Lower EIDL Interest Rate vs. Forgiveness Discussion & Debate

Did your small business receive a COVID-19 EIDL from the Small Business Administration during the pandemic? If so, today's video is for you. If not, watch this video at your own peril. Okay, we're going to continue our trend of answering YouTube comments with today's video. Notably, the title of today's video is Lower the Rate for the COVID-19 EIDL. If you could take a moment to hit the thumbs up and like the video. YouTube will share this video with other small business owners who are just like you. And please consider subscribing to the channel, hitting the bell for notifications. Gregory Salso, 7129, commented on one of our videos, notably EIDL and broccoli and the forgiveness debate. Gregory goes on to say, If they will never forgive them, why can't they lower the interest rate to 1% so at least people can realistically pay the loans back? Gregory, this is a fantastic comment. I want to thank you for sharing this with us. And yes, why can't the SBA? Well, because Congress has to do that. So we've done previous videos about how Congress must act. Contact your Congress people and demand that they take action to help you make payments on the loan that you want to pay back. You don't want to be a deadbeat. You don't want to default. But when your business runs into challenges, certainly the absurd assistance of six months lowered payments is not cutting it for a lot of small business owners. And this idea of lowering the rate is something that actually, I mentioned way back five years ago, we first started doing videos about the COVID program during the pandemic. We gave away free advice here on our YouTube channel for folks on how to fill out SBA form 2202, how to deal with an SBA representative on the phone, how to request reconsideration and on and on. And by our estimation, people used our videos here on COVID experts channel to get approved for about $30 million of COVID loans. Just with our free advice, we helped our clients who hired us get approved for $70 million. So this table here, this little house in Connecticut is helpful to you, small business owners to the tune of about $100 million. And as always, we thank you for following us on our channel all these years. And again, please hit that thumbs up and please subscribe to the channel. And again, going back to the days of the pandemic, I mentioned multiple times, especially on live broadcasts, we do when people would come up with these types of comments. And I would say, look, these loans are not going to be forgiven. I have been saying that for five and a half years now. But what Congress could do is create legislation that allows the small business administration to modify the loan and lower the interest rate from an already low 3.75% for a 30-year term and lower that interest rate to 1%. The Congress does have, well, Congress has the authority to make the loans forgivable. They also have the authority to allow the SBA to renegotiate or modify the loan to lower the interest rate. And I think that that is something that would be very helpful to small business owners. I find it unlikely that the federal government would forgive interest. I will say this, one thing I know for sure, the SBA is not authorized under congressional mandates to do things like that, to give interest or lower or change the terms of a loan. That loan modification, I'm sure, would be a dramatic improvement in your cash flow as you attempt to do the honorable thing, the right thing. Or as one of our clients said to me on a phone call yesterday, it is not my way to not pay my debts. And in that case, I was recommending to that client who is rather elderly, is facing medical issues and a decline in his income as a result. And my advice to him was that he should hire an attorney and file bankruptcy. We've done videos about that. And therefore, this idea of lowering the interest rate to 1% helps people like that client, that doctor, and other folks like you, like this gentleman here with this comment, to afford the payments. And as I've said in previous videos, the previous hardship accommodation program, the current short-term payment assistance program, that just is always going to be a mouthful for me. These six-month reductions, it doesn't matter the percentage, it's only six months at a time. And then you have to deal with the whole process of with the hardship program previously, getting extensions and monitoring the payments and all that. There needs to be a more reasonable way to assist you small business owners with managing cash flow and managing payments, especially with economic challenges that come up, whether it's illness or, as with one of the clients on our one-hour consulting call, an employee who embezzled a quarter million dollars from the company. People who are aging into retirement and still have these 30-year loans to pay. The person I spoke to earlier today on a one-hour call who has faced some serious medical issues in terms of some surgeries and is working back to recovering to full revenue, but it takes time. And for these types of situations, it would be very helpful if the Small Business Administration could do more than just a six-month payment reduction. Likewise, since we're on the topic of payment reduction, if the SBA could implement something that's similar to the IRS, you can negotiate a payment plan with the SBA, present your financials, have the SBA representatives review, assuming there's any of them left at the SBA, because Loeffler fired thousands of them. You can negotiate with an SBA representative and say, look, this is what my cash flow problem is. It's tariffs, it's employment issues, it's health issues, it's whatever the issue is with your business. And I want to do the