Money is my motive.... MED SCHOOL/Doctor!!!!! question :(

[Law2Doc]

...the more you are dependent on luck the less you understand what is going on.

this

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[IMSingular]

It's not that people who are successful are not skilled. Most of them are.
Important thing is that skillful people do fail due to circumstances beyond their control. That is the meaning of "willing to take risk". If success is assured there is no risk.

 

[Law2Doc]

It's not that people who are successful are not skilled. Most of them are.
Important thing is that skillful people do fail due to circumstances beyond their control. That is the meaning of "willing to take risk". If success is assured there is no risk.

Sure. But if you want the big reward, you have to be willing to take the big risk. Someone who wants to be rich but doesn't want to take any risks will not become rich. If he works very very hard, his entire life, he can perhaps end up upper middle class. I don't think that's what OP was contemplating. But I think most of us realize that the recipe for great wealth comes with riding a good idea (whether it's your own or one you "obtained") and effectively bankrolling and marketing it.

 

[IMSingular]

Sure. But if you want the big reward, you have to be willing to take the big risk. Someone who wants to be rich but doesn't want to take any risks will not become rich. If he works very very hard, his entire life, he can perhaps end up upper middle class. I don't think that's what OP was contemplating. But I think most of us realize that the recipe for great wealth comes with riding a good idea (whether it's your own or one you "obtained") and effectively bankrolling and marketing it.

Well. Some people just don't care that much about money and are very happy working hard their entire life, be in the middle class. For example Richard Feynman; he worked hard, and one point even rejected a position that would have doubled his sallary, focused on things that made him happy. To be successful and happy in life you don't have to set to be rich, and wealth is not always a measure of success in life. There is this Russian mathematician who proved "Poincare's Conjecture", and even didn't bother to collect a million dollar prize for that, and he seems to be happy, and certainly considered successful by all mathematicians. 1000 years from now he is more likely to be remembered in history than Bill Gates. Today, for example, we remember Archemedis and Pythogoras more than the rich who lived at that time.

 

[Law2Doc]

Well. Some people just don't care that much about money and are very happy working hard their entire life, be in the middle class. For example Richard Feynman; he worked hard, and one point even rejected a position that would have doubled his sallary, focused on things that made him happy. To be successful and happy in life you don't have to set to be rich, and wealth is not always a measure of success in life. There is this Russian mathematician who proved "Poincare's Conjecture", and even didn't bother to collect a million dollar prize for that, and he seems to be happy, and certainly considered successful by all mathematicians. 1000 years from now he is more likely to be remembered in history than Bill Gates. Today, for example, we remember Archemedis and Pythogoras more than the rich who lived at that time.

Depends what you consider remembered. Even among the educated elite, Archimedes the man is not remembered, just a silly anecdote about overfilling a bathtub, and pythagorus is just a guy who made measuring triangles feasible. The average member of the public probably thinks they are pokemon characters.


As for being happy to work at something you enjoy and not make bank, you are preaching to the converted. But that wasn't OPs goal in this thread.

 

[IMSingular]

Depends what you consider remembered.

Well I said remembered in history.
Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes

Let us say numbers of words alloted to them in historical writings such as in wikipedia.

Here are the historical rich remembered in wikipedia. Most of them are recent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures

 

[synthmonsterjax]

OP: Why not dental school?

 

[Double Trouble]

Title made me think of

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll3uipTO-4A[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Law2Doc]

...

Let us say numbers of words alloted to them in historical writings such as in wikipedia.
...]

Wikipedia is not a historical writing. It is publicly created/edited. If you want 10,000 words allotted to a given person, you can just start typing.

If that's your definition of accomplished, the dude without a career and lots of time to type on the Internet can be the most successful person you know.

 

[tantacles]

Wikipedia is not a historical writing. It is publicly created/edited. If you want 10,000 words allotted to a given person, you can just start typing.

If that's your definition of accomplished, the dude without a career and lots of time to type on the Internet can be the most successful person you know.

Can I use that to get laid?

 

[IMSingular]

Wikipedia is not a historical writing. It is publicly created/edited. If you want 10,000 words allotted to a given person, you can just start typing.

If that's your definition of accomplished, the dude without a career and lots of time to type on the Internet can be the most successful person you know.

I said for example! Your lawyerly character of raising quetsions such as "What is is?" is showing. You don't have to feign your ignorance.

See below books written on Archimedes:

http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Books/ArchimedesBooks.html

 

[TheWeeIceMan]

Be careful what you wish for OP....

 

[slatermd]

This thread got surprisingly good.

Agreed. There is a luck component in any career, but success is still largely skill based. Bill Gates didn't get lucky. DOS was a good idea, and he skillfully leveraged that into a lucrative deal from IBM and ultimately a very successful company. Without the skill or idea, he's just another college dropout. Without having the willingness to take the risk of failure, he could never succeed, but that doesn't really mean he was simply lucky and rolling dice.

wrong

There was DR DOS in addition to MS DOS. One of the reasons Bill Gates got contract from IBM was that Bill Gates' mother and IBM CEO were member of the same Board of Director, and Bill's mother and IBM CEO had a chat about "What your son is doing".

Bingo. Without a skill and an idea, Bill Gates is NOT just another college dropout. He's a college dropout with outrageous connections, and that is his "luck."

