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Actually, I did say in the past that, "It's not what you got, but, what you do". So, maybe I overstated it. But, were I independently wealthy, why should I still toil?
EM and FIRE
- Thread starter miacomet
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True. If I did not have kids, I would have been retired a long time ago. The amount of money I would save would be well over 6 figures a year.
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What are you guys telling your kids to do for a career instead of medicine?
How tough is it to get into biglaw? Pretty much guaranteed as long as your kid goes to a prestigious law school?
Their salary scale beats out medicine by a mile. Six figs after 3 yr law school vs 7-12 yr med school/residency....
www.biglawinvestor.com
How tough is it to get into biglaw? Pretty much guaranteed as long as your kid goes to a prestigious law school?
Their salary scale beats out medicine by a mile. Six figs after 3 yr law school vs 7-12 yr med school/residency....
Biglaw Salary Scale
The current Cravath scale dicates how much Biglaw associates are paid in 2024. We also put together all historical Biglaw salary scales.
www.biglawinvestor.com
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I don't have kids; but BIG LAW?!
Man, talk about pure evil.
Man, talk about pure evil.
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My malpractice attorney who is representing me currently talked about how many lawyers graduate each year and how its hard to find jobs. Very few make more than 100k/yr.
I assume it’s a different story for those who went to ivy law schools?
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Really good article on this topic for Lawyers.
This is where all the unemployed lawyers go to cry
The “Vale of Tears” is an epic thread on the Top-Law-Schools forum that chronicles the lawyer unemployment crisis.
theoutline.com
"Sometimes Michael posts on what is probably the most famous thread on TLS: “The Vale of Tears,” a long-running TLS thread for law students and recent grads without job offers. The name derives from a verse in an ancient Catholic prayer, “To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.”
“Many law professors at many law schools across the country are selling a degree to their students that they would not recommend to people close to them,” he wrote.
It makes sense that there is so much weeping on this particular message board. These graduates face an average of $112,776 of student debt with no foreseeable prospect to repay. “The Vale gives people an opportunity to talk openly about sensitive personal and employment issues in a way you can’t with classmates,” Michael said.
Each year U.S. News & World Report releases its official law school rankings, and schools that are ranked 1-50 are widely considered to be Tier 1. But TLS promotes an even snobbier hierarchy: Yale through NYU are T6 (top six); followed by either T10, T14, T15, or T20 (the exact number is fiercely debated); then the rest of Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 3 and Tier 4 schools are collectively referred to as TTT (“third tier toilet”).
The prevailing wisdom on TLS is that TTT schools are not worth attending.
Although I was not a regular poster on TLS, I found the site very useful in law school. Every user I interviewed for this article agreed. “I’ve used TLS as a resource for every major decision — and many minor ones — ever since I became interested in law school in 2008,” wrote one TLSer. “It’s incredible that so many people are willing to help random strangers on the internet.”
Other professions have similar online communities. Business school applicants have Poets & Quants, which produces a series called “B-School Smackdowns.” (Spoiler alert: Wharton beats Harvard.) Unlike TLS, however, the articles on Poets are more popular than the forums, making the site more akin to an industry publication like Above the Law. Accountants have Going Concern, but that is mostly read by practicing accountants rather than students. Perhaps the closest thing to TLS is Chemjobber for science professionals. The popular blogger challenges the assumption that STEM degrees are “safe” by revealing unexpectedly high unemployment rates.
For John, posting on TLS is all about justice. “In any other forum, these results would be looked upon as a giant unethical scam. We’d arrest the people that are profiting from this. But because it’s higher education, it’s somehow considered legitimate.” John is proud that TLS and other online communities revealed the law school crisis before it was well-known. He continues to post on TLS because not everyone reads those articles in the New York Times. Some might be misled by recent rosy portrayals in the Wall Street Journal and glamorous shows like Suits. TLS gives John a voice. “I want less people to apply. It’s the only way to force change in this industry.”
