Is it possible to pay $4k a month to loans and live decently doing retail?

[Amphetamine Salts]

let's say i work at a retail chain and make $115kish a year and i spend 2k/month on my living/entertainment/bills/etc

is it possible to have enough money to pay 4k a month to loans? that would assume at least 6k/month take home and i'd basically be living paycheck to paycheck

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[owlegrad]

I assume you own a calculator, so what are you really asking?

Personally I think it would be really tough. At some point you're going to have an unexpected expense and that's going to wreck your finances.

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[Rouelle]

It’s imperative that you contribute to a retirement fund. Don’t forget to factor in that.

 

[PharmtoCS]

You need to save for an emergency fund if you do not have one yet. Also, be sure to contribute at least 5% of your paycheck to your 401k so that you get the 100% match (if I am correct about the amount).

 

[rxdawg21]

Put 6k in a bank account and then do what you said. Any problems arise cut back on the payments and get a 0%credit card. Doesn't sound too difficult

 

[Amphetamine Salts]

I assume you own a calculator, so what are you really asking?

Personally I think it would be really tough. At some point you're going to have an unexpected expense and that's going to wreck your finances.

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i think what i'm asking is whether the income from retail is enough to allow me to pay $4k a month in loans

 

[owlegrad]

i think what i'm asking is whether the income from retail is enough to allow me to pay $4k a month in loans

In that case the answer is yes.

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[Amphetamine Salts]

In that case the answer is yes.

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do you happen to know around how much money i'd have left over after the $4k loans?

 

[Digsbe]

I personally could not live comfortably paying 4k a month into loans, but I also live in a very high CoL area.

 

[RangerRx99]

If your goal is to pay 4K toward loans, then perhaps cut down on your living expenses/bill/etc and pick up extra shifts. My base 140K- after taxes, insurance, and 401K I take home $3100 every 2 weeks. If you don't contribute as much toward 401K then you may take home 6K per month.

 

[owlegrad]

do you happen to know around how much money i'd have left over after the $4k loans?

You have to figure out what your monthly income is and then do the math. You want to give me all your contributions and expenses so I can figure it out for you?

 

[6GodPharm]

It's possible but only you know your expenses. Asking people on a forum if thats enough is not very helpful. I don't know what you eat, if you have a gym membership, tv, a sh*tty car that will have unexpected expenses. Work OT. Regular 40/week pharmacist job is absolute crap pay if you have loans. This has to be one of the worst if not worst profession for debt to pay ratios. I am very lucky and fortunate in the situation I am in. I literally get to work whatever hours I want. I avg about 120-125 hours per paycheck and walk away with close to 6-6500 per biweekly paycheck after taxes, 401k and health insurance. I can't imagine 3k bi weekly with 6 figure loans. Being a pharmacists is no means of a good income. That is why half the people on these boards are investors. 3k bi weekly is nothing with our debt to pay ratio.

 

[Hope1974]

You have to figure out what your monthly income is and then do the math. You want to give me all your contributions and expenses so I can figure it out for you?

Lmfao. I can’t believe this person is serious. Probably has a hard time calculating day supply’s for insulin. You can pay 4K a month or more. I did for one year straight, but I worked the entire year non stop with maybe one or 2 days off a month, double shifts mostly and 2 triple shifts. I worked about 60 to 65 hours a week on average. Did I pay off my loans? Yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely not. Life should include more than just work.

 

[Amphetamine Salts]

i heard that after taxes, 401k and benefits you get around ~70k a year working retail. is this true?

 

[dblock05]

i heard that after taxes, 401k and benefits you get around ~70k a year working retail. is this true?

Yes, a little more....around 75k?

Listen...this should not be this hard for you. I live where the cost of living is average. My take home pay as a staff pharmacist is right at 3k every 2 weeks and my 401k is maxed out.

So I believe there are 26 pay periods in a year....so that equals out to 78k. If you are needing to pay off 4k a month then you may need to grab a roomate or something for living to make it the cheapest or live with your parents.

 

[owlegrad]

I can’t believe this person is serious.

That is my feeling as well. Like OP I want to help you but how can I? You are saying, and correct me if I am wrong, "If I gross 115k and all my non-student loan expenses are 2k a month can I pay 4k a month to student loans". My question back is do you know how to do math?

But if you are just asking if people do it or advice on how to do it, maybe we can help you a little better. Yes, people do it, but it isn't easy or fun. Personally my monthly payments are just over 2k and I pay extra whenever I feel like I comfortably can. Usually I end up paying an extra 1k per month. One month I had to replace my AC and that set it me back. Once I had expensive car work done and that also prevented me from making extra payments.

