Actionable Steps to Tackle Student Loans Today - Episode 105
In today's episode, I chat with Lauryn Williams, a financial expert and Olympian, about creating a plan to manage your student loans and take control of your money. Student loans can feel overwhelming, but they don't have to hold you back. Lauryn shares insights into federal repayment options, the importance of building a comprehensive financial plan, and why shame shouldn’t stop you from taking action. Together, we discuss strategies that can save you thousands and put you on the path to financial freedom. Let’s get your money right, starting today!
About our guest:
Lauryn Williams, a University of Miami alum, is a thought leader, speaker, and accomplished businesswoman bridging the gap between sports and finance. A 4x Olympian and 3x Olympic medalist, she made history as the first American woman to earn medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics, winning silver in the 100m Dash in 2004, gold in the 4x100m relay in 2012, and silver in the two-woman bobsled in 2014. After retiring from sports, Lauryn founded Worth Winning, a virtual fee-only financial planning firm dedicated to helping millennials and professional athletes navigate their finances. She authored The Oval Office: A Four-Time Olympian's Guide to Professional Track and Field, combining her expertise in sports and finance, and hosts the biweekly financial literacy podcast Worth Listening. As a member of the CNBC Advisor Council and a regular contributor to news outlets, Lauryn has been named one of Investopedia's Top 100 Advisors multiple times and is now making strides in venture capital. Despite her many roles, Lauryn prioritizes giving back by volunteering with USA Track and Field junior athletes and serving on the World Anti-Doping Agency finance committee. Currently residing in Medellín, Colombia, she is driven by a mission to positively impact as many lives as possible.
Studio Loan Planner
More about Lauryn Williams
Retreats at Worth Winning
—-
Check Intentional Style here: https://www.intentionalstylesuite.com/
Please join me here, and follow me on social media, Instagram, and Facebook.
Need help getting started on your path to financial freedom? Start Here
Join the Financially Intentional Community
Oh and please subscribe and leave a review on whatever app you're using to stream this podcast.
Get my book Smart Money
Subscribe & Review
Love this episode? Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.
TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema: [00:00:00] What's up, my financially intentional people. We have OG here. Lauryn is not new to the financially intentional podcast. She is our go to for the student loan planner to talk about student loans and what y'all need to do, because listen.
I'm tired of talking to y'all about this. Y'all needs to get y'all act together. Okay. These are confusing times, but we always give you actionable things for you to do. If you have student loans right now. Okay. This is your call to action because. The most important thing you can do right now, no matter what is going on is get your money, right?
And if student loans are getting in the way of you getting your money, right? Lauryn is here to help. So what's up,
Lauren?
Lauryn Williams: If we're going to first get the student loans which is a part of getting our money, so that we can be wealthy because the wealthy people are the ones that can make decisions. So if you a little bit scared, you're afraid you all up in arms, you have an analysis paralysis about your student loans because of this most recent election.
The easiest thing you can do is create wealth for yourself, because [00:01:00] that's going to put you in a better position to be able to make better decisions. Period.
Naseema: period, and to be able to influence the policies that drive how we live day to day. So a lot of people sleep on that part of wealth building, like wealth building is truly about How much control you have over your life. Okay. And how much control you have over your life is affected by the policies that the people with money make.
That's why we're talking
Lauryn Williams: that's a word. Like we can just stop the podcast right here. Cause that's all they really need to know.
Naseema: And we can, but people want to know with this upcoming administration, what should they be concerned with? What should they be doing right now?
Lauryn Williams: The thing is that, like I said, while everyone is afraid, there is not a lot for you to be doing right now, unless you haven't done anything up to this point. So if
you've listened to the podcast, You listened three or four times to us chit chatting. And you're still a person that hasn't done anything, then [00:02:00] you need to get a plan in place because if you have a plan in place, here's the options that exist.
You're probably stuck on the safe plan. There's about somewhere between 4 and 8M people. The numbers are a little sketch depending on which article you read that are stuck on the safe plan. And what does that mean? You are not getting any credit toward forgiveness. So the whole point of getting on the safe plan was to give yourself a low monthly payment.
Wait your 20 or 25 years depending on what your particular situation was and then get forgiveness at the end of that time frame. You're not getting any credit. So I think it's June, July, August, September, October. We're six months in at this point where you've been on forbearance. You've not earned any credit towards that six months.
