savings before class starts

[litldime]

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How much money will you guys have saved before school starts?

or how much would you like to have saved?

currently, i have $1200 saved and would like to save 5k...but with a $10/hr job, i don't see that hapenning.

 

[stdmufin27]

I have like 8 grand saved now but I see it dwindling in the near future with the move and necessary transition. Shoot!

 

[Montserrat]

I'm interested in buying a condo or placing a down payment on a house once accepted, so I've saved up quite a bit. If you have under $10,000 though, you might be better off placing it in a open money market account rather than a savings account, because many banks don't offer decent interest rates for savings below that limit (probably ~.5% or lower).

 

[tamkhan]

Does anyone have any personal investments like stocks, property etc. ?

 

[SHC1984]

My job paids only 9 dollars an hour...👎 However this is a good year to save $$$ if you have a year off like me that is....I moved back home with my parents and therefore have NO bills to pay until I start dental school which is a great way to save $$$! 👍😀

How much money will you guys have saved before school starts?

or how much would you like to have saved?

currently, i have $1200 saved and would like to save 5k...but with a $10/hr job, i don't see that hapenning.

 

[jdoc04]

Does anyone have any personal investments like stocks, property etc. ?

Yeah I'm in the market. Well I sold all I had in the market last week before the market fell. This fall is making some really good buying opportunities.

 

[Jem27]

Anyone without 4 digit stores of money? Maybe more like, in the double digits? I mean, especially after that deposit ...

 

[SHC1984]

I own a good amount of Abercrombie and Fitch stock...lets just said I bought them when they were only $17.84 a share....I use to LOVE that store and owning their stock is a great investment..😉

Does anyone have any personal investments like stocks, property etc. ?

 

[DrSmiles12]

I blew all my savings in applying. Now with a family its hard to build it back up!

 

[absolutely]

I'll probably have about $3,000. I'm considering joining the Navy. Then I will not have to worry about savings too much. But I guess you shouldn't join just for the money. The military is quite a commitment I hear.

 

[nemo11]

I'll probably have about $3,000. I'm considering joining the Navy. Then I will not have to worry about savings too much. But I guess you shouldn't join just for the money. The military is quite a commitment I hear.

i'm in the same ball park. the only thing that's keeping me from fully committing to doing the HPSP through the Navy is that i'm afraid there will be some fine print that will sneak up on me later on and screw me over. haha

 

[therealsquat]

.

 

[Anatomy Fanatic]

I am planning to save a little over 3000 so that I can get into an apartment and furnish it a little bit. As far as where I am going to put my money...I think I'll be putting mine in an online savings account where I can earn around 5% interest. Technically, the account is a money market account but for all intents and purposes its like a simple savings account. Since Berkshire Hathaway was brought up, maybe someday I'll invest in one share of BRK.A stock! Then I'll know I've made it!

 

[Montserrat]

I got a full ride through college with crew so I didn't have to spend a dime. It was a good way to stay in the green. It enabled me to save a substantial amount.

You should save 3 months salary/wages for emergencies. The rest you can be put into farely risky investments if you are young and don't have much responsibility.

Cramer's Mad Money has some decent picks sometimes. However, everyone watches his show so beware of fluxations due to his picks.

[Berkshire Hathaway B (BRKB) is usually a stable pick for those with a few thousand.]

I don't see it happening for most pre-dents.

Even with a few thousand of liquid assets, Berk "A Class" shares run over 150K / share. Their "B Class" shares run a little over 5K / share. Their arguably as stable as a good ole blue chip stock, but it's still balling.

 

[therealsquat]

.

 

[Anatomy Fanatic]

The best part would be that only my investments would include the BRK.A shares! That doesn't even take into account the gobs of money I might have kicking around in my interest earning checking account! Or even my high interest savings account! I've got it all figured out....

 

[Montserrat]

(BRKA closed at $138,500/share; BRKB closed at $4600)

I think the phrase "ballin' out of control" would fit if you had a few shares.

Lowball. Buy buy buy.

 

[Anatomy Fanatic]

Well its still about 35K above the 52 week low...however with the recent economic downturns, its defensive nature will probably lead to an increase in value so it would be a decent time to buy in if you were of a mind to do so. Oh, and if you have 138.5K and nothing else to do with it. Maybe I'll pick up a round lot or two...

 

[laundry]

I might have 2 grand saved up. Plus I'm hoping to pick up 10 more in scholarships (perusing those 3 volume scholarship references might pay off). If I get to do DDS/PhD I'll have a sweet cushion as well.