Obviously Microsoft wasn't created at a craps table, but I don't think that's what anyone in this discussion means by bringing up luck. The debate is kind of worthless without an operational definition.

If luck means success is the result of random chance and nothing else, then it's a bogus concept.

If luck means that some factors of one person's success (inherent intelligence or family connections) cannot be duplicated to create the success of another person, then it's not such a bogus concept.

I didn't say he invented it. I said it was a good idea and he leveraged it. No luck involved. Nor did Jobs invent the GUI or the mouse (snagged both from Xerox) nor did Edison invent the light bulb (stole it from Schwann and improved it). The Facebook guy got sued for pilfering his idea as well. Ultimately whose idea it is is irrelevant, although it saves you legal issues if it's your own. Sometimes the key is to recognize the implications of an idea and run with it. Which again is a skill.

It's a skill not everyone has, and not everyone can develop. Being "successful in business" depends on a lot more than just the skills and talents of a given person with an idea.

I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't know the CEO of anything, nor is she on any board of directors. Does that mean I can't be "successful in business?" No. Does it mean I would have to do things differently than Bill Gates? Yes. Does that make Bill Gates "luckier" than I? Again, it hinges on how one defines luck, which is why this conversation is so goofy in the first place.
____________________________________________

Someone mentioned a list of "about 20 key features to getting rich from starting your own business" (which sounds like it could be a book sold exclusively by infomercial or propagated by multi-level marketing). If such a list of ~20 features existed, it couldn't be relevant to every business of every size in every industry. Not any more relevant than "luck."

The top 20 factors contributing to the success of Microsoft would not be the same as the top 20 for Amazon, which would not be the same as the top 20 for Apple. Sure, there would be some overlap, Venn diagram style, but even within the same (or similar) industries, different business will be successful for different reasons.

Example:

24 Hour Fitness (private company) has over 400 locations, but their earnings are not even close to proportionally higher than those of XSport Fitness (also a private company), which has 29 locations. With over 10 times the locations, obviously 24 Hour has way more employees...but their payroll expenses are very similar. WTF?!? But which company is more successful, and by what metric? If you were simply comparing size to revenue, XSport would win hands down. If both companies were sold today, the sticker price for 24 Hour would likely be close to 10 times higher than XSport (think about the real estate involved).

If you took the list of "20 key features," these two very successful companies would probably be executing opposite strategies for half of them, yet both work. They are peddling essentially the same products, services, and facilities. One follows a very conventional business approach, running as lean as possible and increasing revenue primarily by increasing customer volume. The other is very unconventional, with little regard for minimizing liabilities and an almost singular focus on driving the top line, which they do by wringing every possible dollar out of existing customers before worrying about increasing customer volume.

Example 2

Amazon is an extremely low margin business while Apple is an extremely high margin business. Focus on that one difference and you see how many other differences stem from it. There's no way the same 20 things could have made both successful, nor could simply leveraging and properly promoting a few ideas. There's way more involved. If you don't think that's accurate, take it from Bezos himself: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_bezos/all/1

It turns out Amazon is a completely different business than many of us understand them to be. Bezos does not attribute their success to leveraging great ideas, nor to the faithful execution of some "20 key features."

Of course he had ideas that he leveraged. Of course he adhered to some basic business principles. He also knew when to throw out convention. The bottom line is that the man has a combination of ingenuity (which points to his inherent intelligence), intuition, and practicality that can't be taught, or cultivated by whatever Joe Blow who wants to start a business and get rich.

That's the "luck" these guys have. It's not like they stepped up to the craps table and shot boxcars...anyone who thinks that is at best uninformed, and at worst an idiot. But, the people who are stupid, in many ways, are not as "lucky" as Gates, Jobs, or Bezos so this luck thing is a little paradoxical.

tl,dr:
No successful business is the result of simply "leveraging skills and ideas," nor is it the result of the same "20 key features." This simplification doesn't make sense within one industry, let alone across multiple. Apple vs. Amazon vs. XSport vs. 24 Hour vs. UPS vs. FedEx vs. Walmart vs. Target...the success, failures, practices, and ideas can't be boiled down into a neat little explanation.

It's feels great to listen to the graduation speech Jobs gave at Stanford and think that if he can do what he did, so can we. But that's total BS.

Sure. But if you want the big reward, you have to be willing to take the big risk. Someone who wants to be rich but doesn't want to take any risks will not become rich.

This is a remarkably "inside the box" perspective from someone who earlier was advocating "outside the box" thinking. Speculation based on a linear risk:reward ratio is an econ 101 convention.

Sure, if you risk little, you have little to lose. But that doesn't mean small risks can't have large payoffs. This is a major foundation of value investing (Warren Buffet). If an asset is under-valued, the chance of further depreciation is low. The potential upside, however, is NOT more limited than any other investment, certainly not as an arbitrary, obligatory function of its "low risk" profile. Many contrarian plays, by nature, are low risk, high reward.

If you foolishly risk a lot, you may lose a lot. But it doesn't take huge risks to reap huge rewards, and even larger risks can be hedged without drastically reducing the potential upside.

 

[Danlee07]

There have been some of the most naive comments that I've had the chance to read. First thing to make clear is that yes, a $200,000+ salary is enough. Second thing to make clear is that working hard and having an interest is a requirement for every single career path; this isn't just for medicine.

