Lifestyle/Income

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Your username suddenly makes a lot more sense :laugh:
youre supposed to say... username checks out

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I won't go into strictly outpatient based or non-surgical specialties even if it pays a mil a year. Absolutely not. Surgery or bust. I will still pick vascular even it's the lowest paid specialty.

Yeah, I would like to be a star NFL QB or Star Pitcher but not if I am getting paid at a jouneyman's scale. Come on, lets be honest.

If you were paid $180/yr, 130K take home and had to take q4 call the rest of your life...... you would still pick Vascular?
 
Yeah, I would like to be a star NFL QB or Star Pitcher but not if I am getting paid at a jouneyman's scale. Come on, lets be honest.

If you were paid $180/yr, 130K take home and had to take q4 call the rest of your life...... you would still pick Vascular?

I got by in life comfortably with less than $130K take home in my previous life before med school and worked comparable hours to vascular. So yes, I will always pick surgery.
 
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you can't fix stupid
 
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Radiology BY FAR. Whats better than making 400k+ a year to sit in a dark room from 8 am - 6 pm M-F, with occasional weekend call, looking at images? No better gig in medicine.

What's better than spending 10 hours a day in a dark room and having little to no human interaction? That sounds like hell, so I'd say almost anything else...

To each their own though.

I think the days of working very little and getting a gigantic paycheck in medicine are gone for basically all specialties.

No matter what you go into you'll work hard for every thin dime.

What does "lifestyle" mean anyway? Simply "not at work"?

What are we calling "gigantic"? 6 figures/month or 40k/mo? Because I can only think of one or two ways to do the former clinically and they require the stars to line up. I can think of numerous ways to do the latter while working about 40hrs/wk.

you can't fix stupid

Eh, I'd rather make $150k/yr doing something I absolutely love than 400k+ doing something that makes me miserable. Just getting into residency sucked enough, I'd rather not extend that suckage another 15-20 years or more...
 
What's better than spending 10 hours a day in a dark room and having little to no human interaction? That sounds like hell, so I'd say almost anything else...

To each their own though.



What are we calling "gigantic"? 6 figures/month or 40k/mo? Because I can only think of one or two ways to do the former clinically and they require the stars to line up. I can think of numerous ways to do the latter while working about 40hrs/wk.



Eh, I'd rather make $150k/yr doing something I absolutely love than 400k+ doing something that makes me miserable. Just getting into residency sucked enough, I'd rather not extend that suckage another 15-20 years or more...

I don't understand your post. Not sure if clever or not.
 
i know a family med guy who has his own clinic and works like 30 hours/week max. He's banking 500k a year and all he really does is write opioids and xanax; calls himself a pain/anxiety specialist. his lifestyle is chill af, and most patients are cash only too.
 
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I don't understand your post. Not sure if clever or not.

I was just asking what you consider a "gigantic" paycheck. I'm saying if it's $100k/mo then yeah, that's pretty much not going to happen in a clinical setting unless the start align (I know 1 physician who accomplished this doing clinical work). If you consider $40k/mo to be "gigantic", I know plenty of people pulling that in doing clinical work and working around 40 hrs/wk.

i know a family med guy who has his own clinic and works like 30 hours/week max. He's banking 500k a year and all he really does is write opioids and xanax; calls himself a pain/anxiety specialist. his lifestyle is chill af, and most patients are cash only too.

And chances are the guy's going to get reported to his state's BoM and get completely screwed since you're making it sound like he's basically running a pill mill. Given the current climate with the opioid epidemic I'd hate to be that guy right now (especially since it's likely benzos will be the next class of meds they'll go after if the current lawsuits go through).
 
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And chances are the guy's going to get reported to his state's BoM and get completely screwed since you're making it sound like he's basically running a pill mill. Given the current climate with the opioid epidemic I'd hate to be that guy right now (especially since it's likely benzos will be the next class of meds they'll go after if the current lawsuits go through).

looks like he better get it while the getting is good!

he's just out here trying to be like derm, nahm $ayin'.
 
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i know a family med guy who has his own clinic and works like 30 hours/week max. He's banking 500k a year and all he really does is write opioids and xanax; calls himself a pain/anxiety specialist. his lifestyle is chill af, and most patients are cash only too.


There are far less criminal ways to make 500k/yr. He went to medical school to become a drug dealer?
 
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I got by in life comfortably with less than $130K take home in my previous life before med school and worked comparable hours to vascular. So yes, I will always pick surgery.

