MtoM #175: Pharmacist Pays Off Over $200,000 of Student Loans in 15 Months and Finance 101: Working Longer

This is the White Coat Investor podcast, Milestones to Millionaire. Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom. This is Milestones to millionaire podcast number 175. Pharmacist pays off over $200,000 in student loans in 15 months. Love what you hear on the podcast. Looking for more great white coat investor content? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch video recordings of our podcast, short snippets of financial tips explained succinctly by me and others, and deep dives into topics for more in depth learning. You can even learn all about real estate with webinars from our real estate partners. Check out all this and more@YouTube.com thewhitecoatinvestor you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. All right, we're gonna be talking today about. About making money. It's a fun subject, right? I mean, here we are on a financial podcast. Of course we're going to talk about making money. Stay tuned after our interview today. Not only are we going to talk about making money during the interview, but I want to talk a little bit about the benefits of working longer at the end of this podcast. So stay tuned after the interview. You're going to love this interview, though. Let's get Jeremy on the line. Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Jeremy. Jeremy, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, happy to be here. Thank you.

Tell us what you do for a living, how far you are out of school, and what part of the country you live in.

Sure. So I'm a pharmacist. I work mainly at a small biotech and also work at cvs, a retail pharmacy, evenings and some weekends. About seven years out of school now, and I live in Alexandria, Virginia, just.

Outside of D.C. very cool. Well, thanks for being willing to come on the podcast. We like to celebrate with our guests something they've accomplished and use it to inspire others to do the same. So tell the audience what we're celebrating today.

Absolutely. So I just paid off $286,000 in student loans a couple months ago.

Holy crap. $286,000 for pharmacy school. My goodness, that is just incredible. And the thing that's pretty remarkable about your story, I understand, though, is that you did most of this quite recently. Yeah, tell me about that.

Right. So I refinanced November right before the very last extension of the payment pause. And then the bulk of the payoff was 215 in about a year and a half. Just under a year and a half.

All right. So, I mean, I'M vaguely aware of what pharmacists make, but 215 in a year and a half sounds kind of impossible. How did you do that?

So the main thing was going from my previous job to the one I have now was about a 50k difference in pay when I jumped from one to the other. And then working retail evenings and weekends on the side was really the biggest factor because I made up a big chunk of that doing the CVS work too. So that was really helpful for me.

So the way you did this was by doubling your income?

Yeah.

So I have made this comment many times before on this podcast that the vast majority of Americans overestimate the difficulty of doubling their income. You're somebody that's done it. What do you think about that phrase? Do you think that's true? Do you think that people really can dramatically increase their income if they want.

To in the white coat investors sphere of things? Definitely. And I'll speak for pharmacists, especially those in the pharmaceutical industry. It is possible if you're building the skills and looking for the opportunities. And definitely a lot of pharmacists who go into the pharmaceutical industry, they tend to not want to do, you know, the retail. The CVS is Walgreens of the world. A lot of us shy away from working in hospitals on the weekends on the side. But that really was the main, one of the main factors, at least in me being able to pay off that debt so quickly. So it's definitely doable if you, if you want to, I should say.

So what, what happened a year and a half ago that you decided, I'm going to do something different. But what got you fired up to do this?

So it was a mix of a lot of Dave Ramsey, a lot of white coat investor, a good friend of mine, Prince Gjoke, actually introduced me to wci. But then once I got the job offer and I saw how much of a difference it was from my previous job, I had a decision right there. I said, okay, this can either be lifestyle creep or it can be, let me get this, you know, almost 300,000 pound gorilla off my back. So obviously I chose the student loans. It's something I wanted to get to get off a long time ago. And I think it was at some point, roughly a year or so after graduation from pharmacy school, when everything started to just settle in and you see all your finances in one place and then there's this big, glaring 286k sitting there and you kind of, it just hits you for the first time and you don't really know how to do that. Like what, what. What do I do about this? So a mixture of those, but a lot of personal finance education too, led me there.

So how does it feel? I mean, you got the gorilla off your back. How does it feel?

I'll say this, it took a while because it didn't really feel real at first, but it feels amazing now because I have all of that income that was going towards loans is now just going towards whatever I wanted to. So it's an amazing feeling. For sure.

Yeah. I mean, you were sending these guys for the last 15 months. You were sending them 10 or $12,000 a month.

Yeah, just. Just under 10k a month for the last seven months or so. Yeah. I would say the, the best feeling is not having to be at my side hustle, which is cvs as much that. That I'm loving the most. But all things considered, it's wonderful, man, I gotta say.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. So did this turn out to be easier or harder than you thought it was gonna be 15 months ago?