"If you want to make money, then go into business." That comment is useless and worthless. For example, there are too many uncertainties. The amount of time and effort to run a start-up? The ingenuity to use/steal/come up with an idea for a company? The business sense to sell off ownership stake at the right time and then invest? Business is probably the highest risk-reward of all occupations, and yes, you can make a lot of money. It really isn't hard to run "a" business and make profit, but it requires something much different for the kind of money you're dreaming about.

This is a medicine-oriented forum, but think objectively here. You can argue that medical school debt is a risk you're willing to take, but once you actually get into school, medicine/dentistry guarantees that you will make good salary (e.g. 200k+) just by passing. Coming out of the "lowest tier" school can still give you a mediocre residency with a "mediocre" paying job; you still wind up with a good salary. Look at the paygrade for some specialties even in the 25% quartile. As a prospective medical doctor, if you maintain even a passing grade, then you're going to be moving onto the next step. Coming out of residency, by passing, then you're guaranteed a 6 figure salary. What other job has that?

So yes, if you want an occupation that is difficult to gain admission but guarantees a good salary, then medicine will work. Maybe the new healthcare will destroy salaries into 5 figures. Well, that's just a big what-if. Having millions of dollars is another story, but with good investments and creativity, then you can still be a doctor and make more. Who knows?

 

[LizzyM]

Another consideration: health care management. BS for entry level, MBA after a few years in (get your employer to pay for it) and the salaries of CEOs of not-for-profit hospitals runs to the high six figures.

Take calculus if you haven't already done so, plus a year of accounting. You'll start out working nights/weekends as a hospital administrator and work your way up to the board room. If you are smart enough to be a doctor, you are smart enough to make it in hospital administration. And no, you don't need to be a physician or nurse.

 

[slatermd]

...what should I do?

[YOUTUBE]cdtejCR413c[/YOUTUBE]

1. My goal is to retire in 20 years no matter what I do. I also want to be able to actually have a family!! I can't raise kids while in medical school, and its crazy to raise them in residency with these 60 hour work days.

2. If you had a biology degree, what would you do to make a bunch of money and retire at 42 no matter what?

3. I guess what my point is now that I actually understand what some of you guys are saying is that becoming a doctor for the money isn't the best thing to do financially. But my question now i, if becoming a doctor is the best thing to do to make a lot of money, what should I do?

4. People say go into business but that assumes I have money to spend to start a business. I may quite possibly start out having my own business and make 50k a year or maybe even go broke.

5. I guess now knowing I will get my degree soon, I don't know what to do. I always thought that going to medical school was the best way to make a bunch of money but from what you guys are saying its better ways... what are those better ways considering I am getting my degree soon...

1. Get a different goal. Problem solved. IMO, retirement at 42 after 20 years of a career you don't even like is a crappier goal than having a career you genuinely enjoy, but must continue into your 60s. There are strong psychological consequences to doing something you dislike for 40+ hours a week for 20 years. By the time you're halfway to retirement you'll realize it wasn't worth it, but it'll be too late to do things differently. Also, you can start a family during med school and residency. Plenty of people do this. It may not fit into your current notion of "the ideal time to start a family," but a lot of your current notions suck. You could use a paradigm shift or two.

2. I would do something that didn't utilize a biology degree at all. Take some time and compile a list of things that you enjoy, and can do better than most (for me it was a short list of things that don't require much skill...mostly different types of labor and maintenance that people don't want to do for themselves). Rank your list in terms of how easily you could monetize each item, and how much income each could generate. Rerank another copy of the list in terms of how much it would cost you to take that idea, skill, service, whatever and turn it into a business. Find the intersection between most lucrative and least expensive to start, and get to work. Many businesses and other income streams can be put in place for less than $1000. If you fail, you haven't lost that much but you will have learned something. Successful people get over their fear of failure. Then they fail. They learn from failure, don't repeat their mistakes, and become successful over time. Because it takes time, the sooner you start the learning process (the failure that inevitably precedes success), the better.

3. What you should do is stop limiting yourself to the list of standard things you could do based on the undergraduate degree you obtain. Acknowledge what others have brought to your attention: a degree isn't your only meal ticket. It isn't even a guaranteed meal ticket. Quite honestly, if you want to make $300K by virtue of your degree, medicine is certainly one of your best chances. Most other methods of making that kind of coin would rely on you being smart enough to figure it out for yourself, not waiting for someone else to hand it to you on a silver diploma. And even in medicine there are no "guaranteed" $300K/year pots of gold at the end of the academic rainbow. Don't operate on the assumption that you have 100% chance of matching into one of the higher paying specialties.

4. See number 2. You don't have to risk that much to start a business. You do have to be clever, honest in your self-evaluation, and have a bias toward action. Of those 3 things, cleverness is the most difficult to develop if it isn't already in your repertoire.

5. I don't know how many different ways to say this, but forget about your biology degree. Its value is much less than what you paid for it, unless it was free, in which case it still might not be worth cost of time you spent on it. Stop looking at jobs in terms of what credentials you need to do them. Start considering opportunities that don't require a degree. If you want to do something that does require a degree (medicine, college professor, physical therapist...etc.) then consider further education. If the most important thing to you is making $300K or whatever you need to retire when you're 42, you're going to have to stop relying on others to tell you what to do and teach you what you need to know. Start educating yourself. Start researching the huge variety of things other people have done to make that kind of money. And finally, get some balls.