Just a warning to all new applicants. This process takes a lot out of you mentally, puts you in a mountain of debt, and in the end, is nothing more than a giant pyramid scheme that allows silver-haired shysters running law schools to become millionaires with no accountability to what they are doing to students or to society [. . .] I've seen this scam wilt the life out of so many brilliant, young people, from the T6 on down. You should make sure you're not one of them.
Overall, TLS seems to be abiding by its founding principles. But its approach to giving back to the community has become very unorthodox: On TLS, paying it forward means telling others to think long and hard before they join."
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Law? Seems like a huge gamble to me.
1. Get into top Law school
2. Get into top firm
3. Work Resident hours in an office having to drum up business being abused by partners
4. Become a partner and having to abuse new hires to keep the gravy train going.
Seems like alot of time with no guarantees. Atleast in medicine, once you get in you essentially are guaranteed to graduate and make 200K working 40hrs/wk.
1. Get into top Law school
2. Get into top firm
3. Work Resident hours in an office having to drum up business being abused by partners
4. Become a partner and having to abuse new hires to keep the gravy train going.
Seems like alot of time with no guarantees. Atleast in medicine, once you get in you essentially are guaranteed to graduate and make 200K working 40hrs/wk.
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What are you guys telling your kids to do for a career instead of medicine?
How tough is it to get into biglaw? Pretty much guaranteed as long as your kid goes to a prestigious law school?
Their salary scale beats out medicine by a mile. Six figs after 3 yr law school vs 7-12 yr med school/residency....
Biglaw Salary Scale
The current Cravath scale dicates how much Biglaw associates are paid in 2024. We also put together all historical Biglaw salary scales.
Big law is not the way to go. I would hate to grind 70-90 hours a week for several years with no guarantee of becoming partner. A lot of people don't make it and then are grinding away for 100k.
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You never said you were one, then stop making statements like you know what you're talking about. I corrected you the first time when you said "For every VP making 600K at 30, there are 1000 who are happy slogging 60hrs+/wk making 100K regretting things". You didn't know who VPs were or how even much they made. You could have easily looked up this info online if you wanted to.
Then you said "ehhh those 100K slogging it never made it to VP. For every VP there are thousands that never made it past middle management." How do you know this? Have any data to back that up? Just another shoot-from-the-hip misstatement.
"These are strawman arguments that is used all the time and have no relevance. I know unicorn lawyers who make millions a year but no one is dumb enough to recommend law as a degree to make millions. You are using a unicorn example and likely made it all up to try and prove your point that medicine is not worth it."
I don't make things up. That's you buddy. Stop projecting on me.
"I'm not going to respond to your drivel anymore b/c you will make up some factitious friend that happened to be a millionaire working an hr a day because they traded GME so why go into medicine when you can FIRE putting money in GME or AMC."
LMAO. Ad hominem, classic strategy when arguments fails and backed into a corner. If you want to trade AMC/GME that's up you buddy. I don't give investment advice. Peace out.
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I banking and biglaw you can make a lot of money but the door to get into these is narrow and early. 90% of physicians would not be able to get their foot in the door. Mostly need to go ivy undergrad and do well there. And the hours are brutal. And over 50% quit to do something else. And while plenty of these types make 500-1 mill, few make tens of millions (only the very top).
PE is a little less elitist- still hard to break into but more about connections. Same sort of thing too- not everyone in PE is Uber- successful. And you gotta be a smoozer/salesman type which is NOT the same skill as being a physician.
All in all these are good professions if you’re exceptionally talented, your personality is suited to it and you like the work— most don’t.
PE is a little less elitist- still hard to break into but more about connections. Same sort of thing too- not everyone in PE is Uber- successful. And you gotta be a smoozer/salesman type which is NOT the same skill as being a physician.
All in all these are good professions if you’re exceptionally talented, your personality is suited to it and you like the work— most don’t.
