SoFi Blog

When you’re in the home-buying game, especially in hot markets, you’ll discover a process that is both multi-layered and time-consuming—and, at the end of the day, designed to take you from writing an offer to holding the keys in your hand. Understanding each part, your role in it, and how to maximize your participation in each part will save you time and money, and keep you ahead of the game.

It’s no secret that the average doctor is saddled with tons of student loan debt when starting practice. In fact, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average doctor graduates medical school with $190,000 in student loans—6x the national average.

Having a strategy to quickly and efficiently pay down your student loans is critical to long-term financial success, so we’ve put together a few personal finance tips and tricks for doctors to help them pay down student loans faster in 2017. These tips are relevant to all doctors, regardless of specialty or income.

Equities have stumbled over the past several days and interest rates have fallen alongside the dollar. The main impetus for the move was a failed attempt by the new administration and Republican members of the House of Representatives to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

With the rise of millennials and Generation Z grads, the workforce is rapidly changing. Young, educated professionals bring a lot to employers for sure—like energy, enthusiasm, and a thirst for innovation. But these days, they also come with some financial baggage: high levels of student loan debt. That debt can be crippling and distracting, and on top of that, it’s also an obstruction to both short- and long-term financial goals.

It’s no secret that organizations directly feel the impact of the hardship. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) 2016 Employee Financial Wellness Report, 28% of 1,600 full-time U.S. employees surveyed admit that personal finances cause them to be distracted at work—up from 20% in 2015. Among those workers, 46% spend three or more hours a week, while at work, dealing with or thinking about their financial situations, compared to 37% in the previous year. Yet few HR teams are taking steps to address the problem effectively and help their employees—and their company’s ROI.

In this first part of our new series on employee wellness, recruitment, and engagement, we at SoFi want to provide actionable insights on how to better understand the financial burden of student loan debt that these employees face, and what to do to help ease the pressure through financial assistance, education, training, and support.

One of the scariest things about taking on a large student debt load is the fear of what might happen if you suddenly lose your job.  Not only would you have to deal with the stress of finding another one, but you’d have to figure out how to pay that big loan bill each month with no income.