So I worry that I'm kind of a noob to be posting here, so please be kind. I don't know much about finance, but I know my fiancé would like me to learn more and take charge more about our finances, so I'm writing this to take the initiative and I'm sure y'all can help me gain some insight.
We JUST got engaged, and of course with that, are talking even more than usual about our future. My fiancé, Charlie, has struggled for a long time about the fact that he doesn't like his career, and admitted to me last night that all he has ever really wanted to do is get married and have kids. He wants to become a stay at home dad when the time is right, and I fully support this. I am planning on having a robust career and I think it will work out well for us.
Currently, he has a job in finance. He makes a little over $100,000 a year, has no debt, owns his car, and has about $30,000 in savings. He has a 401K, I don't know what the situation on that is.
I am a grad student. My job as a teaching assistant gives me a great tuition reduction, and a stipend. From teaching, I only make about $5000 a year, and that goes toward living expenses (groceries, gas, cat food) and I'm really unable to save. I have another job as a waitress, and that nets about $12,000 a year. That pays my rent, bills, and utilities. If anything gets saved, it goes toward my tuition. I am in my last year, and by the time I graduate, I will have about $33,000 in student loans.
When I graduate, I will have both an Master of Science in immunology and a Master of Public Health. I intend to go to med school next. I'm envisioning that it will probably be about the same situation as I have now, I will have 2 or 3 jobs that pay my living expenses and rent but not much else. Med students usually incur about $200,000 worth of debt during the course of their 4 years.
The starting salary for a resident physician is about $50,000, and after about 5 years, that number increases to about $150,000 a year as an attending physician. I plan to work as a physician in the field of non-profit 501c3 organizations, so I would be eligible for the public service loan forgiveness program. I have attended public institutions, not private, and from everything Charlie and I can tell, I would qualify easily for that. I already have a lot of experience interning at these organizations. I would then like to transition into academic medicine, which I also have experience with. Those doctors make quite a bit of money, I know that the chair of a department at my university's hospital is paid $300,000 per year, not including speaker fees, book sales, and several patents he has.
Charlie has expressed that he is more than willing to continue working until we are ready to have children, which we think would be about 4-5 more years. It would be 6 years before I will make a resident physician salary. We have no plans to buy a house, probably what would happen is that when I get my residency info and we know what city we are going to be in permanently, we would probably buy some land and continue to rent until we have enough money saved to build a home. My questions:
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Is the overlap of about a year between having kids and me making a salary unrealistic, or is it possible to live on my small jobs and savings for that year?
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Is my amount of debt unreasonable? Does anyone have any experience with loan forgiveness plans?
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Are my career plans unrealistic? As I will have useful masters degrees, I could go straight into a career after finishing them next year. Charlie encourages me to follow my dreams of becoming a doctor, but my parents are really on my case to start earning money, even though they don't support me financially in any way.
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Is it a realistic plan for one spouse to work until children are born, and then for the other spouse to take over making income at that point?
Unknowns are: my grandparents have mentioned paying my med school tuition, but we haven't discussed it much. They are also very wealthy and in their 80s, so as much as I don't like to think about it, they may leave me an inheritance. But these are unknowns, so I don't want to factor them into what I'm asking.
Again, I apologize for not being as informed as I should be, but I really want to step up and be more involved in financial planning for my fiancé. Thank you in advance for your help!
Submitted July 09, 2017 at 12:11AM by cyclist_kristin http://ift.tt/2tZ6XIi
