Hey guys,
I'm a 24 (almost 25) year old college graduate and currently I'm working on pre-requisites to apply to PA school. I am engaged; my fiance is completing a second bachelor's in computer science and won't be earning anything for about 3 years, he'll have about 50k of debt and I don't know how much he'll make after.
At the earliest, I will graduate PA school at 30 years old, and the average debt for PA students is something like 75k, which is also about what you earn in the first year of work. So I'm thinking I could have that debt paid off in 2-3 years.
However, my fiance and I will want to have kids at some point, and I really don't want to wait until my mid-30s. And I would really like to stay home with them at least until pre-school. Is there any way to make this work, starting from nothing right now? I have some credit card debt and a little school debt, but not as much as most people my age luckily.
I am also considering a nursing track because it seems more flexible/less expensive than PA, but I think I prefer the medicine side. I was planning to go to med school and had the grades, but I decided that family was more important.
Sorry if this is confusing. I put my current "stats" in the normal format below:
Current Income: Working as a secretary, waitress, and PRN rehab tech: all together about $400/week, $1600/mo, variable depending on waitressing earnings.
Current expenses:
Rent: $625/mo (house-share), utilities: $100,
no car and I get a free bus pass as a student,
groceries: $250/mo;
student loan payment: $60/mo
credit card payment: $100/mo
healthcare: currently nothing, as i'm healthy and on parents' insurance for one more year
Assets: Absolutely nothing lol
Liabilities:
Student loan (subsidized): $5500
Credit cards: $5000 (I recently transferred it with no fee to a 0% APR until Feb. 2015). This is because of some difficulty finding a job and poor planning... had to put some tuition on my card because I couldn't get financial aid for my classes.