Crush Student Loan Debt with Laurel Taylor
Crush Student Loan Debt with Laurel Taylor
If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know how much I hate student loan debt and how it not only impacts the financial but the mental health of people who have it. I’m always open to having a positive conversation about it and learn about more resources to help people manage it.
Joining me today is Laurel Taylor, founder and CEO of FutureFuel.io, a company that is focused on providing great resources and education on student loan debt. She joins me to discuss why she started the company and how what she’s learned can help you if you have student loans.
What are we drinking?
Laurel - Smoothie (strawberries, blueberries, celery, pea protein, and coconut water)
Shannon - Black Cherry Schweppes
Podcast Notes
Laurel didn’t ever feel like being an entrepreneur was an option for her. After graduating from Texas State University, she had a lot of student debt. As an entrepreneur, sometimes you don’t pay yourself or pay yourself less.
Her job after college was to get a full-time job to pay down her debt. It took her a long time before being an entrepreneur was possible.
Fintech, and FutureFuel, found Laurel, through multiple life stacking events. She wanted to be part of the solution for student debt, because it came back into her life after she went to graduate school.
Laurel and her mom took out debt for her undergrad degree. Her mom took out a Parent Plus loan at 9% interest, when she was a social worker making $24,000 a year.
Laurel paid off her student loan debt about eight years after graduation. The same day she received a 2% interest rate on a mortgage, she received a 9% interest rate on a student loan for grad school.
Two companies have recently deployed FutureFuel as a benefit. One is a global tech company and the other is a Neobank.
The average user at the Neobank has a median income of $24,000 and their average student loan debt is $59,000. The global tech company has engagement over 203 departments, with salaries ranging from $41,000 to $300,000, and average student debt is $83,000.
Everyone has student loan debt. It is pervasive throughout all departments and salaries. The number one mission of FutureFuel is to crush student loan debt and empower users to go beyond it.
UCLA recently produced a study that showed student loan debt is the unhappiest of all debts.
FutureFuel is a platform strategy that is a programmatic approach that is rooted in behavioral economics and personalization. A user engages in the platform and FutureFuel aggregates the data to enable that user to change, crush, and learn about their student debt.
Change is a response to COVID. Change enables users to shift to income driven repayment plans. FutureFuel has mapped 127 federal repayment plans that are available. In two minutes, the user can find what they are eligible for and compare them side by side.
On average, FutureFuel saved users at the Neobank 89% off their monthly student loan bill. For the global tech company, they saved users an average of 56% off their student loan bill. Most borrowers don’t know what options are available to them.
At the Neobank, 57% of the users were unemployed, they just lost their job due to COVID.
The goal is to get the user on the right repayment plan, based on income, number of dependents, state of residence, and tax filing status. The entire experience takes about 11 minutes.
Once they get the user on the right repayment plan, they utilize programs that round up what the user spends and cash back programs for shopping online to crush the student debt and automate it.
Out of the $1.6 trillion of student loan debt, about $250 billion is eligible to be refinanced. This looks like a credit score of 750+, six figure salary, and $5,000 to $6,000 of cash flow.
The federal government has made some great programs available to borrowers, other than refinancing, like the six-month payment suspension that was included in the CARES Act.
On average, it takes 17 to 20 years to pay off student loan debt.
FutureFuel doesn’t make money on refinancing or a user shifting to federal repayment plans.
Through user interaction and customer service, of the users that have over $100,000 of student debt, 1 in 15 are suicidal. This program allows for users to have an advisor to talk to.
Around 64% of students and their parents don’t understand what they are signing up for, when they sign up for their student loan.
Innovation is needed in the industry. In all other areas of our lives we can make informed decisions. A big part of the problem is the start of the process. Most users, while in college, don’t know what their total loan amount will be or their monthly payment.
Student loan debt is the second largest debt to mortgages and the process isn’t digitized.
Create a financial list for schools including the financially easy school, middle of the road school, and the financial reach school. Do you really need to go to the financial reach school?
If schools are virtual now, what about community college? You won’t be on campus right now anyway. There needs to be a drop of academic shaming. Is a four-year degree necessary for the job you want?
Visionaries, like Elon Musk, are introducing alternative sources of education, like coding boot camps. As employers begin to rethink their hiring requirements, it will empower households to think differently about how to set themselves and their kids up for success.
Takeaway: My biggest takeaway is that the student loan repayment process is not an overnight one, but there are a number of strategies you can take to make the most out of your repayment process, and staying educated on all of those during your journey is critical.
Random Three Questions
What are you currently binge watching?
What do you do to relax?
If you won a million dollars, what would you do with it?
Connect with Laurel
Website: FutureFuel.io
If you have any topics you would like me to cover on this podcast, or If you’d like to get in the financially naked hot seat, I encourage you to email me to Shannon@fingyms.com, or join the private Martinis and Your Money Facebook group, and let me know what you want to hear.
If you’d like help on how you can manage your student loans while also planning for other goals you have in life, I hope you’ll reach out to my team at The Financial Gym. We have a number of trainers who are experts at helping you navigate a student loan repayment journey and we’d love to work with you. So head over to, or send friends to, financialgym.com to get set up today.