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. They come up again and again across different people, specialties and countries, and most of them are avoidable once you know what to look for.
This post is personal. These are mistakes we are actively thinking about and trying not to repeat, as well as ones we have read about. We are still students, so some are more relevant now and others will matter more later, but we think about all of them.
Figuring It Out Later: The Financial Mistake We Most Want to Avoid
This is probably the most common mistake in medicine, and it is the one we were most at risk of making ourselves.
The thinking goes something like this: school is hard, money is stressful to think about, and once we are earning properly it will all sort itself out. It is a comforting story, and it is wrong.
The earlier you understand your loans, build good financial habits, and start thinking about the future, the better placed you will be when the income arrives. [1] Every year spent ignoring this costs you potential compound growth, reinforces bad habits, and lets avoidable interest build up on debt. Starting this blog was partly our way of keeping ourselves out of this trap. If we are writing about it, we have to engage with it.
Not Understanding Our Loans Properly
Most of us sign the loan paperwork, take the money, and move on without fully understanding what we have agreed to. We were guilty of this too, at least at first.
We have since learned that the details of your loans matter much more than they seem at the time. Different loans carry different interest rates. During training, interest accrues whether or not you are making payments, so the balance you graduate with is often not the balance you end up paying off. [2] Repayment options have real consequences that depend on your career path, and choosing the wrong one, or not choosing and being defaulted onto whatever the system picks, can cost tens of thousands of dollars over a career. [3]
We don’t claim to have this fully figured out, but we are trying to understand it as early as we can rather than leaving it until graduation.
Letting Lifestyle Inflation Take Over
We have written about this one before, but it belongs here because we think about it for ourselves.
When a resident salary arrives after years of living on loans, the temptation to upgrade everything is real and understandable. When attending income arrives, which can be three to five times what a resident earns, that temptation gets even stronger. [4]
The doctors who end up in financial difficulty often aren’t the ones who earned the least. They are the ones whose spending quietly rose every time their income did, until they were earning six figures and still had nothing left at the end of the month. [1] When the time comes, we want to give ourselves a real lifestyle upgrade while deciding deliberately how much of each income increase goes toward financial security, instead of toward a more expensive version of the same life.
Carrying Credit Card Debt: A Financial Mistake to Avoid Right Now
This one matters now as well as later.
Credit card debt at 15 to 20% interest is one of the most expensive kinds of debt, and one of the easiest to drift into on a tight budget when something unexpected comes up. [5] The plan is always to pay it off soon, but balances tend to stick around longer than expected, especially in busy periods when money management slips.
We both use a credit card for everyday spending, and we both pay it off in full every month. Used that way, a card builds credit and earns rewards without costing anything. Carrying a balance is another matter entirely, and we are working hard to avoid it.
Ignoring the Small Spending That Adds Up
Nobody goes broke from one bad purchase. A lot of people do end up financially stressed because of dozens of small decisions made without much thought: subscriptions left running, frequent takeaways, convenience purchases made because it was easier than planning ahead.
Reading about personal finance has changed how we think about small recurring costs. A €15 monthly subscription you barely use is €180 a year. Eating out four times a week instead of twice might cost €150 or more extra per month. None of these feel significant at the time, but over a year of medical school they are real money. [5]
We aren’t saying never spend on anything. We do, and we think that is healthy. We just try to be aware of it rather than letting money drift out without noticing.
Waiting Too Long to Start Investing
This one is more about the future, but it is on our minds.
We now understand that the years right after residency are probably the most financially important of a medical career. Income rises substantially, and what you do with the increase, whether spending absorbs most of it or a good share goes to investing, shapes everything after. [6]
Students and residents who reach that point with a basic understanding of investing, a TFSA already open, and good habits in place are far better off than those starting from scratch at thirty-five. We are trying to be in the first group, even if the amounts we can invest right now are modest.
The Bottom Line on the Financial Mistakes We Want to Avoid
None of these are unique to us. They are the same mistakes that come up in almost every conversation about physician finances, across books, blogs, and surveys of medical students and doctors. [2] Knowing about them and avoiding them are different things, and the difference mostly comes from paying attention early enough to build habits before the stakes rise.
That is what we are trying to do. We don’t have it all figured out, as two medical students still working through the basics, but thinking about this now rather than later feels like the right start.
References
- Med School Insiders. (2025, May 24). Medical students — avoid these costly financial mistakes. https://medschoolinsiders.com/pre-med/avoid-these-pre-med-med-student-financial-mistakes/
- Medscape. (2023, January 19). Money mistakes med students make and how to avoid them: Poll. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/987181
- Student Loan Planner. (2026). Biggest mistakes doctors make with their student loans and PSLF in residency. https://www.studentloanplanner.com/student-loan-mistakes-doctors-make-in-residency/
- Opmed, Doximity. (2022, February 14). Common financial mistakes among early-stage physicians. https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/common-financial-mistakes-among-early-stage-physicians
- Panacea Financial. (2025, December 15). Don’t make the financial mistakes I made as a younger doctor. https://panaceafinancial.com/resources/dont-make-the-financial-mistakes-i-made-as-a-younger-doctor/
- IMAFS. (2026). What financial mistakes do doctors commonly make — and how can you avoid them? https://www.imafs.org/what-financial-mistakes-do-doctors-commonly-make-and-how-can-you-avoid-them/