Speaker 1: Let's say good morning now to ABC's I'm getting back
Speaker 1: and forth with ABC's and KFI is Joel Larsgard, the
Speaker 1: host of How To Money on KFI every Sunday from
Speaker 1: noon to two morning.
Speaker 2: Joel, morning, I'm from wherever you want me to be, Amy, Okay.
Speaker 1: Well you're from New York City, right right? Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's first talk since we're talking about money, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people and their kids and their grandkids have
Speaker 1: student loans, and how is that all going to shake
Speaker 1: out with everything that's happening with the gutting of the
Speaker 1: Department of Education.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. The Wall Street Journal just
Speaker 2: published an article early this morning basically talking about the
Speaker 2: Trump administration's intent to get rid of the Department of Education,
Speaker 2: whether or not they have Congress's help. And that's the
Speaker 2: thing is typically to eliminate a federal you know, what's
Speaker 2: something like the Department of Education, a department, a federal department.
Speaker 2: It takes an act of Congress, and Congress, as we know,
Speaker 2: doesn't do much these days, and so the Trump administration
Speaker 2: is saying, we're going to try to do it on
Speaker 2: our own. There are lawsuits flying back and forth. How
Speaker 2: this shakes out is anybody's guests. But at least the
Speaker 2: intent of the executive order that the President announced was
Speaker 2: to severely reduce the scope at the Department of Education
Speaker 2: that's already happening, and then to have other federal agencies
Speaker 2: take over some of those duties. So it looks like
Speaker 2: the Small Business Administration might take over student loans. How
Speaker 2: that's going to shake out, I mean, there's already been.
Speaker 2: Anybody with student loans knows that working with their servicer
Speaker 2: is a massive pain. We've had just severe issues from
Speaker 2: the companies that the government partners with, the contracts with
Speaker 2: to service student loans, and it just feels like everybody
Speaker 2: with student loans right now is just in this massive limbo.
Speaker 2: They were told right that they don't pay your loans
Speaker 2: for three and a half years. Forgiveness is on the way.
Speaker 2: Forgiveness then didn't pan out. I just feel like, man,
Speaker 2: I feel that my heart goes out to anybody with
Speaker 2: student loans right now, because where things go from here,
Speaker 2: we'll keep an eye on it. But it's just it's
Speaker 2: hard to it's hard to spell out, and it's hard
Speaker 2: to say, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, here's a question or a thought Joel, Like one
Speaker 1: of the things that Dose's doing and making these cuts
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that they said they're discovering like
Speaker 1: super old antiquated systems where you have departments that don't
Speaker 1: talk to each other. So maybe the hope is, whether
Speaker 1: it happens or not, is that they can sort of
Speaker 1: figure it out, because you said getting the student loans
Speaker 1: is a pain in the butt, so maybe they can
Speaker 1: figure out how to fix the system too.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean that that would be awesome. And it's
Speaker 2: clear that there are some antiquated government systems and that
Speaker 2: there is like when they talk about waste, fraud and
Speaker 2: abuse and government, the vast majority of Americans when you
Speaker 2: look at polling, believe that that exists. The way Dog
Speaker 2: goes about it attacking some of that quote unquote waste
Speaker 2: fraud and abuse, and whether or not some of the
Speaker 2: things are cutting actually fall under those monikers, like that's
Speaker 2: another question. Yeah, And it's also going to be interesting
Speaker 2: to see when you when you kind of look at
Speaker 2: since the advent of the Department of Education, well, has
Speaker 2: it had the impact that it was supposed to have?
Speaker 2: And I don't know that it has. So when you
Speaker 2: look at how much we spend as a country per student,
Speaker 2: and when you look at test scores that just have
Speaker 2: deteriorated year after year after year, and where we stand
Speaker 2: internationally in some of the rankings, in particular in science
Speaker 2: and math. We were much more internationally competitive from a
Speaker 2: student basis in the nineteen seventies. So eliminating the Department
Speaker 2: of Education, people are making it sound like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is this is going to torch the education system in
Speaker 2: the country. The reality is the Department of Education only
Speaker 2: fund something like eight to ten percent of state and
Speaker 2: local schools and so sending it back to the schools
Speaker 2: and having less Department of Education and less federal oversight
Speaker 2: in terms of how states do education. I don't know
Speaker 2: that that's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Let's move on to something that everybody
Speaker 1: has come to know and love, and that is door Dash,
Speaker 1: and DoorDash is putting up a new payment option.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is something that when I saw it,
Speaker 2: I mean tearstream streamed down my face and easy.