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Medicine is highly flawed but law? Unless you’re a stud you’ll be lucky to find a job at all, let alone mid 6 figures. A friend who went to a good law school was honest-to-goodness bagging groceries for a long time before finding anything, and even then wasn’t much.
And in Banking/PE the skillset of networking, kissing ass and selling product is so vastly different than a physician I can’t see many excelling. Sure my brothers-in-law in finance are crushing it but I see what they do and the soullessness and emptiness is real. Zero intrinsic satisfaction. Only there for the carrot. Great if you only care about money, awful if you want any professional fulfillment.
And in Banking/PE the skillset of networking, kissing ass and selling product is so vastly different than a physician I can’t see many excelling. Sure my brothers-in-law in finance are crushing it but I see what they do and the soullessness and emptiness is real. Zero intrinsic satisfaction. Only there for the carrot. Great if you only care about money, awful if you want any professional fulfillment.
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When it's time to dole out career advice to my kids, I wouldn't force them into going into a specific career, but would certainly encourage them into going into some kind of a business or business related field, even if just a side gig, and to do it early. I would tell them they should expect to have setbacks, as many businesses fail.
However, you are also likely to learn important lessons from those failures, that will set you up for success later. Even Musk and Bezos crashed and burned on a few occasions. Also, when you face these setbacks early in life, when you don't have a mortgage to pay or mouths to feed, it's much easier to sustain them.
Right now is a great time for anyone with an entrepreneurial bent, because the world is at your fingertips via the internet. Want a professional website? You can go to wix.com. Want to raise capital? Plenty of online websites you can go to do that.
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Dad voice: @emergentmd + @Kryptocoin, stop fighting in the family room or I'm putting you in time out. Feel free to beat each other up in your room (via PM).
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Check DMs for lawyer jokes 😆
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lol yep.
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Krypto thinks every higher level degree will beat docs salary. Shocked that unicorns and reality is different.
Wait for it. Wait for it. Time for more fact twisting. Let me get my popcorn.
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Hey at least he’s your neighbor! PE can be very lucrative but you have zero control over your life until you make enough to cut the cord. Carry mostly comes after being a VP and carry takes about 8-10 years to actually come into your pocket so it’s a long grind and you could very well lose your seat or have your fund fail to meet hurdle rates and end up with a fraction of what you thought you had on paper - much of which can be out of your control. If you read wall street oasis you will see nonstop threads of people trying to find exits and questioning their life choices. Its mostly I-bankers but PE can be banking 2.0 at levels below Principal/MD.
When I look at dentistry and vet school I also scratch my head but the fact is people are willing to go thru a lot even to make sub 300k.
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I tell them to find something they think they'll like and be good at. I've never once pushed them in one specific direction, and absolutely not in the direction of Medicine. I don't want to be blamed for that.
I have two girls. I'll ask them, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Without looking up from tik-tok-phone, they'll say, "I dunno."
Then I'll ask, "How about an astronaut? Teacher? Senator? Garbage woman? President of United States? Artist? Ditch digger? Musician? Veterinarian? Librarian? Interior designer? Doctor? Lawyer? Speech pathologist?" I change the list every time.
They give the same canned response each time, seemingly changing the order of their answers at random depending on the day, "No. No. No. Definitely not. No. No. No. Maybe. No. I dunno. No."
The goal is to get them to: 1) Start thinking about the decision, 2) Realize it's their decision, not mine, and 3) Realize the options are limitless.
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Not all of it. Analyzing companies and their capital structures along with the game theory in certain situations can be quite interesting. Becoming senior in high finance and sitting on boards to add value can also be interesting. If you have a specific expertise in an industry and use that expertise to analyze the operations and finances of a co that can be useful as well. I agree that I-banking is sales and a lot of fluff nonsense, but the actual buy-side that invests the money is different and has some pretty smart people involved albeit at the best firms.
