Chiropractors Can Qualify For Tax-Free Student Loan Forgiveness Full Webinar

Dr. Hoffman: Hey, everyone. We’re live on Facebook now, and just getting ready for this “Chiropractic Economics” webinar to start.

Rick: All right. Welcome to the Tuesday webinar series, “Chiropractic Economics Webinar for Doctors of Chiropractic.” I’m Rick Vach, editor in chief of “Chiropractic Economics.” Today’s webinar, “Chiropractors Can Qualify for Tax-Free Student Loan Forgiveness” is sponsored by Student Loan Eraser. And as always, our program is being recorded and will be archived at “Chiropractic Economics” website, chiroeco.com/webinar for one year.

Our expert is on board today to speak with you, and when his presentation is complete, we’ll follow with a Q&A period. You can submit questions throughout the presentation by clicking on the appropriate chat icon on your screen. Our presenter today is Dr. Ian Hoffman, a second-generation chiropractor, nonprofit founder, and CEO of the Student Loan Eraser. Ian was honored as alumni of the year by Life Chiropractic College West in 2013 for making invaluable contributions to the chiropractic community and inspiring several friends and patients to become chiropractors.

Shortly after starting a nonprofit to assist people in need, he discovered the Public Service Loan Forgiveness or PSLF program, which will erase student debt tax-free in less than half the time of the income-driven repayment plans. He was able to qualify for PSLF and the Student Loan Eraser program was born. The Student Loan Eraser program has helped hundreds of doctors start nonprofits, and qualify for an expected $100 million in student loan forgiveness and counting. Thank you for taking the time to participate in our webinar and for sharing your expertise. And before we get started, can you please give us a little more background with your work with Student Loan Eraser?

Dr. Hoffman: Absolutely. Thanks, Rick. Well, I’m gonna share my screen with you guys, and we’ll jump right into my background here. So, let me jump right into this. Here we go. All right. So, thanks again, Rick. I am Dr. Ian Hoffman, and I’m gonna just share a little bit of my story with you. I’m gonna talk about three different types of student loan forgiveness, and then we’ll jump into the fastest and the only tax-free form of student loan forgiveness, just the best opportunity out there right now. So, let’s jump right in.

The goal of this presentation, or the title is, “How to qualify for total complete unlimited student loan forgiveness in three simple steps.” So, I’m gonna show you exactly how to do that. I do have a bonus at the end for everybody who’s watching. I know that the student loan industry is just super confusing. There’s a bunch of different types of student loans. There’s a bunch of different federal student loans. There’s also private student loans. There’s a bunch of different types of repayment plans. It’s a really confusing world out there.

So, at the end of this webinar…you know, for anyone who wants to talk to me, who wants to ask any questions, I’m gonna give you a link to sign up for a free phone consultation, and I’ll just give you my undivided attention and answer all of your questions one on one. So, the three types of student loan forgiveness, really quick. President Biden announced $10,000 of student loan forgiveness for every American with federal student loan debt. If as a single borrower, you make under $125,000 a year, or if you’re married, if you make under $250,000 a year.

It’s $10,000 if you have just regular student loans, it’s up to $20,000 if you have what’s called a Pell Grant. And the application is now online, but it’s in its beta testing. So, there’s been a lot of people flooding over to this website and it crashes a lot. So, if you get there and it’s not working, just check back periodically, but the link is there at studentaid.gov/debt-relief. And then let me move this little video icon. I can’t see the rest of it, but the link is on there for you guys.

The second type of student loan forgiveness that we’re gonna talk about in more detail are with the income-driven repayment plans. So, the income-driven repayment plans will have you make up to 25 years of payments. At that point, any remaining debt does get forgiven, but so many people have no idea that the forgiven debt is going to be taxed as if you earned the income that year. And so we’ll get into more details on that.

But the major type of student loan forgiveness I’ll be talking about today is called Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Public Service Loan Forgiveness is the best and fastest form of student loan forgiveness out there. It’ll erase your debt up to 15 years faster than with the income-driven repayment plans. So, we’ll jump into that. Public Service Loan Forgiveness, like I said, the fastest and the only tax-free form of student loan forgiveness. Public Service Loan Forgiveness actually started back in 2007 with the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. So, it’s been around for, what, 15 years now, which is pretty awesome.

And so, just to kind of compare these two, the income-driven repayment plans, like I said, 20 to 25 years of payments. And then at that point, any remaining debt, which is forgiven, gets taxed as if you earned the income that year. And so I found this on Google, that a wounded veteran in Michigan got his debt erased, but then got a $62,000 federal tax bill, and I think it was another $14,000 state tax bill. That’s not forgiveness, you guys. I call that fake forgiveness, right?

