Ep 1: What No One Told You About Student Loans

I have 27,000 steel loans. I only have 54,000 student loans, and I don't even have a degree. 62,000 student loans at this, I make around 19,000, I'm barely making it. The student loans tell you up to 75,000 total for VR making monthly payments on that. I have $100,000 student loans. We have 102 student loans. My student loan is actually $115,000. I currently owe $120,000 dollars. I have a master's in student personal administration, so basically I come all the way to college campus for my 160. It's just student loans. I have about $175,000 with private student loans and federal student loans combined. I have $200,000 of student loan debt, and unfortunately not a doctorate lawyer. I just got a business degree from private school, and I'm currently making $45,000 a year. Combined, my husband had roughly $328,000 for the student loan debt. We both have a substantial not a student loan debt in the neighborhood of well over $600,000 dollars. Just feel like I'm starting my life a little bit late, my husband and I are looking at about $630,000 student loans combined. More than 44 million Americans have student loan debt, and the burden is keeping many of them from moving forward with their lives. The average student graduates with $35,000 in student loan debt with an average monthly payment of $393. If this sounds normal to you, it is. Student loan debt has become a part of culture. It's woven into society, and it's a part of our lives. But it's negatively affecting real people and the economy. It's a crisis that's drawing national attention. 43 million borrowers have about one and a half trillion dollars in federal student loan debt. We don't understand the true impact that this debt is having. Going into debt has life-altering consequences. Every single year, another million student loan borrowers default on that debt. This student loan crisis is getting out of control and the way of taking advantage of people crippling my generation is unfair. Along with the media, plenty of experts are chiming in too. You can't do the things you want to do in your life if you're paying the government or banks or whoever it may be. A note at 7%. Every day, I talk to someone who's got $100,000 or $200,000 or $250,000 in student loan debt. 100% of these people are completely emotionally overwhelmed. They're paralyzed. They're terrified. They do not know what to do. $1.6 trillion that people who may not even have graduated have to pay back. That's a problem. People with student loans are not buying houses. They're not buying cars. They don't even have bank accounts half the time. They are not producing in the economy in any regard because they are so shoved down they can't. It has a huge impact everywhere in our economy. They were led down this path by a set of values put on them by a series of guidance counselors and parents who weren't thinking and educators who were out of control and a congress who continues this ridiculous student loan debacle and here they sit trapped and they do not know what to do. The consequences for a large level of debt as relates to their financial well-being and are they delaying other purchases and then what does that do for our economy if our millennials and Gen Z students are delaying getting married delaying buying houses. How does that have an economic ripple? Who they were supposed to become they can't because they're walking around with this 400 pound ball over their head and they're trying to balance that and live a life. From Ramsey Network I'm George Camel and this is borrowed future. A podcast series exploring the student loan debt crisis and the impact it's having on real people. Over the next several episodes we're going to find out how we got here why student loans are such a big deal and what can be done to avoid them in the first place. We'll hear stories of people burdened by student loan debt and be inspired by people who graduated college debt free. You'll also hear from experts and thought leaders along the way. Guiding us through this mess is author of the book debt free degree Anthony O'Neill. He's devoted his life to helping young people make better decisions especially when it comes to money. So I remember my junior year and I'm sitting in the auditorium at Southview High School and it is our time to go in there and talk about our future. Well this guy gets up on stage and he gets out there and he starts talking about colleges and he sits there and he says hey if you're a junior right now and you have not started looking into your college experience you are late. And I'm tripping because my parents haven't told me anything my counselors haven't told me anything my friends haven't told me anything and I'm like what the heck do I do do I go off to college if I do go off to college how do I go off to college I remember after that session and when it asked my counselor like hey I really do want to go off to college what do I do she says what your grades right now are not lined up to get a scholarship but there's also student loans. What Anthony didn't know is that student loans would send him down a road that would take years to clean up student loans are a problem impacting Anthony you our kids and our nation. I go home and my