Funding the College Experience with PayForEd's Fred Amrein

Student Loan Repayment and College Funding Made Easy.

Fred Amrein is the Founder and CEO of PayForED.

Parents and students are making financial decisions worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, with little to no advice. They simply do not have the right tools to understand the real cost of getting a college degree.   The result of making poor decisions and obtaining excessive student loans follows graduates into adulthood. PayForED's goal is to help families make better college funding and student loan decisions by providing personalized financial information.

Learn more about how PayForED can help you make better college funding and loan repayment decisions by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on  Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.

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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

On with us right now we've got Fred, Fred, you're the Founder and CEO of PayForED, and you are on the web at it payfored.com

0:44
That's great. Yeah,

0:45
excellent. So give us an overview of what you do. And first off, I gotta I just gotta forewarn the audience. I'm really into what Fred is doing is a mission.

0:55
So you know, our mission statement is to prevent and solve the students crisis. And basically we have created as three solutions that help parents and students navigate in college, the entire college funding process help them understand the debt they're going to be taking on based on the schools they're selecting, and then keeping them on track to graduation. 35% will transfer 50% will change majors to everyone thinks the first decision is so important. It's really the longevity of making the right decisions. There's actually 21 million people in that space that are making decisions, they're gonna affect their life, their financial life for the next 1520 years. And then we have another tool on the back end that helps both the student and or the married couple were the only tool that handles the married couple for repaying the student loans. they qualify for public loan forgiveness. A married couple actually has 126 different options to pick from when they're making the repayment decisions. Wow. So it's important to note again, that you solve you solve problems for three different audiences before college during college and after college. So again, just you know, off of your website and you and I chatted earlier, you know, having a college cost analyzer, can you kind of just explain that one a little bit more? Sure. The college course analyzer really helps the parents, you know, a lot of times it's the first time going through this process. It's a very emotional time for many families and for the students. And the pressure from the outside is great to from the schools themselves, our high schools, and the colleges and you're looking at your child's financial future. I have three daughters, we put through this process, it is very difficult. But then you're looking at what that is cost is going to be. And when we had our product reviewed by the CFP, what they really loved is we present a four year view both on what it's going to cost you but then we customize that to how you're going to pay it so each family has saved more has maybe a little bit better cash flow. And the combination of those two things identify how much debt you'll have at graduation, by college so that way allows you to figure out or find the best college value and improve Your decision making,

3:01
and what are the price points for your products.

3:03
So the price point for the product is 5995 for an annual license, and that's about, you know, walk you through the entire process on what your position looks like. And then the tool there's actually for that first the analyzer we have a tool that's in there, it's called the the matrix and that actually plot your where your academic and financial position is. So it can save you money just by taking one school off the list on understanding where you are. People don't realize every talks about an academic reach or reach school, what you don't realize is schools don't communicate to you there's actually an average package just like an average essay T. And you could be on the right or wrong side of that, which would mean you have a financial reach and our tool helps you identify

3:42
those so $59 in and, you know, potentially, you know, thousands if not 10s of thousands of dollars in savings from just having clarity of information. Shouldn't like high school counselors have this kind of information.

3:58
The high school counselors were really focused on the academic side, you know, getting you in having the opportunity to get into those schools. Again, the complications here on you know, you know what it's going to cost how you borrow the money 529 plans, it gets to be very complicated and there's tax things there, that's not going to be their expertise. Just like a you would expect your CPA to be able to help you write your essays. So I think there's a divide here, when you look at how the information happens. Now we have we've built the tool similar to your taxes, it's customized to your situation, your war letters, but we've done is it's very do it yourself. There's over 70 videos without throughout the entire tools that there's webinars, but also we have a designation for financial advisors that if they need additional help, they can go to those advisors and get that customized help. So kind of like I can do my taxes, you know, be a software program or do I need to go get my additional help and go to a professional? So we've set that up there now

4:56
for parents and Fred talk about the launch. How did you Launch pay for Ed. And I mean, you guys, what is that process? So this was at the beginning of 2018, officially.

