Is Medical school debt that bad?

[Pagan FutureDoc]

lol..I gotta respect you for being true to your core values, @Dr.Sticks
You are definitely of the 'old school' mold. You'd really enjoy being a 'country doc'.
Did I tell you that one time a patient gave me a duck out of appreciation for taking care of them?
I don't know how to cook a duck though. It's sitting in my freezer for a while. Do you want it?

Cooking duck is awesome...and it can be really hard to find unless you know hunters

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Members don't see this ad.

 

[Mad Jack]

We don't have to agree to disagree, you don't understand what things actually cost.
How much is adequate life insurance?
How much is your own occupation disability insurance?
I'm sure you want to work until 79, but most want to retire. You probably will as well. How much do you need to save over 30 years to be comfortable and conservative with your estimates?
How much will college cost for kids you're having 10+ years from now?
How much is an adequate car, home, and umbrella policy?
Your dollars will fly away faster than you think. You can live on 60k if that's all you have. You can't live on 60k as a higher earning professional and adequately protect yourself and save for retirement.
Though anyone can live frugally for a few years. Several of my junior partners did just that, living modestly and aggressively saving for a home while paying down debt. Living in the sticks will help, but you'll spend more than you think.
You don't have to believe me, just wait and send us an update when you're 30 or so and see how the living cheap thing is working out for you.


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Il Destriero

Getting back to you. I'm in my 30s and it's working out just fine on about two fifths that amount

The whole point of living on less is so that you can save and invest. If you live on 60k, the rest of your income goes to maxing out your 401k, backdooring a Roth, then putting everything else into index funds, real estate, or other investments. It's not like if you don't spend the money you lose it. And most employed positions around here cover insurance, CME, malpractice, and disability to varying degrees, so that's already taken care of (depending on your field, of course).

 

[libertyyne]

Baltimore is worse than Chicago to be honest.. If I can handle being in Baltimore and being in the most dangerous areas I can handle any other city.
But that is me.... Lol


For NYC that is a good bit of space
Also this is a cool infographic showing how spoiled we are in the U.S in our perception

How is 500 Square feet X 22.6= 2500 square feet?

 

[libertyyne]

Cooking duck is awesome...and it can be really hard to find unless you know hunters

It is difficult rendering all that fat!

 

[Dr.Sticks]

We don't have to agree to disagree, you don't understand what things actually cost.
How much is adequate life insurance?
How much is your own occupation disability insurance?
I'm sure you want to work until 79, but most want to retire. You probably will as well. How much do you need to save over 30 years to be comfortable and conservative with your estimates?
How much will college cost for kids you're having 10+ years from now?
How much is an adequate car, home, and umbrella policy?
Your dollars will fly away faster than you think. You can live on 60k if that's all you have. You can't live on 60k as a higher earning professional and adequately protect yourself and save for retirement.
Though anyone can live frugally for a few years. Several of my junior partners did just that, living modestly and aggressively saving for a home while paying down debt. Living in the sticks will help, but you'll spend more than you think.
You don't have to believe me, just wait and send us an update when you're 30 or so and see how the living cheap thing is working out for you.


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Il Destriero

Ugh okay
So lets see
You make 100k after tax you put 50k towards debt and then the remainder you save/invest, live on
Then once the debt is paid off you can invest/save 50k a year
Of course this is a worst case scenario
A more likely scenario is that one takes home 120-140 with a 200k gross
That makes figures even more realistic
I don't see how you can save/invest if you will live to the full potential of the salary...

Also why isn't it realistic? Not everyone wants a Mercedes in the driveway and a big fancy suburban house...
I will be happy with a modest used chevy cruze which I can get for under 15k

Also just because you make six figures doesn't mean you should spend or live on six figures..

