Transcript CFPB FinEx Webinar: Strategies for Paying for College Thursday, March 25, 2021 Presenter: Brian Stone, Office for Students and Young Consumers, CFPB Facilitator: Heather Brown, Ed.D., CFPB FinEx Lead >>Dr. Heather Brown: I'm going to switch the slides for it real quick here. I was waiting for my control to pop up, and there we go. Thank you. Today's presentation is targeted at both financial practitioners and students. If you would like a copy of the slides, you can send an email to cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov. The slides, transcript, and recording will eventually be posted to our website, and we will send out a mailing when a new batch of webinars has been posted as we're working through a little bit of a queue for those. So watch for those announcements through your email from CFPB. Next, I will introduce our speaker, and then I'm going to read a brief disclaimed, provide a quick introduction to the FinEx program for those that are new to the CFPB FinEx webinars. After that, we'll transition to our presentation of the day in just a few minutes. So, first, the disclaimer. This presentation is being made by a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representative on behalf of the Bureau. It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Bureau. Any opinions or views stated by the presenters are the presenters' own and may not represent the Bureau's views. The inclusion of links or references to third-party sites does not necessarily reflect the Bureau's endorsement of those sites or of any of their products or services offered by the third-party sites. The Bureau has not vetted these third parties, their content, or any products or services they may offer. There may be other possible entities or resources that are not listed that may also serve your needs. For those that aren't aware, the CFPB's mission is to be a 21st century agency that helps consumers work with financial markets by making the rules more effective, consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives, and our Financial Education program and Financial Education Exchange are a part of that. This is the landing page for the Adult Education web page. The link is on the left in the top left corner, and you can go to this page if you would like to find out about upcoming webinars. We are updating those regularly now, and on the right, we also have a box where you can enter your email if you would like to sign up to receive announcements. So, if you did not get an announcement for this webinar and you would like to receive one, please make sure you put your email in that box at some point before the next event next month, because you got both announcements for this month already, and you'll get updated. And that's also how you'll get updated if slides are posted or if we have other announcements that would be of interest to you. Also, on the page, you can see underneath the box, the field where you put your email in the lower middle part of the right column. You'll see "Joint Financial Education Discussion Group." That is our LinkedIn page, and you're welcome to join that and post announcements that you may have that are relevant to financial practitioners. Okay. These are the key links that I provided, and you can see also that I have in the third bullet is the email address if you need to write, ask questions. Feel free to take a picture of this if you want to keep it for later, and I wanted to also highlight our coronavirus page. It has been revised. You may land there and not see the little picture of the virus, but you're on the right page. And it really is updated regularly and has wonderful information, including a really robust mortgage and housing assistance portal and information on avoiding scams which are on the rise as well as student loans from our students office and team, of which our representative today is speaking. Okay. I'd like to introduce Brian to you. Brian Stone serves as a policy analyst for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Office for College Students and Young Adults. Previously, he worked as a program manager for a D.C. area financial education nonprofit. While there, he managed a matched savings program for 100 foster care youth and provided financial education services for low- and moderate-income individuals. As part of his previous employment, he also reviewed credit reports with clients, created actionable budgets, and provided staff financial wellness training for the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency. Prior to working in financial education, Brian completed the Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellowship and worked as a paralegal for the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Brian is an experienced financial practitioner and a valued colleague. Welcome, Brian. We're looking forward to your presentation. >>Mr. Brian Stone: Good afternoon. Thanks, everyone, for joining, and thank you very much, Heather. I will move the slide. So, yes, as Heather said, my name is Brian Stone. I'm a policy analyst in the section for students and young consumers, and so today I'll be discussing strategies to pay for college, but along with that, we'll also be talking about budgeting, shopping around for bank accounts, optimizing financial aid, and more. Budgeting for less stress. We'll talk about what is budgeting, and why does budgeting matter, and how do I set up a budget, and how do I stick to a budget? So what is a budget? Quite simply, I like to think of it as your income minus your expenses, and so your budget is a tool to help you meet your financial goals, and a budget is also similar to a financial GPS. So you know where you are. You have ideas about where you want to go, and so that could include paying and saving for college, a lofty goal of retiring comfortably in the future, and so it's just going to be that tool that is going to help you get there. What if you don't have a budget? We'll talk about some ways to develop one and some of the tools and resources we have to help you do that. Within your budget, we have our needs, we have our wants, we have our obligations, and of course, we have savings. So that should be at the top of our list that we want to definitely pay ourself first. We have different expenses that are also going on at