Join VIN Foundation Board Members Dr. Matt Holland and Dr. Tony Bartels in a discussion with new veterinary graduate and practicing veterinarian Dr. Shiloh Landskov about strategies in paying off student loan debt. Is it best to pay it off as fast as possible? Is there value in choosing an income-driven repayment plan? Is a budget really necessary? How does student loan debt compare to credit card debt when it comes to repayment? Listen in to learn about veterinary student loans from three different perspectives, and advice on best strategies based on your situation.
GUEST BIOS:
Dr. Tony Bartels
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA graduated in 2012 from the Colorado State University combined MBA/DVM program and is a VIN Foundation Board Member and Student Debt Expert, and an employee of the Veterinary Information Network (VIN). He and his wife, a small-animal internal medicine specialist practicing in Denver, have more than $400,000 in veterinary-school debt that they manage using federal income-driven repayment plans. By necessity (and now obsession), his professional activities include researching and speaking on veterinary-student debt, providing guidance to colleagues on loan-repayment strategies and contributing to VIN Foundation resources. Beyond debt, his professional interests include small- and exotic-animal practice. When he’s not staring holes into his colleagues’ student-loan data, Tony enjoys fly fishing, ice hockey, camping and exploring Colorado with his wife, Audra, and their two rescued canines, Addi and Maggie.
Dr. Shiloh Landskov
Dr. Shiloh Landskov is a new graduate of the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, Class of 2020. She is a Minnesota native, and currently works in general practice and emergency medicine. Her interests include emergency medicine, surgery, and leadership within veterinary medicine. She currently lives with her husband and 6 pets in central Minnesota.
LINKS AND INFORMATION:
- VIN Foundation Student Debt Center
- VIN Foundation WikiDebt
- VIN Foundation Webinars
- Student Aid
- Stay up to date with VIN Foundation updates
- Personalized Assistance available via the special Student Debt Message Board areas:
- VIN member (including veterinary students)
- Non-VIN member (veterinarians and pre-veterinary students)
Email VIN Foundation: [email protected]
Get updates to stay tuned for the VIN Foundation webinars on student debt.
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TRANSCRIPT
Intro
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: Every year, I’ve reassessed my loans. I’ve reuploaded my data to the VIN foundation’s Student Debt Center for the calculation to simulate what my best options are moving forward. I think the best piece of advice that I’ve learned over the past year or multiple years is that you should never just pick a plan and set that as your only plan moving forward, because your salary will change, your situation will change, and your long-term and short-term goals will change. So that’s been my most helpful thing to keep in mind because your strategy may change, too.
Meet the Hosts and Guests
Jordan Benshea: That is Dr. Shiloh Landskov, a recent grad and practicing veterinarian and this is the VIN foundation’s Veterinary Pulse podcast. I’m Jordan Benshea, Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Join me and our co-host and VIN Foundation Board member, Dr. Matt Holland, as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics, and share stories. Stories that connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible by individuals like you who donate to the VIN Foundation. Thank you. Please check the Episode Notes for BIOS, links, and information mentioned.
Matt Holland, DVM: Alright, thank you for joining us.
Loan Repayment Journeys
Matt Holland, DVM: This time we have a couple of guests and the three of us are all representatives from the VIN Foundation in one form or the other, so we’ve got the VIN Foundation A team today; a regular guest, Dr. Tony Bartels you might recognize and a new guest or maybe a returning guest from a while ago, Dr. Shiloh Landskov, a recent graduate. I will let the two of them introduce themselves. We’re going to focus today on our loan repayment journey, so as we do introductions, I would like to talk about when we graduated around, with about how much debt, etc. Since I’m going to be participating in this conversation today, I will kick us off with introductions. My name is Matt Holland. I graduated from Illinois in 2017 with around $200,000 in debt, and that was all from veterinary school, no undergrad debt. I had already paid that off. My wife [we got married in the last year of veterinary school] had around $70,000 and that was split up between undergrad and graduate school. I’ll pass it over to Tony.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: All right, I’m Tony Bartels. I graduated from Colorado State’s combined MBA DVM program in 2012. I finished with around $140,000 of student debt and then I married a veterinarian, also from Colorado State, who had a little over $220,000 of student debts. She’s a small animal internal medicine practitioner in Denver, where we live. I would say 99% of our student debt was from veterinary school. I had a little bit from my undergraduate education at Purdue University, but the lion’s share of our student loans were from paying for our veterinary education.
