, higher quality, cheaper, and whenever your prices are going up, but not your faster, easier, higher quality, when there's a separation between those lines, someone's going to come and knock it out, and the cost of college universities over the last twenty years is completely insane. These kids are all getting subsidized by these loans, but if you're the guy that goes in there and says, "I'm going to get rid of all the student loans," now you're a monster. But if you got rid of all the student loans, guess what would have happened to all the faculty getting paid $100,000 a year to teach just three classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and then says he's doing homework and research and all this bullshit. If you gutted the student loans, what would happen to the price of tuition at the average university in America? What would happen to it?
Ryan: It would have to drop, right?
Howard: By what percent? It'd be cut in half tomorrow, and the guy who cuts it in half will be the asshole, the bad guy, he'll be a monster. So, what does government do? They just kick the can down.
Ryan: I'll give you another great example of this. I had a vet student want me to come speak at their vet school and I'll leave it nameless, but one of the professors called me to just kind of see if I knew what I was talking about. So, we started chatting and eventually we get to the point where he goes, and I quote this, "If the government ever gets rid of income-based repayment, veterinary medicine is dead," is what he said. And that's (unclear 01:07:12) probably the worst because they come out with like, well it depends on the school, but three fifty, three hundred, I've seen some with four hundred, five hundred-
Howard: And they don't make that much money.
Ryan: They make like seventy-five grand a year and there's a disconnect there. You can't expect the taxpayer to subsidize- I mean maybe you can, but they're not doing it voluntarily. Right now it's not a conscious decision to make that subsidy. It's just happening by default because of the way (inaudible 01:07:43).
Howard: So, we were talking about money being emotional. I mean, for thirty years I (unclear 01:07:47) from now to the veterinary center. (unclear 01:07:52) you know what I mean? He'll say to me, "Well, I don't have any money in my- I just paid $5,000 for chemo on my cat." It's like in Asia, a cat is dinner. You just spent five thousand on your dinner? When you tell someone you can't spend five thousand on chemo for a cat, and then what's really weird is- Just go to Wikipedia. How long does this exact breed of dog usually last? Usually they live between twelve and fourteen years. How old is your dog? Sixteen years. What are you doing? He's going through chemotherapy. And then if you told that person, "You should just shoot that dog." Now you're like an evil bad guy. You know, you're a Nazi. You're just a-
Ryan: Howard and I are not advocating for the harming of any animals in this podcast, just to be clear.
Howard: Well, actually, just to be clear, let me tell you how my childhood went down. I was ten years old. My dad was out of town. My dog Nippy was my best friend and he doubled his weight in about a week. I kept telling my mom, "We got to take him to the doctor. We got to take him to the doctor." "When your father gets home. Ask your father." Dad gets home, I'm crying, "We got to take Nippy to the vet." He's like, "All right, dammit." So, he puts the dog in there and me and Nippy go take Nippy to the vet. Vet looks at Nippy, takes him to the backroom and comes back out, looks at my dad and says, "Nippy is very, very sick and he's going to need an operation." And I think back then I don't know was, I think it was going to be like a $1000. And I'll never forget- My dad went to mass every single morning, all of us went to mass every single morning, my two older sisters left high school, went straight into the Catholic nunnery. My dad leaned over, he gave Nippy a big kiss and said, "Nippy, you're going to see Jesus!" And I'm like, "No! No!" And Nippy was reunited with Jesus in a very short amount of time. There's nothing to laugh at; I cried for a week, but the bottom line is - well we started at this - when it comes to money, and it comes to pets, it's very emotional.
Ryan: It is, it is, and I'm not saying vet schools should charge less. I don't know how all that works. That's not my-
Howard: How do you graduate a kid $350,000 in debt if he's only going to make seventy-five a year? It's because somebody’s loaning money to a kid. And why is that kid? Because when we were little they had Marcus Welby. You're too young. Did you ever hear of him?
Ryan: No, I don't know Marcus Welby.
Howard: So, they had all these ER and they had a dog or a cat, so they fall in love with- When I grow up, I'm going to fix dogs and cats because I love my dog or cat. That's emotional, but you're going to go $350,000 to work on a cat and make seventy-five a year? That doesn't make sense. That's one of the reasons dental school flies under the radar because whenever dentistry is in the media, it's a joke. He's a monster. Even Jennifer Aniston, when she was a dentist, what was the name of that movie? Bad boss. The dentist is always a serial killer. It doesn't attract anyone, but there's all these police shows, firemen shows, doctor shows, and it's always the doctor saves his life, then goes on a hot date with the nurse, so they're all emotionally invested. You got to look at this as an engineering (inaudible 01:11:06) decision.
Ryan: Yeah, and if veteran medicine needs to be subsidized, I think... I don't know, but it seems like the student loan was not the intent of the program, was to allow these institutions to just raise tuition unchecked because there's an unlimited supply of money.
Howard: The only way you could fix the universities is to gut the student loan. You just have to stop it and their prices would come down in half. And you're $19,000,000,000,000 in debt and our government can't even stop the COLAs. 85% of it is entitlements and the COLAs, cost of living adjustments, they're still giving grandma a cost of living adjustment raise on all of her benefits every year when the average American only had enough social security withdrawn to pay for him for three and a half years and they're living over a dozen and congress can't even take away the raises. That will happen in congresses. They won't make any hard decisions. They'll just keep kicking the can until the bond market, finally the $19,000,000,000,000 bond market, when that crashes...
Ryan: Well see, it's not backed by the bond market. It's on the government's balance sheet.
Howard: But the government can only run at a $1,500,000,000,000 deficit by saying, "We're going to pay our bills, we're gonna print this piece of paper and it's called a US bond," and just keep buying it. And whenever everybody says, "This bond is worth the paper it's printed on," then the government says, "Oh, we can't run at deficit, so now we're going to have to raise taxes or cut spending." So, until they have to raise taxes and cut spending, they're not going to do it.
Ryan: And the scary thing about student loans is that a lot of the cost is going to be when the debts getting forgiven. It's going to be really bad in not for maybe another ten years.
Howard: Do you really love your five boys?
Ryan: I do.
Howard: So, you should move to Sydney, Australia. You should move to a country that is fiscally in order.
Ryan: Yeah, the thought has crossed my mind.
Howard: You live in one of the most batshit crazy countries in the world.
Ryan: Oh my gosh. Did you see the quality of life thing that came out? Quality of life in California is the worst in the country.
Howard: Is it really?
Ryan: Yeah, USA Today came out with that.
Howard: But anyway, seriously, I can't believe that you flew out here to Arizona - It's Sunday - to be on my show to talk to the homies. How do they contact you again?
Ryan: Email ryan@studentloananalysis.com. You go to my website, you can actually book a meeting with me right on my website: studentloananalysis.com.
Howard: And give him some business because he's got five young baby boys he needs to feed. So, thank you so much for coming on our show.
Ryan: Thank you.