By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder
I had a speaking gig not long ago, mostly to a group of residents and fellows. After the presentation and group Q&A, I had a few people come up afterward to ask a few questions in a more private setting. One of those questions came from the spouse of a resident.
As usual, the talk included a section about living like a resident. That means to live a lifestyle similar to what you had as a resident for 2-5 years after you finish training in order to redirect the vast majority of your newfound attending income toward building wealth. That means predominantly paying off your student loans for most, but also saving up a real emergency fund, maxing out retirement accounts, and maybe even saving up a down payment for a home. However, living like a resident also means to learn how to live within your means during residency, and that's what this spouse wanted to talk about.
She noted they had started their family relatively early in her husband's career, and now had four children. She was a stay at home mom, and he was earning a typical resident salary, with almost two years left in residency. Her question was this:
“We're having to borrow money to fund our lifestyle during residency. Are we going to be okay?”
Essentially, she was wanting the answer to this question:
Is It OK to Live Beyond Your Means in the Short-Term If You'll Be Earning a Lot of Money in the Long-Term?
What do you say to her question? It's not an uncommon question. I've certainly had it before. Clearly, this couple has not yet acquired the X Factor. In my mind, I'm trying to think, “How can I give this couple The X Factor without offending them or making them think this personal finance stuff is so hard that they just give up and don't even try?” My goal was to inspire, perhaps lead by example, and provide some practical information. I did the best I could on the spot, but after a little more time to think about it, I'd like to flush out my answer a bit.
It's Good for High Earners to Be Average for a While
The average American household income is in the $50-55K range. That's exactly what a resident physician makes. So when a resident (or their spouse) tells me they just can't live on a resident salary, I can't help but feel that they're out of touch with the Americans around them. You will soon be at least in the top 5%, if not 1%, in terms of income and likely stay there the rest of your career and maybe even the rest of your life. It would probably be a good idea for you to have some idea what it is like for the rest of your fellow Americans. Residency is a great time to figure that out. Can you imagine bringing a group of average Americans into a room and telling them, “I just can't make ends meet on what you guys make.” They'd laugh you out of the room. Not only do they have to pay for their expenses, pay off their debts, and support their kids, but that $55K also has to provide their retirement and college savings. Don't be so entitled that you can't live like them for a few short years. Even if you're in a high cost of living area. Even if one of you is a stay at home parent. Even if you have four kids. Figure it out. Half of America makes less than you and seems to survive. You can do it too. Hint- You're probably going to need a written budget.
But We Want Our Kids to Be Able to Have Piano Lessons
She said, “But we really want our kids to be able to take piano lessons.” She was a smart lady, and quickly realized what she had said and how silly it sounded out loud. Then she pointed out the real problem- they had committed themselves to too high of a housing cost. It was a nice place to live, in a safe neighborhood with good schools. But once again, it's the big rocks that sink you. You can have a lot of little rocks like piano lessons and still be okay, but if you blow your housing, transportation, and schooling budgeting amounts, it's going to be pretty tough to stay afloat.
Here's a kid with no interest in piano lessons.
Unfortunately, having already screwed up on the housing front, this family is left with three unsavory choices. The first is to move. This is a really lousy choice if they also made the bad choice to buy a home during residency, but even if they're renting, it's still an expensive proposition to move. With less than two years left in residency, it's hard to really advocate for that. The second is to cut everything else in their lives to allow them to afford the house. There go the piano lessons, the restaurants, the vacations, the school clothes etc. We all get to spend our money on what we value, but you can trade a little nicer house for a lot of other fun stuff. The final choice is the one they will probably take- go into more debt to fund their lifestyle for two years and hope they can change their habits that first attending year.
Your Net Worth Is Already Dropping as a Resident
Even if you're not borrowing more money to fund your lifestyle as a resident, your net worth is likely already dropping like a rock due to your student loans. Most residents are making student loan payments that aren't even covering their interest. Add in lifestyle debt and it really starts going negative in a hurry.
Can You Dig Out as an Attending?
Of course, the mathematical fact is that it doesn't matter all that much what you do financially as a resident. What really matters is what you do during that most critical of years in your financial life- that first year as an attending. Even if this family borrows an extra $10K a year during residency, they probably can still manage that as a new attending. (Thankfully their student loan burden was only slightly above average.) There's enough income there to dig out of their hole if they can, by some miracle, not increase their lifestyle any more upon residency completion.
