So quick introductions. My name is Nikhil. I'm one of the cofounders of Juno.

My journey here is, I guess, a typical for someone in the student loan industry. I was a engineer, went to Boeing, hung out there for a few years, came to business school, finished HBS in twenty twenty. And really in twenty eighteen, as part of joining, HBS started what is today, Juno. Nicholas?

Hi, everyone. I'm Nicholas. I am Peruvian.

That's the accent you're hearing. I, stayed, back in Peru and then went to my MBA, at Wharton and then interned at Juno. And I like I lost Sunil so much that I tried to stay, for the last four years. So, yeah, happy to be with you guys. Just one quick, heads up.

Any question that you have, I'll be answering the q and a, so feel free to put, you know, anything you want there. I'll make sure to, yeah, answer myself or get to Nikhil.

Yeah. And please don't be shy. You know, we we historically, in some of these calls, we've gotten one is to one. Right? Like, so right now, I'm seeing hundred and sixty hundred and sixty attendees roughly.

And so, you know, if we get a hundred and sixty questions, that's not gonna be a surprise to me. K? Nicholas, you'll have your work cut out for you if we get hundred and sixty questions.

We'll have my Yeah.

Start Mavis Beacon typing course. I don't know if that's still a thing. It used to be a thing when I was a kid.

Alright. So one one weird restriction Nicholas won't be using lender names in this presentation. Right? So we try to be as candid, as transparent with you as we can, and we don't like it. But at the end of the day, to meet compliance terms of both the lenders and certain federal regulations, so we we just ignore lender names.

I see someone asked us a question with the lender name included. You know, in those situations, we might, we might respond to a question like that, but we we won't proactively give you lender names just because of some some restrictions.

Alright. So I think everyone's aware of this, but in case you're not aware, you know, before Juno, everyone just sort of goes, shops around, finds out whatever the loan they want. And what we've done for seven years in a row now, is, like, collect demand from everyone, you know, a lot of, grad students, MBA students, and go and negotiate with lenders and be like, hey. There's all this demand.

Can you give us a better option? And really, we are looking for the best option. Right? Better than any private student loan, better than any public student loan, just the best option. And that's what we hope to negotiate, right, and hope to deliver and hope we are delivering that.

So, you know, in in in most cases, what you should find this is my attempt at humor right here. It's like, the next best lender is, like, far away. Right?

What what our research so far has to do we did a soft launch with, you know, a few hundred people. And what we saw is, for those applying without a cosigner, it's pretty pretty rare, for you to find a better rate.

Last year, the number was four percent. This year, we think the number is even lower than four percent. And then, for those applying with the cosigner, it's still gonna be pretty rare.

In some cases, less than single digit percentage of cases, you might find a better rate elsewhere, and we have a plan for that too, we'll which we'll share later.

The other thing I'll add is as as a lot of people are getting into, like, the phase of submitting their applications, We want to we wanna share this graph, which is basically the the average borrower from Juno is borrowing something like not average. Sorry. Median. The median person is buying something like sixty five k per year.

And what we see is, the true median is somewhere between sixty five to eighty five k, including the federal law. So right? So a lot of people will take Juno for all of their needs, but some people will take Juno for sixty five k, for example, and then take another twenty k from the federal government. So that's why we say somewhere between sixty five and eighty five k per year.

So and, you know, like, call it the highest borrowers. The the, thirty percent of them are borrowing, like, the full cost of attendance. Right? So, all of this to say, you know, you're not alone.

If if you are dealing with some sticker shock and you're seeing, like, hey. I'm borrowing a lot of money. We do I don't have data on this, but, because we don't own the repayment data. But we do, talk to lenders, and anecdotally, we understand that, you are paying off these loans in roughly six, seven years. Right? That's very normal timeline to pay off these loans.

We just broke the two hundred mark on, attendance, so that's awesome. Exciting.

Okay. So so what you're here for. Right? What what did you get by signing up for Juno?

So there there's two the this year's structure is a little bit unique. Okay? So there's lender a that is giving Juno members discounted rates. Right? These rates are going to be better than what you get on their own website. Like, if you went directly to the lender's website and check your rates, those rates will be worse than what you get because you're a Juno member and go through, you know, the Juno site even if you end up eventually on the lender's website.

And lender b, this was a little bit unique because we didn't actually get you rates lower than what the lender offers on their own website. We got you the same rates, but we included them because those are great rates for a subsection of the audience. Right? And at the end of the day, our goal is to deliver, you know, be the one place where you just come and you know you've gotten the best rate.

Right? So we included this lender. For some people, it's gonna be even lower than lender a. Right?

It's gonna be harder to qualify for this. Right? So, you know, every lender has their own eligibility criteria, etcetera.

So it's it's gonna be harder to qualify for for this lender b, but you get, some cash back and you get access to lose in some cases, rates lower than what lender a is offering. Okay? So we're pretty excited for that. We also have, something very, very special for people who are either Texas residents or who are not Texas residents, but they're going to a school in Texas.

Okay? So there's a third lender, and it's they just have this honestly, it's free month. Right? Like, the rates with this the for for folks going to Texas if I if I was, you know, going going to a Texas school, I would borrow every single dollar I can from this lender because it's in many cases, it's just so cheap.

You can make a lot more money just sometimes in a high yield savings account than, the rates that this lender charges. So so yeah. Like, it's free money.

Okay. Cool.

So that's that's the I'm not I just want to just just to clarify one point, Nikhil, on the last slide that zero point five, he said he's a Juno deal.

Right? That, like Right. It's not that, you know, the lender is offering that on their own. You know, you still get something better with all the deals if you go through us. That's we we want to make sure that, you know, we do it then.

Correct. That that that's the only reason for Juno to exist. Right? To make sure something's better than going directly to the lender. So there's never a situation.

Yeah.

Nicholas, it's a great question here about the Texas residency. I got people excited about it.

Yep.

I'm I'm already on all over the queue.

Already. It's not picking it out. Okay. Alright.

I'll keep going.

So when we talk about Nas in the q and a, he's the one who negotiated that deal, by the way. So you have him to thank for for all the work over there.

But yeah. So so this is what we are expecting to happen. Right? If you have a FICO score or your cosigner has a FICO score that's gonna call it roughly higher than seven hundred. Right?

We're expecting, you know, you're just gonna use Juno's deal. There's no point of taking the federal loan or the unsubsidized loan or whatever federal option is just you know, Juno's deal is probably gonna be the best option for you.

And then the the if your credit score is less than seven hundred or the maximum of your and your cosigner potentially, if you have a cosigner, is less than seven hundred, then you might end up in a situation where you use some federal, some private, or maybe even all federal. Okay? But for most people, we're expecting our team to just beats federal outright.

And I I you know, this I put these numbers here as, like, a heavy, heavy simplification. Right? At the end of the day, you know, there's a much more rigorous underwriting that happens with each of these lenders. So it's not about, like, okay.

This is my FICO. Therefore, this is exactly what I get. Right? But this is this should give you a thematic understanding of what's gonna happen, what you should expect.

I'll also add that Juno is uniquely a place where you don't need to have a cosigner. Okay? The the state the facts that the the facts that I'm stating here, are thinking about the the median borrower at Juno who who doesn't actually have a cosigner. Sixty six percent, I think, last year, something in that neighborhood of Juno members who, you know, used a Juno deal, did not have a cosigner. And only, like, thirty, thirty five percent, something like that had a cosigner.

