$186,000.

That’s the number of just my (Tyler) student loans. I still wonder, if school was only supposed to cost $90,000 (estimated on their website), how did I get here? Additional cost for books? Housing? Honestly, at this point, I’m not even sure, but the sight of this loan upon graduation was more than I had ever made, owed, or even thought about until finishing PT school. And the scary part? Kari owes nearly an identical amount…It’s safe to say we were in debt.

At the time of writing this, this month, March 7th, 2022, is my last payment. I began working as a physical therapist on August 8th, 2016. That’s 5 years and 7 months. While that seemed like an eternity, it was much quicker than the original 10 year default repayment program they expect you to pay off this astronomical amount of debt. There is a bit more to this story, so I’ll jump to the beginning and share why having so much in student loans may have led us (Kari and I) to the greatest career choice we could have made.

where it all started

By August of 2016, we had just graduated from Loma Linda University in June, studied, taken and passed our PT boards in July, and began our careers as physical therapists. We secured jobs in outpatient orthopedics (Tyler) and outpatient pediatrics (Kari), both our preferred setting and only 10 minutes away from each other. Oh, and did I mention, we were also planning our wedding, which was taking placed in two short months in my parents backyard. Busy lives at that time and a special thanks for all the family support and good friends like Andrew and Chanel who were more than generous with their time.

In the process of working this first few months, we couldn’t be happier. Finally having income, and to us, two brand new therapists who finally were making money, we couldn’t believe the freedom we now had. Less studying, free time on weekends, and having some extra cash for those weekend adventures. Unfortunately, we did realize loan payment would begin at the 6 month mark after graduation, and we quickly realized that owing as much as we did, the monthly expected payment was actually not feasible with our current income.

Time for a math lesson:

$186,000 roughly came down to paying $2,000/month over a 10 year repayment plan. I believe this is the default repayment plan when you graduate unless you decide to apply and switch to another plan. Seeing how both Kari and I owed nearly identical amounts upon graduation, that meant we were expected to pay $4,000/month in student loan repayment. Um…. WHAT? I wish financial classes were mandatory while in school, because the pay to debt ratio for PTs isn’t exactly great.

So, here we are owing $4,000/month, and making a combined total of approx $6,600/month (net).

Great, so we have $2,600 hundred dollars to live off of every month for the next 10 years. Doable? Yeah, of course. Keep living at my parents house, hope I don’t need a new car, and save for a house, plus gas to drive to work. I’m in no way trying to make our situation sound worse than it was. We have great family support and there are people that have it financially much worse, surviving on much less, as well as don’t have the career opportunity that we have made for ouselves. Having said that, no one wants to be in debt forever and this post is designed for the healthcare worker who is finding themselves in massive debt and looking for a way out. So began our search for a solution.

First Step

We quickly changed own loan re-payment plan to income driven.

Kari fortunately worked for a non-profit clinic, therefore she was elegible for the government loan forgiveness program. This program is based off the income driven plan, however, after 10 years of qualified payments, the government would theoretically forgive your outstanding debt. I unfortunately did not qualify for this program, and would be making payments for the next 25 years on the income driven repayment plan, at which point the government would then forgive the remainder of my loans. Some may say it was a long shot, but it was our best option at the time.

Having made the switch, our loan payments dropped significantly to approx $1,000/month combined. It was a huge stress relief and we could begin saving some money and planing our lives together. You know, typical life. Buy a house, start a family, all the “normal” stuff.

At this point, we were about 1 year into working as therapists, still living with my parents and saving what we could for a house. We also had to buy a new car, because Kari’s broke down unexpectedly. We had quite a ways to go to have a downpayment for a house, and even with the potential to purchase a house, we realized we would be basically buying just to have another large monthly payment. Between student loans, a potential future house payment, and our current income, we were still far from meeting our financial goals and anticipated what would be a very long and drawn out loan repayment period.

In comes travel therapy…

In the middle of all this, we began to learn about travel therapy, and aside from a few recruiters trying to convince us at job fairs during PT school, we had never actually considered pursuing travel therapy until meeting a traveler. Kari happened to know a traveling PTA who worked at the same clinic, and the stories she would share about life experiences and getting to travel the country while working captured our attention. Aside from getting to hear about travel PT from a true traveler’s perspective, a dinner with our good friends is what truly pushed us into what would become our current careers. You see, our friends had recently been to Alaska for a vacation and shared what it was like, and the adventures they had. By coincidence, we had recently seen travel jobs in Alaska, and explained travel therapy to them. It was their reaction, the excitement in them and stating they would jump at the chance if their careers would allow travel, that made us finally realize, we have to give this a shot.

A few months later, having talked to many recruiters, completed multiple skills checklists, and looking for potential jobs, we settled on our very first assignment, ALASKA!

Slaughter Gulch Trail, Coopers Landing Alaska

Not only we were going to work in Alaska, we were going to drive up the Alaskan highway! We figured if it’s going to be an adventure, lets make it a good one. I don’t want to spend too much time going into the amazingness that is Alaska and the Alaskan Highway, but if you’re interested, check out a few separate blog posts here. Driving the Alaskan Highway and Preparing for the Alaskan Highway.

Let’s get back to paying off student loans.

Our very first assignment didn’t change a whole lot regarding our student loans. We maintained our income driven repayment plans, and if anything, technically loan repayment time increased as Kari no longer qualified for the 10 year loan forgiveness program with working for a non profit. That means she would now be on the same 25 year plan that I was on. However, we now had a higher income and had increased our saving ability.

With this first contract, we didn’t truly understand negotiation of pay, or how travel therapy worked. I read multiple blogs, gathered the information I could and we took a leap of faith. Ultimately, we knew it was higher paying than our current jobs, we had good family support, and if all else failed, we could return home in hopes of finding permanent jobs again.