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: I am Dr. Shiloh Landskov, and I am a 2020 grad from the University of Illinois. I graduated with around $380,000 of debt. A lot of it is from undergrad as well, because I did go to a private undergrad and didn’t do a whole lot of paying off of that. They both combined to a whopping almost 400k of debt together, but luckily, my husband did not go to vet school, so we spared some debt on his end.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, and I guess I should add that my wife is also not a veterinarian, just for context. So, you hear that we have three different stories, different journeys, and different decisions to make. Also, obviously a lot of similarities when it comes to things that we have to consider. I would like to draw on that several times during this conversation as a reminder that everybody’s situation is different at the individual level. When we talk about things you should be doing or shouldn’t be doing, or the right way to do things or the wrong way to do things, there’s a lot of variation at the individual level. That’s why we have three different people at different stages of their journey to talk about the same kinds of decisions.
Different Debt Repayment Strategies
Matt Holland, DVM: The idea to have this discussion came from a conversation around the idea of paying off debt as fast as you can, and specifically comparing paying off something like credit card debt as fast as you can versus paying off student debt as fast as you can. To start the conversation, I will say that there was a while [and this time extended to pass when I started veterinary school], there was a long time when I thought that paying debt as fast as you can was generally a good rule of thumb, because debt is generally bad. So, you generally want to get rid of it sooner than later. I don’t think that way anymore, but we’ll get into the nuances of how that changed, and why, and the differences between different kinds of debt. That’s where I’ll start with my thoughts around that topic.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yes, I think that is certainly a common belief and for good reason. I mean, generally, when you borrow any kind of money, whether it’s credit card debt, student loans, a mortgage for your home, or a practice loan there’s the idea it’s really not yours until you’ve paid off the debt that you incurred to have that purchase. There’s definitely some good logic behind that, but when it comes to student debt, it’s a little bit different, and significantly different recently, because of all the different methods that are available to pay back your student debt. So, now we have to start separating those things out, it’s not sufficient to just lump them all into the same bucket, because they have very different repayment methods. Which means we have to analyze the repayment strategies separate from each other to see which one is going to fit best in our given circumstances.
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: Yes, I definitely feel like there’s a huge stigma around debt itself and between different generations of students. There’s a lot of different opinions out there on how to pay it back, too.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, if we get into all these different opinions on how to pay it back, or why to pay it back, why not to, when to, and when not to, and something I mentioned earlier, the right way to do it versus the wrong way, can we start with things that we definitely should be doing or shouldn’t be doing? As an example, if you’re a vet student listening to this and you’re thinking should you be paying off the interest that’s accruing on these loans while you’re still a student? I’ll ask Tony, is there a hard yes or hard no, a hard and fast rule that you should or should not be doing, you should or should not be paying off interest in school?
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yeah, generally speaking. Again, I would say you should not be paying the interest off while you’re in school, because most people who are doing that are using their student loan funds to pay back the interest on their student loans. That is not helping you gain any ground at all. If you have the ability, the excess funds to make payments to your interest while you’re borrowing as a student, then you probably borrowed too much. You borrowed more than you needed. It’s always better to borrow less than it is to just pay the interest associated with your student loans because the principal is what generates the interest. If you’re only paying the interest, the principal is still there, and it’s still going to continue to generate interest. There’re probably better things that you can do with that money as you’re living like a student than paying the interest while you’re in school. Borrowing less would be one of those but having an emergency fund would be a close second, so you don’t have to incur credit card debt, which is also quite common among veterinary students.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, there’s a lot in there. I want to touch on some of it in a bit. I will also want to compare and contrast where somebody like Shiloh might be, because Tony and I set up our repayment before COVID existed, and we’re at this different part of our journey versus Shiloh, who graduated in 2020. The class of 2021 is also in this very different place than you or I were ever in, so can either of you talk about considering things that you would do or wouldn’t do because of that? I don’t know if that’s too vague, but I know we were talking before we started recording, Tony said there was something you were getting re-worried about, well, that piqued my interest.
