What are our financial goals for PGY-2?⠀⠀
By the end of fourth year of medical school, I felt defeated in terms of money. As proud as I was for matching and accomplishing our medical school goals, financially, Ally bank told us “we had no assets’.⠀⠀
So, when I started intern year, I felt money hungry. I wanted to save as much as possible. I wanted an emergency fund, to max out our Roth IRAs, and to be able to spoil my family members during holidays and birthdays.⠀
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This year we did pretty much all those goals! And as we look to this coming year, its an interesting scenario because I know regardless of how aggressive we save, the most we could collectively put toward our loans would be $160,000 in four years. This would be if we did nothing but save and did not max out our Roth IRAs from now on. This amount is less than either one of our student loans.⠀⠀
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Because of this depressing realization, I feel less aggressive this year than I did starting intern year. Our goals of intern year include:⠀⠀
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1. Maxing out our 2020 Roth IRAs – due to the unexpected expenses this month, we will do this next month⠀⠀
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2. Save at least 30% of our income⠀⠀
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I feel these goals will keep us on track and we can decide what we want to do with extra money saved – like having a nicer vacation.⠀⠀
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As an aside, people often ask where we put our extra savings after maxing out our Roth IRAs. Last year, it was toward our emergency fund. This year, it will go into a regular brokerage account. The idea behind this is if it grows substantially, we can decide at the end of residency if we want to put it all toward our student loans, leave it there, or put it toward a down payment or something. This doesn’t go along with the White Coat Investor’s recommendation of maxing our your 401k next, but we feel we would rather have access to the cash and be able to put it toward our student loans when/if we want.⠀⠀
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Any advice/feedback on our goals? What are your financial goals for the year? ⠀
Couple of Surgeons 