Writer and product marketing manager Miranda speaks to Nikki about her evolving relationship with student debt and how it shaped her career choices. Miranda believes in transparency around money and conversations that help us increase financial confidence and wellness. She also shares an experience with student loan scammers and examines the vulnerability that exists when we imagine a future without the burden of student loans.

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Transcript –

Nikki Nolan: [Music] I’m Nikki Nolan, and this is Matter of Life and Debt, a show about people in the United States and their student debt.

Today’s episode Financial Transparency

I talk with Miranda Dennis – Writer and product marketing manager, about her evolving relationship with her student debt. She’s advocating for transparency around money that will increase financial confidence and wellness.

This is her story…

Welcome to the podcast, it’s so good to have you here!

Miranda: I’m super excited to be here. This is one of my favorite topics to maybe obsessively talk about to the point that maybe I need to put a timer on how much I could talk about this!

Nikki Nolan: So let’s jump right into it. How much student debt do you have?

Miranda: I have $115,000 in federal loan debt. I hate to say this, but thanks to the pandemic I was able to pay my private. I don’t know how much it was in private, like at least $30K in private loan debt. Because federal loan pause means there’s an opportunity to pay the private loan debt. And I don’t remember what the original private loan or the original federal loan debt was, because of interest. I have FedLoan servicing for my federal loan. So who knows what we’ll have next year- for those who don’t know FedLoan servicing is going away. And there’ll be a new servicer who’s taking over from them. I think it was around 6%.

Nikki Nolan: Oh yeah. And it’s really hard. Cause when it’s paused, you literally can’t even see.

Miranda: Right. It says 0% when I go to check, which is okay, not super accurate, but thanks.

Nikki Nolan: What has been the impact of student debt on your life so far?

Miranda: I think it should be stated here that I live in New York City, which is an expensive city to live in. And I don’t remember how I got through making under a certain salary. I don’t remember, how did I do that?

How was I paying student loans, paying private loans, which don’t have a lot of leeway in what you can pay and living in New York City? But that said, because of my student loan debt, that was a big motivating factor to get me working in industries I probably wouldn’t have considered before. So I work in digital advertising now. I work as a product marketing manager and I have a pretty competitive salary for the region and for the industry. And for the field I’m in. And I love my work. I was never expecting to love my work to the degree I did because when I first started in advertising, I was ah, this is okay.

I remember being in college and being really, really sad when Bitch magazine had to start thinking about taking it ads. I remember being ads, oh, ads are the worst thing to happen to America. I remember being like, I’m never going to go into marketing. I’m an English creative writing major.

I’m a poet. I write fiction. You wouldn’t catch me dead doing marketing. And low key would just maybe roll my eyes at the comms majors in my college. It is not very nice of me, but that’s the irony of where I am today. All of that to say that salary has been a big motivator in the career paths I’ve chosen and in sort of the hustle that is probably not inherent to who I am.

I love to read and lie around. I don’t believe type A/type B are truly real, but let’s use these as coats. I am not a type A person. I’ve had to learn to pretend to be and learn New York has a pretty strong work ethic, work hustle, and I’m not a hustler with a dollar sign for the S, but I’m picking up how to be. And that’s what the motivator has been. Definitely student loans.

When I first moved to the city that I worked in publishing that didn’t pay any money. And I probably had a bit of an ego, coming from my MFA program and poetry thinking, well, they’re just going to want to hire me to work in publishing. Why wouldn’t they? I’m so smart. Turns out I did not have the same hustle as other interns who were aspiring to work in publishing and that’s okay. Because again, I got on this trajectory that I really liked. That is the intersection of technology and my writing skills. And honestly, some of my project management skills that I enjoy.

But that’s a far cry from my dream of being a writer who’s also a professor wearing Birkenstocks and socks together. Right? That was what I wanted. I never really thought I would be a famous, famous writer, but I thought it would be maybe some poetry books published by a university press.

