Investing and the Long Game

This is a question we get from other students and then watch them answer from a group chat, which is a poor way to settle a legal status. We aren’t tax professionals and this isn’t tax advice. Residency can change what you owe, what you can claim and which accounts you can keep contributing to,

The move from training to practice is one of the most financially significant moments in a doctor’s career. Income rises substantially, responsibilities grow, and the habits young doctors build in their first few years as an attending set the tone for everything after. From our reading, the doctors who build real financial security over a

How much should doctors save? It sounds like a question with a simple answer, and it almost has one, but the context behind it matters a lot. Standard personal finance advice is to save around 15 to 20 percent of your income. For most people that is a reasonable starting point. For doctors it is

Residency isn’t the obvious time to start investing, and most residents put it off. You are earning a modest salary, carrying a lot of loan debt, and working hours that leave almost no time to think about anything outside medicine. It makes sense that investing slides down the list. Residency is also one of the

Residency is one of the most financially complicated periods of a doctor’s life, and also one of the most neglected. There are a few money lessons every resident should know before that first paycheque arrives. You are finally earning a salary, but a modest one compared with the debt you carry and the cost of

We started this blog partly because we realised early on how little medical training prepares you for the financial decisions you will face, or the mistakes to avoid, both during school and long after it. The more we have read, the more we have come to see that the financial mistakes doctors make are predictable.

The short answer is yes: an emergency fund is worth building as a medical student. We understand why that isn’t obvious, though. When you are living on loan disbursements and money is already stretched, setting some aside purely so you don’t touch it feels backwards. Every dollar you save is a dollar borrowed at interest.

Investing feels more complicated than it is. When we first started reading about it, we ran into index funds, ETFs, expense ratios, tax-advantaged accounts, and a great deal of confident advice written for Americans. It was hard to know where to start. The concepts turn out to be simple. Most of the confusion comes from

Some doctors have a financial life that looks great on paper and doesn’t feel that way. They have a high income and a respected profession, and they are still living paycheque to paycheque well into their forties. It sounds contradictory, but it is more common than most people realize, and lifestyle inflation is a big