It's the Habits That Matter
But the issue is that one of the most important things you can do in residency is form good financial habits. The most important of those is learning to live within your means, preferably below your means. I think it is likely that most residents who can't live within their means as residents also won't be able to do it as attendings. They're the ones who have two car payments and a $5K mortgage before they ever leave residency. They are likely to be the docs who hit age 58 and realize they still have student loans, have a net worth under $500K, and will be looking at a very different late career and retirement than the other docs in their social circle.
Resident Loans
The other issue, of course, is that you can't get very good terms on your debt as a resident. Most relocation loans, interview loans, doctor loans, and signature loans start around 8%. They're not quite credit cards (although about 25% of docs carry balances on those) but they're definitely worse than student loans. Maybe if you're savvy you can bounce around a 0% credit card balance for a couple of years or get good terms on an auto loan, but for the most part, these new loans aren't at a good rate and aren't deductible.
The Bottom Line
So what did I tell this resident's wife? I told her that they need to sit down and make a written plan for what they are going to do with their first 12 months of attending paychecks. They still have their most important financial decision ahead of them and can make up for all the mistakes they've made in the past by making that one decision right. I also suggested maybe they couldn't afford to hire someone else to do the piano lessons and that maybe she could teach them herself.
What do you think? How can residents live like a resident while in residency? What is the secret? What advice would you give this couple? Comment below!
There’s no secret; it’s self-control. It’s the same as working out consistently or eating healthy.
My friends are leasing 40,000 entry level luxury cars as residents without rich parents while I live on about 20,000 a year as a resident. It’s actually less since I’m including hospital provided health insurance. I used to live on about 16,000 as a med student in my average-cost state.
My net worth is about -115,000 with 7 months left of residency if I include the 85,000 in roth accounts that I’ve been diligently contributing to since I was a pizza delivery guy in college. No consumer debt and a few thousand in my emergency fund which is much less than the 3-6 months that is recommended. If I get in a bind I can just stop contributing the max to my roth ira/401k which I’ve been doing in residency.
My friends with similar family help have about -200,000 of net worth due to vacations abroad every 4 months and also have some credit card debt in residency. Some of these people hace credit card debt as SINGLE people!
I’d probably look at them with an admonishing expression and say, “you really can’t live like the average american for 3-5 yrs?” (Most residencies aren’t over 5 yrs) That’s so out of touch. Yes you have much more education than the average bear, but you don’t get a pass for being a doctor. Do you want the OPTION of retiring early, a nice retirement without much financial stress….or do you want to have a baller lifestyle now while paying for it through the nose later?
A happy medium is best. I think that residents without children should use repaye (especially if not married) for the interest subsidy, max out their roth ira, put in enough for the roth 401k match, and spend up to the rest that they have.
I do realize that in my seven yrs of medical training including residency I could have spent 2,000 more a year net for a much improved lifestyle and financed that by working 5 more hrs a week for my first year as an attending. Balanceis key.
$85K Roth savings is impressive. Wish I had cared about this stuff as an undergrad!
I was gobsmacked when I read that figure, but he doesn’t mean $5.5K put aside annually in an IRA, he means that plus 401K Roth contributions.
Yeah it’s a lot for a pgy3 who has never made a lot of money haha. It includes my roth ira and roth 401k.
This year has greatly inflated the numbers of course. This year is the first time I can max out both.
I can’t imagine how my savings will be as an attending in 7 months when making 4.5x what I make now. 🙂
This is awesome my friend. Congrats on a great foundation to what will likely be an easy pathway to FI.
How did you know about retirement stuff during college? I always kept my cost of living low and I am a saver by nature, but the retirement accounts you have now are truly impressive.
When you say “My friends with similar family help” what exactly does that mean?
Awesome job.
Keep up the great work.
At age 17 I started reading idiots guides to mutual funds books, etc. My dad is in finance but didn’t help much. Just curiosity about money and personal finance.
I didn’t finance all of my med school myself, otherwise I’d have like 20k more debt. I received a somewhat modest gift from a relative plus I got an extra car to use in med school. That saved a few thousand a year in car operating costs; I just had to pay for gas and maintenance.
But my friends lived/live on probably 7-10k more a year during med school and residency.
I would advise them to try their best and cut down their expenses and start living like they were living pre-residency.
That’s what I did. I continued living like a student for 2 years until I paid off my student debt, built an emergency fund and saved for a down payment on a condo.
