How to Make Extra Money During Residency

Hey Gang,

Saw someone make a similar post awhile back which has helped me in making/saving a bit during residency. Wanted to pay it forward by adding some ideas of my own. Without further ado:

 1. Take medical surveys--these are an easy way to make $15-100 per survey. I'd estimate you can make about $40 an hour with how long the surveys take. Downside is there seems to be a fair amount of lag time between surveys, though your results may vary. From Sermo alone I made $1100 last year as evidenced by the IRS form they sent me at tax time. Currently the bonus is $10 just for signing up.

You can sign up for Sermo here.

 Also, Medscape will occasionally send paid survey invitations, though I've had much better luck with Sermo. You can sign up here. Use invitation code 258382SR

 2. Use cashback portals whenever possible. Between Amazon, Peapod, Boxed etc we now spend a large portion of our money online. The vast majority of websites offer cashback when you first go through their website. How it works is as follows: find something on a site you intend to buy anyway (groceries or other products), see which portal offers the best cashback, and use the link provided to click through from the cashback portal to earn up to 20% cashback. Below are some of the better portals I have found.

Ebates - $15 sign up bonus currently
BeFrugal - $15 sign up bonus currently
Topcashback - $15 sign up bonus currently
ActiveJunky - $5 sign up bonus currently

 3. Make sure you are getting discounts from your hospital or university for your cell phone bill. Most organizations have discounts of up to 25% and all you need is a work email address or to go into the store with your ID card.

 4. Whenever possible use credit cards that earn miles/points and then pay these off monthly from your bank account. One of my personal favorites is the Southwest card which offers 50,000 miles which can be worth up to 8-10 flight. We've lucked out that we can use a credit card to pay our rent which is worth ~2,000 miles per month. Here's a link to the 50,000 miles offer.

Anyway, this is a starting point, hopefully others can post other avenues of making money below...

How to Stop Sunburn Itch

My life was almost cut short by a terminal case of surburn itch this afternoon. In my desperate state I couldn't find a good source on the internet regarding how to stop sunburn itch. Because of this (and its remote connection to the medical nature of this blog) I decided to describe my own experience and create a "comment forum" on how to possibly remedy the condition.

Before I continue, let me clarify something: this is regarding the pain-from-getting-burned-just-stopped sunburn itch, not the my-skin-is-peeling sunburn itch.

Here is the backstory:

After spending some time near the equator, I developed a whopper of a sunburn. For a few days I had some difficulty sleeping secondary to the pain the I experienced any time that I moved. Lathering up my back with aloe and other mosturizers, by Sunburn Day 3 the pain was starting to abate and I figured that I was just about out of the wood. Then the unthinkable happened.

I was minding my own business (standing on the street corner when these two guys started to make trouble...wait that's another story), sitting by the computer when out of the blue my back starts to itch.

So naturally I reach around and scratch it. And would you believe it, that didn't seem to help. I keep scraching, but I'm quickly realizing that I need something bigger as I can't scratch my entire back at once, so I run into the bathroom and start frantically grinding my back up against one of the towels that we had hanging up. All this seemed to do was create a kind of itch/pain wherever I last scratched.

This seemed to help for a few minutes, but I was quickly leaving the this-is-mildly-annoying part and entering the I'm-at-risk-for-losing-my-mind phase.

I then tried laying face up in bed and moving up and down, but of course that didn't work. Then I tried arching my back as much as possible (is that decorticate or cerebrate?) as if I was going to do a backwards cartwheel, then curling up into the fetal position--zero help whatsoever.

All the while the itchiness was coming in ever greater waves. My heart was racing and my entire body began to pulsate with each heartbeat. You may think I am exaggerating, but until you have suffered through a good case of sunburn itch, you'll never understand. There were times where I actually considered going into the emergency room, I was that concerned that something serious might be going on.

So here was the one thing that helped: put about an inch of aloe vera gel on your back. I'm assuming it is your back that got burned because, unless your a nudist, chances are you went to the beach with skin white enough to make the Amish proud and decided to spend most of the day face down. Here's the important part: lie completely still, facedown on the bed. I'm sure that after a lot of itching you will be having some involuntary back spasms with how bad the pain is, but the only way to feel better is to keep from moving the burned part.

