The salaries look nice when they're windowed to a single year. Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech - especially when you consider the hours and stress.
* 4 years of med school - $0 income - $40k+ of tuition
* 3+ years of residency, minimum (4+ for most fields, even more for surgery) - $60k/year
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If my wife had gone straight into tech, we'd have been better off financially until our 50's. 30 years is a long, long time to break even.
> Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech
We are in a strange time when software engineer salaries can even be comparable to those of doctors. Rest assured that sooner or later tech workers will be middle-class schlubs like pretty much every other type of engineer.
The idea that doctors need to make huge amounts of money compared to almost everyone else is very American. Here in Poland, doctors up until very recently were paid not much more than the country's average wage. Now it's more diversified, especially with short-term contract positions paying much more than that - but regular jobs at a hospital still don't pay more than 3x the national average.
In the UK you have no debt but salaries for the first ten years generally don't go over 50k per year which makes living in a major city and having children unsustainable
Missing interest - unless you really want to fuck yourself in the short term. 160k of tuition costs more like $300k with the standard payment play. Good luck if you have undergrad debt. Could easily add $500k more to your debt load.
> 80k x 4 = 320k lost wages.
Try a number closer to $400k. Also a good portion of MD's take a gap year for research either during med school or before residency. Potentially adds a year.
> 30k x 3 Delta wages.
3 years is for family medicine, most other specialities are 4 years - so add a year. Surgery is more like 8 years.
This wage delta is more on the order of $80k to $100k+ per year. I have friends who are closer to $150k+ per year wage gap compared to their MD spouses.
For my wife and I this number will be $400k.
$300k + $400k + $400k = $1.1m+ difference.
> You said 30 years. I'm counting 2.
You're counting two because you're only looking at salary and not the salary difference. I'm counting 15 at minimum on a pure salary income.
My wife is also working 80/hours week. I'm working 40. It will take into our 50's before my wife makes more on a per hour basis than I do. If I worked 80 hours per week, my wife would never catch up.
If you are smart enough and tough enough to go through med school and become a doctor you can easily earn $300k-$500k per year in tech, with much less stress.
There’s some interest in there as well which adds up over 7+ years. Plus how much his wife makes depends on her specialty and the potential salary in tech is also wide. You can make $400+k at a large tech company faster than a doctor can even begin practicing.
Granted this is word of mouth from several years ago amongst new grads looking for jobs in NYC and Boston, some in SF, who were looking to stay in academic centers. I would say that's the worst case scenario. (there's a huge line of aspiring NIH PI's who are willing to work for peanuts for UCSF, Mass General, etc. The NIH training grants who are supposed to compensate for "75% time" are $98k/year...so do the math for the full 100%...).
For the Medscape study, I would say it's good to see the numbers are better in the private practice world, nationwide. But - most MD's will be presumably internal medicine and you'd have to look at the breakdown. The low end jobs in primary care, public health, etc start at $200k, and most folks who aren't surgeons or ophalmologists or dermatologists are in the low-mid $200's. That's assuming you graduate from residency in your late 20's or early 30's w/ the $350-500k in debt or whatever it is these days, unless you took the National Health Services or DoD scholarships, whereupon you then owe them 4-8 years of your life...
If you're going into medicine for the money you are making a huge mistake. The front-side effort, commitment and cost is massive, and depending on your field it make impact important aspects of your life for as long as you practice. There are way easier ways to make money.
One example: do a comparatively easier 4-yr undergrad in business and start with a bank straight out of school (they scoop up lots of new grads willing to move around). In the same ~15 years you can move into a senior position in finance or M&A and make comparable money. It's not easy or guaranteed but IMO easier...
Medicine is the single most reliable path to the upper-middle class in America. Sure the other things you described are possible but honestly unlikely unless you have an Ivy League undergrad.
Plus you are the only profession that can legally write prescriptions and do some services.
The power of the medical cartels has intangible benefits too.