different points of time in a month. So we have child care expenses, cell phone. There could be education costs, debt payments, and so we want to be able to put all of that in one particular place so we can manage it effectively. So how can you do that? Again, if you don't have a budget, this is a great resources on our website, the Spending Tracker. The Spending Tracker, the good thing about it is I think it's forward-looking and it's also backward-looking. You can essentially start where you are, and so if you wanted to—usually going forward, you can keep spending as you are. You have your different categories, and you can also add categories to it. You're just tracking your spending that you're doing throughout the month, and then you're going to use to later create budget, which I'll talk about, but you also have the option of looking backwards. You can take your bank account, use this tool, go through and see how much I've spent on my cell phone, how much I've spent on eating out, how much are my education expenses, and get at expense and develop a budget from there. Cutting expenses. Once we get to the point where we understand our expenses and they may not meet our goals or we may be overspending or we want to better channel our resources, we can look for different opportunities and areas to cut, and so a lot of those might be in the way of a subscription, so something that you're paying for that you might not need or want or you may have forgot about, but you can also take this and think about it and take an offensive approach. For car repairs, you can get oil change regularly, take care of different repairs like tires, and so they won't end up costing you more down the road, and also avoiding things like late fees can also be an offensive strategy when it comes to budgeting. How can you improve your cash flow? We talked about different ways, and so this is sort of a third step in the process that we're getting to if we don't have a budget and to developing one. You can negotiate bill due dates. One thing that's commonly done—and I know I personally do this occasionally—is shift my bill due dates in relation to when I actually get paid, which makes it easier. Instead of having things sort of spread out throughout the month, actually connecting those expenses to that income—and we'll talk about a different type of budget that you can actually use to help you better manage those expenses, but another step or strategy is that you could split large payments into biweekly payments, bimonthly, but essentially what allows you to take a big large payment, break it down. Let's say, for example, for rent. If your rent was $700, which may be for a student, but you can take that and split into biweekly payments of $350. What you also find out is that by doing that, at the end of the year, you'll have that extra payment that either you can stash away, and this also works for mortgages and other debt payments, and that you can pay off a debt faster by essentially making that one extra payment a year. So this is one way, and you can also save on fees and interest. Types of budgets. A budget goes by many different names. Cal lit a budget. You can call it a spending plan, a cash-flow plan, whatever works best, but this is an example of a cash-flow budget that's on our website, and so what this budget actually does is it breaks down income and expenses on a weekly basis. And so you could take this and tweak it and also do it on a biweekly basis. For example, if you get paid biweekly, you have your income listed out. You can list those expenses that's going to take place in that first half of the month. You will subtract those expenses from your income, and any excess that you have, you would carry over to the next pay period and add it in, and then you would repeat that process. What this does, again, we talked about reducing stress and is that—I know one thing that I used to do, actually, when I was a financial coach, I would do—for a lot of finance, I would to monthly budgets, so creating these great, which I thought were great, monthly budgets, and it hit me maybe a month or two in that the clients I was working with were getting paid biweekly. So what I was doing—and even though I think the monthly budgets were extremely accurate, but that I was adding an extra layer of complexity for them and when—technique and tool we want to use, but when it comes to budget, it's being as simple as possible and make it as easy to use as possible. And so this is just one example of an opportunity to budget, slightly different, but again—and so with students, this could be a semester-based budget. So it could be something that they're looking on based on those different expenses, and the funding sources that they have coming in, they may want to look, zoom out, and look at this on a semester basis, but I'll talk more about those expenses, student-based expenses, as we go on. Now that you have a budget, so we followed those steps, we have a sense of our needs and our wants and our obligations, what's important to us, and prioritizing those things and maybe cutting our budget, so cutting some of the things out there that are not as important. We want to look for different ways to make it easier to stick with a budget. Again, I talked about simplicity. So we want to be realistic, and so the idea is that if I just start budgeting this month, it may be hard to cut my expenses completely in half. That's perfectly fine, and so a budget is similar to by working out. You get that muscle memory in. It may take 2 or 3 months. You have the pain. It takes longer to work out than you want to or you plan to, but the point is that you're building that habit and you're building that consistency which makes it easy to stick with as you go on. Then we talk about some of the changes that you can make, the quick changes you can make at first, cutting out subscriptions you might not use. I use the analogy of going to a gym. Maybe you don't go to the gym, but you're paying for a gym membership. That's an easy opportunity to cut that expense. Or you're paying for a subscription to a streaming service, and you don't use that streaming service, because what tends to happen is that it doesn't seem like much, but those expenses can add up over time. We signed up for a free trial, and the trial is no longer free