- Joined
- Jan 14, 2016
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I will be entering medical school this fall, and I've gotten some pretty generous financial aid, but will still need to take out loans. I (luckily) didn't need loans for undergrad, and was pretty financially stable without making a concrete budget. The most "budgeting" I did was deciding to go out to eat less to save money. I kept track of my finances only to the extent that I occasionally checked my bank account balance, and paid off my credit card every month.
However, now that I'll be living on loans while I'm in medical school, I want to make sure that I can minimize the amount I take out in loans while also not running out of money. I know tuition is a concrete number that will be subtracted from my financial aid package from the get-go, but everything else is extremely nebulous. I'll be living in a totally different area of the country from where I grew up, so I don't know what to expect from food costs. I don't know how much I'll want/need to travel and what incidentals I'll have. I don't know what utilities will cost. I don't know how much it'll cost to get furniture to furnish my apartment (which I will be splitting with my SO). And without knowing all this, it seems pretty difficult to figure out how much I can afford in rent--but that's something my SO and I need to figure out soon.
I want to make an informed decision on renting an apartment, and I want to keep my finances in order throughout the year, primarily so that I can adjust my spending to avoid taking out more loans, but also so that I know when it becomes necessary for me to take out additional loans. How did you all make budgets that dealt with this uncertainty? How did you figure out how much you could afford in rent? And how did you build in flexibility/wiggle room? Thank you so much.
However, now that I'll be living on loans while I'm in medical school, I want to make sure that I can minimize the amount I take out in loans while also not running out of money. I know tuition is a concrete number that will be subtracted from my financial aid package from the get-go, but everything else is extremely nebulous. I'll be living in a totally different area of the country from where I grew up, so I don't know what to expect from food costs. I don't know how much I'll want/need to travel and what incidentals I'll have. I don't know what utilities will cost. I don't know how much it'll cost to get furniture to furnish my apartment (which I will be splitting with my SO). And without knowing all this, it seems pretty difficult to figure out how much I can afford in rent--but that's something my SO and I need to figure out soon.
I want to make an informed decision on renting an apartment, and I want to keep my finances in order throughout the year, primarily so that I can adjust my spending to avoid taking out more loans, but also so that I know when it becomes necessary for me to take out additional loans. How did you all make budgets that dealt with this uncertainty? How did you figure out how much you could afford in rent? And how did you build in flexibility/wiggle room? Thank you so much.