YFP 320: How One Pharmacist Paid Off $345,000 in 5 Years

Stacie Moltzan Loescher, PharmD paid off $345 000 of student loan debt in just five years and she joins us today to share her incredible journey to becoming debt free!

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Stacie Moltzan Loescher is a Pharmacist currently working in central processing for Albertsons Companies and is currently appointed as the Assistant Grand Vice President for Collegiate Affairs of the Phi Delta Chi Professional Pharmacy Fraternity. She attended Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science where she received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2017. During her career as a pharmacist, she has worked as Staff Pharmacist and Pharmacy Manager at multiple retailers throughout Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois. She has also served in multiple regional and national positions at Phi Delta Chi. She enjoys traveling, fishing, and fitness.

Episode Summary

Stacie Moltzan Loescher, PharmD paid off $345 000 of student loan debt in just five years and she joins us today to share her incredible journey to becoming debt-free! Tuning in, you’ll hear about the hard work and clear vision that led Stacie to the financial freedom she enjoys today. We unpack her process to aggressively repaying her loans, from working throughout pharmacy school and undergrad to paying off a car alongside her student debt. Stacie touches on how her childhood experiences impacted her approach to financial management as an adult, and reveals how she could sustain the momentum necessary to pay off the debt, before sharing powerful advice for graduates as they choose how to approach their own student debt. In closing, Stacie offers a glimpse into her future plans which are focused on building a net worth through side hustles and real estate investment.

Key Points From the Episode

• An introduction to Stacie Moltzan Loescher and her story of becoming debt-free.
• Her introduction to pharmacy growing up with two sisters with intensive medical needs. 
• Stacie’s career in pharmacy starting at CVS in Wisconsin.
• A summary of her process to becoming 100% debt-free. 
• How Stacie celebrated her achievement by traveling! 
• Working throughout pharmacy school and undergrad. 
• What motivated her to choose an aggressive repayment strategy.
• The desire for financial freedom behind her efforts to clear all debt.
• How Stacie’s childhood experiences impacted her approach to paying off debt as an adult.
• The car note she paid off in two years while erasing her student debt. 
• Sustaining the momentum in the midst of an aggressive payment plan.
• Advice for graduates as they choose how to approach their student debt: start planning now!
• What’s next for Stacie: building a net worth, considering real estate, investing, and picking up a PRN position to earn extra income.

Episode Highlights

“I’m just not a fan of paying interest. I’d rather be earning interest.” — Stacie Moltzan Loescher [0:11:48]

“I wanted to be able to have financial freedom sooner in my life. I feel like if I was paying off for ten years, I would have been strapped down to those loans for ten years, living paycheck to paycheck to try to pay them off.” — Stacie Moltzan Loescher [0:13:14]

“I didn’t like seeing debt behind my name because it’s not something that I heard growing up or in my family. My parents didn’t have debt.” —  Stacie Moltzan Loescher [0:15:49]

“Don’t wait to approach your student debt. Start planning now, if you haven’t already.” —  Stacie Moltzan Loescher [0:23:06]

“Start looking at what’s going to be the best loan repayment strategy for you, because there are different options that are better for different people.” —  Stacie Moltzan Loescher [0:23:12]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• Stacie Moltzan Loescher on LinkedIn
• Tim Ulbrich on LinkedIn
• YFP Disclaimer
• Subscribe to the YFP Newsletter

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here. Thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome Stacie Moltzan Loescher onto the show to talk about her debt-free journey, both how and why she paid off $345,000 of student loans in just five years. We discussed her motivations behind aggressively paying off the student loans, how she was able to do it, strategies she employed to keep her momentum and motivation and lessons that she learned along the way. Before we jump into this inspiring interview, let’s hear a brief message from YFP team member Justin Woods. 