Anyways, I will agree to disagree again.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Getting back to you. I'm in my 30s and it's working out just fine on about two fifths that amount

The whole point of living on less is so that you can save and invest. If you live on 60k, the rest of your income goes to maxing out your 401k, backdooring a Roth, then putting everything else into index funds, real estate, or other investments. It's not like if you don't spend the money you lose it. And most employed positions around here cover insurance, CME, malpractice, and disability to varying degrees, so that's already taken care of (depending on your field, of course).

Exactly
I would suggest this to anyone who does not get our views
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2014-spending/

How is 500 Square feet X 22.6= 2500 square feet?

Don't know, but the housing size puts things in perspective lol

 

[libertyyne]

Exactly
I would suggest this to anyone who does not get our views
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2014-spending/

Don't know, but the housing size puts things in perspective lol

Do you trust an info graphic where they cant multiply correctly? I am sure there are housing disparities, however cultural differences and differences in structure of cities makes a huge difference in house size.

 

[Pusheen]

How is 500 Square feet X 22.6= 2500 square feet?

This is so irritating. I think they went wrong somewhere when converting from length measurements to area (squared) measurements, cause the square root of 22.6 is about the factor of difference between 500 and ~2400

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Do you trust an info graphic where they cant multiply correctly? I am sure there are housing disparities, however cultural differences and differences in structure of cities makes a huge difference in house size.

Yeah I got lazy with the source.. and turns out it is wrong.. The problem is much worse
However my point stands
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2015/07/...gs-in-hong-kong-and-the-minimum-living-space/

 

[libertyyne]

Yeah I got lazy with the source.. and turns out it is wrong.. The problem is much worse
However my point stands
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2015/07/...gs-in-hong-kong-and-the-minimum-living-space/

Comparing hong kong housing to the US average is like comparing NYC housing average to the north dakota housing average, doesnt really make a lot of sense.

 

[hsmooth]

Getting back to you. I'm in my 30s and it's working out just fine on about two fifths that amount

The whole point of living on less is so that you can save and invest. If you live on 60k, the rest of your income goes to maxing out your 401k, backdooring a Roth, then putting everything else into index funds, real estate, or other investments. It's not like if you don't spend the money you lose it. And most employed positions around here cover insurance, CME, malpractice, and disability to varying degrees, so that's already taken care of (depending on your field, of course).

Good advice here in bold.

edit: also max out a 457 plan if your work offers it, 527 college plan, HSA acccount, individual IRA, and then any remaining extra funds into a taxable account.

 

[libertyyne]

Good advice here in bold.

edit: also max out a 457 plan if your work offers it, 527 college plan, HSA acccount, individual IRA, and then any remaining extra funds into a taxable account.

A 401/403 ,IRA's,HSA are tax deferment vehicles as well! The portfolio should be low cost index funds and perhaps some bonds depending on risk tolerance and age. I honestly have a hard time taking bonds seriously considering the low rate of return these days.

 

[Mad Jack]

Do you trust an info graphic where they cant multiply correctly? I am sure there are housing disparities, however cultural differences and differences in structure of cities makes a huge difference in house size.

I think what you're missing is that culture is an illusion, and often one that works to your detriment. If someone can survive and be happy in an 800 square foot house in another first world country, that says to me the only difference between there and here is mindset. And mindset is something you can change.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Comparing hong kong housing to the US average is like comparing NYC housing average to the north dakota housing average, doesnt really make a lot of sense.

Like @Mad Jack said; It is perception
1k square feet isn't small when you realize there are people living in a space 1/10 that.

 

[libertyyne]

I think what you're missing is that culture is an illusion, and often one that works to your detriment. If someone can survive and be happy in an 800 square foot house in another first world country, that says to me the only difference between there and here is mindset. And mindset is something you can change.

Ah, Multigenerational family households is an illusion? how about cities which have high population densities? Comparing hong kong to an American average is like comparing North dakota to a NYC average. Lets not go overboard, I understand what you are a saying, I lived in 550 sq foot apartment with my wife for years. Plus there is an argument to be made for what is the money worth to you if you wont live comfortably ? If you get run over by a truck tomorrow what is the purpose of washing that zip-lock bag to re-use it? Maxing out retirement instruments, and saving a good chuck of your paycheck already puts you in a good spot.