You've lost towards your 25 years. You're No interest is accruing. That's great. You're not any worse off than you started, but at the same time it's how long can I sit in this limbo? The answer is we don't know. We expect that in January when the administration officially changes, things will start to move a little bit faster.
They'll strike the save plan down. But as far as what you can do right now, if you're one of those people that's on the save plan, you [00:03:00] can either decide to sign up for a different income driven plan. So that would be Pay ICR or IBR really if we keep it real, real. The only one you can sign up for right now is IBR because they have put pay and ICR on hold.
They have said though, like you said, to the point of the updates, that's why we're here, that in mid-December they're going to open pay and ICR once again.
Naseema: Okay mid December is like next week
Lauryn Williams: That's what I'm like, December the 15th is that December the 16th? I love the way the Department of education to give you a just mid.
Naseema: yeah, mm
Lauryn Williams: So, we don't know if it's really going to happen or not. I suspect that it will, but you need to keep your eyes open. Once again okay, you're not a person on save, or maybe you're on saving.
You want to get on something different. You need to keep your eyes and your ears open. This is not the time to put your head in the sand and turn your turn it the other way and say oh, my God, I'm scared about this administration. I can't do anything. You need to be ready because not everybody is eligible for pay and not everybody is [00:04:00] right for ICR.
So ICR is going to be for those high earners that maybe wouldn't otherwise get forgiveness. It's a very specific group of people that need to be on ICR. And so you don't want to miss your opportunity to get on this plan because they already tried to do away with it. They got rid of it officially in June.
Then they made a mistake and brought it back in July for 12 days. It has literally been the wild, wild West with student loans.
Naseema: insane. It's
Lauryn Williams: So now it's gone again, but it's coming back mid December. So you need to like tune in. That is the biggest piece of advice that I have is like. your student loan situation is yours.
It is not your friends. It's not your homegirls, not your mamas. You need to know what's going on for your particular situation. And like I said, know if you need to change from one of these plans to the other plan and when to do that's probably the biggest thing right now.
Naseema: Yeah, and you said a word when you're just like, you need a plan and most people don't have a plan. And when you started throwing out all the acronyms for the plans that they can be on, [00:05:00] I got confused as heck. And that's for a person that's in the personal finance space that listens to this stuff all this time.
As a borrower that hasn't taken action yet, I can see why there's a lot of confusion. Your solution is you can work with someone as student loan planner that can help you put you on a plan. Let's talk about, like, how you walk people through it. Because you said, your student loan, ain't your mama's student loan, ain't your sister's student loan, ain't your cousin's student loan.
Everybody has a different student loan situation. So walk us through, like, how you guys develop the plans and how you determine what they should be applying to. Mm
Lauryn Williams: up a time that works for you using our automated system, and then you'll be asked to fill out a form. That form is going to ask you for things like your income, the amount of your student loan balance, the interest rate. Things you're gonna have to look up because you're like, I don't know.
I haven't looked at my student loans in forever but at student loan planner, everybody is a [00:06:00] financial expert in addition to our student loan expertise So we're going to be asking things about what's the monthly payment on your housing expenses? What's your credit card debt? And the reason is because when we get in a student loan call Like I said, we're customizing a plan specifically for you So if you tell me you got sixty thousand dollars of credit card debt You But you're setting up this call because you got 300, 000 of student loan debt.
I can understand why you stressed out. You're like, Oh my goodness. 300, 000 is a lot, but I'm concerned because 60, 000, a credit card is also a lot. And that has a 29, 30 percent interest rate. And so I don't want to make a student loan plan for you. When I don't have a plan for you in place related to that credit card debt, because that's the real thing that could bury you.
I can, with my eyes closed, make a student loan plan, but maybe you don't have any money to put toward the good student loan plan. I'm making because you got this credit card debt or, fill in the blank with what other financial things. So we do ask them outside financial things, because we're thinking about a comprehensive student loan plan that takes into the other aspects.
Do you have children? Are you married? Are you doing Mary filing jointly, Mary filing [00:07:00] separately? Okay. So you fill out a form, send that in. And then you'll also send us your N-S-L-D-S file. Where do you get that from? Student aid.gov. That is like the credit bureau for student loans, if you will.
And that form that I was just telling you about is like your credit report for student loans. So you send that over to us and we can see what payment plan you are all currently on when your recertification date is due. How many times you've been in forbearance or deferment, all these different types of things.