[MESSAGE]

[0:00:38] JW: Hey, Your Financial Pharmacist community. This is Justin Woods here, Director of Business Development at YFP. You may be one of the 13,000 pharmacists that have already signed up for YFP Money Matters, which is our weekly newsletter. But if you’re not, what are you waiting for? I want to invite you to subscribe. We send financial tips, recommendations, the latest podcast episode, and money resources, all specifically for pharmacists. It all comes straight to your inbox every Friday morning, so visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/newsletter or click the link in the show notes to subscribe today. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/newsletter. See you there. 

[EPISODE]

[0:01:23] TU: Stacie, welcome to the show. 

[0:01:26] SML: Thanks for having me. 

[0:01:28] TU: Before we jump into your incredible debt-free story and your journey, let’s start with your career journey into the professional pharmacy. Where did you go to school? What led you into the profession, and tell us about the work that you’re doing right now? 

[0:01:41] SML: Sure, so I’ll start with what led me into the profession. I grew up with two disabled sisters, one older, one younger. They were both born with cleft palates. My older sister growing up, she couldn’t swallow pills. She still can’t swallow them to this day. That meant that we would often find ourselves at the pharmacy. They would have capsules ready and she couldn’t take them. We had to work with the pharmacist to get it changed to like a liquid form or sometimes the pharmacist might say like, “Oh, it can be open, and put into apple sauce.” Or what have you. But we often found ourselves working closely with the pharmacist to get it resolved. 

Sometimes there would be insurance issues with that, because they don’t like to cover suspensions for 14-year-olds. We’ve had to work together with the pharmacist to get that resolved, whether it was a PA changing it, or taking it and crushing it up. Then putting it in liquid or apple sauce. Then my little sister, she was born when I was eight years old and she was born with what you call an esophageal atresia, which for those that don’t know what that is, that is where your stomach and esophagus isn’t fully connected. 

After she was born, she was life-lighted to children’s hospitals. We had to undergo a surgery and that meant that she would be fed through a G-tube for the next 10 to 12 years of her life. She had to have everything liquid form and a lot of times with like amoxicillin, that’s like a different viscosity than a PediaSure is. We would have to dilute that before we could give it to her through the tube or else it would, the amoxicillin would like get stuck and clogged in the tubing. 

If we gave her too much volume, she would like get sick, have side effects. We often found ourselves crushing medicine, too. Then suspending it in water to give it through the tube. Then she also had asthma. We were doing nebulizer treatments several times a day. Those experiences growing up really sparked my interest in pharmacy. Then I went to North Dakota State to study pre-pharmacy after I graduated high school. Then from there, I found myself in North Chicago, Illinois, at Rosalind Franklin University and after I graduated pharmacy school, I took a job at CVS as a pharmacist in Wisconsin. 

[0:04:32] TU: Okay.

[0:04:33] SML: From there, I worked at different retailers, grocery chain retailers, big box retailers throughout Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin. Up until recently, I took a job with a grocery chain pharmacy as a central processing pharmacist. I’ve been there about four months now. In that role, we check prescriptions for their grocery stores in about 30 different states. 

[0:05:02] TU: Oh, wow.

[0:05:03] SML: That’s where I’m at today. 

[0:05:04] TU: Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing your career journey and the motivation behind getting into the profession. I’m going to read to kick off you sharing your debt-free story and for us to dive into this a layer deeper. I’m going to read a post that you shared on LinkedIn that really caught my attention and let me to reach out to you where you said.

 “Last month, I made my last student loan payment, and my loan balance hit zero. After five years of working as many hours as my body would allow and living like a resident, I paid off $345,000, $235,000 of that was principal. My goal was aggressive as a first-generation and a single-income household to have it paid off in five years. I paid it off in five years, three months. I could have paid it off by the end of 2022 to meet my goal, but it actually made more sense to just pay the minimum payment over the past year since high yield savings account was currently earning more interest than I was paying an interest on my student loans. Cheers to being 100% debt-free now.” 

Wow, just incredible Stacie. When I think about that dollar amount, we’ll talk here in a moment about some of the motivation and the why behind this journey. My first question for you is, what have you done to celebrate this accomplishment? Have you done anything yet to celebrate this accomplishment? 