And then I would be a very earthy professor. All my professors in undergrad I admire greatly and thought they just had the best job, the best life. But, that’s okay. I’m on this new path, this new journey. It’s really exciting. But it would have never happened without the fact that I had six figures in student loan debt

Nikki Nolan: Fascinating. So out of everyone that I’ve talked to, most people the impact has sort of been “it’s messed up my mental health. It’s done X, Y, and Z”, but for you- and I’ve also heard with other people that it has been a strong motivator to like, even me, the student loans motivated us to have to take jobs for the salary. Which is interesting.

Miranda: I think on another note it’s been hard. And I said, when I was not making enough money, I don’t remember that time. Right? But I don’t have fond memories of being poor in New York City. I wasn’t struggling to the degree other people were, but it’s not as fun of a city if you don’t have money. You have to think about when to buy clothes. You have to be on a budget and that’s okay. And that’s fine. It’s sometimes part of the experience of being younger in a large city.

But, I’m trying to personally reframe my relationship to my debt instead of just seeing it as this thing I’ve resented for so long, which I have. I think this might be the first year where I’m in a relationship with my debt and also I have a salary that privileges me to have a relationship with my debt, that’s not entirely negative. Because I do like my life and I do the things that I can do in this city. And I do like the fact that I’m chipping away at a financial future for myself. But that, of course, doesn’t negate how scary it has been to get to this point into that fear of will I be able to retire? Will I be able to have a home? I don’t know. I don’t want to own property, but the point is having those conversations with myself. But this past year, I don’t know if it’s the pandemic. I don’t know if it’s getting rid of my private loan debt, but that relationship has kind of shifted. I’m just kind of making more peace with it.

Nikki Nolan: I love that. Was there any tactic or force function that got each of those places where you started exploring?

Miranda: There was one really interesting moment. I think I’ve written about this as well, but, they’re this mother-daughter duo of financial advisors, Cindy and Morgan Newman. They go and do sessions with companies to help women or not just women, but in the capacity that I’m the co-leader of our women’s ERG employee resource group at my company. And so we brought them on to do a financial feminists session.

And after that, there was a free consultation with them if you signed up for the newsletter and I talked to them and I was talking to them about my debt. And it was just so powerful to be reminded by, I think it was Cindy who said, “You know what? Student loan debt is good debt.”

Nikki Nolan: Interesting.

Miranda: Now, as an aside, I know that terms bad debt might be applied to credit card debt. And I don’t apply judgements necessarily to the kind of debt we’re in. But historically student loan debt has been seen as a powerful, good thing cause you’re getting your education. It’s just the way student loan debt has burdened us, we can’t really catch up with capitalism, inflation, cost of living, all these things are rising. There was probably a time when we were like, it’s just a little debt, it’ll be worth it.

But the point is you are investing in yourself and you’re investing in your future. And I remember I almost started crying on the phone. I do not cry super easily, but just being reminded that, that wasn’t a bad choice I made. And just hearing someone, this person who’s an expert in her field, or at least, who talks about financial wellness a lot, just reminding me of that was just really powerful. That wasn’t that long ago, that was maybe nine months ago.

Nikki Nolan: Wow.

Miranda: And then it’s just reframing, why am I judging myself for thing? One, I made the best decision I could with the limited information I had at 18. But why, even if I’d been 40 and made the same decision, why am I putting so much judgment on something that was ultimately an investment and the kind of life I wanted? And that life I wanted did include going to a private college that had a great creative writing program. It was nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, not in Alabama, where I’m from. We make decisions that are more than just a sort of capitalist framework of A plus B equals this type of success.

Nikki Nolan: I just want to shift topics just a tiny bit. A little bit ago, our mutual friend, Emma, messaged me and she goes, “Hey, all this information about they’re changing some of the information around federal student loan forgiveness, or public service loan forgiveness” – which we don’t say forgiveness, we say cancellation, but that’s not what their title is.

She messaged me and she goes, “My friend Miranda got a phone call that said something”. And can you tell me a little bit about that story and what’s been happening?

Miranda: I should preface this with the week that happened, I think I was under slept. I was stressed out about something, not related to work, not related to student debt, just a family kind of thing. And I had my guard down for a second. I had a call from some company talking about possible student loan forgiveness. I’m like well, that’s wild. I don’t have the PSLF. And my first thought was this could probably be a scam. And I should also note that, ironically, I study a lot of sorts of privacy and identity now within the context of advertising.