parents are like yo you know we have the GI bill and anything above the GI bill we'll just take out some loans that was the thought that myself my counselor and my parents had if you do not get a scholarship if you do not cover it all but the GI bill we'll just take out some loans. We'll just go talk to Sally May and ask Sally May can I borrow some money and we already know her answer it was going to be yes so I graduated high school ended up getting a NFL scholarship national forensics league not the NFL I'm too short to be playing football go off to college and soon so welcome to the college campus I'm like this is great so I had the NFL scholarship plus I had my father's GI bill and to keep it 100 you guys I had all my school paid for when I had it all paid for I still did a dumb thing I still borrowed money to go after the lifestyle to get the clothes to get the car to buy the roses to go to McDonald's I borrowed money just for the freaking lifestyle and studies are showing that a lot of our students college is paid for but they're still borrowing money to live live off of what you're borrowing money and you're paying back so much but no one never told me that no one never said you're robbing from your future Anthony if you take out student loans it was normal so I said I'ma be normal and I'ma join them not only did I take out $10,000 in student loans but I also took out $15,000 in credit card debt I also borrowed $10,000 in some furniture debt before I even turned 19 I'm $35,000 in debt and I wake up like what in the heck is going on no one told me what woke me up because I did not have a plan was me being homeless at the age of 19 sleeping in the back of the car because I didn't take debt off the table you know I have four amazing parents two biological parents and two step parents and all four of them I loved dearly and equally and neither one of them were rich and neither one of them were poor you know they had a roof over their heads closed in their back food on the tables ac and heat and hot showers but I'm sleeping in the back of my car because I didn't take every one decision that I made seriously and I never took the time to write out the vision for my life right out the plan for my life I just followed what everyone called normal and normal ended me in the back of the car normal trying to finance things that I really could not afford at all normal trying to impress my friends and go to the same school that my friends were going to that normal ended with me in the back of the car it's normal to have 35,000 dollars in student loan debt it's normal to have about 15,000 dollars in credit card debt it's normal to have about 20 to 30,000 dollars spending on a wedding and financing a wedding that's normal I was tired of being normal and I said I was ready to be different and me being different means we don't have to be normal to be successful we should not be financing things we should not be in debt a recent survey of consumer debt shows that four out of 10 people don't even think student loans are debt so that begs the question exactly what is debt let me explain debt is doing anything to anyone for any reason so if you borrow money for a student loan that is debt you have to pay a back and if you're making payments on your student loans that money can't be spent on something else like rent gas, food or retirement savings and that's That's bad for you and the economy. Anthony's not the only one who thinks debt is bad. There's a guy out there who's been yelling about this on a street corner for almost 30 years. And that street corner happens to be the third largest talk radio show in the United States, the Dave Ramsey Show. To go and spend money that you don't have to maybe graduate is absolutely ludicrous. Dave has helped millions of people crawl out of debt and build wealth. Needless to say, he's got a strong opinion when it comes to student loan debt. Student loans are often said by people to be good debt, which is laughable, is education a good thing. Yes, is it worth investing in? Yes, in a proper setting, with proper analysis as to what kind of a degree you're going to get and is applicable in the field. But when I took my kids to college who were graduated a decade ago from university, went to a four year school, we sat down in the state school and in the orientation the lady says we have a high graduation rate, 58 percent, which is above the national average by the way. Now, if I got a 58 on a test, they would have given me an F. But they're calling themselves big dogs because they got a 58 percent graduation rate. Translation, 42 percent did not graduate. So everyone that takes out a student loan four out of ten times does not get a degree. So this idea that you're automatically going to get a return on investment assumes a completed degree in a field that will pay you more than you would have made had you not gone to school and it assumes you freaking graduate. So it's a stupid set of assumptions to get us to the point that the idea that this is good, dead. Along with Dave, there are lots of other people who want you to stay away from this quote, good, dead. One of those people is Seth Frautman. He's the executive director of the Student Bar War Protection Center in Washington, DC. He's