lmfao...he's looking at a single like it's an alien.
Show me a medical student who says his desire to become a doctor is 100% independent of the money and I'll show you a liar. The issue is not getting into it JUST for the money. There isnt one single person here who would go through pre-med, medical school, residency, fellowship and then the rigors of physician life if they got paid $15 an hour their entire career. Not a single one.
False. Most people who make these claims are full of it, but there are some people out there who would actually do this.They're not liars, they're just stupid.
And yet some claim they would. I read a post just yesterday by someone claiming if you werent willing to go into medicine for a McDonald's salary you didnt want to go badly enough and should do something else.
Fundamentally they don't disagree with you, they just think that money shouldn't be the only reason one chooses medicine. I used to worry about this, now I don't care.
My underlying fear used to be that people who chose medicine for the money would end up miserable and make sh*tty doctors, and I'd be stuck with a bunch of boner colleagues who did nothing but complain about having the best job in the world.
What I've come to realize is that these people are everywhere. They'll always be a part of medicine and everything else. There's no point in crusading to convince them to stay away from medicine...there's a never-ending supply of them. If we convince one of these people to stay away, some other tool will creep right out of the shed to fill that vacancy.
Could we all stop pretending that doctors aren't rich? I grew up poor, so perhaps by rich standards $200k isn't rich...but quite honestly anyone pulling more than $70k a year is rich in my books.
What the hell do you need more than $70k for anyway? Does a loaf of bread cost more when you're rich or something? Or perhaps rich people eat more bread?
Anyway...love and medicine ftw.
It's all relative, and "need" is a very funny word. I suspect your opinion on this will change if/when you start making more than $70K. If you just made $40K for your entire life and always lived within your means, by definition you wouldn't need $70K. But if you had it, you'd find plenty of creative ways to live above a $40K standard of living. I've seen tons of cases where a household income went from below $100K to above (graduating residency, promotions, marriage, inheritance, etc.) and I've not seen one single instance where standard of living stayed the same. How much you "need" almost always becomes a fluid concept as soon as you have more money.
BTW, the short answer for "who needs more than $70K?" is "Someone with $100K or more of student loans."
Yeah perhaps physician salaries will be less in the future...but I have a seriously hard time believing its going to be as bad as people on SDN think. Either way, you are going to be financially pretty comfy as a doc..unless you are a complete ***** with your money.
and OP money is a huge motivating factor for me as well and I have no shame saying it. I love making the moneys.
My only comment about this is that future docs who want to make a lot of dough shouldn't be thinking about "salaries," which are basically income ceilings. You can't sign up for the best physician incomes in your hospital's HR department. Patient volume, reimbursements, overhead...understanding how to drive the top line and manage the bottom line is a lot more complicated than filling out the direct deposit paperwork.