THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 44

If a business say gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy. And that’s Noam Chomsky. I know you do a lot of work helping people with navigating student loan options. You’ve been on the show as a guest before. How challenging is it to help people and give them options?

I know you work a lot in the nonprofit and state government sectors, so they’re kind of eligible for loan forgiveness if everything lines up and you coach them on that. But what about people that don’t have that eligibility? You see a lot of news about student loans, the problems paying them. What’s that like trying to help people? It’s difficult in the sense that a lot of people will unfortunately just put their head in the sand and not address the issue.

Really what they need to do is be aware of the type of student loans that they have, whether these are federal, whether these are private student loans, because it’s two completely different worlds. If you have federal student loans, as you mentioned, there are options, public service loan forgiveness, there’s forbearance, there’s deferment. The government surprisingly is a lot more lenient when it comes to those that have federal student loans and are having a tough time making payments. When it comes to private student loans, not so much. You call up your servicer and the servicer is the person that you make your monthly payment to, and you mentioned that you’re having a tough time making your monthly payment, too bad.

You need to make a payment. Been through that with someone multiple times. It’s a road to nowhere. Even if you do your job and communicate with your creditor, there simply is nothing. And here’s the good news, I’m going to have you come back on the show for an entire segment to talk through all the things that are important to know about student loans going into the fall.

Introducing bankruptcy and today’s guest

But luckily today we have a guest from a company called Upsolve. Her name is Tina Tran, and she’s the managing director. And we’re going to talk about bankruptcy, and we’re going to talk about their technology, which may be able to help, because even getting an attorney can be really expensive. Absolutely. So our guest today is going to talk about new technology that will help people to navigate filing for bankruptcy with less cost, if in some instances no cost.

Exactly. And as you mentioned, it can be difficult, very challenging when you’re filing for bankruptcy with student loans. It is, but also if it is an avenue, then you really should explore it, because you can file bankruptcy, it’s just they make it very difficult. Very difficult, and we’ll get into that a little bit. And the good news, again, is all the information that we can provide for our listeners and for consumers that are struggling.

The slogan at the sponsor of this show, Cambridge Credit Counseling, is life is just better without debt. So we’re here to help people figure out different ways. And the stigma of bankruptcy, when people are counseled, if that’s the option, that’s the option. And we talk about mental health problems. If you have to talk to an attorney or you have to use technology that we’re going to talk about, and you need to go down that path, it is a fresh start.

It’s a system in place for a reason. Like I said in that quote, companies can certainly do it to restructure, so why can’t people? So ending the stigma, especially in economic times like today, we’re going to get into that and talk a little bit about that. Excellent. We’re going to take a quick break.

We’ll be right back with The Cambridge Connection. Are the rise in prices for gas and other expenses crushing your budget? Cambridge’s typical clients save $140 per month while paying down their credit card debt at much lower interest rates. Call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection.

Upsolve’s background and how the tool works

I’m here with my substitute co-pilot, Todd. And we have our special guest from Upsolve, managing partner, Tina Tran. Tina, how are you today? Hi. I’m good.

Thanks for having me. This is important stuff in tough economic times. We’re very grateful to have you. Upsolve is obviously one of the best inventions of 2020, and we’re going to get into what Upsolve is about and how it works. But before we do that, can you tell our family, friends, and listeners a little bit about your background?

Sure. So I am an attorney. I’ve been an attorney since 2015, and I’m based out of Chicago. Before I joined the Upsolve team as the lead for their services and supports department, I had started my own practice through the Justice Entrepreneurs Project in Chicago. And I was doing that for a few years before I joined the team at Upsolve.

It’s really great to have you on and hear that. A lot of times on the show, we try to be inspirational for young entrepreneurs like we have junior achievement on. So really incredible story to get to where you are today. And again, we’re in very difficult economic times, and things aren’t looking great. So people are starting to really have some problems with credit card usage, the debts they’re getting themselves into.

Student loan conundrum is a big deal. So for everyone that’s listening, can you tell us about Upsolve and the Upsolve story? Sure. So one thing about Upsolve that really drew me to the organization in the first place was that they do provide a self-service software tool to help people file for bankruptcy on their own without an attorney, and they do it completely free for the user. Well, when I had my own practice, I loved everything about it.

