Finances

The importance of timely annual income certification for students loans

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Perhaps you are a dental school graduate with large sums of debt and you find yourself with no choice but to enroll in an income-based repayment program for your federal student loans. In many cases this could cause your payment to drop from around $5,000 a month to under $1,000. The difference in your payment typically causes unpaid interest to accumulate separate from your outstanding principal (the amount you originally borrowed).

Your annual interest is based on your outstanding principal. So if you borrowed $450,000 of student loans and your interest rate is 6.5%, your annual interest is $29,250. If five years has gone by and you accumulated $100,000 in outstanding interest, you are still only being charged based on your original principal amount.
Finances

Interest capitalization and taxable forgiveness: two things you must understand if you have student loans

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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.

Finances

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Is it worth it?

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female dentistPublic 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?

Finances

Personal finance in the digital age

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Screen Shot 2014-11-21 at 4.52.29 PMWatch the video in this post from Ryan Schulte, a partner in financial advising from Envision Wealth Group. Ryan has been working with dental students and dentists for many years. He says one of the biggest things people are noticing across the country is the mess being made from lack of personal financing. Budgeting is important! The digital age makes it too convenient to venmo your friends, set “auto-reload” to your Starbucks account app, or buy pretty much anything by synching your credit card with the Target app. On average, people are only saving 3-4% of their income. We should be aiming for around 15-20% in savings. Shocking, but with hard work and dedication, you’ll be happy you did!