Well it’s finally here. I start my first attending job tomorrow, and it’s the first day of the rest of my life in more than one way. We’ll see how well I can execute on all the self-education and groundwork I’ve been working on for the past few years. Reading all the blog posts in the world and creating a dozen excel sheets don’t mean much if they aren’t applied in real life.
I’ll have more on The Plan in a future post, but the general gist is that I have 10 pay periods for the rest of the year to:
1) Max out my 403b (current balance $0)
2) Max out my and Mrs. PayItBack’s backdoor Roth IRAs (current balance $1,000 apiece)
3) Max out 529s for our kids (current balance $200 for Number One Son)
4) Pay whatever I can to our multiple debts, with a priority towards my car loan at 3.99% (with one caveat, more on this below)
Should be more than doable based on the projections I’ve done, but there’s always a little uncertainty until the first paycheck hits.
Budget/Cash Flow
LOL
This is what a month without income looks like. Especially if that month involves expanding from 1,000 sqft to over 3,000. Don’t worry, we’re renting, no big doctor house just yet. But it did mean a good bit of spending just to fill the empty rooms. Biggest expenses in July were furniture ($3,500), new rent ($1,850), and moving ($1,475). As predicted, we ate out a good bit, but a lot of that food bill was a restaurant bill with friends that I got mostly reimbursed for. So not too outside the norm.
Net Worth
I’m not proud of this chart. In fact I’m fairly ashamed and humbled. Going to show that even someone with a PERSONAL FINANCE BLOG can make basic mistakes, I fumbled on the cash flow for this month and ended up with a fairly major shortfall. I don’t get my first paycheck until 8/23, and we simply don’t have enough cash reserves to make it until then. Never thought I would be in this situation, but I ended up taking a short-term loan from my folks just to bridge us thorough. It’s another example of my privilege that I was able to do this, rather than carry a credit card balance or miss a rent/utility payment. Many, many people do not have family with means or the willingness to help like this.
Needless to say this loan is first priority, despite a favorable interest rate.
So that’s it my friends; chapter 1 of Dr PayItBack is over. Can’t wait for chapter 2.