Finance: Tackle Undergrad Loans During A Gap Year (ASAP)

There are a few financial decisions that I made in my early twenties that I am very proud of, and a few that I am not so proud of. For decisions that fall in the latter category, I sincerely wish that someone could just create a time machine so that I could send myself back to my younger self and shake some common sense into her. Or at least allow me to go back in time and have a one-on-one discussion (likely at a cafe somewhere) regarding my retrospectively realized financial mistakes, with the hopes of guiding her towards the right direction. But alas, there is no time machine.

However, knowledge lost to me should not be lost to others. I am fortunate enough to have a little brother, six years younger, who recently shocked everyone we knew by deciding to switch from pursuing a path to physical therapy to becoming a dentist such as myself. At first, I told him not to do it, mostly out of fear that he was entering the profession for the wrong reasons. It’s not exactly the profession for everyone. You have to love being inside people’s mouths, and I sincerely believe that description fits a very small group of people. And in exchange for this privilege of being surrounded by teeth, there is a costly price, which includes not only dedicated time towards earning the degree, but a huge monetary cost as well. I could see a young man entering the profession thinking it’s all fun and games. You can call your own hours, you get a decent pay. But you lose a lot of hours compared to your peers, studying the craft and paying off the debt. Additionally, you don’t see a majority (in my case, any) of your pay if you are dedicated to paying off the loans by the time your 38 years old. And by the time you are free from the debt, your peers would have had a 17 year head start on building their lives over you. I was simply afraid he would become a tooth doctor and then regret the bondage and the responsibility that comes with that. The worst you can do is choose to spend your days doing something you don’t absolutely love.

After a lot of back-and-forth conversations about the whys and the whats and the hows, I could see this is what he decided he wanted to do. And in my family, once we made up our mind about something, there is no change of course. Despite my resistance to the whole thing, I could tell he was going to push through with it, whether I supported him or not. So I did what any big sis would do. I immediately switched to supportive mode, figuring that if he is going to do this thing, then I’m going to give all I’ve got to making sure he loves every moment of it. So now we work together at the same office, me guiding him towards becoming a better dental assistant everyday, and him helpfully suctioning saliva out of my patient’s mouths. Perfect harmony.

I started writing the finance part of my blog to help newly graduated dental students with a massive debt realize that they are not alone, and that there are ways to overcome that debt. Now, I have an even bigger responsibility to walk my little brother, and other newly graduated undergrads towards a path that would minimize that final number, as much as humanly possible. If I can’t send myself back in a time machine to save myself from all the silly mistakes, I can at least try to save my brother. I am not doing this so that he could be rich one day. Such is never my goal. I am writing this so he can be a free man.

So if I could travel back and tell my recently graduated undergrad self what to do while waiting to get into grad school, I would tell them one thing. Use your hard-earned money towards paying down your undergrad loans. This was a very feasible thing for me, since I graduated undergrad in 3.25 years and I had an extra 9 months of freedom between graduation and grad school. It was a year and eight months before I was to start my dental program. During that time, I was living at home, and working three jobs. The first was a job as a dental assistant, averaging thirty hours a week. . The second was a visuals specialist at Banana Republic, averaging ten hours a week. And the last was a tutoring gig in Newport Beach, averaging an additional 10 hours a week. All jobs paid me over minimum wage, which at the time was around $8.5 an hour. The dental assisting and the tutoring paid me $13/hr. The sales job paid me above $9/hr. I wasn’t paying for food or rent, with much gratitude towards my parents. But I was also not paying my student loans down. So where did the money go?

At that age, you work like I did and think to yourself, “I’m rolling in the dough.” I had no concept of the power of money at that time, for I had no one to show me, or to even talk to me about it. Friends were dining out every night, going to concerts and raves, watching movies, and buying everything they ever wanted. What did you think I did?There was no outward consideration towards my far off future. I couldn’t see that these loans would one day become shackles that slow me down from enjoying later joys. There was this concept being fed to young kids, summarized in four capital letters. YOLO.

I was twenty one years old, and I thought I was unstoppable. I had so much energy, I worked like a horse. I never realized that the pace was unsustainable and that I will not want to work like a horse for the rest of my life. And off course, once I clocked out, I went on partying like an animal. (Okay, not animal. I saw REAL animals in college, and animal I was not. Maybe a tame deer. Either way…) I  blew my money on frivolities, living my life under the following motto: “Work hard, party hard.” WHO COMES UP WITH THESE THINGS?!