Impact of the Pandemic on Loan Repayment
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: I guess what I’m worried about or re-worried about is the fact that there’s now two classes of recent veterinarians who have no experience with what student loan repayment looks like. That’s because of the pandemic forbearance period we’ve been in and that started March 13, 2020. It shut the interest off, it shut the payments off. It also allowed those of us who are using an income driven repayment strategy to also still receive forgiveness credit during this time. That is due to end on January 31, 2022. That is scheduled to be the end of the pandemic forbearance period, which means those of us who have not had their loans in repayment before are going to start to experience repayment in February of 2022. It has given people some license to not have to worry about their student debt. In other avenues that may give them a sense of, “well, I can just throw a bunch of money at it now, while the interest is off, and see if I can put a dent in it long term.” Both of those are, unfortunately, short term misfires, because you really have to think about your student debt in a more long-term strategy to see how exactly it’s going to play out in repayment to know whether or not you should not be making payments now, or you should be making payments now, or you should be focusing on other areas of your overall financial wellness.
Matt Holland, DVM: That’s great hindsight is 2020 perspective from the expert, and so Shiloh, as somebody who’s living this you could speak for some of your colleagues that you are interacting with, and you know their stories, too, but what are people like you experiencing? What kind of decisions are you making and thought processes are you having around that?
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: There’s definitely a lot to unpack there. I think even between our three stories, and then going further and saying, even between 2021 and 2020 grads, we have completely different mindsets, because we had totally different experiences. With 2020 grads, sure some of our clinicals were canceled or moved, but really, we were only affected in the last few months of our schooling and then immediately into the workforce. We had already had a plan moving forward and then got this fun surprise or a nice surprise as we graduated that, well, you don’t need to worry about your payments for the first however many months. Really, to us that didn’t change our plan, because we already knew at least in my experience that our income based repayment plan would already have me at zero interest or not necessarily that, but $0 payments and so it was nice to have an added little zero interest on there. The 2021 grads were mainly focused on getting their experience and trying to survive fourth year during a pandemic as well. So, I feel like they definitely put the loan stuff on the back burner, and they didn’t have as much hand holding, per se, or at least as much guidance as I felt that the 2020 class did up to graduation. They were all just trying to struggle through the middle of a pandemic. It’s hard for me to say what the 2021 grad experience is as far as strategies, but I know that a lot of my peers, we’ve been enjoying the 0% interest and honestly having more questions from it, while also appreciating that we can take a little bit of a break as far as giving payments. I know that there are a lot of people having questions. Should I be using this time to pay it down quick? Should I use this money for other things? Like Tony was saying, should I be putting it towards payments for my house or my car? So, I think it’s definitely super individual on what the actual answers are to that, and I think a lot of people are frozen almost. As Tony was saying, a little bit re-worried about are people going to maybe just ignore the loans because we haven’t had to think about them for a while? How do we get people to really analyze their strategy and figure out what their plan is moving forward in a time where we don’t even know what’s going to happen in the next six months?
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes.
