What my budget looks like during IM residency

[brewerdoc]

Hey guys,

I've been getting more and more into personal finance since I am a soon to be attending. Since the new interns are going to be starting soon I figured I would post my budget and update it over time after I become an attending in a month or two as I will not be doing fellowship. I posted here because I figured this was practical to internal medicine residency and do not have a finance or investing question.

Debt in my name:
Initial debt going into residency was $110k @ 3.3% from med school and 3k @ 5.5% also from med school

I currently file single on my tax return but am engaged and this will likely change next year. I also live in Houston for residency which of course will change some of your numbers for living expenses. **Houston is not as cheap as I thought it would be around the med center when I moved here**

All budget numbers are per month and have been averaged per year excluding moonlighting shifts since those are sporadic and I do not count them as my regular pay.

My current gross pay: $4,657

Net pay after taxes: $3,492.86

Rent: $1,229
Electricity: $110
TV/Netflix + Internet: $135
Insurance/Phone: $125
Retirement: $0
Loans: $1,000 (as my income increased per year during residency I increased contributions here)
Parking for work in med center:$189

Total Fixed Expenses: @2,788

This gives me $704 left over for everything else:
Food/drinks 500 per month
Savings/ emergency fund is the rest: ~$200

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Debt at the end of residency is currently

84k @ 3.3 %
$800 on the 5.5% loan

Note*** Moonlighting pay also contributed to decreased debt load

I have paid off $28,200 during residency of my student debt. I opted not to do take advantage of IBR or other programs and to refinance my loans right out of med school from 6.8% to 3.3% as above via a private small town bank.

Other one time large expenses: Engagement ring: $7,000 (probably not the smartest choice but whatever)

Money saved up for move and transition to become an attending: ~$9,000 at end of residency thanks to numerous moonlighting shifts


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will be taking a new job as a hospitalist and the big changes to my budget that I am anticipating are that my rent will decrease to $800/month all bills included and my retirement savings / contributions to pay off debt will greatly increase. Once this happens in a few months I'll be sure to post an update if you guys are interested.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[medstudent2IM]

Thats impressive and actually quite helpful. It looks like you're on the fast-track to a +net worth! I'd be interested in hearing the general terms of your hospitalist contract and how you went about deciding on/signing that first post-residency contract. Also, how many moonlighting shifts were you doing in your last 2 years of residency?

 

[brewerdoc]

Thats impressive and actually quite helpful. It looks like you're on the fast-track to a +net worth! I'd be interested in hearing the general terms of your hospitalist contract and how you went about deciding on/signing that first post-residency contract. Also, how many moonlighting shifts were you doing in your last 2 years of residency?

Thank you, hopefully not too long from now I can get out from under student debt!

I didn't have much guidance as to how to find a job or what a "normal" contract is in my market. My adviser was...not very helpful. I ended up going to a few of the career job fairs and found that those are good for some people who want someone else to do a lot of the work when finding a job which of course comes at a price. My brother is in oil and gas here and before applying he gave me some words of wisdom about head hunters. He told me that in their profession, if two candidates are equal they many times will go with the person who did not use a head hunter because they don't have to pay the head hunter for the employee. He warned me against using external recruiters. Now, some groups that service multiple hospitals will have an internal recruiter and I feel this is different.

So with that information I tried to avoid EXTERNAL recruiters in the search. I knew I wanted to be in an area that was desirable so I started my search at the beginning of third year. I googled hospitalist groups in my desired area and started to email them from the "contact me" portion of their website if they did not have an apply here area available. I also started to drop some feelers to my attendings to see if they had any friends in this area. Turns out they did but these friends were little to no help as they were doing locums or were Junior in their group with no say on who gets new jobs. It took about a month to hear back from any place that I emailed to when we set up an interview.

Each job I interviewed at I got an offer for employment (5 total in 2 different cities). They all were different in many ways varying from straight salary with very little bonuses to pure RVU only. All offered insurance (malpractice and health) and some with more generous retirement than others. Some had paid continuing education, others did not. Even in this one market, you can get the point that each place had very different terms in their contract for employment. The people that seemed on my interview to be the happiest were the ones in a medium sized physician run group. I did interview with a sound physician group and those guys seemed burnt out, over worked and not happy.My advise would be apply/interview to at least 3 places if you want to do hospitalist so you can see what different types of terms you can get in your contract. I did get a lawyer to look over the contract but to be honest it wasn't that helpful as non competes seem to be the biggest things they are worried about and non competes for hospitalist groups in my area were either non existent or nothing major at all. The rest of it was him reading the contract to me to ensure I understood what the contract meant, which I of course read and already understood.



Also, how many moonlighting shifts were you doing in your last 2 years of residency?
I was only allowed to moonlight during second and third year as we needed a full texas medical license to do so. I didn't start till end of second year/ start of third year and it looks like I have done 28-12 hour moonlighting shifts which averages somewhere around 2-3 shifts per month. This gave me little to no free time during my third year since many of my shifts were done with my days off.

 

[Renegade44]

What was your average wait period between an interview and on offer letter while applying for Hospitalist positions.

 

[brewerdoc]

What was your average wait period between an interview and on offer letter while applying for Hospitalist positions.

Depends on the group. Most gave me the offer next day to within 1-2 weeks. One place told me that they were doing 2 months of interviews and they would not be giving out any offers till those were done. In essence they told me the offer would be delayed and they were right. This group took about 2.5 months from interview to job offer.