 So we all know that residency interviews are expensive, but today I'm going to give you the tips that helped me save over $2,000 on my interview cycle, but we're going to get to those tips after this intro. All right guys, what is going on? Lux here from the MD journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with a little bit less stress. If you're new to this channel, welcome. My name is Lux. I'm a fourth year medical student applying to internal medicine who just finished his residency interviews, and I've been doing the MD journey for the last two and a half years to help med students and pretty much just like you. So if you enjoy what you hear today, obviously, first of all, give this video a like, subscribe to the channel and join the community. But without further ado, let's get into the video, which is how do you save money on your residency interviews? I want to give you a bunch of tips and these tips I used to basically save a ton of money over $2,000 on my residency interviews. And hopefully you can get close to that number as well. Let's get to tip number one, which is using your credit card points. So I mentioned this in my last couple of videos, but there is an amazing credit card. I'm going to pull it out because it's one of my favorites called a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. This is a card that started to get more and more popular around medical students. And usually people hear about it when it's too late. So I want to give you the inside details of how to use this card, be effective. Even if you're averse to using credit cards, this is probably one if you're smart, you can do a lot of damage to your residency costs. So basically the way this card works guys is when you open it, you have to spend at least at this point making this video about $4,000 within three months. And you get 50,000 points to 50,000 points is equivalent to about two to three round trip tickets. So that's a pretty good deal at the start of it. Now the $4,000 may be sticking a couple of you guys. So this is basically how you would do it. If your school doesn't charge a fee to pay your tuition with credit cards, then definitely use this card. So basically what I do is I get a tuition bill every semester. So I got one right now. This is December. I'm going to get or I'm not going to get one because I'm about to graduate. But usually I get one in the spring. So before my financial aid comes into my bank account and pays off my tuition, I pay the tuition bill with my credit card first. And then my financial aid hits and I pay my credit card bill with my financial aid. So I get, you know, right now my Texas about every semester is about $10,000 for me. Texas is pretty affordable in terms of med school. So it's $10,000. That's 10,000 points. Now, if you multiply that amongst eight semesters, four years of med school, that is 80,000 points. And so again, that's equivalent of another three to four flights that you can go on. Each flight is about equivalent of $300 to $400. So you can see how this starts to rack up. So if you are, you know, worried about spending $4,000, most med students don't have a problem because of rent and whatnot. Just do it when your tuition comes out. Other things you can do like I mentioned, you can just put your rent on your credit card if your apartment or your condo house doesn't charge you a fee for paying rent with a credit card. If it does, there are some online resources. Go ahead and see how you can work with your landlord potentially on paying with credit cards through like that third party app, which doesn't charge you a fee like your credit cards may, but then you still get the points. So I pay my rent with my credit card, my taste card, I pay my tuition and just those alone. Each month I'm adding anywhere from two to 3000 points every semester. I'm adding another 10,000. And these are, these are purchases I would have made with card lids. These aren't things that I'm going on my way to buy for the sake of points. But you know, this is basically accumulating over time. And by the end of, you know, about two and a half, three years of using this card, I had anywhere from basically 200,000 points, which is a lot of flights. Each of these flights is around 300 or $400. And I went on all of them without paying a single dime out of my pocket. So using this card is amazing. Also, if you're somebody that likes to travel, just in general, you get twice the number of points. So if you get a rental car for your residency interviews, or some for something else, you know, you get double the points on the card. If you go out to eat, you know, I love using this card when I go out to eat or grabbing Starbucks or something of that sort, because it's twice the points. It starts to add up. But again, I don't go out of my way to make any purchases that I normally wouldn't, but this card is a great resource. So start early. If you're first or second year med student, grab the card if your credit is good enough and start putting on things without charging yourself any fees and accumulating some credit card points. Because when it's time to apply for residency, guys, I promise you, you will save a ton of money and your classmates are going to be a little bit jealous. Oh, actually a lot of jokes. So try to use credit card points to help you on your residency costs. So getting into tip number two, which is be very careful on the amount of interviews and applications that you fill out. So the average interview or average residency cost for somebody applying individually is about $4,000. And couples matching is about almost $8,000. And most people will probably go above those of those numbers because students have a tendency of overcompensating. They want to apply to more programs to be safe. And I get it, you know, you don't want to not match into a residency program. So the first step is talking to an advisor, making sure your advice is just giving good advice. And two, you know, being realistic, you know, if you're a good applicant, you don't need to apply to 70 programs. Even if you're a struggling applicant, you're probably are going to be just fine with a number much less than that. But after that phase, once you apply, when you're choosing your residency interviews, you know, if you can avoid going to an interview, if you know for sure you don't want to end up at this program, and you just have a ton of safety programs, those are adding hundreds of costs every time you're going, just for something that's not even a second option. So I know peers now who have finished the residency process, and they know there are places that they have interviews for, but I have no intention of going to, yet they're still going to be forking up hundreds of dollars just to go sit down for, you know, two 30 minute interviews. I personally don't think it's worth it. It's not worth the time of the residency program as well. So, you know, be careful on how many programs you apply to as well as how many you actually go on them. Consider yourself as a potential resident there. And if you don't like that thought, then probably don't apply. You know, it's good to have safety schools, but at the same time, you just don't want to go overboard on that number. So be careful on the number of interviews you apply to. So tip number three, and