All right y’all, you’re about to hear from Kate Balzano and how she paid off over $100,000 in student loan debt in a year.
There’s three reasons I wanted to bring Kate’s story to you:
The first is that Kate is all around an amazing human. I have the privilege of working with her on a regular basis and get to see her passion for anesthesia, the balance she brings to her life and her interest in training SRNAs as a top notch clinical preceptor.
The second is that Kate and her husband paid off close to $140,000 of student loan debt in just about a year after she passed boards as a CRNA. She’s gonna unpack the why and how behind that decision in this podcast.
And the last is that she is a rare human in that she wholeheartedly believes that anesthesia training was actually easier having 2 young children than what she imagines it would have been prior to having kids. You heard that right. Kate thought it was easier to do anesthesia school as a mother WITH kids than without them. She’ll explain why during this show.
Kate Balzano-Cowan, MSN, CRNA currently practices anesthesia as a CRNA in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine. Prior to nursing, Kate was an organic chemist with research and management experience in both industrial as well as pharmaceutical research labs. Kate has earned a Master’s of Science in Nurse Anesthesia from the University of New England, a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing from the University of Massachusetts, and an American Chemical Society certified Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry with a minor in Biology from Northeastern University.
If you’ve been following Anesthesia Guidebook, you know that I started a podcast called From the Head of the Bed back in 2015 and having been pulling some of those episodes over to Anesthesia Guidebook before phasing out the old show. This is one of my favorite conversations and Kate and I released this back in October of 2019. Bringing this forward to Anesthesia Guidebook here at the end of December in 2021 is super special because just last week I made my final payment on my own student loans. While I was nowhere close to Kate’s 1-year pay off timeline, I can’t tell you how good it feels to pay back all $197,000 of my student loans in 6 years and 6 months. That’s an average of $2700 a month for 6 & half years. And I’m am stoked to be done with those loans. When I got out of anesthesia school, I had 17 different student loans and opted to consolidate all those bad boys down to one behemoth monster. Doing that brought my overall interest rate way down and just made my repayment plan more manageable… I only had to make one payment. I also signed on with a group who happened to have a rolling student loan repayment program that didn’t phase out after a 3-year sign on bonus or specific amount like many groups.
It hasn’t really sunk in yet that I’m done paying off almost $200,000 in student loans. I’m 38 years old and I’ve been in debt with student loans for 20 years, over half my lifetime. While my payoff time of 6 & 1/2 years after graduation can certainly be classified as aggressive, Kate’s is otherworldly. Another colleague we work with had over $200k in student loans and got hers paid off in right around 4 years. That’s super aggressive and I saw her put in the hard work of delayed gratification and working epic amounts of overtime for those four years.
While I’m going to talk more about finances and why you shouldn’t do anesthesia for the money in the future on the podcast, I want to just say right here that Kate’s story and my story and that of so many other CRNAs who pay their loans off quickly and move forward towards their financial goals are testament that you can do it, too. As Kate says in this show, where there’s a will there’s a way… anesthesia school can seem daunting, especially now with it shifting to a doctoral degree for entry to practice for CRNAs. But it’s worth it. It’s totally worth the financial hardship you’ll endure up front. The pay off is totally worth it. You’ll be able to handle your student loans in stride and have more than enough to be well and happy!
Check out the links below to think more about student loan debt.
Death, Sex & Money podcast series on student loan debt.
Take the Quiz… see where you line up on WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money student loan project quiz.
Beyond the Mask with Jermey Stanley: Episode 23 – The Wealthy CRNA. Get tips on financial management specific to CRNAs in the above podcast and through Jeremy’s company: CRNA Financial Planning. Cycle back to Episode 18 of this show to hear Jeremy talk through freelancing options for CRNAs.
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