 500,000 is extreme, but to go to a million dollars, a million, I mean, what were you doing? Welcome back to the channel, everybody, for those of you who are new around here. My name is Michael, aka Dr. Chleeney and I'm a board certified diagnostic and interventional radiologist working in New Jersey. So you may have seen recently that I've been on this kind of financial kick, which is why today we are going to discuss more financials and specifically student loan debt because that is a huge thing we as physicians, med students, pre-meds, et cetera, have to deal with. So I've reacted to one of the Dave Ramsey videos in the past talking about a millionaire doctor and how she spends her money and all that stuff and doesn't feel like working anymore. So that's cool. Today we're doing a shift years and go with someone who is extremely broke, not a millionaire, this is a negative millionaire. We're gonna talk about his story. I haven't seen the video yet, so hopefully it's worth reacting to. But the thumbnail got me, I just got home from work, I was browsing around YouTube, million dollars in student debt. So let's react to it together, watch the video together and let's do some, I don't know what, I don't know what else to do. Let's do some discussions. Let's go. All right, now that we are over at my computer, let's go ahead and get into it. Also shout out to Dave Ramsey for cranking out these amazing financial videos. Let's go. Justin is with us in Florida. Hi, Justin, how are you? So I had a question for you. I'm just recently graduating from residency to become an orthodontist. Orthodontist, very lucrative career. And orthodontist or orthodontics is actually very difficult to get into. I think one time someone said like only one or two people per dental graduating class get into orthodontics because it's very lucrative. I don't know how lucrative anymore because they're kind of going away from braces and whatnot, but I also have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to dentistry. So don't listen to me. And I have student loans that total just over $1 million. You're kidding. So I knew this was gonna be the case, but I didn't actually know like it was actually a million dollars. I'm trying to wrap my head around how you even get a million dollars in debt. And I mean, after going through what I just went through that's four times as much debt as I have. And I did four years under debt, four years med school, six years residency. At what point do you acquire a million dollars in debt? I really genuinely hope he gets into it. Does that gotta hear this? What were you thinking? I was like, what were you thinking? All right, someone commented last time like you just stopped the video a million times and sorry, but I just have to comment on stuff. That's the whole point of doing this video. I sat down and calculated my interest rates and my interest is about $5,800 a month. Oh, that's not even the principal. The interest on his loans per month is $5,800. So unless he's paying way more than $5,800 a month, he's not even touching the principal balance, just the interest alone, which means he'll never pay it off unless he wins a letter. Also, I wonder if his fiance knew that he has a million dollars in debt before saying yes. If we were this first year able to pay $10,000 a month. So he's saying he has a $5,800 interest payment per month. And if he pays $10,000 a month, that's paying $5,800 interest plus $4,200 on his principal amount, see how good I am at math? But nonetheless, so he'd be paying down $4,200 of principal per month, which is, hold please, $50,400 per year, which means it would take him about 20 years to pay it off at that rate. So what is your income going? When are you getting married? April. Okay. And what will you be making as an orthodontist? About 250. I feel like that's low for an orthodontist. Maybe in my head, I don't know, growing up, I feel like so many kids had braces, I never did, but so many kids did. And like the orthodontist in my hometown and neighboring towns, I feel like they were always really well off, but I don't know. Someone that knows dentistry, please comment below. Maybe there's a follower, YouTube dentist that can help me out here. Okay. So if you make $250,000 a year, why are you only putting $120,000 on your dad? Well, I mean, come on Dave, you don't get clean 250, you have to pay taxes on it. So he's in a pretty high tax bracket, so probably like 30 plus percent taxes. So you could probably pay more, but not too much more. The income-based option does not do away with interest. So he doesn't like this if I've seen some of the other episodes. I remember he doesn't like the income-based repayment because most people who do the income-based repayment plan don't actually get their loans forgiven for a million different reasons, but mostly it's because they don't keep