Just the THOUGHT of writing about money makes me…well, a little squeemish. A lil’ uncomfortable.

But you know you can always count on me for honesty and transparency (as much transparency as my husband is comfortable with, that is – ha).

So let’s do this. Let’s talk money.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I hit AN INSANELY HUGE (how do I emphasize this enough?!) milestone by COMPLETELY PAYING OFF his student loan debt from Medical School after less than 2 years (21 months) of practicing in his attending job. Paying off the loans was an IN-CRED-I-BLE feeling, as we were once pretty sure it would be a weight on our shoulders for the next 10 years.

We are so humbled by this accomplishment and feel EXTREMELY blessed to have these loans behind us.

So blessed that we want to do what we can to help everyone else achieve their goals ASAP!

But look, I (we) don’t have all of the answers, but today (in a completely unsponsored post), I’m going to share with you the combination of factors which were both in and out of our control that we feel contributed to this big milestone.

(And definitely stay tuned for my list of attainable goals at the end, as well as my tips for avoiding lifestyle inflation)!

The Background on Our Loans and Financial Advisor

According to THIS article by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the average Medical School student loan debt is about 200k. My husband attended a private Medical School, accumulating student loan debt in about that ballpark.

While my husband was still in Fellowship, we were alerted to Larson Financial by one of my husband’s co-fellows. This co-fellow told us that his financial advisor was an awesome dude, and shared that if you get an advisor, you actually are not obligated to pay for their services until after you begin work as an attending. So to us, it made sense to check out the services Larson offered, and see if the advisor mentioned was a good fit for us. We set up a video chat and immediately connected with our recommended advisor, Jake. He is a like-minded Christian, not afraid to discuss his faith, and also never recommended any products or services that would benefit him. He quickly earned our trust, which is so important in a financial advisor. For the first couple of years, while my husband was still in the training years, he met with us regularly and answered all of our questions.

With the guidance of our financial advisor, we deferred our loan repayment all throughout Residency AND Fellowship. BUT we committed to paying the interest on the loans throughout Residency. Our reasoning behind the deferment was that we knew that the $1,000+ a month payment would be a lot bigger of a percentage of our income during Residency and Fellowship than it would be post-training. Since there were no penalties to defer, it made sense to us.

Side note: We did miss the annual deferral deadline one time, on accident, which caused some MAJOR headaches, so be sure to stay on top of those dates if you chose this path.

Okay, let’s cut to beginning work as an attending.

Now, it was time to start paying back the loans! The first thing we did was consolidate and refinance the loans at the recommendation of our financial advisor. We used Sofi to do this. This got our interest rate down from the standard 6.8%, to about 4%. It was a LOT of paperwork, but it was worth it for the dollars we were saving.

When we refinanced, we were required to pick from a variety of repayment lengths, which, of course, changes the monthly payment. For example, with the average amount of student loan debt (about 200k), a 10 years repayment plan would put the monthly payment at about $1,750-$2,000 per month. (Of course this will vary based on a variety of factors including credit score, current interest rate, etc. We planned to pay more than the monthly payment to get the length of time down.

So we were good to go on autopilot, right? Well, we decided to follow a different path.

Our Choice to Aggressively Tackle Student Loan Debt

Even though we initially planned to repay the loans over 10 years, when it came down to it, we decided to repay them faster. Much faster.

Everyone is different in the way they choose to handle debt. My dad, for example, never bought a vehicle using credit, and always paid 100% of his credit card bills each month. So from a young age, it was instilled in me that having debt was a significant evil to be combatted at all costs. My husband has a similar story.

If you find yourself in a position, like we did (most fortunately), where you have extra income to invest, beyond your living and student loan payments, then you have a choice. Our financial advisor told us that we could either 1. Invest our money into investments that will hopefully yield a percentage growth that is higher than our student loan interest rate of around 4%, or 2. Throw extra money at the student loan debt.

We did start an investment account and put some money into it, but we couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to just be done with those loans altogether. We felt compelled to finish them off.

So we did.

Ideas for Paying Off the Debt (FAST)!

You guys, there were so many factors involved in repaying the debt. Some were, as I said before, within our control. And others were not. Let’s start with those that we could control.

Strategies that Helped Us (and Could Help You, Too)!

1. Make a budget. This is a no brainer. At first, I did all of our budgeting on a spreadsheet (back in Med School when we were super poor and had almost no income and no expenses – it was quite simple, really). Then in Residency, I used the website Mint, which I really liked. It simplified things for me and did a lot of the work for me (as far as categorizing expenses and also seeing progress toward specific goals). Use your budget to keep your expenses below your income. We made sure to always have a couple of months worth of living expenses tucked away in savings, and then we put any extra towards this…

2. Pay loan interest during periods of deferment. I mentioned before that we chose to set aside money every month to pay down the interest during Residency. At the time, we were dual-income, no kids, (I am/was a Speech-Language Pathologist). It wasn’t too crazy of a sacrifice to make this happen.  I would try to pay the interest every quarter before it compounded.

3. Avoid cost of living loans, if possible. We were able to get by without cost of living loans. For those of you with kids, this is probably significantly more difficult. But I worked my tail off while my husband was in Med School at a $12/hour job and a $10/hour job, and paid all of our living expenses. We lived EXTREMELY simply. It was over 10 years ago, but the apartment we chose was only $455/month in North Carolina. We WANTED the $550/month place, but knew it would put extra strain on our finances. And honestly, I’m so glad we chose survival in the cheap place. It was awful. (Camel crickets EVERYWHERE). But I feel so grounded by the experience and honestly so appreciative for everything we have at this point.

