Financial Flexibility – Don’t Spend It All at Once

By Alaina Trivax, WCI Columnist

“Good for you! You work hard, and you deserve that new ____.”

Have you ever heard that? Maybe after purchasing a car or house or following a big vacation? Or maybe you’ve thought that yourself: I’m getting this because I DO deserve it.

I’m not in medicine myself; instead, I work as a middle school teacher. My husband, Brandon, is a partner in a PM&R private practice. We have two young boys and a dog, and we’re still squeezing into our 1,100 square-foot home from his residency years. We had some preliminary conversations with our realtor recently about selling our current home and looking for something a little bigger. I loved working with this guy seven years ago. At the time, we knew very little about long-term financial planning—we more-or-less impulse-bought a house after our rental situation fell through.

It was not an ideal strategy for home buying!

More recently, when that same realtor emphasized how much we “deserve” an upgrade to a bigger house with more space for our growing family, I’ve got to admit that it was a bit of a red flag.

The Medical and Financial Journey

Like many WCI readers, we have a written financial plan. Ours includes a goal of maxing out our retirement accounts and paying down our debts, with a significant emphasis on paying off the student loans as aggressively as possible. During my husband’s training years, this didn’t leave much money for fun or frivolous spending. Overall, we did fine, but we certainly got used to watching our spending closely.

Now, though, we’ve finally got some financial freedom. Since my husband became an attending and, more recently, earned partnership in his private practice, our income has more than tripled from his training years. A lot of the money has been allocated for student loans, but we’re also saving some for a little fun spending.

As the saying goes, money doesn’t buy happiness. Absolutely true. But it can buy time, convenience, quality, and a whole lot of things and experiences. We’ve reflected on balancing our financial priorities with our desire to enjoy spending.

Our financial plan still stands—and still includes some big goals. We’ve identified a few areas where we want to increase our spending to enjoy life a little more. We’ll keep paying the student loan minimums every month, but spending on these priorities might mean there will be certain months during which we don’t make an extra student loan payment. The hardest thing about this choice is knowing that it’s also delaying our goal of moving to a larger home. We’ve decided to be OK with it, though. We certainly feel like we deserve a house with more space and a bigger yard, but we can’t have it all at the same time. We’re in the final stretch with these student loans anyway, and we are on track to pay them off within 4 1/2 years of Brandon starting his attending job.

More information here:

We Quit Paying Extra on Our Student Loans (and Why It Feels Dangerous)

With Our Expanding Family, We’ve Had to Break Our Financial Plan – Twice

Travel and Family Experiences

Over mid-winter break, Brandon and I traveled to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun for a vacation with our two boys, my mom, and my aunt. Getting out of the Michigan winter for a week and enjoying some sunshine was beyond wonderful. We appreciated the extra hands for our first “big trip” with the boys as we spent a few days living our best lives—splashing in the pool, eating mid-day ice cream cones, and enjoying the time together. We could cash-flow our portion of the trip as the expenses were spaced across a few months—plane tickets in the fall and hotel costs upon arriving at the resort. Honestly, having the ability to cash flow a trip we couldn’t have afforded just a few years ago was pretty cool.

Over the winter, I also booked houses for two summer lake trips with my extended family and with my in-laws. I’m new to the beach vacation world, and it’s wild to me that you have to book so far in advance.

Family trips like these were a highlight of my childhood, and I want to ensure my kids have those memories, too. Now that we can loosen up our budget a little, spending on travel and time together is our top priority.

A Little Fun—For All of Us

We’ve been hitting the student loans hard for quite a while now. During my husband’s first few years as an attending, he regularly took on additional weekend shifts so that we could send some extra money toward student loans. We’re very motivated to be done with them and feel good about our current payoff trajectory. So, we’ve decided to increase our spending on hobbies and activities for us and our kids.

Brandon has been a lifelong golfer and recently signed up for a…