Better residency = better pay?

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It's okay, you'll be fertile forever, right??

I think that is one of the other things that cracks me up... The news is plastered with pregnant teens so college students are conditioned to think that it is super easy to get pregnant, even in healthy couples it typically takes 6 months to a year. And that is for the 25 to 30 age group...

Oy...
 
I think that is one of the other things that cracks me up... The news is plastered with pregnant teens so college students are conditioned to think that it is super easy to get pregnant, even in healthy couples it typically takes 6 months to a year. And that is for the 25 to 30 age group...

Oy...

So true. I came home from a lecture the other day where the infertility doc showed a graph with fertility beginning its nose dive at 29, the same age my wife and I'll be when I graduate. Needless to say, we'll be too poor to have kids when we do but we're going to do it anyway. No sense in waiting and then not even be able to pass along my awesome genes.
 
Starting Salary: $45k

Required or essentially required expenses:
Loan repayment: 10% of salary, down to $40.5K
Taxes (which don't take loan repayment into consideration): ~10k, down to 30.5k
Cheapest available studio apartment close to hospital I work at: $1500k/month, down to $22.5k
Car insurance/maintenance/gas on 15 year old car to get to affiliated hospital rotations: $3k/year, down to $19.5K

So $19.5k discretionary income, about $1600 a month. Bad money? No not really. As a single guy it's pretty easy to make do fairly comfortably, if frugally. How my colleagues with families or two kids do it is completely beyond me though.

Where it gets irritating is comparing yourself to friends who've worked considerably less hard in jobs that do less good with significantly less education. A friend in a marketing job now makes $70k and has only been making money since college. A lawyer friend makes >$100k. Neither work anywhere close to 80 hours a week. Buddies who are engineers, consultants, hell even nurses make more significantly more than me and will continue to for probably the next 6 years.

I like to think I'm above being envious, but it stings sometimes to think of how hard I'm working now for $10 an hour. A friend who dropped out of high school and has worked his way up the hierarchy at Costco makes >$20/h. Guys who went to vocational school do even better. I know temps working for $15/h. It's irritating.

When all is said and done, all the effort should be worth it financially if reimbursements stay where they are now. But for the moment, I think I'll stay annoyed.
 
Starting Salary: $45k

Required or essentially required expenses:
Loan repayment: 10% of salary, down to $40.5K
Taxes (which don't take loan repayment into consideration): ~10k, down to 30.5k
Cheapest available studio apartment close to hospital I work at: $1500k/month, down to $22.5k
Car insurance/maintenance/gas on 15 year old car to get to affiliated hospital rotations: $3k/year, down to $19.5K

So $19.5k discretionary income, about $1600 a month. Bad money? No not really. As a single guy it's pretty easy to make do fairly comfortably, if frugally. How my colleagues with families or two kids do it is completely beyond me though.
Still not really discretionary income - you still have utilities - gas, electric, water - and health insurance, groceries, household upkeep (toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc), personal hygiene, and more. Still, no, it's not bad for a single guy, but as I'm sure you know, you're not exactly a baller.
 
One thing is for sure, while it is tough now, it was nearly impossible from the 70s and earlier. In 1964, long before work restrictions were even imagined, my dad was paid 200 dollars a MONTH in NYC. He had two kids and a wife at the time. The only way he got by was by my grandparents and his (ex)wife working.
 
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