I loved that I was able to help people and put them in better positions financially. The toughest part about it for me was really having to ask clients to pay me when I knew they were already really struggling financially. And that’s sort of how Upsolve came about, and the story of Upsolve is about... So in order to file bankruptcy in the United States, most of the time, if you are looking to hire an attorney, it could cost you upwards of $2,000. And most people who are looking to file for bankruptcy just don’t have that to be able to pay an attorney to help them with their case.

And doing it on their own has a very low success rate, and they’re required to sift through a bunch of forms with a lot of legal jargon, and that can be very complicated as well. So Upsolve came about because we really wanted to help people and provide people with resources, with education, and with a tool that helps them through the process without having to pay $2,000 for full attorney representation. I actually had the pleasure of speaking to Rohan Pavaluri, which is obviously the founder. In the early going, a couple of years ago, just to hear his perspective, and I have a quote from a Time article about Upsolve, and the quote from Rohan is, the cruel irony in America is that it can cost $1,500 in court filing and attorney fees to tell the court, you have no money. You just kind of mentioned this irony, right?

But I think sometimes there is stigma out there about attorneys and the fees that they charge for the services that they provide, and to see a group like yours that is advocating for the consumer who’s already stressed out, maxed out in debt, income is obviously much less than expenses at that point. So you could see, in my counseling past, sometimes people just throw their hands up in the air and just give up because they don’t have an answer, right? So to create, we’re in technological times now, so it’s incredible that your organization has built this application. It still seems to me, and I’m going to learn from you today, that it would appear to be so overwhelming to try to do something so colossal of filing documents with a court to try to defend yourself through the bankruptcy process. So can you talk through what a consumer goes through?

Sure. Yeah, I definitely understand how overwhelming the idea of really entering the legal system and really dealing with bankruptcy courts and all of that can be very overwhelming. And most of the time, we’ve found that our users, if they’re so overwhelmed and they can’t hire an attorney, and if we didn’t exist, they would just not file at all. They would just kind of, like you said, throw their hands up and... Wait till the creditors come get them, you know, through HR and wage garnishment and more stress.

Stick their head in the sand. Absolutely. Yep. And that is most Americans, is how they choose to deal by not dealing. But part of my job and part of what we’ve done at Upsolve, it’s made up of a team of attorneys and a team of paralegals and engineers and students and everyday people and writers as well who really were able to relate to most of our users and have designed the software tool to make it as simple as we possibly can.

And really, our main goal is to take the legal jargon out of the forms and make them less overwhelming for people so that they can go online and they can use the software tool from either a phone, like a smartphone or a computer, and go through the questionnaire. The idea is that it’s designed to be used by an everyday person, and most of the language we have, we try to keep it to like an eighth grade reading level. So the questionnaire actually tells them whether they can actually use the technology or not? Yes. There is a screener, like a 10-question screener that people, once they get to our website before they can use the software tool, that determines whether or not they can go forward and proceed with filing bankruptcy through the software tool.

One of the screener questions we have is, do you own any real estate? Do you own a home? And that’s something that we’ve chosen to screen out because it can get pretty complicated. And we don’t want to put anyone at risk for losing any large property that they might have. Yeah, again, when I spoke to Rohan for the first time, and I’m speaking to you now, you are defending the little guy, the people that really don’t have resources, but yet still have problems that need to be solved.

Right. And of course, with that being said, helping the little guy that doesn’t have resources, it’s my understanding that you’re in the middle of some litigation about the software, and we’re going to take a quick break. If you could stick with us to talk about the court case that’s going on right now, just to inform people about what your organization is going through to try to help people that desperately need help. Of course. Sounds good.

Show milestones and podcast reminders

All right. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. This is The Cambridge Connection. Well, Tina Marie, here we are, already in our mid-30s.

Have you checked your license lately? You’re a far cry from being in your mid-30s. No, no, not me, our show, The Cambridge Connection. We’re already more than halfway through our first year of great guests and need-to-know topics. Oh, I thought you were talking about your age.

Well, that would take a lot longer than we have in this message, but what only takes a moment to share is that if you miss any of our shows on Saturdays on WHMP, don’t worry. com, click on podcasts, and all of our shows are listed there. Plus, listeners can find us on all the podcast sites where they listen to their favorite podcast. Well, when I get home, I’m going to listen to my favorite episode. And what’s that?

Challenges facing Upsolve and a success story

You know, the one with me in it. Welcome back, everyone. This is The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, with my substitute co-pilot, Todd, and here we are with special guest managing partner with Upsolve, Tina Tran, talking about bankruptcy. And again, Todd, you and I, in the beginning of our segments today, we’re talking about how people have this stigma that bankruptcy is this terrible, awful thing.