also the former Umbudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency designed to protect students. Not in a much cooler way, NPR called him the student loan watchdog. So I think what most people don't realize because there's these misperceptions that student loan debt is quote, good debt. Or there's something about the fact that the word student appears before the word loan that makes people think that this is somehow different. And why it was great to be at the Bureau and why it was this unique perspective. For us, this was just another form of consumer debt that we were in charge of overseeing. And unfortunately with the dramatic rise of student loan debt, so we've now added essentially a trillion dollars of student loan debt overnight is that there's just a range of predatory players who view the student loan crisis as their chance to make a quick buck, right? So this is everything from big banks to small scams. So you have private student loan servicers, debt collectors, private equity companies, even social media companies who are looking at the student debt market and creating a business model that is essentially premised on ripping off students. We just can't keep burying our head in the sand, call this good debt and think those folks involved are just inherently pure actors because they're working on issues around student debt because every piece of history we have just shows that that is not the case. If student loans are ripping off and hurting students, why are they taking them out? What's going on in students' minds? I went to a local college prep high school to find out. These students are way smarter than me in almost every way, just maybe not when it comes to money. You've done the math to figure out, here's how much this could cost. I have, so speaking at where I am now, I can likely get out of Virginia Tech with a bachelor's degree with only 40,000 in debt and so I almost see it as an investment and I've talked to my parents about it and we definitely think it's the right thing to do is to take on a small bit of debt so I can advance my career more. So let's say you get out of, you know, you get your bachelor's degree and you got $40,000 in debt. How long do you think it would take you to pay that off? Probably only a year or two, if I'm-- wow, yeah. Of course I'm probably-- I'm going to get financial aid wherever I go, probably. Okay, so what do you know about the FAFSA? What? The application for financial aid? No, I have not heard about that. Do you know where you want to go to school yet? Columbia University. Very expensive school. We could work it out, you know, with financial aid and stuff. So I'm looking at the tuition for Columbia University. Do you know how much it costs to go there? A lot, like $60,000 a year. You nailed it, yeah. And so have your parents talk to you about this? You have a conversation and they're going, hey, listen, we can't afford to send you to a $60,000 a year school. We haven't had that conversation, they've never said I can't go because of financial reasons. Would you take student loans out to go to Columbia? I would if I felt like it was really, really something that I feel like would benefit me in the long run. I feel like it's a great option for me. Okay, so you'd be willing to take out student loans to go there? Yes. If you were like, I got in, I'm really excited, this is going to be worth it. What makes it worth it? I think it'd be worth it if I got in and they told me that they could offer me a scholarship and they could make this work for me and then I'd be like, okay, well, I'll do it on my end if you'll help me out on yours. Okay. I mean, it is our education, it is also our responsibility to do something for it. We have to work for it a little bit. Wanting to be a teacher, I know they don't make a whole lot of money and so I wouldn't want to pay for college and pay more than what I may make at my job, you know. That's very smart. You're saying, why should I take on $50,000 in debt when I'm only going to get paid $20,000? So do you plan on going to college without taking student loans? I plan on trying not to have loans, but I mean, if it happens, it happens and I'll just do what I can to pay them off. So how much do you think you'd have to take out in student loans, ballpark? About 25,000 total for four years, four years, yes, sir, to get my degree, which is very, very well off compared to everybody else. And do you think that's the only type of debt you would have at that point, would you have any credit cards, would you have car loans? I think I also would have, on top of that, because after I get out of college, I will also have to buy a home. I'll have to get gas for my vehicle going back and forth to work, muting, food, all the essentials, and on top of paying my debt off, I think that will also accumulate more debt because of less money I'll have. And the interest? Yes, correct. So the interest is building. You now have a mortgage payment that has its own interest. Correct. And then you potentially have a car loan, correct, because it's probably going to be hard to pay for a car. Correct. And then you potentially would have to have live off credit cards if you don't have the cash in the bank to pay for your expenses. Correct. So how