kind of on that point, is be careful on where you apply to. So a lot of people have, you know, a certain desire of geographic, you want to live on the West Coast, you want to go to California, you want to go to New York, you want to go to Florida. But if you know for sure that you don't have any intention of really living in any of those areas, all those places I just mentioned, California, New York and Florida, I didn't apply to that. I didn't apply to the programs there because I knew for myself and my fiance, this was not like the future destination that we wanted to end up in. It's just not the city or the location that was ideal for us. And so I didn't apply. I saved a ton of money. There's great programs at each of those states and locations. But at the same time, you can save a lot of money if you are realistic with yourself and think, okay, would I really go here? Would I be happy? Or am I just playing applying for the sake of a name school or a reputation? So just be careful in addition to how many you apply to, to where you're applying. So tip number four, this is getting on a little bit more of a micro detail, but I realized how expensive Uber's and Lyfts were when you pay full price because I've never taken one prior to residency interviews at drive-air work. But I had to from airport to airport. So my tip for you is if you can avoid taking Uber's Lyft, if you're staying at a hotel, for example, see if your hotel has a transportation that are shuttles. For, you know, if you are going to use Uber or Lyft, I recommend looking to see if they have promo codes. Just, you know, the first two rides free, maybe creating a separate email account, something of that sort to where you can get a first, you know, first couple of rides free, which will start to add up over time from a hotel to hotel from airport to airport. So use promo codes when you can sign up with a different email for maybe just your residency cycle. And if at all possible, avoid driving, see if a period in the city can give you some transportation or just see if your hotel can provide you some free shuttle. But, you know, the cost of travel, I think I kept less than maybe $150 not includes gas because I only paid for rental cars so many times and I use those other free options when I could. So Uber's Lyft promo codes or shuttle. So make sure you are smart about your transportation. So tip number five is avoiding buying a brand new outfit. Now I totally get it. It's our new, you know, first job interview and we want to look good doing it. And so we may not mind for working up the money, but if you do have a suit that fits you, you know, ladies, you have something that still fits you, that's professional, keep to it. You know, you can save yourself a couple of hundreds of dollars and if anything spends the money on like accessories. So, you know, dress shirts, ties are good things to spice up an old outfit. I go to Ross here in the United States because they have some great quality things for a lot cheaper than going to, you know, some of the name brand stores. So if you do need something, you know, try to minimize it as possible. But if you have the main gear, the suit, the slacks, the dress shoes, unless they're in really bad condition and I need you to be critical on if they're actually bad, save yourself a couple hundred dollars on avoiding buying a brand new outfit. So tip number six is seeing if you can stay with family and friends versus staying at hotels. So I'm going to touch the hotels after the second, but families and friends are huge. I applied in areas that did have family and friends. I mean, that was kind of a priority for me to at least know somebody in this new city. I just didn't want to go somewhere completely new. So luckily I had a friend I could crash on the couch or their guest room or I had a family member who'd be willing to let me stay. And I did that for a majority of my interviews. And I know that that may not be possible on every single one of your interviews for all of you guys. But when you can, you know, hotel seems convenient. But again, they all add hundreds of dollars of cost. So avoid it when you can. Now going on to hotels, the situations when you do residency interviews, if they're a good one will usually send you a PDF of maybe some like potential hotel sites for you to choose and they usually have a discount rate. Most students will just pick one of those hotels that's the cheapest, but I encourage you to look around. What I found is that most hotels will give you or most residency programs will give you a hotel rate that's anywhere from 90 to 100 dollars. They're good hotels. But if I looked carefully, I would find, for example, when I went to Baltimore in one of my interviews, I found the hotel for $55. So you can get a decent hotel close buys here at your location that maybe doesn't have a discount rate, but it's actually cheaper. So if you do need stay hotels, make sure you do that you do diligence versus just buying the hotel that the program provides you and wrapping up my tips guys. So make sure you try to cluster your interviews. If you are applying geographically in many different areas, seeing if you can schedule your interviews together. A simple way to do it is, you know, if you get multiple interviews, obviously first try to reschedule them yourself individually to if you haven't heard from program and you know you want to really go there and you also have an interview near five, you know, without being obnoxious, it's okay to majority of the time send an email to the program director program coordinator saying that you'll be in the area and you hope that they'll consider you for maybe an interview in that time frame. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But at the same time, you know, it's worse putting that email out there while without being obnoxious to save yourself a couple of hundreds of dollars of having to do several round trips. So cluster your interviews whenever possible. It's going to save you a ton of money. But guys, those were my main tips on how to save money on your residency interviews, doing things like the credit card obviously by itself saved me, you know, several hundreds of dollars, probably thousands actually, but then adding all the things that just hang with friends, making sure that I'm clustering my interviews, using Lyft and Uber vary strategically and things such as not buying a new suit, you know, all of that equivalent to over $2,000. Honestly, I would say close to $3,000 during my residency cycle. So hopefully these tips help you. If you guys have any more questions that are more particular to you, obviously comment down below and I'd be happy to help you either personally or make another video. But as always, if you did enjoy this video, make sure you give us a video like, subscribe to the channel, and join the community of the MD journey.com. If you do want more resources to help you on your medical journey, check out the link down below with plenty of new resources, blog posts, videos that I can point to you for free to help you on your medical journey. So check out the MD journey.com in the link down in the description. But as always, I'm going to stop battling like I do it always at the end of the videos and I will see you guys in the next one. Take care guys.