 

[Hulkbuster333]

let's say i work at a retail chain and make $115kish a year and i spend 2k/month on my living/entertainment/bills/etc

is it possible to have enough money to pay 4k a month to loans? that would assume at least 6k/month take home and i'd basically be living paycheck to paycheck

You could but you'd have to live on about $1000 a month and that probably would only cover rent and bills. You'd get about $5000 a month after taxes.

 

[PharmacistFl12]

let's say i work at a retail chain and make $115kish a year and i spend 2k/month on my living/entertainment/bills/etc

is it possible to have enough money to pay 4k a month to loans? that would assume at least 6k/month take home and i'd basically be living paycheck to paycheck

I am currently on plan to payoff my $140K student loans at $3,900 monthly payment in 3 years. Very doable if you have 2 things going on for you: I have a very low mortgage ($860) and no kids. I live very comfortable and able to put at least company match into 401k and own brand new truck. It will take some financial engineering though. I user 3 different 0% APR credit and continue to rotate those credit cards (hint: open Citibank or Bank of America Bank account b/c you can continue to open new credit cards with them every 1.5 years). You will just have to be comfortable with having virtually no savings or emergency (I can only save $500 monthly).

 

[Charcoales]

I work 35 hrs a week and get 5k per month after taxes/health insurance and hsa/max 401k

 

[deleted820760]

do you happen to know around how much money i'd have left over after the $4k loans?

I’m not understanding why you can’t easily calculate this.

 

[boriqua]

Depends how hungry you are. I was able to bang out $100,000 loan in 10 months. 4K is not difficult if you willing to put in the grind and suffer a little for the short run

 

[Dred Pirate]

i am constantly surprised by how people who are smart enough to graduate pharmacy school but they can't do basic math - I do dare ask, maybe that means our admission standards are not high enough

 

[Swishers]

Finance isn't intuitive for everybody so ignore the people talking down to you in this thread.

But it's absolutely possible. I've been paying $4000 a month since December of 2015. My take home pay is about $80-85,000 a year after taxes, healthcare, and 10% going to 401k. My rent and utilities are about $12,000 a year. That leaves me with about $25,000 a year for other expenses like car insurance, food, vacations, and investments.

It would be smart to build up an emergency fund of up to $10,000 before you get super aggressive on your loans. Ignore the spam you get from Sofi and other loan refinance companies. The amount they'll save you isn't worth the protections you'd lose by switching away from the federal government processing your loans.

 

[Momus]

If you don't mind living with a roommate, it's doable. In SD or LA, you can get a decent room for $650-1000 including all utilities and free internet. You have $1000/mo left for food, gas, entertainment (Assuming you don't have a car loan). It's not exactly difficult to live on $2k a month. Your tech do it all the time. I did it for years after I graduated in 08.

 

[owlegrad]

Vehemently disagree about refinancing - I went from 6.8% to 3%. That is many thousands of dollars saved by refinancing. The only Advantage I know of to staying to a government-backed loan is the ability to enter income based repayment. That's not nothing but it certainly isn't worth the many thousands of dollars I would have had to pay for it. Once you have a sufficient emergency fund you shouldn't need income based repayment anyway.

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[PharmacistFl12]

Finance isn't intuitive for everybody so ignore the people talking down to you in this thread.

But it's absolutely possible. I've been paying $4000 a month since December of 2015. My take home pay is about $80-85,000 a year after taxes, healthcare, and 10% going to 401k. My rent and utilities are about $12,000 a year. That leaves me with about $25,000 a year for other expenses like car insurance, food, vacations, and investments.

It would be smart to build up an emergency fund of up to $10,000 before you get super aggressive on your loans. Ignore the spam you get from Sofi and other loan refinance companies. The amount they'll save you isn't worth the protections you'd lose by switching away from the federal government processing your loans.

I completely disagree. Refinancing with Sofi was and still the greatest financial decision ever. It saved me over $50,000 by cutting my interest rate in half. There's a major benefit to refinancing that nobody mention. It takes away your financial flexibility, which is a great thing believe it or not. By owing money to a a private bank, it forces you to stay focus and knock your loan quicker (I'm on a 5 year plan). Government loans gives people too much flexibility in my opionion. I was guilty of doing deferments and paying minimum in order to make big purchases on cars and houses. Refinancing made it much harder to slack off on paying off my student loans because I now owe to a private financial institution.

