Minimum Salary Required!!!

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ZekeMD

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I just finished the Stafford loan entrance counselling session online. One part of it has this neato loan calculator to figure out your payments. So I plugged in my numbers, I figured I'd have about 180K in loans (20K from undergrad, and 160K from med school). It told me the MINIMUM annual salary required to repay this debt would be $300,000+!!! :eek: HOLY Sheeeit! I played with the numbers and this was about the lowest number I could get. I used a reasonable interest rate (5%) over a 10 year period. Someone please tell me this calculator is wrong, or maybe I'm doing something wrong!!!!! :scared:

Edit: I also want to go into pediatrics... I'm pretty sure no pediatricians make over 300K :(

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ZekeMD said:
I just finished the Stafford loan entrance counselling session online. One part of it has this neato loan calculator to figure out your payments. So I plugged in my numbers, I figured I'd have about 180K in loans (20K from undergrad, and 160K from med school). It told me the MINIMUM annual salary required to repay this debt would be $300,000+!!! :eek: HOLY Sheeeit! I played with the numbers and this was about the lowest number I could get. I used a reasonable interest rate (5%) over a 10 year period. Someone please tell me this calculator is wrong, or maybe I'm doing something wrong!!!!! :scared:

Edit: I also want to go into pediatrics... I'm pretty sure no pediatricians make over 300K :(

If you made 300K and you had 180K in loans you could pay it off in 2/3 of a year if you lived frugally. You're doing something wrong.
 
Goes a long way towards explaining some of them private school match lists. No?
 
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Calculators use a fixed percentage of your income, meaning they assume that you won't use more than X% to pay them back. If you committ a larger % to loans you will pay it off faster, just means an extra 10 years before you start living like a doctor. That said 180K is alot (I'm sure I'll be in that neighborhood if not higher) and you may end up taking 15 or 20+ years to pay it back. Once you borrow that much money you will qualify to spread the payments over as much as 30 years if you need to.

You might not get rich as a pediatrician but if thats what makes you happy then you'll make enough money.
 
ZekeMD said:
I just finished the Stafford loan entrance counselling session online. One part of it has this neato loan calculator to figure out your payments. So I plugged in my numbers, I figured I'd have about 180K in loans (20K from undergrad, and 160K from med school). It told me the MINIMUM annual salary required to repay this debt would be $300,000+!!! :eek: HOLY Sheeeit! I played with the numbers and this was about the lowest number I could get. I used a reasonable interest rate (5%) over a 10 year period. Someone please tell me this calculator is wrong, or maybe I'm doing something wrong!!!!! :scared:

Edit: I also want to go into pediatrics... I'm pretty sure no pediatricians make over 300K :(

The 10 year period is the error, try a 20 year loan. Also, the minimum salary will be higher than is actually required, since you are expected to spend no more than a certain percentage of your salary on loan payback. This is something that is important for people making 30K a year, but when you are making 100K+ a year, the amount you have remaining even after a 50% cut is enough to live on.

~AS1~
 
I got this breakdown at the Tufts financial aid presentation. It's helpful to give perspective to the matter.

Debt: 160,000
Scenario 1: high interest, monthly payment 2,667
Scenario 2: low interest, monthly payment 2,000
This is for 10-year repayment plan

the numbers bellow are:
annual salary/monthly pre-tax/monthly after-tax/ after tax and loan scenario 1(this is what you have left for all your expenses after you loan payment)/scenario 2

$100K 8,333 5,833 3,167 3,833
$125K 10,417 7,292 4,625 5,292
$150K 12,500 8,750 6,083 6,750
$175K 14,583 10,208 7,542 8,208
$200K 16,667 11,667 9,000 9,667

Hope that helps
 
you'd be crazy not to make your school loans a 30 yr., esp if they're subsidized. instead of blowing big chunks of money on this very lenient loan, pay off your car, etc.
 
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