my theory on hours in business/law vs. medicine

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happyinthesun

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I wonder what other non-trads who have transitioned from top tier Ibanking, consulting, or big law jobs think of my theory...

I think the hours in medicine are actually better -- much better, really -- than in the aforementioned fields. In those jobs, a partner decides he wants to redo the presentation at 6p on a Tuesday -- you suddenly stay at work until 2am. A client needs to have a meeting in LA? No problem, the whole team is on a plane the next day, away from family for 3 days unexpectedly. And the thing is, this never ends in these jobs. Partners, managing directors, VPs ...many of them travel 3-4 days/week, work all night on short notice, etc. Most consider it a 9a - 7p day a good day.

In medicine, yes, residency sucks - but it's predictable. And limited. You know you have call Q4. You can plan. And the really bad period is limited -- it's most likely just for 9 months of one or two years in a whole career.

I know tons of doctors who work part time post-residency - 3 or 4 days/week, 9a - 3p or in 10 hour ER shifts, for instance, or even every other week schedules.

I'm often terrified of what's ahead given all of the grumbling you hear from residents and M3s about the horrible schedules. But, as a non-trad looking to balance career and family -- I really think medicine has a better schedule and more flexibility to offer than comparable professional jobs. I just think many in medicine haven't had other meaningful professional careers, and can't make that comparison. I really think it's not that bad - and likely better - that other options. And you get to do something (in my opinion) 1000x more meaningful with your time.
 
"Medicine" is too broad a category. There are lifestyle specialities in medicine (something that doesn't really exist in i-banking and consulting). For example, derm for the most part has pretty regular hrs, as do pathologists and such. On the other hand in fields like trama surgery, you never know when disaster will strike or in OB, when a baby could be born. If you avoid specialities where you are likely to be paged, you'll have much better hrs (after completing a residency, which will be grueling no matter what).

In my relatively short stint at Merrill Lynch, the hours were long, but the work was tedious and mindless (powerpoint, excel etc.). I don't have experience in medicine as a physician (though, lot of experience in health care), but the work will likely be more stimulating and exhausting from what I can tell having worked at various hospitals.
 
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happyinthesun said:
I wonder what other non-trads who have transitioned from top tier Ibanking, consulting, or big law jobs think of my theory...

I think the hours in medicine are actually better -- much better,I really -- than in the aforementioned fields. n those jobs, a partner decides he wants to redo the presentation at 6p on a Tuesday -- you suddenly stay at work until 2am. A client needs to have a meeting in LA? No problem, the whole team is on a plane the next day, away from family for 3 days unexpectedly. And the thing is, this never ends in these jobs. Partners, managing directors, VPs ...many of them travel 3-4 days/week, work all night on short notice, etc. Most consider it a 9a - 7p day a good day.

In medicine, yes, residency sucks - but it's predictable. And limited. You know you have call Q4. You can plan. And the really bad period is limited -- it's most likely just for 9 months of one or two years in a whole career.
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Having experienced both, if you are talking about residency vs being an associate at a big city law firm, then no, medicine is far far far worse. In Biglaw, you probably log similar hours at times, but you have a ton of control over your time. You want to go out to lunch with colleagues you can. You want to schedule a meeting off-site with a client you can. You want to go over to the library for a few hours, and maybe grab lunch outside you can. You want to bring work home and work offsite, you can. The partners only really care about (1) your billable hours and (2) that the clients are happy. If those two things happen, you can very often come and go as you please. So you can plan and it's predictable. Residency is not amenable to planning other things.

Sure in law there are intense periods where a big deal (or if you are a litigator, trial) is about to happen and you have to burn the midnight oil making sure everything is done for an imminent deal closing/court date. But that is not a daily, or even weekly event. It only seems that way because that's what folks in law talk about, and what makes the TV courtroom dramas. Most of the time you have a fairly long normal and controlable schedule. So it's the freedom and control over your schedule that separates something like law from residency.

Whereas in medicine, you have to be there at eg 6am every day, and sign out is not until, say, 6pm, and things happen that require you to delay sign out pretty significantly frequently, and you have to be in the building during your work day in case a code occurs or in case you are paged, and call is a regularly scheduled, every eg 4 day thing, but you don't really know when you are going to be able to leave the next day and don't know if you are going to get any sleep overnight. Also, when you work late in law, you maybe stay there until 11, 12, 1am, etc. But when you are on call as a resident, you are there for about 30 hours. Nobody in law is expected to do this, pretty much ever. And you don't carry a pager in law, and rarely have to mobilize at a moment's notice. So you can plan things in law that you cannot in medicine. You can know that you have X, Y and Z to do before you meet the partner the next day and plan accordingly, and take care of things in whatever order you see fit. The partner isn't going to wake you up in the middle of the night to ask an inane question the way the nurses might page you in medicine. In medicine, you can work insane hours because you are going to have 2 thirty hour stints each week -- remember that 80 hours is an average over 4 weeks, not a weekly maximum.

So no, law is much more lifestyle friendly than residency. You may work the same 80 hours average in a given month, and may work through weekends, but you won't have negligible control over your schedule as you do in residency. The only real comparison to residency is the armed forces, IMHO. There they own your time in a similar fashion.

After residency may be a different matter, but in law after a similar duration if you make partner you probably get equivalent perqs. So medicine never really gets "better" from an hour/lifestyle point of view. Just make sure your consideration doesn't focus on the perqs, because they aren't really better than elsewhere.
 
I think the up/out fields like IB have different sets of stressors than medicine. Workload in IB is probably harder/similar than heavy-workload residencies like surgical specialties, but there is a bit more flexibility, with lunch and the like. The problem is, when only 20% of people are getting promoted and the rest being shown the door after 2-3 years, job security makes people put in more hours then they really have to. I would say it's a quality of life thing too.
 
that's true... business lunches. expensed and leisurely. Indeed very different from having a pager go off and missing lunch completely.

But I still stand by my assertion: scheduled call is better than this familiar situation from my old life: I'm getting ready to go after working every night until 9p, and have promised my wife dinner together for the first time in 2 weeks. Partner walks in, wants to explore new line of research before client meeting in the morning. In an instant, dinner plans vanish and I'm expensing sushi at my desk. This happened ALL. THE. TIME.

Professional services = working every day until 9p with completely unpredictable overnighters thrown in. Residency is working most days until 5p with very predicatable overnighters thrown in.

Granted, in medicine, you're tied to a pager -- but in professional services, you are tied to that blackberry -- and there is NO time when it's off. at least call ends!
 
happyinthesun said:
...Residency is working most days until 5p with very predicatable overnighters thrown in....
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Um no, you are simply wrong here. Residency means there is theoretically a scheduled sign out at, say, 6pm each evening, but you may or may not be able to sign out at that time, depending on what comes up. Which is why the 80 hour work week is AVERAGED, not set. Because on a day to day basis you simply don't know what is going to come up and keep you from leaving the hospital on time. You can log 100 hours and NEVER get out of the hospital by 5 for a couple of weeks, so long as there are some easier weeks thrown in. But in terms of scheduled time, you don't get any, except to the extent you have already logged 30 hours in a row -- in which case they have to let you leave under the rules.

