By Alaina Trivax, WCI Columnist“Good for you! You work hard, and you deserve that new ____.”
Have you ever heard that? Maybe after purchasing a car or house or following a big vacation? Or maybe you’ve thought that yourself: I’m getting this because I DO deserve it.
I’m not in medicine myself; instead, I work as a middle school teacher. My husband, Brandon, is a partner in a PM&R private practice. We have two young boys and a dog, and we’re still squeezing into our 1,100 square-foot home from his residency years. We had some preliminary conversations with our realtor recently about selling our current home and looking for something a little bigger. I loved working with this guy seven years ago. At the time, we knew very little about long-term financial planning—we more-or-less impulse-bought a house after our rental situation fell through.
It was not an ideal strategy for home buying!
More recently, when that same realtor emphasized how much we “deserve” an upgrade to a bigger house with more space for our growing family, I’ve got to admit that it was a bit of a red flag.
The Medical and Financial Journey
Like many WCI readers, we have a written financial plan. Ours includes a goal of maxing out our retirement accounts and paying down our debts, with a significant emphasis on paying off the student loans as aggressively as possible. During my husband’s training years, this didn’t leave much money for fun or frivolous spending. Overall, we did fine, but we certainly got used to watching our spending closely.
Now, though, we’ve finally got some financial freedom. Since my husband became an attending and, more recently, earned partnership in his private practice, our income has more than tripled from his training years. A lot of the money has been allocated for student loans, but we’re also saving some for a little fun spending.
As the saying goes, money doesn’t buy happiness. Absolutely true. But it can buy time, convenience, quality, and a whole lot of things and experiences. We’ve reflected on balancing our financial priorities with our desire to enjoy spending.
Our financial plan still stands—and still includes some big goals. We’ve identified a few areas where we want to increase our spending to enjoy life a little more. We’ll keep paying the student loan minimums every month, but spending on these priorities might mean there will be certain months during which we don’t make an extra student loan payment. The hardest thing about this choice is knowing that it’s also delaying our goal of moving to a larger home. We’ve decided to be OK with it, though. We certainly feel like we deserve a house with more space and a bigger yard, but we can’t have it all at the same time. We’re in the final stretch with these student loans anyway, and we are on track to pay them off within 4 1/2 years of Brandon starting his attending job.
More information here:
We Quit Paying Extra on Our Student Loans (and Why It Feels Dangerous)
With Our Expanding Family, We’ve Had to Break Our Financial Plan – Twice
Travel and Family Experiences
Over mid-winter break, Brandon and I traveled to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun for a vacation with our two boys, my mom, and my aunt. Getting out of the Michigan winter for a week and enjoying some sunshine was beyond wonderful. We appreciated the extra hands for our first “big trip” with the boys as we spent a few days living our best lives—splashing in the pool, eating mid-day ice cream cones, and enjoying the time together. We could cash-flow our portion of the trip as the expenses were spaced across a few months—plane tickets in the fall and hotel costs upon arriving at the resort. Honestly, having the ability to cash flow a trip we couldn’t have afforded just a few years ago was pretty cool.
Over the winter, I also booked houses for two summer lake trips with my extended family and with my in-laws. I’m new to the beach vacation world, and it’s wild to me that you have to book so far in advance.
Family trips like these were a highlight of my childhood, and I want to ensure my kids have those memories, too. Now that we can loosen up our budget a little, spending on travel and time together is our top priority.
A Little Fun—For All of Us
We’ve been hitting the student loans hard for quite a while now. During my husband’s first few years as an attending, he regularly took on additional weekend shifts so that we could send some extra money toward student loans. We’re very motivated to be done with them and feel good about our current payoff trajectory. So, we’ve decided to increase our spending on hobbies and activities for us and our kids.
Brandon has been a lifelong golfer and recently signed up for a six-month series of lessons with GOLFTEC. He can squeeze in the lessons on his weekly half-day and then fit the practice session in over lunch later in the week. The lessons are pricey upfront—$1,500 for 15 lessons with a PGA-certified pro, regular practice time, and a club evaluation. But the value is there—it works out to around $100 per lesson plus some additional benefits. It’s the kind of thing we definitely couldn’t have afforded a year or two ago. Even now, we both still shudder at the idea of such a significant single expense. What’s the point of working so hard, though, if we don’t get to enjoy life, too? These lessons are something he’s wanted for a long time, and they finally fit our budget.
We’re also getting the boys into more activities—and kids' activity fees can quickly add up! They both attend school full-time—daycare for the little one and preschool for the other—so they don’t necessarily need extra socialization or structure. But it’s fun to watch them develop new skills and explore their interests. Right now, I’ve got them in weekly swim lessons and a kids Ninja Warrior-esque class. They’ll be home with me all summer, and I might add another activity or two to fill the days.
The golf lessons, for sure, and even some of the kids’ activities are expenses that wouldn’t fit our budget a few years ago. Heck, we just got back to broke in 2022. In February, for example, we paid for the total cost of the resort stay when we arrived at our hotel in Cancun. Brandon signed up for golf lessons the day after we returned from vacation. A week later, I enrolled the boys in a six-month course of those ninja classes. That was an expensive month, and we most definitely did not send extra money to student loans. We’re leaning on the plan here. We know we’ve prioritized our areas of importance. There are plenty of other things we want to buy or do, but that would mean spending it all. And that’s exactly what we want to avoid.
More information here:
What’s the Value of Our Time, Anyway?
How Creating a Budget Helped Us Decide If We Could Afford $1,000 Plane Tickets
Small Upgrades and Conveniences
During residency—and especially during that extra-tight fellowship year—we postponed many repairs, upgrades, and general life purchases. In some ways, that level of frugality became a habit.