Now I'm not saying don't use a cosigner. Right? It's it's a good idea to use a cosigner if you have one. It can make a substantial difference.

In some cases, it depends, you know, if you and your cosign are really close in terms of credit worthiness, then it probably doesn't make a much of a difference. Right? But if you have if you have someone who can cosign with substantially better, credit worthiness than you have, then suddenly, okay, it might make sense, to have to have a cosigner get involved. Okay?

So I can chat more about cosigner stuff one on one. Ultimately, the ultimate guidance is we built the perfect tool for you to understand the value of a cosigner. It's called the rate check tool on our website. And what you do is you fill out this one page form.

You first include just your information. You hit submit. You'll see some rates. Then you fill out the same form again, but this time at the bottom, you'll also fill out your cosigner's information.

You'll hit submit, and now you'll see both the rates, and you can look at it and be like, I like this. I don't like that. Whatever. And it's based on a soft credit check, not a hard credit check, so it doesn't hurt you or your cosigner's credit reports, credit score, etcetera when you do the soft credit check.

Okay?

So in terms of, how you know, I I mentioned, like, Texas. Right? So what we are seeing in terms of Texas, I I I don't know how else to say this, but I just put, like, these double arrows to say, like, it's much better. Right?

And so and especially compared to any other private lender, it's, like, miles apart. Right? So it's it's just substantially better.

You need to be either going to a school in Texas or you need to have a Texas driver's license or, state ID. Right? Those are the two one of the two things that will help you qualify for this. So maybe you move to Texas before you apply for your loans. I don't know.

Okay.

And the last piece that kind of, you know, makes it more or less, impossible for you to find a better option outside of Juno. Right? It's our lowest student loan rate guarantee. You can see the asterisk up there.

So, essentially, lender a, right, one of the lenders, we're working with, as long as you get approved by them, which, again, we expect most people on this call to to get approved, if you find a lower rate elsewhere, right, and there's a list of eligible lenders, but it's pretty much every national lender, any popular lender. Right? They're all in that list.

If you find a lower rate elsewhere, Juno is gonna match it. Right? That means we're gonna look at that piece of paper, whatever you have from the other lender, right, that says, hey. X y z is willing to give you three percent.

Right? Juno's lender is gonna match that. They're gonna give you the same three percent. And on top of that, Juno's gonna write you a check.

Okay? And like I said, last year, only four percent of people were able to find a lower rate outside of Juno. And this year, we expect that number to come down even further. Right?

Second thing I'll say is, like, this is not a guarantee, like, you know, with gotchas and all of that. I know there's asterisk over there. Right? But there's really no gotchas here.

It's as simple as, okay, you gotta bail on somewhere else.

Let's match that and give you a bonus. And, ultimately, this is something we've negotiated as a benefit for our members.

This is not coming out of the most pocket. Right? That means we are fully aligned with you in making sure that if you found a low rate somewhere else, you know, we're gonna work with you really quickly to figure out, how to get you that rate match and then get you the bonus on top of it. And like I said, it it should happen in less than four percent of cases.

Yeah. Substantially less than four percent of cases this year. Last year's number was four percent.

Okay.

We also have, call it automatic, rate matching happening in some cases. Right? So for example, we know that at HBS, there's a certain credit union, that approves, you know, most HBS students.

And what we do is we say, hey. No need to go no need to go and prove to us that you got a better rate somewhere else.

If your rate if your default rate comes out to be higher than the rate that the credit union offers, we'll automatically lower it to that credit union rate. Right?

Similar situation with, Northwestern University. So they have a internal loan program, and we're gonna say, okay. If your rate ordered by the lender ends up being higher than that, we'll automatically match it. So you basically you're gonna get the better off the Juneau negotiated deal that everyone else gets or whatever your local credit union or university is trying to offer you. K? So, again, just our effort to make sure that there's really no better place to get your student loans than the deal we've negotiated.

Same applies for our law school as well. Yeah.

Then I we get this question a lot, right, about, like, hey.

My private versus my federal, like, which one should I choose, etcetera. The first thing I'll say over there is, like, right now, we're I'm focused on, like, a cost discussion. Right? So there's there's the whole concept of public service loan forgiveness and income driven repayment plans.

If you are in a situation, a financial situation, or a career situation where you think you'll need those features, right, you're just gonna go for the federal loans. But in many cases, especially in grad school, what we find is people are going into careers post graduation where where they're gonna make good money, right, and they're not working in public service. Or even if they're working in public service, they're making good money such that the public service loan forgiveness is not beneficial to them. And in those cases, just optimize for cost.

What whatever is the most affordable, you kind of, you know, use that. And so then the question becomes, okay. How do I think about the origination fee that the federal loans charge? Right?

Because I I forgot to include a slide here, but, I have a slide, here, that helps you understand, like, the structure of the federal loans. And the federal loan uniquely have an origination fee. The unsubsidized loan, that's twenty thousand five hundred. It has origination fee of roughly one percent.

And the grad plus loans, which you can, you know, use to borrow more than twenty thousand five hundred, that has origination fee of, like, four point two percent. So in these situations, it's like, okay. How do you account for that origination fee? Because June of the loans do not have any origination fee.

Right?

So we try to calculate we did try to do the math and calculate, like, the effective interest rate.

And what we came up with is this. Right? Because it depends, you know, on how long you take to pay off the loan. So if you take four, ten years to pay off the loan, the effective rate is roughly ten percent. Right?

More likely, you're probably gonna refinance on graduation. At that point, you know, if you're a second year student, it's, like, thirteen and a half percent because you're just taking, like, the nine percent rate of the grad plus loan and adding the four percent. So it's, like, thirteen percent over one year, or ten and ten point nine percent, eleven percent for someone graduating two years from now. So that's kinda yeah.

Okay. So, and we we do have a calculator that will do exactly the math for exactly your situation. You know? You can type in your private loan numbers, hit submit, and it'll try to calculate, you know, the the delta for you compared to the federal plus loan.

I like to pause on the slide for a second. Right? Because we've been talking so far in terms of interest rates, and sometimes I find in conversations that interest rates don't don't make that much sense. It's like, how much different is a seven percent versus nine percent rate?

Right? And here here's the math about that. Right? So let's say you got a seven percent.

Just an example.

Not a difficult. Just an example. Right?

And you were on a ten year repayment plan, a fixed interest rate, and this is a fully deferred, interest, fully deferred repayment plan, which is basically exactly like the standard repayment plan on a federal loan. Okay? So we are really comparing apples to apples, over here.

The the interest and fees could be, you know, thirty eight thousand versus fifty two thousand on, like, a sixty thousand dollar loan amount.

So you can see right away, you know, there's, like, a fourteen thousand dollars plus of savings over the life of the loan, when you are comparing this. And and a good chunk of those savings are upfront because of the origination fee that the Grad PLUS loan has. Right? And then, the rest of the savings is over the course of ten years each year based on the difference in interest rate. So it all adds up and and quite substantially to, like, fourteen thousand dollars plus.

So that's just to help, you know, convert percentages into, like, real dollar amounts. And, again, if you're borrowing higher end ten thousand, hundred twenty thousand, like, twenty or thirty thousand dollars in savings. Right? It can be pretty pretty substantial.