I assume you are a med student and rose colored outlook on life. Great for you, keep that as long as you can because it will change. If everyone had your outlook, the world would be a better place. But we all in some degree compare our life, our salary, our position in the world with our contemporaries.

I would love to see what would happen with your attitude after 5-7 years of vascular residency/fellowship, a mountain of debt, a family to support and the CEO pulls you into the office and tell you that your pay will be cut to 130K/yr. You walk the halls working your 60hrs+/wk, finally finished clinic at 6pm and get called in at 12am for a morbidly obese disaster with a pending ruptured AAA that will push into your clinic. While you pull in, you see the ER doc walking out after his 8 hr shift and cup coffee in hand who makes 350K/yr working half your hours.

Tell me you will still pick vascular and if you do, keep that as long as you can. The world needs more people like you but everyone always gets a large dose of reality.
 
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i know a family med guy who has his own clinic and works like 30 hours/week max. He's banking 500k a year and all he really does is write opioids and xanax; calls himself a pain/anxiety specialist. his lifestyle is chill af, and most patients are cash only too.

Until the FBI/DEA comes knocking on the door.
 
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i know a family med guy who has his own clinic and works like 30 hours/week max. He's banking 500k a year and all he really does is write opioids and xanax; calls himself a pain/anxiety specialist. his lifestyle is chill af, and most patients are cash only too.

Any doc with a license and DEA number can open up a clinic near any Oil field, hire 5 APP to dole out norcos, see 100 pts a day x $100 per visit = 10K x 365=3,650,000.

You could easily pocket 2.5 Mil and barely step foot near the clinic.

You probably could pocket 5 Mil before the feds comes to your door as the #1 Narc doc in the country. Enjoy the 5 Mil because you will spend a few years in a 8x10 cell with Ricardo rubbing on you while you sleep.
 
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Any doc with a license and DEA number can open up a clinic near any Oil field, hire 5 APP to dole out norcos, see 100 pts a day x $100 per visit = 10K x 365=3,650,000.

You could easily pocket 2.5 Mil and barely step foot near the clinic.

You probably could pocket 5 Mil before the feds comes to your door as the #1 Narc doc in the country. Enjoy the 5 Mil because you will spend a few years in a 8x10 cell with Ricardo rubbing on you while you sleep.

If you pocket 5 mil then get out before feds come a knocking, I imagine you could invest and just live off that without eating into the principal. Gotta be the best lifestyle specialty around
 
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If you pocket 5 mil then get out before feds come a knocking, I imagine you could invest and just live off that without eating into the principal. Gotta be the best lifestyle specialty around
that%20not.jpg

your accounts are going to be the first thing that is frozen. Plus one does not need to be a doctor to be a drug dealer, why not just cut out all of the medical training.
 
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that%20not.jpg

your accounts are going to be the first thing that is frozen. Plus one does not need to be a doctor to be a drug dealer, why not just cut out all of the medical training.
That’s what I’m saying. You would have to quit before you get caught but after you’ve built up a big enough stash.
 
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Any doc with a license and DEA number can open up a clinic near any Oil field, hire 5 APP to dole out norcos, see 100 pts a day x $100 per visit = 10K x 365=3,650,000.

You could easily pocket 2.5 Mil and barely step foot near the clinic.

You probably could pocket 5 Mil before the feds comes to your door as the #1 Narc doc in the country. Enjoy the 5 Mil because you will spend a few years in a 8x10 cell with Ricardo rubbing on you while you sleep.

This is possibly the best and worst post I’ve ever seen on SDN.


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If you pocket 5 mil then get out before feds come a knocking, I imagine you could invest and just live off that without eating into the principal. Gotta be the best lifestyle specialty around
Feds don't forget. Ghost out and pay cash for everything in some remote island and you may be on to something.
 
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i know a family med guy who has his own clinic and works like 30 hours/week max. He's banking 500k a year and all he really does is write opioids and xanax; calls himself a pain/anxiety specialist. his lifestyle is chill af, and most patients are cash only too.

I thought this was too obvious of a troll, but apparently it's gone over everyone's head.
11/10
 
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This thread comes up on a regular basis and it always makes me chuckle. Students constantly wondering how to work less for lots of money... The real world usually solves this fairly quickly one of two things happens, 1. you either figure out you don't care about lifestyle and love money and you work a lot and make a lot of money or you figure out you like lifestyle and you find a practice that suits your lifestyle. The problem is few come back to SDN to tell you all about it.
 
