Financial planner Anna N’Jie-Konte remembers the pain of graduating from top schools and then having to pay down the student loan debt in the years that followed.
“I ended up having substantial student loans. And it was something that I struggled with for several years, both from a cash-flow standpoint and also from an emotional standpoint,” N’Jie-Konte said on Wednesday, in a webinar for clients and members of the public on understanding how to strategically repay student loans.
Abdullah Konte
The webinar, which N’Jie-Konte had advertised online, was free and came as many financial advisors — and their clients — are waking up to the resumption of federal student loan payments in the fall. At the same time, borrowers around the country are still reeling from the recent Supreme Court decision in June to strike down the Biden administration’s plan for cancellation of $10,000 or $20,000 in federal student loan debt of all qualified borrowers. The government, in response, has announced plans to cancel student loans through other avenues, which are likely to also face legal challenges.
By providing thoughtful and timely services to help next-generation clients (or their older family members who may be helping to pay their loans) navigate the confusion around all these changes, rules and programs, financial advisors can rapidly grow their business. That’s because offering education planning services is the number-one strategy to increase organic growth for firms across the industry, according to a recent report by Dimensional Fund Advisors.
Read more: 3 strategies to help clients with student debt after the Supreme Court’s decision
N’Jie-Konte knows the value of financial planning focused on student loan repayment, because she had to learn it on her own. She grew up in an immigrant household with “very humble financial means” and did not know how to invest or handle debt. So when she graduated from college into the Great Recession, facing her student loans came as a shock, she said in the webinar.
“I really have a soft spot for this issue and recognize how much stress it does add to so many people’s lives,” N’Jie-Konte said.
Today, N’Jie-Konte is the president and director of financial planning at Re-Envision Wealth, a New York-based registered investment advisor that is one of the few Black-owned RIAs in the country. The firm, which reported around $64 million of assets under management, specializes in working with clients of color and aims to help close the racial wealth gap for Black and Latino households, according to its website. The student loan question is especially salient to those populations, she said, because Black and Hispanic American families are more likely than White Americans to have student loan debt.
Read more: Financial advisors team up to build industry’s first Black-owned $1B RIA
![Cindy Mota](https://arizent.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9df34e6/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3692x4615+0+0/resize/440x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsource-media-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F1b%2Fb8%2F14718c5c44caae499a2a0e9b4c14%2Fdsc06018-1.jpg)
Abdullah Konte
“The struggle with the student loans was real,” Cindy Mota, an advisor who described herself as from a “humble” family originally from the Dominican Republic, said in the event of her own past experience. Mota, the associate financial planner at Re-Envision, co-ran the event with N’Jie-Konte; together in the webinar they reviewed the latest repayment options and answered audience questions.
Financial Planning spoke with N’Jie-Konte following her event to hear tips on how financial advisors can connect with next-generation clients or multigenerational families whose younger members may have student loans. Below are three takeaway tips.