alkemyst
No Lifer
- Feb 13, 2001
- 83,967
- 19
- 81
Well, if you live in a city where a 4000 sq. ft. McMansion costs $500000, it's actually pretty easy to buy one of those after a couple of years of saving if you're a doc making $250000 a year. A 20% downpayment on that is only $100000. There are tons of specialists who make $200000+ as soon as they finish residency, or maybe after residency plus 1 additional year of subspecialty training.
Furthermore, it's not as if they're working for free during their training. After med school, they're making enough money to live off of during residency (say $50000 a year), and more for fellowship training after residency.
The 20% thing is not too common anymore except for those wanting property over $417k.
The first real thing that works against docs is after they take on the $400,000+ debt for medical school they are only making $50-60k on average as a resident so must defer the $3000-4000 repayment per month.
Then the next real thing is malpractice insurance which seems to work directly proportional (at a premium) to salary.
Here in Florida many doctors are not paying for malpractice and having patients sign waivers stating such. Also quite a few are going cash/credit only and not dealing with insurance.
Even general practitioner insurance is $50-60k per year here and surgical ones can be as high as $200k. With $36k-48k of loans + $50-200k of insurance that doesn't leave much of even a $200k salary for the first 15 years of your career (19-23 years if you count the residency).
Even with the $50-200k of malpractice after that time, it's a big hit to your salary.
With a Pharmacist making $80k at the very low end and topping out at $150-175k at the top (unless in Pharmaceutical Sales which I have heard people hitting $500k often)...the pharmacy route is a more attractive to many interested in health careers.
Personally I am going for my CCIE (Cisco Networking). I have a couple CCNAs and a CCNP already and I will have a third CCNA next month. My salary is already nice and although I normally don't get a 9-5 work week (during busy times 60-80 hours can be seen but that is usually a 3 day work week which is really nice or a hard 5 days with the next 9 off)
When I get my CCIE I will pretty much be guaranteed I will always have a very high paying job if I am willing to relocate and always be making $125k+ taking very easy jobs 'doing it' and more like $175k+ if I go the MBA route and enter managing an IT department.
IMHO going deep in the networking field is one of the best bangs for buck right now. 18-24months if you dedicate your life to it like a normal degree and a guaranteed $100k salary at graduation (talking CCIE, not CCNP and CCNA or equivalent) and 0% unemployement.