About a month ago, I was checking out the SoFi events page when I came across a SoFi event that I couldn’t miss – free tickets to the Big Ten Championship in Indianapolis. These weren’t just regular tickets either. They were in the SoFi suite, with free food and drinks and access to the pre-game VIP hospitality […]
Debt
Two Things That Make Paying Off Debt Harder Than It Seems
Every once in a while, I like to listen to a little Dave Ramsey. You can say what you want about him, but when it comes to motivating you to pay off your debt, I don’t think anyone can beat him. His secret is just how simple and doable he makes things seem. Listen to […]
Why Biglawyers Need To Pay Off Their Loans Fast
A few weeks ago, I ran into a colleague of mine from my old law firm. After exchanging the normal pleasantries, we got to talking about who from our class was still working there. It wasn’t many. I graduated law school back in 2013 and started my first biglaw gig soon after. Just four years […]
What Financial Health Means To Me
I like to think that I’m pretty financially healthy. At 30 years old, I’m in a fairly unique position. I’m currently debt free after paying off nearly six figures worth of student loans in just a few years. I’ve got a sizable emergency fund that should cover me in the event of a disaster. And my net worth continues to grow each year as I continue to push myself to save as much of my income as I possibly can.
We have a plan of attack for my wife’s student loans as well. If all goes as planned, we’ll have her debt paid off within a year or two. A dentist/lawyer couple in their early 30s paying off all of their student loans in just a few years isn’t just a unique proposition. It’s pretty much unheard of.
$500,000 Worth Of Student Loans – Could You Pay It Off In Just A Few Years?
When you’re married to a dentist, you tend to learn a lot about the world of dentistry. Turns out dentists love to talk about teeth and when you hear them talk about it all the time, you end up picking up a few pieces of information here and there.
In addition to learning about teeth, I’ve also been learning about the crazy amount of student loans that most new dentists graduate with these days. I’m definitely no stranger to student loans. Law school is notoriously expensive and in the legal world, student loans are pretty much a given. When it comes to student loans though, lawyers don’t even compare to the type of debt that dentists can graduate with.
I’m Back In Debt Again
As you can probably tell from reading this blog, I’m pretty proud of how fast I paid off all of my student loans. It took me just 2.5 years to pay off all $87,000 worth of it. As a brief recap, I started my first job in the fall of 2013, started paying down my debt for real at the beginning of 2014, and paid off the last of my student loans in 2016. By the time I reached a $0 student loan balance, I hadn’t even been in the workforce for three years! In hindsight, that’s actually pretty astounding. There probably aren’t a ton of lawyers out there that are debt free three years out of law school.
With my recent marriage, however, it looks like I’m officially going right back into debt again in the form of my wife’s student loans. She graduated from dental school in 2014. Since then, she’s done a one-year hospital residency and is now currently in the middle of a three-year specialty residency. Needless to say, four years of dental school, four more years of post-dental school training, and no significant income since 2010 means that she’s sitting on a pretty high student loan balance. It’s a little bit over six figures at this point.