 

[libertyyne]

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Ah, Multigenerational family households is an illusion? how about cities which have high population densities? Comparing hong kong to an American average is like comparing North dakota to a NYC average. Lets not go overboard, I understand what you are a saying, I lived in 550 sq foot apartment with my wife for years. Plus there is an argument to be made for what is the money worth to you if you wont live comfortably ? If you get run over by a truck tomorrow what is the purpose of washing that zip-lock bag to re-use it? Maxing out retirement instruments, and saving a good chuck of your paycheck already puts you in a good spot.

Comfort is subjective

Who is to tell me that not driving a new luxury vehicle, living in an average house, etc isn't comfortable?

 

[Dr.Sticks]

@libertyyne Do you like Dave Ramsey??

 

[libertyyne]

@libertyyne Do you like Dave Ramsey??

He isnt bad, he gives very basic advice which for the most part people need.

personal finance is not hard.

Dont be in high interest credit card debt.
Max out tax sheltering retirement contributions.
Buy low cost index funds.
Live reasonably.

 

[Mad Jack]

Ah, Multigenerational family households is an illusion? how about cities which have high population densities? Comparing hong kong to an American average is like comparing North dakota to a NYC average. Lets not go overboard, I understand what you are a saying, I lived in 550 sq foot apartment with my wife for years. Plus there is an argument to be made for what is the money worth to you if you wont live comfortably ? If you get run over by a truck tomorrow what is the purpose of washing that zip-lock bag to re-use it? Maxing out retirement instruments, and saving a good chuck of your paycheck already puts you in a good spot.

You don't have to reuse Ziploc bags at 60k a year, especially if you have a working partner lol. And the point is to save enough to be financially independent by your mid 40s.

 

[libertyyne]

You don't have to reuse Ziploc bags at 60k a year, especially if you have a working partner lol. And the point is to save enough to be financially independent by your mid 40s.

You guys sound like you would recommend reusing ziplock bags ( probably the off brad version of zip lock ). That is my point, you have to be reasonable.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

You don't have to reuse Ziploc bags at 60k a year, especially if you have a working partner lol. And the point is to save enough to be financially independent by your mid 40s.

Without the debt one could have financial independence in their 30s if they took a more traditional route and save over 80%
https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement

 

[GoljansRightBicep]

What are some good, legit resources to learn about dealing with medical school debt and budgeting in general? While there are certainly a great variety of variables, there must be a most effective method or best practices. Recommendations for websites, blogs, books, etc would be great.

http://whitecoatinvestor.com/ and "Personal Finance for Dummies" are good places to start.

 

[Mad Jack]

You guys sound like you would recommend reusing ziplock bags ( probably the off brad version of zip lock ). That is my point, you have to be reasonable.

Hardly. I drink the best booze I could possibly enjoy. eat out with my gf two or three times a week, make meals with only the best ingredients, have a car that's completely paid off, and never feel like there's anything I want to do that I can't. Not only do I not reuse plastic bags, but I only buy the name brand ones lol.

Come now, what do you spend so much money on? I honestly don't understand where it all goes. A nice meal for two ten times a month runs me about 500 bucks, my alcohol runs me maybe 300 on a pricey month, and my basic expenses are pretty much nothing even though I live in one of the nicest towns and school districts in my state (got a real steal on a rental condo!). I guess my Elantra may not be something to write home about, but it's only a few years old, paid in full, and gets great gas mileage. I literally don't know what else I'd want. I'm taking a trip for two to Ireland next year, that'll cost me about 6k for two people at two weeks, including eating out every meal for two weeks, having a rental car, and seeing all the **** I want to see... But that still only puts my expenses at just shy of 32k for the year. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Mad Jack]

Without the debt one could have financial independence in their 30s if they took a more traditional route and save over 80%
https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement

Yeah, the ERE method could get you there quick, but only if you want to live on very little. My goal is to have 80k pretax income per year in retirement, inflation adjusted. That gives me enough money to travel until I die. The 80% method would take several years due to my 400k med school debt, and would only leave me with an income of around 35k, post-tax.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Hardly. I drink the best booze I could possibly enjoy. eat out with my gf two or three times a week, make meals with only the best ingredients, have a car that's completely paid off, and never feel like there's anything I want to do that I can't. Not only do I not reuse plastic bags, but I only buy the name brand ones lol.

