Winter Break Reflection

The majority of the CE I focused on this semester has been either paying off my student loans or the financial matters regarding myself and a future practice I would like to own. I had an experience this winter break that peaked my interest in practice design and management. I didn’t write about it because I forgot about the ‘critical incident” I reffed a hockey game with a Fargo dentist, Dr. Jeremy Wehrman, and we discussed practice management, school loans, and finances in general. He invited me to tour his office after the game and we ended up talking for hours. He designed the practice entirely by himself with the sole goal to make patients comfortable.

I recently made a connection between a Lunch and Learn presented by the Disability

The State or North Dakota has a $50,000 loan repayment program for rural practicing dentists. Minnesota has a similar program for a $30,000 repayment. In addition to the rural practicing grants, military reserve programs have financial benefits in exchange for joining. The workload is giving checkups for 1 weekend a month plus a 2 week engagement once a year. I particularly found interest in the Navy Reserve programs. I went to their Lunch and Learns and spoke to the recruiter on different occasions to see if it was right for me. I would be able to work in a practice full time so that I could qualify for the state programs previously mentioned so I could definitely do both programs while fulfilling the requirements. Financial compensation for the Navy Reserve includes: payment for my time; potential for loan forgiveness depending on length of service ($20k per year of service); monthly living stipend; payment of CE; and military insurance benefits. For non-selfish reasons, it is a great way to give back to my country, as military service has a long history in my

The presenter leaned upon 10 to 20 year loan forgiveness programs as a large argument for debt management. I felt that this was more of a pitch/incentive to have dentists work in community health clinics. In terms of math, you will pay more money in the extended loan repayment time along with money and time lost investing your earnings. A Gifford financial presentation stressed the “cost” of waiting to invest. These are sums that can cost you over 1 million dollars in lost retirement funds. I would find it difficult to find money to invest while you are still paying off loans. For example, the cost of extending a $100k loan with an 8% interest rate from 10 years to 20 years will cost you approximately $50k extra. That is half of what the original loan was. These values will be much higher once we have paid for all of dental school so these financial products just don’t make sense to me. If paying more in interest doesn’t convince you, than the lost investment earnings will. With an initial investment of $10k and an addition of $1K monthly over 20 years with a modest growth of 6%, you will earn about $560k. If you wait to invest by those same 10 years you extend your loan repayment, you will only make about $195K. That is a $365K difference. The longer you are in debt, the more money you will lose in the long