Now what I will say is, you know, the the federal loans come with the the fixed interest rate, a ten year loan term, and a deferred repayment plan. Right? That's what the standard repayment plan on a ten year on a federal loan is. The private loans, whether Juno or elsewhere, you know, they they tend to have more customization that you can do.

Right? And all the numbers are kind of hinted at so far. They are all, you know, based on the assumption of, something very similar to federal. But in reality, when you go, you know, explore your private loan options, there's all this customization you can do.

Now for fixed versus variable rate, I'll tell you right now, it's pretty much everyone we see in our flows is gravitating towards fixed interest rates. Right? That means when you take the loan, there's a interest rate, and that's the interest rate for the life of the loan.

Variable interest rates, I won't get into it too much, but, basically, it can fluctuate over the life of the loan, and we're just not seeing a lot of people excited about that at this point of time.

The second thing you get to select is the loan term. That's how long you're gonna take to pay off the loan.

Again, when you take, like, a shorter term loan, let me yeah. Here's my slide. So when you take a shorter term loan, right, like a five year, it's usually paired with a lower interest rate. Right? So that's why people get attracted towards a shorter loan term. But what you have to keep in mind is that the monthly payment is also going up because you have, you know, short amount of time to pay off the whole loan.

So you want to find a balance there. Right? You wanna find a balance where you say, hey. I'm comfortable with this monthly payment post graduation. Right?

And I don't feel like I'm I'm taking on too much risk in in that approach. Right? And when you do that, you kind of usually land at some happy medium. For people who are taking smaller loan amounts, they might be able to go for shorter terms. For people who are taking larger loan amounts, they might gravitate towards longer terms, all in an effort to manage that monthly payment, being reasonable. Right?

Okay. And then, the in terms of repayment plans, there's a few options. Deferred is what I've mentioned a few times, which you're not making any payments while you're in school.

And then after that, you start making equal monthly payments for whatever loan term you selected. Okay? Fixed is quite similar. The distinction being instead of paying zero dollars while you're in school plus six, nine months, you'll be paying something like twenty five dollars or fifty dollars a month.

What that helps you do is, unlock what's called the autopay discount. That's why we think we see a majority of our members selecting it. This is based on April twenty twenty five data. So, like, you know, two months ago, or one and a half months ago.

And so, you know, basically, to to take advantage of the autopay discount while you're in school, you might want to take the fixed repayment plan.

Now some people, not all people, will see the interest only in immediate repayment plans. As you can see, a lot fewer people actually select those repayment plans because they involve more substantial payments while you're still in school. But sometimes if you have a spouse that might be working, you're supported by your parents, you yourself have some income going on, you might choose one of these repayment plans because they can help you reduce the interest rate. K?

So like I said, just to refer to the timeline here. Right? Folks, a lot of people will start applying pretty soon after this webinar. Right? We kinda see people pick up in June and July, sort of the height of applications, and we do encourage you to apply quickly.

And then what happens is the school will really select the loan disbursement date. Right? So it's not like because you're applying quickly, your loan gets sent to the school more quickly.

The school usually picks a date. Each so each school is picking its own date, and it's communicating that to the lender and saying, hey. On this date, disperse the loan. Okay? And so whatever date the school decides, the lender will disperse the loan on that date. The money goes to the school.

If you're borrowing for living expenses, the school takes some of that money and gives it to you in your into your checking account. Right? That's called a refund process or a reimbursement process.

And, after that disbursement happens, right, that's when interest starts accruing. So you're not accruing interest just because you applied early. There's no downside to applying early, in terms of, like, you know, interest starting to accrue faster. Right? Interest accrues when the disbursement actually happens.

Now the other thing that the the schools typically do is they split the disbursement. So most most students are applying for one academic year at a time. So, like, fall and spring, for example. Right?

But the school, what it'll do is it'll say, okay. Send me it'll tell the lender, send me fifty percent of the money for the fall, fifty percent of the money for the spring. Right? So that's a very typical, timeline, that we see for the disbursement schedule.

Right? And then you're only, again, accruing interest on amounts that have been dispersed. So when that fifty percent gets dispersed, in the fall, you're only accruing interest on that fifty percent. And then when the remaining gets dispersed in the spring, that's when you start accruing interest on the full loan amount.

Okay?

And so, you know, time goes on, you graduate, you go through your grace periods. All of this time is called the deferment period. Right? And during this time, you might be paying paying making smaller payments, sometimes zero dollars, sometimes twenty five dollars. Just depends on what kind of repayment plan you selected.

And then after the grace period is when, full repayment begins. Right? So if you selected a ten year loan, it's gonna be a hundred and twenty equal monthly payments starting from, the end of the the grace period until the loan's paid. Around that same time, right, around graduation, Juno will send you an email and be like, hey, guys. Do you wanna refinance your loans?

And or or you just think about it yourself. And, you can you can potentially refinance your loans. The other thing that might happen is you may not refinance your loan. You just have a really good rate right now, right away.

But you might prepay the loan in other ways. Right? So for example, some people take a bonus, and they pay off their loan using the bonus, or they get, you know, every month from their paycheck, they put an extra amount towards the loan. All these things are fine. There's no prepayment penalties with any of the deals we have.

So, yep, that's totally normal, fully expected.

And most lenders are seeing that, you know, the loans are paid off six, seven years, not ten years even if you select ten years when you first take out the loan. Okay?

Nicholas, how are you doing? I feel like you're buried in questions.

Go for it, man. Go for it. I'm, and I'm Keep going. The zone. I'm in the zone. I'm in the zone.

Alright. Alright. Go for it.

Okay.

Now what we suggest in terms of applying, right, like, the deals are negotiated. The deals are live on the website except for Texas. Texas, hold on. Okay?

If you're in Texas if you're a Texas resident or you're going to a Texas school, hang tight for a few give us, like, one week. Right? It's probably gonna be, like, one day, but I'm just asking for one week. After that, open the floodgates, start applying.

Right? But everyone else, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Right? Really, it it doesn't matter what your tuition due date is.

Again, what matters is, like, you know, you sort of have an idea of the loan amount. If you don't know exactly the loan amount, what we suggest is go suggest is going high. Right? And then you can bring it down.

I'll talk about how you can bring the loan amount down. There's a few strategies to do that.

Because, you know, we have attractive rates right now.

And then once you have an approved application on the lender's side, that rate is sort of yours to keep for roughly thirty days. Okay? And then if you sign on the lender's side, then that rate is yours. Basically, that that's a loan you've signed. You know, the the lender owes you that loan at the rate that you secured.

That being said, if you decide you don't want that loan anymore because for for whatever reason, right, you can just call up the lender and be like, hey. I don't want that loan anymore. And as long as it's not being dispersed, you know, give it you don't call, like, one minute before disbursement. Right?

But, like, let's say one day before disbursement or two days before disbursement, you can just call up the lender and be like, hey. Don't disperse that loan. I don't wanna cancel it. Right?

And they will cancel it. So it gives you optionality. You you know, now you have a rate that's yours, and then you can decide, hey. I, you know, I wanna keep shopping around.

I found something better. Okay. Let's see if I can get take advantage of that or if you just, you know, found found the best deal, which is what we expect to happen, then you've kind of you're done. Right?

So there's there's a lot of good reasons to lock your rate as soon as you can.