Individual Financial Decisions
Matt Holland, DVM: I think this is circling around how these differences express themselves in individual plans. So, I’ll use myself as an example. If I were only focused on accruing the most wealth, I wouldn’t have moved. Well, because of the pandemic, I was living with my parents and saving a lot of money. Then I moved out because it was a quality-of-life decision. I would do that 10 out of 10 times, but somebody else who wanted more money than I’m currently saving, or wanting to save more than I am, would have stayed if that was their primary interest. You have to know to the extent that you are able, what is important to you, so you can know where to channel the different parts of your budget. I wonder what either of you think about that, as it relates to these things we’re talking about when I hear Shiloh say, “Should I be paying this off or saving up for that?” That word ‘should’ makes me think a lot of that is up to the individual. What should you be pursuing is up to you on a lot of levels. So, yeah, I wonder what either of you think about that?
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Well, I would say that, yes, a lot of this is up to individual decision, but you have to start [and you alluded to it] with a budget. Just like clinically, we have to start with a physical exam of our patients and we have to evaluate the empirical evidence that we can collect, to make informed decisions. The same thing happens with finance. We can come in with a preconceived notion that I want to pay my debt back as fast as possible, whatever the debt is, but then the next step in that thought process has to be a numerical analysis. You have to do the basic physical exam to know what paying your debt as fast as possible even means for you. You can start with the individual choice and how you want to unpack that plan, but then you have to start putting the empirical evidence in place to execute it and that starts with a budget. It starts with looking at your student loans and knowing which repayment plans you’re currently enrolled in and which ones you’re available to use and what your monthly payment is going to be or could be when repayment starts back up. How does that fit in your budget? The people I see that struggle the most are the ones that before they even know what their budget looks like, they say, “Well, I’m going to pay $3,000 to 4,000 a month towards my student loans.” Alright, well, what is that going to do? Is that going to actually pay your balance off? How long is that going to take and what is that going to do your budget? Which means you’re likely sacrificing other areas. How long will that sacrifice last? It’s all wonderful to have ideas of how you’d like to pay back your student loans and try to stick with something that fits in an as fast as possible realm, but you have to actually do the analysis to see if that’s something that can even be financially feasible for your circumstances.
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: I think that in school, at least, we had a lot of discussion between students.
Choosing Your Repayment Strategy
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: Are you going to pay it down quick? Are you going to do the forgiveness plan? In the beginning, not a lot of us had much to base it off of besides the fact that we would discuss what our lifestyle was going to be like. If you want to pay it down quick, people tend to mention the fact that they just want the debt off their shoulders, they don’t want to think about it. That’s, like you said, Matt, a quality-of-life decision that could be different from person to person. Other people may want to buy a house, have children, travel, or do certain things that you would need to take that from your budget, inherently taking that out of your repayment budget. So, it’s definitely dependent on the person what the right thing is or what you should do. Not necessarily a set plan that everyone should follow.
Matt Holland, DVM: I don’t know if Tony did this on purpose, but I feel like it was a perfect segue into that’s where the rubber meets the road, is getting anxious about all of these important things. I’m not saying that getting anxious is overreacting, but when you start to notice that then look at it and make it a physical exam and approach it systematically that way.
The Role of VIN Foundation
Matt Holland, DVM: The reason I said I don’t know if Tony did this on purpose or not, but the best if not the only way I know how to do that is through the VIN Foundation. I did that for my own plan when I was a new grad, and I set up a meeting with Tony and then posted my situation on the message board. I’m putting myself in the shoes of the listener and thinking, well, okay, I hear what Shiloh was saying. I can figure out what’s important to me like quality-of-life things, and I hear what Tony’s saying, and I want to put those things into a physical exam and figure out my budget and what goes where. I’m tying those two things together by saying, I recommend if you’re in this spot where you’re not quite sure what to do, use the VIN Foundation, go to the Student Debt Center, and start a conversation there with you and your colleagues. That is a tried-and-true way in my experience to get the help you need.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yes, it really does.
Comprehensive Financial Wellness
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: It starts with that initial physical exam, which is taking stock and then what we call your student debt income and signalment. That is going to help you uncover all of those items that you should be looking into when you’re building your overall financial wellness plan and your student loan repayment strategy. What is your student debt balance? What is it comprised of? Is it predominantly federal student loans or are there private student loans in there, too? Do you have credit card debt? If you’re employed, do you have access to employer sponsored retirement plans, and health insurance or health savings accounts? All of those things that are going to factor into your overall financial health have to be considered so we can then start helping to prioritize those items that you should be considering ahead of an aggressive student loan repayment strategy.