[0:06:20] SML: Not really. I believe I was like went out with like friends, Friday night. They were just like, “Congrats.” But I did a lot of travel over the last year since I wasn’t as aggressive as paying off in my last year. I did a lot of travel that last year, so I was celebrating that the end was near. 

[0:06:43] TU: Yeah. Yeah. I asked that Stacie, because I think for myself included many pharmacists, we can be so focused on getting to the goal that really taking the time to celebrate. I’m glad to hear you did that with friends and also through some travel. It’s such an important part of the financial journey, right? This is a huge accomplishment, but you are just getting warmed up, right, with achieving many financial goals throughout your career. I think especially if you’re a goal-oriented, achievement-focused person, really taking time to slow down and treasure these moments along the way is really, really important. 

My first question for you, Stacie. If we look at the median debt load today of pharmacy graduates, it’s hovering around 160 to $170,000. 345 is a big number, right? 235 in principle, so we can see the balance there that’s an interest, but even that 235 is substantially above the median debt load of a graduate. Why the higher balance? What do you attribute to that? 

[0:07:40] SML: Yeah. Before I went to school, I was always looking into going to schools with lower tuition, and almost all that is from grad school. I only took out 5,500 in undergrad. I didn’t even need that, that was just because it was subsidized.

[0:07:58] TU: Yeah.

[0:07:58] SML: So, I wasn’t going to get any interest while I was in school. It’s a very low interest rate, so I took that undergrad loan, just off the advice that my aunt had given me that, “You need to take that, because it’s going to be the lowest interest rate you will ever get in your life.” She’s like, “Just put it in a savings account.” That’s what I did. That’s part of my emergency fund today, actually. 

Then, so I didn’t get into those – my like preferred school with the lower tuition rates. What I ended up getting into was a school that I was very interested in, and that’s why I had applied, but it was a private school, Rosalind Franklin University. They do have a little bit higher tuition expense since they’re private, but pharmacy was my dream. I always knew that’s what I wanted to do. I went with it. I figured that I will figure out the student loans and pay them off as quickly as I can when I’m done. 

[0:08:59] TU: Was the 235 all federal or was some of that private? 

[0:09:03] SML: Everything was federal. I took out like the max amount that they would let you do, which was like $35,000 for tuition and then plus like another $20,000 on top of that for living expense, which really isn’t a whole lot to live off of. I did work like throughout all of pharmacy school and undergrad. Then, so that was all federal that was like just about the maximum amount they would let you take out. I did return some while I was in school, because they would let you borrow and then if I didn’t use it, if I worked and I made the money, I would actually return it. I could have borrowed. I think about 20,000 more would have been the max. Then that all capitalized, of course, after I graduated. I believe that capitalized to be $267,000. 

[0:09:53] TU: Here. Here. New grads. Yes. Yes, super important to understand that. Yeah. When I look at that number, Stacie, 345, rough math. You paid off 345 over five years. It’s just shy of $70,000 a year. I think of a typical pharmacist income after taxes, maybe taking home 7-ish thousand dollars per month. Obviously, depends on tax situation. A whole host of other factors in terms of where their paycheck may be going. 

Nonetheless, that is a massive percentage of ones take on pay, right? $70,000 a year on average. So, my question is I certainly have talked with a handful of pharmacists that have gone through an aggressive repayment period. Many others may look at this and say, “Hey, I want to take this over a longer time period, less restrictive on the monthly budget.” Allowing additional funds to achieve other goals, other financial goals or other life goals, right, that people have. You mentioned travel as one example. Why did you decide on an aggressive repayment strategy versus a longer, slower payoff that perhaps would have been less restrictive? What was the motivation for you? 

[0:11:04] SML: I did not want to have those loans sit there for that long. If the longer you have them, the more you’re paying an interest, which I saw that like right away with my first student loan payment. My first student loan payment was almost entirely interest with no principal amount taken off, except for maybe $70 a principal. When I saw that, I was like, “This is going to take me forever. I need to put money towards the principal.” Any extra money I can to bring that principal balance down. I’m paying less interest, because the longer it takes to pay it off, the more interest you’re going to pay. I’m just not a fan of paying interest. I’d rather be earning interest. 