And granted, if you can avoid it, you will try to avoid it. But things don’t always work out. Things happen, health problems happen, job loss happens, a bad economy happens. Life happens. Life happens, right.

So Tina, we’re so grateful to have you today in talking about Upsolve. It was one of the best inventions of 2020 from Time Magazine. So just amazing things that you have done, but yet you’re still having some troubles and some challenges. Can you talk a little bit about those? Yes.

So one of the major challenges, and really my ask, is that Upsolve is still relatively a new organization, a new non-profit. It’s only been around since 2016, and there’s not that—I’d say we’re not yet a household name, and we’d like to be, so most people don’t know that an organization like Upsolve exists, where they can—where either they or their friends or family can use the software tool that we have in order to file for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy completely for free and on their own. And the other major challenge we have, and it’s really a—the big challenge in the access to justice world right now and the big fight is about these laws that exist in every state. They’re called UPL laws, or unauthorized practice of law laws, that currently make it illegal and prohibit both people and—people from receiving and or giving any type of legal advice, regardless of how simple it might be or what training they have, if they are not licensed attorneys in the state that they’re providing the advice in. So if I followed it correctly, I thought that you had a victory, and then again it’s now getting re-challenged, is that what happened?

Yes, that is what happened. So I think it was last year, in 2021, we—Upsolve as an organization with our attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General in New York, Letitia James, really asking for permission and for the court to prevent the Attorney General from—to protect us from prosecution, in a sense, because of these laws, we’re subject—anyone who provides any type of legal advice or tries to help in any way when it comes to anything legal is subject to potential criminal or civil punishments or sanctions, and we filed this case to prevent the Attorney General, who has the power to enforce these laws, not to do that in our specific case. So a non-profit, obviously, advocating for people that actually need a helping hand, and these are the things that kind of drive me crazy, which I love coming on the show every week with different material and different topic. You said it earlier that this isn’t something that many people know about, and it’s incredible because this is something that everybody should get behind. Again, it’s helping a person that’s having trouble that doesn’t have the means to pay for expensive services.

So technology—we’re in the technological world, obviously—should be able to help people walk through a process and at least, at minimum, try to cut the cost down as best as it can, and that seems to be the mission of what you guys are doing, and I’m, again, grateful to have you on to talk about the story because, as you know, this show becomes a podcast, and we’re going to do everything we can to spread this show so that people know and understand about this, especially in the economic times we’re in. Yes, we really appreciate it. Thank you. So before we let you go, do you have a success story? One of our biggest successes was a user, one of our early users, Alicia, who is now—she used the software tools to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, one of our earliest users, because she was really dealing with a domestic violence situation where her partner at the time, her ex-partner at the time, had used her—like, in her name, took out credit cards and really completely ruined her credit, and she was then saddled with all this overwhelming debt and is now in such a better place.

She’s actually currently part of our—she’s on Upsolve’s board and runs her own nonprofit and is really paying it forward, and I just think her story is incredible. We have so many stories like that from our users who have really just—it’s a difficult time, especially during the pandemic. People are struggling financially, and it’s really great to see how we’ve been able to help them. That’s totally fantastic. And, you know, here’s another thing I talked about on this show a lot, is debt settlement companies that advertise to people that there’s a secret, the creditors, they don’t want to tell you that you can pay half of what you owe them, and those are things that, again, just destroy people’s credit, and yet here you are as a nonprofit, just like the sponsor of the show is a nonprofit, that works very hard to make sure people are put in the right direction, regardless of what their situation is, to try and get to a better place financially.

So, again, I’m going to look on the site and find some success stories, and when I see articles posted, I’m going to love them, share them, and just continue to do whatever I can to spread the word, because it’s so admirable, the work that you guys are doing and the fight that you have to try to help people that are in great need. Thank you so much. Yeah, and before we let you go, can you tell listeners that may be able to use Upsolve’s technology where they can find you? Yes, you can log in anywhere. org in your browser, and that’s where you’ll find the website.

Tina, it’s been a pleasure having you today. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re going to take a quick break. This is The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back.

Wrap up on student loans and bankruptcy

Are you swamped in debt and need a fresh financial start but are scared of the word bankruptcy? You don’t have to navigate the process alone. Upsolve is a free online bankruptcy filing tool that has helped clear half a billion dollars of debt for American families. All you have to do is visit our website and follow along with our online guided forms. Bankruptcy is a big decision.

