Why Now Is the Best Time for Your Young Adult to Go Degree Free and How Companies Are Embracing Degree Free Hiring (DF#162)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Indeed, the company removed degree requirements. AWS removed degree requirements. Google removed degree requirements. Tesla, IBM, GM, Accenture, all these giant people. Oh, you get we're gonna force be quiet. Have you recently looked at how many of them are rolling back the requirements? It's all of them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:21]:
Aloha folks and welcome back to degree free. I am an idiot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:27]:
Solid opening.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:29]:
When we first originally recorded this episode, I didn't record the audio correctly. And we did this entire episode. We did this entire episode already. And I went to go review it because it came back from the team and I was listening to what happened here. And I didn't press record on the equipment.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:54]:
Did you do it today?

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:56]:
I did do it today. I did. I had to, I have to look over there to make sure. Thanks. Good looking out. Yep. Make sure everything's recording. It is recording anyway to you, the listener, you don't know that this is our second take.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:10]:
So hopefully this is much better than it would have already been. And then also I want to comment to a few episodes back. I think it was when I gave you a verbal dressing down about your interview skills.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:22]:
Did someone defend me? No. Oh, guys.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:25]:
Well, they might have, I'm not sure, but what I wanted to say is that at the beginning of the episode, I make a call back to last week's episode and I said, oh, I promise that I would give you a verbal dressing down on the podcast. It probably didn't make any sense because

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:40]:
you didn't, because those songs are out of order.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:42]:
The episode that I promised to give you the verbal dressing down in was this episode that we're rerecording.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:48]:
We'll have the audio tables have turned

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:52]:
anyway. So while I'm giving you lessons on how to be a good interviewer, all you have to say is just turn the equipment on.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:02]:
That's the sound of humility folks.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:05]:
What an idiot. Anyway, here we are. And the reason why we're rerecording this is because I thought it was an actually good episode. This has happened before and you were listening just a peek behind the curtain. You might not have known that. You'd probably don't know it because if it's not good, we just scrap the whole thing. It has happened before. That's okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:23]:
We'll just do a complete new episode because there's always content that we can make. But this one in particular, I thought was really good. So we're going to do it again. We have a couple of things to add in that's new. So, anyway, take it away.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:34]:
So one of the things that's new is I just did one the coolest podcasts I've ever been on. I'm on circuit. Now, if you know anybody that you think needs to talk to me contactdegreefree.co tell us because I am part of the circus.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:47]:
If you are a part of any type of media team or you know somebody that has some sort of platform, podcast show, YouTube channel that you think has you listening to it, because obviously you're listening to this podcast, then you're saying, yeah, I know somebody. I know Jill. She's in media for whatever podcast. And I

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:11]:
listen podcast.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:12]:
Yeah. Not whatever podcast, but

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:13]:
Been there done that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:14]:
I know that they have a similar audience to degree free because I listen to that one too. If you know anybody like that, please shoot us an email or you can go to degreefree.co and scroll down to the bottom and fill out a contact form and that'll email us too.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:27]:
Yeah. So if you do have any ideas, please let us know. And I will go talk with that person and see if they want to have us on talking about what we're doing. But I just had one of the coolest podcasts I've ever done, and I've done a decent amount at this point now. I'm slowly getting my chops. But this one was so cool because the folks that interviewed me, and we'll talk about this one in the future, but the folks that interviewed me were such big fans and clearly have come in. They have consumed so much of our podcast and so much of our content. It was really amazing to see someone who had done their homework that well, which is a good lesson for me as an interviewer to be as prepared as they were asked amazing questions.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:05]:
And at one point in the conversation, I said something that I found in my research that just shocked them, that people apparently do not know. And it felt like it was probably a good idea to turn around and tell you guys in case you didn't know. And the thing that I told them that they didn't know was that the Higher Education Act was something that is basically the point where the government got involved in student loans. That is the point where they started subsidizing student loans. They started loaning to parents. They started loaning to people who couldn't qualify for the loans on their own. And at that point, that was 1965. At that point in US history, only 7.4% of the population had college degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:42]:
They had them for things that were legally required, kind of like our analysis has looked at before, which is doctors, lawyers, engineers, things where there's a professional license that getting a college degree is required to get that professional license. 7.4% of people had college degrees in 1965 when the Higher Education Act initially passed. That's when the government started subsidizing student loans. By 1976, the Higher Education Act had to be amended in legislation. And what they amended it to do was to prevent students from discharging student loans and bankruptcy. And they had to do that. 11 years had passed. At that point, 13.8 percent of the population had college degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:24]:
So the amount of US adults who had bought college degrees, it doubled in 11 years in a decade, essentially. And at that point, the default rate on the loans was so high that the government had to legislate that you could not discharge those loans in bankruptcy. And so my theory is that that is 1976 is actually how long there's been negative ROI on most of the degrees that have been bought and that blew their minds because a lot of people don't know that. But it is very clear because, and the point that you and I talked about, which I'm sure you'll point out in a second, is that if they weren't discharging their loans because they could pay them off, the government never would have had to step in to legislate that. If it was a good investment, if it had good return, there wouldn't be a need to do that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:07]:
Do you know what the default rates were?