[0:11:54] TU: Let me dig a layer deeper there. That’s what I’m getting to. Right? No right or wrong answer here. I always, I talk to pharmacist about student loans. One of the questions I like to ask them is, “Hey, where are you at on the student loan debt pain scale?” Right? Ten is the house is on fire. I want these gone yesterday. I would say you’re probably closer to that end of the spectrum, based on what I know thus far. Zero is like, ah, they are what they are. They’ll, they’ll take care of themselves eventually. That’s what I’m really trying to understand. No right or wrong answer, but when you say I hate interest, I want what money working for me. Take us a layer deeper, like what is behind that? Is it simply the stress and the weight of that over your shoulders and having the mental clarity to see forward without it? Tell us more. 

[0:12:38] SML: I just, I like for my money to do stuff in the most, like the way where I save the most money, like I don’t want to spend an extra $20,000 towards interest, because I have to do an extra five years of payoff. I’d rather be done early, have that $20,000 and then be able to invest that or travel with that or do what I want with that. I wanted to be able to have financial freedom sooner in my life. I feel like if I was paying off for 10 years, I would have been strapped down to those loans for 10 years, living paycheck to paycheck to try to pay them off. Whereas if I figured if I worked really hard and I paid this off soon, then that 3000 plus a month that I’m putting towards student loans that I can then use that money how I want. If I want to invest it, if I want to travel.

[0:13:41] TU: Yeah.

[0:13:41] SML: I don’t have – I don’t need to be paying student loans. I can just use it how I want. 

[0:13:47] TU: Yeah. That makes sense. I see the passion coming out there for you as you share that as well. One of the things I’m curious about Stacie, so often when we look at the financial decisions we make as adults, we can see trends that tie back to childhood experiences. It may not be that we are raised in the same way that motivates a decision to make today. It could in fact be the opposite or we’re trying to move in a different direction. Sometimes it’s affirming the decisions that were made for us or the household that we grew up in around money. 

As you think about this strategy of, hey, I want to get to financial freedom. I want to pay down this debt aggressively. I want this money working for me, right? I don’t want to have to worry about interests, and so in the future. I can enjoy that on other things. Is there anything you attribute looking back from how you were raised, money approach in the household that impacts here, the approach that you took with your student loans? 

[0:14:41] SML: Yeah, definitely. I grew up, my parents divorced at a young age, but my mom very low income, and that’s what I lived with. I lived with my mom. She was really, really good at like budgeting. I saw that like growing up, because she had a small income to live off of and raised three kids off of, so she budgeted very well with buying groceries to making sure she was getting the right coupons, so we could have food on the table and still live and have money for everything that we needed. 

My dad was very frugal with his money. He bought a house when he was like 30 years old for $16,000 cash. Never had a mortgage, bought a fixer-upper. Still lives in that house to this day. It’s like a 125-year-old home, I think now. I think him never having any debt. He never had a credit card. He never had debt. He always paid everything cash. Bought his car’s cash. Bought his home cash. I think that’s why I didn’t like seeing debt behind my name, because it’s not something that I heard growing up or in my family. My parents didn’t have debt. It was like a newer thing for me to hear that and have so much. I just wanted to get rid of it. Throughout this process, I did pay off a car note to a $20,000 car note in two years, because I just didn’t want it gone. 

[0:16:13] TU: Yeah. I can certainly see the threads, as you described to those experiences back to childhood. I think that’s something I’m always encouraging my own financial plan. I encourage others to look back as well, so much. Again, as I mentioned of how we approach our financial decisions. Good, bad or indifferent, right? Often ties back to some of the childhood experiences that we had. 

