A 29-year-old physician assistant decided to stop making payments on her federal student loans in December 2025 and focus on investing for retirement. Over $5,000 in interest has accrued on her accounts so far as a result of this decision.
The healthcare provider with the username L.Rhiannon shared information about her student loan debt in a TikTok video. According to the video, she owes over $105,000 in federal student loans managed by two different servicers. Interest on her loans began accruing in December 2025, two years after her college graduation.
@l.rhiannon The SAVE plan has been a godsend. I got so lucky that I was not accruing interest during PA school because of COVID and then I didn’t accrue interest after PA school because there were administrative problems with the SAVE plan. It would’ve been much harder to meet my financial goals if I was owing a payment this whole time. I’m trying to be tactful with how I spend my money so that way I don’t accrue too much interest, but I also want to get ahead on my investments while I have the chance. You may not agree with me and Dave Ramsey is probably quaking, but this fits my financial picture and I am happy so far with my progress. #physianassistant #physicianassistantstudent #studentloans #studentloandebt #debtpayoff
♬ original sound – L.Rhiannon | PA-C
“I have not been paying my student loan since December of 2025,” the physician assistant explains. “I’m a 29-year-old PA with over $100,000 worth of student loan debt, and this is how much interest I’ve accrued.”
Between August and December 2025, she repaid $40,000 of the debt, focusing on the loan with the highest interest rate. After spending the last month of the year from her emergency fund on her Roth IRA investments, she decided to pause repaying the remaining debts to let her portfolio grow faster.
“I dedicated $7,500 of my emergency fund towards maxing out my Roth IRA for 2026 early, and so I wanted to replenish that in the first quarter,” she explained. “I also wanted to maximize my goal of $7,500 into a taxable brokerage before I started paying off my loans. My loans are in forbearance. They’ve been in forbearance since I graduated in August 2023.”
L. Rhiannon stated that she did not begin accruing interest until two years after graduating from college. “I started accumulating interest in August 2025, but I paid $40,000 off between August and December 2025.”
As of December 15, 2025, her Grad PLUS loan, serviced by MOHELA at a 7.4% interest rate, increased from $28,495.34 to $29,018.91, indicating she had accumulated $523.57 over three months.
“I have seven smaller loans, my unsubsidized loans, with varying interests of about roughly 6%,” L.Rhiannon added. “I started with $71,750 when I first took out all of the loans. I’ve not paid anything towards these because I was prioritizing my highest-interest loan first.”
These loans have now reached $76,290.85, an increase of $4,540.85 over the past year. “I started this year with $75,431.81. I’ve accrued $859.04 so far.”
Overall, her loans are producing $464 in monthly interest.
Her current goal is to repay the Grad PLUS loan in 2026; however, her priority remains other activities.
“My goal this year was to try to pay off the remainder of my Grad PLUS loan. It is the highest interest, but I’ve been focusing a lot on investing and my future because the long term will benefit me much more than just paying off student loans that I don’t even have a payment on yet.”
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