I'll say. I'll say it was easier. What I didn't anticipate was just the tiredness from. From working extra. That was probably the most challenging thing. But over the. Over the course of time, like a few months into it, it's. You get motivated by seeing the balance go down. So I'll say it's. It's easier. But, you know, if I could go back, I would do it all over again if I. If I had to. Like to be. To have to be in this place to be debt free.

Is there anybody else involved? You single, partnered, married, kids, anything?

I'm married. We just got married. That was a good question. So we got married about two years ago, me and my wife. But the debt paydown was all me. I will say having two incomes definitely helps with other things around the house. And during that year and a half, like, we got married, destination wedding, you know, went on honeymoon, bought a couple of investment properties. So it is not like we were just. What was Dave Ramsey say? Beans and rice. Rice and beans. But as far as the pay down, yeah, it was just. It was just me.

Pretty awesome. What does she think? What? Well, no, let's go back. What did she think marrying you, finding out you owed $300,000 in student loans?

So she did the same thing I did when I first. First graduated, which was just sweeping under the rug. And because it wasn't stopping us from doing anything right. It's like we still travel as much or as little as we want to still go out to dinner whenever, because it wasn't stopping anything from happening. It really wasn't an issue. But I also knew it was something that I could handle on my own. So it wasn't a big deal for us starting out.

How much of that did you have to cut out over the last 15 months in order to do this?

A little bit. But again, it's not like we just completely stop living. So let's say if we normally travel, you know, three nice vacations or three big vacations a year, hey, let's, let's cut that down to one or two worst things that could happen in the world. I definitely started eating at home, cooking more just to save on the eating out budget. But like I said, we still were able to do all of the things that we really enjoyed. And over the course of this, you find out what you really want to spend time on and what you don't. And for both of us, luckily, that was spending time with friends and family, being present in those moments for a lot of our younger nieces, nephews, cousins, things like that. So like, yeah, we had to cut out a little bit, but it didn't have to change our lives drastically from doing what we really wanted to spend time on.

Yeah, it sounds like you made up a lot of it, but just by boosting income, you got your income up that you could dedicate so much more income toward, toward this goal. Do you remember back in pharmacy school, you know when you're taking out these loans, what were your thoughts about how you were going to pay them back back then? And how did that compare to what actually happened later?

To be honest with you, because I wasn't really financially literate, it didn't really register, to be honest. It seems like Monopoly money. I knew I wanted to go to pharmacy school. I had that goal. I knew I wanted to accomplish it. And you know, parents could only pay for so much. The rest I had to supplement with loans. And you kind of have the attitude of, I'm going to figure out, however, to make the best salary I can to pay this off and get started with investing in everything. But it was kind of just a jumble of ideas and thoughts. There really was no plan when I was in pharmacy school. But then you get out, you get the financial education, and you have to kind of reset your mind to what makes sense, which for me was paying the debt off.

I think that's pretty normal, actually. I think most people are in that situation when they're in school. All right, well, you've been incredibly successful now financially in crushing these student loans. What's next for you in your financial goals?

Saving up for down payment of a home. So hopefully looking to expand. Our family become a party of three in the next year or so. So that's. That's the main thing. And then just focusing on. On real estate, real estate investments.

Cool. You said you had a couple doors under management already?

Yeah, a couple doors. Single families in my hometown in Louisiana. And then good friend of mine from pharmacy school, we have a duplex in Wisconsin that we bought recently and just trying to expand from there.

Very cool. Does your family know you paid off your student loans in this sort of a manner?

They do, definitely. Mom. Mom was the number one supporter, definitely. And then I have some cousins who said I was crazy. But, you know, it's. It's a good crazy. Like, I would not trade that feeling of that last submission of $10,000 going down the drain. I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything. And I'm really excited to just be able to do other things that I want to focus on. Right. As opposed to I have to work to pay this debt down. It's a very different experience.

Somewhere listening to this podcast is a pharmacist who's working one job and they're getting paid, I don't know, 120, 130, $140,000, and they're sitting on a quarter million dollars of student loans going, I wonder if I can do that. I wonder if I could get a better paying job. I wonder if I could spend my evenings at CVS or Walmart. What advice do you have for that person?

You miss all the shots you never take. So if you, if you have this goal of paying the debt down, it's possible other people have done it. People with less resources than you have done it. Like, the opportunities are definitely there. If you're in the industry and you're thinking about it, we have these pharmacy degrees for a reason. We are well equipped to go into the hospital, into community pharmacies, and be very effective and make money on the side. So the opportunities are definitely there. Take the jump. What's the worst that could happen?