There's not great reasons I can think of at this stage to to, like, wait. Right? The most common reason people talk to us about waiting is, like, the final loan loan amount. Right?

And if you are borrowing, the maximum you're allowed to borrow, which is, like, the total cost of attendance published by the school minus any scholarships, just apply right now. Right? And apply for a conservatively high amount. And the reason is the school will automatically adjust your loan amount down if they need to because you got a scholarship or something like that. Right? That's not something that you need to wait for.

The second thing you can do to and I put effectively in in quotes over there is, like, let's say this is not your situation. You're borrowing, you know, significantly less than the you know, how much you're allowed to borrow. Right? In that case, let's say an extra amount gets dispersed to you.

You can just log in. You know, as soon as it gets dispersed the same day, just log in to the lender's portal, make a prepayment. Right? And there's no real impact financially because, no real interest has accrued.

Right? So as a no real you know, maybe your days interest, a few days of interest, whatever, something like that might have accrued. So whatever payment you're making is largely attacking the principal of the loan right away. Right?

And lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where you under applied and you need more loans, you can always apply for an additional loan and get some more funding. A little bit annoying to do that, but, you know, you can do it.

And, ultimately, right, we we suggest aiming a little bit high because prepaying is much easier than, like, going through a full application process again. Plus, with a new application, you are exposed to the risk of a new interest rate that may be up or down. So it it could swing both ways. But, you know, yeah.

Just on the the last point there is.

This Nikhil, just just on the last point because I've been getting that a lot, especially for folks that the school haven't released the full cost of attendance of this year.

So you can apply if especially if you're trying to get all the amount of the cost of attendance, you can apply for, amount that is a a little bit higher than what you expect it will be. Remember, the school will certify up to the cost of attendance. Right? And if at any point you need to reduce that, you know, you got more scholarship or, you know, if any you don't want to take that much loan, If it's before disbursement, you can call the school and ask them to certify a lower amount. Obviously, confirm to your school that you can do that, but, you know, we have heard from multiple people that they can do it with no problem.

So it's another tactic.

Even if the loan is disbursed and you mentioned you can just prepaid, there's no prevent penalties. But even before that, you may be able to adjust it with talking to your financial officer.

Absolutely. Yes.

The other thing I was thinking about, Nicholas, is, like, if you you usually at this point, I think most schools have released the cost of attendance. But if your school has not, for some reason, you can just take last year's at five percent, and you kind of know what the number is gonna be. Yeah.

Alright. So shopping around. Right? We encourage you to shop around. Right? We we we are super confident in the deal we've negotiated.

Right? Like I said, we expect less than four percent of people to be able to find a better rate anywhere else.

But if you are you wanna find out if you might be amongst those four percent of people. Right?

So we encourage you to shop around. One thing we wanna highlight to you as you think about shopping around is do it in a tight window. Right? So if you apply for your Juno loan today, you know, in the few days before and after that, go go check wherever else you want to check.

Right? The reason being is, the the your FICO score. Right? When you do a hard credit check, your FICO score can be impacted.

The impact is usually small, but it's not impacted multiple times if you're shopping around for the same product in a short window of time. Right? So if you're doing multiple student loan applications in a short window of time, that's sort of counted as one impact. I suggest you go read the articles on on on FICO to fully understand what they mean by that, but that's my takeaway.

It's kind of like, hey. If I shop around in a tight window for a single product, I'm not penalized for for that from a scoring perspective. Every every credit check will show up on my credit report, but I'm not penalized for that from a scoring perspective multiple times.

Awesome. So well, we got that fairly quickly.

So, you know, we have roughly two twenty five people on the webinar today. There's Nicholas, how many how many class of twenty twenty seven ish Juno members? Or you call it new Juno members?

Don't put me in the spot. A lot. A lot.

Several thousand. Several thousand. Right? So you can tell, like, you know, not everyone's gonna be on this call.

Not everyone's gonna get the memo. So, you know, we'd love your help to spread the word. A lot of you helped us spread the word to get this massive audience together to help us go negotiate these deals. We'd love to your help to spread the word again.

Sometimes among the exact same communities to let them know, like, hey. The deal is live. Go check your rates with Juno. Right?

We do suggest using your referral link. Right? So if you go just email us, we'll give you a referral link or you can log into your Juno dashboard, and you get some cool prices. I think we have the prices here.

There is one person, getting Nico, do you have the latest number? Is someone getting really close to their one year tuition? Someone is. Right?

Yeah. At least on on referrals, like, they have to convert. Right? This is the number of actual you know? But but yeah. Like, there are we have two several super referrals there and appreciate you helping grow the group.

Absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes you you you make the right post in the right Slack channel and boom. Suddenly, you get, like, you know, fifty, people using using your link, and then that unlocks some pretty cool prizes, for you.

So we we strongly seventy percent of Juno members hear about Juno through word-of-mouth. Right? We heavily rely on that. That's what allows us to keep our marketing costs really low and therefore pass on the benefit to our members through interest rate discounts and cashback and stuff like that.

Okay? So strong really strongly encourage that.

Again, no downsides. We need to lock in a rate now. Go lock in a rate. If you want a better rate later, there's ways to switch that as long as it's before disbursement. Disbursement usually happens pretty close to your tuition due date. So, you know, by that time, you really should know which loan you're using.

Yeah. There are some good reasons to take federal loans. For example, public service loan forgiveness and income driven repayment. Outside of that, we we believe, you know, you should just do a cost comparison. And, again, we strongly believe that for most people on this call, Juno will have the lowest rates.

Yeah, and spread the word. Cool.

We will stay on to answer questions because I see sixty three open questions, Nicholas. You're drowning.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I finished fifty two, but there's sixty four left. So, yeah, don't leave. There's very good questions here, and, also, like, feel free to to post more if you need to. I'll voice over some details so you can answer.

I think these these are a good one. Can you please explain the types of loan repayment plans?

Absolutely. So there's four types of repayment plans. The deferred, fixed, interest only, and immediate. And I'm gonna go to a different slide, this slide, to talk about it.

So the deferred repayment plan is one way you have zero dollar payments due. Interest is still accruing. Okay? In all of the prepayment plans, federal, private, whatever, interest is accruing as soon as the disbursement happens.

But how much are you required to pay, right, while you're in school? That's what the repayment plan is affecting. So the deferred repayment plan means you don't have any payments whatsoever to make until you graduate plus six to nine months after that.

The fixed repayment plan is something like twenty five dollars a month is what you have to pay every month until the grace period ends. K? The interest only repayment plan is one where you pay off the interest that's accruing each month. Right?

So if you have a hundred thousand dollar loan with a five percent interest rate, five thousand divided by twelve, whatever that number is. Right? That much is accruing each month. So that much you're paying off each month.

And finally, the immediate repayment plan, repayment plan, there is no deferment period. You just sort of take the loan, and the next month, you start making equal monthly pay payments, for the duration of the loan term till you pay it off. Hopefully, that helps answer the question. Happy to chat more in one on ones about, you know, the nuances of the different repayment plans. Generally speaking, the more aggressive the repayment plan, that is the faster you're making payments, it tends to be associated with, you know, lower interest rates.

A couple of questions that I've seen a lot, Neil. First, I'm seeing people asking if interest accrues, during, you know, deferment and if that's different for federal loans.

