Drs. Tony Bartels and Rebecca Mears on the current top three student debt topics

vinfoundation
05/24/2024
Veterinary Pulse Podcast, Veterinary Student Debt Podcast
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Last Updated: 10/24/2024

Listen in as student debt experts and Board Member Drs. Tony Bartels and Rebecca Mears in this next installment of our Student Debt Series. In this episode we’re covering three major topics: 1) Updates and how they impact new grads and not to new grads 2) PAYE and ICR phase outs 3) Bonus mention for a new proposal to cancel up to $20k. Now is the time to learn what you need to know going into the summer.

As always, we want to hear from YOU. Please share your thoughts by sending an email or joining the conversation.

GUEST BIOS:

Dr. Tony Bartels
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA graduated in 2012 from the Colorado State University combined MBA/DVM program and is a VIN Foundation Board Member and Student Debt Expert, and an employee of the Veterinary Information Network (VIN). He and his wife, a small-animal internal medicine specialist practicing in Denver, have more than $400,000 in veterinary-school debt that they manage using federal income-driven repayment plans. By necessity (and now obsession), his professional activities include researching and speaking on veterinary-student debt, providing guidance to colleagues on loan-repayment strategies and contributing to VIN Foundation resources. Beyond debt, his professional interests include small- and exotic-animal practice. When he’s not staring holes into his colleagues’ student-loan data, Tony enjoys fly fishing, ice hockey, camping and exploring Colorado with his wife, Audra, daughter, Lucy, and their two rescued canines, Addi and Maggie.

Dr. Rebecca Mears

Rebecca Mears, DVM is from Lexington, KY, and a graduate of University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Rebecca started her career as an equine general practitioner and is an active AAEP member, currently serving as a member of the AAEP DEI Committee. Her interest in student debt education began with keeping her own education costs lower and grew from there. This was supported by her involvement in the Veterinary Business Management Association (VBMA), which she now gives back to as a National Advisor. In her time away from veterinary medicine, she can be found obsessing over plants and hosting impromptu dance parties. She is passionate about giving back to the profession and improving the lives of veterinarians, pre-vet and vet students.

LINKS AND INFORMATION:

VIN Foundation Blog, Related Student Debt Blog posts:

Additional help links:

Email VIN Foundation: studentdebt@vinfoundation.org

Get updates to stay tuned for the VIN Foundation webinars on student debt.

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: The deadline for consolidating or having a consolidation loan counted under the one time forgiveness count adjustment, which is a super huge benefit that’s been out there for more than a couple of years now. Essentially, the way that the one time forgiveness count adjustment works is any prior repayment time on any of your loans will be counted as forgiveness eligible, and if you have different loans with different amounts of forgiveness eligible time, consolidating them together will result in a loan with the maximum amount of forgiveness credit possible.

Meet the Hosts and Podcast Overview

Jordan Benshea: That is student debt expert and VIN Foundation Board Member, Dr. Tony Bartels with Dr. Rebecca Mears, and this is the VIN Foundation’s Veterinary Pulse podcast Special Student Debt Series. I’m Jordan Benshea, Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Join me as I talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics and share stories, stories that connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible by individuals like you who donate to the VIN Foundation. Thank you. Please check the episode notes for bios, links, and information mentioned.

Latest News in Student Loans

Jordan Benshea: Welcome, we are back again with our VIN Foundation Board Member and student debt expert, Dr. Tony Bartels, and student debt education team member and expert, Rebecca Mears. We are here to talk about what else than the latest news in student loans. Welcome, Tony and Becca.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Hello again and again and again and again.

Jordan Benshea: And again and again and again. It’s like a nursery rhyme that won’t stop.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yes.

Rebecca Mears, DVM: I think I grew up on that one actually. Yeah.

Jordan Benshea: So these last few years have seen, wow, so, so many changes to the student loan landscape. Even just within the last couple weeks, we got another surprise that we weren’t expecting. As we head into summer, a lot of students are finishing school or graduating, and a lot of colleagues or veterinary colleagues are ramping up for summer and summer schedules. So we thought we’d take a few minutes and kind of shed light on a few really important areas and topics we think colleagues should be focusing on right now for their student loans.