Prioritizing Financial Health
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: I’d love the idea of starting with the I have an idea or a plan to pay my loans back as fast as possible, but if you’re leaving other critical areas of your financial wellness off the table to do so, you may not be doing your overall financial health all that much in the long run. There are certain things to me that are just nonnegotiable. You don’t forego saving for retirement in favor of paying more towards your student loans. You don’t forego having adequate health insurance, liability insurance, or life insurance if you have a family before you start paying extra on your student loans. You don’t forgo an emergency fund. You don’t forego credit card debt. There are certain things that you really have to start prioritizing, even though that student debt number might be the biggest one on the ledger. There are other areas of your financial wellness that rise above what that student debt is actually doing to your financial wellness.
Matt Holland, DVM: Therein lies the “What should I be thinking about and what should I be aware of?” I think all the things you just said you wouldn’t forego; those are the things that we talk about when we say they are up to the individual. Every individual has to think about them, too. That’s why when I say it’s the best if not the only place to get that kind of help is because these people, like the three of us, have been sharing our stories in that space on that message board for how many years, now, Tony? I don’t think there’s any other place that has that collection of people who have been in the position that you’ll be in or that you might already be in if you’ve already graduated?
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yes, what almost been 10 years now. There’s a huge collection of information and experiences and what to do, and what not to do advice that lives in the VIN Foundation and VIN Student Debt message board area.
Personal Experiences and Advice
Matt Holland, DVM: Shiloh, on what Tony just said, like what to do and some advice, what do you or people in your position think about, do you have anything that you haven’t mentioned, or that you’d like to emphasize that you already had mentioned, anything that you would like to impart on either students or recent grads that you have found that gives you peace of mind in this area? Something you do, or something you don’t do?
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: One thing to note is that I’ve always considered myself to be one of the students that really looked into my loans, and at least wanted to learn more about them, how to pay them, and different strategies, because as a person with anxiety about loans, it definitely helped me to understand them more, the process of what my options were and not necessarily the best way to go, but the best way for me in that moment. One thing to emphasize for me is that every year throughout school, and this past year since graduating, I’ve reassessed my loans. I’ve re uploaded my data to the VIN Foundation Student Debt Center for the calculation to simulate what my best options are moving forward. I think the best piece of advice that I’ve learned over the past year or multiple years is that you should never just pick a plan and set that as your only plan moving forward, because your salary will change, your situation will change, and your long-term and short-term goals will change. That’s been my most helpful thing to keep in mind, because your strategy may change, too. I think that’s important to consider. You can set some things and forget them, but I think your strategy should always be on your mind. You should consider both short-term and long-term goals. For me that was buying a house, replacing my old broken car, and improving my quality-of-life in the short-term, but also, obviously, considering the long-term with retirement plans, savings, emergency funds, and all the things that Tony has already mentioned.
Matt Holland, DVM: Great advice there. I would agree with that. I would add I check for peace of mind my credit report. I don’t ever expect to see anything surprising there, but that’s also because I check it regularly enough that I now have that peace of mind.
The Importance of Budgeting
Matt Holland, DVM: I know we’ve touched on budget, but I noticed a big decrease in my own anxiety on this one. I made a budget, and even when the budget wasn’t going as planned, I was like, “Oh, you know, I’m spending more than I expected to.” I still felt a lot better about the whole process, because I could identify what was happening instead of just having vague anxiety.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Budgeting is eye opening. I know, I’ve been there. So many people tell you you have to have a budget and here I am, more of these people telling you, you have to have a budget. It’s true. You cannot manage what you don’t measure. It’s amazing what you’ll find in there, if you just start tracking your income and expenses and where your money goes. I am shocked at how much as a veterinarian, we personally spend on our two dogs. Shocked. Until we sat down and actually laid it out, I really had no idea how much it was.
