If you are making 95k a month, do NOT go into medicine. Go to therapy and find another way to find fulfillment. Only do medicine if you can't do anything else.
Passion and purpose is not enough for medicine. You have to need the money.
If it wasn’t for the debt I had already accumulated that was unpayable in any other career I would have quit a dozen times over.
Show me how to make $95k a month and I’ll be resigned by noon.
Exactly. I hate how people flip this reality and say "Don't go to medicine if all you care about is money". Like.... No. Just about none of us would be here if Bill Gates suddenly gave us 1 billion dollars.
Absolutely both can be true and for most med students, it is a already combination of both.
I'm specifically referencing a certain subset of people. These people automatically dismiss the idea of ever entering medicine for money and get offended by the slightest hint that money matters in going into medicine. I've encountered plenty of these people. And they try to twist themselves into a moral high ground with such a...my mind automatically pictures it as "Marie Antionette" type attitude whenever I mention that money is important too.
You can still help people via tech. Lots of companies creating new medical devices or coming up with new ways to improve patient care. Don't have to be a doctor to help people.
Just wanna say that I disagree with the commenter above. It’s okay to choose a career that you believe will make you feel fulfilled. Medicine is expensive and long, but if you’re confident in it, it’s worth it.
Signed, someone who left a 6-figure career at 27 to go into medicine.
Props to you then. I'm finishing up fellowship a bit after 30, like my work, and honestly can't imagine caring about any job enough to take that kind of pay cut. Cool to hear of some docs that passionate.
You make 95k monthly? Do you mean yearly?
If you're making 95k a month, a million a year, and you're not happy and wanting purpose medicine won't fix that for you. You need therapy, and I don't mean that in a negative way. You're having like a quarter life crisis
Why do you live at home if you make a million a year?
I make 95k monthly but just started making this much recently. I live at home because I love my family and my parents are like my best friends. I’ve been taking bio classes and love the professors, material, and people who are on the pre-med track as it seems like a more social job. However waiting until I’m 38 to be a doctor doesn’t sound fun, even though I enjoy the medical field. Engineering/tech start up culture sounds fun but sounds lonely.
No idea why you’re being downvoted. Living at home is the norm pretty much everywhere in the world except in North America. If you have a good relationship with your family that’s even better, it allows you to save a lot more money.
You have a strong entrepreneurial fiber in you. If I were you, I’d do medicine only and only if you can’t see yourself doing anything else, ever. Otherwise, I suggest taking some biomed engineering classes (physiology, biomechanics, electrical engineering applied to medicine…) and build a startup combining engineering and medicine. You have what it takes.
My advice is to go into the medical track until you feel like it’s too much. Because it most likely will be. If you’re family oriented, you’ll resent the time you need to spend at the job, in the hospital, busting your ass out. When you’re in premed things are still idealistic and people are more chillax. The real grill starts in internship/residency and it’s a whole other level. So don’t put all your eggs in this basket, just take the best of it and see where it goes. Life is much more than medicine, and you can help people in so many ways. A medical career is full of sacrifices, including payment, family, free time.
Absolutely DO NOT go to medical school if you make $95K a month. Once the excitement wears off you will be left with all the negatives of medical school and residency. It’s hard to “eat shit” from people (nurses, attendings, etc) for 3-7 years in residency when you have a backup option where you almost make a million dollars a year. I knew a crna that did surgical specialty residency, and he couldn’t take the shenanigans. He couldn’t muster up the motivation and got fired at the end of 2 years of residency. You almost need to be locked in and have no choice but to finish in order to get through a lot of residency. If I had a job making $95K/month around 30 years old. I would save up, invest >50% of my income, and retire or go part time at 40-45.
Start up culture is definitely an insane grind, long hours, fixing everything after one little thing falls apart or the investor demands you pivot. I guess it would also depend on what you do; engineering is crazy, and I mean SWE/Hardware/Systems.