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:09]:
I do not. I know that they were very low, which is why the government initially started subsidizing them. Because I thought this is a sure bet. It's very similar to the big short. It's very similar to what caused the 2,008 housing crisis, where they just went, oh, this is a solid bet. That'll never happen. And then it did. People will never default on their houses.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:26]:
People always pay their mortgage. People will always pay their student loans and then they didn't.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:30]:
Yeah. Or so you think, but I agree with you. I'm just trying not to throw you softballs the entire time. And I am curious if you actually did know the default rate.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:39]:
I do not. I should look it up though.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:41]:
We should look it up, but I 100% agree in that you wouldn't have to legislate that it not be part of bankruptcy. If everything was going fantastic and everybody was paying their loans and everything, you wouldn't have to legislate.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:57]:
If it wasn't an issue, like there wouldn't be a rule if there wasn't a problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:00]:
Exactly. Yeah. That's an interesting find. Even me, I have done this for literally the exact same amount of time as you. I have been in this industry. I've been in this business. I have been degree free of building our philosophies and everything. I didn't even know that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:18]:
Those of you who listen to the podcast frequently know that my Roman Empire is that stupid Scott Galloway talk, and it sent me on a rabbit hole. I was just digging up. So I was finding all kinds of stuff and I just had a theory. I wasn't sure. And so I went and I looked up how many people had college degrees at that point in 1965. And then I went, okay. But then the Higher Education Act amended it in in 1967. Why did they do that? And then I found out they did it because of the default rate on student loans.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:43]:
I said, okay, well, how many people got them that caused that? And it doubled. And that was apparently too much. That's critical mass.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:49]:
No, no, no. But your conjecture is that they did it because of default rates. It's not fact that they did it because of default rates.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:56]:
No, I did it. That's my conjecture. I will look it up and I will find out for sure. But the logic dictates that's the reason.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:00]:
Obviously because of default rates,

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:02]:
they weren't paying.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:03]:
You don't know.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:03]:
I do not.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:04]:
That making it clear for everybody. It's an opinion of yours.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:07]:
And so I said in the podcast, I said, my theory is that we've been running on steam since then. I think the whole thing has been.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:13]:
Yeah, that's crazy. And that really has hurt a lot of people. Think about the implications of that legislation. It is that legislation that allowed the snowballing of the price of college to just go absolutely astronomical. I mean, just literally through the roof because they're incentivized to do so now. It's like, okay. Well, the government backed me not once, but twice. Not only are they helping with paying for my product, but then on the back, they've backstopped it so that they can't get out of it as at the same time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:51]:
It's just like, boom, let's keep jacking up the price. Longtime listeners know on this show, like, oh, you bad mouth college, you bad mouth college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:58]:
Look at defense spending

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:58]:
is not all the time. No way. I think that they are brilliant marketers and they are brilliant business people and they are just doing what they were incentivized to do. I'm not above it. Like I'm literally not above it. If you're telling me that there was a guaranteed way that I could have somebody else guaranteed that there's a way for you to buy my products and then the backend, there's no consequences on the backend for it. Yeah. I'm going to Jack up my prices because you can afford it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:24]:
Don't worry. It's not your money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:25]:
Look at defense spending. It's the exact same thing. It's the exact same incentive problem. The health care has the same problem too. Anytime the government gets involved, said, oh, yeah. There's no consequences. Well, you're gonna have a wildly out of control industry with no ethics. That's what happens every time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:37]:
What's crazy is the host. And when I was talking about that, she said, you know, it's these, it's the colleges and they're for profit. She said, but the nonprofits are just out to make money too. And I looked at it in my head, I just went bingo because at the point where other people are saying that you and I have been saying that for years. And can I just say too, when people have bought large amounts of paper and they have the clarity of mind, this is what I'm talking about? When I talk about paper versus educated, this woman is educated because she sees clearly she can be objective about things that she sees and she can open her mind and consider that there may be different viewpoints. And she looked at that and she just went, That's crazy. This woman that I was talking to MBA from Columbia and an engineering, an actual engineering degree and a mechanical engineering degree. And she can still look and see that the system has flawed and see that there's an incentive problem and see that it's not a good fit for most people, because it doesn't make sense to buy if you don't need it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:27]:
She could see that. And that is really refreshing to me. That's very refreshing. And it also tells us that we're saying the right things. Our message is very clear. It's very necessary because people can hear it and they can see what we're saying. And that's very encouraging to me. But as my last little offshoot is that this bankruptcy exemption thing has really caused like we were just talking about, an incentive problem.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:48]:
Because you and I just saw that KKR, that private equity firm, just bought a bundle of student loans from Discover for $10,000,000,000 They paid $800,000,000 over market value because they know they know and you use this term. Ryan said this. He said they will hound those people to the ends of the earth. They get that money back and they know because legally, there's no way out. And when you see that most of those people made that decision when they were children, there were 17, 18 years old. It's so disgusting. It's so unethical. It's wild.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:19]:
It's brilliant. It, what it reminds me of with KKR buying that loan with that debt. What it reminds me of is after 2,008. So 2,008 happened, a whole bunch of 4 letter, 3 letter agencies and laws were spun up to help backstop or try to prevent it from ever happening again and whatever, whatever. And so they tightened up mortgages really, really tight. It was really tough to get any type of secured car loan and a mortgage for sure. Where did banks and lenders go after that? They went to the consumer and they went into the unsecured lines. They went into credit cards.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:57]:
They went into unsecured loans, like small personal loans, and they nickel and dime the American people for 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 and 1,000,000. And I know this because that was my job. It was literally my second job out of college. It's the one that I tell everybody. Everybody laughs at me for my failed negotiation attempt of trying to get $37,000 out of this lady that's sitting in front of me. But that job where I was getting paid $31,000 a year, the reason why they needed to expand the team was because they were upping their consumer credit center, like their consumer credit lines and their consumer credit debt was just going off the roof. I know because when I got in there, I helped to change and rewrite the underwriting guidelines. And let's just say that it was very easy to take out unsecured lines of credit.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:51]:
I mean, routinely giving teenagers the maximum amount that we could give them. And I don't know what numbers I can say. So I'm not going to say anything.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:59]:
Can't get a business loan though. Right? Can't do that. That's too risky. Can't buy a lawnmower

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:03]:
because that's how banks make money. It was brilliant of them on their part. They need to find another product line. They need to find another avenue to make more money. And they did. And then they went hard on it. It reminds me the same thing. Now these other people are realizing the value that student loans have, you know, they're just like, wait a minute.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:23]:
That is super valuable. Let's roll all those up and sell that and sell that debt. And then let's make a lot of money. And that's what's happening.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:30]:
To be perfectly clear, 1,000,000,000 of dollars, $1,000,000,000 industry. Anyway, on a lighter note.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:35]:
And so on a lighter note, thanks for giving me a little bit of segue. We turned 3 back in July. And I had visions of grandeur.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:46]:
What visions did you have?

