Milestone Celebration: Back to Broke
I wanted to share the milestone I just hit because I am actually a little shocked that I got here this quickly. I am about to graduate from fellowship this year and I just calculated my net worth in preparation for attending life and I already got back to broke in just 4 years.
I graduated in 2022 with approximately $230k total in medical school debt. My spouse graduated with a masters degree in December 2024 with about $60k in debt. I am part of a primary care loan repayment program that knocked out $120k for a 3 year service commitment that I will be starting in the fall.
I made about $60k/year during residency in a LCOL location and now make about $75k in a higher cost of living location. My husband also makes about $70k/year.
During residency, I saved pretty aggressively. I took my employer match, maxed my Roth IRA every year of residency, and when possible paid some of my husband's tuition to avoid taking on additional debt. I calculated the amount of my income going towards savings/investing/student loan rate to be almost 50% of my income at one point.
Due to COVID forbearance and then the SAVE plan, I was able to knock out some student loan principle on both my loans and my husband's loans. We currently have about $152,000 left to pay across all our loans with an average interest rate across the loans at about 5%.
We have no other loans, no credit cards, no car payments. A 13 year old car that we rarely need to use due to living within walking distance to work/husband working from home.
I rolled everything from my residency into a Roth IRA so the vast majority of my investments are currently Roth IRA. I have about $135k in investments already and the rest ~17k currently held as an emergency fund/cash. This is more than 6 months of expenses but I will need some of this to cover the ~8 weeks I am taking off between fellowship and my attending job.
We are planning on renting for the first year to save up for a down payment for a home and take advantage of attempting to max out both 2026 and 2027 tax advantaged savings (Max back door roth, 403b, and HSA contribution about $68k/year).
I came from a low-middle class family with somewhat poor financial habits so I certainly wouldn't have gotten here without the white coat investor teaching me like 80% of what I know about investing.