because the 7 days has passed. So that's something to think about. And then enjoying looking for new challenges. Maybe instead of eating out, learning to cook. I know that's something that I could probably do more of as far as the cooking. And then thinking about ways—maybe you can cut expenses by taking public transportation, if that's available, instead of driving, and just making it a fun—and there are all different types of challenges throughout the internet to think about as far as like savings and sticking to a budget. So there's fun out there, but just thinking about it from a gaming standpoint. Then setting a reminder to check in. Once you make that first budget, you'll want to set a time to either check on it yourself, and if you have a partner or significant other, checking it with them. If you don't, find an accountability partner and so just someone that you can travel this financial path with, and then setting goals and celebrating those victories, so those baby steps, and once you achieve them, it may not be your big lofty goal of maybe saving enough in a 529 account, but once you save maybe that first $100 or that first $500, celebrating that because that is something, and that's a step that you're actually taking to get you towards that goal. Shopping around for bank accounts. Our students, of course, when they get their first bank account, they haven't—in some cases, students go into college with a bank account. In other cases, they haven't thought about it, but it's always good to just think about your banking relationship and developing that banking relationship and finding the banking tools that work best for you. You don't want to feel limited to a bank or credit union just because it's near your campus. There are a lot of wonderful online opportunities, bank accounts that might work better for you, or if you enjoy the traditional brick-and-mortar bank and you like walking in the door, maybe something that's close to your home or close to your school or close to your work might be best, and then taking a deeper dive into accounts when you're thinking about—you see the flashiness or something is free or something is easy to use, but really understanding what fees may be associated with a bank account and the requirements. It may say free on the surface, and then you take a deeper dive, and you have to meet a monthly deposit minimum or keep a certain amount in your account. As a student, that may be tricky—or use your debit card a certain amount of times with, again, the different expenses coming at different times in the student life cycle, but we'll talk more about those. Then understanding various account fees and the strings that may be attached. The account may be free if you open a savings account also or something to that effect. Then just being realistic, so understanding that accounts, they offer bonuses, but what does that mean for you, and how does that work and to your financial needs of having an account that works for you is better than having multiple accounts that may have offered some bells and whistles, but they don't necessarily work for you, and then making sure you sign up for direct deposit with school or employer. Then the same goes for credit cards. You want to make sure before you even get the card that you understand how do you plan to use it. Will you be carrying over a balance? If you are carrying over a balance, the interest rate is going to be extremely important, and then other terms that you should care about like the annual percentage rate, any fees, if you miss a payment. Maybe if you've had trouble specifically sticking to a budget and taking on a credit card and making a monthly payment might be too much for your financial situation. So it's just something to think about, and again, this is a personal level, but understanding if I miss that one payment, how can that potentially impact my credit, but also how can it impact my annual percentage rate? There is a 6-month penalty interest rate if I miss one payment. So it's good to understand those things also. Then understanding where can you get the best deal. Sometimes when you have a credit union or a bank and you have one product with them and you add another one, there may be some special opportunities there or rates or maybe travel points and those types of things that you can take advantage of. So just remembering that when you're applying for some of the bigger things like an auto loan, a home loan, private loan, that you can do multiple on a 14-day period, and it won't necessarily hurt your credit score. But on the flip side, that applying for a lot of credit cards in a short period of time can have an adverse effect on your score. So just make sure that you understand those things before you embark on the path to get a credit card. Then we'll talk about optimizing your financial aid. For many students and families, paying for college is one of the most complex financial situations they'll actually be in, and so there are a ton of different funding sources. You have Federal grants and Federal loans, and we'll talk more about these later. You have private loans, private scholarships, State-funded aid, work-study opportunities, and the list goes on. Then you have those expenses, so those potentially happen throughout the student life cycle, tuition and fees, dorm fees, club dues, parking, cell phones, and a laundry list of other fees. But the middle of the equation, of course, you're trying to connect the money with the actual expenses, and so again, that's why the budget—if we level the budget part because that's going to help and be important in managing some of this and again reducing the stress because it is, for the most part, a stressful time period. A lot of students are embarking on—they're moving away from home. They may be starting a different higher education program, a certificate program, and in a new environment, but also trying to maybe work or pay or participate in an extracurricular activity, all the while matriculating through college in order to reach their main goal. There are some ways that parents and families—some non-financial ways you can help support students, and that's why, one, providing information for the FAFSA so it can be completed in a timely manner. So the FAFSA general application—or grant application for Federal student