IYKYK: Student Loan Repayment Plans and Calculator
Another day of medical school (it's Thursday already? good god), followed by creeping dread of my ever expanding student loan balance. Let's be real, while I’m busy learning how to save lives, my debt is busy compounding at a rate that would make a loan shark blush. Unless your daddy is rich af, we (every med student) are all just sisyphus-ing our way up.
You may have heard of these: IBR, PAYE, REPAYE, PSLF, RAP. These aren't music genres, but rather federal loan repayment plans. Yes, the government is actively trying to confuse us into a state of financial submission. But fear not, my fellow debt-laden brethren, for I have stumbled upon a beacon of hope in this unforgiving financial wilderness.
Fancy calculator; put bunch of information info and see your…fate.
I've made a tool! You read that right (there is a joke in there somewhere). It's a straightforward and user-friendly calculator (I hope), making you almost forget that you’ll be paying for your education until you’re old enough to be a patient yourself.
This isn’t your guidance counselor’s clunky, outdated spreadsheet. It simulates all of the income-driven repayment plans, side-by-side, so you can see exactly how much of your meager resident salary will be gobbled up by the loan monster each month. It even lets you play out other financial fantasies, showing you what life would be like if you refinanced with a private lender and sold your soul for a lower interest rate.
side by side comparison. Like a reddit post on MCAT and USMLE score for ego boost.
You can then export all the data, so you can spend your one day off a month geeking out over your amortization schedule and plotting your path to (may be) financial freedom; the perfect tool for muh TikTok and Instagram-loving generation with microscopic attention spans. Actually, Ideally, this is for someone smart enough to get into med school, but not quite smart enough to have avoided this mountain of debt in the first place (ha! jk... I'm in the same boat, don't get offended, every medstudent I know has loans).
So, go ahead, give it a try. It just might give you the fighting chance you need to one day, maybe, just maybe, be able to afford a chai tea latte from starbucks.
Stay anki-ing, my friends.
Alright, back to studying.