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I thought this was too obvious of a troll, but apparently it's gone over everyone's head.
11/10

real recognize real
 
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This thread comes up on a regular basis and it always makes me chuckle. Students constantly wondering how to work less for lots of money... The real world usually solves this fairly quickly one of two things happens, 1. you either figure out you don't care about lifestyle and love money and you work a lot and make a lot of money or you figure out you like lifestyle and you find a practice that suits your lifestyle. The problem is few come back to SDN to tell you all about it.
The problem is also that a majority of people making threads like these are unable or unwilling to put in the work required to build an app for a "lifestyle" field anyway, so the whole thing is moot. A majority are going to end up going into PC and then either work like a dog to make more money or find a cush gig to have a lifestyle like you said.
 
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Why would you think a trauma doctor would run a medical code? Are you pre-med? As for traumas, outside of level 1 and 2 trauma centers, EM docs are the ones that run trauma codes.

Just show an upward trend and you’re fine. I’m in a similar situation where I was physically unable to go to school and the drop date for a W had passed so my gpa tanked. The mental reprucussions of that situation are still affecting me but I’m managing to pull my gpa up. What is your expected gpa for this semester?

These discussions are such a waste of time. It gives very little insight as everyone has a different definition of lifestyle that changes with your current situation.

EM has a great lifestyle if what it can offer is what you are looking in a lifestyle. When I first started as an attending and not married it was great. A perfect field. Work overnight was fine, slept in the next day. Flipping was not hard. But once you have kids it completely changes the dynamics. You will miss 2 weekends in a month. Working overnight is difficult as you will be awoken by the kids when they wake up. Its also harder to do when you get older. So it went from the perfect field to a more difficult situation.

EM is a great lifestyle if:
You want to have a 3 yr residency, and come out making 350K/yr. This was BIG to me. After a long haul in med school, I didn't want to extend residency much more than 3 yrs.
You want nothing to do with the business side of medicine and just want to be an employee.
You want to work only 12-15 dys a month and be completely detached from clinical/business side of medicine the rest of the month
You want to be able to take a week long trip every month
You like to be off days when everyone is working to run errands, go downtown
You like to go to work not during peek hours on most of your shifts
You want to work almost anywhere in the country
You want to move to different places anytime you want in your career


EM is not a great lifestyle if
You want to work a 9-5 job most of the days
You want to own your own business and make your own decisions
You want to see your kids on all holidays and weekends
You want to never do Nights again


Every specialist I have talked always have complaints of their fields. Every specialists I talked to envy my schedule. Its the typical grass is greener. I envy some aspects of their lives too.

I think Derm is a great lifestyle field and only 4 yrs of residency or 5-6 yrs with a fellowship. But that is not practical for the vast majority of students to get into so its a nonstarter for the masses
ENT/ortho/some other surg specialty is great but its a again hard to get into and not practical for the majority. Plus its 5 yrs plus any fellowship. Plus once you set up a practice, its very difficult to move and set up another practice in another area. Most ENT docs I know the past 20 yrs are still in the same city b/c its not practical to start over.

The rest does not even come close to the lifestyle EM/money

IM/Peds/FM - same 3 yrs residency, 9-5 but the pay is not even close while working more hours
Hospitalist - same 3 yrs, hours are just as variable, work more hours, still do overnights but less pay
Gas - Hours sucks, call, more hours, pay similar
Rad - Not the your father's lifestyle job. Still crappy hours, more hours, 5+ yrs residency
Most IM specialities - Still have call, long hours, longer residency/fellowship, pay similar
Gen Surg - 5 yrs residency, long hours, still have call, pay similar
OB - Prob the field that mimics residency that I could think of. Still have call and can be up all night. I have friends who still have their 9-5 clinic, take call, then back to their 9-5 clinic the next day. What a beatdown.

Overall, if I could go back 20 yrs ago and I could get into any field, the only one I would go into is Derm if you are taking into what I consider lifestyle (pay, total hours work a month, what are the work hours, ease of travel, ease of job location, ease of taking vacations, ease of moving to another city)

Made me giggle with joy as I checked yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

Do you think the pay will be similar 5, 10, 20 years from now?
 
250k/yr is a lot of money guys even if your student loan is 250-300k, so you can make any specialty a lifestyle specialty.
 
