LY Med's video: New Intern Financial Checklist Investing Rx Ep 17

Welcome to another episode of Investing Rx – and a big congratulations to all the new interns! If you remember way back when I first started this section of my channel – it was because I made USMLE videos for my students who are now all starting, or about to start residency – and there wasn't anything else STEP board related I could teach them - so instead I wanted to teach them something else - personal finance. Let's go over a checklist to make sure your finances are in top shape. So here it is! https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics The first step: create a budget. It’s the fundamentals – and very important when you're just starting out – you have new rent payments, maybe you got a new car lease, maybe you stopped paying for daycare? It'll definitely change over the next few months but its important just to track your ins and outs. Next step : Build an emergency fund - which is enough to cover 3-6 months of basic expenses (that’s housing, food – its an emergency fund so you can cut out things like Netflix or other “luxuries” ). Saving this may take some time but its extremely important to do – I mean think of what has happened in 2020, so many people completely turned upside down. You don’t want that to happen to you. Remember many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and cant handle an unexpected bill. This is a sheet I like to use: https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/personal-budget-spreadsheet.html Next step: Employer sponsored matching funds: What does that mean? Hopefully you had an orientation with human resources (HR) about what kind of retirement account they might offer. Do they have a 401k? 403? 457? Any other random number? If you don’t know – ask! Ask what they have and most importantly, if they “match”. So if you have one THAT MATCHES – contribute as much as you can up to the maximum matching limit.If your employer doesn’t have one, or doesn’t MATCH – move on to STEP 3. Next step: Pay down high interest debts- this is mainly credit card debt. You can do the avalanche method or snowball method - whatever you choose, just stick with it. This does not include student loan debt – I made an entire video on that separately. Next step: Contribute to an IRA – or individual retirement account. You can open it with anyone – the big 3 companies are Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab. Last steps: just to save more. One last vehicle id like to discuss is the HSA (not a FSA – which I do not recommend). HSA is like a retirement account that grows and when you're older – can be used for medical expenses. So those are the steps. And honestly, most Americans do not do these – so if you get these 4-5 basic steps down you are really killing it. And best thing is these steps are similar for most people, at all walks of life. Hopefully you enjoyed this video – do the checklist – see where you stand – let me know in the comments below. Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor!