Loans and job

Nurses General Nursing

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I have been working as a nurse for three years now. I tried traveling and now am back to staff. I have worked in emergency and now ICU. I have approximately 115k in student loans with extremely high interest rates. I am not making a dent and am looking for loan repayment options for nurses or international nursing that pays a lot. I am just simply unable to make these payments and the loans are too much for banks to want to consolidate. Please help with ideas and suggestions! I would appreciate it!

Specializes in ORTHO, TRAUMA, MED-SURG, L&D, POSTPARTUM.

Another thing to consider is a job at a VA Hospital. They have a loan forgiveness program that will pay your federal loans, but I'm not sure about your private loans. Another teacher suggested if your healthcare employer offers tuition assistance, ask them if you can apply that money towards the loans for your education. Her hospital allowed it but I've not tried it yet.

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OP didn't mention having kids or spouse, I'd move to where the wages are highest and rent a room and get that loan paid off not in 10-20 yrs but in the next few years, so you can have a future.

An experienced ICU nurse can easily make > 100K in Sacramento, with full benefits, and rent a not pretty 2 bd for $800.

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Specializes in ICU.

I am not judging you, just trying to get the full picture here. My sister and her best friend did the traveling program straight out of college and they made really good money. My sister did it to pay down her loans and travel the west coast a little before settling down. She actually met her husband in San Diego and now they live on the east coast. She was able to consolidate her loans because she didn't want to be paying on them forever. She had a large amount because she got her doctorate and went to an instate private college. Good physical therapy programs are hard to find in PA and this one was close to my parents house. So she lived there while attending this college.

Since you are having financial issues, I'm going to ask a couple of questions. Have you called the student loan people to see if you could lower your monthly payments for a little while until you catch up on medical bills. If you are in good standing and these are federal and not private loans, they should be based on how much you make. They do this to ensure that you can keep up and do not default.

Second, $2000 is an awful lot to pay in medical bills a month. Have you tried calling the hospitals to see if they will work with you? I have never found a hospital to not work with you on paying them back. I had a 3 month stint in the hospital in 2009. My insurance was terrible and we had close to $30k out of pocket to pay. The hospitals worked with me at the time until I could pay them off. Even if I could only send in $50-$100 a month as long as I kept in touch with them, they were good with that. Have you tried that? My son had staples in his head recently and I had to pay his deductible. It is $2500 and the staples cost around $1000 and I have to pay that out of pocket. I simply called them and set up a payment plan. They were more than willing to work with me.

I think you need to explore some of these options. And like I stated earlier, Dave Ramsey has an excellent program to follow to get your finances in shape. Because of him and me working on his program for almost 10 years now, I had an emergency come up and was able to pay cash for it. My basement flooded and ruined the entire thing. Then when they pulled out the walls, termites were discovered, then the ceiling crashed. Lol. It was seriously a horrible month. Insurance only paid about half. Then I went to the dentist and I had about $3k worth of work to do. All while the basement was going on. But at least I could pay for it. I thank my lucky stars that I could. So it's something to consider.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.

Aw man. That's awful. :(

At this point, I would consider major overtime, possibly a second job if that is possible. Also look into IBR plan so that it gives you some more breathing room to tackle your medical expenses.

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You might want to look into federal loan repayment programs. If you're willing to work in an underserved area for a specified time then they will give you money towards your loan repayment.

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I agree with the above poster about contacting the hospital about working out a better payment plan.

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no offense, but it sounds like you're someone who needs some tough love. I have/had about 35K in student loans that i started paying immediately once I started working as an RN in April of 2013. I worked a lot of overtime and really cut down on my ancillary expenses (clothes, etc.) I still go out and have a good time and have managed to pay off around 17k in 1.5 years. Doing that while paying $750 in rent plus utilities renting a condo in Atlanta. Where there is a will, there's a way. I've heard travel jobs can be lucrative, if you look hard enoug you could find one that would pay a good hourly wage. It might not be your ideal job, but you've got 115k of debt that's accruing interest, so beggers can't be choosers.

Like others said you're gonna have to hustle and bust your ass to pay these loans off.

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Specializes in hospice.
Was given an ROTC scholarship but then was dc'd after review of PMH. That's how I was at a big institution.

Um no....I'm married to someone who was commissioned through ROTC, and a review of PMH would be long, long in the past by the time of scholarship award. Health screening is a very early stage in that application process, and a disqualifying condition would halt the process long before an offer.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.

Unless the medical "history" was actually something that occurred while in school that disqualified the person from entering military service afterwards? I know nothing about ROTC, so I have no idea if that would be possible.

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Then you would know all about DODMERB and EXACTLY how everything works right? Anyone is able to sign up and begin taking coorifice work for ROTC. Being awarded a commanders scholarship after the first semester would warrant a review of your PMH in order for you to continue with the scholarship to work towards commission. Spending a year trying to have it reviewed again would make me pretty well aware of the situation I was in and how the review board worked on my case.

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Specializes in orthopedic/trauma, Informatics, diabetes.

I have a ton of loan debt. I consolidated multiple degrees into one loan with a lower interest rate (

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Specializes in public health.

If you work for a qualified facility (usually rural, or urban place that serves under served population) you can apply to a loan forgiveness program Nurse Corps Loan Repayment Program

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