So, with PSLF, you get your debt erased 15 years faster, which is 10 instead of 25 years, and it’s 100% tax-free. That’s real forgiveness. So, my goal for this presentation is to show you how to break the chains of what is absolutely being called student debt slavery, and meet the three requirements for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. So, this is me at graduation with my parents. I graduated from Life Chiropractic College West in 2010, and I had a little over $150,000 of student loan debt. You know, I did the math early on, and my monthly payment was about $1,700 a month, and I started paying that right away because I wanted to pay off my debt as fast as possible.

I was on the standard 10-year repayment plan. And I found out that I was gonna be paying a little over $204,000 a month…I’m sorry, little over $204,000 total over 10 years, which includes $54,000 of just interests, right? That’s a little crazy. So, I felt a lot like this guy in the cartoon where this dad goes, “Move back home. Kids today are so lazy and irresponsible. Your mother and I started out with nothing.” That’s my dad’s voice. And this guy says, “Trust me, I would’ve loved starting out with nothing.” The fact is chiropractors today are graduating with $250,000 of student loan debt, which is absolutely crazy.

This kid has, you know, five-figure student loan debt, but a lot of us are in the multiple six-figure range. And it’s really hard to get started in life or to build a practice and build a life when you have that much debt on your shoulders. So, just to give a little background on me, I graduated in 2010. I moved back home with my parents after I graduated. I started my practice. And within a few years, you know, things got rolling. I was very fortunate. By 2013, I went to try to get a mortgage, and I went into the bank feeling really good. And unfortunately, I was denied for the mortgage. I was told my income was good, but my debt-to-income ratio was all messed up because of the student loans.

So, that made me leave the bank feeling like a failure, feeling like, you know, I was not able to provide the way I hoped I was going to be able to in life. You know, it just put a lot of junk in my head. So, I wanted to take responsibility. I wanted to research my student loans. I knew nothing about what type of loans I had, what repayment plan I was in. I just asked my servicer what was the best option. You know, that’s what most people do.

So, after doing some of my own research, I wound up switching from the standard 10-year repayment plan to an income-driven repayment plan. And that was great because it cut my monthly payment to under $500 a month. And the cool thing about that, at that time, there were different rules than there are now for Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae. And so I was able to qualify for the mortgage. That was the good news. The bad news was that I realized that now that I was on an income-driven repayment plan, my monthly payment was actually less than the interest.

And so that meant all of my monthly payment was going to basically interest only. I was gonna pay for 25 years, and at that point, I was gonna get stuck with a six-figure tax bill. And so I was stuck. Now, I was paying a mortgage, I had a baby on the way, and, you know, I really felt this financial black hole. And I was really frustrated. I was also really angry at the student loan system, even though I got a great education, and I love being a chiropractor, really it was a really frustrating time in my life.

So, this is the goal that I’m gonna share with you guys today. I’m gonna show you how to meet the three requirements to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. We’re gonna go through each of the three requirements in order. I’ll show you how to meet them and kind of what I did that was a little bit unique in order to make this work. So, the first requirement to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness is that you need to have what are called direct loans.

There are four different types of federal student loans. And I wanna just say from the start, unfortunately, there are also what are called private student loans that came from banks or, you know, other lending institutions. Unfortunately, private student loans cannot be turned into federal student loans, so they’re not eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. They can’t become eligible. But the cool thing is that if you have older student loans, Stafford, Perkins, or FFEL, sometimes FFELP, if you have any of those other three types, you can see here on the FedLoan Servicing website that you can consolidate. It’s called a direct consolidation. It’s a free process.

You can consolidate your non-eligible federal student loans into a direct consolidation loan to make them eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. So, really anyone with any of these three types of loans can turn their loans into direct loans and make them eligible for PSLF for free. So, that’s the first step. If you don’t know what type of loans you have, I didn’t know what type of loans I had. You can log into studentaid.gov to download your student loan data. Studentaid.gov is one of the official websites for the U.S. Department of Education. And it’s a really long download, but there’s a section of it that’ll look similar to this that shows you what type of loans you have.

So, you can see at the top two lines, this person has a direct consolidated loan where the principal is $97,523, and the interest is more than half of that. This person has over $58,000 of interest that’s accrued on their loan. But what I wanna show you is that as you look at the next few lines, this person had FFEL loans, and they even had a Federal Perkins loan, and those loans are now at zero. There’s no balance on that. Because what they did was they took that student loan debt and they consolidated it into a direct loan.