Major Topics for Today’s Episode

Jordan Benshea: Today we have three major topics that we’re going to be addressing in this episode. One is the current updates and the updates on the latest updates and how they impact borrowers. So that’s first for new grads, not so new grads, etcetera. Two is PAYE and IBR phase outs and which borrowers should care and what they should be doing. Then three, we have a bonus mention of a new proposal to cancel up to $20,000 of unpaid interest balance above the starting balance. There’s a lot to cover, and as always, let’s just dive right in.

Updates Impacting New Graduates

Jordan Benshea: Let’s start with our number one topic, updates and how they impact new grads and not to new grads. Let’s start with the new grads, what are we seeing with these new updates and how are they impacting our new veterinary graduates class of 2024?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Well, I think I’ll start kind of with what the update is.

Jordan Benshea: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s back up a bit.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, that was one that I think kind of caught everyone off guard a little bit here, although it shouldn’t have because it seems like deadlines don’t really matter anymore.

Consolidation Loan Deadline Extension

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: But in this particular instance, the deadline for consolidating or having a consolidation loan counted under the one time forgiveness count adjustment, which is a super huge benefit that’s been out there for more than a couple of years now. Essentially, the way that the one time forgiveness count adjustment works is any prior repayment time on any of your loans will be counted as forgiveness eligible, and if you have different loans with different amounts of forgiveness eligible time, consolidating them together will result in a loan with the maximum amount of forgiveness credit possible. So, again, huge, huge benefit. Has had a number of different deadlines over the last couple of years. The most recent one was April 30th that we worked really hard, you probably received a lot of emails from us that maybe you ignored or acted on, but it got extended again. So, they extended that deadline for being able to have a new consolidation loan considered under the count adjustment to now June 30th. So about 6 more weeks from now you have the opportunity to still consider that consolidation loan to maximize the benefit under that count adjustment.

Benefits for New Graduates

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Returning, Jordan, to your original question about new grads, this is super exciting for new graduate veterinarians because if you attended any of the webinars that we’ve done for students or new grads recently, we talked about a lot of kind of less than ideal ways to try to get some new graduates to benefit from the count adjustment. Thankfully, all of that has become much more simpler now that that deadline was extended to beyond most of your graduation dates. I think the one exception to that are the new grads from the University of Arizona program who don’t graduate until August, so they’re still beyond that deadline. But for the majority of US colleges of veterinary medicine programs, new graduates are going to be able to consolidate their student loans and still be able to receive that one time forgiveness count adjustment if it’s applicable to them.

Jordan Benshea: Well, and that’s so helpful because also, first of all, the extension, it seems to me that it’s rare that we see them extend something once the deadlines already passed, which is what was so surprising about this.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Exactly, and that’s why it kinda caught us off guard. It is super helpful. It’s a little super frustrating at the same time too because it kinda makes the other deadlines we’re going to have to talk about also, how real are they?

Jordan Benshea: Maybe we shouldn’t call them deadlines, we should just call them suggested dates.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, maybe. But, yeah, we do.

Rebecca Mears, DVM: Until it actually becomes a deadline.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, we have more suggested dates to talk about too.

Jordan Benshea: But for new grads this is really helpful because it can be so hard to focus on these things while you’re trying to graduate. So for most, except for a couple rare circumstances, they are able to focus on this at least, like, to understand what’s going on. But then to have that date until June 30th does give them a little bit of breathing room.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Absolutely, and I’ve been kind of calling this graduating class, the 2024 graduating class of veterinarians, the most complicated I’ve seen in terms of entering repayment. This extension has made it a little simpler, which is helpful. I think that it makes it easier for me to say, graduate, consolidate all of your federal student loans as soon as you can after graduation, and choose, ideally, the SAVE repayment plan. Now that might differ depending on which income driven plans you’re eligible for. So we’ve been calling them income driven repayment plan profiles, but for most of you, you’re going to want to graduate, consolidate, and apply for the SAVE repayment plan as soon as you can after you graduate, and ideally, before you start your first position after graduation.

Jordan Benshea: Yeah, and for those that did listen to all of our emergency alert warnings, April 30th is the last that we rushed through to get you the information so that you can make it happen, you’re ahead of the game now. So gold star.

