6 Months into Practice: Update on my $500,000 in Student Loans...

so a lot of people have been asking for updates on my student loans i've made previous videos about my plans for my student loans and i made another update about a month ago about my plans with everything going on with the pandemic and was i paying any money yet how much have i paid down well in this video i'm going to talk about that what's up everyone this is dr webb here thank you guys for watching this video make sure you subscribe new videos coming every week you don't want to miss them so in this video i'm going to give some updates on my student loans for those who have not seen my previous videos i put out one when i was maybe a fourth year resident and i talked about my plans to pay off my student loans and just as a quick recap a lot of my plans and the reason why i wanted to be so aggressive with my student loans is partially based off the fact that i did not go back into the military as a military physician i wanted to pay off all of my student loans before my time commitments that i would have served as a military physician which would have been anywhere between four to six years so i came up with a plan which was to be very aggressive to live like a resident and to pay off all of my student loans which is around five hundred thousand dollars which is just bananas and pay that off in two years but then covet hit pandemic a lot of people lost their jobs contracts were cancelled a lot of surgeons couldn't do surgery so their income was cut you know significant amounts uh people have died during this pandemic so a lot of things have changed and i had to kind of re-strategize my plan for my student loans and i put out another video and i'll put that right up here about my last update in terms of what my plans were and just as a quick recap of that video i talked about instead of paying it off in two years i was going to pay it off in four years so it just extended an additional two years which is still good you see some physicians who are out 8 9 10 11 12 13 years and they're still paying off their student loans i that that is absolutely not going to be me i want to be very aggressive attack these student loans pay it off and be done with it so since my last video you know not much has changed i'm about six months a little over six months into practice so i started practice in september 2020 and up to this point you know a lot of things have changed with the pandemic as we talked about people are still losing their jobs you know people are taking significant hits in terms of their income but the problem is in private practice you still have to pay your overhead you still have to pay your employees you still have to pay for your office space all the equipment that you use you still have to pay that and for orthopedic surgery the average overhead across the country and this varies by practice group and whether you're employed or academic or private practice it's around thirty to forty thousand dollars per month which means you have to pay this by yourself um before you can take any anything home and when there is a pandemic and when there is a elective case shutdown where you can't operate well you can't generate income and you still have to pay that overhead so if you can't operate for one month you can't generate any income then you just have to pay out of your own pocket forty thousand dollars some people take out loans to pay that other people may have savings uh so this this is a kind of one of the downsides of being in private practice i have another video talking about the practice models academics private practice employee positions and i'll put that right up here but when you're in private practice you got to generate income to be able to pay your bills and also make a living so with with all of that going on with the pandemic and the stress that goes along with it and trying to meet your overhead and see you know generate enough income and also be productive um i decided to just be very conservative this entire year and by that i mean i mean essentially not really spending any of the income that i get from my main job as a physician all that money has been saved really touching not really touching any of that money and just making sure that if something happens in the next two to three months four months six months that i'm prepared for that like if i can't operate or can't see patients well i still have a lump sum of money where i can pay my overhead pay for my employees because you know you have you're going to have to make a decision whether you pay for your employees and they don't have an income or you you continue paying for their their salary their insurance and all those things you still have to pay for your office space you can't go up to the uh to the the office kind of building manager and say hey i haven't been here in the month i don't want to pay no you signed a contract you have to pay for your office space i just came up with a plan and just going to be very conservative preserve as much as possible and you hear about people you know making investments in bitcoin and other types of uh investments but i just been very conservative this entire six to seven months in practice so that brings me to my point of um kind of an update on my student loans well with the coronavirus the pandemic you know that there's been a suspension or deferment of interest rates first it was extended to january 2021 and then when january came around they extended it to september 31st 2021 so for federal student loans it's zero percent interest this does not apply to private loans so most private loans are in the interest rate of i don't know 10 to 15 percent so that's a lot of money and when you're making payments when you're out in practice making payments uh most of that money is going to interest so it may be you know years before you even touch the principal if you're just making some minimum payments or a little bit above minimum so my initial plan was to refinance my student loans and to get it down to a lower interest rate and also to attack them but with these zero percent interest i decided to hold off postpone my refinancing until september 31st 2021 or until they you know take away the zero percent interest it makes no sense right now for me to refinance because it's zero percent even though with common bond it's a company that i want everyone to check out it's a