Hi all,
I am extremely worried about my school loans. I have gone to a state undergrad and am going to my state med school but I still will come out school with a little less than 300k in debt when you factor in interest. I would join the military but I'm not medically eligible. I am freaking out trying to figure out what my life will be like trying to pay this debt off. I have been supported by my parents my whole life, even though they could not pay for my schooling so I don't really have a concept of what someone needs to live a comfortable life. I have no desire for super nice cars, or a boat or anything but I would definitely like a solid house one day and I want to save properly and plan for retirement.
Also, I live in the expensive northeast but am planning to move out west to a cheaper area.
First of all, the fact that you are seriously worried about it now as a medical student means you're already a lot better off than many people in your situation. I know I wasn't worried about it when I was a student because I was blissfully unaware of the consequences of having that much debt. So, pat yourself on the back and breathe a sigh of relief. You are going to be fine!
With that being said, you will need to be willing to make some sacrifices for a few years in order to get rid of that debt quickly. When you start residency, the first thing you should do is save up a few months expenses as an emergency fund to prevent you from needing to go into any more debt should unexpected expenses come up. Don't rack up any credit card debt and live below your means. Focus on your studies, work hard, and land yourself a good job. Don't worry much about your loans during those years. I would look into refinancing them if they are high interest rates though. Read up about it on this site: whitecoatinvestor.com (there's a ton of great stuff on that site btw)
Then, when you get done with residency and you start your first job, plan on continuing to live like a resident for at least the first few years. During that time carefully budget your monthly expenses and save everything else. Start maxing out your 401K contributions each year and put everything else into paying off your student loans, starting with the highest interest rates first. Work extra shifts, earn productivity bonuses, quality bonuses, etc, etc. Rake in as much cash as you can and throw it all at your debt. It won't take you long at all to pay off 300K if you do this. Especially if you end up going into a high paying specialty.
You mentioned that someday you'd want a house. You will have no problem saving up for a down payment on a nice house. You could start putting money towards that each month when you start working as well. Set up a separate savings account for that purpose and have $1000 automatically taken out of each check and placed directly into that account. At the end of your 3 years you'll already have $36K+ in that account and you can easily add more to it once you're done throwing money at student loans.
How much do you need to live? Well, if you're single, not much honestly. If you live somewhere cheap (like 800/month) and don't have a car payment (buy something cheap and used, but not so cheap that it's a money pit for repair costs) you could probably get by on $2000/month? It all depends on how thrifty you are and what your spending habits are. Don't make yourself miserable though. Budget for a modest vacation and going out occasionally.
An example, if you're making say 240K a year it won't be hard to put 10K a month towards loans if you're careful about your expenses. (assuming 20K per month pretax, automatically deduct 6% towards your 401K, then depending on taxes in your area, you might get to keep 65% of your paycheck?, that leaves you with 12,220/month after taxes). Even if your monthly expenses are 3K/month, you'll still be able to put over 9000/month towards loans. That will take less than 3 years to pay off 300k. Obviously all of this is highly hypothetical, but from personal experience those kind of numbers are not unrealistic. And of course if you land a job in Ortho or another high paying specialty, you'll have a lot more than 12k a month after taxes to play with!