Advice for Procrastinators

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Well, there are still and that’s the other group that should be super excited are the procrastinators. So there are still those of you out there who waited up until the last possible minute, and some of you who even asked about it after the April 30th deadline, who are still sitting on some older loans or loans that maybe you didn’t consolidate but wish you would have. Now you’ve got that bonus extra 6 weeks here where you can still submit that consolidation loan before June 30th and get all of your loans cleaned up and still preserve your existing forgiveness time, if not add to it.

Importance of Extra Forgiveness Time

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: It is really, really hard to overstate how beneficial extra forgiveness time is, particularly later on in your earnings career where you’re likely to be earning more money, you’ll pay less towards your student loans. You’ll save a lot more money. So adding forgiveness time under this benefit is probably the most beneficial announcement provision program that I have seen in the history of the federal student loan system. So it’s something that you really need to take a close look at.

Who Benefits from the One-Time Adjustment

Rebecca Mears, DVM: Tony, for those that maybe missed the new grad playbook webinar, if you did we’ll include that in the episode notes, you can still watch and review all those materials, but could you kinda give a brief synopsis of those that might benefit from this one time account adjustment and consolidating those loans before the now due deadline?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, for sure, and if anybody that does review that recording, anywhere where we talk about that April 30th deadline you now assume that it’s June 30th, because that’s what the extension has done. But the people who can really benefit from this are those of you that might have older loans from before veterinary school that had some existing repayment time on them. So a classic example is, I did my undergrad and maybe took a gap year or 2 years to get into veterinary school and started borrowing again for veterinary school, but my prior loans had 1 or 2 years maybe of repayment time on it. If I consolidate all of those loans together with my veterinary school loans and maybe even Health Profession Student Loans or Loans for Disadvantaged Students that I’ve added, I will add additional forgiveness eligible time to my new consolidated balance. So I’ll start my repayment strategy with an additional 2 years or so in the example I was using of forgiveness time, which knocks 2 years off of your repayment timeline, which saves you money and saves you time in repayment. So consolidating or getting your loans consolidated before that June 30th deadline is really important, particularly for you new grads who have finished school and who are able to do that before that June 30th deadline.

Extension Impact on Not-So-New Graduates

Jordan Benshea: Wonderful, and let’s talk about, just to make sure we covered it, I know you mentioned it a little bit, but for those that are not so new grads.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: So for those of you that are not so new grads, it’s even more beneficial. So those of you that have been in repayment for 10, 15, 20, 25, even longer years, if you’ve got older what are called Federal Family Education Loans, or you’ve been using an extended, graduated, some other combination of repayment plans that might include a series of deferment or forbearance statuses, you can clean all of that up by consolidating your loans into a new direct consolidation loan before this June 30th deadline and get forgiveness credit for hopefully all of that prior time. The closer you get to 25 years of forgiveness eligible credit, the sooner you’ll be done with your student loan payments.

Tools and Resources for Loan Management

Rebecca Mears, DVM: Yeah, for those of you that are unsure if you have those Federal Family Education Loans in your student loan profile, we’ve got some helpful kind of tips and tricks and walk you through some of the student debt. There are tools that’ll help you to do that. So we’ll be sure to include those in the episode notes as well.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: For sure, yeah, and that’s where the VIN Foundation Student Debt Center is really helpful. So you can upload your student aid data file into the My Student Loans tool. We’ve got alerts set up where you can see your loan types that are in there, and you can also see when you started taking and making payments on those student loans, which helps you kinda guesstimate what that forgiveness count would be. If you need help working through any of that, Dr. Mears and I can help you through the VIN Foundation or VIN Student Debt Message Board area.

Jordan Benshea: Wonderful.

Final Thoughts on the Extension

Jordan Benshea: Okay, anything else that we need to cover about this one time count adjustment extension?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: If you haven’t taken a look and you haven’t acted or thought you should, then, again, this is the time to do it.

Jordan Benshea: Now is the time.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Now is the time. I didn’t think that they could extend this one any further because we’re running up to election time too, but they’re hoping to get everything processed and done and the count adjustment applied by September now. So it’s still ahead of that election time frame, but I think they’re trying to put a bow on this before election and a potential change in administrations.