So, if you see that you have other types of student loan debt but it says zero, and then all of your principal and interest is under the direct loan, then you’ve already likely consolidated. And it would say direct consolidation there. So, that’s a way to find out what type of loans you have. If it turns out that you have other types of student loans, you may wanna consider a direct consolidation. But I would only suggest that for people who are going to qualify for PSLF because if you’re on one of the income-driven repayment plans and you consolidate, that time clock for the 20 to 25 years for forgiveness will start over. So, don’t do that unless you’re really sure that you’re going to pursue Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Next thing is that the first requirement is direct loans. The second requirement is that you have to be on an income-driven repayment plan. So, there are several different types of income-driven repayment plans. I’ll show you here. Starting at the bottom, we have income-contingent repayment. And that’s at 20% of your discretionary income is how they calculate your monthly payment. There are certain types of student loans that only can be put on the income-contingent repayment plan, but it’s rare. So, we’re gonna just move on from that.

Income-based repayment is next. For a long time, that was the most popular repayment plan. That was what all the student loan servicers were suggesting. That’s at 15% of discretionary income. But in the last few years, the Department of Education released 2 newer repayment plan options that are at 10% of discretionary income. So, you’ll see pay-as-you-earn is at 10%, and revised pay-as-you-earn is at 10%. So, for anyone who’s on ICR who has direct loans, you can cut your loan payment in half just by switching from income-contingent repayment to revised pay-as-you-earn.

If you’re on the income-based repayment plan, you can cut your payment down by 15% going…I’m sorry, 33% going from IBR to revised pay-as-you-earn. For most people, revised pay-as-you-earn is going to be the best plan because it comes with two giant unpaid interest subsidies that will have your debt accumulate more slowly. So, what that means is for anyone who has subsidized loans, there is a 100% unpaid interest subsidy for the first 3 years that you’re on the revised pay-as-you-earn plan.

What that means is, let’s say that your debt is growing at…you know, the interest is $1,000 a month, and your monthly payment is $300 a month. Normally, that $700 a month would accumulate. If that is a subsidized loan, you’re not responsible for any of that debt accumulation for the first three years. And then after that, there’s a 50% unpaid interest subsidy for all of your loans for the remainder of that term. So, even if you’re not going to pursue Public Service Loan Forgiveness, even if you’re just going to be on the revised pay-as-you-earn plan for 25 years and save up for that tax bill, this is how to lower that tax bill at the end. So, that’s a super important thing to know about.

Now, I have a client, I went to school with him, really great guy. He said, “Hi, Ian, I just wanted to let you know that my payment went from $974 a month to just $149 now that my loans are in the repay plan.” That in and of itself is a huge help. Thanks for your guidance.” And the funny thing is I did some math on that, and I was laughing because by saving $825,000 a month for 10 years, which is 120 months, he’s gonna keep $99,000 in his pocket, which is incredible, right? So, that’s almost $100,000 saved just by being on the right repayment plan. Okay? That’s not even including the loan forgiveness. So, really, really important.

Here’s a couple of other clients. Amber said, “I just wanna let everyone know my monthly loan payment went from $1,600…” She was on the standard repayment plan to just $150, right? That’s a huge savings with cash flow. Luiz, he actually got his student loans…he’s done the full 10 years. I’m gonna show you this next. He got his loans erased tax-free. He said, “Thanks, doc, for the awesome savings, $608 a month down to $270 for 10 years. So grateful, huge savings for me and the family.” So, in May of this year, Luiz sent me this official letter he received from the Department of Education.

Before PSLF, you can see he had a loan for $52,904.37, another loan for $60,000. And so all told, he had over $113,000 of debt that now it’s gone. It’s just erased tax-free with Public Service Loan Forgiveness. So, this is what I want for all of you, right? How good would it feel to go to your mailbox, pull out a letter from the Department of Education, and show that $100,000-plus of student loan debt, gone, right? It’s an amazing, amazing feeling. So, step one is that we need to make sure that you have direct loans. Step two is to make sure that you’re on a qualifying income-driven repayment plan. Step three is that only government and nonprofit employees qualify for PSLF.

So, when I first read about that requirement, honestly, my heart sank. I didn’t think I was going to be able to qualify. I was full-time in chiropractic practice. You know, it was a for-profit practice. And I just didn’t see any way that I could make this work. But you know how some people cross your path and just change your whole direction in life? This also happened in 2013 about 2 weeks after my son was born, I had a pregnant mom come into my office. She was about six months pregnant. She brought her 4-year-old little girl to this appointment. And you can tell by this picture, she had a serious health issue. She was as bald as me, right? And I just…I love this picture.

