Financial Well-Being

Moving from Utah to San Antonio for medical school has been a transformative journey filled with new faces, experiences, and challenges.

The costs of medical education are demanding, frequent, and oft subject to calls for increased scrutiny and reform.

Medical school brings intense academic pressure and significant financial challenges.

Rainy days happen. Your engine blows up and needs a rebuild. Your dog gets sick and needs a big surgery. Your computer dies the night before an exam. Your away rotation requires an expensive parking pass.

As a second-year medical student with an 18-month-old toddler and another child on the way, the journey of balancing academic demands with the responsibilities of parenthood has been both challenging and rewarding.

Growing up in a low-income, immigrant family, my relationship with finances was tumultuous, especially when it came to credit. We didn’t have the luxury to forget about finances, as it would linger in the back of our minds.

Taking time to focus on your financial wellness and pursue positive financial behaviors while in medical school is crucial for financial success now. This will also be important in the future.

To combat the increase in the median medical school debt, initiatives such as guaranteed tuition and fees for the length of the MD curriculum, non-traditional tuition structure, capital campaigns to increase scholarship funds, partnerships with outside organizations to reduce student debt, and changes in grant or scholarship requirements have been or are being considered by medical schools (AAMC, 2023c).

It is critical to create educational opportunities for medical students to learn how to reduce their debt and understand financial literacy information.