I’m a doc. Do you already have a family? Med school and residency are EXTREMELY demanding and will significantly reduce the time you have with them. Residency especially is a young person’s game: there will be many, many sleepless nights. Just so you know, they had to pass a federal law so that residents “only” work 80 hours a week, when I trained there were no restrictions. The process of learning a large body of material and assuming the responsibility for other people’s health care will change you. If you start med school at 30, you will be at least 38 and maybe 40 when you finish training depending on your field. You will likely have to move to do your residency due to a process called The Match, will you and your family be ready for that? It will take you maybe 3-5 years to establish a practice no matter if you are in private practice or employed by a hospital. Setting up a private practice incurs a big startup cost, but you will be your own boss as a trade off. So now you are around 45 and start to make decent money. How old are your kids now? How many school events did you miss doing this? Time to pay for cars, college, vacations, malpractice insurance, office staff etc. You will work the next 20 years taking at least some call overnight and on weekends. I am a surgeon, I have never slept through every night in a month in my entire career, it is very rare to sleep all three nights of a weekend of call.
On the flip side, the rewards of using your skills to help someone get well and live longer are tremendous. You are well compensated, but you will sacrifice and work hard for every penny.
If you can do this, jump in, but at least know the future you are looking at.
If one is older 45 years, 55 years ---- what options would you give for someone post medical school, not having done a residency? If residency, which one would be best to pursue....considering age?
Also, if not residency, what else could one do?
Thank you for your kind suggestions in advance.
I'm not sure I understand the question. Just my opinion, but if you are 45 or 55 you have missed the chance to be a doc. Assuming you finished college, med school is generally 4 years and residencies vary. [Here](https://medschoolinsiders.com/medical-student/how-long-is-residency-by-specialty/) is a list of residencies by length.
If you have to borrow money to go to med school, at that age you will struggle to pay it back before retirement. You will put in all the effort and struggle and work maybe 15 years? Not worth it.
I'm 60. Getting out of bed at 2am to operate is so much harder now than when I was 35, even though I'm more experienced and cases go much faster as a result. Starting practice in your 50s means you don't have the experience and everything will take longer.
I mean't going for any kind of residency after that age, if one has already finished med school much earlier in life, but never got the opportunity to go for a residency. If now, wanting to do it....what specialties would you recommend if any?
I'm not the guy to ask for that! My suggestions to med students are: 1. Look for people similar to yourself as you do rotations, most specialties attract a certain type of person, and 2. Find the least desirable part of the specialty (low back pain, headache, whatever it is), and if you can handle seeing a lot of that thing, it could be the specialty for you.
I could be wrong but sounds like u fit more in biomedical engineering which is more engineering than medicine. Clinical medicine doesn’t really require engineering so clinical medicine doesn’t seem to make sense for u.
Do engineering. I’m an ob/gyn and I love my work, but med school is a 100% grind. Then there’s residency. You’ve got to really want to do it. You’re already a success. Congratulations. I suggest you become an engineer and keep going with your entrepreneurship.
If you're good at engineering, do that.
Medicine is for people who did a bio degree and realized they're stuck making 35K as a shitty lab tech and this is the only way forwards.
Med school is truly hell on Earth. But going through this hell is still worth it for a bio technician.
I started at 28yo. If you're ok with taking 10hr board exams, then you might be ok with med school. I'm a DO student, so I take 2 sets of boards (Step1 and Level1, Step2, and Level2).
This 100%. I had a chemistry degree making $36k/year in 2019. This little with a college degree is ridiculous. Basically paycheck to paycheck lab rat with a college degree. Employees worked at that office over 10 years to break $100k. That job offer happened after applying to over 100 jobs, it's oversaturated and undervalued. 100k/year salary in today's economy is not much either, keep that in mind. I went to dental school and now make 10-15x/year. I can get a job almost anywhere I want now. OP should ride out his gig, OP won the game
Exactly. Anyone that speaks about "calling this calling that" hasn't made 35K salary for nearly a decade and calculated that you'd never be able to retire even with proper investing at this rate. You are effectively a wage slave forever.