Jordan Benshea: I think we’ve also learned that this is completely the wild, wild west, and it’s gotten real western out here. It’s hard to also have any idea what’s going to really happen based on the latest info.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: I guess the other part that I failed to mention with the extension, so we had been telling people that they can expect to see their count adjustment by July 1st. That was the prior deadline, and now they’re saying they expect to apply those count adjustments by September 1st. So with that push to the future in terms of considering that new consolidation loan, you may also have to wait a little bit longer until you see that count adjustment applied in your student loan information.

PAYE and ICR Phase Outs

Jordan Benshea: Okay, topic number two, PAYE and ICR phase outs. What’s the deal?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Alright, so this is the next set of suggested dates. Pay As You Earn and ICR are scheduled to be phased out, i.e eliminated on July 1st of 2024. So what that means is anybody who is not using one of those plans on that date, you will no longer be able to choose either one of those plans. If you are using that plan before the phase out date, then you can continue using either one of those plans for as long as you’d like. But once you leave for any reason, you would no longer be able to get back in after the phase out date. So this is a pretty big deal. We haven’t, up till now, seen any removal of the repayment options, and so this will be the first time that we’ve seen a loss of income driven repayment options. Now that’s blunted a little bit by the creation of the new SAVE income driven plan, so Saving on A Valuable Education, which was updated from the Revised Pay As You Earn income driven repayment plan. But for some of you, and we affectionately refer to this as those of you in the “pickle”, losing Pay As You Earn, it’s a tough one because for some of you it’s a difficult decision between choosing the new SAVE plan versus using Pay As You Earn. It’s not always clear cut, but you do have to kind of decide on that by this phase out date, July 1st of 2024, because if you’re not using Pay As You Earn on that date that decision will be made for you. You won’t be able to use it after that.

Jordan Benshea: Okay, well, we’ll keep an eye out for the July 1st and see what sort of wiggle room we end up finding there.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: When it comes to, yeah. Hopefully, that’s a date that I do hope gets extended.

Preparing for the July 1st Deadline

Rebecca Mears, DVM: I was going to say the same.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: But you can’t really plan for that until we actually get official word, you’re going to have to assume as if that is going to happen on July 1st. You don’t want to miss that date. If this happens to be the one deadline they actually stick to, you may be on the outside looking in. So just be aware of it and make sure you’re kind of crunching those numbers to see if SAVE or PAYE is going to be a more beneficial plan for you. The Student Loan Repayment Simulator is really helpful, and, again, if you have questions based on what you’re seeing in there, you can post in the Student Debt Message Board area and Dr. Mears and I can help you work through that analysis.

Understanding ICR for Long-Term Repayment

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: When it comes to ICR, those of you that have been in repayment for a long time and are expecting to receive a forgiveness count adjustment with a pretty high number. So 20, 22, 23, 24 years and have some time left before you might reach forgiveness, ICR is probably going to be your best option. So once this count adjustment is applied then all of the exceptions that allow for any prior repayment time to be counted as forgiveness eligible, those all go away too. At that point, you’re going to have to be using a forgiveness eligible repayment plan to satisfy any remaining time that you have before you reach forgiveness. So those of you that have been in repayment for 20+ years don’t typically have a lot of student loan balance remaining and your income is likely higher than it was then, when you were a new grad. So it doesn’t help for you to use a plan like SAVE, or you may not even be eligible for a plan like IBR, but ICR can actually provide a reasonable monthly payment that’s still forgiveness eligible that would allow you to reach forgiveness after that account adjustment is applied. So those of you that have a relatively low student debt to income ratio and have just a handful of years or so remaining to reach forgiveness, ICR is a plan that you really want to look into. Unfortunately, we don’t have ICR listed in the simulator. It was such a poor option and almost nobody was using it. But now, because of this forgiveness count adjustment and how things are structured, ICR could be a really helpful way to reach that forgiveness finish line for those of you that just have a handful of number of years remaining to reach forgiveness.

Upcoming Webinar and Potential Extensions

Jordan Benshea: Okay, well, I think the way that we know to ensure that it’ll change is that we schedule a webinar right at the end. So like about a week before the deadline.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: We are planning on doing that. We are planning on having a webinar in June.