much money do you think would be left in your budget after all those payments? After all those payments are done, I think I would honestly be a little lucky out of a year to make a profit of $10,000, $15,000 a year. I think that'd be maybe a possible safe assumption. So you'd have net after taxes and everything, probably $1,000 every month, left over after paying off all of those? Yes, sir. I believe that that could be accurate. Of course, I'm not an expert in these things, I'm still in high school, but this is all hypothetical. This is all off of guessing estimates. Yeah. Guests and estimates are great, and we all have dreams for our lives. These kids have high hopes for their futures, but I talked to their personal finance teacher to find out how far ahead they're really thinking. Mostly day-to-day stuff. I mean, they're not thinking much past what they're going to do with their money this weekend. They're going paycheck to paycheck for the ones that have jobs or allowance, whatever they're getting their money from, but that's the biggest challenge, I guess, is because they're not thinking much past what they're going to do with their money this weekend. I know my son, we talk about opportunity cost and trade-offs and that kind of stuff. He's just a side-and-do. I want to do this with my money if I do, then I won't have it next weekend, so that's what you see with these kids. I only talk to a handful of students, but Anthony O'Neill is talking to thousands of students in schools across the country every year. If anyone understands a teenager's mindset, it's Anthony. I wanted the biggest things that I see with this generation, and they do not have a plan. I believe that's why we have a generation of students, millions and millions of students every single year just walk into a college experience and just quickly sign the student loan paper because they didn't have a plan, they didn't have a duration, they didn't have a vision, and then they wake up four or five years later and they're drowning in 35 to 100, 200,000 dollars of student loan debt. I made a 62-year-old woman, she's paying off her student loans next month. She's been paying on them for 40 years. I'll take six years of hard work, of sweating, of missing nice evenings with my friends and going on vacations so I can enjoy the next 40. Sometimes our expectations of what we think life will look like, don't match up to reality. Seth Frappman dealt with that reality every day at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So we saw people over and over again because of their student debt and again they're trying to pay it back but because of companies or the loan products they were put into just were falling behind and then they just saw this like downstream ramifications for the rest of their lives and you know we were small but mighty and like we were just trying our best to figure out how you fight on behalf of the tens of millions of people who the only thing they did was do everything that they were supposed to do right which was take on debt to get the degree and like the number one thing we heard was how is this happened to me when I did everything right. Anthony O'Neill has seen that play out time and time again. People who did everything right when it came to their future they took on debt to get the degree to get ahead but all it left them was behind. Just the other day I had the opportunity to speak at a HBCU Historic Black Collegeing University to all of their incoming freshmen that about 1500 freshmen were starting their new journey. A young lady came up to me who is graduating this year or senior year and she says Anthony because I came here out of state I'm graduating with about $180,000 in student loan debt. She said I'm gonna be a teacher and I'm gonna make maybe $40,000 a year and I looked at her face and she was like what do I do and I couldn't be like yo you should not have even came here because she's already at the end of it and I felt so bad for her because making $40,000 a year and she's nearly $200,000 in debt before she even graduates. I told her hey you're gonna have to get aggressive you're gonna have to get a second job you have to get very creative in these next four to five years you are really going to have to push yourself hard you may have to go home to bounce back and to really start figuring out some things but do not let this debt slow you down from really going after your dreams as far as being the best school teacher and really impacting our kids. It's there and I am so sorry that it is there I am so sorry that I wasn't even there to help her and give her guidance before she even started. I don't want to talk to kids like her in her senior year of graduating 20 years old and she's like what do I do? My heart breaks for these young kids who signed a piece of paper knowing that it was alone but did not know exactly what they were signed did not know that there were other options that they were better options to go into college. Soodle loans are not an option at all. Everyone starts with good intentions to go to college and graduate and loans feel like an easy way to make that possible but what can start as a small loan can grow and grow and grow. One woman I talked to named Terry shared her story. She did