I've seen a few scattered posts about this topic but no definitive guide based on income brackets, so I thought I would put this out there. I am a 4th year medical student in a long term relationship with a significant other with a good, non medical field job. We are planning on moving together for residency and having children in the next 5 years or so and getting married, but not if it means losing a significant amount of money. In that case, we would prefer to be domestic partners until it was financially reasonable to get married. We are trying to run the numbers but it is tricky- any thoughts?
Me: planning on subspecializing in pediatrics (likely oncology), hoping to remain at an academic medical center and, as of now, planning to PSLF. We'll likely end up in a large urban area like Boston, SF, or NYC.
Finances: $215,000+ federal loans. Likely won't qualify for PAYE as have undergrad loans from 2006-2007 (these did get automatically consolidated in 2012, though, so I may as well try. On the phone, myfedloan surprisingly said I would qualify for PAYE as all loans now appear in the system to originate from 2012).
Him: 150-200k base, could be up to 300k with stocks in 2016. I believe his base salary should be relatively stable at least throughout residency. About 15k student loans that he plans to pay off. Neither of us has family money.
If I'm eligible for PAYE, then I think it could be ok loan-wise to get married and file separately. However, if I want to use RePAYE in residency (and switch to IBR after fellowship) it seems we would lose a good amount of money by getting married. I'm not sure, however, what the financial implications would be in terms of other types of tax credits that exist with marriage and filing statuses. It seems that with such disparate incomes getting married would not be a mutually financially beneficial decision- is this correct? If the savings is in the order of $50-100k then that is a significant amount that could be used for savings, investments, etc!
I would appreciate any suggestions about how to work through the numbers for the different scenarios as well as general suggestions of how to move forward. Thanks!
Me: planning on subspecializing in pediatrics (likely oncology), hoping to remain at an academic medical center and, as of now, planning to PSLF. We'll likely end up in a large urban area like Boston, SF, or NYC.
Finances: $215,000+ federal loans. Likely won't qualify for PAYE as have undergrad loans from 2006-2007 (these did get automatically consolidated in 2012, though, so I may as well try. On the phone, myfedloan surprisingly said I would qualify for PAYE as all loans now appear in the system to originate from 2012).
Him: 150-200k base, could be up to 300k with stocks in 2016. I believe his base salary should be relatively stable at least throughout residency. About 15k student loans that he plans to pay off. Neither of us has family money.
If I'm eligible for PAYE, then I think it could be ok loan-wise to get married and file separately. However, if I want to use RePAYE in residency (and switch to IBR after fellowship) it seems we would lose a good amount of money by getting married. I'm not sure, however, what the financial implications would be in terms of other types of tax credits that exist with marriage and filing statuses. It seems that with such disparate incomes getting married would not be a mutually financially beneficial decision- is this correct? If the savings is in the order of $50-100k then that is a significant amount that could be used for savings, investments, etc!
I would appreciate any suggestions about how to work through the numbers for the different scenarios as well as general suggestions of how to move forward. Thanks!
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