And the other one is if you should borrow for one year or, like, the whole program all at once.

Great question. So, let me answer the first question. The federal loans and the private loans for grad school accrue interest exactly the same way. Both of them accrue interest once the disbursement happens.

There is this rumor that runs around about no interest on federal loans while you're in school or something like that.

That only applies to undergraduate students and that only applies to a subset of undergraduate students that on a need basis qualify for subsidized direct loans. So if you don't qualify for that well, if you're a grad student, there's not a chance.

If you're an undergrad student, you shouldn't be in this webinar.

But if you are, then, you know, there is a small chance that you might get the interest free treatment while you're in school, but you have to qualify for that.

Okay. So hopefully that helps. The second question, Nicholas, was about, what was it? Oh, one year versus two years.

Yep. So the the cost of attendance is released for one year. Right? The whole loan industry is built around applying for your loans one year at a time.

If you wanted, you could do it one semester at a time. Right? So you could take just the fall now.

You could take a separate loan right now for the fall and spring if you wanted to break it up for some reason. But, ultimately, the most you can do is one academic year.

And there's just no structure in the student or industry to try to do a two year loan. Right? There are some lenders who, like, try to advertise, like, oh, we'll we'll do lifetime loan or whatever, but they don't really do that. All they do is they give you a one year loan, and they say, next summer, come back to us, and we'll reapprove you with, you know, less paperwork in in the second year, which, to be honest, you can get through a student loan application in about fifteen minutes.

So, like, honestly, I can get through one in, like, five minutes because I've just done it so many times.

The average person without a cosigner can probably do it in ten minutes, and the average person with a cosigner can probably do it in, like, twenty minutes. So, you know, it's pretty quick.

Okay.

I have to make it. I I honestly, I'm I'm amazed by the very good questions, about my ability, I guess.

What are you being amazed? We have a great audience.

No. I mean, like, I'm I think I'm more more of, like, I'm ashamed of my lack of ability to answer these questions. But, anyways, I think that one interesting one. Is there a benefit to plan early if we're not aware yet of the cost of attendance for this year, or should we guesstimate amount now and readjust when the cost of attendance is no?

Yeah. I mean, look. The the at this point, you should know what last year's cost of attendance is, and then you can sort of extrapolate from the from that, like, add five percent to estimate this year's cost of attendance. Right? So that's that's a way to estimate.

You know, if your school is, like, one week away from releasing the cost of attendance, sure. Just wait. Right? But, like, if it's gonna take a take a while, we do suggest locking in your rate early.

I I I shouldn't have removed that slide, but I used to have a graph here instead of this, like, fake graph. Right? I used to have a real graph that showed you how exactly the rates changed over one season. That is, like, June through September.

And, what because do you remember how much rates changed that year? Was it, like, three three percent?

So Yeah.

It was crazy.

It yeah. So, you know, the deals that Juno negotiates, everything I've told you in this, webinar stands is true as of today.

But, ultimately, lenders do have some amount of flexibility in changing rates, okay, if market conditions force them to change rates. And we are in a volatile interest rate environment, you know, a random tweet from the president can set off interest rates in a certain direction or inflation numbers can look a certain way or recession. You know, the the there's so many things that can cause interest rates to move.

So you you kind of want to it gives you optionality. So I I like the idea of locking in your rate as soon as possible. Is it, like, you know, the only way to do it? No.

But, yeah, you know, it's free option. If I get a free option, I'm gonna take it.

Because you can always like, basically, let let's say rates come down. Right? Let's say there's, I don't know, recession fears and suddenly, rates come down.

What you can do is you can just call up the lender and say, hey. I don't want that loan anymore. It's not dispersed yet, so please cancel it. And then just take a new loan at the new reduced interest rate. Right? So there's no downside to to doing that, but there's, there's upside to to lock in in your rate. Right?

Okay.

If you bought more than you need, is there an option to return some of your loan exempt of interest?

Yeah. No. So, you you you're only paying interest you know, interest is accruing as time moves. Right? So for example, you let's say the loan gets dispersed on August first, and on January first, you decide you want to return some of the money.

Right? So, basically, then what you have to do is between August first and Jan first, how much of interest has accrued? Probably not very much. Right? It's, like, five months worth of interest.

So just take your interest rate, divide it by two, and multiply it into the loan amount. Right?

You have to pay off that interest, and then you can attack your principal balance and reduce your principal balance by how much of you need to. So, no, you can't, like, return money that's already been dispersed, without some interest accruing. But the faster you do it, the less interest has accrued, when you when you return that money. Right? If that makes sense. Let me know if that makes does not make sense.

Mhmm. Yeah. I don't know if I'm putting you in the spot here, but in in is the interest on the student loan stock tax deductible?

Not always, but sometimes.

I do expect for most people here that it's not tax deductible because as you'll make good money post graduation, and there's a income phase out on the tax just on the tax deduction for student loans. Right? So, basically, if you make a lot of money, you don't get the tax deduction. If you don't make a lot of money, you get the tax deduction. That's kinda how it works, I believe. But talk to a CPA, obviously.

Yep. Go ahead. Does the same process apply for students entering second year and need another loan? Yep.

Exactly. It's the same process. You kind of just go apply, you know, submit your loan application, get approved, select your customize your loan, sign the document. You're good to go.

Oh, this is a great question.

Do you need to decide on the school you are attending, before submitting an application? So, yes, you have to select a school when you are submitting an application.

But I've seen something some some people do it, which is very clever. Right? Because same concept. Right?

They kinda wanna lock in their rate, but they haven't decided which school. So they end up submitting an application for each school that they're deciding between. Like, usually, it's not, like, crazy, like, five schools or something. It's, like, usually two schools.

So they're like, oh, I might go to MIT or I might go to, you know, Cornell.

Let me submit two applications, one for Cornell, one for MIT.

And then whichever one I end up at, I'll take that loan and I'm gonna cancel the other one. Right? But there are people who've done that.

Yeah.

How much payment it raises?

Go ahead.

Sorry. Like, one one one common question that I'm seeing is, can I apply now if I need a loan for spring?

Right? Not not right now. So what chance, Miguel?

Yeah. Absolutely. You can hundred percent apply for a loan just for the spring semester. Right? The in your application, it one of the questions you'll be asked is, like, what what academic period are you applying for?

It can be asked in different ways. So sometimes you have to select, like, a month, you know, start month and a end month. So if you're applying for spring, you might select, like, Jan twenty twenty six to May twenty twenty six. Sometimes there'll literally be a drop down that says, like, spring twenty twenty six. Right? And you'll select that instead of selecting, like, fall twenty twenty five and spring twenty twenty six. So, you can definitely apply for the just the spring semester, if you are not borrowing in the fall.

I see. These rates secured until?

Like, the rates today are secured until today. Right? Like, they can move, you know, any any point of time. Generally speaking, you know, it's not like every single day rates are changing, but, technically, they they could.

Right? If if something happened, there's some news article or whatever. Honestly, it could just be, like, nothing might happen. Or, like, it may seem like nothing might happen to the external world, but, you know, risk assumptions or something like that could change, and, certainly, rates could move.

So, you know, just yeah. It's it's what you see today is good for today, and then unless you get approved all the way on the lender's site. Right? Once you're approved on the lender's site, the rates you see over there are sort of yours to keep for thirty days.