everything the right way she had scholarships grants and work two jobs while going to school full-time but during her junior year things changed when her options ran out. Here's our conversation. I was on my third year college and they had cut off all my grants and so I had no financial aid to be able to pay for it. I was already working two jobs at that point going to school full-time so they offered me the student loans. She said that the only way I would be able to stay in college and since I had no money apps like okay when she was telling me about the student loans made it sound like it was very simple you know you don't have to pay it back until six months after you graduate. The interest doesn't accrue until six months so by then you should have a job to be able to pay it so it sounds like a feasible solution to my dilemma. So I went ahead and took the five thousand dollars which covered my tuition and my books. So that started the cycle of debt in regards to education. So when I graduated in 95 I had 15 thousand dollars of student loans. So what was your balance at the beginning and what is it now? My balance when I graduated finally is I was fifteen thousand dollars. It is now sixty thousand dollars and growing. And that's while you've been making payments on it. And that's while I've been making payments on it. Yes sir. So that fifteen thousand dollar loan grew forty five thousand dollars in interest while you're paying it down. Yes sir. Wow. Was that something that you thought could be a reality when you took out the loans? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No one thinks of the worst case scenario when they take out student loans and Anthony O'Neal is no exception. Do not do what I did. Did not have a plan went to school six months in school. I'm drowning in debt and I'm homeless because I did not have a plan. Two years later I'm in default with my student loans. Studies are showing that currently right now that there are eight million followers who are in default. They're also showing that moving forward every year a million people will go into default. So this means every freaking day 28 seconds a day a week a year. Someone is going into default. Why? Because of the lack of knowledge. Because no one is telling them that you're ruining your life. You are delaying your life by taking out student loans. What you just heard from Terry and Anthony is normal because student loan debt is normal. And this is what happens when people decide to be normal. There's a lot of normal people out there more than 44 million of them carrying student loan debt. Swimming against the grain and a sea of normal is Rachel Cruz. She's a financial expert best-selling author and host of the Rachel Cruz show. The show focused on making money fun and creating a life you love. Student loan debt has become so normalized in our culture because everyone is taking out loans and we truly have believe this lie that you can't be a student without a student loan. And you look over even just a simple bar graph of what student loan debt has done over the decades and the price of tuition has increased because students can borrow however much money they want and go to whatever college they want. There's no supply and demand. I mean there's no competition. It feels like in this area of life. And so they keep raising prices. And as federal government they keep loaning out money to these students. And so because of that it's the easier path to sign your name to a dotted line and you get the repercussions four and a half years later doing the hard work and being diligent and saying okay you know what I'm gonna focus on doing what I can to go to school completely debt-free. That is weird in our culture because again it's easier to go and sign a dotted line. Students should avoid student loans because when you look at it financially in a math perspective you're starting out your life in the hole. You're starting your life off on average $36,000 in the hole. And so when those bills start to come your options are limited. Meaning you have to go get whatever job you can get to start paying these bills. Man what a better picture of freedom if you didn't have these bills that you absolutely had to pay back and you actually at the time and the resources to say hey I'm gonna take my time and figure out what do I really want to do. But when you have student loan payments coming in the door six months after graduation you don't have that time and so your freedom is limited because you're starting off your life in a financial hole and it's a financial hole that can be avoided completely if you've made some different choices and decisions and the hard thing is these students they're not dumb right they're not like unintelligent human beings. No a lot of them are very smart they've just been told the wrong information. So the $1.6 trillion question is can the average student go to college debt-free? Yeah if your parents have money for my situation no. I don't know I'm not in that situation it would be nice. Is it possible to go to college debt-free? I think if you see it coming there are ways to live a life a productive life without going six figures into debt. You could certainly go to college debt-free absolutely. There's a lot of