aid opens October 1st, and so sometimes we'll hear that families are unfamiliar with the financial aid process, and so the first question is when the student comes home and asks, "Hey, Mom, can you give me your tax returns and your Social Security number?" The first question is "Why do you need this information?" So really working to understand the process and how it works and that the importance of filling out the application and that pretty much anyone, for the most part, embarking on a higher-education journey, that should be one of the first steps. So you should complete those forms as quickly as possible because it's going to open up the Federal aid but also possibly other opportunities at your institution, which I'll go into. But also helping research for grants and small scholarships, so that's one thing—or scholarship opportunities, but also the small scholarships. Students tend to overlook those, so the community-based ones, and so they could be $400, maybe $200, but the larger scholarships tend to have a larger applicant pool, so the probability, the likelihood that you'll actually get it, it decreases somewhat, but the community-based ones tend to have a smaller applicant pool, even though they're smaller dollar scholarships. But if you get enough of those, you can cover books or you can cover even more than that. You can cover a portion of your tuition, but fiscally, every dollar that a student pays up front—and so that could be by scholarship or grant—and doesn't take out in a loan will potentially save them too down the road, and so that's just something to think about. So any small—and I failed to say that any small amount, even $100, $50, whatever, that is not taken out in the loan definitely helps in the long run. And so then helping students make a budget, sharing your family's financial situation, and thinking about cost-cutting strategies during this time is important, and also considering as a resort, the Federal Parent PLUS loan, if that's an opportunity, and if you're denied, it could provide the student access to the Direct Unsubsidized loans. Of course, once they start school, you want to continue to complete the FAFSA because it has to be renewed. If staying at home is an opportunity, taking advantage of that opportunity. And then one of the important ones—and this is an important one—also building relationships while you're at school, and so we speak with a lot of academic advisors, financial aid officers, and one thing that we hear is the students don't always take the opportunity to engage after they're on campus. Once they receive their financial aid award package, some students tend to think that it's written in stone, so this is it, and I have to figure everything else out. But no, there's oftentimes where then financial aid officer will have a scholarship that may not be as widely publicized or there may be other funding opportunities that a student may qualify for, and you find those out sometimes by, again, taking that step of actually physically walking into the office, as I said, which I had to do a couple of times. And then as a parent, you want to be—or guardian supporter, you want to be honest about your past financial missteps and encourage them to use their resources, so use what's available to them. So even if that means—and this is post graduation, so maybe after the senior year, during the summer, I'm going to work, and maybe I can earn $100 or $1,000 or $2,000 or something like that, and that can actually still defray the costs that I was talking about, because again, every dollar saved is going to potentially save you two or more down the road. And then being up front about limitations. There's a saying that there is no scholarship for retirement, but there's also the loans for retirement. So that's something that we really push, and so it's just important to remember that you don't want to trade off your future retirement security by overleveraging yourself to become maybe—and strain the family resources to pay for higher education opportunities that may not fit your budget. Using Federal tools for students and families. So the first point of entry, of course, when it comes to the Federal financial aid process is always the Department of Education, and I'll talk about COVID resources in a moment. But anything related to student loans or related to deferments or related to the financial aid process comes from the Department of Education, and I say that a lot just because there are a lot of scams and different actors out there that will present themselves. They have some insider information or start a business to help people circumvent the process, but that's not the case, and we'll talk more about that later. But by visiting studentaid.gov, that's where you can find out everything as far as your Federal resources, so the direct loans, your Pell grant, the FSEOG grant, any aid that you might have been given. You can also establish your FSA ID there, which allows you to login to your account that gives you all these things. Then before applying to college, another Department of Education resource is College Scorecard, and I'll say we actually have an upcoming podcast which will dive more into the College Scorecard, which should be coming out next month. I'll tell you how to access that also, but we actually have an expert from the Department of Ed talking about the College Scorecard, the benefits, how can they use it to help them achieve their goals. But you can look at colleges by family income level and understand aid to the family of a university. You can understand outcomes of completion, the median debt that a student ends up with and also monthly payments on loans and then salary outcomes, and then you can compare different institutions. These are all types of higher-education institutions. So that's definitely a tool you want to use, and for military families and veterans, the GI Bill comparison tool from the Veterans Administration. We actually had them on the podcast back in November. So I will post a link. I will drop the link for that towards the end of the presentation, but we actually had someone on who's the director, and she talked about just the benefits of it and how a family can use that to leverage their GI Bill benefits, and I'm going to drop that. It should be in the chat right now. If you want