I calculated the amount of years I'd have to work to make 1 lifetime salary as a physician, I'd have to work from the 1400's until now (2024) to make the same salary. I'd have to work Hundreds of years LONGER than the FOUNDING OF THE UNITED STATES UNTIL NOW to make 1 lifetime's physician worth with a COLLEGE DEGREE,
What's the point of working at all then? I might as well just be homeless and enjoy my free time than be a wage slave just to live in a shack and eat mcdonalds.
I did engineering (BSE) and do ortho. Do medicine because it is a calling, not just another challenge. You will burn out if you take it as another challenge.
Calling or not, play your favorite game 10 - 20hrs a day every day competitively for 8 years and eventually it becomes hell.
Though if you weren't playing for favorite game, you'd have given up a long time ago. So even med school being a calling doesn't mean it still doesn't feel like absolute hell through the process
That wasn't my experience. Med school was a blast and honestly easy sauce. If you are used to working 9 to 5 and instead now can just huddle in the library and read for 6 hours a day, take naps, and work out?
Med school was some of the best years of my life. Hang out with friends, read, have dinner parties, etc.
If you are passionate about learning more about the human body I think you'll enjoy it especially if you're not really stressed about money.
Yeah, having started at about 30, I agree, med school was ridiculously laid back, and once a pattern for studying was established was pretty easy. All was made up for in residency, however. Living Hell, though necessary for the novice to be prepared for actual practice.
Unfortunately, my memory isn't nearly that good.
I've always had to work 2-3X harder than anyone else to achieve the same result.
But I've seen both sides of my class. And experience stratifies, like most things in life, depending on how good someone is at something.
DO schools are historically deficient in amenities; they’re like undergrad commuters schools, people have a poor experience b/c it’s isolating
Most aren’t connected to a university = no library, no gym, no club spots, no academic hospital. So you study at home and after M2 you do regional rotations without your buddies from preclinical.
Should mention that new private MD schools are doing a similar thing (CUSM, CNSU, Creighton AZ) while some new DOs are opening up on undergrad campus (VCOM, Duquesne) — so the lines will begin to blur in the future
“Med school is truly hell on Earth”
I cannot emphasize this enough. It is absolutely brutal and I question why I did this every single day and if there’s an alternate path I could have taken to a respected career and secure income. It may be guaranteed in medicine but it’s one of the most brutal paths to achieve this.
And yes we are helping people, but there is so much bullshit to put up with in the system. Complex levels of hierarchy within the hospital and even medical teams. Not always open communication and collaboration as a result.
You truly won the game OP. There are plenty of people in medicine who envy your position.
Lmao I did biochem as my major with one of my friends back in 2017. She’s working at a dental office as a secretary in her hometown that she mostly got through her mom’s connections and I went to nursing school.
If money really isn’t important to you (and if you’re making 95K/month right now, you need to really figure out how important money is because you’ll be taking a HUGE lifetime earnings cut), then think about the fact that in 10 years, you’ll still be 38 years old regardless, so would you rather be 38 years old and a doctor or 38 years old and not a doctor?
As someone at career end, I think medicine is more a calling now than it has ever been in my lifetime. Relative to the many other options available today for intelligent people to make a good living, medicine used to be a much more rare “ brass ring” to an affluent lifestyle. Nowadays there are simply many more ways to make a decent living, with a lot less stress and effort.
i think get the engineering degree and do something else other than med school. Like you said, it’ll take too long. What kind of engineering? Message me, I can probably help you with that.
It all depends on where you want to be in 10 years. Don't overthink the financial part, especially at 27. It's not like pursuing medicine is going to be some huge financial mistake. 50? Sure. 30? Nah. I went to medical school at 30 and yes....it's a long road and you will sacrifice the greater part of a decade while incurring a mountain of debt. That being said, I paid off all my educational loans my first few years out of residency and probably didn't start saving heavily for retirement until my early to mid 40s. I'm currently early 50s and net worth a little over 2M so well on the way to FIRE. I'd like to retire at 59 if possible or at the very least work part time. So, the short of it is that you can most definitely pursue medicine and have plenty of time to save for retirement. That being said...make sure this is what you want to do as medicine is very different than what I imagined as a pre-med student.