different ways to approach college and with enough research determination scholarships hard work I absolutely believe it's possible to go to college debt-free. It's definitely possible to get a college debt-free but at some point you have to draw a line and say I'm either going to school or my child is going to school debt-free. Yeah it's definitely possible but not everywhere. If you're one of the kids that really does know what they want to do you should be able to study that in a good setting and that's not going to be available at every school that currently is affordable. That guy is Michael Torpy actor and host of paid-off a trivia-style game show on True TV where three contestants compete to get their student debt paid off. The game show has already paid off over a million dollars of student loan debt. When this show started one of the rallying cries because this can't just be a topic every four years during a presidential election. I think everyone knows they need to have a position on this because it is out of control and it is affecting a huge percentage of our population. So I am optimistic. I have to be. I have to believe that this country cares about education and cares about its citizens. The fact that people don't know how much money they owe and the first time they have said the number out loud is on a national TV program. That shows an incredible amount of shame, guilt, and avoidance. I didn't realize how many people were really hiding from it. It's that terrifying thing that they cannot think about it or it will really hold them back from living day to day. And I think I have been amazed by how many people are stuck feeling like they're not adults. When you can't participate with your coworkers in like a social outing, but you don't necessarily feel like saying why. Maybe you never join people for happy hour after work or you're turning down those group plans on the weekend and everyone thinks you're just anti-social but you just can't afford it. And it doesn't make sense to them because you're working, you've got a job, we're all here together. How come you don't have the same disposable income I have? And people don't want to reveal that it's because they have all these loans. It's this hidden burden that 45 million people are walking around with and unfortunately not talking about enough. So I think I'm continually shocked to see how much potential is being denied with those debt free dreams that we ask people about. You hear people talk about such modest things that it's hard to even call them dreams. You know, someone wants to get married or have children or be able to start their own business. These are things that should be attainable to people who went to college and put in all this work to learn a skill, learn a craft. I'm always shocked to think how much more of this person could be living if they didn't have this debt. This show's not a solution. This show is supposed to raise awareness, help out some people who really need it, push for change and encourage empathy. You know, to put some stories out there and just have people connect with these folks that are struggling and kind of push back on the idea that you should have been able to figure this out on your own. You know, just look at these people. Hear their stories, see what they're struggling with and hopefully we can all just agree that something's got to change. Michael is right. There's a better way to solve this problem than by winning a game show. The best way is avoiding student loans to begin with. Here's Rachel Cruz with a story of someone who is able to do just that. I were speaking out of college in Texas and I got on an elevator and this girl was with me and she said, hey, Rachel, I know you're here to speak about money. I just want to tell you that I'm graduating in May. I have no student loan debt. I went completely debt-free, worked my way through and I actually have $4,000 saved in the bank. And I gave her like the biggest hug in the world 'cause I was like, congratulations. Like you did what people said, say it's the impossible. Like you have done it. So then I asked her, okay, how did you do this? And she went on telling me that she grew up with a single mom and her mom told her her junior year of high school that she had to apply for two scholarships every weekday. She had the weekends off, but every weekday she had to find two scholarships and grants. And she told me like, we fought about this Rachel. You know, I got grounded 'cause sometimes I didn't do it. Like it was this huge ordeal, but I did it. I did the work and now I'm on the other side of it and I actually have money saved. And so she is in a better financial position than most adults in America today. 