TLDR Several months ago we received an interesting question from Ben Braun, a medical student who’d attended one of our financial literacy workshops. He realized the new SAVE payment plan presented an interesting opportunity for those with existing or new Direct PLUS loans to effectively set the interest rate on these loans to 0%. Ben is a 4th-year student at the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University going into radiology. Here was the summary of his observation: Direct Plus loans accumulate interest while in-school. But with the SAVE repayment plan, interest does NOT a ..read more

As anyone with Direct student loans likely knows by now, the government has debuted a new payment plan called SAVE that will replace REPAYE. In addition, PAYE will be eliminated soon with borrowers having about a year left to opt into it. SAVE is significantly better than the REPAYE plan it replaces. You can read about the changes at Ben White’s blog. But it “complicates” decisions for some. Those who had previously chosen PAYE now need to reevaluate whether the new SAVE plan is worth switching to. Obviously, graduating medical students will need to choose a plan when payment restart. And many ..read more

Nothing is Simpler During our lectures and workshops, we often explain that while financial planning can sometimes be difficult, investing itself is typically straightforward. Choosing investments is much easier now that there are “Target Retirement” type investment choices readily available. These investments have various other names, such as “Target Date” or “Lifecycle” funds, but the general idea is the same. You can choose ONE investment, in all of your accounts, and never have to do anything different, ever. Almost sounds too good to be true, right?  What’s the Catch? There is no cat ..read more

Side Income? You’re in the Right Place. Did you have a side job in 2020? Are you considering one for 2021? If so, you’ll learn a ton in a very short time by reading our guide to Moonlighting and Self-Employment Income. Many physicians, particularly trainees, often look for side jobs or moonlighting opportunities to help with student loans and low trainee salaries. If you simply take extra shifts with your employer, that income will be added to your pay, taxes withheld, and eventually reported on a W2 But if you do some extra work for an unrelated employer (regardless of the type of job) you ma ..read more

Congratulations! [This is a refresh of our FIFTH annual “medical school graduation” post. Same irreverent tone, same lame jokes, but otherwise the similar yet updated awesome information for 2021.] Congrats! You’ve just matched and internship is around the corner. Enjoy this time (you’ve earned it!) but don’t get too comfortable. There are several key financial tasks you need to address so that you can start your professional life off on the right foot. Or as the ophthalmologists like to say “PD” (pedis dexter, "right foot" get it?). Some of these financial items need to be done BEFORE you sta ..read more

Making Repayment Decisions? Studentaid.gov has a loan repayment tool, which can be very helpful in calculating monthly payments and exploring repayment options. You can manually enter you own loan data OR you can log in and it will automatically import your actual loan data.  Make Sure to Heed the Warning Several loan payments amounts for various payment plans (e.g. IBR, PAYE, and ICR) depend not only on loan balance, but also on the loan interest rate. Currently, interest rates on all federal loans have been set to zero percent by the CARES act. Thus, if you are logged in while using the ..read more

PAYE or REPAYE? There are almost a dozen federal student loan repayment plans, five which qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. But newer borrowers (i.e. no loans over 13 years old) only need to consider two of those: Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE).  One Video, All the Info The video below walks you through all the key features to consider when making a PAYE/REPAYE decision in consideration of PSLF. There are no convoluted tables and there is minimal text. There is also a catchy soundtrack recorded by the Doctored Money studio band. We believe this is t ..read more

Congratulations! [This is a refresh of our FOURTH annual “medical school graduation” post. My my, where has the time gone?] Congrats! You’ve just matched and internship is around the corner. Enjoy this time (you’ve earned it!) but don’t get too comfortable. There are several key financial tasks you need to address so that you can start your professional life off on the right foot. Or as the ophthalmologists like to say “PD” (pedis dexter, "right foot" get it?). Some of these financial items need to be done BEFORE you start internship, while other considerations represent long-term mentalities ..read more

No change to PSLF for existing borrowers We know we are going to get lots of email about this, so we’ll just come right out with a quick post. The scary headlines concerning the elimination of Public Service Loan Forgiveness in President Trump’s new budget proposal does not apply to current borrowers.  Here’s what’s written in the proposal “This package would simplify repayment for all new undergraduate borrowers regardless of occupation and create a pathway for expedited debt forgiveness after 15 years of payments instead of after 20 years under current law”. The keyword here is “new ..read more

Update We are suspending this feature for now. COVID related activities have disrupted our ability to provide timely responses. We are devoting more of our time to patient care, and any remaining free time is preferentially going to our families. Be safe. We have an new venture to share with you! Doctored Money has been striving to educate physician borrowers on debt management and PSLF for over 5 years, both in-person and online. It is a labor of love and we volunteer our own time and money to answer questions for all who reach out. We are happy to report that demand for this help continues ..read more