Personal Finance for Medical Students and Residents...Where to Begin

When I ask medical students and residents about personal finance they seem to know little on the subject. It’s not surprising how it falls down the list of priorities behind studying for tests and boards, filling out residency applications, setting up rotations, and trying to find some time to relax. It’s a tough subject to think about because most of us are accumulating lots of debt before we even start to earn an income. The average medical student that graduated in 2010 had over $157,000 of debt, up 1% from the year before [2010 AAMC Debt Fact Card]. So, how do you start to get a good picture of your financial situation? First, you should figure out how many loans you have, and how much you owe on each. If you already know this, you’re off to a good start. If you don’t there are several ways to find out.

1. Look at your statements. This is probably the easiest and quickest if you’ve been saving the loan statements you receive in the mail from your lenders. Unless you have a meticulous filing system or have someone at your permanent mailing address saving them for you, you might not have access to these.

2. National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) @ www.nslds.ed.gov. Only for loans owned by the government. This should cover all of your medical school loans, but if you borrowed from a private lender it won’t show up here. This also shows your government loans from undergrad. They all show up in a big list with how much you owe and how much interest you have accrued. There is no way to set up repayment options or communicate with your lenders from this site. To see the lender information, click on the number of the loan to the left and more detail on that individual loan will come up.  You now have the website of the lender (most likely www.myfedloan.org) where you can log on to set up repayment options and view statements.

3. Pull a credit report on yourself @ www.annualcreditreport.com. This should show all of your outstanding loan accounts, including student loans, car loans, mortgage, etc. You get three of these free per year, one from each credit reporting agency. This is only a report, not a score (which will cost you extra). It is a good idea to check this out anyway to make sure all of the information is correct. Cross reference it with the list from the NSLDS. This will also remind you of any private loans you have taken out from lenders other than the government. Type the name of the lender in Google and get their website for communicating with them as well.

It’s a good idea to be proactive and remind yourself of how much debt you are in. This may be depressing, or you may be pleasantly surprised, but the first step to paying them off is to know how much you owe. If for some reason you miss a loan (which by checking all three of these you shouldn’t), you will start getting a bunch of new statements come graduation time and can make sure everything is accounted for.