Matt Holland, DVM: I couldn’t agree more.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yes, it is amazing and not that that even led to us changing that amount in any appreciable manner going forward but knowing that is powerful. You have to admit it, you’ll find any number of other areas in your budget that meet that same level.
Matt Holland, DVM: Exactly. I just speak for myself, I don’t know if other people see it this way, but I had the same experience with my own two. We have two cats, and it didn’t change what our plan was, you’re still going to do what we’re going to do and get dentals and everything, but it’s like Sudoku. It’s like, well, once you know that that fits, then it makes it easier to see where the rest of everything fits. That for me was the decrease in anxiety?
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: I track my income and expenses and everything. I recently put together a spreadsheet of my and my husband’s salaries, our loans, our debt, car payments, insurances that we pay for [rent or home insurance and life insurance], all of our savings, and investments. Even just having all of those in one place, even though I’m not changing anything about what is going on there, definitely helps me see any holes that I need to fill. Do we both have our Roth IRAs maxed out, or things like that, that it can help you visualize what’s going on from afar, rather than one by one. Trying to scramble through life every day and feel like an adult with a Roth IRA and a retirement account, just having it all in one place. Also, having all of your student loans next to that is really helpful to see what payments you need to make on other things, and not only hone in on the student loan debt.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Absolutely, I think that’s outstanding. I think the real value of that, too, is the percentage that each of those items occupies in your budget, because that’s when you can really start to do some adjusting. When you start to see how much of my income is going towards short- and long-term investments or how much of my income is actually going to my student loan payments. Then if you do get like a lot of veterinarians paid on production, if you get a production bonus once a month, once a quarter, or at the end of the year or something, then you can look at your budget too and see if I want to allocate this production bonus, how best I can do that. You can use your budget and generally how those percentages of items occupy your budget to allocate that production pay bonus as well.
Outro
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: The thing I wanted to say [I’m going back on what Matt asked], what I wanted to emphasize is that once you take a look at everything, it can be super overwhelming, especially if you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing with it. We didn’t graduate with a finance degree or anything like that. Consulting with certified financial planners is definitely one aspect of that, but also once you have all of what you have written down, it’s okay to walk away for a couple of weeks. Let yourself calm down and then come back to it, change one thing at a time, or just think about what you want to do moving forward. It doesn’t all have to be done at once and I worry that people will think about it, get super overwhelmed, and then push it away for six months, and then repeat in six months.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, I was going to say that one thing that budgeting helped me with is not getting any more cats, which is only a half joke. Just to repeat, it does help you see where things fit in. But it’s only half a joke because I would always get more cats. I think my wife is the reason we only have two, not our budget. So, unless either of you have anything to add, I think it’s been a great discussion. Our plan is to try to turn this into a blog post, too. So, keep your eyes peeled for that. Thanks for joining us. I’ll let Shiloh or Tony add anything they’d like.
Shiloh Landskov, DVM: Oh, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed talking about this stuff and just making awareness that you don’t have to know everything, and there’s not always a right answer, but as long as you’re thinking about it, that’s doing the right thing.
Tony Bartels, DVM, MBA: Yes, absolutely, I feel that you do also have some bonus time here to work through everything. Again, we are in that pandemic student loan forbearance period that’ll last a few more months here. Take advantage of that opportunity to start building that budget and start looking at how your loans fit into that when repayment does restart and that it’s not going to blow a hole in any areas of your financial wellness overall going forward. If you have questions, reach out. We’ve got a lot of experience, particularly with dealing with the ins and outs of student loans and trying to help you wrap your head around the start of a budget and planning and working some of those priorities into your budget going forward.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, exactly what Tony said. If you need us, you know where to reach us, find us, email us. Hope to see you on the message boards. Thanks again for taking the time to listen our conversation.
Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the Episode Notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINfoundation.org. and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.