 All right, so I know med school is expensive. Luxia, even watch your video on how you're $190,000 in med school debt. How do you recommend a student go about saving money in medical school? In this video guys, I'm gonna do exactly that. I'm gonna give you step-by-step kind of what things I would have done, what things I did do to save some money. So let's get into it. All right guys, what is going on? Luxia from the MD journey, helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. First of all, if you're new to this channel, welcome. I am an internal medicine resident who loves making videos like this, helping you on little topics to help your medical journey a little bit easier to smile to enjoy and make sure you get to those four years thinking it was a good experience and not just the stepping stone. So if you enjoyed the message, you enjoyed this video, make sure you smash that like button. I think it's on this side, but I always forget. Hopefully you guys can find it and make sure you smash it, destroy it, disintegrate it. Just make sure it doesn't exist on your browser. Support this video, support this channel and make sure it kind of climbs up the YouTube algorithm. And drop any comments down below with questions that you guys have, but let's get into it. How do you save money in medical school or some of the things that you can do? And this really stems from the fact that med school is expensive. You guys know it. If you saw my video, then you know that average med school debt is about $190,000. That's exactly where I am. And so I'm gonna give you some steps on things that I did do as well as things that I didn't on how to save money. Now number one is something I actually didn't do. So maybe I should have taken my own advice is to get a roommate. Now I know a lot of you guys are like, no, no way. And that's exactly how I was. I did not wanna live with somebody, especially not having lived alone before. But let me just throw some numbers out for you so you guys can see and compare. Let's imagine that in the city that you live in for the med school that you're at, that a one bedroom is anywhere, let's just say $1,200. Now I know that's not a realistic rent in like New York, Chicago, LA or San Francisco, but for the rest of the country, you're probably able to find something for a one bedroom for that price. Now let's instead imagine that you could get a two bedroom with a roommate for about 1,500. That means if you split it half 50-50, then you would go ahead and pay $750. So that means that you have basically $450. That is a difference between you getting a one bedroom and a two bedroom. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Now if you take that extrapolate it over a year, that 450 gets to a little over $5,000. I think it's like 50-400 for that math could be off. And honestly, even that number for many of you guys may be like, well, it doesn't really bother me. But now if you take that same 5,400 or $5,000 extrapolated over four years of medical school, you're eventually going to surpass $20,000. And then if you incorporate both the interest rate that you're curing, as well as interest that you likely won't be paying until you're done with the residency, that number can easily get to $25 to $30,000, even 40 depending on where your interest rate is. So question is, are you willing to pay $25 to $30,000 to live with yourself and now with a roommate? And honestly, if I had to ask myself that question, I would say no, I'm like, bro, like save your money. Like that's a payment in full and cash on a Honda or a brand new car. That's a down payment on a home. That's a whole year at med school, in case my kids ever wanted to go to med school. I basically gave that away in knowing that I didn't keep a roommate. Sorry, future kids. But as you guys can understand, make that decision yourself, but it is very expensive to live by yourself knowing that a roommate can almost half that cost. Now tip number two is creating a budget for your fun. Now that doesn't mean going out of your way to find more money to have fun. Instead it's something that I do with my wife in residency call reverse budgeting. Where basically we look at how much money's coming in through my income and basically saying, okay, these are the different payments that I have to give, utilities, lights, internet, that I have to pay insurance. And then when we look at other things that are a little bit more flexible and variable, things like food, things like gas, discretionary spending, going out to eat, buying clothes, Amazon purchases, because Amazon. Those kinds of things, basically what we do is we subtract all the necessary obligations and then we say how much is left. So if that number is $400, then that means we have $400 for gas, food, discretionary spending. And then we put that into a separate checkings account. And basically every time we have an expenditure that we use our credit card or cash, we actually take it out and put it into the checking account that our credit card is billed from. So that way we can visibly see, okay, this is how much money we have. And slowly we start seeing it dwindle because then if you get close to a time where your paycheck's still a little bit far away, that's when you really start compromising. Maybe I don't need this expensive food item or I don't need to buy this new piece of clothing, even though it's on sale. Those are things you can do. So then you can still have fun saying, well, I can spend this much money going out with friends and grabbing some dinner. But I probably can't do that next week, knowing that I also have to fill up my gas and et cetera. So reverse budgeting is great. And if you guys want me to make a separate video on how I live as a resident, how much money I make, how I budget, all that thing, let me know in the comments down below and I'll be happy to make that. Now tip number three is to open up a