Right? And then if you sign the loan, and as it means, it's a fixed interest rate loan, that's your rate. Right? Because I saw another question, which is, like, how much movement in rates should we expect between now and the school's disbursement date?

The answer is it doesn't matter. Right? Like, when you submit your application, the date of application submission is what's driving, what rate you're going to see.

There is no, you know, if you sign that loan, it doesn't matter how much rates fluctuate after you've signed the loan.

The the rate that was quoted to you is is, you know, the the lender is obligated to to give you that quote.

That that's the that's the point we're trying to make in terms of, like, why you should lock your rates sooner than later.

Yeah. I'm seeing several questions about that. So I'll just, you know, how much rates move from now to disbursement?

Or I think, Miguel, let's make it clear. You know, it's better to lock it now. If rates hold down, again, you can apply again. So there is no real downside of, you know, making sure that you have a rate that you're happy with right now.

And now no one is going to take away that rate. Right? If rates move, like, the spike, you already locked that in. It's good it's good for the term of the loan.

Yeah. And just to clarify, when when we say lock, right, we're we're either referring to, like, you have approved application on the lender's site, not on the Juno site. You know, the Juno's the the stuff you see on the Juno site is moment in time. Right? You saw it.

It's good for your analysis at that second, and then it's expired two seconds later.

When you're on the lender's side and you get approved and you see rates on the lender's side, that's usually good for thirty days. That's your consideration period. Right? Thirty days.

And then if you sign that, that's it. That's that's the deal you've signed. Right? And, of course, you you will have the option to call up the lender and cancel it, but the lender has to honor what's been signed.

Do you have an email so I can ask more personal questions? Yes. Absolutely. So if you want to reach me directly, it's nikhil, n I k h I l, at join general dot com. If you want to reach Nicholas directly, it's n I c o l a s at join general dot com. However, we I think we both recommend reaching out to hello, h e l l o, at join general dot com.

That's a inbox shared by the team.

There's, three people on our team that who who's regularly in that inbox. They're ex honestly, they are better than me and Nicholas at answering questions just because they've done it so many times. They've seen every question under the sun.

All three of them have gone through multiple peak seasons now, so they have the experience of a very wide range of questions.

And then, you know, me, Nicholas, and other people on the team also get pulled in to that, very regularly if, you know, there's a complex situation that requires multiple people to put their hats together to figure out. Okay?

If you pay your loans faster than the loan term, does that help you pay less in interest?

Yes. So if you take a ten year loan, but you're on track to pay it off in seven years, for example, the total interest you're paying is gonna be less than what you would have paid if you, you know, just made the minimum payments each month and ended up paying it off in in ten years.

If if I take a loan and after the first semester, I realized I borrowed too much, can I call the lender to lower or cancel the second disbursement?

You can cancel. Yes. Lower the second disbursement, maybe.

Not usually. You can cancel. Yeah. You can definitely cancel the second disbursement. We've seen that a bunch, in terms of lowering the second disbursement.

I think the the way to effectively lower it would be just to cancel it and make a new application for the exact amount that you want, or let it disperse and then just prepay as soon as it disperses.

Right? Either of those would effectively, you know, accomplish what you're trying to do.

Yeah. I think that did you read an an answer because I I got my Okay.

Alright. I'll keep going. I'll keep going.

So we just answered this question, but, like, what's you know, is the the downside of selecting a longer term role? What is the downside? Right? Is it just a slightly higher interest rate for the longer term loans? Yeah. That that's right. You know, the the downside of selecting slightly a a longer term tends to be a slightly higher interest rate.

And if you take the ten year loan and pay it off in a past time frame, your your total interest rate is actually from pretty close. You're much closer to the the total interest that you'd normally calculate on a five year loan.

K? So great question over there.

Make and you mark your name as as answered right now.

Over here.

Correct. Answer live. Yeah. That's what I'm checking. Yep. If I'm able to pay off my loan before graduation, would I still need to pay the interest rate?

Yes. Because you will accrue interest as soon as the loan disperses. Right? So, let's say your loan disperses in August.

You're accruing interest from August through May. So roughly twenty one months of interest has accrued. You have to pay that off along with your principal to fully pay off the loan if you're trying to pay it off at graduation.

Great question.

There's a question here about how do I check my FICO score? Will checking my pie FICO score impact my credit score?

So, great question. There are many websites where you can check your FICO score.

American Express, I know, has a a FICO checkup. Right? I don't know what the technical term is, but they have a website. They they a part of their website allows you to go see your own FICO score. What I will say is the FICO score that Juno's lenders utilizes may not be the same FICO score that, someone else is showing you.

There are many versions of FICO that exist. So I I don't know if there's a ton of value in going and checking your FICO score. What I would rather see people do is use our rate check tool, some of it as a rate check, and see exactly what rates you're getting. Right? And then if you wanna think about how do I improve my FICO score to get better rates, things like that, then you might go to one of these tools on Amex or SoFi or there's so many of them. Credit Karma and try to say, okay. What can I do to improve my FICO score?

I didn't get this question, but I'm gonna, answer it anyways. It's like, how do I improve my FICO score? And for a lot of people, they might have credit cards where they pay off the credit card every month. Right? So they're not actually carrying a balance on the credit card.

However, you still get a statement. Right? And on that statement, there is a balance, and that balance does get reported on your credit report.

So if you log in a few days before the statement generation date, right, to your credit card website and make a payment at that point of time, so now you've paid off, you know, most of your credit card before the statement is generated. When the statement generates, it's gonna have a near zero balance. That's gonna bring down your utilization rate. And in many cases, it can provide a temporary bump to your, FICO score, which can then help you potentially qualify for better student loan rates.

A question here about federal loans. Is there any prepayment penalties with federal loans? Nope. There's no prepayment penalties with federal loans.

However, there is an origination fee. Right? So it's not the same as a repayment penalty, but, you know, as soon as the loan's being dispersed, you'll be charged a fee, and that's a upfront fee. So the shorter the long term, the heavier that fee feels, in terms of a percentage.

When can we see the new rates with the rate check tool? You can see it now. It's live. It's go if you go today other than Texas, if you're if you're a Texas resident or you're eligible or, you're going to a Texas school, you'll wait a few days. But other than that, everyone else is is good to go right now.

Did you say not see sorry.

Okay. I'm gonna skip that one. I don't know what that means. Sorry.

I have a credit score of o eight hundred, but I'm seeing rates in the seven and a half percent range. Is this normal?

It might be normal.

You know, there's a variety of factors that go into the rates that you're seeing, for you know, I yeah. It's hard for me to to answer that question. Feel free to shoot me a email, hello at john journo dot com, and we can go, you know, dig into your situation more specifically to try to understand if that's you know, if something abnormal is happening on the site. But, it it could be normal. Right?

Okay. Great.

As someone with a majority tuition scholarship, can I apply for a loan only for the remaining amount, or can I apply for a large amount that will help me cover rent slash other bills? Yes. So the maximum you can apply for is the cost of attendance published by the school minus whatever scholarship you've received. Right?

And the cost of attendance does include, allowances for rent, living expenses, other bills, etcetera. Right? So, you know, look at your school's financial aid office website, find the cost of attendance, and that table, you should see, you know, the full cost of attendance, including tuition fees, health insurance, rent, you know, room board, etcetera. And then from that, subtract your scholarship amount, and whatever is left is how much you can, submit a loan application for.