So it’s not the same as cybersecurity, which I know for instance, Emma, our friend, is becoming a bit of an expert on it. But, I was let me just call them back and I’ll be able to listen and see if it’s a scam. Now here’s the thing. I’ve talked to a chat bot, through the federal loan, the student gov, what is the site? Studentaid.gov. And they say we will never do outbound calls, just that there’s going to be a formalized process. But, obviously the issue is how often do we actually hear from the Federal government directly about our student loans? How often do we get told of these best practices or things that should be really obvious? They’re not obvious. They’re really not obvious.

And what was really interesting about the scammer is he said “Oh man, I hate that you got this robocall. It makes us, we have, the system uses robocalls that the politicians use and it makes us look like a scam.”

Like, oh, he even admits it sounds like a scam! Which I think is such an interesting tactic. And I guess if I ever want to be a con artist, a really good way to do it is to just say, “I hate how shady this looks. It makes me look like a con artist.” And I was talking to him for a bit, and there was a point where they were resetting my password on FedLoan and they asked, ”Did you get a code?”

So, when you’re having kind of a fluid conversation, someone’s talking really quickly and really friendly and maybe even kind of, almost down to earth, even being a little vulnerable with you.

You can end up sharing information faster than you realize, because you’re in the flow of a conversation. And again, I am someone who works in tech. I am a naturally suspicious and cynical person. I’m involved in student loan activism if not peripherally, but I’m involved. I’m aware of the world of scammers.

And I still started being “oh no, I didn’t get a code.” And I reset my password on the phone. Like, what am I doing? And then I hung up when I had a call with my colleagues after. I said “call me back in an hour and then we can do whatever’s going on.” And my colleagues, I just told them what’s going on with this call and that I think they’re trying to cancel debt.

They said “that’s probably a scam”, and I’m like oh yeah. But why would I not know that? Of all the people, but at the same time, the reason I think I easily fell into it when I had my guard down, I just wasn’t thinking critically. I was in between meetings. At the time the person’s talking really fast. There are these kinds of key things to look out for.

We don’t know the best practices of communication from the Federal government. We don’t know the best practices with any of them, for instance, FedLoan, is going away. We know nothing about that information. And I was oh, maybe this is maybe this is related to the FedLoan servicing sucking so much that they’re going to help cancel some loans or cancel a percentage of loans.

But I think the other factor is I have a natural curiosity, even if it’s, I’m like my cat, let me go into this awful thing. But I really wanted to believe, even if it was with a scammer, I think I even called me up off its scammer. I’m curious. I really want to know what if, what if? What if this is something that’s not being executed well, because I don’t trust the Federal government to execute communications well, right?

Nikki Nolan: Yeah.

Miranda: But the problem is there’s the, what if, and then there was my guard down about the one thing I’m probably most sensitive about, which is the possibility of this burden one day disappearing. And that part of me sort of took over the conversation more. Right? And the cynical part, dialed down.

And when my colleagues said, “it’s probably a scam”, I thought wait! Now wait, the veil came up and I was well, of course it’s a scam. Why wouldn’t it be a scam? How did I, of all people? It wasn’t my mom who could have easily, more easily been scammed. Right? My mom who doesn’t, well, she didn’t really have student loan debt, but it was me.

And I had the shame about it for at least 48 hours, and then the shame lifted. And so all I did, this is super easy because I don’t know the full process of what the scammer was going to do, but I think there’s probably some kind of authorization that needs to happen for them to be able to access any bank account or something like that. So I think that they were probably engaging in an authorization process to get access to whatever funds were associated with federal loans. So when I logged back in, I logged into my student aid site and I just changed the password and I changed the email address.

And I was like, why would I do that? That was so silly. And then I panicked a bit well, did I give them enough information to actually get my money? But your student, at least my student aid account has no bank information. That’s all through FedLoan servicing. So they would have needed that.

There was however, a section around authorization of third parties to do anything on your behalf. So there was nothing, there was no active authorization, so no big deal there. I got the impression because I had to cut the call short to take a work call and he was going to call me back later, that if I had stayed on there, we would have gone through some kind of process that would have authorized them. Because they just didn’t have enough information to do whatever they needed to do.

