The Student Debt Problem Isn’t Just the Amount Borrowed | Laine Schoneberger

Student debt in America has now tripled in the last two decades to $1.8 trillion. On top of it, the interest rates, in some cases, in double digits. Today, we sit down with Lane, who's with BuyRefi. They help refinance student loans. He's here to tell us what's going on behind the scenes in this industry, why the loans are going up significantly, and what is happening with the interest rates, and how people are impacted. We have 50% of our portfolio is teachers and nurses. They're a prime example. They have to have all this education in order to come out and get a career started. And they'll start off at the lowest spot, right? The teachers, they don't start out making $100,000, $112,000, $115,000 a year. They start out making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, maybe. And they have to work their way up. Well, you can't service the debt, especially if the interest rate is high. So they find themselves in trouble right out of the gate. I mean, this is what we're doing to people. We're crushing them with debt. I'm Siamak. Welcome to Market Insider. Lane, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. We want to talk to you about student loans, and it's a good indicator of what's going on with the economy. What are you seeing out there right now? You are involved with this. What we're seeing in the general economy is that people are struggling to make their payments. The federal portfolio is now back in repayment, which is causing a lot of stress on people in general. Their private student loans are creating a lot of pressure as well. Interest rates are, on private student loans, interest rates are typically variable interest rates. So it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the borrower when they're not in default, their credit is fine, and all of a sudden their interest rate over the last couple of years has gone from single digits up into the 15, 16, 17%. And they've got good credit. They can't even refinance that somewhere. If they can, maybe they can shave off a point or two, because that's just what the interest rates are right now on private student loans. Federal student loans, that's a whole nother basket. And how much is the interest on those, on the federal ones? You know, it varies depending on the type of loans, and there's a ton of different options out there. Some of the programs have been terminated. Other programs are newer because under Biden, they added programs, they changed programs. Some have been completely canceled now. And honestly, I'm not even following it very closely simply because there's no reason to in our world. But they offer all of these programs for borrowers on payment relief. I would tell you, look at that closely. So you've got, for example, income-driven repayment plans, okay? If you have a borrower who is on an income-driven repayment plan, they owe the government, I'm gonna make up a number, they owe the government $50,000. And they're making a $5 a month payment, okay, just so they can say they're not in default. The reality is you're in default. A $5 payment on a $50,000 loan, you're not getting anywhere. It's all going towards nothing, right? Not even, it's not even covering the interest. On paper, it looks like it's fine. What they're doing is they're saying, we're not gonna report you to the credit reporting bureaus and damage your credit because you're making your $5 payment. But all the time that you're spending in your money, your balance continues to go up and up and up. And the next thing you know, you owe a ton of money to the government. You started here and now you're here. Well, you're not getting anywhere. So all you're doing is deferring a problem. So I'm not a huge fan of all of these forgiveness problems, the whole COVID forbearance. That created a massive problem for borrowers. But their interests were still growing on the loans? No, there was a time in there where they had a 0% interest, but they were also, they were saying, no payments were due. And there's reports of borrowers they've sent their money in, maybe even to pay off their loan, and they got it rejected, sent back. It makes no sense. Like, why would you turn away the borrower's money that are trying to pay off their loan? This is the kind of crazy that's happening within the federal government. You know, I don't wanna spend too much time on the federal portfolio to say it's a mess. I mean, this administration has their hands full with all of the different programs over all of the years that have been created. I don't understand how they're gonna get their arms around it, frankly. I mean, I've had conversations with the administration at pretty high levels. And frankly, I don't understand how they're gonna wrap their arms around it and fix it at this point. Now, Lane, how big are these loans? On the government side, it varies. But see, the government doesn't lend you all of the money typically to go to school. So that's why private student loans existed. And that's why we exist, is there's this private student loan market where, you know, this is how people get into trouble. Okay, so they graduate high school, they go to college, and the first stop is gonna be the financial aid office. And I'm being a little bit straight about it, but here's, you know, they stop at the financial aid office. So if they don't have scholarships, they don't have the money from mom and dad, or they haven't saved the money, or the way to pay for it, first thing they do is the free application for federal student aid, FAFSA, right? And really, that's just an indicator of how much money will the government loan this student to go to school. And the variables are things such as where are you going, what's your