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- May 26, 2007
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- Dentist
View attachment 231401 View attachment 231401 I posted this in the other section but thought that I’d share it here as well for the predents:Haven’t been back in a long time, but seems like more and more people are getting that being a dentist nowadays is not worth the financial cost. I agree completely. I graduated in 2012 with about 270k (and that’s with going to a state school with some scholarships that shaved about 10-15% of the total costs). Came out and got my own place in 2014, and last July paid off all of my student loans.
The ironic thing is that I tried to refinance my loans at first with Sofi and they turned me down because my office at first wasn’t profiting really well as I was trying to fix up the previous owner’s mess. The denial actually helped me because soon after I started to do well and decided to just pay off rather than refi or play the PAYE/repaye/ibr game. I managed to pay off all 270k in just about 12 months (see attached), felt great. Must be some kind of record.
Now, some of you might look at this and think that “If he can do it, then I can do it too.” I don’t think that’s the message here. I happened to do well with my own abilities and most of all I am an extremely frugal person. No one else from my class has paid off their loans like me, so I am definitely an outlier. Most are swimming in debt from everything and trying to play the PAYE/repaye gambit. So most cannot do this and honestly I wouldn’t do this again either. Rather, the message is for you to think about how much sacrifice, stress, and financial pressure it is to become a dentist nowadays. Only you can make that decision, but it is a life-altering one. Right now I am projected to finish paying off my business loans in 10 months or so with a large balloon payment. By then I will have paid off something like 700k in 30 months, and be completely debt free. Should be some kind of record again. It is my firm opinion that one cannot accrue real wealth and enjoy the (traidtiona) dentist lifestyle while having a tremendous debt burden. A small mortgage like 100k over 15 years is fine, but not like 500k for school, plus another similar for office, plus another house, etc. There is no enjoyment to being in that of career.
I am not a fan at all of the ibr/PAYE/repaye gambit. First of all things can change extremely fast. You might get grandfathered into the policy but because it is an executive decree they can change up the fine terms fast. 20-25 years is a long time and if people are going to ‘save’ to pay the balloon payment at the end, why not just take it a step further and pay it off? Besides, people seem to forget the inherent risks of relying on the market to get you the final tax bill, not taking into account the market’s fluctuations, and forgetting that any gains you make there you would have to pay capital gains tax, dividends tax, etc. And in the final year when the tax balloon comes, it also means that your earnings that year which would otherwise be at a lower tax bracket would also be taxed at the max, i.e. 40%, meaning more more as well. Look, the government is a sly fox. Their ‘forgiveness’ program will always be designed so that on paper it looks good, but in reality they still recoup their portion. Perhaps not as much, but they will get their cut.
