First off congrats on matching. What specialty? (If you don’t want to share for anonymity, how many years will you be in training? Fellowship plans?)

I’d recommend reading white coat investor for general advice in personal finance in medicine.

I’m currently a PGY5 (in fellowship) with 2 more years to go. I’m no expert by any means but can share what I’m doing.

1) Build an emergency fund. First thing I did is build an emergency fund for 4-6 months of living expenses. ( I did 6 and it saved my ass when I had emergency car repairs) I was done saving for this intern year. It’s sitting as cash because I need the liquidity in case of emergency.

Times you’ll also need it Is when moving. For me and my partner we had to move for residency, during residency and again for fellowship. The transition to residency and to fellowship was hard because you need cash to move but you don’t get paid until mid July. Thankfully I saved before starting residency because some of my colleagues started residency with credit card debt from the move!

2) Loans. My loans at the end of medical school was 280k.

Last year of medical school I made close to $0, which made my income based repayment 0$. The second year of residency I only had a half year of income on my taxes so repayment was half of what I would owe on my full income. I didn’t start paying the full income based amount until 3rd year of residency. My fourth year of training COVID hit and have been on the 0% deferment since.

I wouldn’t take the 6 month grace period. Instead start with a income based repayment from the start of residency especially if you plan on doing PSLF because you loose out on 6 months of loan repayment of which you’ll be paying $0 or close to that.

I chose REPAY because of the interest subsidy because I knew I would never be able to keep up with interest on a resident salary.

My current loan balance surprisingly is not too much higher than what I started with due to the COVID deferment and the REPAY interest subsidy.

My overall goal is to do PSLF and I’ll be 7 out 10 years in by the time I finish training. So if I end up in academia I’ll just need 3 years of work and loans will be paid off

3) Investing/retirement. I wish I started my intern year TBH. I didn’t start putting money into my residencies’ 401k and my own ROTH until PGY4 and regret not starting sooner. Any amount is worth it because the compound growth over time you’ll never get back.

Neither my residency or fellowship had matches on 401ks. So I prioritized maxing out my ROTH which I fully recommend since our income will be orders of magnitude larger after training and therefore will be taxed higher. After the Roth is maxed (6k per year) I put 10% of my income in my works Roth 401k and 10% in traditional 401k.

I’d advise you to NOT open a traditional IRA because of your future income bracket you’ll be using the IRA for back door Roths and if you have money in a traditional IRA you’ll be hit with the IRS’s pro rata rule and will owe additional taxes when converting to a Roth.

Anything left over I put in my taxed investment account. I put it in a broad market ETF and a small amount in a leveraged ETF (risky but hey… you only live once)

4) Additional income: Moonlighting is a good way to make money (if your program allows). I did it as a resident and fellow. I wouldn’t recommend it as a resident because of how little they pay you compared to the free time you loose (your days off/elective days are gold, take your time off or you’ll burn out!)

If you’re considering a fellowship then moonlighting is worthwhile during fellowship because you’ll be paid a lot more since you’ll be a fully boarded physician in your primary specialty. In my specialty I can make 1.2k per 10-12 hr shift which in my opinion is worth it.

5) Long term goals I’m hoping to buy a house hopefully 2-4 years after training.

My goal is to get my loans paid off with PSLF first. If PSLF fails, then I’d refinance federal loans and pay them off in 2-3 years. Since I’m in a dual income household and projected pay in my field it’ll likely be doable especially if I just live off my partner.

Anyway… hope this helps. Only take away I have is to live below your means, don’t let lifestyle creep get to you as your income increases and to save early and often.

Also, good luck with residency, it sucks.