This notion that because you have call every fourth night means stuff is predictable is naive. Nothing is set in stone when you are working under a system where you have to average no more than 80 hours, but certainly are allowed to exceed it. In medicine you don't get to punch out like a clock, you stay until it's a reasonable time to sign out. Meaning, if you get 4 consult calls at 5pm, and some of your patients "don't look right" and if someone calls a code late in the day, guess what, you are going to miss sign out and have to find the night team whenever you get done, be it 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11pm. That's just the way it works in medicine. Which isn't all that different from the IB/law system except that you have a lot more masters in medicine, and they all have easy access to you by pager, so the odds that something will keep you from getting out of there on time are simply greater. So no, I have found that residency is FAR LESS schedulable than biglaw ever was.
 
Law2Doc said:
Having experienced both, if you are talking about residency vs being an associate at a big city law firm, then no, medicine is far far far worse. In Biglaw, you probably log similar hours at times, but you have a ton of control over your time. You want to go out to lunch with colleagues you can. You want to schedule a meeting off-site with a client you can. You want to go over to the library for a few hours, and maybe grab lunch outside you can. You want to bring work home and work offsite, you can. The partners only really care about (1) your billable hours and (2) that the clients are happy. If those two things happen, you can very often come and go as you please. So you can plan and it's predictable. Residency is not amenable to planning other things.

Sure in law there are intense periods where a big deal (or if you are a litigator, trial) is about to happen and you have to burn the midnight oil making sure everything is done for an imminent deal closing/court date. But that is not a daily, or even weekly event. It only seems that way because that's what folks in law talk about, and what makes the TV courtroom dramas. Most of the time you have a fairly long normal and controlable schedule. So it's the freedom and control over your schedule that separates something like law from residency.

Whereas in medicine, you have to be there at eg 6am every day, and sign out is not until, say, 6pm, and things happen that require you to delay sign out pretty significantly frequently, and you have to be in the building during your work day in case a code occurs or in case you are paged, and call is a regularly scheduled, every eg 4 day thing, but you don't really know when you are going to be able to leave the next day and don't know if you are going to get any sleep overnight. Also, when you work late in law, you maybe stay there until 11, 12, 1am, etc. But when you are on call as a resident, you are there for about 30 hours. Nobody in law is expected to do this, pretty much ever. And you don't carry a pager in law, and rarely have to mobilize at a moment's notice. So you can plan things in law that you cannot in medicine. You can know that you have X, Y and Z to do before you meet the partner the next day and plan accordingly, and take care of things in whatever order you see fit. The partner isn't going to wake you up in the middle of the night to ask an inane question the way the nurses might page you in medicine. In medicine, you can work insane hours because you are going to have 2 thirty hour stints each week -- remember that 80 hours is an average over 4 weeks, not a weekly maximum.

So no, law is much more lifestyle friendly than residency. You may work the same 80 hours average in a given month, and may work through weekends, but you won't have negligible control over your schedule as you do in residency. The only real comparison to residency is the armed forces, IMHO. There they own your time in a similar fashion.

After residency may be a different matter, but in law after a similar duration if you make partner you probably get equivalent perqs. So medicine never really gets "better" from an hour/lifestyle point of view. Just make sure your consideration doesn't focus on the perqs, because they aren't really better than elsewhere.
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As a former lawyer, I agree 100 percent with this analysis of law work schedules.
 
I think which is better is a matter of individual preference. I, for one, am willing to do anything to get more flexibility and job security down the line (post-residency). Yay.
 
What I'd like to know is if anyone out there has a perspective on the work hours of an investment banker or a financial analyst. I hear tell their lifestyle also blows (it's like residency without the overnight call); is this true?
 
Law2Doc said:
Having experienced both, if you are talking about residency vs being an associate at a big city law firm, then no, medicine is far far far worse. In Biglaw, you probably log similar hours at times, but you have a ton of control over your time. You want to go out to lunch with colleagues you can. You want to schedule a meeting off-site with a client you can. You want to go over to the library for a few hours, and maybe grab lunch outside you can. You want to bring work home and work offsite, you can. The partners only really care about (1) your billable hours and (2) that the clients are happy. If those two things happen, you can very often come and go as you please. So you can plan and it's predictable. Residency is not amenable to planning other things.

Sure in law there are intense periods where a big deal (or if you are a litigator, trial) is about to happen and you have to burn the midnight oil making sure everything is done for an imminent deal closing/court date. But that is not a daily, or even weekly event. It only seems that way because that's what folks in law talk about, and what makes the TV courtroom dramas. Most of the time you have a fairly long normal and controlable schedule. So it's the freedom and control over your schedule that separates something like law from residency.

Whereas in medicine, you have to be there at eg 6am every day, and sign out is not until, say, 6pm, and things happen that require you to delay sign out pretty significantly frequently, and you have to be in the building during your work day in case a code occurs or in case you are paged, and call is a regularly scheduled, every eg 4 day thing, but you don't really know when you are going to be able to leave the next day and don't know if you are going to get any sleep overnight. Also, when you work late in law, you maybe stay there until 11, 12, 1am, etc. But when you are on call as a resident, you are there for about 30 hours. Nobody in law is expected to do this, pretty much ever. And you don't carry a pager in law, and rarely have to mobilize at a moment's notice. So you can plan things in law that you cannot in medicine. You can know that you have X, Y and Z to do before you meet the partner the next day and plan accordingly, and take care of things in whatever order you see fit. The partner isn't going to wake you up in the middle of the night to ask an inane question the way the nurses might page you in medicine. In medicine, you can work insane hours because you are going to have 2 thirty hour stints each week -- remember that 80 hours is an average over 4 weeks, not a weekly maximum.

So no, law is much more lifestyle friendly than residency. You may work the same 80 hours average in a given month, and may work through weekends, but you won't have negligible control over your schedule as you do in residency. The only real comparison to residency is the armed forces, IMHO. There they own your time in a similar fashion.

After residency may be a different matter, but in law after a similar duration if you make partner you probably get equivalent perqs. So medicine never really gets "better" from an hour/lifestyle point of view. Just make sure your consideration doesn't focus on the perqs, because they aren't really better than elsewhere.
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Having worked at 2 AmLaw 100s I agree about the flexbility points. Though I'm still just applying to medical school I've seen my wife's residency and I have to tell you that if you're able to match with other residents that you get on well with then you guys can work with eachother to add some flexiblity to your schedule. I had a hard time finding other lawyers at my firms who would be willing to assist with tasks to make my life a little easier.
 
Law2Doc: just wondering, as you are a nontrad resident, if you could do it over again, would you make the same choice regarding changing careers and going into medicine?
 