So that allows us to dive deep. And like you said, get to the root of your situation because your situation is not everybody else's and we don't give one size fits all advice as student loan planner.
Naseema: I love that. I love that. Are there certain people that probably a student loan planner, working with a student loan planner wouldn't be the best for?
Lauryn Williams: I would say, if you've already refinanced your loans. And refinancing and consolidating are different. So that's one thing. I think we should take a moment and break down because people use those terms Interchangeably, and I think in the financial sense, sometimes they can be a little [00:08:00] bit interchangeable Like I don't really agree with it overall, but in student loan world, these are two entirely different terms Refinancing is taking your loans out of the federal system Putting them with a private lender.
So SoFi, Ernest, CommonBond, lendKey, you name it. There's tons of different companies that you're probably getting junk mail from all the time, if you're a borrower. Those are not scam companies They are just private companies that are going to collect the interest that you pay every month And that's how they're gonna make a profit at their company.
So they're saying hey come over here We'll give you a nice low interest rate. The thing about it though is it because it's a private company There is no federal forgiveness So you've given up income driven repayment plans. You've given up the idea of getting forgiveness after a set period of time. If you pass away, you need to have some sort of life insurance in place because those loans do not die with you when they're private loans
Naseema: People and people love to say that, but they do not.
Lauryn Williams: They don't, they will collect that money from your estate and that will affect the generational wealth that you're trying to create for your [00:09:00] family.
Naseema: yes.
Lauryn Williams: And the other piece of the puzzle is like I said, yes, you get a lower interest rate, but also your only option is to pay the loans in full. So you will pay the loans off and that's not the worst thing in the world for everybody.
But you need to be sure that that's what you want to do before you do it. So your question was like, who might not be a good fit. It's someone who's already refinanced because All you can do is pay those loans back. The only advice we can give you is maybe try to get a better interest rate.
You got 6%, maybe we can get you down to four, there's not much more to it. There's a lot more opportunity within the federal system, a lot more opportunity for change and a lot more to figure out. Because as you mentioned, that alphabet suit I told you about earlier, pay as you earn, ICR, IBR, save what does it all mean?
Which one is relevant to me? How do I figure it out? Do I need to file joint versus separate? How is that going to affect my actual payment? There's a lot more to do in the federal system. And so that brings me to the second point, which is consolidation. Consolidation happens within the federal system.
You take all of the loans that are at, [00:10:00] StudentAid. gov on that file. You maybe, you went to school for four years, you got 27 loans. And you squish them down into just two loans. It'll say direct consolidated subsidized and direct consolidated unsubsidized. They're still federal loans. So you have created a new loan, but within the federal system, you did not refinance them.
You did not get a big change in your interest rate. They took the weighted average interest rate of all the loans that you just squished together. But you still have all the benefits of the federal system. So to be clear, consolidating, staying in the federal system, refinancing is taking your loans out of the federal system.
And the person that we are less likely to be able to help is someone who has already refinanced their loans. We do have on the website places where you can go to refinance, get some bonuses, cash back, and things like that. But generally you're already going to be setting up a budget and getting yourself in a position to be able to pay those loans in full, or you're Whereas the person with federal loans has a lot more strategies that they can take advantage of.
Naseema: So 2 people, so the ones [00:11:00] who have already refinanced out you can help people who have already done the consolidation within their student loans. Can you still help them or no?
Lauryn Williams: Absolutely, so if you consolidate it within the federal system, we still need to talk about what payment plan is most appropriate for you and how to optimize that payment plan. As an example, 1 of the other tricks that we have a student loan planner, we're talking about financial freedom, we need to be putting money into our 401k, our normal 401k and that is something that is not normalized, especially in communities of color.
There's a lot of scam artists out there bring your money to me, put it over here.
Naseema: are saying 401ks are a scam, but go ahead and invest in this insurance product where I'm going to get 50 percent of the commissions up front and you're not going to have no value to it. That's okay.
Lauryn Williams: Girl. And it's so sad to hear people come to me and say that over and over and I'm like, where, like, how are they still getting to y'all? Like we're out here preaching the good news and you over here.
Listen to
Satan
Naseema: cousins that ain't got no money. That's telling them this.
