Millionaire medical student

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Law2Doc said:
It happens. I mean William Kennedy Smith was a Kennedy and was attending med school during his scandal I think. Other prominent families have physicians in their ranks.
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Wonder if he got special treatment when it comes to evaluation?
 
watermen said:
Are there any millionaire medical students who earn more than the attendings?
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Well, maybe Misterioso. Remember that thread where he bragged about his car?
 
Yes. I know a few Arab guys who went to GW undergrad then med school (pre-9/11 days) who came from VERY wealthy families. Most of them were from the Gulf countries (Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, etc). They spent money like it was cheap toilet paper and drove the NICEST cars (Lambos, Ferraris, Porches, Mercs/BMWs, etc). A few of them actually failed out of med school b/c they partied too much.

I have a hard time imagining an attending making a 1/10th of what these guys had from family inheritance/oil.
 
DOCTORSAIB said:
Yes. I know a few Arab guys who went to GW undergrad then med school (pre-9/11 days) who came from VERY wealthy families. Most of them were from the Gulf countries (Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, etc). They spent money like it was cheap toilet paper and drove the NICEST cars (Lambos, Ferraris, Porches, Mercs/BMWs, etc). A few of them actually failed out of med school b/c they partied too much.

I have a hard time imagining an attending making a 1/10th of what these guys had from family inheritance/oil.
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I always wonder what the attending will feel if he/she knew that student is making as much as or more than he/she is making..examples:

OBGYN people have to work very hard....earn an income of 200,000+ a year...and the student also earning that much or even more...

or

Surgeons have to work very hard too....and that student is earning more than the attending surgeon...

when it comes to attending bringing the whole team out for meal....usually attending will pay...but if you have a millionaire student on your team...hmmm...
 
watermen said:
when it comes to attending bringing the whole team out for meal....usually attending will pay...but if you have a millionaire student on your team...hmmm...
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There are celebrity doctors who probably earn more from their side jobs other than their full medical practice, like Dr. Oz the heart surgeon and freq. Oprah guest.

A paternal uncle of mine is a urologist; he's an attending surgeon at a military hospital in China. Doctors there don't make much, near the salaries of school teacers. Almost inconceivable to think doctors as potential millionaires. But he makes far more money in his other job as a Colonel in the world's largest army. He practices medicine full-time, but makes almost 6 figures with his military duty, putting him in the upper-class income.

Sorry to jack the thread, my uncle wants to study more techniques and do medicine in the US for a year or so. He can pay his own way, but his hospital subsidizes his expense too. All visa issues taken care of, he wonders what kind position he should look for.

Where are most surgeon jobs located? As attending surgeons hired by hosptals? Join HMO? Join a group practice? Some urology fellowship? Iternerant surgeon/Locum Tenems?
 
turkeyjerky said:
i kinda doubt that there are any med students who actually earn more than their attendings. maybe they have more, but that's not the same thing.
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hmmm, you doubt there are ANY? Have you ever considered the scenario where a PhD who founds a technology firm with lucrative government contracts and decides to go back to med school? Or how about the day trader/investor?

Think before you speak
 
I know someone who owns a private clinic. It was his father's clinic but now he employs a physician and a staff. Hes not a millionaire but be certainly makes more than the residents and maybe attendings in some specialties.
 
I had a classmate who was a millionaire. He had his own company importing and selling stuff. He was only in med school because his very traditional Asian parents wanted a doctor in the family. Finally came to his damn senses after our medicine rotation in 3rd year and dropped out.
 
francisco84 said:
hmmm, you doubt there are ANY? Have you ever considered the scenario where a PhD who founds a technology firm with lucrative government contracts and decides to go back to med school? Or how about the day trader/investor?

Think before you speak
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I don't understand the needlessly rude part at the end, but I agree there are plenty of non-trad medical students who fit this bill. For example, I currently work with an intern who, prior to attending medical school, founded and continues to have a substantial interest in a yacht rental business. I don't know how much the guy makes, but he's got a pair of Bettanin & Venturis worth more than my first car 😳.

RandomKai said:
I had a classmate who was a millionaire. He had his own company importing and selling stuff. He was only in med school because his very traditional Asian parents wanted a doctor in the family. Finally came to his damn senses after our medicine rotation in 3rd year and dropped out.
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So he was an importer/exporter? 😉
 
Tic said:
I don't understand the needlessly rude part at the end, but I agree there are plenty of non-trad medical students who fit this bill. For example, I currently work with an intern who, prior to attending medical school, founded and continues to have a substantial interest in a yacht rental business. I don't know how much the guy makes, but he's got a pair of Bettanin & Venturis worth more than my first car 😳.



So he was an importer/exporter? 😉
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It wasn't meant to be rude. Just reminding people that they should think before they speak. How often in medicine do they remind us that "all" should be removed from your vocabulary? Sorry, I have next to no tolerance for people who make blanket statements, especially those that are false statements. I didn't call anyone any names just provided some common sense advice. My apologies if anyone's feelings were hurt.
 
francisco84 said:
It wasn't meant to be rude. Just reminding people that they should think before they speak. How often in medicine do they remind us that "all" should be removed from your vocabulary? Sorry, I have next to no tolerance for people who make blanket statements, especially those that are false statements. I didn't call anyone any names just provided some common sense advice. My apologies if anyone's feelings were hurt.
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I think you're fine.

i kinda doubt that there are any med students who actually would be offended by you jumping down their throat for making a reasonable generalization.
 
turkeyjerky said:
i kinda doubt that there are any med students who actually earn more than their attendings. maybe they have more, but that's not the same thing.
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Dividends and capital gains certainly count as income. I'm sure there are a handful of medical students with annual incomes higher than their attending.
 