I'll throw in the former IBD analyst side of things, which is somewhat similar to BigLaw, though I think IBD it can be worse. I worked at a large bulge bracket firm. A normal week for me was 100+ hrs but could creep to 120+ when things got bad. The afternoon requests are what make it bad b/c being an IBD analyst really isn't amenable to having friends outside of IBD. You will cancel your plans with them nearly every time. Within 3 months of starting the vast majority of people I saw at any point during the week/weekend were my fellow analysts.

Your schedule really depends on your group and your boss. I knew groups who did virtually nothing every day from 9am - 2pm, many of them didn't show up till 10 or so, but were working every single night from 2pm - 4/5am. They'd go home, shower, sleep a few hours and come back. When things get bad, I'm guessing it's as bad as residency (though I have no experience with that yet). I've had deals where I showed up for work Monday morning and left Wednesday night. In between I drank copious amounts of coffee and napped at my desk or on a couch when I could find one. I knew people who occasionally napped on the floor when necessary. I probably pulled one all nighter a week on average.

Now, as for long term prospects, I can only speak for my former employer, but it's actually not totally up or out. At the initial levels, aka analyst/associate, it certainly is. If you don't get promoted from analyst to associate and then associate to VP, you're fired. Once you hit VP though, you can continue on the revenue generating track or after a few years, a number of people chose to move to a nonrevenue generating division. That will usually result in a salary decrease of 80%+, but you then have the option of only working ~50 hrs/week. Keep in mind you'll still earn ~$200k/year or more. If you choose to stay revenue generating, there's really no end to the work/hours.

However, you're making a simple deal there that you cannot do in medicine. Time for money. If you stay revenue generating and work 20 years from age 22 to 42, and actually get promoted etc, you will have more than enough money to retire. Another 10 yrs and your grandchildren will never have to work.

Hope that helps.

Law2Doc said:
Having experienced both, if you are talking about residency vs being an associate at a big city law firm, then no, medicine is far far far worse. In Biglaw, you probably log similar hours at times, but you have a ton of control over your time. You want to go out to lunch with colleagues you can. You want to schedule a meeting off-site with a client you can. You want to go over to the library for a few hours, and maybe grab lunch outside you can. You want to bring work home and work offsite, you can. The partners only really care about (1) your billable hours and (2) that the clients are happy. If those two things happen, you can very often come and go as you please. So you can plan and it's predictable. Residency is not amenable to planning other things.

Sure in law there are intense periods where a big deal (or if you are a litigator, trial) is about to happen and you have to burn the midnight oil making sure everything is done for an imminent deal closing/court date. But that is not a daily, or even weekly event. It only seems that way because that's what folks in law talk about, and what makes the TV courtroom dramas. Most of the time you have a fairly long normal and controlable schedule. So it's the freedom and control over your schedule that separates something like law from residency.

Whereas in medicine, you have to be there at eg 6am every day, and sign out is not until, say, 6pm, and things happen that require you to delay sign out pretty significantly frequently, and you have to be in the building during your work day in case a code occurs or in case you are paged, and call is a regularly scheduled, every eg 4 day thing, but you don't really know when you are going to be able to leave the next day and don't know if you are going to get any sleep overnight. Also, when you work late in law, you maybe stay there until 11, 12, 1am, etc. But when you are on call as a resident, you are there for about 30 hours. Nobody in law is expected to do this, pretty much ever. And you don't carry a pager in law, and rarely have to mobilize at a moment's notice. So you can plan things in law that you cannot in medicine. You can know that you have X, Y and Z to do before you meet the partner the next day and plan accordingly, and take care of things in whatever order you see fit. The partner isn't going to wake you up in the middle of the night to ask an inane question the way the nurses might page you in medicine. In medicine, you can work insane hours because you are going to have 2 thirty hour stints each week -- remember that 80 hours is an average over 4 weeks, not a weekly maximum.

So no, law is much more lifestyle friendly than residency. You may work the same 80 hours average in a given month, and may work through weekends, but you won't have negligible control over your schedule as you do in residency. The only real comparison to residency is the armed forces, IMHO. There they own your time in a similar fashion.

After residency may be a different matter, but in law after a similar duration if you make partner you probably get equivalent perqs. So medicine never really gets "better" from an hour/lifestyle point of view. Just make sure your consideration doesn't focus on the perqs, because they aren't really better than elsewhere.
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ChE04 said:
Law2Doc: just wondering, as you are a nontrad resident, if you could do it over again, would you make the same choice regarding changing careers and going into medicine?
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Nope, I wouldn't change a thing. But I think the OP is kidding himself if he is trying to sell medicine as an easier lifestyle to these other fields. At least as far as residency goes it's a lot worse (at least as per law, I can only attest second-hand to what I've seen in terms of my colleagues in IB).
 
tspremed said:
I'll throw in the former IBD analyst side of things, which is somewhat similar to BigLaw, though I think IBD it can be worse. I worked at a large bulge bracket firm. A normal week for me was 100+ hrs but could creep to 120+ when things got bad. The afternoon requests are what make it bad b/c being an IBD analyst really isn't amenable to having friends outside of IBD. You will cancel your plans with them nearly every time. Within 3 months of starting the vast majority of people I saw at any point during the week/weekend were my fellow analysts.
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That sounds like an old school surgical residency.

You know, though, it is becoming very interesting to me: to at least the first order of magnitude, one's willingness to work f***ing horrible hours or put in terrible lengths of time into one's education seems to be quite directly correlated to one's income.

Unless, of course, you are a trust fund baby or win the lottery. There's no accounting for luck.
 
InLocoAbsentia said:
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You know, though, it is becoming very interesting to me: to at least the first order of magnitude, one's willingness to work f***ing horrible hours or put in terrible lengths of time into one's education seems to be quite directly correlated to one's income....
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Not so much. Most of the folks on the nontrad board who had professional jobs before will never get back to the level of income they had in medicine, especially if you account for time value of money. Going from one profession to medicine is almost always a losing proposition (and adcoms will make abundantly sure you understand that on your interviews). However every single one of these career changers will go through residency and work their *****e$ off. Meaning they are going to work a lot harder for less money. It's not correlated to income because they would have had more without the change. It has to do with goals and work ethic.
 
Law2Doc said:
Not so much. Most of the folks on the nontrad board who had professional jobs before will never get back to the level of income they had in medicine, especially if you account for time value of money. Going from one profession to medicine is almost always a losing proposition (and adcoms will make abundantly sure you understand that on your interviews). However every single one of these career changers will go through residency and work their *****e$ off. Meaning they are going to work a lot harder for less money. It's not correlated to income because they would have had more without the change. It has to do with goals and work ethic.
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There is no denying this on a theoretical level. Time spent going to medical school and then in residency is absolutely a net loss for those that end up making the 200k or less that some medical professionals earn IF your job already paid in the 150k+ range.

That said, most do not. I did, and even for me, with my own particular set of circumstances, it won't be a net loss.

I would say the number of people for whom becoming a Dr. would result in a net loss in financial status is exceptionally low unless they're already in their 40's when they begin.