 

[Bicuspid Bonita]

OMG!! am i the only one here that's in the red??!! Guess i better start being a research subject again...having my skin burned last time didn't hurt THAT much...

 

[Katalyst]

What's the freakin' point of saving money. Let's say I work uber hard and save a whopping $20,000 before school starts. I'm just about to go into debt on the order of ten times this much. I say screw it, I'm keeping about $2k and spending the rest on traveling beginning April 12th. I'll be landing in Paris if anyone wants to join.

Besides, we're just about to make over $100/ hour. Why over work now @ $15/hr for savings money? Play hard now, cuz you'll be working hard soon.

 

[NismoDDS]

How much money will you guys have saved before school starts?

or how much would you like to have saved?

currently, i have $1200 saved and would like to save 5k...but with a $10/hr job, i don't see that hapenning.

haha same exact situation.. about 1G in the bank $10hr job.. but i enjoy my job so its ok.

 

[udonzilla]

haha same exact situation.. about 1G in the bank $10hr job.. but i enjoy my job so its ok.

because nissans are cool.

 

[chumpe]

I'm interested in buying a condo or placing a down payment on a house once accepted, so I've saved up quite a bit. If you have under $10,000 though, you might be better off placing it in a open money market account rather than a savings account, because many banks don't offer decent interest rates for savings below that limit (probably ~.5% or lower).

You can put money in high interest savings account like Ing Direct or Emigrant. I have Emigrant and requires 1$ open and it has 4.55 % APY which is way better than my old Wells Fargo ( I think it had like 0.3 %)

 

[stevenweng]

You can put money in high interest savings account like Ing Direct or Emigrant. I have Emigrant and requires 1$ open and it has 4.55 % APY which is way better than my old Wells Fargo ( I think it had like 0.3 %)

I'm not sure if this is too irrelevant for most of us here, because I have about $35k liquid assets saved right now and even with a 4.55% APY in four years that $35k is going to earn me about what I make in a month or two of practicing dentistry as a new grad (at least in the DC/NoVA area where I live, I can't speak for anywhere else). Right now I am seriously considering buying myself something nice and enjoying my early to mid 20's in dental school, but I know that would not be the responsible thing to do.

 

[litldime]

i'm saving because i hate debt. i would rather live frugally now (moved back home with my parents as well) and pay less later. I have so many things i would like to do with my money after graduation than pay debt. anyways, loans scare me. after running numbers for my total cost of 1st year of d school, it was a little shy of 30k about 16k would be un-sub...i'm trying to persuade my parents to buy a house and we rent one room..that would take about 7k out...i don't owe anything from undergrad nor do i owe any thing on my credit cards, i think that's why loans/ debt is so foreign to me....😕

 

[blankguy]

You guys should at least take a look at the military HPSP.

 

[MissLiss]

I have about 10K to my name right now and I am hoping to get that up to 15K by the time I quit my job right before orientation. I am planning on this being my fun money for going out to dinner, movies, going home, etc. and as emergency money if necessary. I have about 40K that started out as 1K from my grandma when I was born, that I am hoping to have access to by summer to cover most if not all housing/living expenses (depending on what school I end up going to, that could last all 4 years or easily be gone in 2).

As far as expenses for tuition, books, instruments, etc. I plan on taking out loans to cover all of that.

 

[thimsmits]

I agree. I live at home not to save money for school, but to save money for traveling. Southeast Asia is the way to go.

What's the freakin' point of saving money. Let's say I work uber hard and save a whopping $20,000 before school starts. I'm just about to go into debt on the order of ten times this much. I say screw it, I'm keeping about $2k and spending the rest on traveling beginning April 12th. I'll be landing in Paris if anyone wants to join.

Besides, we're just about to make over $100/ hour. Why over work now @ $15/hr for savings money? Play hard now, cuz you'll be working hard soon.

 

[gnarkill]

If I could pay off all my credit cards prior to orientation it'd be super awesome.....

 

[Montserrat]

I'm not sure if this is too irrelevant for most of us here, because I have about $35k liquid assets saved right now and even with a 4.55% APY in four years that $35k is going to earn me about what I make in a month or two of practicing dentistry as a new grad (at least in the DC/NoVA area where I live, I can't speak for anywhere else). Right now I am seriously considering buying myself something nice and enjoying my early to mid 20's in dental school, but I know that would not be the responsible thing to do.

I am getting hitched in a few months, so I'm trying to save a fair amount.
Depends on where you are at in life. If you're single, don't have too many responsibility ties and etc, heck, go for it and splurge. Not too much of a downside.