degree, how much money does mom and dad have to contribute, et cetera. And then they say, here's how much we're gonna give you. So this varies significantly. So now you've got this borrower who has said, okay, I wanna be a fill in the blank on my occupation. And the government says, we're gonna give you this much money, but you need this much. So the next stop is the next office, which is the private student loan lenders. You know, there are lenders out there such as Sallie Mae, they do federal and private lending. You've got companies, you know, banks and other lending institutions, SoFi, et cetera, all great institutions to borrow the money provided that's what you need. Then you have the student is consumed with the idea of going to college, right? Maybe it's because they're the first one in the family to go. Maybe it's because mom and dad went and they're going to their alumni, you know, they're gonna go to the school where mom and dad went, whatever the reason, right? Kid takes out all this loans. And you're talking about an 18, 19, 20 year old taking out what could amount to thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans depending on their occupation that they're gonna try and get a degree for. And then you flip to the other side. They graduate, they get their career started and they get into trouble. Especially right now where you've got these loans that are variable interest rate loans, they come out and we use in our example for, we have 50% of our portfolio is teachers and nurses. So they're a prime example. They have to have all this education in order to come out and get a career started. You'll see them come out with $150,000 in student loan debt and they'll start off at the lowest spot, right? The teachers, they don't start out making 100, 112, 115,000 dollars a year. They start out making 40, 50, 60,000, maybe, right? And they have to work their way up. Well, you can't service the debt, especially if the interest rate is high. So they find themselves in trouble right out of the gate. I mean, this is what we're doing to people. We're crushing them with debt. So they come out, they can't afford the payment. They get into trouble. It ruins their credit. Student loans are basically impossible to get out of through a bankruptcy, right? They have a bankruptcy protection wrapper so they don't have options. And- You still have to pay it no matter what. You still have to pay it. It's going to follow you for the rest of your life. And here's the other part. A little over 70%, historically speaking, even in our portfolio, have a co-borrower. So mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, someone co-signed because they wanted that person to get the education and have a better life. So they're on the hook for those loans with the student borrower who's now out in the workforce, right? And we hear stories all the time where borrowers are coming out and they can't afford the payment and they're embarrassed. They're scared. They're frustrated. They're all, fill in the blank on the adjective, right? It's all of the emotions. And in a lot of cases, they don't even tell mom and dad or grandma and grandpa that they're in default. They find out because the phone rings and it's a collection agency. So you can imagine the strife that this puts into the family unit. So the collection agency is going after the parents. You bet. You bet they are. A lot of the phone calls that come into YREFI start with the mom or dad, the grandparents, because they don't want the damaged credit. They're already damaged. Now they're looking for a way to pay this debt back. They're looking for a way to help. We've heard stories where kids and grandkids aren't talking to parents and grandparents and vice versa, because they've damaged their credit. And it was unintentional, I'm sure. It's not like they went in there and intentionally defaulted. It was a case of, I couldn't afford the payment and it's embarrassing, so I'm not gonna talk about it. And now all of a sudden, Thanksgiving is here, Christmas is here, and it's an awkward time in that family because they're not communicating, right? It's horrible. The stories we hear are absolutely, they'll blow your mind. From what you're saying, it seems like 18, 19-year-olds are going and investing a lot of money on their degree without really knowing what they're getting into. What the lenders think about, you're getting a degree and this is what your income should be, and this is what you afford. You cannot afford to pay $250,000 for a degree that will pay you $50,000 a year. If the interest rate is double digits, right? Exactly, this is where the problem began. So if you look back in the Wayback Machine, you look back to 2008, end of 2007, total student loan debt in this country, total, about $685 billion. To you and me, that sounds like a lot of money, right? That's not a lot of money. Today it's $1.87 trillion. Wow, so it tripled. Easily, and it's continuing to get out of, it's still out of hand. So what did that happen? Well, the government got involved, okay? So all lending was brought back into the Department of Education in 2008. And when they did that and they opened up the purse strings, the cost of college started going up, right? If you're looking at nine, 10% inflation on college costs before real inflation kicked in, okay? So it's basic Keynesian economics, right? Money supply goes up, prices go up, and that's exactly what happened. So the government's just literally giving away money at this point. Anybody that wants to go to school, it doesn't matter, we're just gonna give you the money. Well, now you've got a massive debt crisis. And now the private lenders come back into the picture 2012-ish. It should have never left the private markets, right? Because if you're