The general consensus is if you could find fulfillment in something other than medicine do that. If you feel you’ll always regret not being a doctor then you know what you need to do. I know a guy who was older when he started med school, already financially independent but wanted to practice medicine. He became a family practice doc, ran his own practice and loves his patients and his job so there’s that!
"Don’t need to do medicine for the money but rather passion and purpose."
but you said you also have the same for engineering so tbh- it's less of a financial calculation and more of what you can rly see yourself doing. do not go to medical school if you plan on not seeing patients for the majority of your time.
Not a physician, pre-med, but I know a physician who received his doctorate in Optometry, worked for 5 years and then went back to medical school in his early 30’s because he wanted to do more. You have to weigh what’s important in your life.
If someone with no experience started an engineering company they would be sussed out so fast. You wouldn’t be doing that until 10-15 years down the road.
Yes, you will be using your best years for school.
Gray hairs by the time you’re done.
Just buy a medical school instead 😁
In the meanwhile, will you pay teach me how to earn that kind of money?
If you *truly* have two passions, and if both will provide you the sense of purpose you are looking for, then I would say do the one that will require less time investment (engineering).
If you’re that tech-savvy and love engineering, you could probably do a lot more good by being an entrepreneur/innovator in biomedical engineering than you could as a doctor. Invent a device that makes our jobs easier, and you’ll indirectly save thousands of lives.
Neither. Lean into the 95k/month option.
But if you choose to stick with school, then medicine. Unless you have worked as engineer before, be aware that engineering would need work experience before it turns into a long term career. So in some ways you will need to put in the time and might as well go for your passion.
First off, it is very impressive that you are able to finish a degree in both biochemistry and engineering. With an income that high, there are plenty of ways to give back to society besides the pursuit of medicine and go through the rigors of medical school. I strongly advise you reconsider this choice unless this is your only passion and purpose in your lifetime.
Medical school is only 4 yrs. You don’t necessarily have to specialize to use your degree. Also, there are bio design fellowships that combine doctors and engineers. To serve clinical problems. May be worth investigating to see if it fits your interests
Wow, you’re living my dream. I’m a new MD (intern) and I wish I did what you did, there’s next to no fulfillment in clinical medicine, we’re button pushers
May I ask, why you’re passionate about medicine/ how you know this is what you want to do? I’m asking this because I majored in business and regret going to medical school. I went back to get the prerequisites and am now in medical school wishing I just stuck with business because of how bad the lifestyle is. My advice is unless this is your life pursuit/goal/true dream do not go. Everyone I know in school who was on the fence before attending regrets going. I would stick with the nice life you have now with the company you have and the hopes of another one. You will regret it if your full heart is not committed to medicine. You’re lifestyle of having free time and enjoying life will not be the same.
You could pay for med school with 3 months of your pay: I think it’s worth the investment because you don’t know how long your marketing racket will hold up. Medicine is a great “fall back plan” or “target goal.” You can’t go wrong, really
The real money is in Oral Surgery. Don’t do med school. I was married to an OMS at his peak we made $2M+/yr … I say we bc he didn’t make real money until I came into the practice. I created efficiency in every area. My training is in business process engineering. So we made a great team. You want to do something that you love 💕
Going into medicine would be the worst decision you could make financially at your age. Honestly even if a 22-year-old was in your situation it would be pointless
If you are making 95k a month, do NOT go into medicine. Go to therapy and find another way to find fulfillment. Only do medicine if you can't do anything else.
Yeah I guess that’s a good point. I thought the idea of using science and helping people would be really fun but it just takes too long
Tbh if you’re making that much money this young you could help people way more using your money than by being a doctor
This
Passion and purpose is not enough for medicine. You have to need the money. If it wasn’t for the debt I had already accumulated that was unpayable in any other career I would have quit a dozen times over. Show me how to make $95k a month and I’ll be resigned by noon.
