Foguth Financial Group President Michael Foguth joined Charlie Langton on WJBK Fox 2 to offer helpful tips for paying off student loans.
Read on for a full transcript of the video. Paying back student loansPaying off student loans HOST CHARLIE LANGTON: Paying off student loans can take decades and put a burden on your finances. Michael Foguth is here from the Foguth Financial Group. He’s got some tips on how to pay off student loans. All right, so before we start here, student loans, it affects a lot of people. I thought student loans were the biggest debt that most Americans have more than credit cards. Is that even true? MICHAEL FOGUTH, FOGUTH FINANCIAL: It just surpassed that, so yes. HOST: Oh, wow. Wow! FOGUTH: Yes. HOST: That’s incredible. Do you know the average student loan debt? FOGUTH: I don’t know the average, but I do know that it’s becoming more and more common because more and more people are going to school now. HOST: Yeah. FOGUTH: And they’re rolling that debt up and they’re graduating. And then they’re getting their job and they’re saying, oh, big surprise. What do we do now? HOST: The day after graduation, when do you have to start paying after graduation? FOGUTH: Well, it depends on who is going to be your borrower, but typically you have six months and then you’ve got to get right on it. And now it becomes real debt. Because all of those years leading up when you’re in school, you can defer the payments. HOST: Yeah. FOGUTH: But once you graduate, now it’s time to pay the bills. HOST: So you’re going to be graduating from under-grad $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $100,000? FOGUTH: Yeah, $100,000 is not uncommon to see a six figure. Yeah, school’s not cheap anymore. HOST: Oh, I know. Yes, I know about that. Yes, I do. Okay, so give me a tip. What’s the number one tip about paying the student loan off? FOGUTH: I want to say consolidate it, simplify it. So if you have multiple loans out there – maybe throughout each and every year you’ve picked up a different debt or a different year, consolidate it. So get it down to one low monthly payment. So once you consolidate it, you can also shop it around. HOST: Are banks willing to consolidate it? FOGUTH: Absolutely are, yes. HOST: Because you have your college degree now? FOGUTH: Because you have a college degree, they know you’re going to pay it. But it’s not only banks, but there’s other financial institutions out there that want to buy that debt. So they’ll buy that debt from other of these places, consolidate it down into one payment at a low interest rate. HOST: What’s the delinquency rate on a student loan that people don’t pay? FOGUTH: I don’t think it’s that high because what you can do is – if you get into real bad trouble – you can defer your payments. HOST: Oh, okay. FOGUTH: Now, I’m not going to advise to do that. HOST: No, don’t do that. FOGUTH: But you can. If you’re in a hard spot, maybe you’ve lost a job or you’re not getting paid as much as you thought you would out of school, you can defer those payments. HOST: Now you said don’t pay off the debt too soon. FOGUTH: Yeah, don’t pay it off too fast. HOST: Why is that? FOGUTH: This is what I call good debt. This is debt that – student loans – a lot of people don’t realize this – it’s tax-free. So what I mean by that is you get to write off the interest that you’ve paying on your student loan. So every year when you’re paying that, you just get to write off the interest, so it’s good debt because you get to write it off on your taxes. Two, it’s typically lower interest rates. So if it’s low interest rates, if you have other debt out there, pay that debt off first before you pay off this low-interest student loan stuff. HOST: They’re lower than a – yeah, they’re actually pretty low. Do you worry, though, with all this new tax talk we’re hearing coming out of Washington that maybe student loan write-off debt may be eliminated? FOGUTH: It could be. Absolutely could be. Right now it’s not, so we’ve got to plan for what we have, not plan for the ‘what ifs.” HOST: And what about the other financial institutions? Should you go around and take a look at other banks and what they’re offering? FOGUTH: Yes, other banks plus there’s a lot of places online because student loans it’s becoming more and more common, like we were talking about. A lot of these online financial institutions will buy them. So you can go out there and you don’t even have to have a brick and mortar. It’s not banks anymore. It’s anybody and everybody because they know that this student loan debt is so common. We’re talking trillions and trillions of dollars of debt. People want a piece of the action. HOST: Maybe you can use that debt because you’re college degreed now, you’ve had a good record paying off your loan. Then you can get your house loan or whatever else you want. Right? FOGUTH: Yes, that’s exactly right. HOST: We’re going to put some information about you on our website and student debt. FOGUTH: Perfect. HOST: Don’t wait. Continue it. Interest rates are good. FOGUTH: Yes. HOST: Thank you. I appreciate that. Good advice. FOGUTH: Appreciate it. Good to see you again. HOST: All right. Very good. Got questions?
We’d love to assist with any concerns you may have regarding your retirement strategy. Contact us using the form below!
![]() The post Tips for Paying Off Student Loans on WJBK Fox 2 appeared first on Foguth Financial Group. from http://www.foguthfinancial.com/tips-for-paying-off-student-loans-on-wjbk-fox-2-detroit/
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ABOUT USAt Foguth Financial, retirement planning is their specialty. From Social Security income planning to asset management, the Foguth Financial Group team takes a bird’s eye view of their client needs and goals in retirement to ensure that safety and growth are two foundations of every plan. ArchivesNo Archives Categories |