a private lender, you're going to underwrite differently. You're going to look at things like, what is the degree? Where are you going to school? What's your capability of you actually making this payment at the future date? And the government's just doing this, just handing out the money. Private lenders, they don't do that. Now, under this particular administration, I don't wanna get too political. However, under this administration, it's very much, we need to get the government out of the lending business, return this back to the private markets where you're gonna get proper underwriting, where you're gonna get proper accountability. Get it out of the government. The government shouldn't be lending money anyway. They just shouldn't. That's a whole nother conversation. So if you get these private lenders back involved, there's gonna be better accountability and more responsibility for, okay, you're gonna go to school, what do you really wanna do? We're not gonna go get a degree in underwater basket weaving and not be able to come out and have a career, right? So I think it's gonna be a good thing to see the government get out. Are the private lenders doing a lot of due diligence or are they not because it's already guaranteed, it's already, it doesn't go away from bankruptcy? When you, as a 20-year-old, go there and get like $50,000 from them, they're gonna say, you're gonna figure out how to pay it back because it's gonna stay with you forever. Well, yeah, when a private lender's involved, it's not guaranteed. It's not backed by the government. That's a private loan from a private bank or private lending institution. So that goes away with the bankruptcy? No, no, it's still got the bankruptcy protection because it's still a student loan. So Title IV schools, bankruptcy wrapper, the whole bit. So it's not guaranteed, like if the borrower doesn't pay it back, the government's not gonna pay the bank, right? That's what I'm referring to. It has that, it has the protections in the sense that the borrower can't just walk away by bankrupting. It's got a co-borrower typically because they're looking at all of the typical underwriting, right, when you're, when you go in and you get a car loan, they're looking at things like your FICO score and your debt to income ratios and all these things. Well, gosh, I don't make enough to buy that car, but I can get it if I have a co-borrower. Same thing with student loans, same idea, right? You gotta have a co-borrower if you need a co-borrower and the private lenders are going to be a little more firm, if you will, right? It's not the government where it's like, oh, well, welcome to school, here you go. The private lender's like, let's talk about this. Is this really the best thing, right? Is this a degree that you can actually complete the education, get the degree, start a career, make the money and pay us back, right? So it's just a little different world. When the co-signers, co-borrowers sign up, do they know that this debt is going to stay with them if the kids can't pay? They don't know, right, for most part. I would tell you that they know, but it's glazed over, right? This goes back to how well are these things being explained to these young people when they're going to school? How well are they being explained to the co-borrowers, right, as opposed to just this idea of grandeur of going into the college and getting the education and living the college life and getting that college experience, right? At some point, the borrower, the student borrower and the parents or grandparents or whoever's co-signing needs to help that borrower understand that it's not just about having that college experience. It's about getting in, getting the education and getting out, right? Get it done and get out. Don't become the lifetime student. I think it's very expensive. Why do you think the tuitions keep going up and they seem to be a little bit unreasonable? Like when you do the math, you do the numbers and the cost is just, it's so expensive now, especially for some of the private schools. It's completely out of line. It's unreasonable, especially with all of the technology where you've got kids doing a lot of online stuff. So now they've got bigger and bigger and bigger classes. You know, you've got professors who are tenured. You've got sports programs that are completely and totally, in my opinion, out of control where you're paying coaches. You've got these massive arenas and facilities and it's just, it's excessive in my opinion. I understand there's a need for some of that, but at the same time, why are we spending that kind of money, right? I mean, it's almost like the university money pit. It just keeps going and going and going. At what point do we stop and say, where's the value? Where's the value for the education side? The whole point was to get an education, not just spit out a bunch of people that run a football up and down a field or a court or a whatever, right? And I'm not suggesting that the folks that are in the sports are not getting something out of it, but what about the other folks that are there, right? You've got all of these opportunities for different occupations. Are they really capitalizing on making those people as strong as they could be? You've got amazing athletes doing amazing things, but what about, are you generating good doctors and other professions? Are you really giving the best education you possibly can for everything else? Or is it just about sports, right? And if the cost is so high, what it does to people is the people that go into debt, they have to pay for those facilities. Right, you've got the schools just putting people deeper and deeper into debt. And if I want an education and I don't have the money, I have to borrow it in order to get