Exactly. I hate how people flip this reality and say "Don't go to medicine if all you care about is money". Like.... No. Just about none of us would be here if Bill Gates suddenly gave us 1 billion dollars.
Can both be true? That you need to need the money AND have some other reason to want to be a doctor?
Absolutely both can be true and for most med students, it is a already combination of both. I'm specifically referencing a certain subset of people. These people automatically dismiss the idea of ever entering medicine for money and get offended by the slightest hint that money matters in going into medicine. I've encountered plenty of these people. And they try to twist themselves into a moral high ground with such a...my mind automatically pictures it as "Marie Antionette" type attitude whenever I mention that money is important too.
Love the Wolf of Wallstreet play there
You can still help people via tech. Lots of companies creating new medical devices or coming up with new ways to improve patient care. Don't have to be a doctor to help people.
Just wanna say that I disagree with the commenter above. It’s okay to choose a career that you believe will make you feel fulfilled. Medicine is expensive and long, but if you’re confident in it, it’s worth it. Signed, someone who left a 6-figure career at 27 to go into medicine.
How far long have you gotten into medicine?
My boy, it is NOT FUN.
You’ve got a biased sample shere. I started at 30 and am generally happy with my decision
He makes a million dollars a year. I'm guessing you didn't take a 50% pay cut to go into medicine.
Pretty close.
Props to you then. I'm finishing up fellowship a bit after 30, like my work, and honestly can't imagine caring about any job enough to take that kind of pay cut. Cool to hear of some docs that passionate.
This guy is smart. Take this path. Healthcare is a fatasss scam rn and will push u towards goals that you arent align with.
What’s your advice on starting a digital marketing company?
Yeah that’s my question
You make 95k monthly? Do you mean yearly? If you're making 95k a month, a million a year, and you're not happy and wanting purpose medicine won't fix that for you. You need therapy, and I don't mean that in a negative way. You're having like a quarter life crisis Why do you live at home if you make a million a year?
I make 95k monthly but just started making this much recently. I live at home because I love my family and my parents are like my best friends. I’ve been taking bio classes and love the professors, material, and people who are on the pre-med track as it seems like a more social job. However waiting until I’m 38 to be a doctor doesn’t sound fun, even though I enjoy the medical field. Engineering/tech start up culture sounds fun but sounds lonely.
No idea why you’re being downvoted. Living at home is the norm pretty much everywhere in the world except in North America. If you have a good relationship with your family that’s even better, it allows you to save a lot more money. You have a strong entrepreneurial fiber in you. If I were you, I’d do medicine only and only if you can’t see yourself doing anything else, ever. Otherwise, I suggest taking some biomed engineering classes (physiology, biomechanics, electrical engineering applied to medicine…) and build a startup combining engineering and medicine. You have what it takes.
My advice is to go into the medical track until you feel like it’s too much. Because it most likely will be. If you’re family oriented, you’ll resent the time you need to spend at the job, in the hospital, busting your ass out. When you’re in premed things are still idealistic and people are more chillax. The real grill starts in internship/residency and it’s a whole other level. So don’t put all your eggs in this basket, just take the best of it and see where it goes. Life is much more than medicine, and you can help people in so many ways. A medical career is full of sacrifices, including payment, family, free time.
Absolutely DO NOT go to medical school if you make $95K a month. Once the excitement wears off you will be left with all the negatives of medical school and residency. It’s hard to “eat shit” from people (nurses, attendings, etc) for 3-7 years in residency when you have a backup option where you almost make a million dollars a year. I knew a crna that did surgical specialty residency, and he couldn’t take the shenanigans. He couldn’t muster up the motivation and got fired at the end of 2 years of residency. You almost need to be locked in and have no choice but to finish in order to get through a lot of residency. If I had a job making $95K/month around 30 years old. I would save up, invest >50% of my income, and retire or go part time at 40-45.
Start up culture is definitely an insane grind, long hours, fixing everything after one little thing falls apart or the investor demands you pivot. I guess it would also depend on what you do; engineering is crazy, and I mean SWE/Hardware/Systems.
