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What This Attorney Wishes He Knew About Student Loans

Student loans can be tricky. For 2016 law grads, average debt was $112,776 according to a U.S. News survey. As a five-year associate, Jordan Rothman knows this. Rothman, founder of Student Debt Diaries—a personal finance website—paid off his $197,890 college and law school student loans over 46 months during his late 20s. Rothman recently published an Above The Law piece detailing what he wish he’d known about student loans as a first-year associate.
“When I first started my career, I had many fears about student loans, and I also misunderstood the impact that student loans could have on my life,” Rothman says. “I never thought that I would be debt free so early in my career, and I also did not totally grasp the reality of living with student loans when I was a first-year associate.”
Repaying Student Loans Should Not Take Priority Over Saving For Retirement
Rothman discusses how one of the first firms he worked for offered matched employee contributions to 401(k) accounts. Essentially, the matched contributions would serve as “free money” from the employer for retirement. Rothman, who prioritized paying back his student loans, says he regrets not participating in the match program.
“I decided to devote all of my resources to paying down my debt, and any money I saved for retirement could not be dedicated to paying off my student loans,” Rothman says. “However, the money I saved for retirement would have likely increased in value at a rate higher than the interest rate on my student loans. Also, due to the effect of capitalizing interest, if I had started saving for retirement years earlier, I would have had a huge impact on my retirement savings.”
Networking is important – even for student loans
Every student knows that networking is essential to success. For Rothman, networking and cultivating contacts is directly related to student loans as well.
“As I have previously mentioned on this website and on my own blog, it is possible for young attorneys to generate money from originating business, and any additional cash can be devoted to student debt,” he says. “However, in order to generate business, you need to make contacts as early in your career as possible.”
Rothman says keeping in touch with law school peers can be helpful as your peers may refer you work down the road.
“If you let these contacts go stale, it will be very hard to generate business from these individuals in the future,” he says. “If I could go back a few years, and redo parts of my career, I would have networked earlier in my professional life.”
Don’t let student loans overstress you
For Rothman, student loans loomed heavily over his head following graduation. Looking back, he wishes that he hadn’t let student loans overstress him as a first-year associate.
“I obsessed over my student loans constantly, saved money in almost laughable ways, and stressed out about my debt to an unbelievable degree,” he says. “However, anyone can make an impact on their student debt by working side-hustles, so there is no reason to stress out about your job. Also, student debt repayment is a marathon and not a sprint, and any saving you do will likely only account for a small amount of the money you devote to student loans.”
In the end, Rothman says he wished he’d “chilled out” more over his student loans. “There are much greater things in life worth stressing out about,” he says. If anything, Rothman says he is still relatively early into his career and he hopes his advice will help new attorneys lay the foundation to better manage their student loans.
Sources: Above The Law, U.S. News
 

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