What no one tells you

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WhatJobDoIPick

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You'll take on 200k+ debt.

Work really hard in school and residency while your friends are chilling making money out of college.

Face constant threat of law suits.

Receive no support to do your job.

Be compelled by law to see everyone.

Be yelled at by people who are paying nothing to be seen.

Face never ending threats to your livelihood from government and private payors.

Work for no extra money on weekend evening holidays away from your family.

Maybe they did tell me and I wasn't listening.

Anyway, props to my EM brothers and sisters working this holiday weekend for no extra pay.

/endrant
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200k would have been nice

Mine was 312k base and I paid another 80k in interest.

They say not to prioritize debt but I needed it gone so I could make different life choices. Took 4 years to pay off.


And now I don't work any weekends or nights ever again that I'm out.

Gonna pour one out to all my homies still trapped tonight, one day may you FIRE/change careers
 
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AlmostAnMD said:
200k would have been nice

Mine was 312k base and I paid another 80k in interest.

They say not to prioritize debt but I needed it gone so I could make different life choices. Took 4 years to pay off.


And now I don't work any weekends or nights ever again that I'm out.

Gonna pour one out to all my homies still trapped tonight, one day may you FIRE/change careers
Click to expand...

Who says not to prioritize debt?!
 
AlmostAnMD said:
200k would have been nice

Mine was 312k base and I paid another 80k in interest.

They say not to prioritize debt but I needed it gone so I could make different life choices. Took 4 years to pay off.


And now I don't work any weekends or nights ever again that I'm out.

Gonna pour one out to all my homies still trapped tonight, one day may you FIRE/change careers
Click to expand...

Ya I'm in super saver mode and looking into other opportunities. One way or another I won't be doing this my whole career.
 
What they also don’t tell you:

You be smart, find a good job situation (may have to be flexible with geography), start out working hard and saving. and 10 years out you can basically not worry about money and coast from a financial standpoint while being better off than 98% of people. It’ll allow more family time and time to pursue other things important to you.
 
Logically it may make sense to refinance student loans and invest at a higher rate than loan interest accrues. However, the nagging thought of them hanging over your head may make paying them off freeing. I paid $300K off (including interest) in my first 1.5 years out and have never regretted it. Also cemented the idea that I could aggressively save and allocate money a certain way. It’s understandable, but many fall into a pattern of gradual lifestyle creep without any intentionality. Everyone conceptually knows they should save, but as income and net worth goes up often so does expenses. I also feel that not having student loans adds to the feeling of FI, which more easily allows for a way out if desired or at least makes the job feel more freeing. There are arguments on both sides with people in different camps as there isn’t a single answer that applies to everyone.
 
AlmostAnMD said:
Quite a few people, really....

In many ways, it makes sense. If i had dump 6k a month into tesla at the time instead of my debt I could have sold all my shares in October, paid off my debt and retired.


So, there's definitely SOME logic to that...
Click to expand...

I'm assuming the whole Tesla thing was a joke (although can't be too certain because physicians are terrible with money) but how important it is to pay off the student loans depends on the loan details. I only owe about 20k at about 7% and my monthly payment is less than $150. I will eventually just go ahead and pay it off but its obviously a very manageable payment and if I never paid it off I'd only owe an extra 8k in interest over 20 years. If you owed 300k+ at 7% I'd live on Ramen noodles until that was paid off.
 
Torsion said:
I'm assuming the whole Tesla thing was a joke (although can't be too certain because physicians are terrible with money) but how important it is to pay off the student loans depends on the loan details. I only owe about 20k at about 7% and my monthly payment is less than $150. I will eventually just go ahead and pay it off but its obviously a very manageable payment and if I never paid it off I'd only owe an extra 8k in interest over 20 years. If you owed 300k+ at 7% I'd live on Ramen noodles until that was paid off.
Click to expand...

Oh, dude, definitely not

We personally know a long-term tesla investor. In a previous life, he was a physician assistant. He wouldn't shut up about Tesla...back when it was $5-15/share he would spent his whole goddam check on it. He sounded ridiculous but then when it hit $1,000/share he sold them all.

He now lives on a boat with his wife and just travels around the world. Looking back on the share count he said he had at one point, this would have been around 20 million dollars....he's definitely never working again. Great start to life too, he wasn't even 30 when he sold.
 
AlmostAnMD said:
Oh, dude, definitely not

We personally know a long-term tesla investor. In a previous life, he was a physician assistant. He wouldn't shut up about Tesla...back when it was $5-15/share he would spent his whole goddam check on it. He sounded ridiculous but then when it hit $1,000/share he sold them all.

He now lives on a boat with his wife and just travels around the world. Looking back on the share count he said he had at one point, this would have been around 20 million dollars....he's definitely never working again. Great start to life too, he wasn't even 30 when he sold.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I dunno, that sounds awesome, but I think for every one of these, there's 100 or 1000 that lost a bunch on some failed "thesis."
 