Come now, what do you spend so much money on? I honestly don't understand where it all goes. A nice meal for two ten times a month runs me about 500 bucks, my alcohol runs me maybe 300 on a pricey month, and my basic expenses are pretty much nothing even though I live in one of the nicest towns and school districts in my state (got a real steal on a rental condo!). I guess my Elantra may not be something to write home about, but it's only a few years old, paid in full, and gets great gas mileage. I literally don't know what else I'd want. I'm taking a trip for two to Ireland next year, that'll cost me about 6k for two people at two weeks, including eating out every meal for two weeks, having a rental car, and seeing all the **** I want to see... But that still only puts my expenses at just shy of 32k for the year. What am I doing wrong?

32k includes your rent, food, living?
The rest is savings?

Wow impressive
I do not believe in alcohol so I guess I could live on even less

 

[Mad Jack]

32k includes your rent, food, living?
The rest is savings?

Wow impressive
I do not believe in alcohol so I guess I could live on even less

Well, that's my med student budget- not an attending yet, but I think the only thing I'm going to change is I'll probably but maybe 5k of nice clothes. Maybe get a new car since mine will be 10 years old at that point. And 32k is my food, living, and a vacation for two out of country.

 

[hsmooth]

It helps a bit that we live in a low cost of living area..but you wanna know what my wife and I did this year?

Granted, we are a dual income couple with no children yet, but this doesn't change how much we want to put away for retirement each year. We'll still plan on maximizing all possible tax sheltered retirement funds each year.

This year we also paid down about $90,000 in student loans between the two of us.
We don't like grocery shopping so we spend extra to use a meal delivery service called Blue Apron every week.
We hire a cleaner to clean our house every 2 weeks
We hire a landscaper to fertilize our yard 5 times a year because I don't want to
We bought a brand new 2016 hybrid vehicle in cash for $20,000.
My wife spends $500 every month to workout with a personal trainer to stay fit (and bonus for me! hehe)
We took 6 vacations this year, to the Bahamas, ski trip to Ontario, Grand Canyon, Martha's Vineyard, Iceland, and Australia.

All of this on top of putting away about $83,000 towards our retirement funds. If we do this every year I'll retire at 55 with $4-$5 million saved/invested.

You just gotta be smart with where your expenses go. We bought our 6 year old house for $315,000 instead of the $500,000-$600,000 some of the other young doctors I know did. We spent $1,000 for a professional interior designer to work their magic and our house looks like it came out of a magazine. My wife gave me permission (haha!) to buy a Porsche if I wanted to, but decided that I'm not really a car guy so we went practical with the Hyundai. We flew economy plus instead of business. We stayed in 4* instead of 5* hotels. We got rid of cable 2 years ago and if we need to watch TV, we stream Hulu or Netflix. I'm not too big into cell phones so I use Google Project FI and pay $25 a month instead of having unlimited data and spending $90 a month...etc etc..there's so many ways you could go about doing this.

 

[Stagg737]

32k includes your rent, food, living?
The rest is savings?

Wow impressive
I do not believe in alcohol so I guess I could live on even less

Dawg, my med school budget is 15k/year (1,250/mo). Granted I've got a bit of a different situation (had some things established before starting) and the area I live in has a very low COL, but 32k/year is reasonable to live off pretty much anywhere in the U.S. if you know how to budget.