the education. Well, okay, am I doing it because the education is really what I want or am I doing it because of the social pressures of having a degree from this university, whether it's social pressures, family pressures, whatever it is, right? So I get my degree, I come out, now can I actually get a job? Or can I start a business and do something with the education that I just got? And I don't know that I'm seeing a lot of that these days. It's really unfortunate. So you said half, and tell us a little bit about your business and then you'd said half of your portfolio right now is nurses and teachers, which is shocking because these are good paying, especially nurses right now are in high demand and teachers too, but these are stable jobs, people that figured out to get a job after graduation. So they're the ideal, right? They're great job stability. We need teachers, we need nurses as we experienced the pretty well pandemic proof. I mean, these are people that we need in our society, right? And unfortunately it costs a tremendous amount of money for them to have the education that's required in order for them to get their certificate and actually get the job. So teachers have to have, in a lot of cases, a master's, the nurses, they need all of these degrees. Well, then they go and they get their job and they don't typically start at the top of the ladder. They just don't. And because of that, they're not getting paid these high wages. So they start off down here and they start working their way up. And after a few years of doing the job, they start making more and more money. Well, sometime between here and here is when they get into trouble. And that's why REFI exists. So all we do is refinance distressed private student loans. These are borrowers who they got into trouble typically early on, right? If we're looking at the borrower profile, and this is why we don't underwrite on their FICO score. Their credit score to us is irrelevant. We know they have a bad FICO. We know why they have a bad FICO. Most of these folks, they don't own homes. If they own a car, it's typically paid for, or it is a very small financing because they just, they have bad credit. They typically don't have much, if any, credit card debt. Okay, because they came out of school and they got whacked by their student loans. So they never had a chance to really get their financial footing. So again, we're not looking at them from a FICO standpoint. We're looking at them from a, tell us about your life. Let's look at the real life stuff. Can, and at the end of the day, can you afford the why REFI payment? Which is typically 50% of what they're being asked to pay in the environment they're currently in. Because remember, they're in distress. They're in default and their credit has been destroyed. They're getting the collection calls. They're being chased. They're probably being threatened with garnishment of wages. So we're looking at them as, okay, can we help this person get out of the situation that they're in? And we underwrite them very carefully. Okay, it's very similar to getting a mortgage, the process we put our borrowers through. We want them to start making those payments to us right away so we can prove they have the willingness and ability to pay us back. That's the underwriting process. Well, during that timeframe, as we get to know them, we're also working with the existing lender, servicer, collection agency, law firm to help negotiate the cost of that debt, which we'll settle and pay off at a discount and then refinance it back to the borrower, right? Now, a lot of people, they ask, well, if a borrower had $100,000 in student loans, which is not uncommon. Just normal people. Just normal people, just like you and me. $100,000, $150,000, I mean, teachers and nurses. For a teacher degree or nurses. $125,000, $150,000 in student loans. We get asked frequently, why don't you share that discount with the borrower? So just to tell us the payment for something like that, $150,000, it's $20,000 a year. Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be $1,500, $2,000 a month. Is it after tax? Yeah, they'll all be after tax money. Wow. Yeah, the payments to your student loan are not pre-tax. You can, in certain cases, you might be able to write off the interest if you're making the payments. The interest might be deductible, depending on, we can get into a little tax conversation, but that's about it. So it's kind of like buying a home. You're kind of- Pretty much. Taking a mortgage. In certain parts of the country, I mean, California, you cannot buy a home for that. But- True. So yeah, no, there's just this huge monkey on their back that they cannot seem to get rid of. So, you know, we settle the debt, we pay it off, and then with us, they still owe the same amount, but we do share the discount. We do it through a low fixed interest rate and a custom term built around their ability to pay. So they're not long-term predatory loans. They're short-term custom tailored loans built around that borrower's ability to pay, right? So now all of a sudden you've got a borrower who couldn't afford 2,000 a month, but we get it to them at 1,000, right? 