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250k/yr is a lot of money guys even if your student loan is 250-300k, so you can make any specialty a lifestyle specialty.
Agreed. Several people in my FM residency were 300k+ in debt and still have great lifestyles only 5 years out.
 
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Yeah, hand is definitely there, as long as you can minimize hand call, lol. Any ortho subspecialty with a high ratio of outpatient cases will be closer to ''lifestyle".

Except in most practices you have to take call. Lots of it. And call blows.


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Except in most practices you have to take call. Lots of it. And call blows.


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I've seen a greater proportion of hand guys that don't have to take call than you would expect in orthopaedics, even for people that are fresh out. I wonder how little to no call is negotiated. Guess I'll just have to ask them.
 
The best way to make sure you have a great lifestyle and enough money:

1. Don't live above your means
2. Don't get divorced
3. If you get divorced, don't remarry multiple times.
4. If you do #3, don't have kids
5. Don't get nurses pregnant
6. If you like to have fun and want to avoid #4 and 5, get a vasectomy
 
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The problem is also that a majority of people making threads like these are unable or unwilling to put in the work required to build an app for a "lifestyle" field anyway, so the whole thing is moot. A majority are going to end up going into PC and then either work like a dog to make more money or find a cush gig to have a lifestyle like you said.

Newflash for all the lifestyle gunners out there:

You need need to bust your a$$ for 60-70 hrs/wk straight out of a lifestyle specialty residency in order to pay back your debts and stack enough $$$ bills in your bank accounts in order to make money work for you.

For anyone that wants to make 500+K while working only 40-50 hrs a week with 8-12 weeks of vacation, you need to have a secondary skill, like some business sense to either invest in great businesses or create great businesses yourself, so that you can go on cruise mode and still have those machines printing $$$ bills straight into your account.

Outside of FM, Peds, and general hospitalist jobs, I can see almost every doc in other specialties out there to make about 600-800K a year if they're willing to work 60-70 hrs/week
 
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The best way to make sure you have a great lifestyle and enough money:

1. Don't live above your means
2. Don't get divorced
3. If you get divorced, don't remarry multiple times.
4. If you do #3, don't have kids
5. Don't get nurses pregnant
6. If you like to have fun and want to avoid #4 and 5, get a vasectomy

Or make more money
 
Money is nice and doctors should be paid well. Time away from work is important. But I went to medical school to help people. Call me idealistic, naive, etc. but that's why I did it. I want to help people and I want to be the guy who makes the decisions when your mothers sick (that's why I didn't go into social work or something).
 
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Money is nice and doctors should be paid well. Time away from work is important. But I went to medical school to help people. Call me idealistic, naive, etc. but that's why I did it. I want to help people and I want to be the guy who makes the decisions when your mothers sick (that's why I didn't go into social work or something).

God damn you.

You just had to be THAT guy didn't you?

ARGHGHGHGHGH!!!!!!
 
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What lifestyles are people expecting? I mean damn! I am virtually guaranteed to make almost double what my parents made combined, and more than most people will ever hope to make. Yeah loans suck a lot but I'm coming to terms with the fact I won't be able to afford that private jet :/ its tough but I'm pushing through
 
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Define great lifestyles
One lives in the same town as I do - big house, nice neighborhood. Just bought a lake house last year. Vacations usually 2-3X/year.

The other lives on a ranch in Montana. Bought an RV a year out of residency and goes vacationing in that about once/month.

Both work basically 40 hours/week with no inpatient and phone call only.
 
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I've seen a greater proportion of hand guys that don't have to take call than you would expect in orthopaedics, even for people that are fresh out. I wonder how little to no call is negotiated. Guess I'll just have to ask them.

Depends on the practice— but remember as a hand person, you are nearly always on hand call, so even if you are not on general call, you can be called with any hand related stuff. Hand and spine sometimes have completely separate call expectations. for example, where I was in residency, ortho split hand call with plastics, and they would be on call for any hand related stuff for a month at a time.


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God damn you.

You just had to be THAT guy didn't you?

ARGHGHGHGHGH!!!!!!

I am 100% that guy haha. I think this is a fun conversation to have at times but it can also be depressing when it seems like people put everything in terms of $ and cents.
 
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So the best plans thus far have been

1). Open a pill mill and try to take in a couple mil before the government comes after you. Once they do, it’s cool bc you can fake your own death and move to a third world country.

2) Derm

Man what a bright future...
 