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:47]:
That I was going to take the time to get together a 3rd year anniversary episode and

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:56]:
The thought was admirable.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:57]:
Yeah. And I don't think I'm going to be able to do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:00]:
I don't think you will either.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:01]:
Not that I don't have enough of the time, but I think we have so much better things to talk about. And so maybe I'll do a 3 and a half year or something like that. Half birthday.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:09]:
How come Alice in Wonderland?

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:12]:
Maybe sometime in December or something like that. We'll do a little.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:15]:
Sometime in March, but no, but then we have to do our March episode. There's people listening to this podcast that are specifically waiting for March of next year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:22]:
And if you don't know what we're talking about.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:24]:
The dumbest story ever told.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:25]:
You are going to want to subscribe for March. Make sure that you're notified. You can literally

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:31]:
not listen again until March of next year,

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:33]:
but make sure you're subscribed though. Yes. You can, but not listen to a single episode, a

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:38]:
single iota,

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:39]:
a single second more shut me off right now, as long as you're subscribed and then come back the week of like March 9th to 16th or something like that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:47]:
Not for us. It's for you. I promise

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:51]:
we missed it this year, but we will not miss it next year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:54]:
We will not.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:55]:
Anyway, we turned 3. I had a couple of questions for you since we turned 3. I think that would be simpler than doing a whole big episode on an anniversary episode. I'm talking about the podcast now. How do you think the podcast has evolved since we started?

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:08]:
I think that we have a much clearer vision of how to help people. That's a big thing because we identified that the highest lift, the biggest generational impact we can have is working with young adults to keep them out of student debt. That's something that was born out of the podcast. And I will say the launch program came from the podcast. Absolutely. From us talking through this stuff and thinking through this stuff. So the way I'd say now that it's evolved is I think you and I have changed so much. We've grown up a lot since that first episode.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:40]:
I listened to it sometimes to remind myself where we came from actually. And man, do we sound a lot less nervous? That's the biggest thing. Well, I was nervous.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:52]:
I would have to agree with you on the nervous part. And I don't know whether or not I said this before or whether or not I'm just having deja vu. I'm living in the matrix right now because we already did this episode. But I go back to the first episode all the time and that's because I go to our YouTube channel and just like how anybody else goes to our YouTube channel. And then I will hit podcasts and it'll give me the whole degree free podcast playlist and it starts it from 1 and it auto plays it. So whenever I click in it'll auto play that very first second of our video. And if you are curious, I definitely suggest you go and do that. I

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:32]:
suggest you don't.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:33]:
Well, listen to how scared I am. I'm literally shaking into the microphone and I am Aloha guys.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:42]:
Now you're not scared at all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:45]:
I am not scared of this microphone on this show. I think one of the things that any person struggles with is when you go on somebody else's show and you're interviewed and things like that. And that's just reps, just being interviewed by other people is just reps and reps and reps. You might know everything you might have answers to every single question. It might be the friendliest interview that you've ever had. They might be throwing you softball after softball after softball, but if you don't have the reps, it's a little difficult. That's just the way that it is. I think for us as podcasters, yes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:23]:
I mean, we have definitely evolved a lot because at the beginning, we think of the anniversary when we say we turn 3. I always think of the anniversary of the podcast and I love it because it's on YouTube and it's on our podcast feed that I can just go back and look at when the first episode was put out. And the reason why I think that that's our anniversary and not whenever we started our business is because we didn't really know what this was going to be.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:50]:
No, we just wanted to talk about it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:53]:
Right. We talked about this for years. We have lived the degree free way for years and we have told other people of like, you don't have to go to college. There are other ways to get there. There are other ways to success, but we didn't formalize any of that. And so this was just supposed to be a formalization of that. And I mean, obviously you don't start something without any goals or without anything and sure. Our goal was to make this a business, but I think our goal back then was to make podcasting our business.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:23]:
Yeah. Because we didn't know if it was going to make money or how. And so we'll start a podcast. The podcast is much more intentional than it was. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:31]:
We thought that this itself was going to be the business and we quickly learned.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:37]:
As anyone will, if they start a podcast.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:39]:
Yeah. We quickly learned that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:41]:
That is not a quick way to make a business.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:43]:
If you want to be rich and wealthy

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:45]:
This is not the way

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:46]:
This is not the way.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:47]:
To date 3 years in, this podcast has not made us a dime, people. Just so you know, we spend money to make this podcast. We say it. Those of you who listen a lot, you hear us complain about it all the time. But if you're going, I'm gonna start my first business. Don't start a podcast. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:01]:
There are easier ways to go about it, but I'm very glad that we did it. Like I've said many times on this show, my personal life has been changed by podcasts and what a beautiful thing it is to have a free resource that you could boot up at any time on your computer, on your phone, in the car or at the airport. And you can put these into your headphones, your earbuds, you can put it over the car. You can listen to it with your kids and you can learn and you can steep yourself in conversations. I was going to say intelligent conversations, but like not say I have intelligent conversations at all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:35]:
What you do with our guests. I'll give you that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:37]:
But you can go and listen to other people talking about things that you care about. And if your goal is to learn about a subject, you can do that for free. And even if they do have ads, which we don't really have, I've had the same ad running on this podcast. I think there's 2 ads and I need to update that and we don't make any money on this. And that's probably why.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:58]:
I think there's just one.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:00]:
No, I think there's 2. I did it this like a year ago.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:01]:
Maybe my app always skips it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:03]:
I think it's asking you to share which please everybody, please share this podcast. And then I think the other one is subscribe or give me a review anyway, for free. You can listen to all these things. You can be a fly in the wall of these conversations. You just have to listen to ads for some people's podcasts, but that's it. And then you can just use your skip function if you want to skip through them. I think as far as the podcast evolving, it has evolved from, oh, we're going to be a podcasting media business to podcasting. Is this something that we feel we should keep up and keep doing for the people that listen to us

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:39]:
for the love.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:39]:
I mean, for ourselves too. It does help to clear up some thoughts. It does help to talk about things, write things down and then talk about them. That's how I think it has evolved over the past 3 years. And then the second question is how has your personal slash professional viewpoint on degree free changed in 3 years? I am purposefully asking you a vague question. So I'll ask you it one more time. Give you a couple seconds to think about it again. How has your personal or professional viewpoint on degree free changed in 3 years?