high interest savings account. Now a lot of you guys via your parents or your own decisions may have a bank account in something like Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America. Those are very common, but the interest rates on those savings accounts are like 0.01, 0.02. But if you get an online and high interest savings account, such as Ally or a Wealthfront, Betterment, I believe even has one, it gets up anywhere from 1.9 to 2%. Think about it, 0.02% compared to 2%. Think about how much money you can grow, especially if you're somebody who gets a lump sum of your loan put into your account at one time. Like I would, I would have like $10,000 come in after my tuition was paid to be able to pay my rent and whatnot. All of that cash could sit into a savings account and a cure 2% annually. And so that starts to acquire a lot of money. It's a very safe way of growing that cash as well as kind of offsetting and subsidizing the interest rate that's on that loan. If I'm paying a 6% interest, but I'm also getting 2% on the savings account, as long as that money sits there, you're effectively paying 4%. So having an online savings account is something that you can do for free. Ally is what I use and I've always had a great experience with them. So definitely consider opening one up if you, especially if you don't have one. And if you guys do want me to make a video on how I use online savings account, just make sure you comment down below because they are a little bit tricky and a little bit different from a physical branch like Bank of America, Chase, et cetera. Now tip number four is finding low budget or free items to do with your classmates. It's very common to find a Friday and like find every excuse to do happy hours, going out to clubs, going out to the equivalent of 6th Street, Uptown, whatever it is in your city where people are parting on a Friday night, but it's expensive. And honestly, you don't have the budget and that's cool to do it. But frankly, also no one asks you. If you can't afford it, they just ask you, hey, you down to hang out on Friday and you're like, yep, and they're like, yep. And so everyone ends up paying several hundreds of dollars a month or throughout the course of the semester that they probably couldn't afford to pay anyways. So find free things you can do in your city. That may just be finding out what things are going and happening in your city. That may simply be going to a museum, going to a park. Maybe there's a cool restaurant that's offering like free or discounted food, things like that. Make sure you're kind of up to date on what things you can do for cheap, if not free with your classmates. Now the next four tips I'm gonna give to you guys at rapid fire. So the next tip is to basically track your expenses by using online apps. Submin.com is a very popular one where you basically link it securely to all your financial accounts and then it can tell you, hey, you've spent this much money this week and you somehow made this much money. We probably don't make money as medical students so you just see all of that red leaving your account. So it's good to understand how much money you've spent on groceries, gas and you could also even budget within min.com. But you can also get very simple. I love using an Excel sheet to help my wife and I understand what we've spent money on, how much we have left. And if you use my reverse budgeting technique that I mentioned in earlier in the video, you can actually have a whole account that gets deducted every time you spend something. So then you can see how much is left. Next tip is to have a credit card that accures points so then you can use them as a fourth year medical student. So a lot of you guys may have seen my video of how I saved almost $3,000 and basically paid for all of my airline travels, hotel costs, as well as my honeymoon during my fourth year of medical school. I'm gonna use that because I acquired a lot of credit card points through my Chase Sapphire Preferred card and I basically put expenses that I was going to get anyways in medical school. That includes my rent. I was lucky in that situation where I didn't get charged a fee. But also things like step one exams, books, resources, you name it. So find things that you're already gonna spend in medical school. Get a very good credit card that can accure points and that way you can use them when it's time to go on interviews and save yourself some money when it comes to travel, hotel fees, et cetera. And the final two tips, I'm just gonna combine into one, but avoid buying resources when you see them immediately. Sometimes we'll see the fancy new shiny object, whether it's a new resource that I mentioned or somebody else mentions on Reddit that works for them and we just wanna get a credit card info and go ahead and buy it. But take two days. So it's a two day rule to say, okay, I may need this, but let's check in two days if I still am as excited or hyped about it. If you still are and you think you can afford it, then go ahead and be okay with your purchase. But sometimes two days later, we realize all the objections that we may have in terms of buying it and we realize we probably don't need it. And you can save a lot of money because med school resources aren't cheap. So those guys combined are all of my tips to help you successfully save some coin. Hopefully this semester if you guys have more questions or think that these financial videos are helpful, then make sure you comment down below. And if that like button still hasn't been smashed and you somehow still see it, there's something wrong, it means you didn't hit it. So please do help the video out. Thank you guys so much for joining me in today's video. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on your journey. If you guys have any questions, you know where to find me. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.