 

[Momus]

I completely disagree. Refinancing with Sofi was and still the greatest financial decision ever. It saved me over $50,000 by cutting my interest rate in half. There's a major benefit to refinancing that nobody mention. It takes away your financial flexibility, which is a great thing believe it or not. By owing money to a a private bank, it forces you to stay focus and knock your loan quicker (I'm on a 5 year plan). Government loans gives people too much flexibility in my opionion. I was guilty of doing deferments and paying minimum in order to make big purchases on cars and houses. Refinancing made it much harder to slack off on paying off my student loans because I now owe to a private financial institution.

If you are already planning to pay it off ASAP, an extra 3% interest (+some flexibility), it's not gonna cost you $50k extra keep the government loan, likely it's 10k extra (it's not nothing but it's not that bad either). It's $50k extra of you pay minimum and keep the loan as long as possible. You can go either way on this if you decide to pay it off ASAP, keep the goverment loan or do refinancing to private lender. There are benefits on both scenario. You gotta know who you are.

The only wrong move is for you take your time and never pay more than minimum.

 

[Bubba98]

No

 

[rxdawg21]

If you are already planning to pay it off ASAP, an extra 3% interest (+some flexibility), it's not gonna cost you $50k extra keep the government loan, likely it's 10k extra (it's not nothing but it's not that bad either). It's $50k extra of you pay minimum and keep the loan as long as possible. You can go either way on this if you decide to pay it off ASAP, keep the goverment loan or do refinancing to private lender. There are benefits on both scenario. You gotta know who you are.

The only wrong move is for you take your time and never pay more than minimum.

what is 10k compounded at nominally stock market gains over a 30 year career?

 

[Chrish]

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[Dred Pirate]

what is 10k compounded at nominally stock market gains over a 30 year career?

$100,776.69 if making 8% a year

 

[rxdawg21]

$100,776.69 if making 8% a year

Nice, it was kind of a rhetorical question. Too me it is a no brainer to refinance unless you can get rid of your debt in <6 months or you aren't planning on paying it back (or some other unforeseen circumstance I can't think of). Time value of money is a big thing. And I don't like giving away free money, especially to the govt who are gouging graduate students on their loans.

 

[Dred Pirate]

Nice, it was kind of a rhetorical question. Too me it is a no brainer to refinance unless you can get rid of your debt in <6 months or you aren't planning on paying it back (or some other unforeseen circumstance I can't think of). Time value of money is a big thing. And I don't like giving away free money, especially to the govt who are gouging graduate students on their loans.

I know it was - but I had to respond with the typical "pharmacist" response in taking everything literal

 

[mentos]

Finance isn't intuitive for everybody so ignore the people talking down to you in this thread.
Ignore the spam you get from Sofi and other loan refinance companies. The amount they'll save you isn't worth the protections you'd lose by switching away from the federal government processing your loans.

If you plan to pay off your loans aggressively, then you should absolutely refinance. I went from 6.8% to 2.9% and saved thousands in interest. Paid off loans in 2.5 years, best feeling ever.

 

[PharmacistFl12]

If you plan to pay off your loans aggressively, then you should absolutely refinance. I went from 6.8% to 2.9% and saved thousands in interest. Paid off loans in 2.5 years, best feeling ever.

If you don't mind me asking, what was the total amount you paid off in 2.5 years. I'm on a 3.5 year plan to pay off $140k.

 

[Swishers]

If you plan to pay off your loans aggressively, then you should absolutely refinance. I went from 6.8% to 2.9% and saved thousands in interest. Paid off loans in 2.5 years, best feeling ever.

I was quoted something stupid like 4% fixed rate on $140k worth of loans that average 6.1% even though I have great credit. The $5-6k that I would've saved wasn't worth it in my opinion.

I say go for it if you're a doctor or dentist with $300k+ in loans.

 

[mentos]

If you don't mind me asking, what was the total amount you paid off in 2.5 years. I'm on a 3.5 year plan to pay off $140k.

I had about 100k. You can definitely do 140k in 3.5 years.

I was quoted something stupid like 4% fixed rate on $140k worth of loans that average 6.1% even though I have great credit. The $5-6k that I would've saved wasn't worth it in my opinion.

I say go for it if you're a doctor or dentist with $300k+ in loans.

SoFi also gave me a bad rate in the 4.XXs variable. So I shopped around. Went to DRB who gave me 2.9X% variable. That slowly crept up to 3.3X. So I refinanced again with commonbond at 2.9X. Made a few hundred for referrals along the way.

I consider saving 5-6k significant but to each their own. Now that my loans are paid off, all of my excess cash goes to investing!