Retirement Parity for Student Loans Act

[NY_Med]

I have been looking into the new bill being presented and am super confused. Wouldnt this only reduce the resident's salary to give said "benefits"? Can someone with more financial knowledge explain how this "helps ease the student debt burden" when a student has 300k+ in debt?

AMA: Senate Finance Committee bill offers relief to students with debt

Bill would strengthen the retirement options for medical students and others struggling with student debt.

www.ama-assn.org

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[deleted1079620]

The way I understood this was that students could receive employer contributions into their 401k by considering student loan payments as student “contributions”, so the students would not have to forego the benefits of employer matching contributions because they had to make loan payments. I could be way off though.

 

[mrbreakfast]

I agree with above: I'm reading it as student loan payments count toward the matched contribution plan for retirement that your residency offers.

A very simplified example: you have $600/month to invest. Your residency will match up to $500/month put in a qualified retirement plan. You also have loans. How should you invest?

You should WANT to put $500 toward retirement to get the full matched contribution, but you might not be able to, because of loan payments. So in reality, you might have to put $300 toward each, only getting $300 matched (i.e. per month you pay loans down $300 and put $300+$300 matched toward retirement = $900).

I'm reading this as, in that situation, you can put all $600 toward loan payments, and residencies can count the first $500 of that as a contribution toward retirement eligible for matching. So instead of the above, you pay $600 toward loans and would get $0 + $500 matched towards retirement = $1100.

These numbers aren't accurate and don't factor in other things (e.g. taxes), but tl;dr this will likely look like $100-$200/month more toward loans for affected residents.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

dead on arrival