Starting 2020 with a $25,000 Student Loan Payment

My hope in starting this blog three years ago was to help those interested in the PA profession with financial tips. I am not a financial expert by any means; however I did find that as I spoke with colleagues and students, that sharing my experience was helpful.

PA school, like medical school is expensive. The cost of going through school is not something to take lightly. I have mentored a few students who are interested in attending PA school, and paying for school is often an afterthought.

The fact is that the majority of PA students will rely on student loans to cover the cost of PA school. With this in mind it is important to plan ahead on how you are going to pay off those loans.

You don’t know exactly how much you’re going to make once you are working as a PA, but you can get the average PA salary from salary reports for PAs. From there you should know what your estimated monthly payments are going to be for your student loans once you graduate, and you should be able to come up with a general budget for how much it will cost you to pay your loans and other expenses.

If public service loan forgiveness might be an option for you, you’ll want to plan on working for a qualified employer for ten years after you graduate. If that is not something you want to commit to, look for employers that will help with student loan repayment.

Beyond helping possible PA students with the student loan advice, I wanted to create a place where PAs could learn and share tips on negotiating salaries. In order to negotiate your salary you must know your market value. I regularly post about changes in PA salaries from a variety of different reports. Each report has its downside, but in combination with others can be a valuable tool.

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PA School Loan Payment

There is always something to learn from someone else’s experiences and that is why I wanted to share my student loan journey with others. When I started this blog 3 years ago I had over $130,000 in student loans. I have paid off some of the smaller loans and have had some cancelled out, but the majority have not been touched.

My goal was to pay off the remaining balance in five years. With any goal it is important to write it down, and my plan was to use this blog for accountability. Right after starting this blog we found an opportunity to purchase a home and rebuild it, this was a unique situation and in order to make it happen it meant putting off large payments to my student loans.

However, in the process we were able to sell our other home for a profit and now have extra money to put towards my student loans. With this money I was able to put $25,000 towards student loans.

I decided to put the extra payment towards the highest interest loans. As you can see there are a number of different federal student loans that I have, and depending on the type of loan it has a different interest rate.

To be honest it is very unsatisfying to pay off student loans. I have nothing to show for it. No new car. No new toys. Just a smaller balance on my loans, but it hardly feels like it makes a difference as the balance is still high.

In order to make my goal of paying of these loans by 2022 I will use my bonuses to make extra payments when possible. I keep hoping that there will be some new debt relief plan put out, but the longer I hold off on paying my loans the more interest I will end up paying.

Three more years to pay off $100,000 in student debt…here we go!

What’s your student loan goal? How long did it take you to pay your PA school loans? Please comment below the original post, sign up to receive future posts by email and share with your friends!