Shoushu said:
Where are most surgeon jobs located? As attending surgeons hired by hosptals? Join HMO? Join a group practice? Some urology fellowship? Iternerant surgeon/Locum Tenems?
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If you didn't train here you can't work here as a physician. 30 years ago a foreign doc could get a waiver, but that just doesn't happen anymore.
 
I know a millionaire who won it/is winning it at poker. I know some ticket scalpers. I know some authors. I know a guy who runs a bunch of overseas missionary organizations. The last group doesn't necessarily make more than an attending, but they do have nice salaries coming in at school.
 
There are sons of diplomats that are in rotations right now that could pay for my education with their yearly allowances, but I would imagine that their wealth would only be an issue if someone attached value to it. They are just like anyone else, except they take their own private jet to travel on the weekends.

I feel bad for people like that. It must be difficult to enjoy the simple things when money is always in the way.
 
There's always something just a little bigger and little better that's just out of your reach and there's always someone with bigger pockets. Even people with $5M yachts feel unworthy when a $20M boat passes. The cycle never ends and you never reach the point of having enough. 🙁 It's like the horse with a carrot on a stick in front of it that it can never reach.
 
Where would you rather feel unworthy from: On your 5M yacht or on standing on the dock?
 
RandomKai said:
Where would you rather feel unworthy from: On your 5M yacht or on standing on the dock?
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Definitely the dock. The upkeep on a 5M yacht is over 100k per year.
 
McGillGrad said:
Definitely the dock. The upkeep on a 5M yacht is over 100k per year.
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Are you kidding? That barely covers the salary of my captain, let alone the rest of the crew. It's at least $200K/year, and if I want to go on any nice excursions, like a little cruise to the Mediterranean, it's at least double that.
 
ok my bad. Forgot my audience was broke med students. 🙂

But on the plus side, if you have a 5M boat then you can always sell it. How about that?
 
While there are some millionaires, it's only a handful I'm sure. If you are already pulling in 7 figures from your previous job, investments, trust fund, whatever, I just think it would be hard to put yourself through the grind of med school. Sure we are motivated by a love for medicine, but at times we are also motivated by not walking away with 200k in debt to try to find an entry level job somewhere making 35k/year. If I win the megamillions this week, I highly doubt I will enter residency.
 
cpants said:
While there are some millionaires, it's only a handful I'm sure. If you are already pulling in 7 figures from your previous job, investments, trust fund, whatever, I just think it would be hard to put yourself through the grind of med school. Sure we are motivated by a love for medicine, but at times we are also motivated by not walking away with 200k in debt to try to find an entry level job somewhere making 35k/year. If I win the megamillions this week, I highly doubt I will enter residency.
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You are right about not knowing how you will react to a bunch of money. But in response to the small number of millionaire residents. I am much more envious of those who leave residency with no debt because their education as paid for by parents etc.
 
RandomKai said:
I had a classmate who was a millionaire. He had his own company importing and selling stuff. He was only in med school because his very traditional Asian parents wanted a doctor in the family. Finally came to his damn senses after our medicine rotation in 3rd year and dropped out.
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I have a weird suspicion that I kinda know this person from their import/export days...I don't think he was like a super-wealthy millionaire though. The guy I knew was very successful considering how young he was but like I could see how it wouldn't have been enough to really sway strict asian parent types. Asian parents tend only to be swayed if you can show that you have a good shot at becoming *disgustingly* wealthy-so you can get away with telling your parents that you've decided to go help run a hedge fund :laugh:

And the guy I knew was definitely legitimate with his import/exporting ways-just got in early enough on importing cheap goods from Asian countries that he ended up being able to make a good (if not great) amount of money. But it seemed like his net profit each year was still in the lower end of the sixes from what I could tell (obviously don't know his exact finances).

I used to make decent money with a side business I ran outside of my regular work and basically made almost as much money from it as my regular 9-5 even though I only did like 5 hours a week of work for my business...knew lots of other people who made a lot more money (like 200K/year) doing it full time. The only reason I didn't just quit my job and just run my business full-time was that I needed my full-time job for a medically related resume point to buff up my resume for med school.

Some days I look at my bank statement and old-ass car and reminisce about the days when I had money in the bank and could afford a new car (lost what spare savings I had left in the stock market meltdown), but I don't regret having gone to med school at all. I mean the only reason I had for doing my work was the money back then-it wasn't really very rewarding otherwise. And it didn't really seem like there was a lot of room to grow long-term anyway. So at least for myself I know that I'm probably a better person for it-definitely more disciplined at the very least...if I had quit my job and just did my business full-time I would have woken up at like 10AM just because I could.

That said, I know that if I had already had like $20 million in the bank from an inheritance or something I'd probably have partied my butt off at college and never made anything of myself. Seriously I have no idea how you'd find the motivation to force yourself to stay up when you're dead tired to study when you knew that you were set no matter what. I knew some pretty well-off kids in undergrad and while they supposedly wanted to do med school they all ended up with mediocre grades just because they didn't have any real reason to torture themselves. To their credit they still pursued other graduate studies, although they chose fields that would probably not be great graduate degrees if you had to pay your own student loans back, lol. Of course I don't think you really care about that when you already have a black amex and a $50,000 wardrobe.
 
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I have a friend who has an export/import company (mainly yacht and big ship). Lately, he's interested in woods and bugging me for the past 1 yr. I finally agreed with comission only (since he was asking me to seriously become his partner and I will own my share). So this summer we are going to my country to find woods for export. That is just by his own. By inheritance, his family own a university... So I guess, his income is beyond what a dentist makes...

the weirdest thing is..................

He's been trying to get into dental school for the past 2 years.... LOL I am not trying to make fun of him in a bad way, but I did ask, "wth is in ur mind?" :laugh:
 
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