And the first thing this mom said to me when we sat down in the appointment, she said, “You know, my 4-year-old daughter, Caroline, has stage four cancer.” And I still choke up over this. You know, I had a 2-week-old beautiful baby boy at home, and just no parent or child should have to go through anything like this. So, it hit me hard. I went home that night. I kissed my healthy newborn son on the forehead, and I just was so grateful that he was healthy. And I just couldn’t get this family out of my mind.

So, when the mom came back for the report of findings, I was like, “Listen, I can’t imagine the stress that you’re going through, physical, financial, all of it. I just wanna help. I’m gonna take care of your whole family. I’m not gonna charge you.” Right? It was hard for me at the time because to be honest, I had a lot of student loan debt, and that made it really difficult to be generous. But I felt called to do this. And so, here’s that little girl now with her younger sister. The story has a happy ending.

We got her under care, the whole family. She started eating better. You know, this is not a testament to chiropractic and cancer. It’s nothing like that. But what’s really cool is that, you know, she started to get better. And that’s our why, right? So, what this little girl inspired me to do was to start a nonprofit branch of my practice to expand access to care for more people in need in the community and give back, right? Because it lit me up. To be honest, there was a time where I was doing a pretty decent volume in practice, and my dad and both of his brothers are chiropractors I grew up with chiropractic and the philosophy. I love the chiropractic profession, but I was also starting to feel a little burnout.

I had a newborn, I had a mortgage. I had car payments. I had student loan payments. And it’s a lot of stress and pressure. But there was something about just taking care of people that it really lit me up. So, I wanted to do that more. I wanted to to give back. And the nonprofit was my way to do that. And then I had this, like, lightning bolt moment where I figured out, or I kind of was wondering what if I reverse-engineered that last requirement for PSLF? And so that’s when the secret sauce really came together where I realized that you don’t have to quit your job and go work for the government or a nonprofit to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, you can start your own. You can absolutely make the world a better place and get your student loans erased at the same time.

So, that’s how the Student Loan Eraser program was born. Since then, the Student Loan Eraser program has helped start over 400 nonprofits, and our clients are expected to save well over a $100 million on their student loans. In fact, the average client is saving $267,432, which is absolutely unreal. So, let me just explain a little bit about nonprofits because not a lot of people really understand what they are or how they work. But 75% of hospitals in the U.S. are actually nonprofits that have 501(c) status. And 501(c) is tax exemption status. So, nonprofits actually don’t pay any taxes at the corporate level. People who donate to a nonprofit can take a tax write-off. There’s all sorts of benefits to running a nonprofit.

But the mission of these nonprofit hospitals is to expand access to medical care for people in the community, right? That’s the mission of the non-profits that the Student Loan Eraser is helping to start is we help you start a nonprofit to expand access to the miracle of chiropractic care for underserved in your own community. The cool thing is after talking with thousands of doctors, most people are already doing it. So, if you have anyone in your practice that you’re providing your services at a discount, whether it’s people with low income, people who don’t have insurance, people with…you know, whether it’s kids or active military, veterans, police, firefighters, you name it, right? You get to decide who is eligible for the lower fee.

The cool thing here too is a lot of people ask me about fee splitting. And fee splitting is when one business has two different fees for the same service, right? The nonprofit is a totally different business. So, the nonprofit has its own bank account, its own tax ID. We file articles of incorporation. It’s a totally separate business entity. And so you’ll have a for-profit organization with its own fee, and then for those who are eligible, you’ll have an organization with a different fee, right?

So, because most people are already doing this, because I already had patients that were paying less than my full fee, I’ve seen this being really, really easy to integrate. So, by expanding access to your services through a non-profit and providing a discount for people in need, you get the double benefit of being able to make the world a better place and get your student loans erased. So, that’s the huge win-win, okay?

Now, here’s a little more detail on how it works. You have to be a nonprofit employee to qualify for PSLF. So, when someone comes in, if they tell you, “I can’t afford it,” or, “I’m in the military,” or if they have any of…you know, meet any of the other requirements that you set on who qualifies as a nonprofit patient, what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna pay a discounted fee directly to the nonprofit, right? They’re not gonna pay your for-profit. It doesn’t touch your personal finances. There’s no commingling of funds. The money goes right into the nonprofit bank account. The nonprofit then pays you a small salary, right? Even minimum wage is fine. But once you’re on payroll from the nonprofit now that you’re a nonprofit employee, now you qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. You’ve met that third requirement.