At first, putting gel on your back is only going to make the itching worse, and you'll still have some lingering itchiness, but it will pale in comparison to how miserable you were beforehand.

Addendum: My wife couldn't believe that I was in as much agony as I was letting on--feel free to point to the comments section of this post when your friend/parent/significant doesn't believe you. Also, feel free to leave comments in the forum if you would prefer. Thanks to everyone who has posted their own stories in the comments section, they always bring a smile to my face.

If you have a second, please click on a link. Every little bit counts when you have 200k in student loans.

Update: was interviewed by the National Post regarding my experience, it would seem that sunburn itch is still very rarely described and somewhat poorly understood now 5 years after this original post. You can find the whole story here.

For the one person who doesn't have Uber you can sign up and get a free ride here.

If you haven't discovered the joys of cashback on online purchases you can sign up here.

Republic Wireless A Full Review by Pros and Cons

This could also be titled: How We Went from Spending $185 a Month on Cell Phones to $25 a Month.

Not to turn this into a "How to Save Money" blog, but I thought I would also detail how we cut down on our monthly charges for our two smartphones.

Here's the synopsis. We were faithful Verizon Wireless subscribers. Aside from a short hiatus, we were loyal, happy customers for the past decade. To restate, aside from the how much we were spending a month we had no complaints whatsoever.

At some point we did the math and realized that $185 a month is close to $5000 over the course of a two year contract, plus a few hundred dollars for the phones.

Enter Republic Wireless. Republic Wireless is a low-cost carrier that has smartphone plans ranging from $5-40 per month. Savings vs. the main carriers are due to the unique way that wifi is used for calls and texts whenever available. The lowest cost plan uses wifi exclusisvely and has no tower service when outside of wifi range. The $10 a month plan (which we use) has wifi + cellular calls/texts via traditional cell towers when outside of wifi range. The $25 and $40 dollar plans have 3g and 4g data respectively. The Sprint network is used for data/call/texts where applicable based on your plan.

As I'm getting typing-weary let's jump to bullet points


PROS

1. Incredibly cheap, even with 4g data it is a savings of more than $1000 over the course of a two year contract
2. In many work environments, aka here at the hospital, I get better service than my co-residents as the wifi is ubiquitous but cell service is very marginal.
3. Free international calling via wifi, great for travelers. Make calls and send texts from anywhere there is a wifi network without paying exhorbitant fees as you would with a traditional carrier
4. For those that have a mobile hotspot, either through work or in your car, you can get away with an even cheaper monthly rate.
5. Try it for free for 30 days, return it with no questions asked and a full refund at any time.
6. Great mobile signal throughout the Chicagoland area, try it out in your area to see if you have similar results.

CONS

1. Currently only have two phones to choose from: Moto X and Moto G. I'm an android fan so this is fine with me, but if you are a diehard iphone lover this may be a bridge to far.
2. Occasional random calls: I'm not a tech whiz but I believe when under wifi republic uses Google Voice to make and receive calls. Google seems to have it's wires cross occasionally as I get people trying to reach "Veronica" every few days. When asked they give a number that is completely different than mine. This is mildly annoying.
3. Need to frequently (every few hours) click to Accept the Terms of the Guest Wifi Network that I frequently use in the hospital.
4. When I was using wifi + 3g data I had some trouble with picture text messages when under cell data. When I am under a wifi signal there was no problem. Additionally, stream-of-consciousness text messages will be split into multiple messages, often leaving a few letters out in between which is somewhat painful to interpret at times.
5. Must have mobile data for GPS directions UNLESS you start the directions while under a wifi signal. While driving the GPS will only give you one route (if no mobile data). If you deviate from that route you will have to return to it to continue to get turn-by-turn directions.

On balance, I think it is a great deal. The savings are worth the headaches for us, even for my iPhone loving wife. If interested you can check it out here.