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Don’t want kids, so lifestyle for me basically means

  • practicing intellectually stimulating, meaningful medicine the way I want to practice it. I’m thinking 90% private practice w 10% inpatient/outpatient academic referrals so that I can see zebras and write up case studies about them.
  • Partying hard in an mid-tier city (somewhere like Scottsdale, AZ or Minneapolis, MN
  • Engaging in local politics in order to a) make our public education system better and b) conserve the trees, animals, water quality, air quality, etc. Gotta think about the future yo.
Dunno how I feel about getting a vasectomy because I might want kids when I’m 50s/60s. I have thought about freezing some of my gametes and storing them until I have some midlife crisis, but that storage timeline sounds $$$.
never say never.
e8a.gif
 
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Don’t want kids, so lifestyle for me basically means

  • practicing intellectually stimulating, meaningful medicine the way I want to practice it. I’m thinking 90% private practice w 10% inpatient/outpatient academic referrals so that I can see zebras and write up case studies about them.

  • Partying hard in an mid-tier city somewhere like Scottsdale, AZ or Minneapolis, MN. NYC, LA, SF, even Chicago do not particularly interest me, too expensive and too many people. Chicago would be perfect, but it’s too ****ing cold in the winter. LA would be nice, but that sprawl is bulls*** NYC, too fast-paced for me. If I somehow stumble upon millions of $$$, I would consider living in those big 4 in order to have plenty of opportunites to practice learning languages (see last point)

  • Engaging in local politics in order to a) make our public education system better and b) conserve the trees, animals, water quality, air quality, etc. Gotta think about the future yo.

  • International travel to urban cores in developed nations. Think Cork, Ireland, and other second tier cities that tend not to get as many tourists.

  • Learning a few more languages. Korean, Italian, Dutch, French, Greek, mastering Spanish, maybe learning Portuguese...
Dunno how I feel about getting a vasectomy because I might want kids when I’m 50s/60s. I have thought about freezing some of my gametes and storing them until I have some midlife crisis, but that storage timeline sounds $$$.

I probably won’t be able to achieve all my goals, but I will die trying lol.

Get that vasectomy so you can bust nuts raw
 
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Path is the best lifestyle in medicine. Every academic institution is hiring and you can plan on about $225-$275k mid career. Private practice is even more. All sorts of cool routes to choose from: derm path, heme path, molecular, plain surgical path... it’s a fun field if you’re willing to give up showing off to the floor nurses and random stranger patients how cool of a doctor you are.
 
Path is the best lifestyle in medicine. Every academic institution is hiring and you can plan on about $225-$275k mid career. Private practice is even more. All sorts of cool routes to choose from: derm path, heme path, molecular, plain surgical path... it’s a fun field if you’re willing to give up showing off to the floor nurses and random stranger patients how cool of a doctor you are.
weird flex, but ok.

upload_2018-12-23_19-31-40.png
 
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All these other specialties like Derm, Ortho and ENT are great picks too, it’s just when comparing lifestyle pathology wins hands down. No comparison really.

The IMG thing is what it is... but it does make it easier for American grads to do even better in the field if they choose to.

If you like starting your day off with a coffee, uninterrupted lunch breaks, and being a cancer expert- it’s a nice sleeper pick.
 
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All these other specialties like Derm, Ortho and ENT are great picks too, it’s just when comparing lifestyle pathology wins hands down. No comparison really.

The IMG thing is what it is... but it does make it easier for American grads to do even better in the field if they choose to.

If you like starting your day off with a coffee, uninterrupted lunch breaks, and being a cancer expert- it’s a nice sleeper pick.
yeah but you have to be a pathologist
 
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All these other specialties like Derm, Ortho and ENT are great picks too, it’s just when comparing lifestyle pathology wins hands down. No comparison really.

The IMG thing is what it is... but it does make it easier for American grads to do even better in the field if they choose to.

If you like starting your day off with a coffee, uninterrupted lunch breaks, and being a cancer expert- it’s a nice sleeper pick.
but you have to find a job first and or complete multiple fellowships first. greater than 50% of the graduates waited for six months or more with 11% waiting 12 months or more before.
upload_2018-12-23_20-14-38.png
 
yeah but you have to be a pathologist
As opposed to a colorectal surgeon? It won’t impress nurses or people at a bar but honestly who cares? If you do, then yea maybe neurosurgery or ENT is for you.
 
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