Joel Kim Booster

But now that I've had, you know, many years of distance from it, it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

It's a huge one.

Yeah, no, I mean, it was a huge thing for me.

I've changed my life.

It changed the course of my life, being able to pay off my loans.

Because, I mean, I went to a private liberal arts school for theater at a time before we were talking about predatory student loans and specifically private student loans, too.

I took out up the wazoo and I had scholarships.

I had grants and stuff like that too, but it wasn't enough.

Certainly not for this school.

And it certainly wasn't a good idea to do that, getting the major that I was... I mean, I took on debt that a med school student took on to get a theater degree.

It was insane.

And I remember...

my senior year it was a small enough school that everyone there every senior who had debt had to sit down with nancy askins who was the financial advisor at our school and go through our plan for paying off our debt and i remember her looking me in the eyes looking at my debt load and looking at my major and saying what were you thinking

And I wasn't because, I mean, I was emancipated at 17.

I didn't have an adult in my life telling me to, hey, slow down, don't sign on that dotted line.

And without parental support, I needed that money.

Even with, again, I worked my way through school.

I had two jobs the entirety of my college career.

And so it was just none of it was enough to cover the costs of going to this very expensive private school.

I came out of the closet at school when I was 16.