My assumption is they would have needed to log into FedLoan servicing. FedLoan servicing, I even just as a precaution deactivated my automatic payment bank account, which is only connected to my checking. And so in the grand scheme of things, just my little financial journey, I’ve had my savings account. I actually have a high yield savings account where most of my money is. I would have been at risk of losing some money in my checking account. I was going to the natural conclusion of what if I’d been scammed. I don’t think I would’ve lost, I would’ve been annoyed and I would’ve lost money and I probably would’ve had a hard time recouping that. But I wouldn’t have lost the majority of my money.

So that’s also a reminder, if anyone is listening to me, diversify where you put your savings, maybe. I think it was only as silly as not thinking through things as I was with someone resetting my password. There wasn’t enough information for them to do the next step or they would have done it. And I would have seen the repercussions of that. I did get a voice message and I saved it, but I didn’t listen to it. I just looked at the transcription. The guy said “Ugh. It looks like you reset your password probably due to paranoia, but listen, we gotta get this application in. If you change your mind, just call.”

Okay. So one thing I learned about scammers after kind of looking them up, they’ll often create a sense of urgency. You gotta do this now. Knowing I don’t have to do anything now. I don’t even make my bed. You don’t tell me to do something now. You’re not the boss of me.

But, so I feel really good now. I still feel only slightly embarrassed. Only it was for the best when I told my colleagues. I’m talking to these people right now and they know this is a scam and are looking out for me. How do my colleagues know I have this vulnerability?

And so that’s the hardest part for me, is they know I have a vulnerability. They know that as smart as they think I am, I guess they think I’m smart. I assume. I don’t know. I can’t assume. I joked earlier about being so smart, but really whatever, we don’t know. Who knows if I’m smart. But, someone who I know that at work I’m seen as someone who people can go to for questions about a wide range of things.

I call myself a dilettante, but some people do not. They might say I’m a Jill of all trades, a Renaissance woman, if you will. But I, as someone who, by reputation is about knowing things, it was kind of humbling to be in the position of showing this vulnerability and showing that’s where my guard is down.

That’s a moment of this isn’t a bad thing, but that’s a place of hope for me is we can change these things and we can make a better future for a lot of people. And I will investigate that. But I think I investigated, but I didn’t sort of protect my barriers a little bit better.

And it could, I think that it can happen with anyone, not just with scammers. You can put, get put into situations where you think about everything. And you’re so cynical. And you’re so smart. You study privacy and identity in advertising. Everything there is to know about protecting yourself. And you may still find yourself in a moment of, but this is the thing I’m hopeful about.

Nikki Nolan: I want to learn a little bit more about you.

Miranda: So I was born in LA, but raised mostly in Alabama with my mom. A single mom for the most part, and she was working a lot. I was a pretty well behaved kid. I liked to read. I liked to do funny impersonations and act. I wanted to be an actress. I did not become an actress. I shifted gears a little bit around 13. I started writing poetry. I wrote poetry as a joke at age 13, the way you can be ironic about stuff.

And again, there’s a theme of me and feelings, how dare I be vulnerable. But poetry I started writing a lot. I started writing fiction. And I went to Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, which had a really great creative writing program. It was an all women’s college at the time. I think it might be a little bit more gender inclusive now, in terms of maybe non binary, et cetera, but women at the time and nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Just a really gorgeous little campus.

And I went there and I got to be deep into creative writing. And then I went to get my MFA in poetry. It didn’t quite complete it, long story, not an interesting story, but I did three years at an MFA poetry at UMass Amherst. And so, I spent a long time preparing for the life of someone who was going to go teach at the college level. And I said before, wear Birkenstocks and socks and sit cross-legged on the desk. I’m describing one of my dear professors, Jean Larson, and she’s amazing. She is always just who I want to be. She’s fantastic. She’s just sitting on the desk, talking about the history of poetry, in essence gorgeous, and I love school.

