How much in loans do you suggest

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I know this question is vague but If you consider the salary of a new NP, how much in loans would you say is reasonable? I know the responses might say “as little as you need to take” but please can you give me a manageable figure? Thank you.

p.s. Say with interest rate being 6-7%

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Specializes in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

It's as simple as pulling out any other loan, only pull out what you need. For example, tuition for my FNP program estimated about $53k. About $25k was for room and board and roughly $21k was for actual tuition while the remainder were other fees. I didn't need to borrow $25k for room and board because I have a place to live and it's close to campus. The "extra" fees included health insurance fee, parking permit, loan fees, etc. No need for me to pay for health insurance fee because I have my own and no need for a parking fee because I'm in an online NP program. My point is, find out what you can't really pay now and borrow that much. I mainly needed to borrow $21k for tuition and another $1500ish for loan fees because I cannot pay for the tuition every semester. Everything else can be avoided or can be paid out of pocket. If you're a full time student with 0 scholarships, no job, and/or no money support from anywhere, then you may need to pull out more than you actually need for the program in order to cover the costs of your living. But again, calculate what you cannot pay now and the near future, and pull out that much. Worst case scenario, you pull out more loans down the road. They will always be there so there is no real rush to pull out a huge loan.

The more you borrow, the more likely you'll end up paying more and/or extra in return due to interest. That also increases your chances of going into bad debt.

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Specializes in Psych/Mental Health.

There are so many individual factors, such as how much debt you currently have and how much you're expecting to make as an NP. There are student loan and income calculators out there that you can use to estimate your monthly income and student loan payments after graduation. Use these calculators to run different scenarios (best case, worst case, most likely etc.) and see how you feel.

As an example, a $70k debt at 6.5% over 10 years will cost you $800 per month ($1,370 if over 5 years). If you make $100k as a new-grad NP, your take home pay will probably end up being $5,500 to $6,000 per month (after healthcare cost). That leaves you ~$4k income to pay for other things (rent, mortgage, other debt, car, food, etc.). Whether that's enough depends on cost of living and how much other debt you currently have.

Here are the links to the calculators:

https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/college-planning/loan-calculator.aspx

https://www.calculator.net/take-home-pay-calculator.html

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The people I have known who borrowed money for living expenses, plus tuition, have had a very difficult time with repayment.

My suggestion is to work full time in the field of study, support yourself, and continue learning. Take 1 or 2 classes a semester and pay for some of it as you go.

If an average NP salary is 100k, you'll see about 5k monthly take home.

Ball park figure of 50k is manageable.

Considering how easy many NP programs are to get into, and considering the negative perception of online programs, I don't see pay going up much anytime soon.

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I personally didn't take out any loans for my masters, and am not taking any out for my DNP. My jobs have always reimbursed some and I usually pick up a side gig to fund the rest. Nurse practitioner programs are designed in a way that nurses can continue to work. I actually learned a lot by going to clinicals and then going to the hospital and seeing acute cases from a different perspective as I was learning to step into the acute role. I prefer the students I precept to be actively working.

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Thank you for the advice all. And those calculators were extremely helpful!

I was kind of playing with the idea of taking out more in loans so I could relocate on my own and cover my cost of living in between jobs if I relocated. But I’m not going to do that. My current work reimburses $5000 a year for tuition. My school costs about 45k total minus books. I didn't take any undergrad loans (got scholarships, aid and worked) but I missed my graduate school’s scholarship deadline for fall semester, hoping I’ll get awarded some in spring.

Thanks again

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