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VP is a young kid in banking it’s not the same as VP at a Fortune 500. Guys the VP is usually 28-30 years old. There are over a thousand plus VPs at investment banks it’s not a senior role. The Director is usually only 30-36 years old and the MDs begin anywhere from 35+ as a rough approximation.
VPs do not make 1.5 mil, that’s extremely rare but they do pull down 350-450 consistently usually with the Directors pulling down 500-700 and the MDs being top dawgs. the pay scale is pretty amazing but it’s a brutal lifestyle. The PE side is more intellectual and is considered more prestigious on average but the cash payscales are somewhat similar besides the Fact that PE gets carry. Most in PE at the principal/director level have carry worth over 10 million dollars. No I’m not joking my sibling is in this business. See this comp survey, it is mind blowing. Look at pages 13-25 Or so you will be amazed:
Keep in mind, because of the financial crisis, at a bank (doesn’t apply to PE like survey above), the bank usually has to cap cash bonus comp at something like 300k cash or so and the rest has to come in stock that vests over 3 years so.
with all that said, these businesses could not be more different than medicine and thankfully in America one can try to apply themselves to what suits them best!
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how do you have a net worth in the black and over 200k loans?
Not uncommon strategy these days. Market has been on fire and earning greater returns than the interest on most student loans.
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Maxed out my 401(k) + backdoor Roth IRA + HSA + emergency fund + checking account > student loan balance.
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gotcha!
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same. student loans at 0% is a no brainier to put everything in the market
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Yes, mine are at 2.6% for 30 years. No reason to pay them off when the market can get me 5-8% easy.
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At the end of this year I could be worth not a damn thing with net worth at 0 with 500k loans. Come onnnnnn PSLF 3 years to go.
mdartclub
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The cool thing about NFTs is you can set royalties (you can specify the amount, up to 10% on OpenSea). So if you sell a piece, you get 10% royalty. If that person resells your piece, you get 10%...and so on. The one potential pitfall is if they resell on a different marketplace, you get nothing!
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Specifically on the "Retire Early" part of FIRE, I think it would be near impossible for someone in medicine to have a big enough nest egg by mid 40s to comfortably retire and have no qualms about it. We are an educated group of well resourced professionals and - barring freak accident or early terminal diagnosis - can probably assume to live in the our 80s or even 90s. You could easily be in for a 45-50 year retirement. Anything could happen in that 50 years that could turn your financial security on its head. If you save a little less and live a little more and retire at 60, you will likely have a much larger pot of money and fewer years for **** to hit the fan.
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Not sure I agree. If I put all my money in a checking account, kept working em full time (not gonna happen, at least partially shifting fields), and wife kept working we’d have 2.5 million in bank if we left it in a checking account. Could definitely have 3-4 with prudent investing, which is way more than enough for the 40k a year our family spends. Might go up 50% as our kids get older. Could “something happen?” Sure, but that’s always true, and less likely without a daily commute, needle sticks, etc.
It’s possible with financial discipline, assuming you live in an area with a low cost of living. In California, nyc, I agree it is impossible.
Regardless, that’s not really what I want. Can’t speak for others but for me retire early aspect isn’t as much that I’m going to sit on my hands and atrophy till I die after 40, it’s that I will be financially independent. It doesn’t mean you won’t have to lift a finger again, it means you can sustain yourself indefinitely without outside help.
Essentially, f you money. It gives you time to develop new skills, a new degree, start in real estate. Most of the retire early folks also have plans for new income streams beyond a a large market nest egg.
That’s a lot more valuable for my peace of mind than a bigger house, more extravagant vacations or other things.
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With lawyers there is much lower floor, and a MUCH MUCH higher ceiling. I met a Duke law school grad who was working as a paralegal 2 years after graduation (I don't know how good of a student they were) and I have a relative who has a $9 million dollar house who works for big law.
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idk it seems totally possible to RE in EM by mid-40s depending on your lifestyle.