Moonlight instead of borrow if they refuse to cut costs. It’s a good sample of being a slave to high expenses. That’s 2 years to see what it’s like. Maybe then they’ll learn “hey, I don’t want to work all the time just to pay for stuff we don’t really need”.
Yes, moonlighting to the hilt is actually their best option if his residency allows it. Ideological objections aside, moonlighting is also great for figuring out what kind of practice environment is best for him if he hasn’t already decided that.
WCI, I think you are spot on. I know many people make fun of those that plan and use budgets, but not everyone was born with that X-factor that makes them a “go-getter” financially. Some people need structure, which will in turn provide some self-motivated discipline. I know setting a budget and a plan at the end of my fellowship for this first year has been directly linked to our success.
The hardest part is setting the plan, in my opinion. Once that is done, it is just a matter of trusting that the plan will work and following along (read: budget) to make sure you are actually following the plan.
I, too, had three kids by the time I finished training. We were still able to let our kids do sports/ballet/etc, but we didn’t buy a big home (though we did buy an 1100 square foot house way back before medical school that we still live in now 8 years later even as an attending; we will stay here for two more years til debt is paid off).
Part of the problem is contentment, too. People think the more they buy, the happier they will be. The problem is that no matter how big/fancy your house or car is…it ends up just feeling like a house or a car. People need to learn to be content during training, and then contentment as an attending (while investing wisely and destroying debt) will be easy!
WCI and I had it easy (?) with minimal school loans, higher pay during residency, and peers who weren’t rich doctors just middle class military officers. Keeping up with the Jones was easier; only the single guys and colonels had fancy cars!
One of my concerns with doc/ nondoc marriages, which pretty clearly isn’t an issue for WCI: counting on/ requiring the doc to work more (moonlighting or whatever) to earn more to satisfy hedonic adaptation needing regular upgrades in everything, especially if the spouse is not adding money to the equation or if the workload of the doc prevents the doc from enjoying the luxury lifestyle let alone time with their family. Doctor’s spouses should remove any suspicion they married for money by ensuring their doc spends as much time with them as feasible and by living less than large. Yes yes it’s a waste for spouse to earn minimum wage instead of doc work an extra 5 hours a week but how about spending $300 less a week instead. Should be easy for an at home spouse to economize in some way.
I totally agree.
This is why ONE SPOUSE is so important. I refused to marry anyone who didn’t have ambition and who didn’t want to work, and now my wife adds another $150,000/year to my income through her tech job.
Solid advice as usual. That being said, although I am a huge proponent of delayed gratification, I think there is some wiggle-room. We can use the piano lessons as an example. They were used in this post to illustrate how the family is out of touch with the average American, but I think it could represent real concerns that residents have. If they cannot afford piano lessons (let’s say $100 a month) for the oldest child they can either do without, as the post suggests, or borrow as a resident to finance that $100. We can for simplicity say that that $100 will cost roughly $200 to pay back (hopefully less depending on rate of intrest and how long it takes them to pay off their loans). Depending on how dedicated the child/family is to those piano lessons they may look back on the decision and be very grateful that they financed them and would have been willing to borrow much more from their future earnings to pay for those lessons. On the other hand, if they are each stopping for a Starbucks each morning and spending $5 for whatever overpriced coffee milkshake they like, it is unlikely they would consider that $200 a month that will cost them $400 to pay back “worth it”.
This does not change the fact that if piano lessons were important for he family that they should have factored that in to their budget and rented less home, been more frugal with groceries, paid cash for used cars, utilized cheap entertainment, etc and have been able to pay for those lessons without having to borrow money. However, that ship has sailed. As WCI suggests the most important thing now is that they don’t grow into their attending income.
I know that it is likely that if they are spending 60,000 on a 50,000 income that they will spend 360,000 on a 300,000 income. WCI is dead-on that those habits are important. However their current “extravagant” lifestyle will fit very comfortably in an attendings salary as long as they develop some self control and live like big spending residents. Are they likely to do that? Not sure. But it is certainly possible to do.
Time in the Markets is Paramount to Wealth Creation, obviously if one understands the Magic of Compounded Profits. Quite satisfying when you reach a point of generating 6 figures PASSIVELY!
Maybe that resident’s spouse will read this article and realize the issue even more?
Self control is a key. I know residents who moonlight to try to make ends meet. It’s probably not necessarily the end of the world, but you really have to reign in expenses the first few years in practice. I remember that my salary on paper increased by about fourfold after residency, but the take home didn’t seem nearly as much. With various expenses and purchases that didn’t even seem frivolous to me at the time, that 4x amount didn’t really seem enough either!