Lauryn Williams: [00:12:00] all the time. Like, why are you listening to Pookie? Pookie ain't never had no money. He was on
food stamps, still on food
Naseema: never had that. He still live with his cousin. He still live with his mama on the couch. Stop playing.
Lauryn Williams: Right,
That right there, but back to the strategy, your 401k is a pre tax account, which is going to lower your adjusted gross income, which is the number they use to calculate your student loan payment. So what am I saying? Saving for retirement is going to one, get you ready for retirement. Two, save you money on taxes, and then three, lower your student loan payment.
You talk about a return on investment you didn't have to pay me a commission for that. You didn't none of this side scammy, like you said, stuff, is just do something that's already in place, and you go online at your employer and increase the amount you're contributing and you did something better for yourself gargantuanly.
Naseema: yes, yes. I love that. And before I met with Travis and I had already paid off my student loans, but we did an analysis and [00:13:00] Travis is the owner of student loan planner good friend for a long time, but we did this analysis where we went back. And looked at the loans, how I repaid them and looked at what I could have been contributing.
Cause I have a 403 B and a 457. And so it took me only two and a half years to pay off my loans. But in that two and a half years, if I had optimized maxing out and contributing to my retirement versus aggressively paying off my student loans, which would have gotten paid and actually would have been cheaper Anyway, We found that I could have saved over 80, 000, which is crazy, which is crazy.
And that's why I'm a strong advocate for student loan planner, because if I would have done that, as opposed to being on this whole, hype of like paying off my loans, heavy on the Dave Ramsey tip, then I Would have been in a way better position financially. So just to drive that home, like I was already on [00:14:00] public service loan forgiveness.
I had already done the consolidation, but if I would have worked with student loan planner, I could have saved 80, 000. This is how important this information is. This is how important it is for you to get on a plan right now. Like it's not a game people
Lauryn Williams: It is not a game. You cannot be afraid of what's going to happen. We've already had this president before. So
Naseema: We already know.
Lauryn Williams: I don't know what we had all the tears for in November. Let's get ready. Let's control what we can control. And you can definitely control. What you do with your student loans and how you organize your finances going forward.
It's all about strategy because that's what everyone else is doing. People who have wealth are strategizing. A lot of people, there's also a narrative that everybody's cheating. Everybody's scheming and sliding. They're just educating themselves and they're using strategies to optimize their finances.
There's some people out there scamming, but not everybody is scamming. And in the Brown community, we always looking for a way to come up overnight, hit the
Naseema: Overnight. It's not, it's no, come on, [00:15:00] because it's the lottery system and all of that kind of stuff that's been ingrained in us, but wealth is built slowly and to keep wealth, you have to strategize and you have to have things in place to keep that. And that's what these people are doing. As far as like paying back student loans though, if somebody only has say, they have only 20, 000 dollars in student loans, they're making 200, 300, 000 dollars a year. Is it still beneficial for them to work with student loan plan? Or should they just be like, just pay them loans off, stop playing. Yeah,
Lauryn Williams: because this is the person that, 80 percent chance just needs to pay the loans off and move on with their life. But there have been so many changes in the system recently that I'm feeling like if you have 20, 000, it depends on if you have 20, 000 left and you started with 200, 000, or if you have 20, 000 and you just got out of school and you already make it 200, 000, those are two completely different situations because One situation is where you might still get some forgiveness.
So you might be 19 [00:16:00] years into a 20 year forgiveness and not even realize it. So I'm not going to tell you to write the 20, 000 check because that's the equivalent of what happened to you with Travis. Like you realize with a little bit of strategy, you could have paid maybe three grand toward these and got the 17 forgiven as an example.
But like I said, if you just got out of school, you landed your first job and you're already making 200 K yeah. Just go ahead and pay those off. I find that sometimes the peace of mind is worth paying for, especially if you are a good earner, like you said, 200 K to spend 500 on a consultation. Like the peace of mind and knowing that you didn't waste 20, 000 or 80, 000 to your point.
It's okay, like they told me what I already knew, but I feel good about this. And now I can execute my plan with confidence. So it also depends on how you look at it from a perspective standpoint. Cause some people are like, Ooh, girl, I don't want to spend that money. But what would you be losing if you don't spend this money because you don't know what to do appropriately?
Naseema: even if you feel like it's a loss of money, like people don't bat an eye at paying on this. Okay. [00:17:00] Look, the Kendrick Lamar tickets are like 3 or 400. Okay. You can watch Kendrick Lamar on streaming for a little while, while you get your student loans together. Okay. Okay.