I still enjoy a lot of EM so am more focused on the FI part.. current realistic plan would be FI, ie $100k/yr recurring income, by 2026. I graduated residency in 2015, paid off $310k loans @7% in 3.5 years and have since invested 50% gross income mostly in index funds (VTI) and passed two comma NW in 2021. I'm in a MCOL no state income tax area as a cmg 1099 and don't live like a resident.
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As someone else said above. It’s entirely possible to have a big enough nest egg by 40. If not enough to FI, definitely enough for coastFI.
What it takes to get there is having control over your finances. Still living a happy life but not needlessly overspending. Investing the excess. And protecting your assets.
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The idea of "Partial FIRE" is always a thing too early on that I feel like people don't give enough weight to. Wouldn't be hard to work 3-5 shifts/month doing locums or setting up as a PRN with a local group you develop some connections with to cover your living expenses and just let your savings compound for another 20 years without ever having to touch it. It's a different path than traditional FIRE, but I've seen people in much lower earning fields do it and just say "hey, rather than look for complete FI by 40s, I'm gonna plan to work 30-50% of full time until I'm in my late 50s/early 60s" or something along those lines
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I’m 47 and still practicing full time EM (16 shifts last month). Do I feel like a loser some days? Sure. Literally all of my other close friends in the speciality have moved on completely from EM (CMOs etc) or are super part time.
Can I retire now? **** no. Kids are about go into college, the house is almost but not quite paid off yet etc.
But I hope in the next 5 years I can cut back to like 8 shifts a month or so.
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Yeah that’s why a key part of my FIRE plan is not funding kids college, at least not completely.
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From my perspective and predictions (and based on the current market situation) I highly doubt there will be ample locums or part-time positions where this is feasible. Nobody around me has any available locums shifts and haven't heard of anybody being able to pick up in a while. Everybody is hungry and groups only want full-timers!
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After retiring from anesthesia in his 50s, one of my friends is teaching middle school science for pay and he enjoys it very much.
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Eh.... Incorrect. Depends on how good you are with your money.
I'm 33 now. Been an ER doctor for 2.5 years and my wife is FM who has been an attending for 5 months.
We will hit 7 figure net worth in 6-8 months, before i turn 34, roughly a month or two after my 3 year anniversary as an attending. We didn't inherit anything and i had student loans like most people. My put option selling last year cashed out 45k, this year probably looking at 65k though i diversified massively out of options and into physical real estate last year. My taxable account is positive 3 percent vs negative 6% of spy YTD. Im already getting 5 rental paychecks from passive real estate syndications, if i don't make any other real estate investments, by year end I'll be getting 10 or so passive rental checks.
With our family income, i could buy 7-8 single family home investment properties a year if i wanted to self manage. Having enough money by 45 is easy if you play your chips correctly. The amount of money most doctors make in 3 years is the money that 50 percent of the US will make over a lifetime of working. Ofcourse we get heavily taxed, but still retiring at 45 isn't hard, especially if we don't have an over inflated lifestyle while also investing in assets that create passive income.
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I kind of agree...I would think it would be hard to retire at 45 being able to live off your investments. I can't imagine doctors wanting 75K / year to live off of...it would be more like 300-400K/year. And to have your investments give you 300K/year SAFELY....you would want your retirement fund to return 3-4%/year, every year, for decades. That would require ~10M starting principle.
Why retire and live like a pauper?
One could "semi-retire" on 3-4M investment...and maybe work 6 days/month. That's semi retirement though.
Anyway I'm sure people are going to comment on how I'm wrong. Every situation is different. If I were to retire (and I wouldn't because I would be bored to death), I would want minimum 400K/year. I still have a mortgage to pay and kids to put through college.
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To put another way....the principle you need to 100% retire is as follows:
- calculate what yearly income you want to live off of
- divide that by 3-4% (which is something we could all easy get in any market conditions, bear or bull)
--> that is the principle you need.
I think it's folly to assume any growth more than 3-4%. Assuming you'll get 7-10%/year is just folly, YOY for decades.
