Tag: loans

How The Surgeon and The SurgeonSpouse Managed Medical School

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.

Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash

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

During Medical School: Managing Debt and Living Costs

So you’ve chosen a medical school, enrolled, and are happily studying through first year and loving anatomy lab. How do you manage your expenses and loans while in school? Excellent question, dear reader, and this builds on the previous post in the series that provides a high level summary of securing student loans.

Every person has a unique financial and life situation – perhaps you have a partner and are sharing living expenses. Are they in school? Are they working? Do they make a comfortable amount and are you close enough such that they can support you while you’re in school?

What kind of loans do you have, private or public?

From the perspective of managing loans while in school, both private and public loans generally allow you to defer making payments while you’re a full time student. Note however, that your loans will continue to accrue interest whether or not you’re making payments. Because you’re fully focused on school, it doesn’t make sense to make payments until after you’ve graduated. I’ll go into detail about ways to manage your public and private loans once you’ve graduated from medical school in a future post.

Managing Expenses – Find a Roommate!

Here’s where having the discipline to focus on keeping a budget will save you in the long run. By using one (or more) of these tools, you can get a perfect picture of your monthly income and expenditure, and carefully plan out what you’ll need each semester.

If you don’t have a partner that you’d consider sharing expenses with, there are additional options you have to save on housing costs. Check with your fellow classmates to see if they’re looking for roommates – do make sure you’re compatible living together. If the idea of living with a fellow med student is like bringing work home with you, see if you school has other graduate programs. Like med students, students in other grad programs are typically focused, high achieving, and might make an ideal roommate or three.

Ultimately, shacking up with a roommate for a few years while in school isn’t the worst thing you can do. It’s a great way to save on your largest expense outside of med school tuition and can reduce your need for loans.

Budget for Larger Expenses

As you progress through medical school, remember the long game. By the time you become an attending, (if you’re in the US), your superlative education will include:

  • Four years of undergrad
  • Four years of medical school
  • at least 3 years of residency
  • TOTAL: 11 YEARS after high school

If you’re like the Surgeon and planning on a surgery sub-specialty, that’s a seven year residency (including research). Tack on roughly two years of fellowship. Say you’re interested in becoming a Thoracic Surgeon. That’s a 17 YEAR ride after high school – buckle up.

My point with this isn’t to scare you, but to realize that your high income years (at this point) are about a decade away, the decisions you make regarding finances early on can save you much later in the long run. Remember, life is a marathon, not a sprint.

During medical school, larger expenses might include mandatory testing (like STEP exams), vacation (responsibly), transportation (keeping your car alive), and in your fourth year: residency interviews. Loans are certainly one way to manage these expenses. But another, perhaps more prudent option, would be budgeting and planning for these expenses ahead of time.

What Should YOU Do?

In the end, I can’t tell you what to do. I know what worked for The Surgeon and me, and I’ve seen what can work for others. Ultimately, it’s about being responsible with your financial decisions, closely evaluating living arrangements and expenses, and keeping your mind and body healthy for the long run.

It’s also great to instill these habits early, so that once you are making a bit of an income (at least adding to the positive side of the ledger) in residency, you can work on saving. Keeping those habits into your attending years will have you set up to be debt free while maximizing your financial potential for your life time!

What questions about expenses and budgeting do you have while in med school? How to make ramen more tasty? Adding an egg and some leafy greens can really kick up a ramen pack on the cheap.

-SurgeonJourney