How Do Med Students Make Ends Meet?

mom2collegekids
Thu, 23 Apr 2015 03:10:30 +0000

My son is a second year med student.

It is very difficult for a med student to have the time to earn any money while in med school. Summers are typically very short (except the summer leading into med school). After college graduation, son worked as a bartender just to accumulate a good bit of money (great tips) to provide some added spending money.

Students can borrow up to the full cost of attendance, which is what it sounds like this student needs to do. He can do Stafford, GradPlus, or (I think) Discover or some other lender.

I would recommend that he not try to live alone. My son has 2 med school housemates and they share a 3 bedroom condo. This reduces son’s rent to $575 a month (including utilities and cable). Obviously, other places can be more expensive.

Although his parents don’t “have money”, they could “help” by letting him be on their cell phone plan…which can mean a nice monthly savings since it doesn’t usually cost that much to add a line to an existing acct.