When I had announced my resignation from residency, I still worked for 90 days afterwards, and during that time I had so many interesting conversations with attendings, co residents, people who were trying to understand my decision and how after eight, ten years of working to get to this point, how was I able to just leave and just say, nope, not doing that anymore. I remember on antepartum rounds, one of my attendings Was like, can I ask you something personal? What are you going to do about your loans? And the funny thing is that was such a common question. Everybody was wondering, well, like, don't you have loans? Like, what are you going to do about those? And that might be something that you're wondering as well, right? Maybe you have realized the medical field is not necessarily right for you or that you're wanting to do something different. But you have this hefty balance of student loans so How can you feel free to enjoy your life and make decisions about your career if you still have so many student loans to pay back? That's what I'm going to answer in this episode. Welcome to Hot Take Tuesday, where I am going to be sharing short, Bite sized episodes with practical takeaways and tangible tips all in 15 minutes or less. And if you want personalized coaching and guidance to find your own authentic career path at the end of this episode, I will let you know what to do. But for now, let's dive in. You are listening to Life After Medicine, the podcast for health care professionals who want to make a difference, make a living, and still have the freedom to enjoy their lives. My name is Chelsea Turgeon. My mission is to help you, the frustrated health professional, find your authentic path to helping others and generating stable income without having to sacrifice your own health and happiness in the process. So I graduated med school with about 120, 000 in student loan debt, I went to a public school. I also had about a 10, 000 a year scholarship, and I still ended up with 120, 000 in student loans. For the longest time, this debt kept me feeling trapped in medicine. It really felt like this weight on my shoulders. And when I was first starting to question if medicine was the right path for me, back in third, fourth year of med school, I dismissed the idea of quitting immediately because my loans. I really thought that the only way I could pay them back was if I had an attendings salary. And I felt stuck on the path to becoming a doctor because I didn't know how else I could pay back my loans. So how did I start to free myself from this heaviness? How did I start to see it differently? At the height of my burnout on my five week leave of absence, I was on a call with a physician burnout coach. And if you've listened to or heard my story before, you'll know she asked me these two questions that were really powerful. So number one was, you know, if I could wave a magic wand and you could have whatever you wanted for your life and career. What would that look like? And I described this life of going to cafes and working, having a morning that was slow and full of self care, and just having the freedom and flexibility to travel and do work that I really enjoyed. And then she asked, okay, well, what's keeping you from doing that? And I said, well, the money. And then she asked, okay, well, like anything else? And I really searched my brain. To try to figure out, is there anything else? Is there anything else keeping me from living out this gorgeous life that I just described? And I realized, no, there was nothing else. Money was the only thing standing in the way. Now obviously that's a pretty big thing, but there was something about that realization Like, it's just money. Money's the only thing. That's not acceptable. I'm not okay with that. That money's the only thing standing between me and the life I actually want. And I was starting to do mindset work at that point. And I was also starting to realize like, it wasn't that money was standing in my way. It's my perceptions of money. were keeping me from doing what I wanted to do. So what were my perceptions of money? Honestly, I was viewing my student loans as this heavy weight. And more than that, there was this time, urgency, and pressure to it, right? It felt like my student loans were like this monster that kept growing and growing and was getting bigger and bigger. And if it was left unchecked, it would just like grow out of control and consume me. And I think the reason I felt that way was because of all the conventional wisdom I had been taught around interest rates. That's something you hear all the time. Well, the interest rates are growing and they're, going up and then your student loans are rising. And it's like, if you, don't pay them back right away, they're going to just get bigger and bigger. And the more, the bigger, the principle. The higher percentage, like the faster the interest grows and it starts to create this really crazy feeling of like I don't know, there's this like live entity growing and it's going to crush me. And so I felt this urgency that, I have to pay back my loans as fast as I can to squash the monster to keep it from growing. Once I had this conversation with the physician burnout coach and realized that money was the only thing keeping me between me and my dreams, I started to question that urgency and that monster. I started just asking, like, why? Why do I need to do this so quickly? If I could let go of this time pressure to pay back my loans, if I could stop caring that every year I didn't pay them, the interest would grow and grow and grow. If I could just let go of that panic and fear, then I could breathe. And then I could give myself a chance, more of a runway, to figure out how to earn six figures. But not in a way that felt so rushed, right? Because at the point where I left residency, I was about two and