Stacie, I’m curious. One of the challenges with an aggressive debt repayment plan, right? Five years, averaging about $70,000 a year, is being able to sustain the momentum and the motivation, right? We can start with good intents. Hey, I want to go aggressive repayment. That’s something I hear from many pharmacy graduates, but actually being able to sustain that momentum can be very challenging. What kept you motivated? What kept you going throughout that five-year period? 

[0:17:01] SML: Yeah. I guess like my career itself kept me going. With that, it helped me earn more income. I spent three years, the last three years, like as a manager. I was picking up extra shifts, working extra hours and anything that I earned over my base salary, this over the course of my repayment, I always put the extra money towards my loans. When I floated, I was actually when I like started with my last company. I was brought on as a 48-hour pharmacist. That was like a lower salary, like 72,000 a year. 

Anything, and I made my budget based off of that $72,000 which included a, I put 3,000 of that toward my student loan itself, which I was required to pay 2,300. I always did put 3000 towards it. That’s what my budget was based off of. Then anything I worked over that, 48 hours in a two-week pay period, I put towards a student loan. A lot of times I was working a hundred or 120 hours a pay period. All of that, I put to the student loan.

One of the jobs I had, I was getting reimbursed for gas and for tolls. All that gas reimbursement, toll reimbursement. I put all that to student loans. As I was just picking up extra hours and helping people, which is my passion. It’s just the money was coming in where I was able to just keep putting that towards my loans. Then as a manager, I was really, really driven to meet our store goals and such. I was at a store that was challenging, that needed a lot of work. I was able to just use that as my driving force to bring my store, to help my store achieve. Then with that, I was just working extra hours and that would help with my financial. 

[0:19:11] TU: Yeah. What I hear there, Stacie, is you had a very clear goal and vision for your financial plan that really fueled the hard work. The hard work, which produced the payments and the additional income was directly going towards your loans, which that momentum would then build upon itself. You said something really important there that I want to make sure we don’t overlook, which was, that’s what my budget could afford, right? 

You made extra payments, but you mentioned with the $3,000, that’s a really key, important piece for those that are getting started with their student loan repayment journey, when you have so many different options to consider, especially for those that might work in a nonprofit sector, or have a loan forgiveness option, or choose an aggressive repayment and are looking at these two ends of the spectrum. How much your budget can afford is a critical number to understand to determine which loan repayment option may be best for your situation. Great wisdom there, Stacie, that you shared. I want to make sure we didn’t overlook that. 

One of the most common questions I get when I present to new graduates or I talk about student loans is, should I pay down my debt or should I in invest? How do I balance these two? My stock answer is, it depends, right? It depends on a lot of factors. How do you feel about the debt? What’s your repayment plan? What is your budget afford? What’s your timeline towards retirement? How conservative or aggressive are you? There’s just so many components. I’m curious to hear from you, no right or wrong answer again. How did you reconcile this decision towards more debt payment and perhaps delaying that investing for a period of time? 

[0:20:45] SML: Yeah. I was fortunate that when I did start my debt repayment, I already had an emergency fund built up when I started working when I was 14. When I was 14, I was putting half of every paycheck away into a savings account to save for college. I never, actually, used that money for any expense. It is my emergency fund today. I already had that set-in stone. Then I did actually work on the other goals while paying this off. I was always taking the employer match from my 401k. 

I was always like I always have done a high deductible health insurance plan. I always put the 3,500 is like what it is today, towards my HAS. Then investing within that after I had a thousand dollars in there. I’ve also done just my own investments, just a smaller amount each month. I’ve done Acorns, like Robinhood, but I don’t do as much, because there’s more risk. At one of the jobs that I had actually, I was not eligible for an employer match until one year in. I only worked there for five months, but – 

[0:22:03] TU: Okay. 

[0:22:04] SML: That job, I actually did not contribute to a 401k, because I was not going to get a match. I decided to put that money towards the student loans at that time, which my plan was to do that until I hit one year with the company and then I was going to start taking the match. So that job, I didn’t contribute to a 401k, anything that would have went to a 401k went to student loans instead. 