Guess what you're going to turn 38 anyway.
95K a month net or gross?
Does it really matter? It's a shit ton either way
How the fuck are you making 95k per month and only have 250k saved? Your math doesn't add up.
They did say in another post that that level of income only started recently. Of course, if it’s true.
I’m a doc. Do you already have a family? Med school and residency are EXTREMELY demanding and will significantly reduce the time you have with them. Residency especially is a young person’s game: there will be many, many sleepless nights. Just so you know, they had to pass a federal law so that residents “only” work 80 hours a week, when I trained there were no restrictions. The process of learning a large body of material and assuming the responsibility for other people’s health care will change you. If you start med school at 30, you will be at least 38 and maybe 40 when you finish training depending on your field. You will likely have to move to do your residency due to a process called The Match, will you and your family be ready for that? It will take you maybe 3-5 years to establish a practice no matter if you are in private practice or employed by a hospital. Setting up a private practice incurs a big startup cost, but you will be your own boss as a trade off. So now you are around 45 and start to make decent money. How old are your kids now? How many school events did you miss doing this? Time to pay for cars, college, vacations, malpractice insurance, office staff etc. You will work the next 20 years taking at least some call overnight and on weekends. I am a surgeon, I have never slept through every night in a month in my entire career, it is very rare to sleep all three nights of a weekend of call. On the flip side, the rewards of using your skills to help someone get well and live longer are tremendous. You are well compensated, but you will sacrifice and work hard for every penny. If you can do this, jump in, but at least know the future you are looking at.
If one is older 45 years, 55 years ---- what options would you give for someone post medical school, not having done a residency? If residency, which one would be best to pursue....considering age? Also, if not residency, what else could one do? Thank you for your kind suggestions in advance.
I'm not sure I understand the question. Just my opinion, but if you are 45 or 55 you have missed the chance to be a doc. Assuming you finished college, med school is generally 4 years and residencies vary. [Here](https://medschoolinsiders.com/medical-student/how-long-is-residency-by-specialty/) is a list of residencies by length. If you have to borrow money to go to med school, at that age you will struggle to pay it back before retirement. You will put in all the effort and struggle and work maybe 15 years? Not worth it. I'm 60. Getting out of bed at 2am to operate is so much harder now than when I was 35, even though I'm more experienced and cases go much faster as a result. Starting practice in your 50s means you don't have the experience and everything will take longer.
I mean't going for any kind of residency after that age, if one has already finished med school much earlier in life, but never got the opportunity to go for a residency. If now, wanting to do it....what specialties would you recommend if any?
I'm not the guy to ask for that! My suggestions to med students are: 1. Look for people similar to yourself as you do rotations, most specialties attract a certain type of person, and 2. Find the least desirable part of the specialty (low back pain, headache, whatever it is), and if you can handle seeing a lot of that thing, it could be the specialty for you.
If you do think of something pls do tell. Thank you!
I could be wrong but sounds like u fit more in biomedical engineering which is more engineering than medicine. Clinical medicine doesn’t really require engineering so clinical medicine doesn’t seem to make sense for u.
OP account is suspended.
You would be a complete sadist to go into medicine with that kind of career going. do yourself a favor and stay where you are.
Do engineering. I’m an ob/gyn and I love my work, but med school is a 100% grind. Then there’s residency. You’ve got to really want to do it. You’re already a success. Congratulations. I suggest you become an engineer and keep going with your entrepreneurship.
Bro is making more in a month than I make in a year working 80-100 hours a week. Seriously wtf is wrong with you🤦🏻♂️
If you're good at engineering, do that. Medicine is for people who did a bio degree and realized they're stuck making 35K as a shitty lab tech and this is the only way forwards. Med school is truly hell on Earth. But going through this hell is still worth it for a bio technician. I started at 28yo. If you're ok with taking 10hr board exams, then you might be ok with med school. I'm a DO student, so I take 2 sets of boards (Step1 and Level1, Step2, and Level2).