I  wasn’t fully irresponsible (or so I thought) since I paid the minimum payments towards my loans every month. They told me paying the minimum payments is considered good. No one ever told me paying off the maximum you can possibly pay is ideal. I never even hit my principle balance. I was paying so little that my accrued interest stayed about the same. At the time, I was already dating my future husband, and he was also working hard to pay for his housing. Since I didn’t pay for rent, I thought I had wayyyyy more money than him, and offered to take him out to eat whenever I felt like it. I bought him many gifts, just because. I invited him to concerts and bowling and karaoke and anything I can throw my money at. What I didn’t realize was that he had almost zero debt. He took out a skimpy little loan, which was paid off a few months after he started work as an engineer. And there I was, almost two years graduated, with the same debt I had while I was in school.

I was even so foolish as to plan a trip to Hawaii with Mike. In preparation for this trip, and as a reward for working so hard on my year and a half off, I quit all three jobs pre-emptively at the end of May, three months before dental school was to start. I continued my usual spending, and then allocated a huge chunk of my hard-earned money towards Hawaii. Granted, that trip was our first trip together and ended up being our favorite trip until we went to New Zealand. So yes, YOLO. You never get the time back, and it was a great experience. But the trip cost something close to $5,000. At the time, my student loan was about $16,000. I spent a third of my debt on a vacation, without realizing that it’s all just borrowed money. The crazy part was that I had $5,000 in my bank account, (I actually had close to $10,000 in my bank account) ready to be used for Hawaii. That money should have been placed directly into student loans the minute I was earning it. Not knowing anything at all about the power of compounded interest, that could have saved me a good portion of my current loan amount, probably around $13,000 or so, since it accrued interest over the next 5 years that I was in dental school. That’s the thing about any loan with interest. It continues to add even more debt to your plate, and the longer you wait, the more money you waste. As a young twenty something, time is on your side. Address debt while you are still young.

Now, you may be saying, $13,000 out of $550,000 is not a big difference. It’s such a small sliver of the pie! But it is, because it all adds up. It’s not like you graduate and start paying back the principle on your loans right away. You address the interest that has been growing on it first. For the first five months, we didn’t even touch our principle. Five months of all of the paychecks of a dentist going towards a loan, and not bringing down principle can be a very depressing thing. I think people need to see that. Extrapolate that for 9-10 years, as if you are essentially working for no take home pay for ten years, and then tell me that the $13,000 does not matter. Every single penny matters. That should be the mind set newly graduated undergrads should have. That every financial decision they make will shape their future. Especially so if they are going to pursue further education. It’s not a matter of “YOLO, my future self can worry about that.” Your future self is still you.

If I could do it all over again, I would continue to live at my parents, like I was doing. That was definitely a decision I was proud of. I would put as much of my income as possible (which would have probably been 90% of it) towards paying down my undergrad loans prior to grad school. I would have worked harder while I had a lot of energy. I would have saved more by saying no to all the pressures to conform to this image of a successful, newly  graduated student. I would have worked until the very end of my “time off”. I would have probably skipped the Hawaii trip, or traded it in for a more financially friendly local trip to a national park. If I had done all of this, I would have been able to pay off all of my undergrad loans easily, while still living a fairly decent lifestyle, and possibly saving money along the way for my future graduate loans. Heck, I might have even been able to go to Hawaii and do that. Don’t believe me? Here’s the math.

Dental assisting: $13/hr x 30 hrs/week x 78 weeks = $30,420

Banana Republic: $9/hr x 10 hrs/week x 78 weeks = $7,020

Tutoring: $13/hr x 10 hrs/week x 78 weeks = $10,140

Total income: $47,580

Student Loans Total when I started dental school = approximately $16,000

Conclusion: I didn’t know anything about money at the age of twenty one.

Currently, my brother is gallivanting around Costa Rican terrain with a college friend. Before he left, I went over finances with him, grilling him on what he was planning to do while there, how much he was planning to spend, and pointing out tips to save money while traveling. The bottom line is that I can’t stop him from enjoying his life. I’m not even saying his trip is a life mistake. The Hawaii trip was a financial mistake, but it was also an experience that led us to realize how important traveling was to us. Ironically, the debt limits the extent with which we can travel. You win some, you lose some. He will likely learn something very valuable about himself on his travels. But I want him to at least hear from somebody that this decision will affect his future from a financial standpoint. I think every newly graduated kid deserves to hear that. If I could talk to my twenty year old self, I can’t guarantee she would have listened, or even fully understood. I mean, I would continue to make this mistake throughout all of dental school, again and again. But there is a chance that she would have changed her course, ever so slightly. And that makes a difference.

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