This of course is based on the idea that physician salaries do not take a sudden unavoidable dive into the abyss due to policy changes.

Again though, in theory, you're correct. After all, we could all adopt the spartan lifestyles we're planning for our training even while earning our 150k+ incomes and invest the money wisely, maybe retiring a little earlier.

You and I both know this isn't happening for most. It's not happening for the very reason we're looking to medicine. Our careers do not fulfill us or make us feel as though we are where we belong, so we medicate with things that cost money. If you take away the material reward from what we're doing now (or were doing), it ceases to be worth it.

As far as hours go:

Part of me believes that some of what is expressed about Med School, (less so Residency), and being a Dr. is "This is so hard, see how amazing it is that I'm doing it? Because it's so, so very hard you just can't imagine how amazing you must be to be able to do this very, very hard thing."

If becoming an MD isn't the most hardest, most difficultest thing ever, then they'll lose the sense of awe they hope to receive from those outside the process.

My father-in-law worked 90 hours a week for over twenty years, working three jobs, real labor jobs, actual hard work, to raise his family. He earned less than minimum wage overall for his entire working life. I worked an average of 70 hours a week for over four years as a Director/Manager for software dev firms. Long hours are the new reality in the US economy. We have one of the worst work-life balances in the West. Medicine as a career, outside of residency, is hardly the worst profession in terms of working hours and dominates the yearly earnings statistics.

Didn't mean to write quite so much here, I just can't believe anyone with access to a calculator would think that most people are going to see a net loss in income as a physician. Yeah, if you're a lawyer/executive/crna/ib and drop your 150k+ job to head into family medicine or primary care, you -might- lose money.
 
AllOptionsOpen said:
There is no denying this on a theoretical level. Time spent going to medical school and then in residency is absolutely a net loss for those that end up making the 200k or less that some medical professionals earn IF your job already paid in the 150k+ range.
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I will never get close to the money I would have accumulated if I kept earning my prior salary through post-bac, med school and residency, especially when you consider net present value of each year and when you factor in tuition cost. I know there are MANY on this board in the same boat, whether they realize it or not. And that's without even considering that if you stay at a job for another decade most probably will get raises, bonuses, will avoid taxes through 401k, will get paid for employee benefits that you pretty much have to pay for on your own while in school, and don't have student debt interest running. It's a big deep hole and the income you have to have had before making the career change, to make it something you won't get back out of isn't really as high as some might think.

Now if you are financially naive and say, I was making $100k before and after residency I will be making $250k, then sure it sounds like you are coming out ahead. But if you remember that you are making $100k each year for a decade, plus raises and bonuses, and getting this money in earlier years ("time value of money" means money earned this year is worth more than the same amount of money earned next year), and you may be borrowing $150k in student loans on the medicine path, from which interest will run, we are talking about a very late break even date before the medicine path actually nets you the amount of money you WOULD HAVE HAD, if ever. Most people look at it naively and say, gee I will have a higher income on this path than I would have on the other. But in fact "slow and steady wins the race" in finance. And a lot of money earned a decade from now is not necessarily worth more than less money earned now. (you have to take the NPV to see what something earned later is actually worth) That's what a lot of people don't get.
 
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Law2Doc said:
And that's without even considering that if you stay at a job for another decade most probably will get raises, bonuses, will avoid taxes through 401k, will get paid for employee benefits that you pretty much have to pay for on your own while in school, and don't have student debt interest running.
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Raises have stagnated for the majority of US workers for the last decade unless they're willing to job hop. You're keeping up with inflation if you're lucky otherwise. My assumption based on your name here is that you were a working lawyer before. For you, these things are true. For many, these just aren't. I went from < 100k to high 100's in seven years, then for five years it fell flat, including this last year where no raise happened at all and eventually the company died.

Law2Doc said:
But if you remember that you are making $100k each year for a decade, plus raises and bonuses, and getting this money in earlier years ("time value of money" means money earned this year is worth more than the same amount of money earned next year), and you may be borrowing $150k in..... And a lot of money earned a decade from now is not necessarily worth more than less money earned now. (you have to take the NPV to see what something earned later is actually worth) That's what a lot of people don't get.
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I think there is just as much naivety in expressing that people that earn $100k or $150k are putting a lot of money away to make some accumulating total on a spreadsheet an accurate representation of money earned/lost.

The average % of disposable income being saved is < 5%. Can they fix this? Sure. Will they? Unlikely, they haven't yet. Some reasons why? The average cost of a home is rather high in many areas. $300,000 for a house even in the Midwest nets you a 2,500 square foot home in a typical suburban neighborhood. Heating, mortgage, all of this, you'll spend around $3,000 a month just for housing. Car payments for an average sedan, assuming you don't lease, are going to be $400 a month. Need 2 cars and don't have it paid off yet? $800. These are the 'basics' of transportation and housing.

Should we spend as much as we do on electronics, entertainment, clothing? Probably not, but we do. $6,000 a month is a rather easy figure to reach for a middle class family.

The point being, what you earn above what you spend is all that matters for 'long term' financial calculations. If you earn $150k, and spend $150k, you're at $0. Only what you have in your home really comes back to you out of that money, and then, only if real estate prices rise (and they've gone the other way recently). Disposable income is all that matters.

I know people could cut back and save more, but they aren't, and since we're dealing with the pragmatic and real when working on life plans, everyone can see this for themselves in their own situation.
That's an aside however. Back to $'s.

Spending most of what you make is going to happen for the vast majority whether they're making $150k or $40k, so assuming they need a fresh BS, 0 credits, and med school, they're going to come out even except for education debt. What you have in assets at the end of those eight years won't be any different for nearly everyone (again, 5% of disposable income is the average savings).

After the eight years, you're earning $40k-$60k during residency depending on the year/location etc. Assets at the end? Just about the same. You don't start to see significant increases in savings until you see significant increases in disposable income. This only starts to happen once you can live a pretty comfortable lifestyle, one you feel is worth the work you're putting into what you do, and still have more left over than is usable. Few people will buy 5 50" HDTVs. Lots of people will buy 1.

Money earned and spent today is still 0$, no amount of NPV adjustment is going to make 0$ into anything other than 0$. I'm certain everyone going back to school for this is making a lifestyle adjustment. They're cutting back somehow, or they couldn't do it. Their real loss is in the education debt they're going to amass, and it is massive. $240k for undergrad and med if you're not getting any scholarships or other assistance. After interest, this can easily be $400k (although the wise man would keep his resident lifestyle for a couple of years after it's over and pay those completely off or close).

Think you can make up $400k worth of disposable income in 20 years? I think it's easy. How much more are you really losing? Well, just look at your savings account, home equity, and investments and add them up. Whatever you have in assets after a decade of work is what you won't have on top of this number. I'd be astonished if this figure averaged more than $50k a person. Based on the salaries I see for MDs, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine they'll increase their disposable income by $30,000 a year or more for that 20 year career ahead of them. Some are going to increase it by much more than that.