Speaker 1: Joel's going crazy.
Speaker 2: No, I know, I'm pulling my hair out like sackcloth
Speaker 2: and ashes because door dash is saying, hey, you can
Speaker 2: split your little fast food delivery up into four easy
Speaker 2: payments via Klarna. Now, if you're if you're ordering your food,
Speaker 2: and to me, this is what feels like the culmination,
Speaker 2: but it probably isn't of buy now, pay later for
Speaker 2: literally everything. I'm sure it's going to go into more
Speaker 2: even more places, but I don't really use these food
Speaker 2: delivery apps because every meal that you buy, if you
Speaker 2: get it delivered. Sure it's convenient, but it's going to
Speaker 2: cost you more. So the fact that it's that people
Speaker 2: are gonna even split up those payments. You're gonna order
Speaker 2: a twelve or fourteen dollars meal or something like that,
Speaker 2: and then you're gonna split it up over the course
Speaker 2: of four months makes zero sense to me.
Speaker 1: Four months, Like, why would anybody in their right mind
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: They even have something called Klarna pay Later, which means
Speaker 2: you kick the can down the road even further, and
Speaker 2: then you can pay a fee to pay even later
Speaker 2: than that, And so I think it's something. It makes
Speaker 2: me think of the frog in the pot of water
Speaker 2: that just like steadily gets warmer. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is actually true, if it's just an old
Speaker 2: wives tale, but like the frog boils to death if
Speaker 2: it stays in the water. This is kind of how
Speaker 2: we are as consumers. We're getting used to all of
Speaker 2: these methods of payment that just reduce the friction, and
Speaker 2: I think the friction is actually a good thing for us.
Speaker 2: It's like, do I have the money to buy the burger?
Speaker 2: If I don't, then I probably shouldn't. I should cook
Speaker 2: at home. And maybe that sounds like it's not empathetic
Speaker 2: or something like that, but I just I think it's
Speaker 2: really important to think before you use bye now, pay
Speaker 2: later on anything. But in particular, when we're talking about
Speaker 2: these smaller purchases, using buy now, pay later to break
Speaker 2: up just a meal delivery to your house, it just
Speaker 2: to me, it feels almost dystopian in nature, and it's
Speaker 2: hard for me to stomach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I totally agree with you. Like, again,
Speaker 1: a twenty dollars meal. I've never seen a fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: door dash meal. I've only used a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and it was always like stupid expensive because of all
Speaker 1: the fees. But yeah, spreading it out over four months,
Speaker 1: what are you thinking? And then do you do that
Speaker 1: every week and out all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: four months later You're like, how do I owe two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, right.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, the more we kick the can
Speaker 2: down the road on a bill that we have to pay, right,
Speaker 2: typically fees or interest add up. But on top of that,
Speaker 2: it's it's harder to budget. I want people to pay
Speaker 2: for the things that they're buying, Like, I'm down with
Speaker 2: credit cards as a method of payment, but I don't
Speaker 2: want you to buy more than you can afford, and
Speaker 2: I don't want you to overextend yourself. So you can't
Speaker 2: pay that credit card bill on time and in full.
Speaker 2: By now pay later. It just kind of blurs the
Speaker 2: lines and people start using it and then they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: how much do I owe? What's what's my BNPL you know,
Speaker 2: payment amount this month, and we become payment buyers, just
Speaker 2: like we have become when it comes to buying a car.
Speaker 2: We're payment buyers these days. And to me, that's the
Speaker 2: real nefarious part of buying now pay later and splitting
Speaker 2: up payments like this is that we just kind of
Speaker 2: become used to the monthly payment instead of like deciding
Speaker 2: whether or not we're comfortable with the overall amount of
Speaker 2: the purchase to begin with.
Speaker 1: Okay, so proceed with caution. And if you'd like to
Speaker 1: proceed with getting lots more great advice on how to money.
Speaker 1: You can listen to Joel Larsguard every Sunday, it's noon
Speaker 1: to two how to Money with Joel Larsguard. You can
Speaker 1: also follow him and at how to Money Joel. Thank you, Joel.
Speaker 2: Thanks Amy