5:08
So this has been an evolution for me, I built the program up from spreadsheets, I was doing individual, I'm the, you know, financial planner, my initial, you know, career path, and that have slowly built this out to being a product that we distribute now via the cloud. And that's basically what happened, we went through an incubator, identified the things that we needed to do and brought this to the web so that we can help more people navigate the entire process and create the transparency that's kind of missing that customized transparency that everyone needs. So your background. Again, you're the founder of principle of American financial ground. So somehow, you saw that you're the man for this job. And your opinion is that this wasn't in the marketplace.

5:53
Yeah,

5:54
you know, it's actually from my background. My daughters were coming in. I was making a transition from corporate finance, planning, analysis and modeling, that's my original career path. And then I made a transition into financial planning and started my own financial planning firm and saw, you know, my daughters were facing that I saw what information was there and realize that it wasn't good information. I talked to a good friend SEPA friend, he said, this whole college thing is out of control between how do we, you know, the 529 plans, the tax strategies, how we structure the debt, how the financial aid process work, no one knows it, and it's getting really expensive. So we build everything in Excel. And then in 15, a company approached us and said, Hey, we'd love to take this to the web. And we have, you know, I successfully navigated my three went through, I have to change schools change your major. So I kind of live the experience I had when it was a division one athlete. So I've seen all this and we've kind of brought it to the web, we're kind of excited and that we can help a lot of people in this in the process, but also improve the financial future of families, both from the parent side and from the student side.

6:54
And so in terms of you know, growing and scaling And awareness. What is your plan right now? And what has it been in terms of just letting students and parents and recently graduated folks know about what you provide? So we're

7:11
going through three different two or three different verticals, I guess would say we have a direct consumer, we have a really great, great website. We're going to be increasing the information there. There's a newsletter that's available that's free. And then we're the one of the benefits that's really being looked at right now from a financial wellness standpoint, is going through the employer. So it's coming through financial wellness, and the the one of the most desired benefits now is called student loan repayment, a student loan Assistance Program. So what's different about us is, is you know, companies are looking for these solutions, what makes us so different as we walk into those companies, and we're looking and saying we can help not just help the recent graduate has student debt, but I can help that 50 year old parent that's ready to send their child to school so I can avoid the stress and it's a holistic approach to financial wellness. And then we also have, as I said, mentioned earlier, through financial advisory firms, we're partnering up with quite a few of those now that they are now going to deliver that as a benefit or an add on to their comprehensive planning. So with a solution like this, what does your team end up looking like? So we have, we've outsourced some pieces and we have some internal sources of the present, the company might want more and more the partners as a detailed background in financial services. And then we have another partner who is detailed in the employer space and insurance space. So that's the marketing piece of it from the technology side, I'm basically the IP here and run most of the operations and we've outsourced piece of those. So you know, I've written a book and we have the course that's out there. So we're pretty excited about being able to deliver a more holistic approach that's not really available anywhere in the space. That's great.

8:47
That's great. So in terms of product development, or kind of growth or expansion of the company, what do you see yourself going over the next one to three years.

8:56
So in right now we're going to actually do our first Since we had the delivery of all the solutions, we're in the middle of the us right now. So we hope to have that out by the end of the year, if not before. So we're excited about that. And then we have a whole list of enhancements. We're looking at America yesterday, I was at the Philly fed and attended a whole webinar, or sorry, a whole program they program on what's called is a is the income sharing agreements, which produces one of those schools that offers that it's gonna be a new alternative for student loans. So we will be adding that functionality into our tool. And our whole thing here is understanding how your debt structure drives your loan repayment option. And we're trying to, again, customize that to you and understand the financial consequences of the decisions that people are making. So making that an easier or more transparent processes, all those things will be enhancing or developing over time.

9:48
That's great. All right. Well, Fred Amrein, you're the Founder and CEO of PayForED, and you're on the web at payfored.com. Thank you so much for joining us,

9:57
Josh. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the time.

10:01
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