1,500 a month is now 750, roughly, give or take. And they can afford that, and we know that because they've gone through our underwriting and they're going to do that for several months. We're intentionally slow in underwriting. We want to make certain that these people are going to be serious about paying this debt back. But we do share that discount with them. And as you can imagine, there's a spread, right? We pay the loan off for this, the loan is worth this, and then we're sharing that spread with our investors. Hence the commercials people have probably seen where we're paying 10 and a quarter on a five-year note. So we're sharing that spread with our investors, and it becomes a true win-win-win. The borrower's winning because they can afford their payments, they're getting out of debt, their FICO score is typically recovering very quickly. They start living a good, responsible life, right? The investors are winning because we're giving them a good rate of return. And then the lender, servicer, collection agency, law firm, they're finally going to get something out of this, right? We already know that it's going to take them five years to get what we're willing to give them today, cash. So time value of money, they're in a win-win situation. They've already written this thing off from a tax perspective. They've moved on, they just want to get what they can. Well, now they've gotten something far more than they're going to get if they just keep harassing this poor borrower. So it's a win-win-win. And at the end of the day, YREFI wins as well. So, but we're the last in line. That's four wins. Four wins. That's cool. Pretty interesting how you set this up. Now, how much is, how long is the term? Like, let's say I had $150,000 of debt, I got a nursing degree or teaching degree, and then I, now I have to pay $1,500 to $2,000 a month. And for how long is the typical, is it 20 years, 10 years? And then how long do you guys negotiate it down to with them? So with us, our longest term is only 20 years. Now they might've come out of school with a longer term. Our longest term at YREFI is only 20 years. So there's that. On the other side, our interest rates are currently our only, our highest interest rate is 5.19, fixed to the borrower. So it goes from double digit, you guys bring it down to a very low. Yeah, if they're not in default right now, we're hearing people calling in saying, hey, my interest rate is 16, 17%, 18%. I'm not in default. People that are in default are now paying the default interest rate, collection fees, late fees, all of that. So they might be sitting 20% or north APR and hitting maximum usury, frankly, in whatever state they're in. In our world, 5.19 is the highest interest rate that we charge, and 20 year term. Lane, you have seen a lot of this, right? And is that, you saw that the student debt is skyrocketing, essentially tripled. And it looks like there's some level of us being irresponsible by doing this to young people. What are your thoughts on that, what you've seen? Are you concerned about these people are losing a lot of their future income for borrowing at a young age for a degree that they might not even know what they're gonna do with? I am concerned. And I'm concerned because you've got young people going to school for what they think they want to have a degree in for a career they think they want, and they're not even certain. I couldn't even tell you the statistics on the kids who graduate with a degree and then never work in that field. Most of the time that happens. My wife is a prime example, right? She went and she got a degree in ag sciences and she did insurance and real estate, and she spent six minutes in agriculture after she got her degree. And this is a long time ago, okay? So it's only gotten worse. And I'm not knocking those folks because everybody does it. At a young age, you don't know what to do. At a young age, you don't have a clue. How could you possibly hold someone accountable to that? It's almost like, let's get them through the basics and let them mature a little bit, right? Basics meaning the English, the math, the science, the history, the basic stuff. And during that time, let's find out what is of interest to these young people and then mold them into a career that makes sense for them. And that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. Asking someone who's 18 years old to commit to a career seems silly. They don't know what they want. They don't even know what careers are out there in a lot of cases, right? So why would we pin them down on that and then give them a bunch of money that they got to pay back and they'll never be able to do it. So we're literally creating this problem every single day in these settings of colleges and universities. And it's one of the reasons Charlie Kirk was big on trade schools and tech schools, right? There's great careers there, tech and trade. We just created a product at the WIREFI platform and it's called Ignite by WIREFI where we fund new borrowers going to school in the tech and trade. Why? It's a great career. I mean, you can make a tremendous amount of money and you come out with this much debt instead of this much debt. So the cost of getting the training is a lot less than- Substantially less, you know? And then you might have someone who maybe they want to learn how to weld or maybe they want to be a barber or drive a truck or whatever their trade is, they can go make a great living and not get out with this massive amount of debt. So we need to be supporting that and getting behind that. And WIREFI, we do, obviously, because it's really about, let's get these people an education so that they can get out there and start making money. Because picture it, you decide you want to be a welder. You get a certificate and let's just pretend it's $10,000. Okay, that's manageable, $10,000. Maybe you do that for a year or two and you decide, ah, this welding thing, this stinks. This is horrible. I want to go do something else. Okay, your debt is minimal. You probably already paid it back because it was so minimal, right? So why would we- What if it's 100, 150? Yeah, you go to school because I want to be a teacher because my mom was a teacher and my grandma was a teacher and you come out with $150,000 in debt and now you want to be a teacher. Now your interest is $20,000 a year. Right, and you got this massive