My Favorites
You must be logged in to see your favorites.
Medical and Dental Students Top 10 Financial Tips
Hover below to read the first 5 tips!
Click here for more info!
Public Service Loan Forgiveness | Federal Student Aid – Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans can lead to forgiveness of your remaining student loan balance after years of reduced payments.
The most common plans are Pay As You Earn (PAYE), Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE), Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) and Income-Based Repayment (IBR).
Each of these plans requires you to pay a percentage of your discretionary income for 20 to 25 years – This site recaps all of them… Student Loan Forgiveness (and Other Ways the Government Can Help You Repay Your Loans) – Federal Student Aid. In addition to many options for doctors. They are willing to give a lot to get a little, are you willing to give a little to get a lot?
Check it out!
Click here for more info!
Public Service Loan Forgiveness | Federal Student Aid – Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans can lead to forgiveness of your remaining student loan balance after years of reduced payments.
The most common plans are Pay As You Earn (PAYE), Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE), Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) and Income-Based Repayment (IBR).
Each of these plans requires you to pay a percentage of your discretionary income for 20 to 25 years – This site recaps all of them… Student Loan Forgiveness (and Other Ways the Government Can Help You Repay Your Loans) – Federal Student Aid. In addition to many options for doctors. They are willing to give a lot to get a little, are you willing to give a little to get a lot?
Check it out!
Click here for more info!
You can find your federal student loan information and holder of your loan by searching The National Student Loan Data System at https://studentaid.gov/ which will lead you to the database for student aid, including loans and grants. It contains information on the kind of loan you have (such as a Direct loan or Perkins loan), the outstanding balance, and its current status. If you have not done so already, create an account, save your username and password and get started in loading in all of your debt into the DFW debt module. Secondly, to accomplish this in other personal debt areas (car loans, credit cards, lines of credit etc.), you will want to pull all three credit reports to ensure that you capture all your debt (as every merchant does not report to all three agencies, so you do not want to omit any item within your debt inventory). Once you have accomplished this, load in the debt’s total balance, interest rates, lender(servicer), payment (if applicable) etc. Now you will have a good picture of your total debt picture on paper.
Most people refi to get better terms on the loan with the most important being for lower payments. This is accomplished by offering you a lower interest rate. Therefore, the number component that the lender will evaluate is your credit score, which needs to exceed 740 to get the best rate available.
Here are several relevant reads to your profession that will aid your knowledge currency:
Whitecoatinvestor.com – basically any and all physician financial topics.
Physicianonfire.com – tilt towards financial independence and early retirement.
Passiveincomemd.com – how to invest in passive income sources to take control of your financial future. https://lifeofamedstudent.com/2020/07/03/how-much-do-doctors-make/
1) Not Funding Retirement Accounts
Residency was the first job I had that paid enough money to care about. Every job I had before that was simply spending money. Money to blow on the weekends. Dinner and date money. When residency started, I could not believe my first paycheck–nearly $2000–JUST for the two weeks of ORIENTATION! WOW! The organization I worked for, of course, offered retirement packages, including a 401k with automatic withdrawals starting at 4% per monthly paycheck. There was no employer match and with the excitement of the new job/paycheck, 4% was enough for me to want to get my hands on while rationalizing it was too little to build a retirement on.
2) Rolling Over One Whole Life Policy into Another Whole Life Policy
If you are considering a whole life policy, stop IMMEDIATELY. If you need a course on why to, no matter the sales pitch, not get a whole life policy, read the series on the White Coat Investor blog. It’s very convincing and I couldn’t match his passion for debunking whole life in this post.
3) Being Underinsured…
You go to undergrad, medical school, and residency, with all of this on top of high school. It is now grade “Twenty” or more when you finally finish. That time is worth a lot. The good news is that suffering through that time eventually pays well. The average physician is now making $220,000 + per year. That is a lot of potential income down their road. And while my decent amount ($220k and rising) of government-issued student loans is forgivable in my death, not all private refinance companies go this route. I should never have considered whether I need a $300k or $350k life insurance policy like my wife and I debated, but a ‘how many MILLIONS’ policy. It did not really occur to me until after my daughter was born and my wife stopped working how insignificant that $350k policy (that essentially cost $14k to plus $800 a year to get) would be if something happened to me.
4) Not Having my Attending Contract for after Residency Professionally Examined
I am pretty sure I have a good contract for next year. It’s a small group, the contract is short, and even I can understand it. It’s more money than I ever imagined. It’s in the exact location I wanted to work/live. I beat out two other guys from my residency who were also interested. Then, they agreed to give me a signing bonus! What could be wrong with that? Well, now that it has been a few months since I signed it, I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from other people/residents/attendings about how their “perfect” contract turned out to be anything but. Will mine make out ok? I hope so. It’s a salary position with great pay, but it’s weak on specifics on how much I’ll have to work to earn that– “work and call load equally divided” among the group. Well, what if the group size changes? I could end up working a lot more with no additional compensation. Looking back, I really wish I had it professionally examined.
5) Not Knowing Any or All of This Early in Residency or even Medical School
Let’s face it–medical schools are terrible at giving you any kind of business or financial advice. And what happens when you start a practice? You are constantly making big-time business and financial decisions, with no education on how to do so. The mistakes I have made in residency have literally cost me tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, in my lifetime. And had I had an injury, disability, or death in the time periods I have been underinsured–it would have cost my family and I a lot more. I wish I’d known something about finances prior to residency. My favorite for physician financial help is a website/book called “The White Coat Investor.
To read more about The Top 10 Medical and Dental Students Financial Tips and Top 5 Financial Mistakes made during Residency: CLICK HERE