65% of college seniors graduate with student loan debt. And student loan repayments account for five to 15% of those students' incomes after they enter the workforce. That means that most graduates start their careers with hundreds of dollars going out the door every single month just to keep up with their debt. Ken Coleman is a best-selling author, speaker, and host of the Ken Coleman show. And he talks to people every day who feel stuck in their careers and regret their degrees. I absolutely think that you can go to college debt free. I know this because I know people who did it and you can do it, but it's all about intentionality and then having a plan and sticking with it and being patient. So you can have a plan, but if you're not patient to work the plan, you'll give in and you go, I can't wait that long. I gotta go get a loan so I can get done faster. That's garbage. Would you rather wait five to seven years to not have the debt, not have all the things associated with that debt, anxiety, doubt, financial risk, all of that? Would you rather have that and get through quicker or would you rather wait a little longer to get it as a guy who waited nine years. Now I was hustling. It took me nine years to get the dream job. It was worth every second of the patience and the perseverance to do it the way that only I could do it in that time. I couldn't go any faster due to my family and financial situation. But I got here and I got here without being in debt. Experts believe it's possible to go to college debt free, but what about everyday people? I talk to a teacher named Josiah who's seen the burden of student loan debt up close and personal and he wants to help others avoid that burden. Do you think the student loans were worth it? Oh, absolutely not, absolutely not. Yeah, it wasn't worth it to go do to put myself in debt for 30 years like they wanted me to be. Tell me, practically, how have student loans impacted your life? What have they stopped you from doing? And I was talking to my wife the other day about this. And she's like, well, I can think of right off the bat like things that we can't do just because of your student loans. And so really, it stopped me from being able to get a house with my wife. We live in a super small house that we just kind of survive in. It stopped us from starting our family. My wife has always loved kids. I've loved kids. And it stopped us from wanting to do that yet because we don't want to bring a child up in this basically poverty-stricken home. It stopped me from getting my car fixed. My car broke down about a week ago, actually. It stopped me from just really being happy a lot of the time. So take me back to the moment when you took out student loans. What was going on in your life? I was the youngest child, brother and sister, both gone going to college. Mom wanted me to go to college. Stepdad wanted me to go to college. So I decided that I wanted to go to college. I wasn't worried about money. I wasn't worried about anything else that was going to happen because I'm 18, so what bad can actually happen? So when it came time to actually coastline for loans, my mom decided that, no, OK, I got a good credit score. I got all these things that I'm just ready to do. So she said, I can help you out. So awesome. I'll take the money where I can get it. So when we applied for the student loans, and then we got approved, the interest rate for that loan is at 13%. And that's just a mind-bending number. How is that even possible? To me, being 18, that didn't mean anything. It's just a number. It's 13%, whatever. I don't know what that really even means. To my mom, that was shocking. That was-- she couldn't believe what was going on. But I'm the one that kind of pressure and is saying, hey, we're like a week away from school. I got to do this. OK, I got to take this money now or else I'm never going to get it. I'm never going to go to school. Because me being 18 and I thought it was going to be the end of the world to fight in and do exactly what I wanted to do right at that point in time. So where did that perception come from? It sounds like, in your mind, you just had to have student loans to go to school. That's just how you paid for it. Going through high school, like I don't even know if I remember anyone ever saying it's a possibility to pay no school out of pocket. I feel like I was always, hey, you know, you've got to apply for student loans. You want to go here, you've got to apply for this loan. You've got to apply for this loan. You can apply for all the scholarships you want. But that's probably not going to cover it because you're not going to be able to live and sustain your lifestyle in college. So now it becomes more than just, oh, I got to take money to go to college. Now it's-- I got to take money to be able to afford a car, to be afford food, to afford fast food every maybe two, three times the day. I had to be able to maintain my lifestyle while I'm there. And so it really became a societal thing where you just got to do it. If you don't do it, you're going to be miserable. And college is supposed to be the best four years, sometimes six years of your life. What are those minimum payments? When you graduated, what was the minimum payment you needed to make under student loans? The minimum payment I have to make on my student loans, when I first graduated, was $550 a month. I want to know how much you took out total. I took out $120,000. So I just did the math here. What you would have paid with $550 a month over 30 years is just about $200,000. So that's $80,000 in interest on $120,000. $1,000 alone. - I'd never actually sat down and done the math before. - I think millions of Americans also aren't doing the math. It's pretty incredible. - Because I don't know if it's a matter of, I didn't know exactly how to do the math or if it was more a thing if I didn't want to do the math. Because either way, like that just infuriates me. How did I make myself believe that that was okay? Like did I think that I was just gonna make $200,000 or you're being a teacher? 