to take a look at that episode and learn more about those benefits, and again, College Scorecard, we're also going to have an upcoming podcast episode about that. Then different types of aid. The aids sort of fall in a couple of different buckets. One of the buckets is that one that doesn't have to be repaid. So those will be scholarships and grants, and so you could have scholarships that are school-funded, State-funded, from private organizations or maybe even ROTC, and then you have grants. And those grants can come from the Federal Government, from the State, and maybe a school tuition waiver or maybe military-based for military families, and then you have the ones that you earn. Those can be work-study, be Federal work-study or non-Federal work. Then repaying the things that must be repaid, so that third bucket, again, that's going to be Federal subsidized loans or the Parent PLUS loan, a loan from a State or nonprofit institution, a school-issued loan, or a private loan from a bank or a credit union. Then to think about how all these costs fit together, your cost of attendance and also your expected family contribution, so your expected family contribution comes from the FAFSA application formula. Again, it opens October 1st. You enter in all the information. The student enters their information, and then the formula does its thing. Then there is a number that pops out, and that number could be zero or it could be more, and that's not necessarily something you have to pay. It's just based on the Federal data and information. It's the amount that your family could potentially pay, but again, it may not be based on your actual ability based on your budget. But then for financial need—and this is the max amount. This is need-based aid that comes from government, school-funded grants, work-study, or subsidized loans to cover that portion. Then for non-need-based aid—and this comes from merit scholarships, so that can be school, private organization, the direct unsubsidized loan, PLUS loan, and private scholarships again, and these things could also bridge that gap between your expected family contribution because, again, that may not fit your current family financial circumstances for whatever reason and then the need to actually cover the cost of that institution. Then depending on your financial situation, how do you appeal for more aid? Maybe there has been a decrease in income in the household for various reasons, especially during the pandemic. We have seen that. So how to appeal for financial aid? The first thing is, of course, you want to document your actual costs and compare those to school's estimated cost of attendance. So your cost could be more for whatever reason. Maybe you have more health care expenses. You might be paying more for child care. You have some disability expenses. There is a study abroad that you want to go on that's not necessarily calculated in the number. You need a laptop. There can be a family circumstance. Again, you just want to be able to document that and provide it to your financial aid office. Also, you want to check last year's FAFSA for funds that you may no longer have, especially in the pandemic. We saw, unfortunately, some families, again, lose income, maybe lose a job, maybe have hours cut, and so that information maybe 2 years prior when the FAFSA was actually used, that information to calculate your EFC, today's situation wasn't necessarily your family's previous situation. So maybe you were gainfully employed and had more income, and now there's been a change. So you just want to be able to show that. And then again, the third one, last but not least, talking to the financial aid office, no matter what, because again, there's always those opportunities, and you may be able to find out about something or an opportunity that wasn't advertise or is about to be advertised. How do I manage my student loans during COVID? CARES Act benefits for Federal student loan borrowers. We're probably all aware that there's ben an automatic suspension of principal and interest payments on federally held student loans, and this started in March of last year, and as of right now, it's through September 30th of this year. Essentially, what that means is interest rates are set to zero and will not capitalize at the end. So you won't have any interest that's accruing during this 18-, 19-month period that will be added to your principal. Suspended payments are not missed payments, and they're reported to your credit bureaus as fulfilled. If you look at your credit report, in your credit report, see any of them that your student loan is reporting to, so Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, you see a loan. It should show that it's paid as agreed, essentially that you were making a payment. Suspended payments do count towards loan forgiveness, including public service loan forgiveness. So this is something to think about, that if you—and we'll talk about which loan qualifies because I think that's very important, but if you are pursuing public service loan forgiveness, as an example, and you meet the other requirements, there may be an opportunity to, again—these months, if you meet all the other requirements, again, you can apply these months towards that public service loan forgiveness or another forgiveness program. But what's important is which loans actually qualify, and so which loans are eligible? The Direct Loans, Federal Direct Loans are eligible, and essentially those are going to be loans that were made in 2010, so after June 30th of 2010. Federal Family Education Loan, loans that were part of the FFEL program, and so it's a caveat to that, which you can actually see on the next bullet point, and Perkins loans owned by the Department of Education, and so which loans are not eligible are those, that same set of loans, but those loans that are owned by commercial lenders. So loans that were under the FFEL program, if you have those and maybe know about someone who did have them, they were made before June 30th, 2010, and essentially those loans were owned by commercial lenders. So it was a part of the Federal Loan program, but it was owned by a bank or a credit union. That's who you would go to as your loan servicer. So Perkins loans also that were held by the school, but after the loan program switched to the