We do agree though on one thing, in theory, this is a net loss. If you had enough willpower to cut your life back to what it would be as a student without being a student and continued earning what you're earning, you'd be better off. If you had enough willpower to save $30k a year at whatever income you're at, again, net loss. We also agree that this shouldn't be only about money. If it is, there are easier ways to get what you want (like the advice above). It also can't be purely about altruism either. It's much easier to sell everything you have and join some third world humanitarian organization as a general volunteer laborer and get straight to making a difference in people's lives right now.
 
Law2Doc said:
I will never get close to the money I would have accumulated if I kept earning my prior salary through post-bac, med school and residency, especially when you consider net present value of each year and when you factor in tuition cost. I know there are MANY on this board in the same boat, whether they realize it or not. And that's without even considering that if you stay at a job for another decade most probably will get raises, bonuses, will avoid taxes through 401k, will get paid for employee benefits that you pretty much have to pay for on your own while in school, and don't have student debt interest running. It's a big deep hole and the income you have to have had before making the career change, to make it something you won't get back out of isn't really as high as some might think.

Now if you are financially naive and say, I was making $100k before and after residency I will be making $250k, then sure it sounds like you are coming out ahead. But if you remember that you are making $100k each year for a decade, plus raises and bonuses, and getting this money in earlier years ("time value of money" means money earned this year is worth more than the same amount of money earned next year), and you may be borrowing $150k in student loans on the medicine path, from which interest will run, we are talking about a very late break even date before the medicine path actually nets you the amount of money you WOULD HAVE HAD, if ever. Most people look at it naively and say, gee I will have a higher income on this path than I would have on the other. But in fact "slow and steady wins the race" in finance. And a lot of money earned a decade from now is not necessarily worth more than less money earned now. (you have to take the NPV to see what something earned later is actually worth) That's what a lot of people don't get.
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This is an apples and oranges comparison. If you are making gt 100k, then you are living a 100K life. The big house, the nice cars with the nice insurance the big utility payments etc. You go to medical school and you are now living a 20K life - little apartment and a junker car with liability only insurance. Once you go to residency, you start living the 40k life - upgrade to a real car and rent a nicer house. You stop borrowing now, you are living on what you make.

Now, if you had continued making 100K, and put back 25k/year for 10 years, then at the end of the road you have somewhere around 10*25k * 2 (for interest) 500K versus -200K for medical school. 700K difference. Now you are paying that back to yourself at (250-100 - 150K) per year. In 8 years you are way ahead.
 
EdLongshanks said:
This is an apples and oranges comparison. If you are making gt 100k, then you are living a 100K life. The big house, the nice cars with the nice insurance the big utility payments etc. You go to medical school and you are now living a 20K life - little apartment and a junker car with liability only insurance. Once you go to residency, you start living the 40k life - upgrade to a real car and rent a nicer house. You stop borrowing now, you are living on what you make.
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Exactly.
 
EdLongshanks said:
...

Now, if you had continued making 100K, and put back 25k/year for 10 years, then at the end of the road you have somewhere around 10*25k * 2 (for interest) 500K versus -200K for medical school. 700K difference. Now you are paying that back to yourself at (250-100 - 150K) per year. In 8 years you are way ahead.
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Um no. Not apples and oranges - you seem to have missed my point and your calculations are all wrong. Say you were earning $100k. Instead you choose to go to med school and residency. Say you borrow $150k (lower than the average). So instead of earning 1 million plus interest over that decade, you end up owing $150k plus interest, minus $45k*4 (residency salary). So we are talking far more than $1 million in the hole to start with. And that's assuming no raises or bonuses, which is a bad assumption. And whatever amount of this you actually saved continues to appreciate/generate interest.

PLUS when looking into the future, you have to take the net present value of everything, because $100k today is worth A LOT MORE than getting $100k a decade from now. This is the basic concept used for lottery/annuity payouts, where they can offer you a million dollars over 20 years or $300k today -- it's always the same value to the payor. So in a decade say you start earning $250k, it's really not $250k -- it's $250k earned a decade later, so the net present value is a lot less. So whatever net present value of $250k minus the net present value of $100k + raises + bonuses starting in year 10 on is going to be your difference in value. Guess what -- it's not going to be much of a dent in the > 1 million head start the dude with the six digit salary would have had. I'm thinking it will take conservatively 15 years for the person in this example to be ahead, and even then I think "way ahead" never happens.
 
Law2Doc said:
So instead of earning 1 million plus interest over that decade, you end up owing $150k plus interest, minus $45k*4 (residency salary). ....Guess what -- it's not going to be much of a dent in the > 1 million head start the dude with the six digit salary would have had. I'm thinking it will take conservatively 15 years for the person in this example to be ahead, and even then I think "way ahead" never happens.
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I don't know anyone that spends 0$ of their income. You're talking revenue/earnings, we're talking profit/disposable income. Revenue isn't a very valuable way to measure personal financial success.
 
AllOptionsOpen said:
I don't know anyone that spends 0$ of their income. You're talking revenue/earnings, we're talking profit/disposable income. Revenue isn't a very valuable way to measure personal financial success.
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That's the point -- it doesn't matter if you spend it or not. And it doesn't make any sense at all to talk profit when you aren't giving up just profit, you are giving up a revenue stream. You still have given up that income for those years, and replaced them with debt. If you give up 10 years of earning and instead spend 10 debt/interest ridden years, you are way behind. Doesn't really matter if you invest it or not, it was worth something to you, you earned it. And you won't get to get that back. To be doing better after residency means you still have to catch up to where you would have been on a present value perspective LOOKING AT THE REVENUE YOU HAVE FOREGONE, or else you didn't really catch up. You can earn a nice lifestyle later and still would not be where you would be had you never taken this diversion. And that's the point. That's how people in finance value money. I strongly recommend sitting through a finance course or two before you embark into medicine, it will probably change the way you look at life, and will certainly keep you from getting fleeced the way you might if you truly value streams of income the way that's being described by some of you guys in this thread. That you are choosing to focus on savings/investment, rather than the total income stream is irrelevant -- you are not looking at it the way you need to to understand what you are actually giving up. Even if you spent every cent of your income every year, you still got value in todays dollars, something you would need to "catch up to" later to make it a wise financial move. And I'm saying many won't ever catch up, even if they earn more later and even if the non-career changer didn't bank a thing and simply lived the life for a decade. You lived like a pauper for a decade, so you have given up a decade of value, in today's dollars, for a high income in tomorrow dollars. Tomorrow dollars are not worth as much so it will take many years of that salary to get to where you would have been. Period.
 
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EdLongshanks said:
This is an apples and oranges comparison. If you are making gt 100k, then you are living a 100K life .
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This is horrible financial planning, but unfortunately what the majority does. And because of this, I get to hear med students saying they have to go to a high paying specialty because that's the only way to pay back the debt. Even with an average general practitioner's salary, say $150k/year, paying back $250k loan is a matter of a few years. No need to starve either, just drive an Accord instead of the audi, and that's $10k right there 😀.

