Graduating from residency or fellowship with large amount of student debt can feel a lot like standing in front of a mountain. It’s hard to see the end when the debt load is overwhelming. Most of the people I know who have over a quarter million in debt fall into one of two categories. The first group is individuals who feel that the amount of medical school debt seems hopeless.… Read the rest
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One of the most common questions that medical students, residents, or fellows will ask is should I use REPAYE or PAYE? These two programs seem to be the most popular plans available with IBR being a close third. Determining what plan is right for you could save you thousands of dollars if unable to use the standard repayment plan or refinance for lower interest rate.… Read the rest
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There are several occasions when it may make sense to delay contributing to tax advantaged retirement accounts. Tax advantaged retirement accounts include plans such as a 401k, or an IRA. For most people, it is in their best interest to invest in these retirement accounts. However for certain situations, it may actually make sense to delay contributing to these retirement accounts.… Read the rest
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In many ares of medicine, there is the ability to undergo additional training for specialization. For most specialties, additional training via fellowship usually means increased income. One example of increased income is a physician who completed an internal medicine residency and then goes on to complete a cardiology fellowship.
Internal medicine is a 3 year program. Cardiology is at minimum another 3 years of fellowship beyond internal medicine training.… Read the rest
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This year I’ve finally made enough money to reach the Social Security contribution cutoff. The Social Security paycheck bonus occurs when an individual makes more than $127,200 per year. Any income beyond this amount no longer has taxes taken out for Social Security. New attendings who scrutinize their paycheck may notice a nice bump up in the take home pay when this threshold is reached.… Read the rest
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Choosing to have a child while in medical school or residency is a difficult decision to make. Entering into the medical profession and raising a kid both take a lot of effort. The average age of a medical student or resident usually ranges from mid 20’s to mid 30’s. This age also coincides with the most popular time to have a baby.… Read the rest
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I have been tracking my expenses for years with excel files and PDF’s. The benefit of this is it gives me an ability to look back and see where I was able to save, and where I had large expenses. Both medical school and residency were filled with opportunity to spend large sums of money. In this post, I take a look back at some of the largest expenses during medical school and residency.… Read the rest
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Newly graduated physicians may find themselves dealing with a foreign process, billing. The amount of training for billing while in residency varies widely. Some programs have only brief discussions while other programs have residents do some of the billing. I was lucky in that my residency program had us rotate through 4 different hospital systems. In two out of the four, the residents were responsibility for entering in the diagnosis and bill for level of service.… Read the rest
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The IRS offers a service where almost any individual making less than $64,000 a year can file their taxes for free. Sounds too good to be true, well the catch is that you have to be comfortable with some basic math. In past years, I have taken advantage of the service and it worked quite well. Filing taxes may seem daunting and expensive, but rest assure – the thought of filing is worse than the actual process.… Read the rest
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As a new attending, I don’t believe I can go a week or two without some older physician telling me how much harder things were when they trained. This seems to come up as a natural progression when someone notices that I’m new and asked where I trained. Soon after I reply comes the comments about how their training was somehow more difficult.… Read the rest
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