In terms of "savings", I have very little in my savings account, because the rate of return, even if slightly below 5%, still isn't a good rate of return. I loathe them as much as I do mutual funds. Actually, even having 3 or 4 grand is enough to play with in terms of investment and being your own portfolio manager. It's really not that hard - just too many people go through mutual funds, are lazy, and end up with underperforming funds that they pay through the nose for fees. Sadly, it's probably better for a single investor to have their assets managed by not for profit orgs (eg. TIAA Cref or Vanguard.)

 

[stephy87]

Question is, you do save up... but how much does it affect your financial aid?


The only way I see it working for me is working p/t next semester and full time Spring 09 (I have all of that semester off yay!). If not... two p/t jobs in Spring (=1 f/tjob) as long as theyre off the books.

 

[scuzfly]

I'm married (2.5 years) and graduating this semester. I also have a fair amount of credit card debt under my belt. I'm planning on getting a good paying job with my degree and saving $1000 each month until I get into dental school. Then I'll use part of that to move and buy stuff I need for D school and put the rest in a 5 year CD so when I graduate I have that money waiting for me.


I'f you're making $10/hour and working full time your checks are $1200 a month. You should be able to save around $300 a month if you budget well. Smartest thing I've done was setup automatic payments from each check to cover the minimum on my cards and pay the biggest one off as much as I can. I still have money for gas (3.50/gal) and money in case I need food or whatever.

 

[Lurchdubious]

If I could pay off all my credit cards prior to orientation it'd be super awesome.....

LOL. that's what I'M talkin' about. been married 4 yrs and just had a lil boy a few months ago. lucky enough to have a good summer job so the current credit card debt WILL actually be gone by orientation.

ya'll have money in savings? what's that like?

 

[Montserrat]

You can still take out federal loans, no matter how much you earned prior though the amount allowed will vary. I'm taking out the max allowable for federal loans (piddly ~2% interest) and paying the rest out of pocket. I plan to pay that off as slowly as humanly possible. Best loan you'll ever get, because you can throw the rest of your allocated funds into a basic savings account and earn money on it.

 

[mooredge]

You can still take out federal loans, no matter how much you earned prior though the amount allowed will vary. I'm taking out the max allowable for federal loans (piddly ~2% interest) and paying the rest out of pocket. I plan to pay that off as slowly as humanly possible. Best loan you'll ever get, because you can throw the rest of your allocated funds into a basic savings account and earn money on it.

Are you talking about the Grad Plus loan? I thought the interest rate was locked at 8.5%. And 6.8% for Stafford.

In response to the OP i hope to have about 15k saved up when i start.

 

[tekstyle]

i had $11,000 saved up until i started applications. so there goes 3k. then my car got burned down so there goes 4k for another car. and since then, i have saved up 4k. 3k was in a CD account (thank god for 4.95% APR!!! it is locked in until the end of this month). so i really have 1k to play around with right now. it's been 4 months since i bought the car.

i figure, what's a few thousand if loan is going to be a few hundred thousands. even if you save, it won't make too much of a difference, but that's assuming you don't have much saved to begin with.

 

[Adam_W]

I'll probably have about $3,000. I'm considering joining the Navy. Then I will not have to worry about savings too much. But I guess you shouldn't join just for the money. The military is quite a commitment I hear.

I'm a dental student and I hear this kind of talk WAY too much... Your definitely right - don't do HPSP just for the money; Do it if you want to work for your country and serve our heros, but don't do it just for the money. You can likely get more than enough in Stafford, Grad Plus and Private loans, if the military is not for you. Someone brilliantly put it to me like this: Picture yourself in 2012 walking across the stage getting your DDS/DMD. You can have either A) a ton of debt and complete freedom or B) zero debt, a good savings and another four year commitment. There's really no right or wrong choice, but seriously consider which is a better fit for you.

 

[TempleDMDKrazd]

1.7 saved up...probably add 2k more...then that would be about it

would probably spend all that to furnish my apt, a new laptop, and some other necessities....other than that...i would be living off on loans for the next 4 years....yay me

 

[rose786]

Where do you guys stash your cash?

I have about 5k sitting in a savings account, earning a sad 4%. 🙁 I think I'm going to take out about 3k to pay off loans, and then keep adding to my savings. Hopefully, I'll have 10k when school starts.

 

[rose786]

I'm not sure if this is too irrelevant for most of us here, because I have about $35k liquid assets saved right now and even with a 4.55% APY in four years that $35k is going to earn me about what I make in a month or two of practicing dentistry as a new grad (at least in the DC/NoVA area where I live, I can't speak for anywhere else). Right now I am seriously considering buying myself something nice and enjoying my early to mid 20's in dental school, but I know that would not be the responsible thing to do.

