entering the working world & figuring out finances

Thursday, August 25th marked the first day of my life as a working pharmacist. It was all around pretty horrible but in the words of Judy, at least I survived. I've been working the last 4 days and it's been a great first week at work besides that first day. I strongly believe that the staff you work with really determines whether you'll have a good or bad day. There was this one technician on my first day of work that was seriously typing random jibberish. Every single prescription I was checking literally had 3 mistakes: drug strength, date written, doctor. There was a prescription for Neurontin that CLEARLY stated 300 and this technician typed it for 600. AND he was off in his corner talking to the other technician while the phone just continued to ring. I had to pick up the phone and then delegate him to answer the call. Honestly, hearing "one pharmacy call" over and over again is not the most pleasant thing on earth. To top it off, I seriously had 5 or more instances where during my final quality assurance, I was checking the drug against the drug image and they did not match AT ALL. The ones I remember from that day were the rx's for Bactrim but the technician put Bactrim DS in the bottle... another one was filled with Vicodin when the prescription was for Vicodin ES. Then I caught a prescription that was written for a completely different patient! The date of birth didn't even match! *le sigh* Makes me appreciate those really good technicians so much more.

I haven't gotten my first paycheck as a pharmacist yet but I've been thinking a lot about the amount that I owe and how I'll be paying it off. I've been using Mint.com to track my finances ever since Judy and Sophie introduced me to it. It's quite useful especially since I don't have that many accounts (well... technically I have around 28 accounts according to my last credit report but I don't use all of them). I know the initial setting up of all your accounts is long and tedious but it is worth it!

My loan totals for grad school and undergrad are posted to the left. I also owe $6,000 for my Federal Perkins Loan from UCLA. I've been trying to figure out how much of the interest of my student loans could be used as a tax deduction since this might be the only year I can use the tax deduction. Anyways, I was talking to Sophie and she sent me a link to a site that was pretty helpful.

So if you're trying to figure out what tax bracket you're in here's the link:
http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/federal-income-irs-tax-brackets.html

From the looks of it, I'll either be in the 15% or the 25%, which is a pretty large difference so I'm counting on my deductions to put me in the 15% tax bracket. 

So I looked into it a little more and found the IRS Page regarding Student Loan Interest Deductions. It's actually quite useful. Here's the jist of it which I updated from this article because the numbers have changed. Basically, if you make less than $75,000 (single filer, post-tax and other adjustments), then you can get a deduction of $2500. If you make between $75,000 and $120,000, then you get a partial deduction which can be calculated by going to the IRS page up to $2500. If you make more than $120,000 then you don't get any deductions for the interest you pay on your student loans. Once again, this is for single filers since most of my friends are not married.

Hopefully this answers some questions you may be having regarding repaying all our debt and how to attempt to not get taxed a crap load.

In an attempt to streamline my expenses vs. income, I came up with a spreadsheet of my bi-weekly income, how much is used to pay each one of my bills and/or loans, how much I will transfer to my savings account, and what is left over. I guess we'll have to see how well this system will work.

Anywhos, I'm working on some catch-up posts for the past month so you'll hear from me soon! Hope this post helps!