How did we survive financially during medical school? We jumped through hoops, got really creative, had some wonderful luck and lived on a wing and a prayer so to speak.
Actually, here's the breakdown of our financial history: my husband was accepted to medical school a few months after I found out I was pregnant with our first child. At that time we were both undergrads and worked in addition to having full scholarships (which luckily included living stipends). We did great with him being a pizza boy (and later as a computer consultant) and me working in a vet clinic. After I got pregnant we decided together that I would stay at home with the kids while they were young (ie at least until the last one got to be school-aged) and that we would do whatever was necessary to accomplish this goal- period (we are nothing if not tenacious people
). So, the spring before medical school began I sat down with the packet the financial aid office gave us and figured out our budget and compared that to the maximum amount that my husband qualifed for every year of medical school (and, it was a different amount every year based upon the school's schedule - nine months of class the first year, etc and other factors). The result was we were going to be a few hundred dollars short every month. Not a very heartening thing! I spoke to the financial aid office and they were adamant that everyone gets the same amount of aid - period - family circumstances were NOT considered. My husband could only get a bit extra money for child care if he filled out a form stating that someone took care of his children and how much it cost to feed, clothe, etc his kids. He got the form for this and looked at it. It was a form that basically stated if you had kids and someone cared for them, the student could get an additional stipend for their care. So, we (being tenacious people
) filled out the form with me being the caregiver and turned it in (we answered everything entirely honestly and according to the form qualified for childcare aid). Shortly thereafter my husband got a call from the office saying they had changed the rules on this to specify that only those who didn't have spouses or who had spouses who worked outside of the home could qualify for money for their children in their financial aid package. So, in other words we would only get extra money in his package if I was earning an income and we'd only get it in order to pay for strangers to watch our children! I'll stop there because I could go on quite a tirade on that incident alone.
OK, continuing: here's where the luck comes into play. My husband's grandmother died and as luck would have it left him a trust fund to be used for his education. Woohoo! Who knew he had rich relatives, right? Well, actually she wasn't rich - she just was very concerned her grandchildren all get good educations. As luck would have it, trust funds are NOT factored in with expected sources of family aid/income and thus his trust fund had no negative impact on his financial aid package.
Well, trust funds from kind grandmothers go only so far - our butts were saved for a while with that but only a while. Before medical school began we sat down with these numbers and my husband came to a decision he had been mulling for a while: he would take a military medical scholarship. Now, this is a big decision and one that shouldn't be taken lightly, but my husband's dad was an air force officer and he felt very comfortable with the give and take nature of the scholarship. This added a small monthly income to our bank account that really made a difference (in addition to reducing our debt to almost nothing). We still applied for financial aid, though because we needed all the money we qualified for after the military scholarship was taken into account.
Next thing: medical insurance. That was our boogy man during those years. We made sure we had constant medical coverage of one form or another and it is a good thing we did: Our son had three neurosurgeries during those years and I had a high risk pregnancy (with the twins) and our daughters spent two weeks in the NICU after birth. All told our medical bills over those years would've added up to HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars without medical coverage. We could never have predicted these events, but luckily we were prepared for them. So, the first thing we did was look at the school's insurance policy. It stunk - big time! So, we opted for COBRA coverage through my husband's last employer. This allows you to pay for continued coverage at the rate the company paid for it for a set amount of time (24 months if I remember correctly) after you have left the company. This got us through the first couple of years. After that we had so many medical problems with our son that we couldn't get coverage for him due to pre-existing conditions. At that point I was also starting my high-risk pregnancy - not a good position to be in and we were worried! It turns out that we easily qualifed for Medicaid and promptly applied for it. That got us through the rest of medical school. Do I feel bad about taking this route? NO! Our taxes in future years will EASILY make up for any taxpayers' money we used for our medical expenses. It is something to look into and I know that most of the families of medical students we knew were on Medicaid (at least their children were).
Finally:
1)we lived off a budget that was "the law" - not fun but we survived and survival is the key here
2)we were fortunate to have parents who sent their grandchildren gifts of clothes on occasion
3)we managed to buy a house rather than rent in the beginning. The difference? $1200-$1600 a month for a three bedroom apt where we lived vs. our $600 a month mortgage on our three bedroom townhome. (We chose an adjustable rate mortgage since we knew we'd sell within just a couple of years).
4)We avoided credit card debt as much as we could. Admittedly we could've done better in this dept but we made a concerted effort to keep this high-interest, dangerous debt very low and we paid it off as soon as possible. In addition, we did NOT get any new credit cards during medical school (or since then).
5)We paid our tithing religiously (pun intended). Now, this is a matter of faith and ten percent of your income when your income is pretty much nothing isn't much anyway, but for us this has always been very important and we believe it has made all the difference in our survival. But, as I said, that is a matter of faith.
So, that is all the stuff I could think of at the moment. Was it easy? Nope, it was harder than heck but it is a temporary situation and you just have to go into it with a survivalist mentality in order to, well, survive! I hope that helped in any way!
Jennifer