a half years away from earning a six figure salary. And so, if I felt this deep rush to pay everything back, then I would also feel this sense that, okay, in two and a half years I have to be making six figures at that point. But if I could just let that go, then what could be possible. And so I just slowly decided to let it go. That I'll pay my loans back one dollar at a time. I also decided that I just didn't care if I ever paid them back. Even if I was paying them back until the day that I died, I was just okay with that. Because the cost of rushing to pay back my loans so the principal doesn't rise so much that it squashes me, like, that fear and that urgency was costing me too much. And so I just decided that I'll pay back my loans one dollar at a time. And technically, that's what I was doing at that point anyways, because I was in residency, so I had already filed for income driven repayment. I was like, well, maybe I can just keep doing this, like, is there an expiration date on that? Like, is there a certain amount of time where you can only do income driven repayment while you're in residency? And no, there is no time limit on that. You can do income driven repayment for as long as you want to. So right now I am on an income driven repayment plan, which means you just pay a small percentage of your income every month. It's just auto drafted from your bank account. You don't even have to think about it. You do have to file your income annually every year when you're filing taxes. And that just Keeps you qualified and keeps you kind of up to date so that the payments change to match your income so currently I'm paying around 200 a month and Now what you might think well if you're paying 200 a month How are you ever going to make a dent in the grand total of 120, 000 plus all the interest that's piling up? so If that was how it was going to work, I would never pay them back. And again, that actually was fine by me. I was like, you know what? I'll just pay 200 a month and if I die and I still have student loans, that's just what happens. like, that's just what will occur. Um, I did look up and saw that if you die with a student loan balance, No one else pays it. It doesn't transfer to a family member. Nobody pays it. it's just wiped. It's done. So, initially I thought that was, I was like, alright, well I'll just do that. And then hopefully at some point I'll be making so much more money that it doesn't even matter. That the interest has grown so much and then I'll just be able to pay it off. So I was okay with that, but then what I realized is if you do income driven repayment over 20 years, and generally if it's a public loan that's not refinanced, they just forgive it after 20 years. So you can just do the minimum income driven repayment for 20 years and that's all you have to do. Right, so for me If it's 200 a month, that's 2, 400 a year. If I do that over 20 years, that's only 48, 000. That's not near 120, 000 plus interest. Now obviously the payment that I'll make is going to go up as my income goes up and so that's not exact right math, but again, it's not a big deal. And here's the thing, as I've been traveling and running my business, I probably could have lived more frugally, saved more money, paid off loans more aggressively, and almost paid it all off by now. But I don't care to do that. That's actually not a priority. That's not something that is interesting to me. there's no sense of urgency for me. And it really doesn't matter to me if they never go away, if I'm paying them off until I die, none of that matters. Now, I'm going to do the payments. I'm not planning to evade or avoid my payments. But what I really want you to get from this is that your loans, your student loans, they only have power over you that you give it. You can decide how all of this works for you. You can decide that you aren't going to let some random number in a bank account determine how you spend the actual moments of your life. Because here's what felt really true for me. My time and my energy, those are currencies to me that are more real and more precious Then a random number in a bank account on a ledger somewhere that says I owe a person money for a decision that I made when I was 20 years old. Sure, that's real. I'm not gonna pretend that it's not a real construct in the world that we live in. But what is more real is every moment of my life. That's what's most real to me. And so you get to choose what you want to do with this, what you want to do with your student loans, how you want to think of all of this. But for me, making this shift and having this mental freedom and viewing my student loans as this thing that it'll get paid off, but I'm just not worried about it. Or maybe it won't. Maybe it'll cancel out after 20 years, either way, I'm not worried. But first and foremost, that comes from this mindset shift. It comes from this willingness to see things differently, to stop letting your perceptions of money and how you view and think about money stand in the way of you actually enjoying your one wild and precious life on this earth. So how can you feel free to enjoy your life if you still have student loans? You literally just decide to. You decide that you can pay them back one dollar at a time, and that they will not get in the way of you living your most authentic life. If you want a career that gives you freedom and fulfillment but you need help figuring out what that is and how to go about it, then I want to invite you to join Pathway to Purpose so that you can clarify your purpose, your career direction, and your next steps. All you have to do is head to the link in the show notes and book a career clarity call. So, that's it for today. If you guys have any other questions, things you want me to address on Hot Take Tuesdays, send them my way, and I'll do an episode on it. until next time.