I’m good at school. I’m not as good at work as I am at school. I had to learn, it’s one of those things where certain things come naturally to you and the other stuff like you’re well, what do you mean I have to practice this? This is horrible. I have to practice being good at work? No. What do you mean I have to do a job? Why can’t you just put me in front of people and I can be animated? I think a lot of aspiring writers probably have a comparable situation where they enjoy the joy of the college classroom and then hit reality, right? And I, one day woke up and decided I need to be in New York City after my MFA program.

And I moved to New York. I don’t know what it was. It was intuitive. There was no rhyme or reason. I tried to get a job in publishing, but I didn’t really. And I started to find my way to working in advertising technology, starting with ad operations and then sort of working through technical spaces and then into product marketing. Which is, again, this great opportunity for me, where I combine a lot of my interests. But this whole time I’ve been writing, this whole time I’ve been writing novels and, occasionally getting poems published, occasionally getting essays published. I’m still waiting on a short story to find out if it’s going to be rejected or published by this one journal I care about. And I still see myself as a writer. That’s one thing that’s been really hard when you think about dreams, right?

There’s the dream of, okay, I’m a writer. And then you start to understand what the publishing industry was, and what it’s becoming and the complications around that. And, every industry is messy. And so I think when I was younger, I thought, oh, well, if you get a book published for one, you just find an agent and they get your book published. And I don’t know, maybe you’ll get $200,000. And that’s not the reality anymore.

Nikki Nolan: Wow.

Miranda: Some people get $200,000. And some people get nothing. Or they get $30,000 or whatever. But the point being it’s not in this way, a sustainable path the way it might’ve been at one time, just like so many things.

Nikki Nolan: So many things, everything is changing so rapidly. One question right before we dive completely in. Were you taking out student loans? Did you take out student loans for your undergrad and for grad?

Miranda: I took out mostly for undergrad. I took out a little bit for grad school for living, kind of stipend in the summers, especially. So I had a fellowship, a teaching fellowship, and I had a small stipend. I think we want to say $17,000 to live in Western Massachusetts. But tuition waived and health insurance covered. and Western Massachusetts is not cheap., But, what I would also do is take it a little bit more cause at that point I had so much student loans, I was like, what’s a little extra because I didn’t want to work. Honestly, I didn’t, there weren’t a lot of jobs in the summer and I just didn’t wanna work. I didn’t get good at working until I moved to New York. So…

Nikki Nolan: It makes a lot of sense. We are raised in school, so we understand that system. And when you have to transition out of a system that- education doesn’t translate to reality and everyone can believe that. Yeah.

Miranda: I agree with you. And I wasn’t raised wealthy or anything. We struggled a lot, but I think because I was a good student, my mom was okay with me, just focusing on my studies and not working as much.

So I didn’t really learn the value of a dollar for a while. Just fine. It’s just, I don’t know, my mom spoiled me. What can I say? So I did take out loans, not as significantly for grad school, but it was a three-year program versus a two year. So again, that kind of adds a little bit. So I still write. That’s still important to me.

I’m still trying to preserve that creative part of myself, but it can be very hard when you’re working 40 hours a week, doing things that might in part be creative, but have their own kind of drain on your energy, which is okay. It’s just when I have a weekend to myself, do I sit and actually write? Or do I binge watch the newest season of You on Netflix? I feel bad even saying that. I mean sometimes you binge watch the Criterion Channel.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah, I know. I struggle with that balance too, because so much of my energy, because I’m in a creative field, sucks all that creative energy out of me. Do we do something creative or do I binge watch something? And it forces me into a relationship with television to just sort of drown out the exhaustion.

Miranda: And thinking about it, to be in any way related to the arts and make a living is not very easy in this country unless you kind of come from money in some capacity. Not saying you have to be super-wealthy, but even your parents just having any money set aside for you for living or anything like that. Which isn’t to say that the artists in New York city are all from a place of privilege. There are some who are truly making it work in spite of everything and don’t have a lot of resources. But like student loan debt, and especially with the private loan debt that I only just paid off, there’s not a lot of wiggle room with private loan debt. I remember when I was making, let’s say it was like $38K in New York City and a reminder to anyone who’s listening to this, that if you live in different regions, $38K might sound okay.