 

[slatermd]

Yea! Take that, OP.

...or you could go hard and pay your loans off in 6-8 years as an attending, then reap the benefits of being merely at the 50th percentile for Anesthesiology compensation @ $424,000 per year (2009).

Medicine pays well in a number of specialties.

Perhaps you won't be able to retire as early as you crave in your wettest of dreams, but you will still play hard if you are wise with your investments funded with the new-found capital (that is unless the idiots that think we should only make 50k per year have their way ).

Edit: Also, OP, people on SDN (and IRL) that tell you that an MBA is the way to go if you want to "make money" are really just talking out their ass.

Sure the richest MBA is likely much wealthier than the richest MD, so what? The richest college dropout trumps both their bankrolls, degrees aren't everything... forget about the stereotypical methods propagated by the masses as the way to riches.

Nailed it. The result of fewer loans, as well as loans paid off more quickly, is accelerated cash flow, i.e. more disposable income, sooner.

More income can be used to generate more income can be used to generate more income Xzibit.jpg, #DIV/0

This can be done in or out of medicine, with or without and MBA.

 

[forthemoney]

Ok, I'll run through the financials for you.

Note: There are a lot of estimates in my numbers because there are a ton of variables in every aspect (i.e. you could live like a king or a pauper doing medical school, residency, etc).

Medical School:
Tuition: 4 years @ $ 30,000. (State school cost. It's a lot more if private).
Room & Board: 4 Years @ $10,000
Other costs (Insurance, gas, social activities): 4 years @ $ 5,000.

Just like that, you're $ 180,000 in debt, not counting undergrad costs. Stafford loan cost is 6.8%. The estimate is it will take 15 years to repay (Total loan payment amount = $308,000).

Here's what residency, which is 4 years, looks list for an anesthesiologist.
Salary: $ 50,000.
- Taxes: $ 4,750 + 25% over $ 34,000 = $ 8,750
- Living Costs (Apt, insurance, housing) = $ 20,000
- Loan Repayment (Est $ 500 every month) = $ 6,000
- Savings (because you're planning to retire at 42) = $15,000.

So at the end of residency, you'll have saved $ 60,000 +/- whatever your interest rate is (usually 0.5%). Unfortunately, you still owe $274,000. So now, we get to the good part. Where you're the baller anesthesiologist, assuming you get the job and ignoring external factors affecting the current market (i.e. CRNA takeover).

Anesthesiologist:
Salary $ 200,000 (that's a really generous starting offer by the way).
- Taxes = $ 42,449 + 33% over $ 174,000 = $ 50,000.
- Malpractice Insurance = $ 20,000
- Living Costs (let's be honest, you're not going to drive a Kia and live in a studio in the middle of nowhere) = $ 75,000
- Loan Repayment ($ 2,100 per month) = 25,000
- Savings = 30,000

Assuming you get a generous raise every year (5% which I will add is rare in this economy and probably won't happen with the decrease in future insurance compensations) and you put that all in to savings.

Now, let's draw the final picture. It'll take you 11 years practicing as an anesthesiologist to repay your loans completely. During that period, you saved a total of 4 @ $ 15,000 + 11 @ $ 30,000 = $ 390,000. Even with shrewd investing of that money, you'd be lucky to double it. Do you believe you can retire on $ 800,000? Most people save @ 30,000 per year for the next 25 years of their career to get anywhere near to a comfortable retirement number (1.5 million plus.

Oh and all of this is with very conservative estimates regarding your living costs. A person who's mentality is for the money will probably end up spending all their money not saving it.

So good luck with your plan.

My Errors:
Didn't factor in state taxes. Figure that to be another 5 - 10% of your salary.


.

damn. You just made a good case for me not to be an anesthesiologist. This coupled with the fact of the opportunity costs of all these years in medical school not making any money makes doing medical school for any reason other than the love of taking care of hurt/sick people look kinda silly.

OP: Why not dental school?

good question. I don't know anything about dental school. is it better to tat dentistry? Lord knows I love to get into peoples face.

 

[SunsFun]

I do not agree with OP, but It is funny to read replies of bunch of college kids talking about easier ways to make money than medicine. There are NO easy ways to make lots of money. If you are good at hard sciences, can handle sick people, and possess certain other characteristics medicine may be the best fit for you to make a decent living.

From what I've heard, going into medicine just so that you can help sick people is as bad of a reason as wanting to become rich. Not to mention, I've met many excellent doctors who are more motivated by financial gains than they are by other altruistic motives. What they all seem to share is that they find their jobs to be inherently interesting.

 

[yellowbird12]

Depends what you consider remembered. Even among the educated elite, Archimedes the man is not remembered, just a silly anecdote about overfilling a bathtub, and pythagorus is just a guy who made measuring triangles feasible. The average member of the public probably thinks they are pokemon characters.

LOl

 

[spiralina]

All of you make insightful responses! Wow-- very fun to read. To the person writing and asking the question-- I think it really boils down to: What kind of life do you want? What exactly are you looking for in life? Be a scientist on yourself by putting yourself into situations that test your assumptions. Or ask the people closest to you (friends and family for variety) what attributes they've noticed in you. You think money makes you happy? Hmm...then ask yourself, is it happiness your after? Or maybe it's stability? Is it the lack of taking risks? How do you handle failure? Think about these things, but more importantly test it out! Act on it.