So, that was the light bulb moment for me. And I love this GIF. But those are the three steps, right? Number one, direct loans. Number two…let’s go to this. Here’s the summary. So, “How to qualify for total complete unlimited student loan forgiveness in three simple steps.” Number one, you need qualifying loans, which are direct loans. If you don’t have direct loans, you can do what’s called a direct consolidation to turn your other types of student loan debt, federal student loan debt, into a direct loan so that it’s eligible.

Number two, you need to be on a qualifying income-driven repayment plan. If you’re not on an income-driven repayment plan, you can switch for free with an IDR income-driven repayment application online. Very simple and easy to do. That application takes about 10 minutes. And number three is qualifying employment. If you don’t work for the government or a nonprofit, you can start your own nonprofit organization to meet that third requirement. And that’s what we help you do.

So, the Student Loan Eraser is a proven system that’s helped start over 400 nonprofits, make the world a better place, and get over $100 million in student loan debt erased. This is Dr. Chuck. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s the past president of the San Diego Chapter of the California Chiropractic Association. And when we first met, we were talking a little bit about his student loans. And he said, “The mountain of student loan debt was like a black cloud that loomed over the rest of my life, I saw no way out. My debt did nothing but grow.” Right? I felt that way. So, many people I talk to feel that way.

And then after we were able to help him qualify for PSLF, he said, “Your program has given me hope that I will one day be free of this debt and able to live the rest of my life with joy and peace. It was so well organized that it was like someone was there constantly helping me cross every T and dot every I. So grateful.” Right? That’s why I’ve done this program. So, the question I get a lot is, “How much could I save?” The average chiropractor is saving $267,432 with this process because rather than paying for 25 years and then having to pay a tax bill on an income-driven repayment plan, with PSLF you’ll pay the minimum payment for 10 years, and then everything else gets erased tax-free. It just goes away, right?

So, by cutting up to 15 years off your repayment timeline, lowering your monthly payment, keeping money in your pocket for the next 10 years, and getting the entire balance erased, you can see why people are saving $250,000 with this process. This is another good friend of mine. She’s a naturopathic doctor. She’s gonna save $438,000. This is another doctor who’s gonna save $400,000. This is Emily. And so, Emily said, “My experience with Dr. Hoffman and the PSLF program has been spectacular. Knowing what I know and how complex the paperwork and how specific everything needs to be filled out in order to qualify, I would never consider going through this process without the help of the modules. It’s a step-by-step program. All the hard work is done for you.”

Emily was actually…she had just graduated when she started my program, and she was pregnant. So, she actually was able to start the nonprofit, go through this whole process, and finish it with a newborn. So, that’s how easy it is you guys. If Emily can do it, anyone can do this. This is another good friend of mine. She’s Dr. Shay. She was actually originally a friend and a patient. She became a chiropractor. She was able to qualify for $300,000 in savings. So, just those three people, they’re gonna save over a million dollars on their student loans.

So, when you join the Student Loan Eraser, what you get is access to the membership site. That’s why I broke the whole process down into eight bite-sized modules. So, Module 1 is a custom student loan plan. That’s where I look over what type of loans you have, what repayment plan you’re in, make sure that you have direct loans, and that you’re on an income-driven plan with the lowest monthly payment to maximize your savings and cash flow while we go through this process.

Step two is we will jump on a call and I’ll help you design the nonprofit. We’ll talk about the mission statement. We’ll talk about what services will the nonprofit provide, who qualifies as a nonprofit patient, and we’ll customize the nonprofit around you and your practice. From there, all that information gets sent to my team. So, legal, state, and IRS fees are included. They will write the articles of incorporation, the bylaws, the conflict of interest policy, send all of that to the state. When that comes back, they’ll get the tax ID, they’ll get the 501(c) status from the IRS.

While all of that is in process, then I’ll just walk you through the simple infrastructure steps. So, Module 3 is to hold your first board meeting. That should take about 30 minutes. I show you exactly how to do that. Module 4 is to open a bank account for the nonprofit. Super simple. Module 5 is to start payroll and connect a credit card processor to the nonprofit. The cool thing about…as soon as you start payroll, that’s really exciting because that’s the first month that’ll count for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Module 6 and 7, there’s actually no action steps. We’re just waiting to get the 501(c) status letter back from the IRS. So, in module 6, I’ll go over office systems, scheduling, billing, how to keep the two organizations at arms-length, which is legally and financially separate. We’ll talk about, you know, those kind of details. Module 7 is ongoing compliance. There’s an article in nonprofitquarterly.org that said 6 months of compliance training for nonprofit executives costs between $4,000 and $30,000 for bigger organizations. That’s 100% included. I don’t wanna just help you start a nonprofit, I wanna teach you how to run it and keep it going long-term.