Most of the people I know in finance I know have a lifestyle at the limit of what they can afford. Scary.
 
Law2Doc said:
Guess what -- it's not going to be much of a dent in the > 1 million head start the dude with the six digit salary would have had. I'm thinking it will take conservatively 15 years for the person in this example to be ahead, and even then I think "way ahead" never happens.
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Totally unrealistic. The question is not a mathematical calculation of 100K/Yr * interest now versus 250k/Yr 10 years from now. The 100K dude doesn't have a million dollars 10 years from now because he SPENT MOST OF IT!!!

The question is whether the doctor who has been an attending for 8 years at 250K/year is in a better position than someone who has and continues to make 100K/year for the 18 years. It doesn't take much of a look around to figure out who is better off.

In reality, even the most financially sound planners spend 75% of their income. To make calculations based on anything but that is pure theoretical nonsense.
 
The one missing piece in this analysis is risk. One of the greatest things about medicine is that the risk of job loss is very low compared to those others. Everyone talks about salaries for partners in law firms, but not many associates make partner. How many of the 10 associates in my class made partner? One or Two. The rest did not get the huge salaries. One became a US attorney, several became corporate counsels, a few changed careers. You need to add a little game theory into your economic analysis to get a more accurate answer.

Interestingly about 4 years ago there were a ton of threads discussing the merits of IB vs medicine and people asking which career they should pursue. I haven't seen very many lately (which is why this thread caught my eye).

Ed
 
Law2Doc said:
?... That's how people in finance value money. I strongly recommend sitting through a finance course or two before you embark into medicine, it will probably change the way you look at life, and will certainly keep you from getting fleeced the way you might if you truly value streams of income the way that's being described by some of you guys in this thread.
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... I've dealt with people on all ends of finance nearly every day the last four years due to my jobs at the time. "people in finance" are as varied as "people in law" or " people in academia". To imagine they have some universal philosophy in practice for their lives is silly.

As for the rest, how can it not be relevant if they spend every dollar? A dollar spent today is a bigger loss than a dollar spent tomorrow in the exact same ratio as a dollar earned today is worth more than one earned tomorrow. So then, the only dollars that matter are the ones you earn but don't spend when looking at it from a purely #'s perspective. Investments are of course the exception.

Thanks for the advice on taking a finance course. I'd love to find a class that suggests it's better to run a 5mil revenue, 6mil expense biz for a loss every year as a better option than a 1mil biz earning 100k profit. "But you're losing 4mil a year + interest!!!!!"
 
EdLongshanks said:
Totally unrealistic. The question is not a mathematical calculation of 100K/Yr * interest now versus 250k/Yr 10 years from now. The 100K dude doesn't have a million dollars 10 years from now because he SPENT MOST OF IT!!!...
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Doesn't matter what he "has left". It matters what he was deprived the use of. He gave up a stream of income for a decade. This is first day of finance class stuff. See my prior post for more elaboration.
 
AllOptionsOpen said:
... I've dealt with people on all ends of finance nearly every day the last four years due to my jobs at the time. "people in finance" are as varied as "people in law" or " people in academia". To imagine they have some universal philosophy in practice for their lives is silly....
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I've used finance my whole prior career, not just dealt with people. There are certain basic financial principles on which all of finance is based. To say that this is not a "universal philosophy of practice" makes no sense. It's sort of like saying that physicists don't use gravity as their "universal philosophy in practice". First day finance class stuff includes the concept of "time value of money", and "revenue streams". They are concepts that most premeds don't understand but they are, in fact, what drives markets, and what folks in finance base their financial decisions. And since they are truisms, they really should be what you and I base our financially driven decisions on as well.
 
AllOptionsOpen said:
...I'd love to find a class that suggests it's better to run a 5mil revenue, 6mil expense biz for a loss every year as a better option than a 1mil biz earning 100k profit. "But you're losing 4mil a year + interest!!!!!"
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Um, the above isn't the current example we are discussing. The current example is that it's better to run a 100k dollar revenue a year business where the owners spend some or all the revenue each year as opposed to 250k dollar a year revenue business where the owners have a decade of expenses and debt (loans) before they show a cent of profit. Most finance courses will, in fact, cover that scenario, on day one, when they discuss the "time value of money".

At any rate, good luck. It's clear you aren't going to understand my point, and from your post it is probably worth it that you take a business class, or maybe sit down with one of the many finance people you have worked with and get a better understanding of revenue streams and time value of money. Good luck.
 
Law2Doc said:
Doesn't matter what he "has left". It matters what he was deprived the use of. He gave up a stream of income for a decade. This is first day of finance class stuff. See my prior post for more elaboration.
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The original question is whether a real person is better off after going to medical school. The answer, for normal people, is absolutely yes. Now, if you have a theoretical (non-existent) person who invests instead of spends and who is in the middle of a high paying career, but nevertheless lives like a pauper, then, yes, that theoretical person in a high paying career would probably have a few more dollars, even though he is stuck in a dead-end job for the rest of his life, while the doctor MIGHT have a few less dollars than someone else, but has a dream job of helping people and making money at the same time.

On the other hand, since I am talking to someone who knows SO much about economics, the economics theorist, Theodore Veblen, said that money is simply a way of increasing status, that people engage in "conspicuous consumption": they spend their money in order to gain status. So I would say that the medical student is gaining status WITHOUT spending money. A future doctor, though he may drive a Ford Escort, can, by simply wearing a short white coat, gain the admiration of his fellow man. Since you want to talk about the theoretical time value of money, then maybe you ought to take a few courses in the theory of why money is valuable.
 
Had to chime in one more time. Law2Doc is 100% right for anyone coming from a prior career where they were earning, say, $90k+ or so. If you were earning $30k/year, the calculations are obviously different. The numbers simply do not work for the 90k person. It's virtually impossible for them to recoup the money lost by going to med school.

For those of you who doubt it, and have the inclination, I strongly suggest you put together a basic excel model including factors like income, taxes, living expenses, unexpected expenses, inflation, interest rates, investment returns, and perhaps most importantly, your school debt & its associated interest etc. Due to the nature of medicine, I would also suggest including declining reimbursement inline with the past 10 years as well as increasing malpractice expenses. You'll quickly realize that unless you join a high paying speciality, aka interventional cards / ortho etc, there is a very good chance you will not come out ahead. And if you do, it often requires you to reduce your disposible income to redirect more of it to savings, aka the other path would let you spend more and end up in the same place.

Another example...get into a decent MBA school, and you'll have a starting salary of no less than $100k/year and let's say you cap out at $200k/year, you'll still end up in the same place and work a lot fewer hours. Frankly, probably the best gigs that are no longer available are the union jobs people used to get at age 18 and keep for 40 years. Without getting into specifics, I know people who took such jobs and are currently earning ~$120k/year with 2 months vacation and never had a bit of educational debt in their lives. It adds up.

Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't take this path...hopefully you're doing so for reasons other than just $$$. But for those of you who doubt Law2Doc, please, for your own sake, run the numbers. Don't find yourself 10 years into this and realizing that you have no way out and your friends who took other roads are earning just as much with fewer hours and less debt. Keep in mind median physician salary, for ALL primary care physicians, is somewhere in the range of $160-$180/year. I might be pessimistic, but I wouldn't assume I was going to end up in one of the highest paying specialties when I was doing these calcs. If you want more info, try salary.com or you can even use the BLS occupational career outlook handbook.

And if you're unfamiliar with how to do so, just Google how to build a basic financial model, or if you want the NPV (net present value) that Law2Doc has been discussing, Google "discounted cash flow model" and you'll get some basic examples on how to build it.

Finally, Law2Doc is certainly correct that everyone really needs to understand basic finance if you want to maximize your chances of successfully savings/earning etc. It's a sad truth but people with knowledge of finance will take advantage of those who do not have it. Why do you think all those investors got put into various CDO/MBO garbage that was supposedly as safe as a savings account? Anyone who read the prospectus realized very quickly their broker was lying.

Law2Doc said:
Um, the above isn't the current example we are discussing. The current example is that it's better to run a 100k dollar revenue a year business where the owners spend some or all the revenue each year as opposed to 250k dollar a year revenue business where the owners have a decade of expenses and debt (loans) before they show a cent of profit. Most finance courses will, in fact, cover that scenario, on day one, when they discuss the "time value of money".

At any rate, good luck. It's clear you aren't going to understand my point, and from your post it is probably worth it that you take a business class, or maybe sit down with one of the many finance people you have worked with and get a better understanding of revenue streams and time value of money. Good luck.
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Law2Doc said:
At any rate, good luck. It's clear you aren't going to understand my point, and from your post it is probably worth it that you take a business class, or maybe sit down with one of the many finance people you have worked with and get a better understanding of revenue streams and time value of money. Good luck.
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You're confusing understanding and agreement. I understand what you're saying very well, I just disagree with the way you look at it. We have different ideas of what it means to be 'financially ahead'. I'd see a guy that earned 150k a year and spent 150k a year as being broke. Broke by his own choosing, but broke. You see him as a millionaire after 10 years (if not in dollars/money, then in 'value'). We disagree.

(Also, when I said all people in finance do not share some universal set of ideas on which they practice, I meant in their personal lives. The most ridiculously head over heels in debt people I've met in my career have been executives and investment bankers, spending 2 of every dollar they make now to impress their friends. I've also met some especially frugal people in finance, and some in between. They're just like everyone else.)

I'm very grateful for the advice on what classes to take to rid me of my excessive ignorance however. If only I could see the light now, I would realize that I'm a millionaire already (a few times over) due to my lucrative software career and can afford to volunteer my time in a third world country while living off the interest of the millions I've earned. Or if not live off of the actual money I could bathe in the 'value' of having earned that money, which from what I'm told I'll learn in business class/finance class what that value is since it's not showing up on my bank statements.
 
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chinocochino said:
I disagree. You don't HAVE to increase your expenses as you make more money. That's how people don't secure their financial independence, spending thousands of dollars on nonessentials like a big house and nice cars.
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You're absolutely right. I don't know anyone that does this below the 80-90k a year mark though. Doesn't mean they're not out there, and they're definitely wise if they're doing it, I've just never met them.
 
tspremed said:
Keep in mind median physician salary, for ALL primary care physicians, is somewhere in the range of $160-$180/year. I might be pessimistic, but I wouldn't assume I was going to end up in one of the highest paying specialties when I was doing these calcs. If you want more info, try salary.com or you can even use the BLS occupational career outlook handbook.
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Yes, it is true that primary care physicians don't make 200K/year. They also do not pay back their student loans, because they are in debt forgiveness programs because they are, after all, primary care physicians.

You know, really, despite the condescending tone of some on this thread. Most people do understand the "Time value of money" and knew how to type "salary.com" a decade ago. If someone is part of this discussion, it is because they are in the upper level of their professions. We are not all a bunch of shiny faced 23 year old first time graduates of college. We know how to use a Excel (we learned spreadsheets in the old Lotus 1-2-3 days) and did the calculations that you suggest before we ever embarked on this journey. Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
 
EdLongshanks said:
Yes, it is true that primary care physicians don't make 200K/year. They also do not pay back their student loans, because they are in debt forgiveness programs because they are, after all, primary care physicians.
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They also have a 3 year residency. I have to say, if I were the type prone to paranoia and believed the government will wreck medicine as a profession bringing everyone down into the low 100's, I'd be looking at primary care very seriously.

EdLongshanks said:
You know, really, despite the condescending tone of some on this thread. Most people do understand the "Time value of money" and knew how to type "salary.com" a decade ago. If someone is part of this discussion, it is because they are in the upper level of their professions. We are not all a bunch of shiny faced 23 year old first time graduates of college. We know how to use a Excel (we learned spreadsheets in the old Lotus 1-2-3 days) and did the calculations that you suggest before we ever embarked on this journey. Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
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Ed, we couldn't have actually worked this out on our own, at least I couldn't have. I haven't taken a finance course yet. I'm just closing my eyes, putting my fingers in my ears and screaming, "THE DR'S ON HOUSE LOOK RICH. THE DR'S ON HOUSE LOOK RICH" and believing with all my heart it's so.

My wife and I always make serious long term decisions this way. It's what keeps our marriage fresh.

Also, good luck with your applications! I see you're applying this year.
 
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chinocochino said:
I don't get sarcasm too well, but you're joking, right? I hope!
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Hahaha... of course I'm joking! I'm well aware that House etc. are not accurate representations of the profession of medicine any more than Swordfish is an accurate representation of what programmers/hackers do.

No, my wife and I sat down and looked over our finances for the last 10-12 years. We did a bit of an inventory of what we owned, our savings accounts, investments, equity in the house etc. We took the total value of these things and used that as our "real income" earned for the last 10 years, because frankly, the money we spent on a $155 dinner five years ago at a fine Chicago restaurant isn't really counting for much today. We then imagined this continuing with a 5% above inflation increase year to year in how much we could save. We laid out 5-6 different paths depending on specialty (difference in residency length, median pay afterwards for our geo region). We decided that we'd found a rather happy place in our spending that we'd keep after residency was over, basically resuming a comfortable lifestyle we enjoyed. We ran those numbers out for 10 years after residency to see how it would look.

We're not clueless either, we have a lifelong friend that works every day in the medical field (in fact, I'd imagine that many of the adcom/residency people here have had contact with them). We know what we're in for.

Even still... this decision isn't about money, but that doesn't mean you can't also admit the money is better for most. This doesn't have to be an experience of martyrdom for you to feel good about what you're doing.
 
