My Debt after Optometry School

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buddyle

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this post is to give an idea of what to expect for people who is considering optometry or any other profession. these numbers are close to my current numbers, rounded to the nearest 1k.

i graduated optometry school in 2013 with about 241K in student loans

17k in undergraduate loan(Subsidized loan-no interest while in school) interest rate 5.0%

224k in graduate loans(partial subsidized and non-subsidized)+interested interest rate 6.8%:
113k tuition (out of state, started at 27k in 2009, increase about 1k per year)
35k accumulated interest for 4 years
6k equipment (BIO, Ret, Lens-90-20-gonio, Lens Kit)
6k health Insurance-Required
5k school Misc Fees
59k living expense (apartment, utilities, food, gas, etc)(shared apartment with classmate)


This is roughly my break down of my cost attending college.

after graduation, i got my license in june. got married in july. got a job in august.

I was able to find a job for 110k at a commercial practice. Its not america's best :)
I see about 10-20 patients per day. good benefit: 401k, paid malpractice ins, annual CE stipends
Here is my breakdown on my paycheck:
Annual salary 110k :
Biweekly gross pay: 4230, After taxes: 3183

I didn't include my 401k contribution and insurance premium. Depend on what you can afford. Your looking at 6366/month, 76k/year in actual money you will see. I get about 65k/year.

I choose a 10 year payment plan. my monthly payment are about 2.7k, I pay an extra 1k/month to get the loan done faster. At the current rate i'm going, I'll be done around March 2020. Once my loans are paid off, I would have paid a total of 299k. the total interest accumulated will be 93k.

What motivate me in paying my loans faster is the compound interest on the loans. my interest compound about:$16k/year, $1.3k/month, $44/day. That is like working 1.5 hours a day to pay the interest.

These are my numbers for when i first started graduate school in 2009. If i saw all the numbers that i see now, I would still continue optometry because i enjoy what i do. I would have made some changes to reduce my loans. Im fortunate that i dont have a house mortgage or car payment. most of my paycheck goes to my loans.


I would advice student that all consider optometry or any other profession to look at the numbers. Estimate your loans when you finish. Tuition has increase since i started, so expect the numbers to be higher.



Here is a link of the current tuition for each optometry school
http://opted.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Profile-of-Applicants-2013-Updated-2-13-14.pdf

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Wow thank you for this! What optometry school did you go to and in which state/ province are you working in now?
 
went to Nova Southeastern University in Florida. now living in arizona
 
oh wow the numbers are massive... Waterloo (Canada) has a first year tuition of around 16k (not including textbooks/equipment) and rent is around 4.5k / 8 months. But I mean these figures don't matter when we can enjoy doing what we do for a living.
 
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