Amber Masters & Danny Masters Are Tackling $500K

Happy Friday friends! I’m excited for another installment of Student Loan Conquerors. Student Loan Conquerors is an interview series. I talk with some awesome people tackling their student loan debt head on. Finding out how they are doing it and what inspired them to start in the first place.

If you are interested in participating please contact me and share a little information about your student loan debt situation.

Today, I’m excited to have Amber Masters and her husband, Danny from RedTwoGreen where they write about their journey out of over $500k of debt. Amber and Danny are a JD and DMD who fell in love, had a baby, and are now on a journey paying off more than $550k in student loans. They are debt haters, travel lovers, and real estate dabblers. Now onto the interview!

1. When did you graduate and with what degree?

Amber Masters: I graduated with my bachelor’s in 2009 with a degree in Sociology. I graduated from law school in April 2015.

Danny Masters: I also graduated from my undergrad in 2009 and just graduated from dental school last month (June 2016).

2. What was the maximum amount of student loan debt you owed and where do you stand now?

We were really fortunate in our undergrads. Danny graduated with $0 in debt. Amber graduated with $3500—which has been paid off.

We were considerably less lucky earning our professional degrees.

Amber graduated law school with $39,000 in loans. Danny graduated dental school (and a master’s degree) with a whopping $561,000 in student loans!

3.When did you start to focus on your student loans and what motivated you to do so?

We started focusing on our loans right after  I graduated from law school and when Danny was one year away from graduating dental school. We wanted to have an “attack” plan so to speak, on our loans before they came out of their grace period when payments were due. We logged into Danny’s account one fateful day and noticed that he had more than $60,000 purely in interest! We couldn’t believe it. That was all the motivation we needed to start getting after our loans.

Editor’s Note: If you have federal student loans and are struggling with your payments, consider utilizing an income-driven repayment plan at least temporarily.

If you have private loans or your debt to income ratio allows, consider refinancing with a company like SoFi. I wrote a review about my experience refinancing my bar loan with SoFi. Refinancing with SoFi ended up saving me over $1k. Use one of my links to refinance and you’ll get a $100 bonus. 

4. What is the best piece of financial advice you’ve received?

Two pieces of advice come to mind:

1)  In “Rich Dad Poor Dad” Robert Kyosaki talks about when he wants something, he thinks to himself “how can I afford it” instead of the question many of us ask ourselves, “Can I afford it?” This has really taught us a lot about side hustling—working several little side jobs to pay for the things we need or want, or in most cases, to make extra loan payments.

2) The second piece of advice that comes to mind is just a phrase that I think we have both heard most of our lives, and that is to “live within your means.” You really will always be rich if you can live within your means.

5. What is one piece of advice you would give to others paying down student loans?

For people who have not started school yet– I would say take the time to learn about your major and what kind of jobs are available to people with your major. Really consider whether that is the kind of job you are willing to do, for a long time.

Also, even though college is an “experience,” take the time to consider if your major is going to be worth what it costs. Majoring in Sociology (like I did) is fine! You can get a job. It’s just probably not going to pay you six figures. Therefore, you should not go to a college that costs six figures unless you can do so on a scholarship.

There is not a chance I would have spent six figures on a degree that would not earn me six figures or more.

One thing we wish we had done was to start making payments while we were still in school. Amber worked all through law school, and we have no idea where that money went. Even if we had just thrown $50 or $100 a month into student loans, it would have gone straight to the principal—we could have knocked out almost $4000 of the principal making a small monthly payment while in school. That is definitely a missed opportunity that we wish we could get back!

6. If you could do it all over again, would you? Why or why not?

Yes, but we would have done it a little differently. We would have strengthened Danny’s dental school application to make him more marketable to different schools. We were dead set on living in Utah—where he was born and raised.

Utah also had a law school that Amber attended that was a great school for DIRT CHEAP. We should have done a better job shopping around for dental schools. He could have gone to a state school and paid probably about half of what we paid in Utah.

7. Are you actually utilizing your degree? If not, why not?

Yes. We are both practicing in our fields—Amber is a lawyer and Danny is a brand new dentist.

Amber

Once I graduated, I did NOT use my Sociology degree. I majored in Sociology because I thought it was interesting. I stuck with Sociology after deciding in my third year of college that I wanted to go to law school. It seemed like a good set up for that.

I ended up not going to law school until 2 years after I graduated my undergrad (we taught English and traveled through Asia for a year, and then Danny did his Master’s degree for a year. We wanted to start law school and dental school at the same time to simplify things). During those two years, my degree was completely useless. It was a tough market for jobs generally, and definitely a tough market with a Sociology degree.

My law degree, on the other hand, has been wildly useful. Despite all the hate that law students get about not being able to find jobs, etc, that simply has not been a problem for me (yet).  As long as I am willing to do the work, it seems like it has been there. I know that is not the case across the board, but it has been my experience.

(editor’s note: good for you! 2015 was a good year to graduate from law school. The recession really didn’t hit the legal market until 2010/2011 – when I graduated, but it’s been looking up in recent years.)

Danny

Dentist jobs are much different. Practices are practically begging for dentists. There is truly a shortage of dentists and for that reason, it makes getting a job MUCH easier than a degree in something like Sociology or even law.

8. Anything you’d like to share with LDMW readers?

We share all the details about our experience paying off our whopping $591k in student loans on our website www.redtwogreen.com. We started the site because we didn’t have anyone to turn to for an example on the best approaches to paying off loans. Feel free to follow along with our journey or contact us with any questions you have!

The End.

Thank you, Amber Masters and Danny Masters! I appreciate you being a part of Student Loan Conqueror Series. I’m excited for your journey toward student loan debt freedom (I’ll see you there someday)! If you would like to learn even more about the Masters’ journey you can visit RedTwoGreen.