AllOptionsOpen said:
... I understand what you're saying very well, I just disagree with the way you look at it. We have different ideas of what it means to be 'financially ahead'. ...
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Again, if you had any finance background, you would realize that financially ahead isn't really a matter of debate. There is only one financially sound way to look at it. Any other way means you are going to be fleeced at some point in your life by folks who understand the basic truisms of finance. Longstanding financial concepts aren't matters of debate. They are very basic concepts of how finance works; they are tried and true over hundreds of years. You can disagree all you want, but there is only a right and wrong way to look at the notion of what it means to be "financially ahead". It means, plain and simple, whether you will get to the point where you will have made more than the same amount of money, over time, in today's dollars, less any expenses and debt you would incur along the way. Focusing on what one does with the money and ignoring it because one might have "spent" it misses the point that you have given up that revenue stream by going back to school. That is money you would have had in TODAY'S dollars that you don't have by going back to med school. You can blow it all on bubble gum, but that's still value you have on one path that you won't have on another. And it's a more valuable revenue stream because you get it sooner, so each dollar is worth more on a net present value perspective. At any rate, this debate is silly. Go take a business school course and then come back and reread your posts - I think you will be enlightened. Good luck with your notion that finance is in the eye of the beholder, rather than governed by some very basic principles. You may as well argue gravity with physicists as well because it's equivalently not something you can win by debate. See tspremed's post above if you don't like mine. Again, good luck with that.
 
Law2Doc said:
You can disagree all you want, but there is only a right and wrong way to look at the notion of what it means to be "financially ahead".
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I'd agree with that statement, I just don't think you're on the side of 'right/wrong' you believe you are. Sorry, earning and spending 150k is still broke. Just as broke as earning and spending 20k, or 2million. If you invest or save the money instead, everything changes. This is true no matter how much or little you make.

Law2Doc said:
Go take a business school course and then come back and reread your posts - I think you will be enlightened. Good luck with your notion that finance is in the eye of the beholder, rather than governed by some very basic principles. You may as well argue gravity with physicists as well because it's equivalently not something you can win by debate. See tspremed's post above if you don't like mine. Again, good luck with that.
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I didn't say finance is in the eye of the beholder. I said that everyone handles their money differently, and finance professionals aren't better as a group at handling their money than anyone else. Some of them spend too much, take on too much debt, while others are more moderate and some frugal.

I continue to appreciate your advice on class selection though. I'm certain they'll enlighten me to the value of the $155 meal I had six years ago in today's dollars. It will take my closet full of computer equipment I had to buy to keep pace with my career niche and make it worth it's cost + interest today rather than what it is worth now: Less than 0$ because I have to pay to have it recycled. It will take the cars traded in, the equity lost on the home we own thanks to the financial meltdown, the investments that nosedived, the clothes we don't wear, the vacations we took, and turn those into usable money today. Except, it won't.

There is value in these things, but it's not money value. Things depreciate in value, I'm pretty sure that's a lesson you learn in business/finance class as well. Some things depreciate by 100% immediately (vacations, meals), some slowly (clothing), some quickly (computer equipment).

Maybe for you and I, it would be easier to agree on one sentence.

A dollar earned today is worth more than a dollar earned tomorrow in the exact same ratio that a dollar spent today costs more than a dollar spent tomorrow.

I think we agree on that based on your quote: "It means, plain and simple, whether you will get to the point where you will have made more than the same amount of money, over time, in today's dollars, less any expenses and debt you would incur along the way."
 
Law2Doc said:
Again, if you had any finance background, you would realize that... .
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I'm trying not to raise the level of debate. But the level of pressumption and condescension is so high in that sentence that I really didn't feel like reading the rest of the post.

I thought that I was arrogant. But at least I don't assume that I am the only person who has an education on this board.
 
Ed,

I would venture to say that the percentage of primary care physicians who are in debt forgiveness programs would be at most 15%.

Also, some primary care physicans do make over 200K a year. The salaries vary so much in medicine...

An advisor once told me that if you were not OK with doing primary care medicine, you shouldn't bother with medical school.

EdLongshanks said:
Yes, it is true that primary care physicians don't make 200K/year. They also do not pay back their student loans, because they are in debt forgiveness programs because they are, after all, primary care physicians. QUOTE]

As an aside, I ran my own analysis and I figured that if you are making between $100K -115K and over the age of 35 - you won't be "guaranteed" to come out ahead by going to medical school. Plus, we really haev no idea where salaries will be 7+ years from now...

I concur with Law2doc's analysis; even if his/her opinions are bluntly stated... 😎
Click to expand...
 
My uncle is a lawyer, my step-father is a physician and my uncle has WAY better "hours".
Furthermore, if you are deciding to go into medicine because you believe that a physician will have better hours than law/business then you really shouldn't consider medicine as a career.
 
say you know someone who is in their late 20's, no kids, no so, but supportive family(financially) without a solid career and only a 4 year business degree, with limited work experience mainly in IT, (sad i know) what would you who are experienced in IB, medicine or law suggest he should do if high income (~10 yrs from now) is his #1 motivation and if he does not have any passion in any particular area. this person is also going through a quarter life crisis and can't wait for things to just fall into place anymore. 🙂
 
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allover said:
say you know someone who is in their late 20's, no kids, no so, but supportive family(financially) without a solid career and only a 4 year business degree, with limited work experience mainly in IT, (sad i know) what would you who are experienced in IB, medicine or law suggest he should do if high income (~10 yrs from now) is his #1 motivation and if he does not have any passion in any particular area. this person is also going through a quarter life crisis and can't wait for things to just fall into place anymore. 🙂
Click to expand...

Do a NPV on the cash flows you can reasonably expect from each career.

Medicine is not a good choice if money in ~10 years is your only objective:
1) It will take you at least 7 years of school+residency before you can practice medicine. 4 year tuition at an OOS or a private institution will set you back some serious $$$$. Money during residency is not that bad, but not great either, and still 4 years out.
2) IB. You likely need to get an MBA from a prestigious institution to get a foot in the door as most IB are elitists. Competition is fierce amongst MBA students. However, if you land the job and manage to stay, it's easily the best paying career. Besides it has the lowest costs of all three degrees. Only 2 years of lost income, and ~$100k tuitions.
3) Law. I don't know much about it, 3 years of schooling. From what I read, getting a nice associate position at a top law firm has become much harder since the recession started.
 
thx. ive been looking at the MBA area today. what worries me is my off and on work experience since graduation. im pretty sure i can get a very high GMAT as my LSAT score was a 161 (from when i was dead set on law school:laugh:). and my GPA is in the 3.5+ area. i wish it was 5 years ago.🙁
 
Armywife06 said:
My uncle is a lawyer, my step-father is a physician and my uncle has WAY better "hours".
Furthermore, if you are deciding to go into medicine because you believe that a physician will have better hours than law/business then you really shouldn't consider medicine as a career.
Click to expand...

Law and medicine are two different fields. And outside of residency doctors can work less hours than lawyers.
 
I was comparing lawyers and doctor because the OP was comparing the two.

Doctors work less hours than lawyers??? Really, well I guess that some doctors do depending on their specialty.
 
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