u/mandolin6648

Hi all. I recognize the above is a bit of a silly question from the get go. There's a lot of variables in play (potential moves, etc) that make this a difficult situation. I'm just trying to plan out my financial future and wanted some external input.

I'm 30 years old, and currently in a postbacc premed program. I'm taking classes on the GI Bill and by the time I finish I'll have roughly 3.5 years left of benefit for med school. I'm in Philly, which has 4 MD schools, 1 DO, and a few in the broader region. I'm taking a gap year to work and apply after I finish the postbacc, and I've been thinking long and hard about the fact that med school and residency mean I likely won't be buying a home until I finish training at 38/39, which for a first time home buy feels a little awful.

I'm considering trying to buy a home with my long term partner in the gap year, and hopefully get into a med school in my city and residency as well. We like the city, its affordable despite being on the East Coast, and I personally feel there's a lot of potential for the city in the years to come. Being able to pay the mortgage with GI Bill/residency income would be nice, but I'm struggling to see if this is unwise given the risks involved, so I thought I'd reach out for some external perspective.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Edit: It seems the overwhelming consensus is that this is a bad idea, which I suspected. Sucks that I have to wait and that mortgage interest rates are so high right now, but I suppose it simply is what it is.

Hi all!

I’ve been considering switching careers into journalism but could use some advice — I know the industry is in free fall, low paying, and unstable, but without getting into details, I have some financial resources to help cushion instability, and I’ve come to realize how much I enjoy writing and want to leverage it for the good of my community.

Here’s the rub: I graduated in 2025 with a social science degree, and wrote for my college newspaper a handful of times, but between being an older nontraditional student and the culture of my university at large, whether it was a me-problem or not, I was turned off by the paper’s environment and thought journalism wasn’t for me. I bounced around between nonprofit, law, and medical positions and something still wasn’t clicking for me.

Cut to now, I’ve been working in the nonprofit space in Philadelphia and feeling unfulfilled. I’ve been thinking of trying to apply to one of the career changer Journalism master’s programs like Mizzou or Columbia. The nice thing is, the cost isn’t a factor, as I have a mostly-unused GI Bill to fund the program. I just feel like I have no real skills or clips I can show to local papers, and I’m probably past the horizon for recent graduate fellowships or programs for young writers. I like the written word, I’ve been working on putting together a nonfiction piece of “guerrilla reporting” for a project I did abroad in 2024, and journalism seems like it could be a good fit for me.

Open to any input if this is a wise direction or if I could just try and grind and get my foot in the door in my local papers.

I know in a lot of instances people ask these things despite a lot of work ahead of them, but I’m in a unique place where I have a lot of flexibility which ironically makes it difficult to choose. I’m late 20s and a military vet, with the GI Bill to pay for all my grad schooling. I’m currently setup for two different professional prep programs that lead to law school and med school, and I thought I would have it figured out which one I want to do by the time it got to this point, but I’m stuck in decision anxiety and which one is the “right” choice.

I’ve already completed my undergrad and have an acceptance to a career-changer premed program starting this summer. The program has >90% acceptance rate to med school.

For law school, I’m in this prep program which includes an LSAT prep course and visitation to the law school it’s associated with. The core of the program starts this summer. The outcomes of this program usually lead to a T14 acceptance at a minimum.

I know folks will probably ask why I decided on these two vastly different careers and that I’m probably just chasing prestige. I admit, that’s part of it. I’m a working class kid who worked hard and went to a T20 for college after the military. I feel like I should keep going as far as I can.

I find I like these careers for different reasons. I’ve shadowed physicians and like the problem solving and less adversarial nature of healthcare. But reading and writing are my strong suits and I feel like skill set-wise, law school would be an easier transition. I’m also nervous about turning down the law school prep opportunity as it could potentially lead to acceptance at HYS. But I can’t say that I’ve always dreamt of being a lawyer. I have dreamt of having a large impact on the world like running for office, and if law could get me there, then perhaps that’s the move.

Would appreciate some perspective, especially from professionals in both fields.