Doctors are trained to save lives — and taught almost nothing about money.
You spent a decade mastering medicine. Nobody used any of that time to teach you what to do with the six-figure decision waiting for you at graduation. AttendingFi exists to hand you that answer — clearly, for free, and with no reason to lie to you.
Why we built this
Physicians are trained exhaustively in medicine and given strikingly little guidance on their own financial lives. You learn to manage a code, not a loan portfolio. Yet the moment training ends, two facts dominate everything that follows: your single biggest asset is your future income, and your single biggest liability is the debt you carry into it. Manage that debt well and it becomes a rounding error against a long career. Manage it poorly — wrong repayment plan, a refinance that quietly forfeits forgiveness, a tax bomb nobody warned you about — and it can cost you a hundred thousand dollars or more.
The cruel part is that the stakes are highest exactly when you have the least time and the least information: residency. The repayment plan you pick, whether you certify employment for forgiveness, whether you consolidate — those choices compound for ten years or more, and most physicians make them in the dark or hand them to whoever markets to them hardest.
AttendingFi is the tool we wished existed for that moment: one place that runs the real federal math on your numbers and tells you, plainly, what to do.
Our whole thesis in one line: a physician's biggest asset is their income potential, and their biggest liability is failing to manage it — starting with their student loans. Get that one decision right and everything downstream gets easier.
Judge the math, not the messenger
You'll notice there isn't a founder's face or a celebrity advisor's name plastered across this site. That's deliberate. Most financial tools ask you to trust them because of who is behind them. We'd rather you trust this one because you can check it yourself.
Every recommendation the engine makes is built from primary government sources — the Department of Education's rules, the 2025 federal law, IRS tax treatment, and HHS poverty guidelines — and every result shows its work: why your plan won, which assumptions we used, and exactly what would change the answer. You don't have to take our word for anything. The math is the authority here, and you can audit it line by line on our methodology page.
Why it's free, and how we stay honest
A one-on-one consultation that runs this kind of analysis typically costs $300–$600. AttendingFi runs the same federal-rules math — PSLF, the RAP plan, capped legacy IBR, refinancing, married-filing-separately, and a year-by-year future model — in minutes, for free.
We do earn money, and we want to be completely transparent about how: if your own numbers favor refinancing and you choose to do it through a partner lender, we may receive a referral fee. That's the entire business model — and it's structured so it can never bend the advice. When your situation favors forgiveness, the honest answer is "don't refinance," and the engine says so plainly even though we earn nothing in that case. A tool run by a lender profits when you refinance; we don't have to. You can read exactly how we're paid on our disclosures page.
What AttendingFi is — and isn't
AttendingFi is an educational decision engine. It gives you rigorous, government-sourced estimates and modeling so you can understand your options and ask better questions. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice, and we are not your adviser or fiduciary. The 2026 rules are new and still being implemented by the Department of Education and loan servicers, so we keep the engine current as guidance is finalized — and we always point you to verify specifics at studentaid.gov and to confirm major decisions with a qualified advisor and your CPA before you act.
We also don't sell your data, we don't take custody of your money, and we never let what pays us decide what we tell you. That's the standard we hold ourselves to, and we publish enough of our reasoning that you can hold us to it too.
Built for the way physicians actually earn
Generic calculators treat you like a salaried 9-to-5 with a flat income. You aren't. You may spend years on a resident's salary before your income multiplies, your residency may or may not count toward forgiveness, and the rules shifted underneath all of it in 2025. AttendingFi models that real trajectory — training-years income first, then your specialty-level attending income — because that arc is precisely what decides whether forgiveness or payoff wins. It's the difference between a rule of thumb and an actual answer.
Get your free plan → See how the math works →
Questions, feedback, or a correction to our math? Email us at hello@attendingfi.com — we read everything.