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:12]:
I'm a 100% sure that we're right. When we started, I was maybe 85% sure that we were right 3 years ago. Now I'm a 100%. I am 100% sure that we are basically on the bleeding edge of this and equipping people to teach themselves, equipping people to feel bold enough, to try to learn what they want to learn, to try to do what they want to do, And that we are going to see an increase as work changes, as education changes, as the internet continues to democratize education and certify people. And when I say certified, I don't mean necessarily professional certifications, but continues to show that other people can learn whatever they want and then do whatever they want with that information and with that education. I think that I am absolutely sure. I have no doubt that this is the future.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:04]:
What are 1 or 2 things that makes you 100% sure that's correct?

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:09]:
I think the biggest thing is actually, ironically enough, AI. It's one of those things that when I saw how widespread I remember chat GPT. I remember you using chat GPT when it first came out and then using, you know, learning how to use all the subsequent AI tools. And when I saw those in action, I just went, oh, the colleges are done. They're so archaic as it is, And they're desperately trying to paywall any sort of anything. And they are not going to be able to, because now it was already all on the internet. Consolidating and pulling resources is so much faster. And I just saw how work is going to change, how society is going to change in general.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:48]:
And I saw an interesting clip. We'll have to play it on the podcast maybe in a couple of weeks, but I saw a clip of Naval Ravikant. He's an investor. And I saw him talking about how he believes the future of work will be people waking up and seeing, and they'll log into an app on their phone and then they will choose what work they do that day that suits their skill sets, that suits whatever type of money they want to make. And it will be instantaneous and everybody will be gig workers. Everybody will be freelancers. And I, for a long time, have thought that that's exactly where the economy is headed. And when I saw chat gbt for the first time, I just went, oh, yeah, they're done.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:19]:
They're done. It's over. Because colleges and universities cannot change what they're doing. They are concreted into their own business model and they will not change. The only thing they'll do is try to speed up the process of degrees, but the degrees themselves are now useless unless they're required for legal licensure. And I think that we'll talk about later in the episode, but that's under threat also. And so that's going to be very interesting to watch and see how that changes. Is seeing the rise of AI made me 100% sure that it is not a pay walled educational future that we all are walking into.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:50]:
So to clarify your point, or at least for me to understand your point, you're saying that the increase of access to educational tools, the increase of access to knowledge outside of an academic setting is what makes you think that the degree for your movement is correct?

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:11]:
Think of Chat GPT almost like a librarian. When I say Chat GPT, I just mean AI tools in general, right? Because what a lot of what they do is make sure that they're bringing you when you ask them to find something on the internet and you're asking them to find you a resource. Like, you can Google a passage from a book that you've read and then say, find me the name of this book. And it'll bring you the book and the section in the area, and it'll show you where it is. And it's like having a librarian, everyone having a research librarian. So I was able to look into the census data. I was able to find that information really quickly based on a theory that I had, which allows me to theorize, research, and compile a hypothesis and then prove or disprove it within 15 minutes. Even though I'm off the tracks.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:48]:
Right? I'm way off the tracks. I'm out in the wilderness of research because there's no information on that. There's only a bunch of disjointed information that I'm trying to connect because I see a connection. And for people who are trying to learn something, whether they have a hypothesis about something that happened in the past, or they're trying to learn linear algebra, or they're trying to learn how to write a book, and they're not sure where to start or what to do, whatever they're trying to do, whatever they're trying to teach themselves. Being able to ask an AI librarian, essentially, a question, and then have it give you the resources you need to get to learn what you need to learn. It's simplicity. So all the information was there, but getting it was really difficult. And so now a lot of people that, Oh, people aren't motivated enough to that's crap.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:27]:
They just don't know how to look. And now they don't have to know how to look. They need to know how to ask AI to bring them the information that they need or the resource they need to get the information that they need.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:36]:
How much of you saying 100% you're correct. We're correct. Degree free is the way and is the future. How much of that is sunk cost fallacy? How much of it is because you've been working on this for 3 years now and you show no signs of slowing up that you believe that you're correct.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:59]:
It's really not so much a sunk cost. Like I talked about this woman that interviewed me on the podcast earlier was so open minded and so willing to entertain new ideas. I just went, am I willing to do the same thing? Am I willing to be wrong? Because if I'm not, something is wrong with me because that is not being open minded. That is not being educated. That is not being an academic as people want to be. That's not being a scholar. But the more I look, the more it's just unavoidable writing on the wall. To me, how it feels is just discovering gravity and saying, guys, this is what's causing the stuff to fall out the sky.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:30]:
And people just go, no, no, no, it can't be that. And that's really what's cementing it. Even if I go into it, it was going, all right, let me just look at this and see what I find. And then I'll just go, oh, well, that's the reason that's the cause. And another example of that was recently I was looking into that $1,000,000 earnings myth, the college one from the 2012 Georgetown study where they said, yeah, college graduates make over $1,000,000 more a year. And you and I both have talked about how there's a bunch of flaws with that study. But what I found was when I was looking, I happened upon the economist who worked on the study. Her name is Sandy Baum, b a u m, like Mark Baum from The Big Short.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:03]:
And she said the real figure, the real college premium is $400,000 not a million, which is very different. And then coupled with the NCES data that we saw from 2023, which says that the total cost of a bachelor's degree is $509,000 on average. And remember when I said this is a couple of months ago. I said, all these millennials are complaining about they can't buy a house. They don't have a down payment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah because they bought college degrees. It's because they bought bachelor's degrees because what are they missing? They're missing a $100,000 of wealth. And that's what's keeping them from buying homes. I was like, that's the number.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:38]:
That's the missing number. They're all like, where'd the money go? I'm like, oh, that's it. You thought you were gonna get this premium. You didn't. And you don't have that money now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:45]:
Can we talk about this isn't on our bingo card. This isn't on our notes. Literally right before we press record, we were talking about one of the stories from one of the people that came through the launch program, going through the launch program and being able to start his life and propose and all that. Can you talk a little bit about this? Because what you just said reminds me a lot of what we were talking about.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:06]:
Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed about, and there's so many things because of the podcast I did today too. 1 of the co hosts on the podcast is writing a book called Talk to Your Boys, which is basically a guide for parents to talk to their sons about issues that are really important that are impacting them because they are disproportionately being affected by a lot of different elements in society. And one of the things I've noticed in the launch program is totally separate from this, which it was such a wild conversation with her today, just hearing what her perspective is because of the research she's been doing. But I've noticed that the boys that come into the launch program, the young men that come into the launch program, they really lack direction. A lot of times kneecapped by the school system they're in, there's nothing wrong with them. They've just been told that they're failures. They've been told they're bad at things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:50]:
They've been told they can't do things their whole life. It's like somebody putting up all of these bumpers constantly in random places, and you're constantly running into them. And by the time they get to me, they're almost bruised. And it's really sad. It's super discouraging. And so I had one young man come to the launch program, 19. And one of the things he told me in his interest inventory in the beginning was that one of his goals was to propose to his girlfriend and get married and buy a house and have kids. That's what he wants.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:13]:
And a golden retriever. He wants that. But the thing that was stopping him was not feeling like he would be able to provide those things and that's freaking serious. And so when he came to the launch program, he was able to go get a job. And after that, he was going to go propose to his girlfriend. And what I was saying on the podcast today was that the work we're doing, we didn't start out realizing it would be this high impact. We thought that it would be, oh, wow, just keep them out of debt. But what I'm slowly realizing and where maybe I'm drinking our own Kool Aid, but it's stuff that you and I didn't anticipate because we couldn't have known.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:45]:
We knew what the problem was, and we set out to fix the problem. We fix the problem. And then downstream from that, all these other problems get fixed. I watched this have generational impact in front of my eyes where not only did he get direction, not only did he get work that fits the life that he wants to live, he now feels enabled