right thing, but at the moment, I can only afford this amount of money every month. And as with the IRS, the SBA should be able to have that procedure in place where you can have that kind of a conversation and establish a formal payment plan where you're still paying the loan, you're not defaulting, you're not being driven into that dead end where your only option is to file bankruptcy. And we've discussed that in previous videos. Instead, you're saying to the Small Business Administration, this is where I am financially. This is my situation. Please work with me. And again, as with the IRS, you'd be able to work out a payment plan. But this type of protocol doesn't exist. And again, we encourage you to contact your congressperson and demand that they do more to support you, their small business constituents. Real quick, because I don't want to belabor the point and I don't want this to be a clickbait video. In fact, I want this to be a more positive video than what I'm used to providing to you. Someone said to me on the phone a few minutes ago, hey, you know, your videos are very depressing. You're very passionate about delivering bad news, Trevor, but wow, depressing. And we've seen those comments. Look, I'm the messenger. As I said to that person, as I say to all of you, there is no reason for us to exist here as EIDL experts, if not for the continuing failures of the Small Business Administration to support you properly. But I don't want to belabor the point. So I'll just briefly touch on it. This idea of forgiveness, please. This is everyone's talking about it. Everyone is dreaming of it. Everybody is wishing for it. But it is never going to happen. And I have been making that statement for years. It's not that I don't want it to happen, but it will never happen. And I'm not going to go into the reasons why my professional expert opinion is in that manner. OK, so stop talking about forgiveness. But you can contract your congressperson and say, hey, can you create some kind of a procedure at the SBA where either I can call up and make a payment plan that fits my cash flow budget temporarily or longer term, like three, four, five years? You know, the IRS gives you several years, by the way, in payment plans. Or maybe consider lowering interest rate to 1%. And that's why the topic, the title of today's In light of observations from you and the audience that I am the guy who delivers bad news, let me try to switch this into a positive aspect. And I think you're going to see this on more of our upcoming videos because I've shifted this tone in the one hour consulting calls. And by the way, everything you need to know about what we offer to you in terms of support for the covid EIDL program, everything you need to know is in a link that you will find in the pinned comment down below. That's the first comment that appears in comments or in the description for all of our videos. You click on the link and you will discover everything we have to offer to assist you. OK, positive spin on things. Number one, we have another video channel called Simple Sense for Small Business where you will find ideas that will inspire you, that will encourage you, that will inform you, that will educate you. Basic business operations, marketing ideas, employment issues, pricing, firing bad clients, hiring good accountants, attorneys and on and on and on. There are hundreds of videos. I would encourage you to pop on over there, get the inspiration you need and please subscribe to that channel. But get the inspiration you need so that you can focus on a positive aspect here. Since the SBA and the Congress is not helping you in a reasonable manner, you have to help yourself. And that's where business recovery comes in. Find those inspirational videos, educational videos, informational videos on our Simple Sense for Small Business channel. We're working on a new guidebook called Business Recovery, which we'll present soon to you and you can purchase that. Again, all our products and services you will find in the link in the pinned comment and the description. We have other guidebooks. If you find yourself in a position where all you can do is consider closing the business down, we have a guidebook. We call them blueprint guidebooks. There's one about business closure. There's one called imminent business closure, where you know right now that several months or a year from now, it's kind of a longer term process. So the imminent business closure guidebook gives you kind of strategies for winding it down. Whereas the business closure means you're there right now. You need to know what are the procedures at the SBA, hiring an attorney and on and on and on. Speaking of attorneys, we created a recent guidebook on how to find an attorney that you will find at an affordable price in the link in the description. Other guidebooks, bankruptcy, freedom of information act. I recently did a one hour consulting call with somebody who insisted that their social security number does not appear on the COVID loan. And because I processed hundreds of those, I know that it does appear in the file. And so I encourage that person to file a freedom of information act request to get a copy of their application to prove what I was telling them on the one hour consulting call. And we have a guidebook about that. In other words, we've created a lot of resources to assist you because when you communicate with the SBA, they make it so complicated and so difficult. And the Congress is not doing enough to advise the small business administration to support you in a more reasonable way. And that's where we come in. Again, I want to thank you for tuning into our videos. Please hit that thumbs up, like the video, consider subscribing and I'll see you on the next video.