Direct Loan program, some of those commercial lenders and schools sold those loans back to the Department of Education, and that's why you see some that may qualify and some that don't, but the first point of entry, if you're not sure, is to contact your lender, and so that's the person who you may be receiving the bill from, or if you don't want to do that, you can always visit Federal Student Aid by going to studentaid.gov and logging on and then seeing who is your lender or servicer. But private loans—so private loans are owned by banks, credit unions, or maybe the school, and they don't qualify. So what happens when CARES Act benefits end? As of right now, as I said before, they're supposed to end September 30th, 2021. That could be extended. Maybe it won't. We're not sure right now, but you expect more information from the Department of Education and the President. But your automatic payments may resume in the same manner they were before, so if you had those payments set up, but the first and most important thing is that you just want to check with your servicer to make sure that your payment information hasn't changed because, again, between then and now, it's been about 19 months, and you just want to make sure they have your accurate information. You can also ask them. You can expect, reasonably expect information from your servicer and, again, Department of Education, and so if you didn't have automatic payments enabled, again, you're responsible as before. This is kind of like a freeze period for making those payments before the established due date, but you can expect your bill to be mailed to you 21 days before it is due. If the date has changed or you wish to change the date, you can also contact your servicer to again, as I mentioned before, move around the date. Then if you're in a situation where you can't make payments or maybe your personal finances have been impacted by the pandemic, again, the servicer is always the first point of entry for additional options. You may be able to recalculate your payments based on your current income, and so there are various repayment plans, income-driven repayment plans that might work better for you. You can also reduce your payments by, again, switching to a different payment plan, and then you can sign up for a deferment or forbearance, and you may not make payments for a period of time, but you just want to remember when you sign up for one of those and it's outside of this CARES Act benefits window, that interest may accrue, even though you're not paying, and then it may capitalize, so it will become a part of your principal. So your loan balance may actually grow, and so that's just something again you want to discuss with your servicer before you make that decision. Then private loans, we saw when the CARES Act benefits first started last March, some private lenders were offering postponements for up to 90 days and waive the late fees, and they didn't at the time indicate any negative marks on your credit report. So if you missed a payment or couldn't make payments, they had different options, but as of right now, those have changed for various lenders. And again, it switches from lender to lender. So you just want to, again, check with your lender because the terms of private loans are again set by the lender. Just reach out to them because they're the first point of entry and the first point of contact. Then monitoring your credit report. You want to make sure you check your credit report to make sure information is accurately reported, and that's your—even non-Federal student loan information is reported correctly, and so you can actually do that through annualcreditreport.com, and you can have access to your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit reports. You can access those for free actually for once a week up until April 22, 2022, and that was recently extended, but when the pandemic first started last March, I tested this out, and I pulled my credit reports for 5 weeks straight. I pulled Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to see if it worked, and then I stopped. But it does work. I can say that. Even after that, Equifax has agreed to allow customers to pull their credit report. So you can free credit reports once a year until December of 2026, and so that's something—and even if your information hasn't changed or you don't think anything has changed, you definitely want to check your credit report at least twice a year because just identity theft or anything that is reported, to make sure things reported are reported accurately, because what you don't want is to go use your credit for something and you find out there is an issue on your credit report. You have to take the time and effort to resolve it before you can access what you're trying to access. Then loan servicer assistance. You want to contact your servicer directly—and that's a reoccurring theme throughout this conversation—for any assistance with the following, lowering your payment, changing your repayment plan—again, if you're having issues making repayment, that's the first thing you do, or if you even see that on the horizon, because one of our goals in the section for Students and Young Consumers is also to make sure that those borrowers who are currently in repayment do not default on their student loans and especially for Federal student loans because there are a lot of options and opportunities and changes and things you can do before you get to that point. So we want to do what we can to avoid that at all costs. You can consolidate multiple Federal loans, but something to remember is when you consolidate those loans, those loans actually—say, maybe you're consolidating direct loans into a new direct loan, but you're also thinking about public service loan forgiveness. When you consolidate those Federal loans into a new Federal loan, that new Federal loan resets the clock on working towards that public service loan forgiveness, and so that's something you definitely want to think about, talk about with the servicer, or you can call the Department of Education to find out more, if you made any qualifying repayment, would it make sense for your personal plan to consolidate, and it could also change your interest rate, so that's another thing. And then postponing monthly payments while you're