WCI, nicely done. This tackles the statement I constantly get when coaching: “There is no way for us to live on less than this, we have already made all the cuts we can.” Usually the real meaning of that statement is “I’m not willing to live on less than I’m spending now. I want it all and I don’t care what it costs.” 90% of Americans live on less income than this doctor family has, yet there seems to be nothing in their budget they can cut. If there are other people living on less than you, then you have room to make cuts.
Dr. Cory S. Fawcett
I am a retired CPA. About fifteen years ago, I was doing some research on personal bankruptcy. Part of my research involved reading the filings of the plaintiffs and the various court documents.
One case that I will not forget is a physician who filed for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy with $450k in debt. The debtor presented to the court a plan where he would contribute about $300 a month to his creditors.
The judge went through his monthly budget and noted that the doctor was paying $600 a month on music lessons for his three kids, $2000 a month on private school tuition, and $2500 on food eaten out and groceries. The judge noted that the first two expenses were unnecessary and then he asked the trustee to take the average expense for the last five cases with four family members and use the average for the food. The court stated that the debtor could afford to pay about $5000 per month to his creditors.
When I graduated from the university, I rented rooms in boarding houses until I could afford better. However, in recent years, I see students (medical or otherwise) living a lifestyle that their parents may have only attained at age 45 or so before they have the earning to support that lifestyle. There is little self control.
We lived like residents for 7 years after graduation. That was over twenty years ago and we weren’t planning to retire early. The FIRE movement wasn’t obvious back then and we weren’t really saving so much to retire early, but rather to give us freedom of choice. I’m glad we kept working, because the confidence we felt and freedom of choice allowed us to negotiate and look for great jobs. I’m still working and enjoying my job at 54 but the past couple years my husband has not been enjoying his job and he’ll retire at 53 in April. Those first seven years of early saving built a great life of freedom for us.
It is amazing how residency and medical education has changed. In the late 80’s and early 90’s it seemed there were few married residents and those with children were really rare. The student loan debt rates were a fraction of what current trainees seem to experience. And, of course, prior to the work hour restriction era, there was very little time outside of the hospital to live any other way but as a resident. As I was unmarried, had no children, no loans and routinely worked 120 weeks, there was simply no time to spend what I was earning ($25,000 or so as PGY1 up to low $30’s as PGY5, as I recall). I finished up residency in the black, without even taking advantage of any retirement vehicles (unfortunately). No question I had it easy. And then when I did get married the year after fellowship, my new spouse was still in residency, so it was easy to continue living that lifestyle (vs. that of a “rich” attending). It is certainly much more challenging with a stay at home spouse and several children, not to mention ballooning student loans, but I totally agree with the premise that if you are making ends meet by taking on additional debt and allowing for lifestyle creep during residency, I think the same tendencies might get even worse as a young attending. So important to be mindful of keeping within a budget and living below ones means from the get go.
Living within your means is an attitude not a math equation. If you don’t have the attitude that you will live on less than you make as a resident, you will not have the attitude that you will live on less than you make as an attending either.
I lived small as a resident, probably mostly because i didn’t have a wife or kids. Got my radiology job and bought night vision goggles, a BMW, a hand made $3,000 rapier for the wall, tickets to Thailand, etc etc.
The following two years i developed a reputation as the most ruthlessly hard working guy in the group, the one you could be sure would hit you up for your evening shifts every time the schedule came out, and i knocked out over $300,000 of debt in two years.
I kicked back after that but still managed to put $550,000 in vanguard over the next three years.
My total monthly fixed expenses are a tad over $2,000/month. Rent, car insurance, phone, internet, piano lessons, Pandora. I’m extremely afraid of financial ruin so watching my friends build $2,000,000 houses makes me go pale.
But i have no kids. One fiancee. No dog. I kept it simple but not everyone can do that.
I did just buy an $8,000 acoustic guitar but only after selling a few unused watches to colleagues to pay for it. The fiancee approved that one lol.
One thing you can count on with a frugality post is comments by the most hyperfrugal out there. Be sure to remember why you lived like a resident for a few years as an attending. I’m sure it wasn’t so you could die the richest guy in the graveyard. Eventually, it’s okay to go spend some money without having to sell stuff to do so. Moderation in all things.