 

[pseud0]

Because they aren't wise with money
Car oayments, mortgages that are too large, excessive luxury...
Not everyone but many who live paycheck to paycheck put themselves in that position by taking on all sorts of luxury..
Cable itself can be over 100 bucks a month..
That's crazy

Im sorry arent you like 20?
There are millions of americans working full time at mcdonalds or whatever at age 45, living in project housing with literally zero dollars in any bank account.

Wake up.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Im sorry arent you like 20?
There are millions of americans working full time at mcdonalds or whatever at age 45, living in project housing with literally zero dollars in any bank account.

Wake up.

http://www.businessinsider.com/family-of-four-live-well-on-just-14000-per-year-2014-4

Dawg, my med school budget is 15k/year (1,250/mo). Granted I've got a bit of a different situation (had some things established before starting) and the area I live in has a very low COL, but 32k/year is reasonable to live off pretty much anywhere in the U.S. if you know how to budget.

Yep; Making use of alternative housing makes it even easier.

 

[Pepe18]

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[Pepe18]

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[InvestingDoc]

As someone interested in med school it could potentially cost me 400k at the high end of things. However how is that too much debt that would take a long time to pay?
Say you go into FM and your after tax take home is 100k..
You could pay 50k a year into your debt and pay it off in 8 years!
That is the worst case scenario of course..
If you did something better and made 200k after tax you could pay the debt off in 4 years.

Anyone should be able to live off 50k a year, and one should certainly be able to live off of 100k a year.

Maybe I am looking at this wrong, but 400k doesn't just look that bad to me.

I do not see why people make living off 50k a year appear to be poverty..

Honestly I think 50k itself is fairly lavish, one could live on even less like 35k a year in a more Midwestern location.

For this post, I will make some assumptions. Since OP seems to be keen on paying down large debt without mentioning an income based repayment plan in the initial post. I'll just run some quick numbers to see what life looks like if you wanted to repay these loans.

Lets say you have $400,000 debt from medical school and you do a 4 year residency. During that time, only minimal payments are being made as you elect to enter one of the income based repayment plans.

Your total debt at the end of residency will be about $500-$520k give or take a bit depending on which IBR program you enter into and your monthly payments.

This means that in order to pay off the debt in 10 years outside of an income based repayment plan, one would need to pay just over $7,000 a month.

Now, lets say you make pretax about $250,000 a year. After taxes and if you elect to contribute to your 401k this may be about $12,000 a month. This leaves you with $5,000 a month for all other expenses. This includes building a 6 month emergency fund, saving for a house or new car, rent and daily living expenses, saving additional money for retirement.

OP, yes it can be done. However, there will always be road blocks along your financial path to freedom from debt. Will you be getting married, having kids, need doctors appointments, pay for a nanny, support an aging loved one? There are many things that can happen in the next 10 years financially, and its impossible to plan for all of them. But taking out $400,000 in debt and not considering this as a life changing decision, potentially for the worse even with doctors high levels of income is short sighted. This will affect every aspect of your adult life and this decision should not be taken lightly.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

For this post, I will make some assumptions. Since OP seems to be keen on paying down large debt without mentioning an income based repayment plan in the initial post. I'll just run some quick numbers to see what life looks like if you wanted to repay these loans.

Lets say you have $400,000 debt from medical school and you do a 4 year residency. During that time, only minimal payments are being made as you elect to enter one of the income based repayment plans.

Your total debt at the end of residency will be about $500-$520k give or take a bit depending on which IBR program you enter into and your monthly payments.

This means that in order to pay off the debt in 10 years outside of an income based repayment plan, one would need to pay just over $7,000 a month.

Now, lets say you make pretax about $250,000 a year. After taxes and if you elect to contribute to your 401k this may be about $12,000 a month. This leaves you with $5,000 a month for all other expenses. This includes building a 6 month emergency fund, saving for a house or new car, rent and daily living expenses, saving additional money for retirement.