'Cause if there's a $200,000-year teacher out there, I'm signing up for it. But I just, that is absolutely insane. It's something I gotta live with though. It's my mistake. So my last question for you, do you think it's possible to go to college debt-free? - Yes, it is completely possible to go to college debt-free. It's just a fact of, are you willing to do what it takes to go to college debt-free? Are you willing to go get that job while you're at full-time in school? Are you willing to talk to your parents early about what's gonna go on and save a little bit of money into an account that way in that first of your hits you're ready to go? Are you willing to go to that community college because it's the cheaper option? Or do you want the glitz and the glam of society to look on you and say like, oh, they're going to a good school? So it is possible. It's just, are you willing to do what you have to do to make it possible? - Can you go to college debt-free? Yes. Is it gonna be easy? No. Is it gonna be easy for you to become a millionaire? No, is it easy to start and have a successful business? No. If everything was easy, everyone would be doing it. But only the successful ones, only the ones who are willing to work have integrity, have character, and do whatever it takes to become successful or the ones who are actually successful. Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Debt-free people do what non-debt-free people are not willing to do, which is work. Yes, it's possible. People are doing it every single day. Now, let me say this. It's not about a privileged thing. It's not about a racing. It's about people who work. If you put in the work, you'll get the results. If you wanna be lazy, if you just wanna have a easy route, yeah, go sign the student loan papers and be in debt and bondage for the rest of your life. But I would rather work hard for four years, or maybe five, six years, depending on how quickly you can catch for the college experience, then to be in debt for the next 40. - Avoid the stupid mistake that I made, of borrowing money to go to college, even when I did not need it. No one gave me another route. Hey, Anthony, maybe going off to community college is the best route for you. Well, maybe checking out a trade school is the best route for you. Maybe starting off this way is the best route. - If you do not have a plan right now, you need to get a plan. The caliber of your future will be determined by the choices you've made today. You have to be so strong that you want your future to be the very best. So if you're saying, hey, I want to get through college 100% debt free, you're gonna have to be so passionate about it. You're gonna have to take action. You're gonna have to always be grinding towards that. It's not going to be easy. It takes a lot of hard work, and your hard work is gonna produce results that only your hard work could have done. And if you're saying, hey, I wanna graduate debt free, you're gonna have to get up every single day looking up grants, looking up scholarships, going to work, figuring out some things. You know what? You may not be the most popular person doing it. People may look at you and they may laugh at you. They may question you. They may even doubt if you're gonna get through, but you have to be so passionate that no matter what, you are not going to give up. You're not going to borrow one dime to go to school. Even if it means you gotta move a little bit slower, I would rather you move a little bit slower on a solid foundation than the borrow money and you're on a rocky foundation. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna take a lot of grit. And you're gonna have to stay with it and do not give up. There's currently $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. You're not gonna be in that. You're gonna graduate college. You're gonna walk into your future, not a part of the stat, but just starting a new stat. What's a new stat? I'm not in the stat. That's the new stat. Tired of this crap. (upbeat music) Anthony O'Neill has a path for how you and your kids can avoid student loans and graduate debt free. But before we dive into that, we've got to unpack some myths and lies about college and we'll do that in our next episode. We don't need to have a student loan crisis if we would allow our kids to grow up to be who they were meant to be. Join me. You've been listening to Barrowed Future. If you like what you've heard, do us a favor and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps. You can find more information about this and other Ramsey Network podcasts at BarrowedFuture.com or on your favorite podcast app. Our show is produced by Chris Wright, Eric Cheslevich, Eva Daniel, and Kevin Weimer. Music has been curated by James Childs. Will Rudder is our engineer. Our editor is Tim Holt. Blake Thompson is our executive producer. I'm George Campbell and remember, there's no such thing as good debt, except doing your grandma for teaching you some common sense.