Jordan Benshea: We’re encouraging the date to get moved. We’re very powerful.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah. Exactly, and that usually corresponds with an extension the day after we put that out. So, yeah.

Jordan Benshea: Maybe we’ll do a podcast as well just to encourage it even further, increase our chances.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, Murphy’s Law holds true.

Jordan Benshea: Alright. Let’s talk about this bonus mention.

New Proposal for Student Loan Interest Cancellation

Jordan Benshea: A new potential proposal to cancel up to $20,000 of unpaid interest balance above the starting balance. What’s the deal with this proposal?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, we’re starting to see some mentions and questions come up about this, and this is the Biden Administration’s take two at providing some student loan assistance after the last attempt to cancel a certain amount of student debt was struck down by the Supreme Court. So this is another bite at that apple that they hope is going to survive the challenges this time. Just putting it on people’s radar again because people are asking about it and also because I’m seeing some conflicting information in terms of people’s understanding on how that is supposed to work. But currently, the way that it’s written is that you would receive up to $20,000 of either unpaid interest or some amount that was added, capitalized, to your principal amount above what the balance was when you entered repayment. This is kind of similar to the last time, it’s going to be eligible only for those folks who meet a certain income threshold. So if you’re a single person who has an income of $120,000 or less, or are married filing jointly household that has $240,000 or less of income would be eligible for this benefit. So it’s something to be aware of. Again, it’s got some time to work through the system to see what the final details look like and how you might have to indicate your eligibility, if you have to do anything at all. It might be just something that is automatically applied, but we’re going to have to wait and see based on how it moves its way through the system, and if there’s any successful challenges to it or if there are any changes as it works its way through that negotiated rulemaking process.

Jordan Benshea: Okay, that could potentially be very helpful to colleagues. What other important changes? What other updates? Those are the top three topics we wanted to make sure we covered, but anything else that you guys think our colleagues should be keeping an eye open for?

Evaluating Your Student Loans and Consolidation

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: I think it just mostly comes down to making sure you’re evaluating your student loans. I commonly see people who either are assuming they’re using a different plan than they’re actually using or they’re not quite sure which repayment options they should be choosing. So it really comes down to just sitting down looking at your available options, knowing enough about the differences so you’re selecting the appropriate repayment plan, and then also not dragging your feet on consolidation. So it’s really, really important to take advantage of that consolidation opportunity, particularly under the count adjustment period. It’s always been really helpful for people to consolidate their loans as soon after graduation as possible. For any number of reasons, a lot of new grads don’t do that, and it becomes a more difficult exercise to fix that later. This is a hugely beneficial and rare opportunity to clean up any of that, what was a missed opportunity to consolidate your loans shortly after graduation. So don’t drag your feet on that. Again, I don’t think I have ever seen a case in the more than 10 years that I’ve been doing this where I looked at it and said, “I wish this person would not have consolidated their loans”. So if anything, err on the side of consolidation and getting your loans into the best income driven plan that you can. Particularly for new grads, I mean, that SAVE plan is so beneficial because you can get a very low, if not zero, payment, and the Department of Education will cover all of the interest that your payment is not covering. So, if nothing else, it buys you some time so you have a better idea of what your finances and your career path is doing as you’re working your way through repayment, and you can evaluate or reevaluate that strategy 2, 3, 5 years down the line.

Rebecca Mears, DVM: Yeah, and I really can’t say enough to listen to what Tony’s saying here because I know of at least one case on the message boards where we had to, Tony had to tell somebody, “oh, sorry, you just missed out on the deadline”. Then they did get a unique opportunity to go back and consolidate their loans and be in line to benefit from this one time forgiveness count adjustment. While we joke about suggested deadlines, at the same time, you don’t want to be that person that misses out. That unique case, luckily, that deadline got extended after the fact, but we really can’t promise that’s going to happen again. So If you’re in line to benefit from that, please take action and do so.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah.