This is the conservative way to retire.
- calculate what yearly income you want to live off of
- divide that by 3-4% (which is something we could all easy get in any market conditions, bear or bull)
--> that is the principle you need.
I think it's folly to assume any growth more than 3-4%. Assuming you'll get 7-10%/year is just folly, YOY for decades.
This is the conservative way to retire.
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What are your kids gonna do for college? Private loans?
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Keep in mind inflation which the 4% rule takes into account.
the 2 big factors are simple how big is the nest egg and how much do you spend.
also net worth means little as money in a tax deferred account isn’t equal to money in a regular brokerage (post tax account) of my liquid NW it’s about 50/50 but as my spending on my kids rises the tax deferred amount won’t keep pace.
i am a fan of coast FI and fatFI. The reality is for most of us we worked so hard to get here that even if some retires early it will be to do something else like teach in Hs or so real estate. That’s not retiring early. That’s switching careers. There is no issue with that.
i think the goal of FI is control.
for those who don’t think it’s doable in your mid 40s on em pay you have a spending problem And lifestyle bloat. I’m not even saying thats bad. But you should be able to imagine how your personal spending would be at 100k per year. People do it all the time and get by. It might not be your dream but it is doable. As I tell my residents 3x your residency budget and save the rest. You will thank me in 5 years.
avh em pay is about 350-380k a year. For the sake of this exercise we will say 30k a month assuming you are single or a sole earner.
pre tax health insurance for a family $1500
25% to taxes.
That would leave you around 21k a month. You cant live on 10k spend a month? Save $10-11k. Even with student loans save half spend half til you are out of debt. All extra money goes there too.
pill confess I spend way more than that. However I have a working spouse who makes 6 figures, multiple income streams both medicine and non medicine related And my em pay is above avg.
its doable To live on way less than we think but most of us don’t want to. Whether it is a nice ski resort or beach resort vacation. A family trip to Disney or a fancy tesla. We worked hard and want nice things and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
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They can study hard and land scholarships. They can get jobs in between school years. They can enroll in co-op aka work study programs that cover tuition. Plus I live in TX where in state tuition is cheap. Nobody needs to go to private school. Lots of things you can do to finance your education without drowning in student loan debt, or mommy and daddy paying for everything
Nobody paid for my undergrad when I was in college. I earned and saved up money and paid for it myself without borrowing a dime from anybody.
Your kids can find money to pay for college. What are you going to do when you’re old ans can’t work and don’t have retirement money to survive on? Expect your kids to pay you? That should be a bigger financial priority.
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I graduated college relatively recently (about 8 years ago) and went to a relatively inexpensive state university. One of my roomates came from a more modest background and did not have any significant financial support from mom and dad. He worked multiple on campus jobs - often nights and weekends - all while completing an engineering degree. He missed out on a lot of what makes college a memorable and transformative experience because of his workload. He probably didn't get the grades he wanted because he had to work to pay for school and that took away from study time. Despite all of that, he still needed to take out loans to pay for school.
Putting a few thousand dollars every year into a 529 is about the least a high earner can do for their kids. I wouldn't wish what I saw him go through on anyone.
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- Apr 27, 2014
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- 863
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- 1,501
This comes down to individual priorities.
My parents paid for college, but even as a teenager I had the forethought to look into other options in case something happened, I got cut off, etc.
I paid for med school. I lived cheap throughout both because I always had guilt about spending money that wasn’t mine and then about spending my own future money.
I learned a lot more about finance once it was my tushi on the line though. It was good for me (though it lead to a pretty dark place in internship, and could have gone badly if I had worse mental health)
I guess my point is I can see an argument for either way. I want my kids to enjoy college, I will probably pay for it.
And though I don’t want “soft” kids I will absolutely do everything I can to position them for success: the world sucks too much not to. Sometimes that means paying for things, sometimes that means purposely not paying, or at least not telling them you will.