Good point, I had the same thought while reading this thread. What's the point of saving a couple thousand if a new grad straight out of D school earns at least 100k?

I save because I don't really want to to take out more loans than I have to. I hate hate hate debt.

 

[dgundy]

Hey all,
I have to agree with the guy who said play hard now. Seriously, what's a few more thousand in debt when you are talking about hundreds. It is a drop in the bucket. A friend of mine quit his job when he got into dental school (didn't find out until June) and then golfed for a month to clear his mind before the crunch. I'm in a little bit of a different position. I am planning to attend Dental School this fall, but I am a little bit older and I have been building houses in Canada for the last 4 years (the market up here has not crashed). Anyway, I have enough saved up to pay for dental school, but I will not graduate until I am almost 32. So I will be an out of debt dentist at 32. I think if any of you young people play your cards right, you can work down that massive debt quickly after graduation. Live simple until you pay off that debt and then start looking for your dream home. The banks will offer you almost anything so beware. Even a dentist can become a slave to debt. Anyway, that golfing friend of mine has been a dentist for 6 years now and he just finished paying off his loan (150K) and his modest house (was 150K when he bought it). He is 33 and debt free. That being said, he still drives the crappy saturn he took to dental school and his wife moves the kids around in an old dodge caravan. Now that he is debt free he is looking at a new Tacoma. Just play it smart. Dental school is a great investment. Who wouldn't pay 250K for a business that could return half of the investment in the first year after grad. Good luck.

 

[KinKs]

If I could pay off all my credit cards prior to orientation it'd be super awesome.....

I am feeling you still

 

[KinKs]

Hey all,
I have to agree with the guy who said play hard now. Seriously, what's a few more thousand in debt when you are talking about hundreds. It is a drop in the bucket. A friend of mine quit his job when he got into dental school (didn't find out until June) and then golfed for a month to clear his mind before the crunch. I'm in a little bit of a different position. I am planning to attend Dental School this fall, but I am a little bit older and I have been building houses in Canada for the last 4 years (the market up here has not crashed). Anyway, I have enough saved up to pay for dental school, but I will not graduate until I am almost 32. So I will be an out of debt dentist at 32. I think if any of you young people play your cards right, you can work down that massive debt quickly after graduation. Live simple until you pay off that debt and then start looking for your dream home. The banks will offer you almost anything so beware. Even a dentist can become a slave to debt. Anyway, that golfing friend of mine has been a dentist for 6 years now and he just finished paying off his loan (150K) and his modest house (was 150K when he bought it). He is 33 and debt free. That being said, he still drives the crappy saturn he took to dental school and his wife moves the kids around in an old dodge caravan. Now that he is debt free he is looking at a new Tacoma. Just play it smart. Dental school is a great investment. Who wouldn't pay 250K for a business that could return half of the investment in the first year after grad. Good luck.

I totally agree - I estimate that if I will be about 180,000 in the red after school. So what if I add 10,000 to it. The only reason I have not quit my job yet is that I have immediate expenses like gas, clubs, beer etc that must be covered. I have a car with 217,000 clicks that I plan to run to the ground and will continue to drive when I am a dentist. Paying off debt will be my main concern when I become a dentist.

 

[Frederico Albin]

I think ill keep my 10k for many partying reasons

 

[aggie-master]

You should save as much as you can, especially if you are going to San Antonio.

They make you write a 5K check on the second day of class for your laptop and DVD with books on it. This and the fact that they get you to buy loupes in the first semester combined with moving expenses and everything else really makes the money tight in the first semester.

 

[C equals]

I'm a dental student and I hear this kind of talk WAY too much... Your definitely right - don't do HPSP just for the money; Do it if you want to work for your country and serve our heros, but don't do it just for the money. You can likely get more than enough in Stafford, Grad Plus and Private loans, if the military is not for you. Someone brilliantly put it to me like this: Picture yourself in 2012 walking across the stage getting your DDS/DMD. You can have either A) a ton of debt and complete freedom or B) zero debt, a good savings and another four year commitment. There's really no right or wrong choice, but seriously consider which is a better fit for you.

A nice way to put it. You may have a huge amount of debt when you graduate but you should be able to start earning a very nice salary right out of school. A few thousand $$ saved is nice but it won't put a dent in your school costs. Save that money for an emergency - things do happen (car problems, health issues, etc.)