up with it, they don't work for a nonprofit company, all this other stuff, yada yada. This is such an extreme situation. Your income is extreme and your debt is extreme that you have to be very, very careful to just act like you're a broke college student because you are a broke orthodontist. Yeah, this is really weird. So he didn't really go into why he has so much debt. I mean, unless he had like a failed business or something. I mean, I know people who went to very prestigious undergrad universities and very prestigious med schools who finished residency with like $500,000 in debt, but to double that, $500,000 is extreme, but to go to a million dollars, double like the most extreme example I've seen, I think I've actually seen $600,000 in debt, but a million? I mean, what were you doing? And so that means you guys aren't going on vacations. You're not buying a house. You're not leasing a new BMW. You are, you have a million. I can't even say that I'm not, I can't breathe. A million dollars in student market, it gives me an anxiety attack and it's not even my debt. This is kind of sad when you think about it, right? Well, it's partly sad because I still don't know how you acquired a million dollars in debt because that's insane, but even if you had $500,000, that's still kind of sad because he's a very specialized dentist or an orthodontist, which is a very specialized field and should be a very high-paying specialty, which it is. I thought they made more than 250, but that's still high-paying. He went into a million dollars in debt because of that. Say he even went into $500,000 in debt. Is it really worth it to go into a field where you make $250,000 if you have to become $500,000 in debt? It's very discouraging for anybody in the medical field, pre-med, med students, all that stuff. This is kind of stuff that always is looming in the back of our minds, but it's real. Like, it's a real issue. Student debt is real and it seems to be going up way faster than inflation and way faster than our salaries are every year. So it's a very real concern. You're gonna accrue $5,800 worth of interest somewhere and you are going to reduce principal by 4,200 somewhere in total by using $10,000. So it doesn't matter. The only benefit is just to be able to check those little, I like cleaning up the little ones, getting the dust out of the corner, getting rid of the mosquitoes and then we'll get down to the bear hunt. I'm still, while he's watching this, I'm partly thinking in the back of my head that he's just, let me, let's do some math here. So he's an orthodontist making $250,000, right? So with $250,000, let's say he gets taxed that we'll just make it easy and say 30%, which gives him a $175,000 take home from that $250,000, which equals $14,583 per month. And he's supposed to pay off $10,000 a month plus. So that gives him $4,500 per month to live off of, essentially for everything else, which is completely doable. But the problem I'm thinking of is he goes through all this work to be an orthodontist, taking all these loans, busting his butt in school, getting crazy good grades, going through residency, fellowship, whatever he had to do. And then he can't even enjoy it. He has to pay two thirds plus of his monthly take home pay, just give it away to loans, because that's what happens. And he has to do that for a very, very long time. So he doesn't get to enjoy the fruits of his labor unless he wins a lottery for like way over a decade. So maybe when he's like 50 years old, he didn't finally enjoy himself. That's just, that's just wrong. It's just wrong. Also, someone please fact check me here. I think a lot of these dental residencies are unpaid or there are a lot of unpaid dental residencies, which might be the only plus one point for us physicians. I don't know, but that's what I hear. And sometimes these fellowships are unpaid or they even have to pay like $30,000 a year just to be a part of that fellowship, which is crazy. And that's actually criminal. It's not crazy, it's criminal. The good news is you've got a great shovel and you have a great bright future with your income potential. And that gets you out of this. It's not a reason to get into it, but it does get you out of it. It gives you hope for your future. Thank you for the call. All right, so I feel bad for the eye. He sounded pretty defeated, but this is what happens. And I'm still curious what exactly he did to take up $1 million of student loans. It's very odd to me. But nonetheless, if you like these kind of videos, let me know in the comments below. If you haven't seen the student loan video where I talk about my personal student loans and how I'm going to pay that off, link up here. Otherwise, make sure you smash like, subscribe button, follow me on Instagram and TikTok if you don't already, and I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.