I was scolded by one of my friends who lived in Virginia, who said “that’s not so bad”. New York City is expensive now and it was expensive then. And I remember I tried to put my private loans in forbearance cause it was just impacting my ability to pay for other things. If I needed new clothes or new bras, things that can cost money, it was at odds with my pretty steep private lending payment.

And they would say “okay, yeah, we can put your private loans in forbearance for three months”. I’m like, okay. And they’re like, “and that’ll cost you $150” or it was some kind of number. And I think it was with, either Sallie Mae or Navient at the time. before I refinanced through Sofi. And I just remember thinking, so I’m being punished for putting something I can barely afford in forbearance just to give myself a couple of months to catch up and use that money elsewhere.

And so that, again, we kind of talked about this earlier, but that motivated me to make more money. I may not always be like this and there may be a time where I’m like, that’s enough money. And I may pivot to do something more creative or live somewhere cheaper. but that’s not that time now. Right? And so it’s just, it can be a little tricky balancing the things that I care about so much with what you have to do to just keep going when you have six figures of debt or when you have a negative net worth.

Nikki Nolan: So you just said that you had a private loan and then you refinanced with SoFi. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Cause there’s a lot of things that have been coming up about refinancing and why you shouldn’t, if you have a federal loan, you shouldn’t finance, but you refinanced the private loan. What sort of choices went into that?

Miranda: So my private loan monthly payment was just too high and they wouldn’t come down on it. And I think the private loans had been co-signed at the time by my mom or someone like that, someone in the family. And so there was a point where I was making enough money where I was like, this is wild, we should definitely bring this loan payment down. We should bring this interest rate down if possible. And so I refinanced through SoFi. I want to say that I did so much research into which company to refinance my private loans. I did not. I think honestly, I’m a sucker for good marketing. I do think SoFi does pretty good marketing in the grand scheme of things. So I refinanced through them and I think it shaved my payments down by, I want to say $250. It was a significant amount of money and it made a difference. I think it went from maybe $550 to around $300 a month.

And so it was a really positive experience for me. However, I was never going to do federal loans. I guess you can’t really refinance a federal loan, but you could consolidate that, right? And I was never going to consolidate them. I was just going to kind of leave them. Because I have for about five years now, secretly believed that one day loan cancellation would happen. This past year has been so wild to see this becoming more and more of a topic of conversation because no one talked about this before, right? I mean, people did, but it wasn’t being picked up. So I’ve just been not touching my federal loans. You never know what miracle could happen, but my private, I just knew that the best choice in this instance for me was to be the only person on my loans to get my mom off as a co-signer just to kind of relieve her of that. And then to get a lower interest rate and to shave off my monthly payments by $200 so that I can actually reasonably pay something every month without being well, there goes my hair cut for the month or whatever.

Nikki Nolan: Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you want to talk about?

Miranda: Yes. I would say this kind of concept of transparency when it comes to money and especially around debt. I think one of the most important things we can do is where we’re comfortable, is to talk more openly about these things.

That’s kind of how Emma and I connected a lot more around being transparent around money, around being transparent about student loan debt. Around that time, I talked to a financial person who said, for you to pay off your debt, you just need to make more money. And I thought that sounds simple, but you’re right.

And for not being ashamed of wanting to make more money. It’s not necessarily a sign that you’re a class traitor or something like that. But I think another thing that’s really important for me is I used to get really envious when people I knew would post on Facebook or Twitter, Instagram, or wherever, and they would say “I did it! I paid off my final student loan debt!” and they’re 30 or whatever. And then I remember, one, it’s good for them. I’m glad they did it. That’s my own envy. And I can work through that. But I sometimes do want a little more information. I do want to know, hey, were you living with a partner that helped pay the rent? Which is okay. Yeah. I think that’s great. Or did your parents help you? I think it’s wonderful when parents help. I do not resent at all. My mom gave me a little bit of cash to help pay my private loan. It wasn’t a lot. I could have paid for it myself eventually, but it was a beautiful gesture. I was so proud that she did that because we didn’t have any money saved for college in the other capacity.