 

[Law2Doc]

[YOUTUBE]cdtejCR413c[/YOUTUBE]



1. Get a different goal. Problem solved. IMO, retirement at 42 after 20 years of a career you don't even like is a crappier goal than having a career you genuinely enjoy, but must continue into your 60s. There are strong psychological consequences to doing something you dislike for 40+ hours a week for 20 years. By the time you're halfway to retirement you'll realize it wasn't worth it, but it'll be too late to do things differently. Also, you can start a family during med school and residency. Plenty of people do this. It may not fit into your current notion of "the ideal time to start a family," but a lot of your current notions suck. You could use a paradigm shift or two.

2. I would do something that didn't utilize a biology degree at all. Take some time and compile a list of things that you enjoy, and can do better than most (for me it was a short list of things that don't require much skill...mostly different types of labor and maintenance that people don't want to do for themselves). Rank your list in terms of how easily you could monetize each item, and how much income each could generate. Rerank another copy of the list in terms of how much it would cost you to take that idea, skill, service, whatever and turn it into a business. Find the intersection between most lucrative and least expensive to start, and get to work. Many businesses and other income streams can be put in place for less than $1000. If you fail, you haven't lost that much but you will have learned something. Successful people get over their fear of failure. Then they fail. They learn from failure, don't repeat their mistakes, and become successful over time. Because it takes time, the sooner you start the learning process (the failure that inevitably precedes success), the better.

3. What you should do is stop limiting yourself to the list of standard things you could do based on the undergraduate degree you obtain. Acknowledge what others have brought to your attention: a degree isn't your only meal ticket. It isn't even a guaranteed meal ticket. Quite honestly, if you want to make $300K by virtue of your degree, medicine is certainly one of your best chances. Most other methods of making that kind of coin would rely on you being smart enough to figure it out for yourself, not waiting for someone else to hand it to you on a silver diploma. And even in medicine there are no "guaranteed" $300K/year pots of gold at the end of the academic rainbow. Don't operate on the assumption that you have 100% chance of matching into one of the higher paying specialties.

4. See number 2. You don't have to risk that much to start a business. You do have to be clever, honest in your self-evaluation, and have a bias toward action. Of those 3 things, cleverness is the most difficult to develop if it isn't already in your repertoire.

5. I don't know how many different ways to say this, but forget about your biology degree. Its value is much less than what you paid for it, unless it was free, in which case it still might not be worth cost of time you spent on it. Stop looking at jobs in terms of what credentials you need to do them. Start considering opportunities that don't require a degree. If you want to do something that does require a degree (medicine, college professor, physical therapist...etc.) then consider further education. If the most important thing to you is making $300K or whatever you need to retire when you're 42, you're going to have to stop relying on others to tell you what to do and teach you what you need to know. Start educating yourself. Start researching the huge variety of things other people have done to make that kind of money. And finally, get some balls.

Well put. Basically a lot of the notions I have been trying to express in this thread, but more eloquently and without all the tangents. Even though you nitpicked what I said in your prior post, I think this post incorporates the risk taking and thinking outside the box points I had made nicely.

 

[forthemoney]

All of you make insightful responses! Wow-- very fun to read. To the person writing and asking the question-- I think it really boils down to: What kind of life do you want? What exactly are you looking for in life? Be a scientist on yourself by putting yourself into situations that test your assumptions. Or ask the people closest to you (friends and family for variety) what attributes they've noticed in you. You think money makes you happy? Hmm...then ask yourself, is it happiness your after? Or maybe it's stability? Is it the lack of taking risks? How do you handle failure? Think about these things, but more importantly test it out! Act on it.

I do like the stability of being a doctor. Sure some people here saying that the crna take over in the medical field is something to be worried about. i'm cool with that, I can easily just change what I want to do in medical school to ortho.

I don't know of any other job that has the type of stability doctors have ( unless universal health care comes into the mix) but even then it would be stable, just paid a little bit less.

 

[SpecterGT260]

we would all be lying (or terminally naive...) if we didnt say that money played a role here. I like to play and I have expensive toys. I'd like a career that allows me to keep doing this. however, the amount of money is not worth it if you would be miserable with the job. if you are highly capable as most of us are, you are capable of making good money without the BS that is medicine. you have to love it otherwise you ill get out there and realize what you have is really not what you expected.

 

[slatermd]

Well put. Basically a lot of the notions I have been trying to express in this thread, but more eloquently and without all the tangents. Even though you nitpicked what I said in your prior post, I think this post incorporates the risk taking and thinking outside the box points I had made nicely.

thanks. I always mean to be thorough, never mean to nitpick, but it's a fine line and I'm too clumsy to always find the right side of it.

 

[lucitrea]

youre going to get a lot of **** for making a thread like this.

i suggest becoming a medical malpractice lawyer

 

[kpcrew]

youre going to get a lot of **** for making a thread like this.

i suggest becoming a medical malpractice lawyer

he's obviously trolling

 

[Renaissance Man]

Another consideration: health care management. BS for entry level, MBA after a few years in (get your employer to pay for it) and the salaries of CEOs of not-for-profit hospitals runs to the high six figures.

