Salary of a doctor

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Atmm

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So recently I came to light that doctors really don't earn much despite the rigorous training and higher education they go through. You begin making full salary in your mid 30's whilst having to pay off school debts and etc. As promising as that full salary sounds, it seems the years spent towards education and training overpower the salary and in-turn, you lost a lot.
And I also came across this....
https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2f96f21d60fe621bf6f2be27602cbe00?convert_to_webp=true

How accurate is that?

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So recently I came to light that doctors really don't earn much despite the rigorous training and higher education they go through. You begin making full salary in your mid 30's whilst having to pay off school debts and etc. As promising as that full salary sounds, it seems the years spent towards education and training overpower the salary and in-turn, you lost a lot.
And I also came across this....
https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2f96f21d60fe621bf6f2be27602cbe00?convert_to_webp=true

How accurate is that?


Slightly accurate if you assume the teacher has a sweet job, and a physician has a low paying job with a lot of debt. That scenario is likely happening only when comparing some fortunate teachers, to docs stuck in bad/low paying jobs with high hours and in poor paying specialties (which usually don't work the 59.5 hour/wk quoted).

If you didn't cherry pick two extremes in each profession, docs still come out better in the end 90+% of the time. That said, being a physician is not a way to become rich. With education costs continuing to soar and healthcare costs increasing (leading to reimbursement cuts since us greedy docs make up about 10% of healthcare expenses) we will see more patients per hour leading to longer days to make the same as the years before. If the education bubble doesn't burst, there could be a point where being a doc is a stupid financial move.

It blows my mind that you could have 100k of undergrad and then another 3-400k in med school. That could easily become 6-700k by the end of a longer residency. God forbid you live an expensive city, have a family, or a non working spouse during that time!!!!! Those loans could eat 9-10k a month on a 10 year repayment plan. If you made 250k gross, you'd be living on 60-80k post tax/loan payments. That sucks for the time invested.

Lol, just realized I just cherry picked a crappy scenario, like the website you quoted. Moral of the story.
Minimal to no undergrad debt (work)
Med school in a low cost of living area
Pick specialty with a short residency, or high pay only
Do residency in low cost of living area
Don't have kids
Find a spouse/partner who works
Or better yet: marry into money or win the lottery.
 
Last edited:
So recently I came to light that doctors really don't earn much despite the rigorous training and higher education they go through. You begin making full salary in your mid 30's whilst having to pay off school debts and etc. As promising as that full salary sounds, it seems the years spent towards education and training overpower the salary and in-turn, you lost a lot.
And I also came across this....
https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2f96f21d60fe621bf6f2be27602cbe00?convert_to_webp=true

How accurate is that?

it's accurate. moral of the story: don't go into medicine.
 
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