Travis is the founder of the Student Loan Planner and host of the Student Loan Planner podcast. So far Travis has consulted on half a billion in student debt. Travis is a chartered financial analyst and has helped over 2600 clients save over $120million in loans. He made his first dollar getting A’s on his report card which taught him that his brain would get him more money then mowing lawns. At college he took classes in macro economics just as the Lehman brothers happened and it was so exciting that he caused him to follow that journey and become a bond trader. 

Travis really enjoyed teaching and helping others and this was missing when he was a bond trader. He retired from trading at 25 and found the FIRE movement – this means Financial Independence Retire Early. He saved all of his money – about 70-80% each month – while the markets were soaring and went travelling for 18 months. Just before he quit his job he also met his now-wife. She had a lot of university debt at the time and he tried to help her get out of it but realised that it was much harder than expected.

Universities became big business during the space race, they started off as affordable and then the brakes came off borrowing so uni debt grew. Loans are based on how much the university tuition will cost and so if they uni says it’ll be $400,000 for the course then you can get a loan for the whole amount will no credit history. The average debt for an undergrad is $35k.

Travis has a solution – these figures are for a real person – if am unmarried person had $30k of debt and an income between $50-$60 she could consolidate the debt using student aid.gov and sign up for revised pay as you earn programme. This would give her a subsidy of all interest on the unsubsidised loads for the first 12 months after graduation and 100% on subsidised loans for 3 years – the interest doesn’t compound. This means he’s effectively taken a 6-7% load and then you can put money towards other things and not deal with increasing interest.

Top tips

• Most important habit – learn something new each day
• Most influential person – His university professor​
• Most important tool – Google Analytics
• Most influential failure – A bad performance review – not being a top performer
• Contact studentloanplanner.com/refi – contact butto