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:04]:
To be miserable, just like the rest of us.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:12]:
You've ruined my story. I cried. I cried on the podcast today on that podcast telling that story because it was so cool. This is such a good anniversary episode. You're just letting me run all over the place as per usual. He'll roll me back in later. But basically what's happening is there's just transformational change going on because a lot of what these kids need is they just need direction. And once they have it, they're gone.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:36]:
And it's so amazing to see that that was right. They just need to feel someone to go, oh, you could do that, do this, and then do this. And then they they're like, okay, I can do that. And then they do it. And then they're gone. And it's amazing. The downstream implications on their life, on their future families, on their happiness, on their control over their income, on their ability and confidence to feel like they can do things when they've been told their whole life. You can't, you can't, you can't, you have to do this.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:03]:
You have to do this when none of those things are true. It's just amazing to watch.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:06]:
Talking about the interest inventory. When we work with young adults, 16 to 20 year old range, we start with that and we always start with their goals. We always start with like, what do you want your life to look like? And we have tried to distill that down into an incredibly actionable way that you can do it yourself if you wanted to. And that's in the degree free way here. If you're watching the YouTube, I'm holding it up right now. The way that we decided to do it is it is in the form of needs and wants and it's what do you need? And what do you want from your job or just in general? And then we go through different sections like industry, which we say don't put anything in there, money, location type of work, those types of things. And you can go through the degree free way with your child, with your young adult and go through and figure out what are their goals. Because if we don't know what their goals are, how are we supposed to choose work? And I think personally, we don't go through that process enough.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:19]:
Even adults as job seekers and career changers, don't go through that enough. And they're just thinking, what do I want to do for work? And we think here at degree free, that that is the exact wrong question to ask yourself whenever you are at some sort of career point instead. What do I need? What do I want? What are my goals? Clarify those things. And then you find work that enables you to reach those goals. And I think personally, and I think you would think that as well. That is the recipe for life satisfaction and career satisfaction. That is the recipe right there. What are my goals and how do I reach those goals? What type of work helps me reach those goals? And we understand that not everybody can come through the launch program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:06]:
We get it. I mean, it's expensive and rightfully so. I mean, we do a lot of work and it is very valuable. The service that, and so I, 100% stand behind it. If you don't know where to start and you don't have the money to pay us to work with your child, or you're like, I don't know, I'm really new to this degree free thing. The degree free way is the best way for you to work through this with your young adult. And it comes with 2 books, a parent and a young adult copy so that you can work through this together. You can go to degreefree.coforward/book to get your copy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:41]:
And it is crazy and amazing. I was just making a joke, but it is amazing to have this type of impact on their lives. Because as you said, I was just making a joke.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:53]:
Dude, you ruined this story.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:56]:
I totally stomped all over it. And all the sinners are

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:59]:
probably right. On our anniversary. Just like, let

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:01]:
her talk and

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:03]:
Let her let me go. Let me go.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:05]:
So I apologize for that. I just it was just

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:07]:
He can't help himself. You have

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:08]:
to help him. I just

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:11]:
I forgive you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:12]:
All jokes aside, I mean, it is amazing. It is literally life changing coming to these realizations and also putting it into action, finding work that fits their goals, that they can go and do to reach their goals quicker and more effective.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:28]:
It changes everything.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:29]:
Yeah. It changes everything. So thanks for taking us on that little adventure. I didn't have that to talk about before, but I thought it was perfect fitting for what we were talking about. And you've been talking so much about podcasts and going on other people's podcasts that this next thing is funny because it is also another podcast that you did. You want to take this away?

