Hi everyone, thanks so much for all the replies! I really appreciate the thoughts so far, but I should have expected that the people who follow a blog and forum dedicated to some serious financial pursuits would have liked to see more specific numbers so here goes nothing!
As a caveat, my current spending is nowhere near the level of frugality and dedication compared others on this site. In fact, I just stumbled upon this whole idea a few days ago and have now "seen the light," so to speak. For background, my class had a financial advisor come to speak to us during my first year and I proposed the same question to him that I asked in my OP, how much is too much? This is my endless debacle because technically I should spend as little as humanly possible because everything I spend in school will cost so much more when I have to pay it back. However, I am not capable of doing that without going more insane than school already makes me...so I was after a number to be my monthly target that wasn't too depriving or too excessive. The estimated cost of attendance for my program (not including tuition) was stated as a whopping $1,800/month, which I thought was excessive. So I asked him what he thought about my budget of $1,500/month, and he told me that I should be fine...so I thought I was fine. Although, now that I've seen some of the budgets on here, I am beginning to rethink that.
To address an earlier comment, I do in fact already have a part time job and am currently looking for more options on that front. Whether or not they missed my comment about my part-time job in my OP, I understand that the overall point of Lepetitange3's comment was talking about boosting my part-time income to offset my reliance on loans for living expenses. However, I do have to be careful with overloading my schedule because studying 5-6 hours per night is also my most important part-time job and my first priority.
After looking at my past few months of spending (now more like $1,700/month due to increased rent and decreased motivation on my part to stay frugal), I know that there are many line items that can be reduced, like food and grocery, entertainment, and miscellaneous purchases.
For even more specific information, the current average student loan debt for a new grad PT is $120k. I am currently at ~$80k which makes me right in line with the $120k after two years in school. But, I have been getting concerned lately because I will end up with even more debt due to requiring that extra year of living expenses. The current data on average starting salary for a new grad PT is $60-70k depending on location and PT setting (before PRN work). My current plan is to work as a travel PT straight after graduating because that typically boosts the hourly rate by at least $10/hr. I also plan on doing my travel PT on wheels in the form of an RV or something similar so I can pocket most of the housing and traveling stipend, à la the Fifth wheel Physical Therapist blog. Although his blog has a lot of information on FIRE, I was having a hard time following his calculations without specifics, so then I stumbled onto MMM. If you're interested, this is the blog post from fifthwheelpt that first opened my mind to FIRE:
https://fifthwheelpt.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-best-student-debt-repayment-option-for-those-seeking-financial-independence-fire/. In this post, he talks about using PAYE or REPAYE for student loan debt so that he has a greater amount of leftover income to dump into savings/investments. This is the approach I think I will use during repayment vs. the "pay off all my debt as quickly as possible first and start aggressively saving after" method. If I did that, I think my financial future would be quite dim.
My main motivation for writing this post was to get some clarity from more experienced minds with the calculation side of all this. Most of what I've seen so far have included an income, a mortgage, and savings/401k-- all of which I don't have. I have also seen calculations for people with debt that are currently in repayment, but I couldn't find anything with someone currently still accruing student loan debt (which although not ideal, is where I'm at). I will definitely look into the "Getting confused trying to calculate savings rate" thread and see what I can do with it. Luckily, I do have $17k in a mutual fund that I just found out about that can be the start to my net worth thanks to a lawsuit payout of $3,000 when I was 3-years-old because of an injury I sustained at an unsafe YMCA. I'm very thankful my parents had the foresight to invest it for me instead of just using it to pay my medical bills.
