You finally accept your first job at a great private practice. They offer you $600 a day (about $150,000 a year), and you are ecstatic. You remember them saying something about being an independent contractor, but you didn’t really understand what that meant, so you took the job anyway. Now you are left to figure out what that means.
Wondering what you can do with your money even while you don’t have any? Here are some ideas of what you can do while in dental school to set yourself up for financial success.
A lack of understanding regarding these two facets of student loans can have a significant impact on your wealth. Let’s start with interest capitalization. When you borrow money, you have to pay for the use of that money. It’s called interest. Interest is usually charged as a percentage of your outstanding principal.
Second is taxable forgiveness. When you get to year 20 (under the PAYE plan), any outstanding debt gets forgiven. Throw a party because that’s really great. But… there’s a catch. All of that debt forgiveness is considered taxable income.
You’ve probably heard that you need to start early when it comes to saving for retirement. I often get asked by dental residents (some of which have $450k of outstanding debt) if they should save for retirement while in residency. For your average resident and recent grad, there are some very good reasons NOT to put money into a retirement account. Here are a few…
Public Service Loan Forgiveness is a government program in which federal student loans get forgiven after 10 years of work at a qualifying non-profit or government organization. I’m going to assume for the purposes of this article that you are at least a little familiar with the plan. You can read more about it here.
There are a variety of considerations one must take into account when considering a job that qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Often times the dentistry isn’t very exciting and the areas that offer these kinds of jobs can be somewhat remote. But I want to answer the economic question. How valuable is Public Service Loan Forgiveness from an economic standpoint?
The completion of dental school (or residency) brings a whole bunch of changes and new responsibilities. As this blog has made clear many times before, there are several financial changes a new grad must deal with. One of those financial questions new grads are often confronted with revolves around disability insurance. While not exhaustive, I’ll attempt to give a few tips on disability insurance in this article.
Let me first say that there are a lot more than 5 things you need to do when you graduate dental school. Like get a job for example. But I’ll focus in on a few often-overlooked items I typically find when someone goes through my planning process.
Keep reading for five tips…