Take calculus if you haven't already done so, plus a year of accounting. You'll start out working nights/weekends as a hospital administrator and work your way up to the board room. If you are smart enough to be a doctor, you are smart enough to make it in hospital administration. And no, you don't need to be a physician or nurse.

Hey LizzyM,

Do you know of administrators that are physicians? I think it would be fun to slow down practicing medicine and move into the business side after a certain age. (Sorry to hijack thread but your post was interesting to me).

 

[LizzyM]

Hey LizzyM,

Do you know of administrators that are physicians? I think it would be fun to slow down practicing medicine and move into the business side after a certain age. (Sorry to hijack thread but your post was interesting to me).

I don't know any who are hospital administrators but I know a few who are leaders of multi-specialty group practices.

 

[LieutenantDan]

OP you don't understand that there are going to be substantial medicare/medicaid cuts in the future, that will kill your reimbursement do you. Also, doctors that patients don't like eg doctors like you the one you'd aspire to be - maxing out patient load while minimizing patient interaction as you see them as a paycheck - are lawsuit magnets.

Just go into the pharmaceutical industry, so we don't have to call a douche like you a colleague.

This is an excellent point that I was going to make (albeit more politely). It is really important to consider that physician salaries are inevitably going to decline, and no more so than in the specialties. With the aging baby boomer population medicare is set to become the provider of the majority of reimbursements to physicians in the future, unless you go into peds which is already a loss leader. Medicare reimbursements are frozen and every year there is a fight to prevent cuts to the payments made to physicians by huge amounts (this year I believe 27% was the cut to payments that had to be averted, next year it will be 30% if nothing is done to prevent it.) Docs already complain that medicare reimbursement is often too low and in many cases they take losses on medicare patients. And yet the cost of medicare is set to eclipse everything else in the national budget within the next 50 years or so, so it is inevitable that the cost of medicare and consequently the reimbursement of physicians go down substantially. Others may disagree with my pessimism but I think there is a wind of change coming in our health care system that will make salaries and cost more sustainable and in line with the rest of the developed world.
Then there is the possibility that the US economy enters and prolonged decline over the next several decades due to unprecedented levels of debt and difficulties meeting our energy needs, and if you cant charge your patients don't have that $300,000 available to pay every year then you are not getting paid that much.

I do think the advice of going into the pharmaceutical industry is something you should consider if you have any fondness of biology or chemistry. I got to tour one of AMGEN's labs as part of a biochem class and they treat their employees like Google or Microsoft employees and they were all happy and well paid, and they have time to enjoy their lives and money (something which is less certain as a physician). There are also more dentists who do it for the money than physicians, although caring for your patients would make you a much better dentist.

I have a family of physicians and I can tell you that the money is not all it is made out to be. As others have mentioned, the amount of work you do for the money is substantial. I forgot where I read it but I saw an article that said orthopedic surgeons (one of the highest paid specialties) worked so many hours between clinic and keeping current with materials and all of the less glamorous elements of medicine that they end up making less money on average per hour than the average lawyer makes. My dad is a surgeon and I can say his experience is very similar to this, he puts in roughly 60 hours per week in clinic/OR, plus anywhere from 10 to 20 hours on reading the literature, contacting patients/colleagues from home, and doing various administrative tasks. Then he takes anywhere from 24 to 72 hours of call per week which can be slow but more often then not he gets called in at least once or twice in the middle of the night. It all adds up.
My brother is a surgery resident doing about 80 hours a week plus call, his huge salary of 35K works out to getting paid less than minimum wage.

Bottom line is that it is shortsighted to see green and be blinded to what a career in medicine entails. I assume you want more money because you feel that you would be more happy, but you will be miserable spending most of your life doctoring and dreaming of a day when you have time to attend to your money if medicine has no real appeal to you.

 

[canadian18]

I hear people saying that you should become a doctor because of the love for the patients and not the money. Thats sounds all nice but to me, 300k is just soo tasty.

is that what you're going to say on your personal statement and during your interview if you make it that far?

 

[GNE24]

Dude, you're missing the point. You're under the delusion that becoming a doctor is somehow the easiest way to make a lot of money. You're absolutely right that being a doctor will make money, and that there are specialists that do make that much money. But the people who get into those residencies are typically very good in medical school, and of the people who get into those residences, the ones that make a lot of money are typically very good at what they do. And the people who are very good at what they do tend to be the ones that put in an absurd amount of time, effort, and work into the job.

You see the trend? Good doctors make a lot of money, but I haven't met any good doctors that are good doctors BECAUSE they want to make a lot of money. They put in all the extra work because they cared about what they were doing and were willing to make a lot of hard sacrifices, financial and otherwise, to get there. The money is a side-effect of a passion for medicine.

I have no doubt of the possibility that you can motivate yourself through the hardship of medical school based on financial motivation and the somewhat naive dream that you'll certainly be able to land in one of the higher paying residency programs. But you aren't absorbing that what you would have to sacrifice as a medical student and as a physician is not going to be worth the CHANCE (as in, the possibility without certainty) of getting into a job that you consider to be financially worth it. In fact, even some of the 300K/year physicians are advising pre-meds to just avoid medicine altogether.