For example, the lid on our blender broke at some point. The blender still works; you just have to hold down the lid while it’s running. Did you think you’d put the frozen berries away while your smoothie came together? Not anymore. I like to think of it as an opportunity for a little (forced) meditation break! It’s been like that for at least a year, and we just live that way now. Sure, we could buy a new blender today, but we’ve got our eyes on a fancy brand, so we’re waiting for a sale.
A new blender, upgraded sheets, and a better couch are all on that list. Especially as we’re preparing our house to go on the market in the next year, there are quite a few home projects that we need to wrap up, as well. These are expenses we could cash flow, but we can’t cash flow them all simultaneously AND continue fulfilling the other goals of our financial plan. We’ve kept a list of these upgrades and figure we’ll fit them in as our other spending allows.
Sticking to the Plan
After maxing out our retirement accounts, our top priority is still to keep paying off the student loans. With an upcoming bonus and additional expected income, we hope to finish paying these off by mid- to late-2024. The most exciting thing about being done with them is knowing how much additional financial flexibility we'll have. We can make different choices with our lives, because we won't be tied down by hundreds of thousands in student loan debt.
After we pay off those loans, we both look forward to frivolous, unmonitored spending. By various measures, we have been relatively conservative with our spending and lifestyle throughout this journey, and we want to loosen up for a few months—before settling back into a budget while saving for a new home. Brandon would like to purchase new golf clubs. He’s been using his current clubs since he was in high school, so he’s certainly well overdue. Even my brother poked fun at him last time we golfed together: “Come, on doc! You’ve got to get some new clubs.” We could justify the expense—he’s investing in his golf game with the lessons already, so he might as well get the new clubs, too. It takes some intentional effort to avoid falling into that trap. We’re holding out just a bit longer; he wants to do a club fitting for personalized clubs, so he’s waiting until we’re really ready to spend the money.
I’ve long been considering an appointment with a personal stylist. I used to be much more fashionable and enjoyed styling myself. Amidst the chaos that comes with working full time, running a household, and keeping two small children alive, my personal style isn’t something I put much thought into anymore. I’d like to have a sense of style again—I just don’t have the time to explore fashions and shop and return what doesn’t fit. I think it could be a lot of fun to work with someone who is an expert.
Brandon has also been building a commemorative watch collection since graduating from residency. Obviously, with our finances as they were, he doesn’t have anything super pricey, but he does have a few meaningful pieces gifted upon the graduation of fellowship, for Father's Day from our boys, and more. He also wants to get matching his-and-hers watches to commemorate the payoff of our student loans. This will be a pricey purchase that will delay our other financial goals by just a bit. I’m learning, though, that we’ve got to enjoy our money.
Once those loans are actually gone, our priority is to maintain our retirement savings while also saving to buy or renovate our next home. We want more space for our family, and we are ready to use our money to get it!
Spending the Money
Like the “I deserve it” perspective, we’ve found that the “I need it” mindset is also a threat to our financial plan. These clearly defined priorities give me something to reference when evaluating our choices and spending. We now have the flexibility to enjoy our money, but we don’t want to get caught up in enjoying all of it at once.
How have you prioritized your spending? How did your investing plan change after you paid off your student loans? Is it still difficult for you to spend the money on yourself or your family?
One of the big takeaways I’ve had from this article (and WCI in general) is to spend money on the things you enjoy. The key is identifying those small handful of things and attempt to block out the rest. Congrats!
Alaina it looks like you have excellent style in your photo! You guys have excellent financial discipline and it’s great to have something to look forward to once you meet the paying off student loan debt financial goal. And congrats on your hubby not falling for the Diderot effect and still using those beat up old high school clubs during his $1500 fancy pants golf pro lessons. I celebrate such behavior! My wife always argues with me that fighting the Diderot effect means I’m cheap. she used the analogy of showing up to a $1000 suit cocktail party with $20 shorts and T-shirt. The Diderot effect is protecting me from embarassing myself and being socially inappropriate. I argued with her though that’s not what the Diderot effect is. A better analogy would be the Honda I park in the doctor’s parking lot next to the Teslas- they still got us from to work on time, I just paid a lot less for it. Just like your husband holding off on those new clubs 🙂
A bit off topic, but in line with other posts of yours, I recently talked to a young anesthesiologist, who has been doing locums anesthesia since he finished his fellowship. He is doing amazingly well and is likely to make $700,000 his first year out.
Because he has no wife and no children and the Locums pay for his room and board and travel, he has been able to amass $360,000 in cash, which is exactly the same as student loan debt.
He said he would rather invest that money, than pay off his student loans all in one lump sum because he is in the SAVE program.
Here is an anonymous text about the situation:
“They paused interest due to COVID a few months in and not that much interest has accrued. Four years of residency and one in fellowship and those years counted, remarkably, even though I didn’t make payments those years. So sixty more minimum payments and my debt could be cleared. Now, I’m not sure to continue 1099 vs W2 to work for a non profit hospital and if I should pay back loans or invest. The situation is very much like that moral dilemma article you sent me.”
Before he sent this, my advice was to pay off the debt (it is at 6% now that interest has been reactivated). I mentioned he could simply accumulate a similar amount of cash again in the subsequent year for any “investments” that could guarantee 6% after taxes.
But, his situation is interesting in that he has a huge chunk of cash that he could invest, and by paying minimums he may be able to get this debt forgiven?
I hate to be ‘that guy’ but getting the lessons now and the clubs later seems penny wise and pound foolish. I would get the clubs now to learn how to use them properly with the professional coach.
Appreciate your focus on getting rid of school debt.
For me, it was paying off our house and being completely debt free. Not that it mattered in the long run, but for me at the time, it was paramount in my life. As you finally pay off that student debt, with the kind of income you’ll have, you’ll truly be off and running. congratulations.