loan with all this high interest. You go into the classroom and you learn that it's not what mom and grandma had. And you're like, this teaching thing is not my gig. I'm out. They put two years in and they're done. They've given up because it's just not what they thought it was going to be, right? And that maybe shouldn't be- We shouldn't be treating our teachers and so forth like that but that's another conversation. It's more about how is it possible that these people can actually decide they want to do that and be serious about it when they don't even realize what's involved in the career. Right, they came out of high school when they went right into this idea. So what's the fix, in your opinion? How would we go back to lowering this debt or at least not grow it at the levels we are growing it? The first step, get the government out of the lending business. Get them out. Completely, totally out. By kind of, I call it guaranteeing but by not letting you get rid of the debt in bankruptcy or just other factors? The bankruptcy protection is not a bad thing. That's the way to hold people accountable, right? Because you get down to it. I borrow $100,000 to get an education. There's nothing, there's no collateral, right? So if I'm allowed to bankrupt out- Then there's no reason for you to just walk away. Yeah, why would I, as a bank, lend anybody money on $100,000 to go to school? So you think that would kill this market if they- If they took away the bankruptcy protections- Nobody would lend it. Nobody would lend and now nobody can go to school because there's no money to go to school. So I don't think taking away the bankruptcy protection is the answer. Getting the government out of the lending business is the answer. That's step one. Step two is the schools, particularly the schools with these massive endowments. They need to be making the loans. They need to be the private lender, right? They need to be looking at these students and saying, okay, so you want to come to our school and get a degree in fill in the blank. Okay, our endowment will loan you the money at this interest rate, at this terms, et cetera, et cetera. And now the endowment, some of these schools have these, I mean, when I say massive, they're in billions. They could be paying for these kids' education. They could do a 5% interest. Yeah, they could do a loan. They could do a grant, a scholarship. I mean, they should be doing far more than they are doing, as opposed to just sucking away money for God knows what. So those are the first two steps, in my opinion. Get the government out, make the schools accountable. Getting the government out helped, because they're still a player, and you said their interest is lower than the, how would that help? Well, if you get the government out, right, because the government, their interest is lower, yes, but they've got all these programs, and the government shouldn't be lending tax dollars for something like this, right? Why should they be lending me? Let's say I'm a student, right? I want to go get an education in whatever. Why are the taxpayers' dollars funding my education? That doesn't make any sense. We're in a world of capitalism and a world of entrepreneurship and innovation, and that's why I look at it, and I think get the private lenders to take more accountability for this, where it's, and this will also teach them, right? You set them down with a banker, and they got to fill out an application to get a loan, and they have to answer questions that make sense, as opposed to how much money can mom and dad pay back and all this other garbage that the government is asking, but a real loan, where they have to understand what it is they're signing up for, right? It's not, no bank is gonna just, you can't walk into a bank and say, give me $10,000, and they do it. They have questions. Well, put them through the process. Teach these kids the responsibility of taking out that kind of a loan. What does it mean? I got to pay it back. What's the payment look like? When do I have to start paying it back? What are the terms? What happens if I don't pay it back, right? All of that, and I don't think anybody's really explaining that to them. In your business, how much loans are you servicing now? So we've funded over 200 million of new loans, originations of, I say new loans, meaning borrowers who have refinanced their existing debt with us. Remember, all of our borrowers are done with their education. They're out of school. They're not in school anymore. They're struggling. They kind of figured out that they can't pay, and they stopped paying, and then they came to you guys. Right, something happened. They couldn't afford it. Now they're in default. They come to us. Those are the loans. So over $200 million of loans funded. We have a pipeline right now of borrowers looking for help, and these are borrowers that have done a full application with us. They're making those escrow payments every month. It's eclipsed $240 million. That's growing at two to three million a day right now. What do these people go through? What's it like for people? It's a very scary time. On our call floor, we have inbound calls only. We don't buy portfolios or anything, so a borrower has to find us, right? And they're gonna find us through a myriad of ways, from advertising and so on. But when they call us, there are a lot of times where there's a lot of crying, a lot of emotions, because they're scared. They're embarrassed. They're upset. They're nervous. They're confused. I could fill in all the blanks on all the different things. There's a lot of family strife. We've heard borrowers talking about suicide. That's the option that they can come up with because there's no other way. Nobody will loan them any money. Nobody will help them out