For Full Attendings - what was it like paying off your student loans?

[ophtholife12345]

I would be very interested to hear about your specialty, annual salary, take home after taxes, monthly mortgage, student loan balance, if you refinanced, and how much you pay/paid on student loans. I realize this is incredibly personal information, so feel free to keep it generic to remain anonymous.

As someone at $240k in debt still in residency, this is invaluable information.

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[fahimaz7]

I would be very interested to hear about your specialty, annual salary, take home after taxes, monthly mortgage, student loan balance, if you refinanced, and how much you pay/paid on student loans. I realize this is incredibly personal information, so feel free to keep it generic to remain anonymous.

As someone at $240k in debt still in residency, this is invaluable information.

It's crappy. 230k k in debt =2500/mo for 9 years. You can estimate your take home as 70% of your gross. There are tons of posts about aggressive payoff options, but those are specific to to region, family, other debts, kids, etc.

 

[Student Loan Planner]

I think I saw you over on Reddit ophtholife, but my girlfriend is repaying her loans right now. We're in a 400 square foot studio apartment in the midwest, expect to be done with repayment within 18 months, but ours is a radical approach and she had about half the debt you do. Doctors actually have far better options for repayment than veterinarians or optometrists for example. I think you'll be fine actually. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions

 

[fahimaz7]

Doctors actually have far better options for repayment than veterinarians or optometrists for example.

We're not that special. All of us have to go to the private sector to refinance. I wish it was true that we got special rates or something magical like that though. If he's 240k in debt he'll be lucky to get 4-5% fixed int his day of age (assuming he's got good credit).

 

[Student Loan Planner]

The difference is that an attending opthamologist is going to have a far better debt to income ratio than other professions, so they'll get better interest rates accordingly. If you don't have a debt to income ratio below 2, you aren't going to get a good rate at all.

Best you can hope for is probably about 4.4% fixed in 10 year, around 3.2% if you wanted to do variable for 10 years. 4.95% fixed in 15 or 3.4% variable in 15. Speaking from experience helping dozens of clients refinance.