How to Get a Free Car Ride From the Airport Using Uber

Post blitz today as I'm considering getting back into blogging. I'm on a "saving money" kick right now and have been using Uber religiously for short rides.

Their signup bonuses have been ranging from $10-30 and have been recently been on the high end. $30 would probably get you a 30 minute ride to or from the airport for free. Plus you have the convenience of calling for it on your smartphone.

You can signup here.

How To Save Money On Online Purchases, A Step-By-Step Guide

1. Figure out what item you are looking for, either in store or online
2. Go to cashbackmonitor.com to see who has the best cash back offer
3. Use that portal to purchase said item, often I've found that ebates is the best. You can sign up here. They are currently running a special where you can choose a free $10 gift card of your choice after your first purchase. It simplifies things to use one main portal for getting cash back, especially if the percentages are similar.
4. Go to a site such as retailmenot to see what the best coupon codes available are
5. Complete purchase on retailers website, be sure that you go through the link from ebates (or other portal) to arrive at the retailers webpage
6. That's it! Using this I got ~$500 of clothes (MSRP, which you could argue overestimates the value) from Kohl for the equivalent of $90

Almost everything has a cashback portal, even Amazon. You could think about it like you are getting an additional discount after all other coupon codes have been applied.

Sunburn Itch Revisited

Tristin Hopper was kind enough to interview me about the one post on this blog that still draws a fair amount of people--that being my post about a bad case of sunburn that I got several years ago. You can find the full article from the National Post here. Thanks again to all visitors. I'm thinking about getting back into writing on this site as I never really transitioned to a new blog when I finished medical school.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/04/whitest-mans-burden-for-an-unlucky-few-sunburn-means-a-debilitating-itch-torture/

Doctor Mortgage

I have learned way more in the past few days about mortgages than I wanted. In the past, medical students who were under contract at a residency program could get a mortgage for 0% down, 0 mortgage insurance, no prepayment penalty, and at current market rates.

Unfortunately, this exact mortgage is all but extinct with the ongoing financial downturn. The cashier at McDonald's who said his salary was $100,000 ruined it for all of us. That said, there are a few options for those of us with huge medical student loans and little-to-no money down. Here are the current options:

1. Huntington Bank As long as they have a branch where you want to move you are set. They will give you a loan exactly as stated above, given you have a decent credit score. Two notable exceptions: Chicago and Miami, where they do not have banks. This was the company that I went the furthest with, unfortunately I am moving to Chicago.

2. Suntrust Bank Same as above as far as I can tell. Only works if you are moving to a state in the southeast.

3. Other Banks Several other banks have physician mortgage programs that do not count deferrable student loans against you and have some other perks. Unfortunately, most/all require a standard down payment 3.5% for FHA, 5% for conventional loans. Most do not require mortgage insurance, but instead they charge an inflated interest rate (by 0.5% typically). An example of a bank that does this is 5/3rd bank and Bank of America.

Mortgage Brokers Be careful using mortgage brokers as they will either want a set amount money at closing (in exchange for them referring you to a bank) or the bank will significantly raise your rates.

A couple of other considerations: compare packages from multiple banks--you may find that a standard loan will result in reduced monthly payments. Best of luck!

Waiting for Superman

In "Waiting for Superman," they mention that 1 in 57 doctors will have their medical license revoked, but only 1 in 2500 teachers have their license taken away. Either there are too many doctors being punished, or there are barriers in this country to getting rid of poor teachers.

Failed education has to be one of the saddest aspects of American society today. Without the teachers that I had I would not be where I am today, a few months from graduating medical school. I was one of the lucky ones. They taught me what I needed to know to move on. More than that they motivated and inspired me. They made learning fun.

Here is to all the great teachers of this country. And here's to one of the saddest but most moving documentaries I've seen.

Vertical Gardens, Grown on Walls - NYTimes.com

“In the rain forest, I realized that plants didn’t need to grow in pots with labels...”

Vertical Gardens, Grown on Walls - NYTimes.com

Some Funny Videos From Wayne State's Graduating Class