So, that’s Module 7. And then in Module 8, the last step is the employment certification form for PSLF. That’s where you’ll fill out the required paperwork and send that to the Department of Education. They will send you a letter back to let you know that you meet the three requirements to qualify, or that you have qualifying employment, which is with your nonprofit. And they’ll let you know how many months you have that count towards PSLF so far so you know, you’re in., You don’t have to wait 10 years to find out if the process is going to work for you. If denied, we’ll fix it. If it can’t be fixed, you get 100% refund. So, there’s a money-back guarantee with the program as well.

So, you get unlimited support. It’s not just watch the videos and do it by yourself. If you get stuck, if you have questions, if anything comes up, you can contact me. You can contact the team that I use to write the articles of incorporation and get 501(c) status. We are all here to help you and make sure this works. You’ll also get access to a library of resources that will give you forms, templates, downloads, you know, the nonprofit patient application form. Everything that you need is in there to make it super simple.

And you also get access to a private Facebook group which is, you know, just ongoing, you know, 10 years, however long it takes. You can ask questions, community support, share resources. There’s over 200 doctors in there. And all of that is included. So, the guarantee with the Student Loan Eraser program says after you complete the program, you will meet the three requirements to qualify for PSLF. If you’re denied, we’ll fix it. If it can’t be fixed, you get a full refund. So, it has to work, or you don’t pay anything.

This is another one of my clients, Richard. He said, “I just got my letter from Fed Student Loan,” he meant FedLoan servicing at the time, “my loans are on the forgiveness track. I’ve already made 18 out of the 120 qualifying payments, which is 10 years. Easy process, easy setup. Had my back at every turn. Thank you, Dr. Hoffman and team.” Jeremy said, “I’m excited to announce FedLoan got back to me. I’m qualified for PSLF. So grateful, huge savings for me and the family.” Stephanie said, “Program is turnkey. All you have to do is show up. What a relief to know you can do all the good you’re already doing, get the astronomical student loan debt erased tax-free in 10 years, 15 years faster than any income-driven repayment plan?”

And Michelle, “Got my letter qualifying for PSLF today. Such great news to brighten my week.” I want this for all of you guys. Justin Moody’s a dentist. I’ve worked with dentists, naturopathic doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, lawyers, physical therapists, you name it, the program works. So, this is the summary page. This is everything that you’re going to get inside the program. Right now, for any of you who want the free link to schedule a call with me, it’s right there at the bottom. It’s www.erasemystudentloans.com/chiropracticeconomics.

When you click that link…let me take you over here. When you click that link, you will be taken here and you’ll see a page that looks like this. There we go. All you need to do is put in your name and email. You’ll get that free phone consultation with me. You’ll get a link right over there to schedule a call with me. And you’ll also get my free 30-minute Student Loan Eraser masterclass. Very similar information that I went over here with you guys today. But you’ll also get a recording of this webinar provided by “Chiropractic Economics,” so everyone will have access to that. So, that’s it for today. I think that we have a little bit of extra time here now for some questions, Rick. So, if anyone has questions that I haven’t covered, I’d love to jump into that.

Rick: Thank you, Dr. Hoffman. We have some great questions come in. Bethany asked, “Do you have to set up your nonprofit before applying for income-based repayment?”

Dr. Hoffman: You don’t have to set it up before. You can be on an income-driven repayment plan at any time, but being on an income-driven repayment plan is one of the requirements for PSLF. So that’s why the first step in my program, number one, the first step is the custom student loan plan, where I look over what type of loans you have, what repayment plan you’re on, and just make sure that you have the right type of loans and you’re on an income-driven repayment plan. We do that before starting the nonprofit so that if in the situation where someone has private student loans and they’re not eligible, or we can’t make the program work, then what we’ll do is we’ll know that in advance, and then we don’t even need to start the nonprofit.

Rick: All right, Thank you for that. And John asked, “Given the time it may take to make a nonprofit and get going versus the time of the Biden forgiveness, is this still possible? Are these two things dependent on each other, the non-profit forgiveness and the Biden program?”

Dr. Hoffman: They’re not dependent on each other. You can do both. Absolutely. So, you can get $10,000 of debt erased now, up to $10,000 or $20,000 if you had a Pell grant using the application with the link I showed on the earlier slide. And on top of that, you can also qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Rick: All right. Thank you. And Brian asked, “Do FFELP qualify? Can they be consolidated as I have two? Can they be applied to or for income-driven repayment?”

