This originally was included inside the post about how to manage loans and finances while in medical school. Though the summary advice of that particular post is: don’t spend too much, get a roommate, and manage your finances closely – perhaps some of you were looking for more salient advice. Given that, I wanted to break out what we did into it’s own post for more detail.
What Did YOU Do During Medical School?
Before Med School
For some personal background about the SurgeonSpouse (tm) here at SurgeonJourney, I worked for a healthcare software company (with a solid 401k & benefits) right after undergrad. Though I had great benefits, I totally didn’t know it at the time. Knowing what I know now, I was lucky I decided to throw a bunch of money into my 401k – I didn’t know about suggested investment strategies and I didn’t know what resources to use on the web.
While I was working at the healthcare company – The Surgeon was doing research and preparing for medical school. At this time we lived in different cities and correspondingly kept our finances separate. To her immense credit, the Surgeon is a frugal BOSS and knows how to stretch the dollars when she needs to.
Med School – The First Year
Fast forward a year or two and the Surgeon is in her first year of medical school. We’re still in separate cities and I visited with my hard earned consulting airline miles (I’ll have to do a post about some frugal travel tips in the future. Would certainly help for residency interviews). The Surgeon, being the frugal badass that she is, lived with a fellow grad student and had a carefully planned weekly food budget and menu. She packed all her own lunches and cooked dinner at home.
Much of this meal planning and living arrangement takes discipline and a healthy amount of delayed gratification. Skills that apply not only to finances, but to a variety of things in life – like staying the course to becoming a doctor. Luckily, the Surgeon has an abundance of both! If you’re reading this blog and have made it this far, you, too, likely have these attributes.
Second Year and Beyond
Through her first year, The Surgeon kept to her budget and did a really good job of limiting expenses. At the start of second year of med school, I left my healthcare consulting job and moved to be in the same city as The Surgeon. We looked around and found an affordable apartment near the school and made the big decision to move in together!
Moving In with a Partner?
There are a lot of practical decisions to make when moving in together, it’s a great step in a relationship. We had to talk about and make decisions on things like:
- Who’s paying for groceries?
- Are we splitting rent? If so, how are we going to do that – evenly or based on income?
- Are we putting both our names on the lease?
- Which name(s) are we going to use for utilities?
- Are we sharing streaming accounts?
- What do we do with our furniture?
- Which way does the toilet paper face? (FACT: there’s only one right answer to this and I’m sticking to it)
Sure, the questions can go from the more practical and reasonable to slightly more esoteric – but you’ll encounter every aspect of a partner when living together. It’s important to have these discussions upfront – especially about the TP.
Some of the financial conversations can get sticky if not broached early, by talking about them ahead of time, it can save a lot of angst down the road. Alas, I digress, back to financial advice.
Being a Partner of a Med Student
I found a job in the same city as The Surgeon, which worked out well while she was in school. We were fortunate that her med school was in a larger metropolitan area but still relatively affordable – in the Southeast, I’m sure you can guess which city. There’s a vibrant startup community and I was able to get a great job while The Surgeon finished the remaining three years of med school.
Having an income really helped out our financial situation while The Surgeon was in school. Since we lived together, I tried to pick up expenses where I could to minimize loans. It should also be noted that we had been together for four years at this point (since senior year of undergrad), so sharing expenses and living together was the next ideal step for us.
Fourth Year!
Until forth year, spending is fairly predictable. It is worth noting, amusingly, that generally med school tuition goes up for third and fourth year. Of course this is when you’re done with your didactic years and moving to clinical rotations. You’ll have sparing classroom time once clinicals start, though it was always strange to me that tuition goes up for your final years when you’re not really in a classroom.
What throws a wrench in finances for your forth year is residency interviews. Once you choose a specialty, you’ll start picking out residency programs based on your scores and aspirations. Depending on what you choose, you may end up applying to a few dozen programs. For every program that extends an interview, that travel is on your dime.
We also got married, which isn’t exactly cheap endeavor – but still file taxes separately! #PSLF.
Residency Interviews – Unavoidable Travel Expenses
For The Surgeon’s residency interviews, we used a combination of airline miles, low cost carriers, and creativity to keep costs low. But when you don’t have a lot of scheduling flexibility nor advance notice – flights can get expensive. To save on hotels when she could, the Surgeon would find a friend who lived in the interview city, if possible. Otherwise, it was AirBnB and hotels.
You might end up spending a few thousand dollars on interviews once you’re done. Between all the travel, and also the interview attire, it adds up. In the future, I’ll do a post on some credit cards I’d recommend to take advantage of all that travel spend, something I wish I thought of sooner.
Final Thoughts on Med School Finances
Overall, you’ll make it through! We did it with a combination of saving and careful planning, coming out with federal loans just shy of $200,000 (that interest was already adding up) – hooray! I made some loan mistakes that I definitely will cover in the rest of the loan and PSLF series.
What questions do you have about finances during med school? Questions for The Surgeon and The SurgeonSpouse?
-SurgeonJourney