Yeah. Jeremy, you're a fantastic person, a fantastic American, a fantastic pharmacist. You should be very proud of what you've done. I know that we are here at the White Coat Investor, and we're super grateful you came on to tell people about your experience, because I think it will inspire others. We're always being Asked for people that aren't doctors that did something like this, and here you are, right? A doctor, like student loan debt, you paid it off in an allied health profession, and now the world is your oyster, right? You've got $10,000 a month to do whatever you want with. I mean, if this is all going into real estate investments, you are not that far away from financial independence. And that's pretty cool.

Hey, thank you.

All right. Wasn't that great? $286,000, $215,000 in 15 months on a pharmacist income. And those of you out there telling me it can't be done, right? It can be done. Takes a lot of work. You got to get a better job than the one you've got. You got to negotiate, right? You got to do some overtime, put in some extra time, get another job. You can make more money, you know, no matter what your income level, you can boost it. Whether you're in business for yourself and you make the business more efficient or hire people to work in the business, whether you are negotiating a better job or changing jobs, whether you're getting better education or more certification. You know, I'm confident that most people think they can't increase their income, but actually, most people have a pretty dramatic increase in income if they really want it. I told you at the beginning we're going to talk about working longer, which sounds terrible, right? Who wants to work longer? But the truth is working longer is the solution to the financial problems of many people, right? What happens when your career becomes longer? Well, a number of really good things happen. For example, your Social Security benefit goes up. Not only are you not taking it early, but you're continuing to put more money into Social Security and your benefit goes up. You also have less of life ahead of you to pay for, and so you don't need as much money going forward. The more you work, the longer you work, the less money you need. Because you're not going to live forever. You're not invincible, right? You're going to die eventually of something. And the older you get, the more likely that becomes. And so the longer you work, the less of a time period you're going to have in retirement. But you also have more time to save for retirement. And especially as people tend to get in the latter half of their career, often they're making more money than they've ever made before, especially on a nominal basis. And so they're saving tons of money, right? And you get catch up contributions in your HSA and your IRA and your 401K and your 403 and your 457B, you can actually put more money in there. So more of your savings is growing in a tax protected way. It gives your savings that you already have more time to compound. Compound interest works. And so a lot of times people that don't, they don't really have enough to retire. Just a few more years of work and all of a sudden they do have enough to retire. It can really solve a lot of problems. The issue of course, is that your retirement date is not 100% in your control. I saw a survey recently, I think it said 52% of retirees are retiring kind of against their will, not at the date they would have chosen to retire. Whether that's from disability, whether that's from job loss, whether it's just cause their back hurts or whatever. 52%, right? There's age discrimination, there's all these other things that can happen to people. So don't assume that this is the solution to your lack of ability to invest properly, your lack of ability to save enough money. It may not work for you, but if it can, if you're trying to solve an issue of not having enough for retirement, consider working longer. Another year, two years, three years. It can make a dramatic difference. We became financially independent somewhere around 2018, right? And now it's 2024. We've been working for six years after financial independence. And I'll tell you, we're in a heck of a lot better financial situation than we were in 2018. Things only get better. It's like I'm telling docs all the time, if you're doing this right, you're getting richer every month of your life. And there's occasionally an exception when there's a big bear market or something. But for the most part that's true. You become in a better and better and better financial situation. And so consider working longer in order to reach your financial goals. You may find that that is the very solution you need. I got an email this week from a doc that's 54 in residency and not much in assets at all, but wants to be able to retire by 70, 16 years, right? That's enough time to get the financial independence. You do have to have a pretty good savings rate and you can't make a lot of mistakes with your money. You gotta do just about everything right when you're working on that sort of a timescale. But so long as he's able to work to age 70, I think he can still do it and have a very dignified retirement. But can he retire at 58? Probably not. Probably not going to be able to retire at 58. Just not going to be an option for him. But if you're 35 and you're listening to the White Coat Investor podcast out there, boy 58. I'd be surprised if you couldn't be financially independent by 58. Applying the knowledge you're getting on this podcast to your high income and your life. It's like having a superpower. I mean, you'd be amazed how quickly your wealth starts compounding how rapidly your debt disappears. Like Jeremy's today that we talked about in the podcast when you're dedicating significant chunks of change to it every month. All right, if you're interested in coming on the podcast, you can do so apply it or whitecodeinvestor.com Milestones we're always looking for people that can inspire others through what they've accomplished. Whether your milestone is something small, maybe you got back to broke, whether your milestone is something big, you know, maybe you paid off a mortgage or student loans, or maybe you became a DECA millionaire. We'll celebrate with you and use your experience to inspire others to do the same. Love what you hear on the podcast. Looking for more great White Coat Investor content? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch video recordings of our podcast, short snippets of financial tips explained succinctly by me and others, and deep dives into topics for more in depth learning. You can even learn all about real estate with webinars from our real estate partners. Check out all this and more@YouTube.com thewhitecoatinvestor you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We're here to help. See you next week on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.