in school or unemployed and then seeing if you qualify for any type of loan forgiveness. Then avoiding scams. This is something I mentioned before. You do not have to pay to receive any of these benefits. Even if there is a service that may say they're acting on behalf of the Federal Government, if it's not from the Department of Education or another Federal Government agency, again, this will come from Department of Education and no one else, but it's probably inaccurate. So if a company or you see signs, you know, the bells and the whistles saying they can provide some type of forgiveness, that's probably inaccurate, and you want to check with Federal Student Aid before you make any of those decisions. So you can call them. Again, you can also contact them by email or log on to your account and probably send a message, but you don't want to share any of your personal information as it relates to your Federal Student Aid account, especially your FSA ID, your password to anyone. So you can think about your FSA ID as your Federal Financial Aid Social Security number, and so it's something you don't want to pass out. You want to protect it at all costs and not give it to anyone, and you want to change your password directly, of course, just to make sure that they're not out there and no one is able to easily get into your account or anything like that. Student debt relief companies, which I alluded to earlier. You want to be aware and just wary of companies that are offering student debt relief. So it could be a commercial. It could be a sign. It could be flashy lights saying that there is some new program, and you can get loan forgiveness if you pay them and sign some forms. You don't want to do that. That will be warning signs because if it didn't come from Department of Education, again, it's probably not correct. Then things to be aware of, requiring upfront monthly fees, again, these programs we've been talking about through Department of Education are free, and there are things you can normally do yourself. There are forms that you can fill out yourself. You don't need to pay anybody to do that. And then they promise immediate loan forgiveness saying, "Hey, if you pay us, this new program to start it, we can put your name on the list, and all your loans will be forgiven." Of course, they're going to ask for access to your information, so your FDA ID, and again, you want to protect that. That's your Federal Aid Social Security number, and we're going to guard that. They may ask you to sign a third-party authorization form or give them power of attorney to act on your behalf, and that's one of those warning signs. Then, of course, the scarcity issue that it's a limited-time offer and it's going to end soon if you don't take advantage of it. Then with the emails, of course, spelling, grammatical errors, the email address is not the same as—it's not a dot-gov address. It's a dot-com address and those types of things you want to keep an eye out for. Reporting scams. What can you do if you're a victim of a scam or you feel like someone maybe tried to scam you? You first want to ask the Federal Trade Commission so you can report it via their website, and there's also a hotline number. Even if you just google "Federal Trade Commission scams," I'm pretty sure that website will come up, but also contact the Department of Education. You can call the, give them feedback, and if you're already initiated, maybe started one of these things and you feel like it's a scam, you can stop payment, and then you can contact your student loan service provider to revoke any power of attorney you may have issued and let them know that you are the only one that's approved to access your account. The CFPB listens. How do we help and reach out to consumers? Of course, we have our coronavirus page. During the pandemic, we started it, and this is a screenshot of it. You can access our coronavirus page at consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus, and we have lots of topics and timely and relevant information as it relates to things that the pandemic may have affected. You can go there and access logs and videos and resources to help you. Of course, our podcasts. I had mentioned this earlier. I'm really excited because I'm the host of our podcasts, and I dropped the link for one of our episodes in the chat. At CFPB, we have started a podcast, a Financial InTuition Podcast. We have different types of individuals on. We've had experts. We've had grad students. We've had current students. And they're all talking about the issues as it relates to money, student money, and young consumer money, and so how do we manage these things and navigate as we're trying to achieve our higher education goals. So we've covered credit, budgeting, grad school, managing grad school debt like postgrad school, and then as I mentioned, the next series, which is timely, is going to be focused on understanding your financial aid award offer, and so that series should actually be out next month. Our Grad Path tool, which I will skip ahead. Our Grad Path tool, this is a tool that we have to help with financial decisions. Within the student life cycle, there is a point—and we probably all remember this, and we know when we've gone through it where we applied. We were accepted. We got an offer, and then there is this decision. Between that offer and decision point, there is like a period of maybe 6 weeks where you feel pressure to make a decision. You have to find the funding. You're trying to decide what program should you enter, what certificate program should you start or what school should you go to. What Grad Path seeks to do is it seeks to, again, reduce stress in that process where it allows you to take your actual offer and turn that into a plan. So you can take what you're seeing on paper. So maybe the loans or maybe the grant, being offered the scholarship, pop it into this tool, and what it does, you have your school information, and we pull different data. It actually shows your need, if you actually have a need, or your surplus, and if you plan on taking out loans, how much the loans will cost over a period of time. So, over a period throughout your college experience, but also post-college, and even to the point where you can actually calculate if I take out, say, $10,000 in student