WhatJobDoIPick said:
Yeah, I dunno, that sounds awesome, but I think for every one of these, there's 100 or 1000 that lost a bunch on some failed "thesis."
Click to expand...

Oh, I wouldn't necessarily think literally one-basket egging is advisable, but it was the long answer to, "why ignore debt?" If someone like my friend is so certain stock X will be more valuable than the debt.

Intel made many new millionaires last year, who knows what the next hot thing is that allows for sudden retirement!

Obviously, myself, I paid my debts off. Have a debt-free home feels better than knowing stocks X and Y are growing. That and positioning myself into a role that I wouldn't MIND doing for another 20 years. Those were my best decisions of last few years....
 
AlmostAnMD said:
Oh, I wouldn't necessarily think literally one-basket egging is advisable, but it was the long answer to, "why ignore debt?" If someone like my friend is so certain stock X will be more valuable than the debt.

Intel made many new millionaires last year, who knows what the next hot thing is that allows for sudden retirement!

Obviously, myself, I paid my debts off. Have a debt-free home feels better than knowing stocks X and Y are growing. That and positioning myself into a role that I wouldn't MIND doing for another 20 years. Those were my best decisions of last few years....
Click to expand...

What’s this other role you got into?
 
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WhatJobDoIPick said:
You'll take on 200k+ debt.

Work really hard in school and residency while your friends are chilling making money out of college.

Face constant threat of law suits.

Receive no support to do your job.

Be compelled by law to see everyone.

Be yelled at by people who are paying nothing to be seen.

Face never ending threats to your livelihood from government and private payors.

Work for no extra money on weekend evening holidays away from your family.

Maybe they did tell me and I wasn't listening.

Anyway, props to my EM brothers and sisters working this holiday weekend for no extra pay.

/endrant
Click to expand...

I’ve been telling people for the last 5 years bro 🤣 med students just ignore because they think it won’t happen to them
 
Birdstrike said:
No one tells you these things?

I have been (along with others) ranting about these exact things on SDN EM for decades, to the point of being too exhausted to continue arguing with EM aspirants who claim we’re all wrong and EM’s flaws are either minor, imagined or easily mitigated.
Click to expand...

sand GIF by South Park
 
Birdstrike said:
No one tells you these things?

I have been (along with others) ranting about these exact things on SDN EM for decades, to the point of being too exhausted to continue arguing with EM aspirants who claim we’re all wrong and EM’s flaws are either minor, imagined or easily mitigated.
Click to expand...

I matched over ten years ago when EM was hot.

Anesthesia and psychiatry were bears and are now hot. The grim reaper likely coming for anesthesia and every other hospital based field that is dependent on government payors.

NSA and COVID decimated our field. No one really anticipated that.

The lesson is to choose a field that you have an intrinsic attraction to and ignore current favorable market forces, because that can change rapidly.
 
Birdstrike said:
No one tells you these things?

I have been (along with others) ranting about these exact things on SDN EM for decades, to the point of being too exhausted to continue arguing with EM aspirants who claim we’re all wrong and EM’s flaws are either minor, imagined or easily mitigated.
Click to expand...

SDN isn't that big of a forum espesically the EM side SDN is mostly for premeds
 
WhatJobDoIPick said:
I matched over ten years ago when EM was hot.

Anesthesia and psychiatry were bears and are now hot. The grim reaper likely coming for anesthesia and every other hospital based field that is dependent on government payors.

NSA and COVID decimated our field. No one really anticipated that.

The lesson is to choose a field that you have an intrinsic attraction to and ignore current favorable market forces, because that can change rapidly.
Click to expand...
The lesson is that we all should have been high throughout, private practice Lasik, Mohs, or bone surgeons.
 
Brigade4Radiant said:
SDN isn't that big of a forum espesically the EM side SDN is mostly for premeds
Click to expand...

That and there's this weirdly antagonistic view of SDN on other EM/trainee social media outlets.

The rare time I see it brought up, it's followed by legions of the blind piping in with "don't listen to anything there, it's a bunch of depressed and burned-out docs."

Not realizing that there's a reason why the veterans here ended up that way, and a vast majority don't even practice EM any more except for edge cases like emergentmd, who honestly I'd call more of a businessman than a physician (not hating, just stating the facts, plenty of respect given).

Add in a hefty serving of the IRL attendings they interact with who can't kick it to them straight (or are mentally ****ed themselves into their academic or CMG-quasi-academic job), and all of a sudden, you understand why medical students STILL choose EM.

Of course, there's the delusional hubris of the MS3/MS4 applicant; I was one of them, and there was very little anybody could tell me that would shake me off the EM path since it was such a sexy field at the time.

The biggest lie 10 years ago: "ROAD-E"
 
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