Lauryn Williams: Tiny desk, something, right?
Naseema: Yeah, I made a bomb.
Lauryn Williams: Also, we're on the holiday season and you're running out getting gifts, spending money on this and that. What better gift to give yourself than the investment in your financial future to get ready for 2025? Everybody's like resolutions, new year, new me. Like why not spend the 500 you'll spend on those shoes or gifts between three or four different people.
Like they don't need that stuff. This might be something that you need to get so that you can be ready for 2025 and walk in like with that confidence that I'm heading the right direction financially.
Naseema: Definitely. Like I always tell people, listen, I don't buy nothing else for my kids. They don't need nothing. Stop buying stuff for your friends that they're not even going to use investing yourself. Investing in yourself is the best investment that you're going to make, especially if it could lead you to [00:18:00] saving Hundreds are multiple figures my 5 figures, invest in yourself.
You walked us through the process, you go to student loan planner, you fill out the form, you put your financial information. You guys are going to, create this holistic, incorporating all of your debt and everything, your whole financial picture into this plan, this whole comprehensive plan.
And I love that because, like you said, personal finances, personal, your student loans are personal. And so that's why I always advocate people get their plans, but I know you guys have had some huge, some huge. Successes like how much in student loan forgiveness are you guys at now? I know it's in the millions, if not billions.
Lauryn Williams: Oh my goodness. If I think the
Naseema: yes. Yeah.
Lauryn Williams: It's off the charts. Like, and it sounds like a ridiculous number to some people that are like, where y'all get that? Y'all fudging up. No, no, no. Like you have to think about it. Like I said, everything is about strategy.
So if you get on a call with me and you start by saying that you're paying [00:19:00] 700 a month, and then you tell me that you're making 50, 000 a year and you got four kids. I can do that math in my head. This is a 0 payment. You made some sort of mistake and you shouldn't be paying 700. So I just saved you 700 a month times 12 times.
How many every years you were going to do that?
Naseema: Hmm.
Lauryn Williams: we can easily save somebody 60, 80 grand, seven, 800, 000 sometimes because people also come to us with a million dollars student loan balance. And that's what other people don't realize. They're like, Ooh, this 30, 000 is wearing me out. And. It's your balance and it hurts.
Like everybody, everybody's gonna feel their pain, but know that there are people out there with literally 1 million of student loan debt
us to get help Yes, 100 percent and they got a million dollars in student loan debt and probably making 80, 000. Let's keep it real.
The burnout in those professions is very real, so people take on a lot of debt thinking they're going to make a lot of money and then they realize they don't like the work. So here you are with this big debt and now you are teaching school or doing something different than what would have paid you five or [00:20:00] 600, 000 a year.
And helped you be able to work on that debt in some sort of meaningful way.
Naseema: And oftentimes too, and I just, somebody just told me this before we got on this call is that people are entering into programs, not understanding the cost, not understanding the loans that they're signing up for and not even looking at it. And I can tell you, I was 1 of those people. I did not know how much I owed in student loans because I never just looked at the cumulative number until I finished with all of my education. People just don't know, you don't know what you don't know, because I was taught go to school by any means necessary. And you'll figure out the money part.
Lauryn Williams: Right. You like sign here to be able to roll in classes. Okay.
Naseema: yeah, and so you go to financial aid and they're just like, okay, fine. Here's a stack of forms, fill this out and then you've got money deposited into your account.
You just know, you survived another day at that university. Especially if you're the 1st in your friend group in your family group that has gone to these [00:21:00] institutions you don't know what to expect. You don't know what questions to ask. You just, you don't know what you don't know. And then on top of that, these are just like regular Institutions now, there's so many other these private colleges.
I was a teacher at a nursing college was a private college and these people took people out of high school to go through a nursing program and These programs were 100, 000 a year
Lauryn Williams: unbelievable. And like you said, people are not taught to think or wonder about it. It's just like education is going to give you a better future. Get the education by any means necessary. And then you finish and you're like, oh, wait, what? Yeah. I got to pay this back. Hold on a second. But the thing that stands out to me about what you just said is like, how paralyzing the shame is that comes with that.