Okay?

Once loans are dispersed, is Juno still available for support or insight, or at that point, you still need to go through the lender's support if you have questions.

So are we available? Yes. You know, we take, we we have a team that's active, throughout the year to help get ourselves involved in conversations, etcetera. But we don't service the loans.

Right? So if you want to prepay the loan or just make a regular payment, etcetera, you're logging into, either the lender's website or a vendor of the lender's website, the servicing company's website, and that's really your primary point of contact. But if something weird is happening, like, we are here to back you up. We are here to help you, you know.

And if you just want to discuss, like, strategy and stuff like that, we are happy to chat about it, pretty much all the time.

Great question here. Does interest capitalize at time of graduation? Yes. It does. So, you you get the benefit of simple interest during the deferment period. At the end of the deferment period, all that interest that's accrued as simple interest capitalizes, and then you enter for repayment.

So, yeah, it's sort of a monthly cadence at that point.

Great question.

Any quick services that can help evaluate the mix of cash selling equities and taking loans? Me.

We we we have a lot of one on one calls with our members to discuss exactly that, like, how much should you sell equities, how much should you you know, at the end of the day, we're not investment advisers. We are not we don't have all of those qualifications, etcetera. But we've just spoken to so many, students going into MBA schools, different graduate programs, etcetera.

We understand the context of people, you know, three, four, five years post graduation, and we can help give you opinions on, you know, whether you should what you what subs what sources of cash you should use, or you should think about using. Right? And then there's more options than just selling equity, sticking loans, and cash. Right? So we can help you think through that more holistically.

So there's a question here where all going all fixed versus variable interest rate. I kind of glossed over that on purpose, but I'll I'll go go over it in more detail given there's the question about it. So, fixed interest rate is hopefully straightforward. Right?

Fixed interest rate means when you get a rate quote, right, you're looking at a interest rate, and that's the interest rate for the life of the loan. There's no changing of that interest rate. Whatever happened outside world, your interest rate is your interest rate. Right?

That's a fixed interest rate. That's the most popular option that we see.

A variable interest rate is one that can change over time. Right? And the way it changes is formulaic. So it's not like the lender wakes up and says, today, I wanna charge you, you know, x percentage and the rate is no. It's it's formulaic and the typical formula is c.

Not as a typical, not like, you know, d formula, but it changes from lender to lender.

Is this an index rate and there's a spread over that index? The most popular index being used these days is the SOFA index. Okay?

And so as the SOFA moves, your interest rate also moves along with that. And the interest rate is not usually evaluated on, like, a per day basis. Right? So for example, let's say on the first of the month, they check the SOPA.

They calculate what your rate is gonna be by taking that SOPR rate, adding your spread over index. The spread over index stays constant. Okay? So let's say your spread over index is two percent, and your index rate when you signed the loan was four percent. So your starting rate is six percent. And then something happens and the SOFA rate increases by, you know, whatever, one percent.

So at the next at some interval, right, once a month, once a year, whatever the interval is that the lender has selected, At that point of time, they reevaluate what your rate is going to be, and they check again what the index is on that date. Let's say the index has now moved to five percent. So the index is five. The spread of index has stayed the same, two.

Five plus two is seven. So now your new rate is seven percent. So that so, essentially, you can think of it as, like, as the SOFA moves, your interest rate also moves in parallel to the SOFA. And you can see, like, post twenty twenty two, the SOFA, like, really climbed very quickly.

Right? And and this is similar to, you know, what we mentioned when we were talking about locking in rates today, whether it's a fixed rate or variable rate, or really fixed rate. It's like, if you locked in a rate right here, you didn't see the spike. Right?

But if if you delayed locking in your rate, you you might have seen this spike and suddenly you're like, oh, shoot. I have to take a rate that's two percent higher, right, because of that. So so that's why it's kind of sometimes important to to you know, if you're in this kind of a period where the rates are just flat, it doesn't matter. Right?

Nothing's happening.

So, yeah, hopefully, that's helpful.

I'm just seeing a bunch of acne colossus, so I'm just gonna go ahead and mark those as done.

Do you need to know the exact amount we want to borrow in order to lock the rate? Kind of.

That's a great question. So do you need to know the exact amount? So if you know that you're borrowing the full cost of attendance minus any scholarships you've received, in that case, you don't need to know exactly how much you're borrowing. Okay?

You can just apply for a conservatively high amount. Right? Just apply for, like, five thousand dollars more than your cost of attendance minus scholarships, and the school will automatically reduce that to exactly the maximum that you can borrow. Okay?

So in that way, you don't have to sort of exactly calculate the number. But outside of that situation, yeah, you kinda wanna know how much you wanna borrow.

There are ways, like, we've discussed to adjust that amount later on. For example, you can prepay the loan. You know, as soon as it disperses, take that money, prepay the loan. You haven't really accrued any, you know, real amount of interest. Right? So all payment you make is going towards the principal.

The other way to adjust it is, like, there is some amount of flexibility even after certification where you can call the lender and say, hey. Can you reduce my loan amount by a thousand dollars, etcetera?

That might work out.

And then finally, you know, you you could use the school's help to request them to recertify the loan at the loan amount that you need, and they can help you with that as well. Okay? So, hopefully, that's helpful.

If tuition money goes straight to school, for non tuition money borrowed, when is that dispersed, and where does the money go? Great question. So all of the money, that you're borrowing goes straight to the school, including the money you're borrowing for living expenses.

The school will take its piece, right, the tuition fees, whatever, and then the school will reimburse that money to your checking account.

That's kinda how the money flows.

Here's a scenario. Assume I'm still working and will be MBA year one this fall. Assume my income is one twenty five k. Should I apply for a higher amount this year and a lower amount in year two when my internship income may only be twenty five to thirty k?

Great question. And there's a sub question under that that you didn't ask. Let me answer that question first. So when you apply for a loan, and it asks you what's your income, alright, you want to think about your current income on a annualized basis.

Right? So even if you are only gonna be earning thirty thousand dollars during your internship, let's say your internship is a three month internship and you're earning thirty thousand dollars over that, on an annualized basis, that's hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And that's the number I would enter when I'm asked the question, like, what is my income? It would be it's a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

Right? Because on a on a annualized basis, that's what it is. And then if the lender asks for proof of income, you're just gonna submit your pay stubs, which is going to show an annual rate, not a total amount, but an annual rate that is moving towards hundred and twenty thousand dollars for the full year. And that's it.

So, so I guess that kind of answers your scenario question, which is like, yeah, it doesn't matter that much, you know.

You if you're gonna have this roughly the same income annualized income now versus then, it doesn't matter. Obviously, market might move. Right? Rates might be higher or lower next year. Who knows? But, like, as just in terms of based on the income, should you do something different? Probably not.

Alright. Cool.

Can I see what FICO score Juno used to generate rates during a rate check? Unfortunately, you cannot.

Our hands are tied over there. I I don't even allow, many of Juno's internal employees to be able to see the FICO score that's being used to generate the rates, during a rate check. Unfortunately, that's that's just FCRA regulations prohibit us from sharing the PICO score that that's being it's it's really weird, but that's that's the the law. So we we can't do anything about that.

Do Juno loans have an origination fee? Nope. Do not Juno loans do not have an origination fee.