Dr. Hoffman: Yes. So, I’m gonna scroll back here. These are the different types of federal student loans, Stafford, Perkins, FFEL, and direct loans. So, if you have Stafford, Perkins, or FFEL loans, we can turn those into direct loans with a direct consolidation.

Rick: Excellent. Thank you. And Matthew asks, “So even though you pay yourself a large salary within your for-profit, you can still have the separate nonprofit and quality. What about for two doctors, husband and wife together within the same practice? Can they qualify?”

Dr. Hoffman: Absolutely. And so, remember, there’s only three requirements for PSLF, qualifying loans, qualifying repayment plan, and qualifying employment. They don’t care about for-profit employment. They don’t care if you own a for-profit. They don’t care what your income is in a for-profit. Your income will be considered when you’re on an income-driven repayment plan. However, they don’t care about for-profit employment at all. They just care about that you meet those three requirements for PSLF. So, most of my clients either own a for-profit or they work full-time at a for-profit, and they run the nonprofit in addition to that.

Also, my program, the Student Loan Eraser, it actually includes for one fee two doctors or two people to work for the same organization because I know that there are a lot of husband and wife teams out there, or spouses, or partners in the same practice. You can’t do it with partners or people in multiple practices or different areas. It doesn’t really work that way. So, if you’re in one practice or your spouse also has student loans, then both of you can sign up together, just one fee, and you can both qualify.

Rick: Thank you. And we’ve got another family question. Kimberly asks, “How about a mom and daughter? Do we both qualify for loan forgiveness in a nonprofit?”

Dr. Hoffman: Absolutely. So, if you both have student loans and you both are able to meet those three requirements, direct loans, income-driven repayment, qualifying employment, then you both can qualify for PSLF and get your student loans erased.

Rick: All right. Thank you. And another doctor asked, “How much does the nonprofit need to earn?”

Dr. Hoffman: That’s a really good question. So, in order to qualify for PSLF, the nonprofit needs to hire you as a full-time employee, which is 30 hours a week. And I teach lots of strategies on how to get that time and those hours without stress and overwhelm. I know it sounds like a lot, but it is actually way easier than you might think to meet that requirement. But to answer your question on how much the nonprofit needs to generate, basically what it works out to is it depends on minimum wage in your state.

There are some states where minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. In those states, your payroll is gonna be around $900 a month. I’m in San Diego, minimum wage here is around $14 an hour. Payroll here is just over $1,600 a month. So, let’s just say that you’re in California and payroll is $1,600. Let’s say the total overhead of your nonprofit is $1,800 a month, right? Just to use a round number. That’s it, right? So, I don’t know many businesses that have a breakeven point of less than $24,000 a year, right?

So, to kind of reverse engineer that and do a little math, I think I have this right in my head, and correct me if I’m wrong, but if your nonprofit needs to bring in, let’s even say $2,000 a month, and you are charging $30 per visit, you’re probably somewhere around 12 or 13 visits a week to make this work. If you’re charging $50 a visit, I think you’re closer to 10 patients a week to make it work. And so I run those numbers and I give those numbers to everybody while we go through the process once I know what state you’re in, what minimum wage is for your area, and also on the free call.

So anyone, if you wanna know those numbers and you wanna kind of break it down for you depending on your state and your situation, I would encourage you to go to erasemystudentloans.com/chiropractic-economics. Sign up for a free call with me and I will run that for you. So, it’s not off the top of my head and give you more specifics.

Rick: Thank you. And another question, “How do we avoid fee splitting?”

Dr. Hoffman: Yeah, great. I answered that a little earlier, but fee splitting by definition is one business offering two different fees for the same service, right? When you start a nonprofit, now you have two different businesses. The nonprofit is its own business entity. So, when someone comes into your for-profit, they pay your for-profit fee. If someone qualifies as a nonprofit patient, they pay the nonprofit fee, right? That’s not fee-splitting. And you have a paper trail of why the person qualified as a nonprofit patient versus being a for-profit patient. And each individual, each of you gets to decide who you want to qualify as a nonprofit patient, and we’ll write the articles of incorporation, the mission statement, we’ll customize the nonprofit for your specific situation.

So, a lot of my clients serve people with low income, active military and veterans, first responders. A lot of my clients wanna see more kids, so they give a lower fee for kids. A lot of my clients have…you know, they accept…I personally, I had patients with cancer because of that little girl. I had patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS. So, anyone who had a severe potentially life-threatening medical condition, I said, I’m gonna take care of you in my nonprofit. Anyone who serves our country and community, military, police, fire, you know, paramedics, all of them. I said, I’m gonna take care of you in the nonprofit.