My goal actually is to die with about 5 million in today’s dollars at age 80. If I live on 53k a year net I can die with 10 million actually. However, if I have three kids with my future wife like I want to, I assume that they would want to use more of the money I have haha.
My real goal is to have about 1 million to fund a merit-based scholarship fund in perpetuity. With a 4% real return that 1 million dollars could fund 40,000 in annual scholarships. However I’d have to choose between having a small scholarship fund when younger or a large one when I pass.
Some of us actually have very little desire for material things but we’re a small minority to be fair.
Yes, you should be prudent as a resident. You can still screw up a lot of financial decisions then though and recover fine. There will be plenty of time and money in the future. Training is the time to build Human Capital, not Financial Capital.
The thing that I denied myself in residency was a dryer. I hung my clothes on a drying rack in my apartments kitchen. One of my first purchases as an attending was a dryer.
My first year fellowship apartment in Boston was the basement of an old Victorian home in Brookline. It was rented out by a kind couple, walking distance to my hospital, and blissfully cheap. It featured a plug in range and microwave, low ceilings, and vintage linoleum. That November I noticed the three windows that provided the only source of natural light in the apartment became buried beneath snow…and stayed that way for 6 months.
Two years later I moved to a dumpy beach apartment in LA (moldy bathrooms, strategically located on the 2am inebriate skateboarder path from a nearby live music venue). I was overjoyed with my newfound rich man’s living quarters.
The secret to happiness is low expectations, and the key is setting those expectations realistically as a trainee.
How about mentioning to your readers that there are morally-sound ways to avoid expanding the number of children one has and it makes sense to do some family planning as part of or in parallel to one’s financial planning? That message is always absent from Dave Ramsey’s advice and I am disappointed that it is absent from WCI, in this particular case too. Multiple kids, with stay at home spouse while one spouse is in residency is just poor planning, as far as I am concerned. And, it is a choice to have those kids. There are ways to manage that which do not require employing morally difficult concepts. The best thing that Dave Ramsey could do for many of his listeners is to say, “It costs a lot of money to raise a child, and you can’t afford it right now. Don’t add children to your poverty plan.” Likewise, it would help if some med students, residents, and young Attendings hear that message, every once in a while too. Just a thought. Not trying to be difficult.
By the way, I have seen this movie before. In the next scenes, the doctor in training becomes an attending and starts bringing home the big money. And, that stay at home spouse feels like she or he has “graduated” from training, too and is now free to become the “doctor’s wife” or the “doctor’s husband” that she or he always dreamed of being. “They started to fight when the money got tight and just didn’t count on the tears…”
I think a household making the average American income can certainly afford to start their family and begin saving for retirement. I hardly think it financially or morally irresponsible to have a child or three in residency. In fact, in many ways that’s a great time to have a kid- the co-pay on my first kid (in residency) was $10. The co-pay on my fourth was $5K. Which is more financially responsible?
Now if you’re on food stamps, Medicaid, and welfare, perhaps there is an argument there. But on a resident’s salary? Give me a break. You might not be able to live in the best school district and blow $600 on piano lessons, but you can certainly afford to feed, clothe, and shelter them on $50K a year.
You’re working against biology here too. If you are going to be in training until 35, and you wait until you finish to get pregnant, it’s going to be awfully tough to have more than 2. And how far do you carry this argument out? Do you have to wait until the student loans are paid off? The mortgage is paid off? You’re a millionaire? I mean, it just gets silly after a while. When/if/how many are very personal decisions. I think my readers are smart enough to make them wisely, weighing both financial and non-financial aspects. They don’t need some financial blogger telling them how to plan their families.
Clearly as a female resident with kids this comment rubs me the wrong way as well. A lot of women finish training when we’re over 30 and we’re not *that* much better off financially as young attendings. Postponing kids too long often means not having kids, having fewer kids than desired or having to spend $$ on IVF (I have friends in all 3 camps). It’s certainly prudent to think about family planning when planning finances but most physicians are capable of weighing the pros and cons of reproducing in training and as WCI said there are advantages. Clearly age applies to men as well but differently.
The other issue with waiting is you end up in my situation. Financially independent in your mid 40s with a toddler. Maybe better to be FI at 50 with all the kids out of the house.
I don’t really know where to start with this one aside from saying that the decision to have children is both deeply personal and that wealth without wellness is pretty meaningless.