Yeah.

What are the best rates you're seeing right now? So the absolute best rates we're seeing right now is probably in the three, four percent range, but I I don't like using that number publicly because very few people qualify for it. Right? It's like less than ten percent of people are gonna see those numbers.

I would say the median rates are gonna be in the high sixes, mid sevens, you know, range like that is a lot more normal, for people to see.

Okay.

What if I get a rate, but then the rates start going down before school starts? Can I reapply? Absolutely.

If you get a rate today, you lock it in. You even signed the loan, but the disbursement hasn't occurred yet. Right?

You can just call up the lender and be like, hey. I don't want that loan anymore. I have another application. You know, let's use that one, and you're good to go.

The way we can be applied for the loan, you start on the Juno website. Always start on the Juno website to make sure you're getting the Juno negotiated benefits.

We cannot help you. If you just hear about it from a friend and go directly to the lender, you're not gonna get the Juno negotiated rates. You're not gonna get the Juno negotiated cash back. You're you're just, you know, not getting the Juno benefits. So start on the Juno website, and we'll guide you to the lender's website when it's the right time to do that.

Okay.

Would you have recommended overshooting and applying for more than you might need to be conservative, but upon disbursement, we will accrue more interest on a larger balance. How do you recommend thinking about this in choosing a loan amount? So to to clarify our guidance. Right?

If you know how much you need, apply exactly for how much you need. You you don't need to over apply. Right? I think the the whole over applying thing comes up in a situation where you want to borrow the cost of attendance minus any scholarships you've received.

K?

And in that situation, you can over apply without stressing about it because what will happen is the school will automatically reduce the loan amount before disbursement, and the disperse amount will be, you know, the maximum, which is the cost of attendance minus scholarships. K?

And if you know this number, you know, just exactly enter that number. There's no there's no point of overshooting it. Okay? So, hopefully, that's helpful. And but but then, yeah, in terms of, if you have over applied and actually disperse more than you need, just prepay the loan really quickly, so that you're not accruing interest of that higher loan amount.

Do you know what the origination fee is for the federal unsubsidized loan? Roughly one percent. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but I think it's, like, one point o eight. Don't quote me on that. But one you know, roughly one point o one percent for the first twenty thousand five hundred you borrow from the federal unsubsidized loan. And then if you use the grad plus loan, it's like a four point two percent origination fee. That's where it gets really expensive on the origination fee.

Alright.

I think we're burning this down, Nicholas. We're we're down to fourteen questions left. I'm gonna take a quick sip of water before I continue knocking this out.

And, also, I realize I'm sitting in darkness.

Okay. Here we go. Homestretch.

Somewhat off topic, but relevant for calculating the loan amount needed. How much should I expect to make from my summer internship?

I have no idea.

Happy to chat in a one on one. I obviously get data from a lot of people on on the topic like that, but I would need to know what are you aiming for in terms of the internship, and then then we can talk about, you know, expectations around that. We do encourage people to factor in the tax impact. You know, a lot of people might make thirty thousand, but they might end up owing, you know, five, six thousand dollars to the government. And so then your take home is a little bit less.

So just don't forget to calculate your tax impact if you're doing the math on that.

If I'm taking two loans, one for each year, am I able to renegotiate both loans into one when I graduate?

Yes. The term I would use is not renegotiate but refinance, which basically means you can take out one new loan that pays off your two loans that you took, one for each year, while you were in school. Okay? So and that's very common. We help people do that. We negotiate better rates than you can get by yourself, for that. So, you know, to come back to Juneau when you're ready to do that, and we'll help you, do that.

Okay. For federal loans, I think you have to take an online course to show that you understand the financial liability of taking out loans.

Does something similar exist for private loans?

No. Something yeah. I I I believe what you're talking about is called entrance counseling, and there's exit counseling as well. And, unfortunately, there isn't something like that that exists for private loans. Juno should look into creating something like that.

I I I've actually taken the federal one recently just for my own academic research, and, it's a bit drab, I guess, but it it it's very helpful information. I do recommend people read it. You know, it's honestly not a bad idea even if you're taking a private loan to just go through that entrance counseling just for kicks. Right? And you you learn something.

What exactly happens if you can't pay a Juno loan due to a layoff in, say, twenty thirty? Is there a grace period? Okay. Great question.

Right? So, if you're laid off, you don't have any income, and let's just assume for a second that you don't have savings either. Right? So you're truly not able to make payments on the loan.

What you want to do is not bury your head in the sand. And what you want to do is call up the loan servicer and say, hey. This is my situation. What can be done? Right? And when I've had these phone calls with other people, usually, the solution tends to be something like, hey. You can go on forbearance for up to twelve months, or you can go on interest only for twelve months or six months or whatever the term that, you know, is discussed.

But that tends to be the typical solution. So with the federal loans, you know, this qualification criteria, but at some point, you're able to get onto an income driven repayment plan, and that can you can be on the income driven repayment plan for a very long amount of time. Right? With private loans, you don't have that option to be on a income repayment plan for, you know there there is no income driven repayment plan.

Right? There's there's only the one repayment plan that you signed up for. But if you have a hardship, it's not unusual for you to go into, you know, forbearance or something like that. So where you don't have to make payments for x number of months.

But after those x number of months, you are expected to start making payments again. Right? So for for most people, twelve months, you know, six months, twelve months, that kind of time frames are pretty good for finding their next job and getting back on track.

But, yeah, that's kind of the flexibility we see that many private lenders offer. I would recommend calling up, you know, the specific lender that you're considering taking a loan with and having a discussion with them about that because this is something that could vary lender to lender. It's not like a universal rule that exactly all lenders work the same way.

Great question. What if you want to make loan payments while in school? How do you select that option? It's not on the form once submitted.

Is it not on the form?

It it means, like, the principal interest is not populating.

Okay. So some people will not see that option. That's fine. You can still there's no prepayment penalties.

Right? So what you can do is select one of the payment plans that is available and then simply, pay extra each month. Pay more than the minimum required each month. If you need some help in calculating, you know, how much you should pay so that in five years, your loan is fully paid off or something like that, shoot us a note.

We can do some quick math and let you know roughly how much you need to pay each month to, yep, pay off your loan in x amount of time or something like that.

Last question.

One eighty fifth question.

On Juno's website, it says deferred repayment plans do not receive the auto pay discount until after graduation.

Is this factored into the interest calculation shown on the rate stage?

I don't know. Is it? I don't think it is. Right? It probably just assumes a flat I I I don't know.

Sorry. I I don't know the I I can do the math, myself and let you know what, like, the numbers look like. Should be a note, But I don't know. I don't remember.

I guess it should be the answer. I can I can go find out? Oh, marathon.

That was fun, though.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. This is definitely a record. Thank you. Thank you, Miguel.

Yeah. Thank you, Nicolas. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you for, you know, the amazing questions, all the engagement. We absolutely love it when we see this kind of engagement. Again, just as a quick reminder, go lock in your rates, sign those loans, tell your friends about it, win some win some rewards courtesy Juno.

And, yeah, we're we're here to help, guys. So, like, any any questions, just shoot us a note. Our our Zoom links are readily available to all members. If you wanna book a time on our calendar, please do so. We're happy to help.

Alright.

See you guys.

For the night. Good night. Good night. Bye.