Throughout assignments 1-4 (Alaska, Louisiana, California, and Massachusetts) we contemplated the idea of paying off our loans and about midway of assignment 3 (California) we changed my payment plan from income driven (approx $700/month over anticipated 25 years), to the standard 10 year repayment program (approx $2,000/month). We felt with the extra we had been consistently making, this would allow at least one of our loans to be completed in 10 years.

Wow, 10 years. Just saying that makes it seem like forever, but we were excited. Little did we know, we would find Massachussetts to be the turning point for all our financial decisions moving forward. I’m not sure what about Massachusetts changed out minds financially, but possibly the contract or the family we were staying with or the fact that we were renting a room and our pay to rent ratio was good. Either way, I think this is where we finally hit our stride as travel therapists. .

Making the decision to pay off our loans as quickly as possible

By this point, we were beginning to understand negotiation skills and what is possible in a contract. How to request time off more efficiently, how to utilize extensions of a contract as a means for higher pay, and various other tricks of the trade allowed for a smoother travel therapy career. I think all of this, in combination with our savings in both retirement form and personal savings, made us feel more confident in our effort to pay more towards our student loans. So, near the completion of our Massachusetts contract, 20 months into our travel careers, we decided we would max out as much as we could to our loans, with a goal of paying them off as fast as possible.

One down side to waiting so long to decide if we would continue on income driven repayment verse paying off our loans, is that interest continues to accrue on the income driven repayment plan. It’s an unfortunate situation. Yes, income driven may be the only option you have financially, but then you potentially may never pay off your loan if it’s as high as ours was. Interest would accrue at a faster rate than we were paying, and by the time we decided to finally make the switch, we had a lot of capitalized interest.

Desite this, don’t let that deter you from thinking it’s impossible to adjust your plans like we did. I have found it challenging at times to accept where we are and enjoy life, usually getting caught up in the stress of the moment and not seeing what I have right in front of me, but we were able to take the steps necessary to reach our goals despite having a late start.

Spencer sun bathing on Cape Cod, MA. Doesn’t he resemble the lion statue? I think so.

It’s not all about work, we have fun too

While our loans have continued to take time, we have now been able to work in many amazing places including (all listed in order), Alaska, Louisiana, Central California, Cape Cod Massachusetts, Northern California, Texas, Maine, Northern California (coastal), San Francisco, and now Idaho. That’s 10 assignments, spanning from November 1st 2017 - Current March 4th, 2022 and still going.

What happened after our loan repayment adjustment in Massachusetts?

June 2019. That’s what I consider when we effectively can say we began paying off the large total of $186,000. Up until that point, nothing had changed, only interest being accrued and payments that felt like they were doing nothing because our total continued to grow, not shrink.

Over the course of several assignments since Massachusetts, we made adjustments. We started by honing in our monthly budget, writing down our monthly income, calculating what our spending and saving goals were, and then budgeting for our loans accordingly. That has truly helped ensure we stay on track and allows us to see where our money goes each month.

Each assignment was different. We always made a goal of paying well above our minimum monthly payment for my loan ($2,000/month to complete in 10 years) and Kari’s, we would ensure to pay enough to limit the accrual of interest and slowly work on the principal balance.

Financially, what does that look like?

What started as only a few thousand dollars back in June 2019, has now continued to grow. As a travel therapy couple, combined we are putting $6,000-$8,000/month towards our loans. And don’t even get me started on that number. First, it’s insane that I could even say we are able to put that much towards loans. A few years ago, I would never have believed as a therapist that would be possible. That’s more than we were making combined at our first permanent jobs in 2016. It also blows my mind that instead of investing, buying a house, or being able to afford a new car, that’s what we are doing to be debt free. But we did invest in ourselves by going to PT school and unfortunately at this point, it is what it is.

Kari on a long horn steer in Fort Worth Texas. This thing moved about as quickly as we did paying off our loans.

At the time of writing this, my last payment is this month, March 7th, 2022, and I began working as a physical therapist on August 8th, 2016. 5 years and 7 months. This was my opening line to start this blog post, but I want to make an adjustment. It didn’t really take 5 years and 7 months. Interest was accruing, adding to our principal balance and therefore our loans were growing not shrinking until June 2019. Therefore, 33 months (2 years and 9 months) is what it took for two traveling physical therapists to work, budget, save like hell, and make a difference in our lives.

The feeling is bittersweet, because while an amazing feat in and of itself, we still have Kari’s entire loan. It’s also, and I’ll say unfortunately, nearly identical to what mine started at. However, I think we will accomplish it even faster than our current record of 2 years and 9 months. We did it once, how hard can a second time be haha.

was it all worth it?

So is travel therapy worth it financially? I would say yes. In another post, I may need to break down the financial benefits of travel therapy more thoroughly, and if that would interest you please reach out through commenting on this blog post, emailing us, or contacting us through instagram. If there is an interest, I would happily spend time sharing more insight into the financial aspect of travel therapy.

I would like to end with saying just a few more things regarding travel therapy, paying off what seems to be like an absurd amount of debt, and our lifestyle. Travel can be hard. It was especially true when we started. Moving constantly, understanding more about this career lifestyle and changing settings was a tough task to undertake, but it was doable like any other career. And that’s just what it has become, a career. We always have work, move often, and get to explore the United Sates one beautiful state at a time. While we pay a large portion of of income each month to student loans, don’t let that fool you, we have our adventures too and are able to save each month for retirement and a house.

This has all been one great adventure and we have been happy with how everything has worked out so far. We have our good assignments and our not so good ones, but those can sometimes be the best memories. I hope sharing our experience has helped shed some light on what it’s like trying to pay off student loans, and most importantly that it’s possible.

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