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:51]:
Oh, yeah. We talked about this a little bit, but sometimes if someone's in the middle of a train of thought when they're interviewing you and they do a 1 or 2 parter or 3 pronged question and you answer the first part and then they kind of skip forward and then disagree and move on from your point, then it's almost rude to go back and say, Oh, wait. No, no, no. And so I didn't in this one podcast. And the host of this podcast just said, well, you still needed a college degree to get most good jobs in the country, which is just patently false. But she said it in such a way that it was rude of me to interrupt and try to correct her.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:24]:
I hear what you're saying, and I completely agree with you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:28]:
But it's my job to correct that because she didn't listen to anything else I said after that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:33]:
Took the words out of my mouth.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:34]:
Sorry, degree free folks. It's my failure for our movement to communicate that to her, but I will do better in the future.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:40]:
I completely agree that it is difficult to go and say those things and be like, hold on. We've already moved past it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:48]:
Cause it feels like you're not listening to them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:50]:
You asked me a totally unrelated question that you've moved on. You know, like that's the second paragraph that you said, but in the first paragraph, after you responded to what I initially said, you said this and that was wrong. That is super awkward.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:04]:
Feels rude.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:04]:
Yeah, exactly. And for the most part.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:07]:
And I'm a guest on her podcast. It's I'm in her house.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:10]:
It's not a combative thing and you don't want

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:14]:
to drop jealous salad on the living room floor.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:16]:
Yeah. And you're just like, wait, why am I coming in here? And I'm just being combative with this person. And so I completely hear what you're saying, but at the same time, it's kind of our job as the guest

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:25]:
to inform and educate and inspire and entertain.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:28]:
Yeah, exactly. It's kind of our job to call those things out. That's why they're having us on the podcast. That's why we're there to say those things. And if that's something that they disagree with and that's their opinion, so be it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:44]:
And I will do better in the future, but in lieu of doing better in the future for the current present right now. So I'm going to correct this. You do not need to buy a college degree to get most jobs in the country. Most people who are employed in the US are degree free. You do not need to buy a college degree to get most good jobs in the country either because very few jobs actually legally require college degrees. What she said too, is there are many jobs that will not hire you or you just won't get your foot in the door unless you have a degree. No. The data on that is very, very clear.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:15]:
And she just didn't know it. And I did not inform her of it. So she still doesn't, which if I go back on there, I will do so. But there is a big difference between degree requirements and degree requests as we talk about all the time. A degree requirement is something that is legally required to do a job, in that if you did not have it and you do that job, you will get sued. What's that movie Catch Me If You Can? Leonardo DiCaprio just goes around pretending he's all these pilot surgery. He pretends to be a doctor at one point. I think he, like, actually practices medicine.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:40]:
The guy in the actual story, this is a real story that happened. He pretended to be a doctor and then taught medical students. He did that for like a long time or anyone found out. And then the crux of this though, is that this is the data on what's going on. The state of work, the state of degree free work, as we know it only 14.5 percent of the jobs on ZipRecruiter have a degree request in them at all, even mention a college degree. And that includes finance, medicine, and education. Because that's always the one people always say, well, what about healthcare specifically? Do you want to guess how many of the healthcare related jobs had a college degree mentioned? Not even required mentioned.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:19]:
40%.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:20]:
9%, Not even 10%. Not even as much as you give to the Lord. Okay? Like, 9%. So little. Okay? Less than 185. Do you like my idea reference? You in front of my story, man.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:36]:
Go on.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:37]:
Less than 1 in 5 on indeed list a degree at all as of 2023. Less than 1 in 5 of them list a degree in the job description at all. Not even required. Just a college degree preferred also falls into this category. That's how few. Indeed, the company removed degree requirements. AWS removed degree requirements. Google removed degree requirements.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:59]:
Tesla, IBM, GM, Accenture, all these giant people. Oh, you get we're gonna force be quiet. Have you recently looked at how many of them are rolling back the requirements? It's all of them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:10]:
Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you. So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one of the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:41]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you, and back to the show.

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:44]:
And not only did they already do that in 2023, but then this year, 55% more companies removed more. It's every year they're just peeling off because technology is changing, and education is changing because work is changing. And we have been selling college as an avenue, as a pathway to work when it has literally nothing to do with it, unless it is illegally required. That divorce is about to become very evident, which is part of why I'm so sure about what's going to happen.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:11]:
Just to jump in here a little bit to her point. She might be right though. And I'm just playing devil's advocate because there might be, and there probably are companies out there that have the hiring practices, that if you do not have a college degree, we will not hire you. Like I'm just talking about companies, 1 company, 2 companies, 3 companies, there's any company. You just said the data here. So it's obviously not most companies, but there are certain companies I'm sure that, oh, no. We see it all the time in the YouTube comments all the time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:45]:
My company would never All

