Financial Tips for Pharmacists with Student Loans

Tim Ulbrich, PharmD and CEO of Your Financial Pharmacist, discusses his top tips for pharmacists with student loans. This video was filmed at the 2019 ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Tim Ulbrich, PharmD: When it comes to students, and paying back student loans, and learning how to navigate those student loans, this has to be a big topic of priority. We now know graduates are facing over $170,000 of debt on average, and if I had to pick 1 piece of advice it would be to have an intentional repayment strategy and plan. There's lots of options that are available, everything from staying in the federal system and pursuing loan forgiveness, choosing an income-based repayment, staying in the 10-year standard repayment, or ultimately going to a private company and refinancing your student loans. And unfortunately, it's very difficult to navigate all those options. It hasn't been made very easy to figure out which 1 of those is the better option. And for each person, that option may be different based on everything else that's going on with their financial plan. So, intentionality of decision when it comes to choosing the right loan repayment option, and making sure to spend the time to investigate that, is probably the single most important piece of advice.