The Resident Curriculum
Eight lessons on the money decisions of training, in the order they matter. Each one is built the way you learned medicine: Watch a short read, Do a handful of concrete actions, and Teach it back until you could explain it to a co-resident. About eighty minutes of reading in total, and a lifetime of not having to relearn it.
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1
Protect the LicenseEverything else in this curriculum assumes you can keep practicing. Before loans, before investing, before the first contract, the first job is to make sure an illness or injury cannot take your income with it.
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Loans: PSLF or NotThe loan decision is the biggest financial lever most physicians will ever pull, and it is mostly made by the choices you make in training, whether or not you make them on purpose.
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The Resident Budget and Cash ReserveYou cannot out-earn a habit. The budget you build on a resident’s salary is the one that decides what the attending salary becomes, so this lesson is less about spreadsheets than about defaults.
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Benefits Enrollment Done RightOpen enrollment is the one afternoon a year when a few clicks are worth thousands of dollars, and most residents spend it choosing the default because the packet is unreadable. Here is how to read it.
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Roth While Your Bracket Is LowTraining is the only stretch of a physician’s career spent in a low tax bracket. That is not a hardship to endure; it is a window to use, and it closes the day the attending contract starts.
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Investing and the Backdoor RothInvesting well as a physician is not complicated; it is repetitive. A few index funds, low costs, automatic contributions, and the discipline not to touch it. The one genuinely technical piece is the Backdoor Roth, and it has one trap.
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The First ContractMost physicians sign their first employment agreement within days of receiving it, while studying for boards and packing a moving truck. The terms are negotiable before signature and almost never after. This lesson is about slowing down.
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The Attending TransitionThe jump from a resident’s pay to an attending’s is the largest raise most people ever receive, and the first thirty-six paychecks decide more than the next decade. This lesson closes the loop and starts it again.
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