But I would just love one more transparency, like, well, how much was it? Not to diminish it, but to sort of help, people understand who aren’t getting all the details. I think it’s helpful for people who might have much larger debts. I’m a six-figure debt person to understand one they’re not alone. And that two, when people are getting to congratulate themselves, which they should do, but there’s just a little bit more story that they may be missing. I think that’s all we need. I think we need that in all areas of money, not just student loan debt, but that’s why I like to talk about my student loan debt. Because I know that there are a lot more people out there who might even be ashamed of how much- I know there are people who are ashamed of how much they have.

I know when it gets to the six figures, there’s an extra kind of a secret shame. So, money transparency is just the big thing I’m advocating for again, super proud of everyone who can do that. just tell us the story better.

Nikki Nolan: I think that makes sense. I’ve talked with some people who are like, yeah, I just get really demotivated from hearing those stories because, and I think it is, there’s a very flat experience there. When you just see a couple pays off $120,000 in three years, and then you read into the story or maybe there isn’t even a story there, but you read it into the story and it’s oh, their parents bought them a house. And then they lived in an apartment and rented out that house and that’s how they paid it. This is a lot of the stories of paying off massive amounts of debt that I’ve come across are not a scalable solutions. It’s not a 1, 2, 3, you can follow this. Especially even my story, I don’t think anyone could, 1, 2, 3, follow how I did it. I paid off a massive amount of student debt because I lived very, very cheaply, really, really cheaply.

And then I ended up working for a company right before it went public. It went public and then it got sold. This is a one-in-a-million chance. This never happens to people. So there’s not like, oh, just go work for a company before they IPO, totally scalable. I just used the word scalable.

Miranda: But that’s it? I think that’s a keyword. I love the word scalable there because what we don’t have is a scalable solution, except for loan canceling.

Nikki Nolan: Thousand percent. So we’re coming to the end. What advice would you give your younger self? Knowing all the information, you know now.

Miranda: Fight a little bit harder with your student aid office at your university, young Miranda. They are making it way harder to get federal funds than they need to.

I don’t understand the process. I don’t actually know why, but I don’t think I should have ever had to have taken out a private loan based on my estimated financial contribution for my family. That does not make any sense. Why did we have no other recourse but private loans? It doesn’t make any sense why we got so few grants. I do not think my university was good at financial aid and they know I feel that way, so that’s not shocking. I love my alma mater. I do not love their financial aid office. And I would say, just fight, just fight a little bit harder. Because while I am frustrated with the amount of federal loans I have, I don’t think I would have gone to a different university.

But I do resent the private loans because they’re exploitative. There’s not much recourse for them. And they’re just a money-making machine and I don’t think they should exist. And I think the federal, I don’t know why I couldn’t have gotten more. But I didn’t, so I would just say fight. And also I think, in retrospect, I wished I could have prepared younger me for more financial literacy, but, what does that even mean?

Is financial literacy, even the right word we want to be using? There’s probably financial wellness, maybe? I don’t know, but I didn’t get the kind of upbringing because my mom has her own limitations around how we talk about finances. And that’s not surprising. Women have not historically been trained to have the best relationship with money. That’s still a holdover from patriarchal crap. But yeah, I think a little more fight in me would have been nice to know that there were probably more options out there than then I was aware of.

Nikki Nolan: Is there anything that you want to promote?

Miranda: I do have writing out, including some of the work that Emma and I worked on together about student loan stuff. It’s been on a pause, but you can certainly find us to try to read what we’re working on. Anything new I’m writing, I usually promote my Twitter account. So if you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @Mirandaist.

That’s M-I-R-A-N-D-A-I-S-T. Just add ist to Miranda you’ll figure it out. Gothamist, but not as cool. Not as cool as Gothamist. Mirandist.

Nikki Nolan: Well, thank you so much for being here. It was really a joy to talk to you.

Miranda: I had so much fun. And can I just say, I love your jumpsuit? For those of you guys who are listening, Nikki and I both love this brand called Nooworks and she’s wearing the long cat magic suit and it’s pink and it’s got stretchy cats on it. And since you cannot see it, I’m telling you cause it’s fabulous.

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