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:46]:
the time in the TikTok comments. My company would never hire anybody. I am saying that there are companies like that. But this one company or this 2 companies, 3 companies, for whatever the role is, if it doesn't legally require a degree for you to optimize around these 3 companies or this one company to hire you doesn't make any sense. You're gonna go and spend 4 and a half years. Your young adult is gonna go ahead and spend 5 and a half years of their life and a $100,000 they're going to go into debt to get this one job at this one company. Like that doesn't make sense. Just go to another company and apply for whatever role that is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:27]:
It's very similar to going to a company that only hires like a 120 pound people. Oh, I only hire people that are a £120. And it's like, well, I'm like 2 20 right now. So I guess I could absolutely lose a £100.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:43]:
Or I could just apply next door.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:45]:
Or I could just go to a company that doesn't have such stupid rules. Just go to a company that doesn't hire just 120 pound people.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:51]:
Also the trends show that if you wait long enough, the company that you apply to will remove their requirements too. It's coming. And it's coming because companies are money focused and degree free people churn less. That's the biggest takeaway that college graduates don't seem to understand. And oh, the PLMS. No, no, no. They're going to pay them exactly what they're going to pay you, but they are not going to leave. That's what's going to happen.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:09]:
That's why they're hiring them over you. My theory that there are people have had some success with removing the degrees on their resumes and applying because employers are actually actively looking for not that. And there was recently a study done. A 2023 study showed that 800 US employers said they were likely or very likely to hire experience over degrees. That is what they're doing. It's now dripping down to a policy level, took some time to drip down to the actual HR because usually they are papered and it took some time to retrain them and it's still taking time to retrain them. But on the flip side too, with with the legal requirements, states are removing degree requirements too. Here are 18 states that have removed degree requirements, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Nevada, Washington, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Minnesota, all have removed degree requirements from upwards of 80% of their state jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:01]:
So all of the ones that it's completely unnecessary for, like park rangers, for instance, is a good example of that. Not National Park Rangers, but state park rangers because that's ridiculous. It's a bachelor's degree was a requirement for most of those. Silly. Why? Any bachelor's degree? What bearing does that have on being a good park ranger? None. 0. 0%. States are catching on to that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:21]:
They did internal analysis and they looked and they just went, oh, we can remove these for almost all of our jobs. And then they proceeded to do that, which is very indicative to that 7 I think it was Maryland. Was it Josh Shapiro? Oh, Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro. Remember that when he removed the degree requirements for the state of Pennsylvania? It was like 90%, which is very close to our 7.7% estimate for legal degree requirements. Very close.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:43]:
I wanted to key in on one of the things that you always say as to try, which is for those people that are career changers and job seekers to remove their bachelor degree or move their advanced degrees from their resumes and see if that gets them through. I always like to kind of, you kind of just go for the jugular and say, remove the degree. And I just always like to temper it back and say that is in the spirit of testing. What we mean is that if you are having a hard time, and this goes from 16 years old, from your very first job, all the way to your last job before you retire, If you are having a hard time finding a job, depending on what stage you are in, in the job search process, depending on which stage that is, whether that's pre interview interview negotiation, those are roughly the 3 stages that you're going to be in. You see where in those stages you are getting caught up in. So if you're in the pre interview stage, which is meaning that you haven't gotten an interview, you have sent out a 100, 200 applications, a lot of applications, and you haven't gotten any type of feedback and just been silenced the entire time. Then you should test your job search materials, their job search materials, being your cover letter, your resume, your cold DMS, your outreaches, whatever it is, change something up because something is obviously not working. And in the spirit of that, one of the things that you could change is removing the degree from your resume.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:10]:
You just go for the jugular. And I just like to remind people that

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:13]:
it's in a battery of other tests.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:15]:
Yeah, exactly. You've kind of left the station and we're really on a higher level of just testing things in general. You can test an entirely different resume format. That's another test that you could do. You could test not sending your resume and you could test a video resume. You know what I mean? Like you could test so many things. You could test just sending it a link tree, whatever it is that you want to test. That's what you should do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:37]:
One of the tests that you can do is removing your degree from your resume. Just to be clear for everybody. That is the spirit of what we mean it. The reason why I always like to say that is because the next question that you always get when you say that is everybody's like, why would I do that? Well, let me explain why you would do that. And, but if you had explained it first, then we wouldn't have had to have this conversation.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:59]:
No, I like to do this so that the people on YouTube can hate us even more than they do now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:06]:
Yeah. But yeah, I hear what totally hear what you're saying about the podcast thing about when you're getting interviewed or even interviewing somebody and they say something that you think is erroneous. What do you do? What's the etiquette? But I think going forward, you have to having this discussion. I think both you and I have to be a little bit better about that. I think most media training and I don't know, I've never been through my any of myself. I think most media training would just tell you, just leave it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:28]:
I don't like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:28]:
Yeah. I don't like that either.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:29]:
Obviously, I felt the need to correct it afterwards. So in the future, I'll just be uncomfortable, but I'll be polite about it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:34]:
So the last thing that I wanted to talk about is another correction, basically. So this is just the podcast of corrections here. And instead of correcting what you didn't say or whatever, I'm going to correct what I did say. And in episode 153, I misspoke. We were talking about a podcast episode that we listened to where this family was trying to do a bunch of financial engineering to get out of their daughter's student debt situation. In this podcast episode that we were speaking about in episode 153, the family, mother and father, were talking to this financial guru and they were trying to do figure out how to get out of the student debt situation that they incurred from their daughter and the way that they were going to do that with is to either dip into their retirement, try to do a HELOC, you name it. They were trying to do it and through production magic. This is the very first on degree free.

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:31]:
I'll play that clip of me right now. I think they missed the entire point of the whole thing, which is when you break it down to its simplest parts, what they have is they have a cash flow problem. They are spending too much money every single month and they're not making enough. And we've talked about it before on this podcast, but your expenses, debt payments are one of the line items in your expenses can only go to 0. They're sitting here thinking about all this financial engineering. Okay. I'm going to do a HELOC. I'm going to consolidate this debt.

Ryan Maruyama [00:48:03]:
Well, what are the points I can get here? Their debt can only go to 0. That's it, but their income can go to infinity. Really, to me, it was simple as day. If this is you and you're having some problem like this, it's probably a higher lift for you to literally go drive Lyft. You're going to see a greater outcome if you just raise your freaking income. And so I don't know if anybody caught the mistake that I said there. And I know that a couple of people did

Hannah Maruyama [00:48:34]:
on YouTube,

Ryan Maruyama [00:48:36]:
which is why I felt compelled to correct it. I still stand behind everything I said in this clip, or at least the essence of everything that I said in this clip. But I did want to point out that I did make a slight mistake towards the end there. I said that their quote debt can only go to 0, which is obviously wrong. Their debt can go to infinity, but that wasn't the problem. In this scenario, the problem was that they weren't worried about borrowing more money. So their debt was for the most part steady state. It was going to remain the same.

