Show Me the Money!

I really love being a physical therapist.  It's funny to say that now, because I didn't know this was the right career path for me.  I never said I wanted to be a PT when I was growing up.  I applied to the PT program at UConn as an undergraduate - but was also considering several other options.  When I was accepted, I set up a meeting with the program director and the dean and was told that I could not continue my role as a manager for the UConn Women's Basketball Team if I wanted to be in the PT program - the two were just not compatible.  I withdrew from the PT program.  #BasketballIsLife

Anyways, a few years later, I was again at a cross roads.  My basketball life was going in a direction that didn't really fit me and I felt like I was meant to do more for the athletes than travel arrangements and video taping practices.  There's nothing wrong with those jobs - some people love doing that - it just wasn't what I was meant to do.  So I applied to PT School again.  Got accepted again.  And back to UConn I went.  I didn't know it was the best career decision for me until I started my job at Seattle Children's Hospital.  Now I'm certain it was the right path.  Despite the cost. 

Free photo 3643050 © Melissa Evanko - Dreamstime.com

I work in an office with a lot of younger clinicians balanced by a few more experienced ones who share their experiences and wisdom generously.  Those more experienced clinicians, however, do not typically share the same burden of student loan debt that many of the rest of us face.  I've briefly discussed my student loan payment approach here where I celebrated my achievement of getting my student loan balance under $100,000 from my starting balance around $124,000.  In that November 2018 post, I talked about some of Dave Ramsey's principles that I had applied to my payment plan to try to move the balance down.  That post was six months ago.  I'm currently sitting at a balance of $86,500, and, thanks to Facebook, I recently learned about Fitbux.  

If you're a new graduate physical therapist - I'm going to 100% recommend you reach out to them as soon as you know how much your total debt looks like from school.  You may have accumulated your loans at a much higher rate than you can get by making a change.  I waited almost five years to do this - who knows how much more money I could have saved if I did it sooner.  If  you're not yet done with school or you've been out for a bit longer, I'll also recommend you connect with them, just to see if they have any recommendations.  It only takes 30 minutes.  Here's how it works:

Fitbux is a company run by Joseph Reinke, a CPA (certified public accountant)- who actually was the one that posted a comment on Facebook in response to questions about mountains of student loan debt- and whose wife is a physical therapist.  They've combined their finance knowledge with their knowledge of physical therapy income and high student loan debt and created this company.  Fitbux offers FREE CONSULTATIONS to anyone (physical therapist or other careers) to assess their student loans to make recommendations on payment plans, approach for payment, consolidation, refinancing, and - I'm sure - many other things, though I don't know finance so I probably don't understand those.  

Until now, I had been doing a pretty good job of paying off my student loans and making a dent in them, but I still felt like it was a huge burden and had hoped something could make this a little better.  I had asked my own accountant about recommendations regarding consolidation and refinancing in the past and was advised not to do either.  Perhaps those were the best choices at the time, but my consultation with FitBux showed me that I could lower my average interest rate from 6.73% to a fixed loan at 3.75%.  My FitBux consultant calculated that I could now be done in five years and pay at least $8,000 less than the plan I was previously on.   They even found me a loan company that offers a bigger discount in interest rate to APTA Members! Yes, I'm paying a little bit more money per month than I was previously committed to in order to get that low interest rate, but we're talking a 3% decrease!  If I keep making extra payments like I had been - I could be done even sooner!

I'll repeat here that I'm not advising anyone to refinance or make financial changes without some professional advice.  They explained a lot of things to me that I thought I understood - but now understand much better.  I will advise everyone to take these free consultations.  FitBux explained to me that they get paid if you choose to refinance through one of the companies they point you to - and there are many options.  So, since they advised me to check what rates I would be eligible for through one of the companies they work with, and I then had this new company buy my loans for a new rate - FitBux will get a kick back from this arrangement.  The loan companies pay them so we can have this free service and I didn't have to commit to anything - but FitBux supported me through the entire transition of my loans.  FitBux also offers a tracker that you can purchase which will track your student loan payments to make sure they're being applied to your loans in the way in which you intend them to be paid.  So that's how they can offer this service for free.  

And who doesn't like free stuff?  Check it out.  Worst case scenario - you're already in the best student loan debt situation you can find yourself in and nothing changes.  Best case scenario - you save a boat load of money!