The year was 2002 and I had just graduated from medical school. After a one-year internship living in resident housing in La Crosse, WI, a small city famous for having the most bars per capita of anywhere in the U.S.,
Gainesville, a college town and something of a party town in its own right, had no shortage of student housing. But I wasn’t a student anymore, I was a doctor, a doctor who would be getting up really early, often working late and sometimes working nights for weeks at a time.
I needed a place of my own. I needed a place of my own in the swankiest building downtown high above the din of the partygoers below. I needed a doctor loan, or a physician mortgage loan, specifically.
Having taken out all of the subsidized loans I qualified for as a medical student, I ended up with a little bit of money leftover, knowing I might need some down payment money, eventually.
As an intern with little time off and incredibly cheap on-campus housing at Gundersen Lutheran hospital in La Crosse, WI, I was able to save a bit more each month in my first year after medical school.