Ryan Maruyama [00:49:13]:
What they were worried about was they were worried about the debt payments. They were worried about every single month having whatever. Just for easy math, it was way more loans than this, but let's just say it was 6 loans and each loan had a $500 a month payment. Like I said, I'm just making numbers up here just for easy math. So that's a $3,000 payment. What they were worried about was a $3,000 expense, a $3,000 line item that they were trying to get rid of every single month. And the way that they were trying to do it was with all of these different financial products and financial engineering with this financial guru. And I just thought for myself, I thought it was interesting listening to this podcast episode of this financial guru.

Ryan Maruyama [00:49:56]:
They were talking about all of these different possibilities, but the one thing they didn't bring up was it didn't bring up increasing their income. They didn't bring up, Hey, one of the biggest things that you could do is just focus on making more money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:50:07]:
Yeah. And instead they're just trying to burn what they have to fix the problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:50:10]:
And the reason why you should be focused on making more money is because your monthly debt expense can only go to 0. That's what I meant. Not that your debt can only go to 0, but your monthly debt expense, that $3,000 once all 6 of those loans are paid off, those $500 a month payments disappear. They're gone. The upside of you doing all this financial engineering is that you capture $3,000 worth of value. That's it. But if instead, if you divorced yourself from that one very difficult line item, like to look at it and be like, my daughter's just in college and I don't know what's going on. You look at it and you say, okay, that's not going away.

Ryan Maruyama [00:50:56]:
That's just another expense. That's just not going away. What is a more effective thing to do? Well, if you focus on your income, your income can go to infinity. And so that's why I said it is going to see more impact if you drive DoorDash or Uber Eats or Lyft, and then there is the father, the mother, and the daughter. You can have 3 people working

Hannah Maruyama [00:51:20]:
chipping away at

Ryan Maruyama [00:51:21]:
this on raising your income. Or if you don't have time to do that, or you don't have the car to do that or whatever. I mean, just going into your boss's office and having a hard conversation with them and just be like, look, I've been doing this for 40 years now. I've been busting my hump up for this company. Here's all the 7 things that I did that improved these KPIs, whatever. And then you lay out an argument for a 30% raise.

Hannah Maruyama [00:51:43]:
Please pay me more money.

Ryan Maruyama [00:51:44]:
And then they say, no, you're smoking crack. And you're gonna be like, yeah, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. And then you go across the street and you go to another company and then you go get paid double.

Hannah Maruyama [00:51:53]:
Because you got it. You got

Ryan Maruyama [00:51:54]:
to jump. Exactly. And you go make more money. And all of those things has a potential to have a higher impact than $3,000 a month or whatever the amount is, is that I'm talking about. Dollars 3000

Hannah Maruyama [00:52:05]:
a month loan. I'm so crazy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:06]:
I'm making up numbers. I don't know what it is. I think they literally had 17 loans. If I remember correctly, I don't know how much that is per loan, but it's a lot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:52:14]:
They're a Sallie Mae loan. So they weren't good loans.

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:16]:
One of my points was that this financial guru.

Hannah Maruyama [00:52:18]:
Didn't say, Hey, make more money. Cause it's hard.

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:21]:
It was never a part of the equation. It was never part of the equation. When I think to like, at least bring it

Hannah Maruyama [00:52:27]:
up. Hey, can one of you make more money either by changing jobs or working more or over time or learning a new skill? I don't know. Can your daughter do something?

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:35]:
To me, it was very simple. It was a cashflow problem. This is just another expense that you have to deal with. And one of the best ways to deal with it, obviously you're trying to get rid of it, but instead you're doing all this crap and you're going to dip into your retirement and yeah. Easier said than done. I get it. You're busy. You got kids, you got soccer, you got whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:56]:
So I'm not saying it's easy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:52:57]:
You got to do it. Neither is paying a multi $1,000 loan payment every month.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:02]:
And so anyway, that was a correction that I wanted to make because it was very obvious that I did make a mistake there. 100% made a mistake there. Your debt can go.

Hannah Maruyama [00:53:11]:
Infinity and beyond.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:13]:
Yes. Your debt can go crazy. There will always be someone To loan you money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:53:19]:
And wow. That just tied so nicely into the beginning of our podcast episode.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:23]:
There will always will be start out, be your mortgage in credit cards, then unsecured, then your car loan, then your mortgage and then whatever. And then once you get super levered and you're like up to your gills, I'll

Hannah Maruyama [00:53:39]:
do that consolidation.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:40]:
Oh yeah. And the debt consolidation loans. And then once you get up there, then they got payday loans. You got loan sharks, and then you got Rockwell up the street, you know, and if you don't pay them, he's going to kick your cat or a crowbar or whatever. Exactly. And then once you've got Rockwell, then you got geo down the street.

Hannah Maruyama [00:53:57]:
We're getting a

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:58]:
little, I am absolutely picturing people in my mind 100%.

Hannah Maruyama [00:54:05]:
If you're wondering if Ryan's profiling, he is. 100%. I know these people. So to make sure Rocco doesn't come and kick our cat because we've been spending so much money producing these podcasts for 3 years, please give us a buzzer for you. Yeah. For an anniversary present. We'd love it if you did that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:54:27]:
If you made it all the way to this, you will know that the flashback is new and I want to know what you think about that because that actually took me longer than I thought I was going to, because I had to listen to that whole episode because it wasn't timestamped. So I thought like, listen to it and figure out where I said it and I had to cut it out.

Hannah Maruyama [00:54:45]:
And this is a 3 year episode. Lisa, if you notice that it was really our girl, our girl, Lisa.

Ryan Maruyama [00:54:52]:
Let me know if you guys liked this episode. Let me know if you liked that little flashback. We're thinking about including more of those like different production types of things. The only problem with those things is that it takes time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:55:06]:
It does. And we're working on it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:55:08]:
Yeah. Five star reviews, all that good stuff. I think that this was a really good episode, even though this was a rerecord.

Hannah Maruyama [00:55:14]:
The re re re return.

Ryan Maruyama [00:55:16]:
Yeah. That's it. Until next week, guys.