Case Study: Consolidation Benefits

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Thanks for bringing up that case because it gives me a chance to talk about specifically a few different things. That’s a person who graduated a year ago, had Health Profession Student Loans, did an internship and is now heading into a residency, was using the Pay As You Earn plan, now has a unique opportunity to consolidate all of their loans together, get that Health Profession Student Loan to be included in that balance. They also had some loans from before veterinary school that will add a couple of years of additional repayment time, forgiveness credit, when they consolidate that balance, and it’s going to help them get their loans into the new SAVE plan instead of Pay As You Earn, which will be really helpful during that residency training where their income is lower, and it’ll prevent that interest from accruing during that low income period. Whereas in Pay As You Earn, that’s one of the details in the “pickle”, if you use Pay As You Earn, your interest will continue to accrue. If your payment is below the monthly interest accrual, if you use SAVE, the Department of Education covers all of that interest. When you’re doing internship, residency, advanced training, post grad, those scream save. You want to use the SAVE plan, in nearly every case. So making sure that your loans are in that particular repayment plan, receiving that unpaid interest subsidy is really important. This person has, again, a rare opportunity to kind of undo that original sin, which was not consolidating their loans as soon as they could after graduation to make sure all of those loans are eligible for that 100% unpaid interest subsidy while they complete that advanced training. By the way, they’re going to add some additional forgiveness credit to their loan. So that’s a perfect illustration on how this all works, and also reminds me that we’re going to be doing a webinar next Wednesday, May 29th, at 8pm eastern time that is focused specifically on those of you that are heading into internships, residencies, or you’re in grad school. So if you want to hear more details on how best to make sure your loans are benefiting from a plan like SAVE during that advanced training, then please join that webinar.

Staying Updated and Seeking Help

Jordan Benshea: Okay, where can colleagues go for updates?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: They can go to the VINFoundation.org website. They can go to the Student Debt Center, which is also under the VINFoundation.org list of resources. Then we will also be sure to be pestering you with probably too many emails, but for whatever reason, it’s still the medium that you guys all respond to most regularly. So, you can look forward to more information in your inbox. I’m sure we will try to get the word out in other ways as well just to make sure that everybody is aware. You can also check the studentaid.gov website periodically. I mean, that’s where I find out about these extensions when they pop them out at the last minute or even beyond the last minute, they usually get posted on studentaid.gov in their update section or the press releases that are associated from the Department of Education.

Jordan Benshea: Okay, wonderful. Anything else from either of you that you think our listeners need to know about this latest news or just the student loan landscape in general right now?

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: You got to stay plugged in. There is no set it and forget it. And it’s funny, I tell people on the message boards all the time, it’s like, “hey, the last file I see from you is from September of 2023, unfortunately, that’s too old”. So, I mean, if it’s been a while or any time that you have a change, you change repayment plans or you submit for public service loan forgiveness credit or you just generally had an interaction with your loan servicer that didn’t make a lot of sense to you, upload a new student aid data file. That’s the best way that I know for you to check, double check what you’re seeing from your loan servicers. That is critical information to be able to make sense of your student loan. So if it’s been a while since you’ve looked at that, go grab a student aid data file from studentaid.gov and upload it into the VIN Foundation My Student Loans tool.

Jordan Benshea: Alright, wonderful. Anything else from you, Becca?

Rebecca Mears, DVM: Yeah, I would just say that this stuff isn’t inherently easy. So if you listen to this podcast and you feel like your head is spinning, don’t feel like ignoring it is the best tactic. That’s what we’re here for, is to help. So definitely reach out if you have questions, email us, studentdebt@vinfoundation.org, find us on the message boards, whatever works. But if you have questions and you’re really not sure what all of this means for you, touch base with us and let’s walk through that together.

Jordan Benshea: Yep. Okay, wonderful.

Outro

Jordan Benshea: Thank you guys so much. As Becca mentioned earlier, we will have a bunch of links and information, including the ones to those webinars and additional helpful blog posts, etcetera, in the episode notes. So be sure to check those out and reach out for help. If you have questions, we always want to encourage engagement, and if you have a veterinary story that you want to share about the podcast, we encourage you to reach out for that as well. We’ll have a link in the episode notes for you to share your story too. Thank you all for being here and be well. Thanks everyone.

Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Thank you.

Rebecca Mears, DVM: Thanks, Jordan.

Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the episode notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org, and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.