If you're after money, then becoming a doctor simply isn't the way you want to go. I would bet dollars to donuts that if you took just half the amount of time and effort needed to become a highly paid physician, and instead put that toward becoming a really good invester, banker, real estate agent, car salesman, or something of the like, then you'll be making two or three times more than the vast majority of physicians in the US.

And just an FYI, when you start spouting of "300K" being made as an anaesthesiologist, you're kinda confirming how extremely naive you are about the life of a physician. You have to pay a few thousand a year just to maintain your licenses, a few thousand more for the costs of running a practice, and a few tens of thousands of dollars a year for malpractice. That's not taking into account the "civilian" costs of housing, car payments, and possibly a family. Oh, and anaesthesiologists are a favorite target of sue-happy people, considering that if they even DREAMED they were uncomfortable during a surgery, you're the one they can hold responsible. Anaesthesiologists aren't paid more because their job is "harder"; they're paid more to balance out the gargantuan sums of money many of them have to pay out just to practice.

Amazingly said

 

[IlDestriero]

Amazingly said

Actually, the salaries quoted in those surveys are after expenses like malpractice insurance and anesthesiologists usually have minimal overhead, generally just for billing. Also, FYI anesthesiologist's malpractice is quite low, I believe the average is ~25k/yr, most surgeons pay several times that. My medical license is $800 every 2 years. It might have been another $800 or so initially to apply.

Cheers!

 

[IlDestriero]

Hey LizzyM,

Do you know of administrators that are physicians? I think it would be fun to slow down practicing medicine and move into the business side after a certain age. (Sorry to hijack thread but your post was interesting to me).

Most department heads and other senior faculty take on significant non clinical duties for the department, Hospital, and/or medical school. Some duties are compensated with funding others with non clinical time.
It's very common, moving to CEO positions, etc. requires other skill sets and would be less common. Of course you could get an MBA, etc to develop those skills.

Cheers!

 

[xoxx]

I've heard there's good money in social work

No kidding. I was wondering how all of my social worker buddies could afford a new mercedes every week..

Social work looks good for op.

 

[circulus vitios]

Are you serious about becoming a doctor solely for the money? Wow I'm on my cell phone right now and I just felt like I had to voice my opinion over reading what you had wrote. You are so selfish and are only thinking about yourself. Even if you become a doctor, you do not sound like you have any compassion for anyone but yourself. Think about what being a doctor means. Think about what doctors really do. You are in it for all the wrong reasons which are only for yourself. Nothing wrong with thinking about yourself, but being a doctor is not a field to do that. Gosh you make me so angry with what you are saying.

Sent from my VM670 using SDN Mobile

 

[circulus vitios]

Walk through any hospital in the United States. How many doctors do you come across who are making >$175k/year? Now walk through any business office, large or small. How many businessmen or office workers do you come across (with 7-10 years post-college work experience) who are making >$175k/year?

 

[235788]

dont become a doctor if you just want to make a lot of money. it takes many years to establish yourself enough to make a considerable amount of money..if you just want to make money go into business, finance, etc. Only become a doctor if you have an interest in healthcare. If youre only in it for the money and not the work youll be miserable long before you even get your first real job after your residency. due to the nature of the work and the stress physicians are under its not worth it to go into medicine if money is your sole aim. Also, to make the really big bucks you most likely will need some kind of extra special training such as extensive research experience, business experience (needed to work at a big pharma company, etc.), or a very specific specialization-- basically, the average doc makes a nice living but the salary is not worththe effort and time if you dont want to be a practitioner and youre goal is to lead a considerably wealthy lifestyle; the avg salary of a physician w/ a specialty(or at least 7-8 years of training, and not including general practitioners) is $170,000 a year. In order to make above the mean or well above the mean you must hold skills that other physicians do not have..obviously. I dont see how you are going to develop these skills if you dont even have any motivation for going into healthcare besides money. You should really have some kind of philosophical understanding of why you want to go into healthcare before you decide to enter a healthcare field. Healthcare workers are firstly humanitarians and secondly prestigious and affluent members of society, and anyone who is pre-med should know that. Premeds often arent aware of the fact that docs are around sickness and dealth a considerable portion of the time.
here is an example of a real-life high wage earning doc: spent 10 yrs in training (med school + specialty training) before getting a real job; he also has extensive research experience, plus he moonlights twice a week. Hes said that he has been around so much sickness and seen so much death and been in so many stressful situations that if he didnt have an internal interest in science and healthcare or a desire to be a humanitarian then all the hard work and time and energy he spent developing his career would not have been worth it. He could have gone into business or a related field and had the potential to make vastly more money than he makes now with less effort and stress. However, he wouldn't have gotten the same intellectual satisfaction and meaning from his work. So many college kids are so ignorant concerning what the life of a physician is really like; if you are just interested in money and prestige, GO INTO ANOTHER FIELD. im serious. you arent guaranteed to make a truckload of money if you go into business or finance;however, if you are smart enough to make an above average salary as a doc then youre probably smart enough to make even more money than that in a business related field or other field.

Regardless of the money, if you dont care about being a humanitarian, serving the needs of others, and arent PRIMARILY INTERESTED in improving the well-being of othersthen ur gonna be a crappy doc no matter how smart you are. youre also going to hate being a doc if youre going into it for the money and the glamour because there really is not glamour and the money only comes after years of hard work. I personally think ur way too selfcentered to become a good doctor and i think youd hate medical school and residency.