Like people realize okay, I got the degree. Look at me, mom. And then, like you said, a bill comes in the mail and it's okay, you owe us 4, 000 a month. And you like, Hold on a second. But the shame from that is what buries people sometimes [00:22:00] and allows them to get the paralysis. Nope, I'm gonna just pretend like I got it all together because everybody's proud of me.
I'm gonna keep buying and shopping and doing whatever. I'm a college educated person who's making this kind of money and I'm not gonna look at the loans. But we've got to stop with the shame related to what we didn't know. Take the blinders off and figure it out. Okay, I messed up. I didn't understand that this was debt.
But what am I gonna do now?
Because this is not going to stop me from being successful.
Naseema: Yeah, that's super important. And that is something that I want everybody to realize is that we've all made many mistakes. Okay, that's fine. You made a mistake. All right. You made a mistake. You got something from it. That's fine. Be grateful for what you got from it. You got that education from the student loans.
Okay, now move on and figure out how you're going to fix the problem because it's so easy to blame yourself, to go inward and be like, Oh my God, I made these mistakes. I messed up. There's no hope for me. What we're telling you, there's a [00:23:00] solution. There's a plan. There's actions that you could take that can help you.
Okay. So take those actions and, stop living in that shame. Like people just, I just wanted to reemphasize that. Cause that's like super important. A lot of times people just don't take action because of that shame. And we need to normalize, Hey, everybody messes up, but it's about what you do now.
Take the next step towards, improving that situation.
Lauryn Williams: Yeah, which also comes with what information are you taking in? Because if you're taking in stories where everything is sad, everything is woe is me. Then you're going to feel like, Oh gosh, what was me as well? But there is information out there that says, Hey, Warren Buffett lost a million dollars. All these fancy people that sometimes people look up to have also made those money mistakes and people are very transparent about it.
So look at some of those stories. If you need some inspiration I can tell you one right off the back. I gave a stranger 150, 000 at one point in my life. [00:24:00] Like that is something to be ashamed of and the method and the reasons behind it was like, basically the background that I came from trying to trust people that weren't trustworthy.
Not coming from a place where anybody had any financial knowledge and thinking I was getting ready to make a come up, I was doing this investment, but it wasn't investment off my money got stolen and I had to rebound from that. It could have broke me. And for a while it did, because I didn't tell anybody about it.
Then I had to find money to pay my taxes because that was actually my tax money that year. It's a whole thing. We could spend another hour. We're not going there, But,
Everybody has made a mistake and it's how you rebound from it.
Naseema: I don't want you to go deep in that story because I know that story. I personally know that story because I've heard it, but I just want you to give people a little bit of your background because you've been with student loan planner for so long that, now it's just oh, Lauryn, is this part of financial professional, tell them your background, how you got there.
You're an athlete, baby don't like [00:25:00] overshadow that. Come on. We talked to an
Olympian. You know
what I'm saying?
Lauryn Williams: because somebody's on the other end of the podcast doing the math, like, wait, you had 150, 000 tax liability. What y'all do it over a student loan planner. I want a job at that place. That was my past life. You're right. So I am a four time Olympian. I am the first American woman to have earned a medal in both the summer and the winter Olympics.
And I was a full time professional athlete for a period of, I think it was like 10 or 11 years depending on how you look at the math, but yeah, I made a really good living. I had a really good life. I've traveled to 57 countries now not all because of track and field, but that was the start.
That was the catalyst for it. And while I was making a lot of money, I also made a lot of mistakes and that's what actually led me to being interested in joining the financial industry. I hired some financial advisors and they said and I was just like, where do you go when you want to get advice?
Like I'm willing to pay. I understand now that I don't understand things, but I couldn't get in the vein of where the right person was. Like you said, I ended up with the uncle that was selling [00:26:00] insurance and the foolishness and that led me to just kind of like start digging deeper and figure out like, how am I going to handle this for myself?
Because I don't want to be broke. I realized I have an opportunity to make a different trajectory for me, my family and the people all around me. And
Naseema: Thank you for that. Cause people need to hear that. But I think also it speaks to the fact that there are people that pray off of our misinformation, especially people in the athlete space and the sports industry, because you guys come up on a lot of money at one time.
And typically you're younger, so you're a little bit more naive. People pray on that. There are people that are really out to get you.
Lauryn Williams: you just, like you said, you can't know what you don't know. So it could be a combination of background. It could just be age. you haven't experienced enough to make good decisions. And where are the people going nowadays for social media? For information, Social media.