OP, yes it can be done. However, there will always be road blocks along your financial path to freedom from debt. Will you be getting married, having kids, need doctors appointments, pay for a nanny, support an aging loved one? There are many things that can happen in the next 10 years financially, and its impossible to plan for all of them. But taking out $400,000 in debt and not considering this as a life changing decision, potentially for the worse even with doctors high levels of income is short sighted. This will affect every aspect of your adult life and this decision should not be taken lightly.

I wouldn't say impossible, but yes it can be difficult to plan and have it execute perfectly. I could get cancer next year, a parent could die, etc
As for the debt that is the worst case scenario.. I just hope to get into my state school so I can save money. @.@

But again, you realize that this article is for entertainment/inspiration to be more mindful about spending?

That household has 2 stay-at-home parents (the father is just in undergrad, which is basically stay-at-home). So she has time to obsess and plan and make homemade laundry detergent etc. Most people don't have that kind of free time and prefer to spend what little time they have with their family. A life spent obsessing over money is not worth living. Your life should never revolve around money even if it revolves around not spending money.

They probably have some kind of health coverage from the fact that he was in the army. They have no mortgage! A huge problem nowadays is that housing eats up more than 50% of people's pay...even the people living in the projects. So of course people with no mortgage will have a lower budget. I could extreme coupon and have couponing take as much time as a full time job to bring my grocery budget down. But instead, I'm going to enjoy life and not do things I find gross like make my own detergent

And, you know, take someone living in the projects: Let's say they bring in $20K. They live on your $14K. Add in the fact that their job doesn't provide health insurance and their housing and utilities are $700/ month. Now they are way over budget! Even using the same budget in that article, they won't make it. Bring it up to $30K and they can manage it, but aren't saving much, if anything.

Just wait until you are older. Nothing wrong with wanting to minimize your spending, but stop projecting your inexperienced views on to how other people should think haha

I will agree to disagree;
Anything can be done in my opinion, it all depends on the quality and kind of life you want.

 

[pseud0]

http://www.businessinsider.com/family-of-four-live-well-on-just-14000-per-year-2014-4

lol this reminds me of when Bush brought a woman on stage during an event once who was like "I have to work 3 jobs to support my family" and instead of realizing how awful that is and taking issue with it, he was like "That's uniquely american isn't it? Congratulations!" and the audience clapped

 

[Dr.Sticks]

lol this reminds me of when Bush brought a woman on stage during an event once who was like "I have to work 3 jobs to support my family" and instead of realizing how awful that is and taking issue with it, he was like "That's uniquely american isn't it? Congratulations!" and the audience clapped

If it is 3 part time jobs that is 60 hours a week which isn't bad at all to be honest
And I have worked 40
I got up at 0330 to get ready
I loved every minute of it too
I hate afternoon or day work
I would love to work 4 to 5 ideally

 

[Stagg737]

Yeah, I live on less than 1,250 and I'm in one of the most expensive US cities. I don't think med school budget means much in translating to attending spending

Right, but the point is that it's not hard to live on 30k/year anywhere (even as an attending), as another poster said that was impressive. For over a year my SO and I had a total budget of around 25k pre-tax and we made it work just fine. The point is that if someone is looking to pay down 300-400k in debt in 5ish years and they're making 120k+ after taxes, it's not as unreasonable of a goal as many people make it out to be.

That household has 2 stay-at-home parents (the father is just in undergrad, which is basically stay-at-home). So she has time to obsess and plan and make homemade laundry detergent etc. Most people don't have that kind of free time and prefer to spend what little time they have with their family. A life spent obsessing over money is not worth living. Your life should never revolve around money even if it revolves around not spending money.

And, you know, take someone living in the projects: Let's say they bring in $20K. They live on your $14K. Add in the fact that their job doesn't provide health insurance and their housing and utilities are $700/ month. Now they are way over budget! Even using the same budget in that article, they won't make it. Bring it up to $30K and they can manage it, but aren't saving much, if anything.