So, you get to decide who you wanna give back to and who gets that lower fee in your nonprofit, and we’ll design that around it. So, remember, step one is a custom student loan plan. Step two, I’ll jump on a call with you and I’ll help you design the nonprofit so that by the end of that call, you’ll have a really clear vision for who qualifies and how it’s going to fit into your current practice.

Rick: Thank you. And another question, “How long does it take me to qualify for PSLF?”

Dr. Hoffman: That’s a great question. So, a lot of it depends on you, how quickly you take action on each step as it becomes available. Some of it depends on processing times at the state or the IRS. That varies. But on average, most of my clients are able to make Module 5 and have their first month count towards PSLF usually within about 90 days. So, as soon as you get on payroll from the nonprofit, that’s when your first month will count towards PSLF. So, the first step we make sure you meet the first two requirements, and then as soon as you turn on payroll in the nonprofit, you meet that third requirement, your time for PSLF will start from that point forward.

But there’s usually a little time after that to finish the paperwork, to get 501(c) status back from the IRS, and then to send in the employment certification form for PSLF and wait to hear back from them. So, usually, we make the first month count towards PSLF within about 90 days. Most people get the letters back showing that they’re in within closer to around the five-month mark. But by that time, when they get the letter back, they already have a month or two or even three that counts towards PSLF so they know that they’re in and it’s been working that whole time.

Rick: Thank you. And another question, “If I’ve already worked for the government or a nonprofit in the past, can I get my past time to count for PSLF?”

Dr. Hoffman: That’s an awesome question, and the answer is absolutely yes. But we’re really running out of time on that. So, by October of 2021, the government had only erased about $300 million of debt with PSLF for the previous years since going back to 2007. And it had only about a 2% acceptance rate, which is terrible. And it’s because, unfortunately, number one, student loan servicing companies, they’re not your ally, they’re collections agencies, basically. And so they were found and sued, some of them, Navient was sued basically for misleading borrowers to maximize their own profits.

People were working for the government or a nonprofit and, you know, they were asking their servicer, “Hey, do I qualify?” And the servicers a lot of times were saying, “Yeah, you’re good.” But they didn’t have the right type of loans, or they weren’t in the right repayment plan, or a bunch of other issues had come up. And so in order to fix the PSLF program, in October of ’21, the government said, we’re going to allow for one year for anyone who has had qualifying employment, you can go back and get all of your past time to count for PSLF even if you didn’t meet the other two requirements as long as you meet the three requirements going forwards. But you have until October 31st of this year, which is in like 2 weeks in order to make that happen. So, if any of you have had previous employment with the government or a nonprofit, I would recommend reach out to me, like, today, tomorrow, right away, so that we can get you enrolled.

Rick: That is great info. Thank you.

Dr. Hoffman: You’re welcome.

Rick: And we have run through our questions. Before I give our participants the wrap-up info, is there anything you would like to add that we haven’t touched on, Dr. Hoffman?

Dr. Hoffman: That’s a good question. You know, we’ve touched on a lot. I think the only thing that I would add is that, you know, my passion here, you know, part of my reason for offering this program, I love helping chiropractors and naturopathic doctors and dentists and I love helping people get their student loans erased. But my clients right now by my best estimate are taking care of over 10,000 nonprofit patient visits every month. And those are people, like that little girl, Caroline, with stage four cancer and people who ordinarily would not be able to afford care. And so I’m really on a mission to try to bring chiropractic into the household of every single person in the U.S. who wants it and needs it. And so, that’s my purpose with this.

And, again, if you have questions, if you need support, you know, I’ve had people tell me that because of their student loans and other life situations… I had one chiropractor tell me he was living in his office because he could no longer afford to pay rent. I’ve heard some pretty heartbreaking stories over the years and it is absolutely powerful and transformational to be on a path and just have that weight lifted from your chest, lifted from your shoulders, and know that you are going to get your giant student loan debt erased as a result of expanding access to care for people in your community.

Rick: Excellent. Thank you. And at this time, we’d like to thank our sponsor, Student Loan Eraser, and Dr. Ian Hoffman for today’s webinar. And thank you all for attending. Remember, this webinar, including our speaker’s PowerPoint presentation has been recorded. We will alert you via email when the webinar is available online. Thank you again for attending, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great day.

Dr. Hoffman: Thanks, everyone.