I think you are overestimating the pay and underestimating your future podiatry debt. Here's some negative thoughts.
(1) You may find it challenging to acquire the surgical numbers to sit for ABPS. This may impact your long term career opportunities which would be a damn shame after working 80 hours a week for 3 years.
(2) The positions you see advertised for are (often) aggressive nail-cutting jobs at old folks homes. Have you ever been to an old folks home? How about a crappy one - cause they are out there. How about one that smells like urine and death where everyone is trying to get out the front door and people grab your hand crying as you walk by. Some people have made good money in places like that, but I doubt that is what they went into podiatry to do.
(3) How do you think money is actually made in podiatry? You won't be there busting your butt, taking phone-calls, referrals, sharing in the expenses, managing the employees, taking risks. You'll be coming and going. We are short on full-time podiatrists here, but if you read the dental forum they'll tell you that ownership is where the money is. So imagine yourself as a full time podiatrist. You are seeking referrals, advertising, managing an unruly staff, doing every little thing to keep your practice going. You are invested in it and you know your deserve to taste the rewards. A part time person comes to you. Do you see them as an integral part of the team? Or do you see them as someone to push all your crappy patients off on while you take the more profitable patients (your practice - your rules). I don't think that its worth dwelling on the horror stories, but there are horror stories out there. Private practice may be on the way out, but it is still the dominant domain of podiatry.
(4) Where do you think surgeries come from (assuming you want to do them)? Just a guess - seeing patients and building relationships. There are full time doctors who generate ~0.5-1 day a week of surgeries. Fewer patients seen means fewer opportunities for surgery.
(4) Do you know what a 1099 is? There's a big difference between being an employee and being a contractor and what column you end up in is very important. One may receive benefits like health insurance or a retirement plan (employee). One will be paying both sides of social security (a contractor - for employees your employer pays 1/2 of social security, for contractors you pay the employee side and the employer side).
(5) Tuition for 4 years of school is ~$130K. Cost of living bumps this into the ~$200K range. $200K of debt will generate at least ~$14K of new debt a year in interest.