Just wait until you are older. Nothing wrong with wanting to minimize your spending, but stop projecting your inexperienced views on to how other people should think haha

Yet all of our lives "revolve" around money unless you're living on your own land, growing your own food, and are completely self-sufficient for pretty much everything. If you're talking about simply not having to worry about money, you're still way off base. Around 15% of all people in the U.S. live below the poverty line (11,770 for an individual, 24,250 for a family of four) and around a 1/3 of the all earners in the U.S. make less than 35k/year, which means money is probably something that's on their mind pretty frequently, especially if they have kids. There's a difference between how our lives should ideally be lived and what reality allows. Given the general consumerist nature and entitled attitude of the average American, almost everyone I've met either thinks about money regularly or is so financially irresponsible that they're setting themselves up for rude awakenings down the road.

 

[JohnWill30]

It helps a bit that we live in a low cost of living area..but you wanna know what my wife and I did this year?

Granted, we are a dual income couple with no children yet, but this doesn't change how much we want to put away for retirement each year. We'll still plan on maximizing all possible tax sheltered retirement funds each year.

This year we also paid down about $90,000 in student loans between the two of us.
We don't like grocery shopping so we spend extra to use a meal delivery service called Blue Apron every week.
We hire a cleaner to clean our house every 2 weeks
We hire a landscaper to fertilize our yard 5 times a year because I don't want to
We bought a brand new 2016 hybrid vehicle in cash for $20,000.
My wife spends $500 every month to workout with a personal trainer to stay fit (and bonus for me! hehe)
We took 6 vacations this year, to the Bahamas, ski trip to Ontario, Grand Canyon, Martha's Vineyard, Iceland, and Australia.

All of this on top of putting away about $83,000 towards our retirement funds. If we do this every year I'll retire at 55 with $4-$5 million saved/invested.

You just gotta be smart with where your expenses go. We bought our 6 year old house for $315,000 instead of the $500,000-$600,000 some of the other young doctors I know did. We spent $1,000 for a professional interior designer to work their magic and our house looks like it came out of a magazine. My wife gave me permission (haha!) to buy a Porsche if I wanted to, but decided that I'm not really a car guy so we went practical with the Hyundai. We flew economy plus instead of business. We stayed in 4* instead of 5* hotels. We got rid of cable 2 years ago and if we need to watch TV, we stream Hulu or Netflix. I'm not too big into cell phones so I use Google Project FI and pay $25 a month instead of having unlimited data and spending $90 a month...etc etc..there's so many ways you could go about doing this.

Followed your Ask a FM Doc anything thread and I gotta say, you are doing it right my friend.

 

[Dr.Sticks]

Right, but the point is that it's not hard to live on 30k/year anywhere (even as an attending), as another poster said that was impressive. For over a year my SO and I had a total budget of around 25k pre-tax and we made it work just fine. The point is that if someone is looking to pay down 300-400k in debt in 5ish years and they're making 120k+ after taxes, it's not as unreasonable of a goal as many people make it out to be.



Yet all of our lives "revolve" around money unless you're living on your own land, growing your own food, and are completely self-sufficient for pretty much everything. If you're talking about simply not having to worry about money, you're still way off base. Around 15% of all people in the U.S. live below the poverty line (11,770 for an individual, 24,250 for a family of four) and around a 1/3 of the all earners in the U.S. make less than 35k/year, which means money is probably something that's on their mind pretty frequently, especially if they have kids. There's a difference between how our lives should ideally be lived and what reality allows. Given the general consumerist nature and entitled attitude of the average American, almost everyone I've met either thinks about money regularly or is so financially irresponsible that they're setting themselves up for rude awakenings down the road.

I wa more impressed by the large food budget and alcohol budget on that figure, but yeah.
I agree;Most people I interact with think that bills are just a normal thing in life..
Not really..
Bills exist due to expenses you have incurred or services one is a subscriber of.
I will just go ahead and agree to disagree...
If someone thinks they can not live off 50k after tax, okay that is them.. Whatever
I however could live on much less so that is me...