I had three kids during training (last one during my fellowship). I’ll likely be able to retire early at the age of 45 or so (goal is 47 currently). I am doing that by living like a resident for the most part after finishing training, but also had kids. You can both accomplishment obtaining wealth and having a family. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
To add a little perspective. When my youngest kid leaves the house for college, I will be 49. I’ll already have been financially independent for probably a decade and be able to retire for 4 or 5 years prior to that, though I’ll likely still work part time. I then will get to spend time with my kids as adults, and maybe even follow them around if they decide to play a college sport. I’ll have the financial freedom (and the young age) to do that.
I guess what I am trying to say is that preparing for your future is vitally important, which is why we all read WCI and POF, but if you save all that money and never live a life well lived, what’s the point? If you don’t get to enjoy it at some point what’s the point?
I would much rather die with $4 million inheritance left for my kids instead of $6 million and be able to enjoy my kids as adults than to save every penny, wait til the perfect financial time to have children and be 60 when my youngest is 18. For those that decide to wait to advance their career or get their financial feet under them, that makes sense to me, too. But to say that no one should have kids during training because it adds to the “poverty plan” lacks perspective.
That all said, Weston would have a much better argument if he were talking about medical students having kids than residents. I’m not going to open that barrel of monkeys though. Some would argue “that’s what foodstamps and Medicaid are for” while others would argue they’re not.
Obviously kids cost more than contraception. I have seen oops pregnancies in patients who quit their birth control because it was too expensive- now THAT is a dumb move (for someone who didn’t want to be pregnant). For couples who choose to get pregnant and have however many kids- finances are something that needs to be taken into account but I wouldn’t berate them for it. For example, if you start residency wanting a baby but choose the big budget items such that there’s hardly any wiggle room to start… well, you will have trouble affording daycare. Better to have plans in mind and build in wiggle room to pay for things your kids need without moving all the time, and if things don’t pan out the way you hope, it turns out you have extra savings.
There is NO crystal ball when it comes to fertility. There are averages, then there are individuals. I have seen women with oops pregnancies in their 40s and others who struggle with poor egg quality at 30. Combine that with the increasing average age of first year med students, and you get a lot of women in training who don’t want to risk never being able to have a baby just to avoid having one or several in residency. Again, kids makes it harder but it is still doable on the average American salary. There is just some planning involved.
Its all about upbringing
If you had to work and scrounge for every PENNY YOU VALUE $$$ much more than the spoiled child brought up in wealth thinking everyuthing comes easy
Part of the problem with the highly educated is they think they can outsmart Wall St-HOW SAD
I lived pretty much paycheck to paycheck on my $38k to $41k resident salary. I did put $2,000 a year in an IRA, but didn’t save much beyond that other than the equity that was building in my little 1-bedroom condo.
My first two years out, I worked locums exclusively, had our condo rented out for much of that time, and most of our expenses were covered. I was able to save the vast majority of my income while my fiancee / wife finished her education and internship.
When I was interviewing for residency as a med student, the residents at one of the dinners were talking about the $10 and $20 bottles of wine no longer being good enough, and they were now accustomed to $50 and higher bottles of wine. I’m not going to name names, but it rhymed with Baio Cynic. For that and other reasons related to the perceived culture, I did not feel I would fit in well there, and ended up ranking it low, despite the outstanding clinical reputation.
Cheers!
-PoF
In case any other residents out there realized that they can’t afford to pay for piano lessons during residency . . .
http://notsoapparent.blogspot.com/2016/12/teaching-your-kids-piano-which-books-to.html?m=1
As a current resident, I think we also have to acknowledge that the system is broken. Inflation so far this year is 7.9 %, salaries at my program in a mcol city are going up 1% (but the hospital is getting 5.9 % more from medicare). The average rent on a two bedroom appartment is 1700 in the city our hospital is in, but that means all pgy1s will not be able to afford it without qualifying as being rent burdened by hud. My husband and I are both residents and we spent so far 4 k on registering to take our respective boards, and 6 k to get full licenses (will be needed for pur fellowship). Yes, living alwithin your means is important but as the years have gone on it has become substantially harder than when many older docs were in training.
Maybe. When I applied to residency the residency I attended was paying $34K. What’s your salary? I bet it’s higher even when you adjust mine for inflation over the last 20 years.
Don’t forget a (single) resident salary is still the median American household income. I’m not saying you should be saving 20% or anything, but you certainly shouldn’t be living in poverty. $1700 * 12 = $20K. Your income is $120Kish, no? Even after $10K in special doctor expenses, there’s still lots of money there.