of the situation. They've got a co-borrower, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa they may or may not be talking to anymore. It's an epidemic. Frankly, it's a problem. These people call in and we wanna just hear their story. We wanna hear them talk and listen to them, ask questions, see what we can do to hear. How can we help you? Because of that, I mean, our people that are on the front lines, these are the guys that are doing the heavy lifting, in my opinion, at our company, because they're listening to those stories. We give them resources. I mean, you have HR, right? Everybody's got an HR. Every company's got HR. And I love my HR team. They're awesome. They're rock stars. But that's very corporate, very sterile. So we have a on-staff chaplain, full-time. Okay, so if they need someone to go sit and talk to, pray with, just whatever they need, they can go sit and they can talk with Steve. And if that's not your thing and HR isn't where you need to go, okay, over in the corner, we've got a pool table and a ping pong table. Go over there and crush a ball. Get the frustrations out so you can go back and keep going. The other side of that coin is our employees. And I hear it all the time and I just love it because it makes me so happy. They love working there. They love helping people. They love hearing and seeing the success stories. I'm the admin on our Google account. So every time someone leaves a review, I get to see it. Five-star, five-star, five-star. And they're not just leaving a five stars. They're telling a story. These borrowers are coming in. They're writing little stories about them, how they got there in this situation and how Wider Reefite helped them get out of it and what it means to them. And I mean, wow. Wow, it's very cool. So you started this in 2017. Yes, sir. And did you think you would get here by now? You know, my partner and I had a plan and we were kind of just gonna kind of fly under the radar and help a bunch of people get out of debt. And then as we started to really get momentum, I think when things shifted for us was at the beginning of the pandemic. We felt we needed a borrower testimonial, right? And we were just helping people and doing the thing. And it was really about just helping people get out of debt. And how many borrowers did you have at that time? Do you remember? Oh gosh, 2020, we were probably just several hundred. I mean, I don't think we'd even crossed a thousand. Pretty small, right? Pretty small. We were just getting started. I mean, it was very much down here. And the real spike has happened in late 23 and into 24 where we just, everything is hockey stick. But I think where that mindset shifted was at the beginning of the pandemic, we did our first borrower testimonial. And the story that we heard changed the trajectory of the company, in my opinion. That was when we realized how significant what we were doing really was. When you hear a borrower talking, this is the very first testimony. When you hear a borrower talking about suicide as the only option, and you've got the solution right here in front of you. And it took her from that thought process to my life is great, I'm married, I have a kid, I now have a home and a custom home. Two homes now, right? I mean, this is only in a matter of a couple of years from the time we funded her loan to the time we're now in the pandemic. And that's how much her life had shifted for the better. And we're sitting here listening to this story thinking, wow, this is why we're here. This is it right here. And since then I've just done, I can't even tell you how many testimonials where I've heard horror stories of how it's ruining people's lives. And every single time it's, you guys changed the trajectory of my life. I'm like, okay, this is why we're here. This is it. So in 2023, late 23, early 24, we just saw this hockey stick. I mean, we were bringing in 50, 60 million a month in new borrower applications all of a sudden, right? It's just taken off, which is great. I love that we're able to help folks. Now we got to raise the capital to fund the loan. So I'm out there having conversations like this to tell our story. Lane, where can people find you if they have a student loan and where can the investors find you if they want to invest on these loans with you? Thank you for asking. So if you're a borrower and you need our help, you can go to whyrefi.com. It's the letter Y-R-E-F as in Frank, Y, whyrefi.com. Our 800 number's there. Give us a call. We just, we want to hear the stories, talk to the borrowers. If you're an accredited investor, a lot of people don't even know that they're accredited. So if you're an investor or they're looking to make an investment, give us a call at, well, you can go to investyrefi.com or you can go to 877-80-INVEST is a phone number. But investyrefi.com, learn more about who we are, our mission, what we're doing, the interest rates we pay, all the flexibility we've built into our investment. It's really something unique. Just like our borrower product, our investment product is completely custom tailored and built around what our investors were asking for. And I've had experience with you guys. You have. And I hope you like your investment. It worked well, right? It worked really well, yeah. Well, Lane, we hope you raise the capital soon and raise a lot more and help more people. It was great to have you on Marketing Insider. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Tell us what you think about this conversation with Lane. Do you have student loans? Was it the same for you when you went to college and got student loans? Did you have challenges paying them back? Or was it okay? Make sure to tell us in the comments. I'm Siamak, this is Marketing Insider. We'll see you next time.