We are here at every step. org for more information. Welcome back everyone to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my substitute co-pilot, Todd. Todd, what incredible work they do at Upsolve.

Absolutely, that was really interesting that she’s out there and like she said, fighting for the little people that really are kind of stuck. When they don’t have enough money to hire an attorney, they can possibly do this on their own. Yeah, and technology is helpful because the way that I understand it, you’re going through a questionnaire to see if you meet the benchmarks that would allow you to use the technology to go through the filing process for yourself. And I’m sure if you think about like the legal zooms of the world, this attempt has been made in the legal space for a long time to do it yourself, you know, do it on your own. But it’s just seems, again, going and having to face the court, however that looks, again, we didn’t have enough time to get really into the entire process and hope to have them back again to discuss it.

I didn’t even get a chance to ask Tina about student loans because, again, there’s a stigma and it is pretty true that it’s very difficult if you have mountains of student loans and you’re not eligible to get your loans forgiven to be able to file for bankruptcy and have them relinquished. So I’m sure you see that in the counseling that you do. Constantly, and federal student loans are different from private student loans. Private student loans, there’s a statute of limitations. With federal student loans, you owe those until either they’re paid off or until you die.

You know, hopefully once we pass, then I’m not gonna be held up at the gate somewhere saying you still owe private student loans. But you can file bankruptcy on both types. I know, as you mentioned, it’s very difficult to. So it’s great that they’re letting the average person be able to have access to this technology, and that’s what it is, this new technology, to be able to file this bankruptcy when they need to. Yeah, you know, I’m gonna tell you a story.

Back in my counseling days, I had a client that had 100,000 plus in private loans. And we legitimately called Discover every month with the budget, with the income, with what’s left over. They were looking for a payment in the excess of $1,300 a month. And this is why we talk all the time in an economy like this, kids, when they get out of school now, they’re moving back in with their families because they simply can’t afford the cost of living. Now, if you wanna have a family, you wanna raise some children, you’ve got 100 plus thousands in student loans.

We called Discover every month. The final result was they sent it to a collection agency. The borrower then had to just say how much they could pay and then be religious paying it. But the amount of time it would take to have that default on their credit and pay this payment every month to get that debt down, if they can only afford $300 into 100,000, you know how long that’s taking. Never.

So, unfortunately, the legal system, and we don’t give legal advice on this show, it’s just, these are observations. The legal system has made it very difficult for banks to lose money that they lent for student loans, both private and federal. So, back in the day, and we’re gonna have you back on this show to talk about public service loan forgiveness because there’s a deadline coming on the waiver process and we can’t possibly get into it on this show, but back in the early student loan years, there were what’s called family federal education loans, which are private banks, that lent the money to the student, but the government would guarantee the funds so that the bank couldn’t lose. Exactly. So, they made these very stiff, stringent laws so that banks could be protected and so could the government, if you will, so that people, no matter what, pretty much had to pay these loans.

Over time, things have changed, and in the headlines that you see in the news, and this links right into Upsolve and right into filing for bankruptcy, the amount of debt, in my quote, in the beginning of this show, we talked about how debt for student loans is more than credit card debt. So, if people don’t have bankruptcy to turn to to get rid of it, and they’re stuck with this debt, how are they ever gonna get their financial life better? And then you have people saying, oh, well, they got themselves into their debt, and that’s true, but one of the things that has been circling in the discussion is, are they going to lighten up the legal part of being able to file for bankruptcy now that the government owns a lot of the debt because these are becoming direct consolidation loans or direct loans directly to the government, which I don’t know even if that’s a good idea. But that’s what people are dealing with now, and again, we can’t get into the student loan dynamics here, but I’m gonna have you back very shortly as a guest. Excellent.

Because we have to break this down for people because deadlines are coming, and there’s paths and ways. They’re coming quick. They’re coming fast, yeah. So, we’ll have you back on the show to break it down, and I thank you for filling in today for my co-pilot, Tina Murray. Absolutely, anytime you need me, Gordon, I’m right here.

Thanks, brother, always a pleasure. All right, as you can see, we have great assistant co-pilots on our show, as well as experts that come on the horizon. com, click on podcasts, or you can find our podcast and our show wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We want you to be part of the conversation. org, or feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.