loans, I'm going to need to make this much an hour at least to cover those loans, and so it just gives a different perspective, especially to a young person and a family who may not fully understand the actual costs. So, again, I think about my college experience, and I had no concept of even owing $10,000 and paying that back. I'm like, what does that mean, and of course, what does it mean to my future decision-making? So please check this out. Also, another plug is that we will be releasing a webinar. We actually do a demo of Grad Path next month, so to take a deeper dive into this, because I gave a high-level overview, but to take a deeper dive and answer some of the questions that we hear from students and families that relates to the tool and how to use it. If you want more information, I will say you can sign up on our website in the section for students. We have an email list, and you can sign up on that email list. All of our work, especially when it's released, it's funneled through there as an outreach method. Our mailing list. We have our mailing list. We have free bulk printing as some of the CFPB resources. We have our Ask CFPB box, and our Ask CFPB box, I like to think of it as like a Google One Box, and so you can type in a word or a phrase as it relates to personal finance, and then it will crawl our website and pull back related information. That information could be our booklets. It could be additional resources, videos, any one-pagers we may have, but all related to that topic. So it's an easy-to-use tool to pull back information on our website. We have our Money Topics, and so these are curated sections on the website for students and practitioners. We have our blog that's constantly updated as it relates to what's happening as far as personal finance for individuals, and all of our resources are in multiple languages, and so multiple common languages. If you need a resource in another language, it's more than likely we will have it. You can access that by using our website. Opportunities to help shape future resources. We have our Financial InTuition platform, which we are creating for higher education institutions. So that research is currently happening, but one thing I will mention is our Grad Path tool for families. I talked about Grad Path, but we're working with our contractor to develop a different version of that. So we're in the very early stages. We understand that families often help pay for a child, a grandchild, and other family member's expenses, and so one thing that families want to understand is how does this impact my personal finances, but also how will it impact my future? Maybe retirement security. So we're working on that new tool to help those families understand how a student's college education will, again impact them and maybe some better ways to pay for college. So the part of that, as I mentioned, is extremely early stages working in listening sessions. So those listening sessions are really to understand how families are navigating some of those issues as it relates to saving and paying for college but also families who have paid for college and maybe take a look back and understand their experiences and how we can use it to create something to help families. So the listening sessions are going to be taking place in the near future, and I'll actually drop the link and the email address and the phone number, if you're interested or you know someone who may be interested, and again, it's for perspectives, borrowers, and so families thinking about paying for college and then those who have paid and want to take a look back, because we want to hear from you. We want to hear from you so we can develop the best possible tool to help families navigate this experience. So the listening sessions in short will happen via a video call. So they'll happen approximately over 90 minutes, and again, we partnered with Abt Associates, an independent research organization, to help conduct these listening sessions. So you can sign up via the survey link if you're interested, or you can call in, or you can email, or if you know anyone, feel free to share that information. Thank you very much, and I think that's it. I will hand it back over to Heather, and we can open it up for questions. Thank you. >>Dr. Brown: Thank you very much, Brian. That was really informative, and every time I get to see you present, I learn something new. I'd also like to thank Tracey and Susan, our Events Management Team for handling everything in the background and keeping things going so smoothly. I did see one question that popped up, which was somebody asked if you had a link for grants and scholarships or if you knew of a site where there was one location where you could kind of look up grants and scholarships. >>Mr. Stone: That's actually a great question. We don't have one on our website, but the Department of Education does. I don't have the actual link to the website, but if you google Department of Education scholarships, I know that their website provides more information on that topic. >>Dr. Brown: Okay, great. Thank you. That's helpful, and good to see the links to the events you're having for your podcasts and your listening events. That's wonderful. I don't think we have any more questions today. It doesn't look like anything else has popped up in the chat. So that tells what a thorough job you've done today, Brian, in answering all the questions. I wanted to let everyone know that the next CFPB FinEx webinar is on "Understanding the Women's Wealth Gap," and that's going to be March 31st. We squeaked it in so it could be on Women's Month, and it will happen from 2:00 to 3:30. We have several speakers for that event. That's why it's going a little longer than most, but of course, you can always leave at your convenience. For those of you that get our mailings, you already have the login credentials for this because we sent them both out on the same announcement. For those that don't, you can email cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov box or go to the Adult Ed web page and put your email in, and you will receive announcements for the future. Okay. That concludes our session for today, and I hope to see you all at the next session on the 31st. Have a great day, everyone. >>Mr. Stone: Thank you. Bye-bye. [End of recorded session.]