All Forum Posts by: Ali Dawood

So this is my dilemma: I have no money at all right now since I'm a full-time dental student living off of student loans, so at this time I'm in no rush to start investing. I'm just trying to learn everything I can. Next summer when I graduate, I'll happily take my diploma and grudgingly begin paying off my ~$450K worth of student loans (and that's JUST FOR ME, my fiancé will add on another ~$450K the following summer since she's also a dental student). Please don't comment on the ridiculousness of the student loans -- I already lose sleep about it.. BUT I try to keep a positive attitude about it since I know our combined income potential. Plus there are programs to help us with payments, such as IBR (income based repayment). With IBR (which we'll probably start with), our estimated monthly repayment is a little under $3000/month combined for 25 years vs the standard plan of ~$11,000/month combined for 10 years.

I'm assuming that we'll both make between $200-300K combined our first 1-2 years working for another dental office (private, corporate, etc) until we pick up our speed and earn more. Most associate dentists are paid between 24-33% of production per year, so the faster we can complete procedures, the more we can get done in a day, and the more we'll get paid. If we make the low end of that ($200K), we'll be able to pay the ~$3000/month loan repayment, pay whatever our expenses for the month will be, and should have some income left over.

For that excess income, would it be smarter for us to save it for potential RE investing, or add it towards our student loan repayment?

I'm hoping to build a RE portfolio of various properties with passive income to help offset (if not simply pay) for our student loan debt, and eventually be a secondary cash flow. I know it won't happen overnight; it's a process and it will take time. Also, the interest rates range from 5.41%-7.9% for the loans. The interest rates dropped (thank God!) this past summer so we technically have 4 different loans, each with a different rate.

Any opinions/suggestions would be greatly appreciated, and I'm sorry for the long post! Thanks!

Thanks for the welcome and I'll definitely be sure to read that!

Hey, my name is Ali Dawood and I'm a third year dental student in Utah. I'm originally from Texas and am only up here for school, I'll head back south after I graduate. I've always been interested in investing, but I've never had the capital or cash flow for it - hopefully that will change once I graduate. I registered here to learn all I can about investing as well as beginning to network with all of you. My plan is to, eventually, invest in multiple dental offices as well as residential/commercial real estate. I have a ridiculous amount of student loans to pay off, so I'm hoping investing in the right places will help off-set some of that down the line and bring a promising secondary cash flow.

Looking forward to learning from all of you.