Yeah. The one size fits all and it's scammity scam scam [00:27:00] Like they're more likely to view the thing with the 10 000 views than the thing with the 10 views not realizing the person with the 10 views is out there really out here trying to give you good information where the 10 000 views is get rich overnight.
You're like, oh, that sounds good. It's viral for a
Naseema: Because they walking off a private jet and getting into these cars and everything is rented and nothing is real. But so I, but I'm going to say. It is hard for people to discern these messages like how do you know who's a scammer? How do you know? Who has your best interest at heart and it's really hard to tell but that's why I like to have this platform because I like to weed out this snake oil salesman and actually provide you with information for people who have Embedded and trusted and people that I personally know, they are not here to take your money.
They are here to help you. And I like that. Your model is such that you couldn't even do that because you create a plan. It's a 1 [00:28:00] time fee and that's it.
Lauryn Williams: That is the thing I love, too, about Student Loan Planner. Everybody's what do I do now? Like, where do I pay again? We're almost conditioned so, and it's no. We gave you all the information you need. You should be able to go off and implement this plan on your own. You should feel more empowered to be able to advocate for yourself as it relates to your student loans.
You might need to circle back in a couple of years. If your life changes, you make a bunch more money or something like that, but we're not trying to string you along with the monthly reoccurring fee. That is just not necessary. We're trying to educate you so that you can feel empowered and that you can keep moving along on your journey to financial freedom.
Naseema: Yes. I love that. I love that so much. Anyway, Lauryn just walk us through one more time, like, how do you work with student loan planner? How do you create a plan? How does it work? What's the fee structure, all that stuff.
Lauryn Williams: Absolutely. So studentloanplanner. com is the website. There's a podcast, there's blogs, there's tons of free information. If you just want to educate yourself, because education is important. And that might be [00:29:00] the first step, maybe this podcast was good. You're like, Oh, it got me hype, but. I don't really know still, and you want to go to some more information, please, by all means go to student loan planner dot Com.
But there is a link. I think you'll probably send them 1 that will allow them to get a discount. You can, I don't know. She'll tell you what a link to it, but the fee is 495 for a 60 minute consultation. You get 3 months of email support. We don't just abandon you after the call, if you're trying to implement it, and you hit a roadblock, you can circle back and hey, I was trying to sign up and this is what happened and.
So we do offer that kind of support afterward, but like I said, it should empower you with the email that we send afterward to say, this is what you need to do. Step 1 step 2 after that. Here's where you are. And then you understand, we make a calculator. We also, like I said, go through that TXT file, which is your credit report for student loans and you'll have those files as well to reference after the call is over.
You should be fully locked and loaded with a customized plan after just 60 minutes of time for a 500 dollar investment.
Naseema: Love it. If you don't take away anything from this [00:30:00] conversation, if you take away 1 thing, I just want you to know it's time to take action. If this election has done anything for you let it be that. It was the thing that inspired you to get your money together. And if you have student loans. I guarantee that that is getting in the way of you getting your money together.
So the first step, make sure you create a plan with student loan planner. Get your money together, get those loans in order so that you can focus on building well. So thank you, Lauryn. It is always have fun talking to you. We can do this anytime, but I'm so grateful for you joining us all the way from Columbia
Lauryn Williams: I know I got to come back on and tell you about all the stuff that's happening down here because there's a whole nother business outside of my student loan work and financial retreats is a thing. Yes. So
Naseema: Ooh.
Lauryn Williams: got to get, we got to get you and some of your listeners down to Columbia and let's really make some money moves.
Naseema: yes, we need to hear more [00:31:00] about that and we will reschedule for that 1. all right, Lauryn. It's been so real. I'll be talking to you again soon. I know it. But again, thank you for your time. And you guys, the links will be in the show notes to work with student loan planner. I believe I have a little discount there for you.
So make sure you use my link and yeah, cheers to you. You taking action and having a way more profitable 2025.
Lauryn Williams: Ciao for now.
Hey there I’m Naseema
My dream is for everyone to know that financial independence is attainable with a little intentionality. Learn how I can help you finally break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.
Join the Facebook Community
Join the Financially Intentional community and get access to resources to guide you on the path to Financial Freedom.
Watch these Videos To Learn How to…
Keep Listening
Here are some more episodes you may enjoy…
Student loans can feel overwhelming, but they don't have to hold you back.