[0:22:28] TU: It makes sense, especially without having the match component there. Stacie, I’m curious to hear your advice for new grads, right? We have now three graduating classes that have yet to pay on or required to pay on their federal student loans, because of the pause dating back to the beginning of the pandemic. I’m sensing as those repayments are going to start back up, many graduates from last few years are feeling overwhelmed, they’re stressed or discouraged. There’s a lot of uncertainty. What advice would you have for graduates coming out as they look to approach their student loan debt? 

[0:23:04] SML: My advice would be, don’t wait. Start planning now. If you haven’t already. 

[0:23:09] TU: Amen. 

[0:23:12] SML: Start looking at what’s going to be the best loan repayment strategy for you, because there is different options that are better for different people. For some people, it’s going to be doing the public service loan forgiveness. Some people that might have a house and kids and have like those extra payments that they need to make, they might have to do more of an income based, but start having that strategy and that plan now and make a budget if you don’t have one already. Have a budget, so that way you can and start like using that budget now. So that way when those student loans, you have to start repaying them, it’s not a shock and you’re like, “What am I going to do?” So, start planning now. 

[0:23:55] TU: That’s great. Great advice. I think that that’s a message I’ve been trying to get out, but because we’ve had several extensions of the pause. I think there’s been – some of this feeling of, hey, when exactly are these going to come back online or will they, might there be another extension. Now that we have some clarity of when these will start back up, to your point, this is the time period, right? This is the time period to make sure that we’re understanding our options. 

We’ve got clarity on the best repayment plan for one situation. To your point we begin to weave that and work that into the budget, right? Even if we’re just putting that in a savings account for now, we’re building those reps and those behaviors, so when that turns back on, we’ve accounted for it and we can move forward with the confidence knowing that we’ve already planned for that. Whether we like it or not. There’s a lot of repayment options, and strategies, and nuances. 

Fortunately, the system is maybe more complicated than it needs to be, but that’s the hand that we’ve been dealt in. Really, it’s upon the shoulders of the borrower to make sure that they’re understanding those options. We’ve got lots of resources on the YFP website. If you need some help navigating that forward. Stacie, what’s next for you? Right? This is an important milestone, but you’re just at the beginning of your journey. What does success look like for you going forward? 

[0:25:12] SML: At this point, I’m looking at like building a net worth, how that looks. I have like several different things in mind. I am interested in real estate. I thought about maybe like a duplex or something, living in one half, like renting out the other, investing, just different things I’ve thought about. I also am potentially looking at picking up a PRN position to earn some extra income, because the central processing job did come with a little bit of a pay cut. I’m looking to see if there’s a way, I can bring more income in different side hustles. 

I definitely, want to do a side hustle, because I have a better work-life balance now, where I have the time to do more, because I can’t pick up extra shifts like I was able to do before. This is just a straight 40-hours a week. I really want to use my time to see how I can earn more income. Then decide how we’re going to use it. 

[0:26:22] TU: Yeah. This is I often give the analogy of a marathon when my wife and I went through the journey of paying off our student loan debt, which wasn’t quite as large, but it was a big amount. I often had in my mind this visual where, “Hey, once we get to the end of the student loans.” Like, we’ve arrived, right? We’re at the finish line. I often say, it’s like running a marathon where when you get to the point of in this situation, an important milestone of student loan debt paid off or running a marathon. We might be at mile marker three, right? We’ve started the race. We’ve got a long way to go.

I love the vision you’re articulating, whether it’s around real estate, whether it’s around other side hustles. I can sense an intentionality that as you start to evolve other parts of your financial plan, you’ve got clarity on why you’re going to be doing that and where those funds are going to be going towards. Stacie, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to come onto the show to welcome our community into your story and your willingness to share it. I’m really looking forward to following your journey ahead. 

[0:27:20] SML: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[OUTRO]

[0:27:23] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show has provided you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists and less otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

Current Student Loan Refinance Offers

Advertising Disclosure

Recent Posts

[pt_view id=”f651872qnv”]