Its been a long time since I read such an ignorant, thoughtless, and clueless post- get your MBA and go into business, finance, accounting, etc. if making money is your primary goal. but please do not go into healthcare...the fact that you were clueless enough to even ask this question is proof enough that you should not be applying to medical school.

lol since this market is just pumping out millionaires left and right . I hate when people suggest to go into business/MBA if you want money.

Becoming a physician grants a guaranteed good-life, unless you do something to f things up. Plenty of these MBA's are going to get laid off when they hit age 50 - to be replaced by some 20 something year old college grad. Business world sux!

 

[neoevolution]

With the current trend of rising debt levels and falling compensation (especially for the highly paid specialties) and likelihood of major healthcare reform which will cut salaries further, why would anyone go into medicine for the money? Engineering+MBA, IB, and the like can all easily make 6 figure salaries and their lifestyle probably beats that of many physicians to boot.

 

[Fakhter]

obvious troll is obvious

 

[235788]

With the current trend of rising debt levels and falling compensation (especially for the highly paid specialties) and likelihood of major healthcare reform which will cut salaries further, why would anyone go into medicine for the money? Engineering+MBA, IB, and the like can all easily make 6 figure salaries and their lifestyle probably beats that of many physicians to boot.

Specialists will still crap on 99% of business grads.

obvious troll is obvious

What do you know? You joined this month and have 12 posts. We're not discussing this for the OP.

 

[OwlPower22]

Go into business.

There's more sacrifice than money in medicine. Look elsewhere for the cash.

 

[JESSFALLING]

OP, you can generate more wealth by retirement with a carefully chosen B.S. in Engineering (or Business or Economics) than with Medicine....it sounds like you didn't get that memo soon enough.

Graduate in 4-5 years, live conservatively, and invest wisely. Compound interest is your friend.

Hint: Read Berkshire-Hathaway's annual shareholder letters religiously

 

[neoevolution]

I wasn't saying engi+MBA made more than specialists, but their salaries can easily be ~$150k coming from a good school, and my point is that career path is easier to follow and has better lifestyle if those are your goals.

 

[circulus vitios]

I wasn't saying engi+MBA made more than specialists, but their salaries can easily be ~$150k coming from a good school, and my point is that career path is easier to follow and has better lifestyle if those are your goals.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Hint: Good MBA programs require significant work experience, the kind of work experience that isn't gained through engineering jobs. You don't just "go into an MBA program" out of engineering school, unless you want to waste money on a bottom-ranking MBA program.

 

[Reaction]

troll.

+1 but seriously as many of the posts above indicate, don't go into medicine just for the money.. God knows how you will survive medical school

 

[Latuza]

Have you considered petroleum engineering (drill for and process oil and natural gas) for making money?

A bachelor's in that gives you an average starting salary of 80k+ (highest of all engineering disciplines), and US universities don't even produce enough of them to meet demand, so you will get a job!

Also energy and gas companies are probably the most profitable companies in the world, so job security I think is pretty good.

We are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels and not moving to renewables anytime soon, esp. with a fast-growing world population in need of more energy production. Also the championed candidate to replace oil right now is natural gas, so the degree will remain very relevant for a long time.

After you've saved about 100k+, it's all about how savvy you are about creating/investing in assets that can generate cash flow (instead of spending money away buying fancy cars, house that you live in). This requires a bit of ingenuity, but ain't rocket science I suppose.

Medicine is a good way and the chance of success is nearly 100% if you've made into med school (just don't get into too much student debt). And medicine has great job security too, a huge plus when the economy tanks.

 

[neoevolution]

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Hint: Good MBA programs require significant work experience, the kind of work experience that isn't gained through engineering jobs. You don't just "go into an MBA program" out of engineering school, unless you want to waste money on a bottom-ranking MBA program.

What makes you say that a few years (~5) of engineering work with significant responsibility and management won't get someone into a top MBA program? That's a pretty common path for those who want to go into engineering management and the like. I never said he would be able to get into a good MBA program straight from UG, but those 5 years as an engineer and the cost of the MBA program beat out med school and residency financially (not even considering gap years)

"Most of the top MBA programs have Engineering as about 30% of their class" http://www.amnesta.net/mba/overview.html
"at most other top programs, where the average student has between four and six years of work experience" http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/aug2006/bs20060807_159640.htm

 

[NonTraditional3]

Like, $5.



Annual salary of $5.



They also make $5.

LMAO. I know it's old, but....hahaha had to leave the library to laugh

 

[SunsFun]

What makes you say that a few years (~5) of engineering work with significant responsibility and management won't get someone into a top MBA program? That's a pretty common path for those who want to go into engineering management and the like. I never said he would be able to get into a good MBA program straight from UG, but those 5 years as an engineer and the cost of the MBA program beat out med school and residency financially (not even considering gap years)

"Most of the top MBA programs have Engineering as about 30% of their class" http://www.amnesta.net/mba/overview.html
"at most other top programs, where the average student has between four and six years of work experience" http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/aug2006/bs20060807_159640.htm

Even top MBA is not a road to riches for the majority of graduates. Not to mention that you have to do consulting (read fly back and forth every single weak) or i-banking (hours as bad as residency while living the most expensive cities in the US).

Anyway, my point is:

ITT bunch of college kids talk about careers they know very little about.