One of the reasons we started this blog is that we realised early on how little medical training prepares you for the financial decisions you will have to make — both during school and long after it.
The more we have read and learned, the more we have come to appreciate that a lot of the mistakes doctors make financially are not random. They are predictable. They come up again and again across different people, different specialties, and different countries. And most of them are avoidable once you know what to look for.
This post is personal. These are not just abstract mistakes we have read about — they are things we are actively thinking about and trying not to repeat. We are still students, so some of these are more relevant now and others will matter more later. But we think about all of them.
Telling Ourselves We Will Figure It Out Later
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. It is also not how it works.
The earlier you understand your loans, build good financial habits, and start thinking about the future, the better your position will be when the income eventually arrives. [1] Every year spent ignoring this stuff is a year of potential compound growth lost, a year of bad habits reinforced, and a year of avoidable interest accumulating on debt. Starting this blog was partly our way of forcing ourselves not to fall into this trap. If we are writing about it, we have to actually 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.
What we have learned since is that the details of your loans matter a lot more than they seem at the time. Different loans carry different interest rates. During training, interest accrues whether or not you are making payments, which means the balance you graduate with is often not the balance you end up paying off. [2] Repayment options have real financial consequences that vary depending on your career path, and choosing the wrong one — or not choosing at all and defaulting to whatever the system puts you on — can cost tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a career. [3]
We do not 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 is worth including here because it is something we genuinely think about for ourselves.
The moment a resident salary arrives after years of living on loans, the temptation to upgrade everything is real and understandable. And when attending income arrives — which can be three to five times what a resident earns — that temptation becomes even more powerful. [4]
The doctors who end up in financial difficulty are often not the ones who earned the least. They are the ones whose spending quietly scaled up every time their income did, until they were earning six figures and somehow still had nothing left at the end of the month. [1] We want to be intentional about this when the time comes — giving ourselves a genuine lifestyle upgrade while being deliberate about how much of any income increase actually goes toward building financial security rather than just a more expensive version of the same life.
Carrying Credit Card Debt
This one is relevant right now, not just later.
Credit card debt at 15 to 20% interest is one of the most expensive forms of debt available, and it is also one of the easiest to drift into when you are living on a tight budget and something unexpected comes up. [5] The intention is always to pay it off soon. The reality is that balances have a way of sticking around longer than expected, especially during 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. That is the version of credit card use that builds credit and earns rewards without costing anything. The version where you carry a balance is a different thing entirely, and it is one we are actively trying to avoid.
Ignoring the Small Spending That Adds Up
Nobody goes broke from one bad purchase. But a lot of people end up financially stressed because of dozens of small decisions made without much thought — subscriptions left running, frequent takeaways, convenience purchases that happen because it is easier than planning ahead.
One of the things that reading about personal finance has genuinely changed for us is 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 be €150 or more per month extra. None of these feel significant in the moment. Added up over a year of medical school, they are real money. [5]
We are not saying never spend on anything. We do, and we think that is healthy. But we try to be conscious about it rather than just letting money drift out without noticing.
Waiting Too Long to Start Investing
This one is more about the future than right now, but it is in our heads.
We understand now that the years immediately after residency are probably the most financially important of a medical career. Income increases substantially, and what you do with that increase — whether you let spending absorb most of it or direct a meaningful portion toward investing — shapes everything that comes after. [6]
The students and residents who arrive at that moment with a basic understanding of investing, a Roth IRA already open, and good financial habits already built are in a far better position than those who are starting from scratch at thirty-five with no foundation. We are trying to be the former rather than the latter, even if the amounts we can invest right now are modest.
The Bottom Line
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] The difference between knowing about them and actually avoiding them is mostly about paying attention early enough that you can build habits before the stakes get higher.
That is what we are trying to do. We do not have it all figured out — we are two medical students still working through the basics. But the fact that we are thinking about this stuff now, rather than leaving it for later, already 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/