company that i trust and i vet it and went through lots of different various companies and this company actually has the same values and missions as as mine so uh you know this you know the common bond company they don't charge you anything there's no extra fees that are added to your loan so if you refinance fi i mean 100 000 your new loan is going to be for 100 000 it's not going to be 105 000 because of these extra charges and fees there's no fees extra charges whatsoever associated with refinancing with them they also give a lot of money back to other countries there's pencils of promise that they donate money to schools over in ghana and other parts of the world so that really aligned with what i'm about and for the refinancing part i decided not to refinance right now but this is what i suggest for students to do i suggest that if you have federal loans if you have extra money that you're not investing with or is just sitting around if you're generating a little bit more income go ahead and apply that to your student loans put as much money and pay it off because all of that money is going straight to principal so in september when the interest rates rises again a portion of that money is going to be going towards interest seven to eight percent of those going towards interest if you're talking about federal loans if you're talking about private even more than that so apply and put as much money towards your student loans right now if possible or you can do like what i am doing right now just and just preserving as much as possible just building that bank so that if something happens again you're prepared for it and everybody's situation is a little bit different in terms of their income level in terms of how comfortable they are in terms of investing and some people may not be paying anything towards their student loans right now but they're investing they're making money with in the stock market a lot of people made a lot of money since the pandemic started in the stock market but for me i just wanted to preserve so i know that i may be missing out on a lot of potential income and revenue but for me just having that mindset or that just that confirmation that uh you know i don't have the potential to lose money in the stock market it's a good chance that you can build and also save and generate income from buying and selling stocks but for me i just didn't want to take any chances and i had a rough kind of uh you know start to practice because of some things that happened financially because of covet 19 so i'm just a little ptsd about that but if you have private loans i suggest that you refinance them asap because the interest rates that you can get with common bond are some of the lowest interest rates that are out there as i mentioned there are no really no charges or fees you know to refinancing and also they have a 90-day rate lock guarantee which means if you fill out an application right now you can whatever rate that you're you're selected because of your credit score and some other factors you can lock that in for 90 days so anything over the next 90 days you can lock it in potentially at a lower rate because if the interest rate start to go up again which they will it's better to just go ahead and lock in a rate now but if you're paying 10 12 15 on private loans refinance i suggest common bond they're a company that was founded by someone who had a hard time figuring out how to pay back their student loans and you know i like i mentioned talked to several companies and this is somebody that i recommend this is a company that i'm going to refinance as soon as the interest rates go back up again i'm clicking that button and i'm going to refinance so that's kind of the update haven't made any payments to my student loans and right now just in preservation mode trying to preserve as much as possible and be very conservative be very frugal so that if anything comes up again the pandemic or the numbers go up i can't operate i can't see patients in office because of the pandemic well i still have that that safety net to pay my overhead and my employees and just live comfortable during that time so everybody's situation is a little bit different i have friends that who have had contracts canceled i've had friends who got terminated within months of working who are orthopedic surgeons that can happen you never know so if you're paying all of this money towards your student loans or if you're doing you know living like an intending and then four months into practice i had a friend who's an orthopedic surgeon had his contract terminating he does not have a job now so those things can certainly happen um you just have to be very frugal live like a resident have a plan and you know even though you want to enjoy life at this time you know you have to be be very wise in your financial decision making so check out common bond i'll put a link in the description for them um you know and that's my plans and hopefully i can give some more updates over the next few months in terms of how much i've paid down on my student loans what are my plans what am i thinking but i hope all of this is very helpful for you guys this is something that is not really talked about a lot and i just didn't have or see anyone out there kind of doing this or talking about it so very important principles things that you need to know when you're entering medicine when you're leaving your training going out into practice these are the things that need to be talked about so hope you guys learned something let me know in the comments what are your your plans for your student loans have you paid any payments over the last year since the interest rates have been zero or what are your plans for the future this is dr webb thanks for watching and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Antonio J. Webb, M.D.

Views: 127,314

Keywords: Student loan interest waived, Covid student loan interest, Suspend student loan payments, CARES act, CARES act student Loan interest, Student loan forbearance, Government pause student loan, public service loan forgiveness, how to pay off student loans in 2 years, dave ramsey budgeting, student loan refinancing, student loan debt crisis explained, how to pay off student loans, how to pay off student loans with low income, student debt cancellation, covid student loans

Id: AN0vhFaLRws

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021