4. Refinance. The 6.8% loan interest can certainly be beat by other lenders and can save you lots of money in the long run. We used Sofi. However, note that refinancing means starting repayment.

5. Take advantage of moonlighting opportunities. Depending on the program, some training programs allow you to moonlight. During Fellowship, my husband was able to take just a couple of weekends of moonlighting and it proved to be very lucrative and helpful to our bottom line.

As an Attending, he now has opportunities to teach courses, which has also significantly supplemented his income, and contributed to our loan repayment.

For me, as a Speech-Language Pathologist, I picked up extra shifts on the weekends during Residency to help with our finances, but I’m not sure I can fully recommend this as a long-term option.  I was already working full-time, and it made our life stressful and cut in to the already limited time I had with my guy. But I do believe it was nice to have the extra cash.

6. Avoid “lifestyle inflation” for as long as possible. This is hard to hear. And I understand. Once you FINALLY start earning a “real” salary after the years and years of sacrifice, it’s very tempting, to, well, SPEND that salary. But if you can just wait a couple of years more, it could make all of the difference in your student loan repayment. The million dollar house may need to wait. The BMW can be a 5-year plan. The country club sounds nice, but it is necessary off the bat? I truly don’t know if we, personally will ever have any of those things (we bought a relatively modest house, and my husband drives a 2003 Mitsubishi, I kid you not). But having the mentality that to live into whatever lifestyle you have earned, could make this whole “loan repayment” thing take longer. Maybe much longer.

As I say these things, I do want to be very honest: we did spend more money when my husband was done with training. I got a new car before we had our second child (I went with an SUV after having only a sedan). We spent about 1-2k more on average per month. But we had a budget and a plan. That extra money was used to work on our house, and we had another baby and the medical expenses to go along with that. We bought air conditioning (haven’t regretted that for one single second). I did just spend $40 at Chick-fil-a just now which is super embarrassing. Anyway, we felt like some upgrades and additional purchases were reasonable given our budget. Overall salary will determine how much extra is reasonable to spend, and will vary depending on your overall debt and salary.

And always, ALWAYS remember that it’s much harder to go from a place of “having” to a place of “not-having.” If you get a taste of a new ”lifestyle,” you’re likely going to want it, and want to maintain it. For example, when I picked out my car, they only had the fanciest edition of the Honda Pilot I wanted available to test-drive. Convenient, right? I had planned to buy the middle-of-the-road edition. Which one do you think I ended up with? So, it’s better to avoid the “taste” if you’re trying to save money, in my opinion.

7. Avoid credit card and other sources of debt. If you have credit card/other debt, I’m certainly not saying this from a place of judgement, nor do I want you to feel guilty. But having to pay on credit cards or other loans will occupy disposable income; income that you then cannot put toward paying off your student loan debt. So I recommend getting back on a solid budget, and making cuts where necessary to keep that from escalating.

Factors Mostly Out of Your Control

I just want to acknowledge here that while you do have control over budgeting and a lot of your expenses, there are SO MANY factors that are beyond your control, as well.

1. Cost of Medical School. The cost of Medical School can vary tremendously between schools. There are often financial assistance options or scholarships available to some students, so be sure to look into those options. However, you’re not guaranteed to receive and qualify for them.

2. Cost of living. The cost of living to attend Medical School is certainly very different for those in different geographical locations. Those attending Emory in Atlanta and those up in New York at HSS are going to be paying very different amounts for their temporary homes.

3. Family factors. Then there’s whether or not you have a family. No, no, we didn’t wait on having kids just because we wanted to save money. Read all about our actual reasons in this post: When Your Ideas About When to Have Kids Don’t Align with your Spouse’s. But having kids earlier in the training years can be a factor in the ability to make and save money (they are certainly expensive)!  And for the record – I’m 100% supportive of having kids during training OR waiting – you will know what’s right for your family!

4. Attending salary. The other factor that is out of your control, to some degree, is the actual salary that you or your spouse makes as an Attending. Salaries vary significantly depending on specialty, as well as whether the position is Academic or Private, geographical location, etc. In a Private Practice scenario, there may be a buy-in time which impacts salary.

I personally feel very strongly that a Physician’s speciality should NEVER, EVER be selected based on salary.

My husband has always been a builder. It started on his floor with a box of legos when he was only a few years old. He’s always loved taking things apart and putting them back together. He knew early on that Orthopedic Surgery was the right specialty for him. It just so happens to be one with a higher median income than most specialities.

It would be ignorant for me to suggest that the finances of every Attending position look the same or even similar. So I’m just saying that this is a factor that is mostly out of your control, and it should be. And I’m not saying it’s fair, but those specialities with higher incomes may have an easier time setting money aside, and vice versa with the specialties that make a little less.

But don’t be discouraged if you or your spouse are heading into a speciality with a lower average salary. It will still be SUBSTANTIALLY more that what they’ve made all along. You can make things happen with it.

So whether it takes 1 year, or 20 years, you WILL get there. You’ll be able to put those loans behind you, too.

That’s something to get excited about!

Thank you for reaching out and asking for advice on this topic! I hope it’s been helpful!

What strategies stand out to you as something YOU can take action on?! How can I support you!? Let me know if you have any questions about anything I’ve talked about today!

I know that avoiding lifestyle inflation is a really big factor in the ability to reduce student loan debt, and it’s something that my husband and I thought about weekly, if not daily, along the way.

I’ve created a little document for you, that you can print out and stick to the fridge as a reminder of some easy changes you can make to keep living within your budget, and start packing those pennies away for student loan repayment. Find it HERE: 6 Tips to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

Can’t wait to see you soon, friend!