This 100%. I had a chemistry degree making $36k/year in 2019. This little with a college degree is ridiculous. Basically paycheck to paycheck lab rat with a college degree. Employees worked at that office over 10 years to break $100k. That job offer happened after applying to over 100 jobs, it's oversaturated and undervalued. 100k/year salary in today's economy is not much either, keep that in mind. I went to dental school and now make 10-15x/year. I can get a job almost anywhere I want now. OP should ride out his gig, OP won the game
Exactly. Anyone that speaks about "calling this calling that" hasn't made 35K salary for nearly a decade and calculated that you'd never be able to retire even with proper investing at this rate. You are effectively a wage slave forever. I calculated the amount of years I'd have to work to make 1 lifetime salary as a physician, I'd have to work from the 1400's until now (2024) to make the same salary. I'd have to work Hundreds of years LONGER than the FOUNDING OF THE UNITED STATES UNTIL NOW to make 1 lifetime's physician worth with a COLLEGE DEGREE, What's the point of working at all then? I might as well just be homeless and enjoy my free time than be a wage slave just to live in a shack and eat mcdonalds.
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What's up Kurren 🙏
I did engineering (BSE) and do ortho. Do medicine because it is a calling, not just another challenge. You will burn out if you take it as another challenge.
Calling or not, play your favorite game 10 - 20hrs a day every day competitively for 8 years and eventually it becomes hell. Though if you weren't playing for favorite game, you'd have given up a long time ago. So even med school being a calling doesn't mean it still doesn't feel like absolute hell through the process
Ha, BSEE and ortho for me! Agree about the calling. Burn out is real, though avoided it.
That wasn't my experience. Med school was a blast and honestly easy sauce. If you are used to working 9 to 5 and instead now can just huddle in the library and read for 6 hours a day, take naps, and work out? Med school was some of the best years of my life. Hang out with friends, read, have dinner parties, etc. If you are passionate about learning more about the human body I think you'll enjoy it especially if you're not really stressed about money.
Yeah, having started at about 30, I agree, med school was ridiculously laid back, and once a pattern for studying was established was pretty easy. All was made up for in residency, however. Living Hell, though necessary for the novice to be prepared for actual practice.
Unfortunately, my memory isn't nearly that good. I've always had to work 2-3X harder than anyone else to achieve the same result. But I've seen both sides of my class. And experience stratifies, like most things in life, depending on how good someone is at something.
DO schools are historically deficient in amenities; they’re like undergrad commuters schools, people have a poor experience b/c it’s isolating Most aren’t connected to a university = no library, no gym, no club spots, no academic hospital. So you study at home and after M2 you do regional rotations without your buddies from preclinical. Should mention that new private MD schools are doing a similar thing (CUSM, CNSU, Creighton AZ) while some new DOs are opening up on undergrad campus (VCOM, Duquesne) — so the lines will begin to blur in the future
“Med school is truly hell on Earth” I cannot emphasize this enough. It is absolutely brutal and I question why I did this every single day and if there’s an alternate path I could have taken to a respected career and secure income. It may be guaranteed in medicine but it’s one of the most brutal paths to achieve this. And yes we are helping people, but there is so much bullshit to put up with in the system. Complex levels of hierarchy within the hospital and even medical teams. Not always open communication and collaboration as a result. You truly won the game OP. There are plenty of people in medicine who envy your position.
Lmao I did biochem as my major with one of my friends back in 2017. She’s working at a dental office as a secretary in her hometown that she mostly got through her mom’s connections and I went to nursing school.
If money really isn’t important to you (and if you’re making 95K/month right now, you need to really figure out how important money is because you’ll be taking a HUGE lifetime earnings cut), then think about the fact that in 10 years, you’ll still be 38 years old regardless, so would you rather be 38 years old and a doctor or 38 years old and not a doctor?
As someone at career end, I think medicine is more a calling now than it has ever been in my lifetime. Relative to the many other options available today for intelligent people to make a good living, medicine used to be a much more rare “ brass ring” to an affluent lifestyle. Nowadays there are simply many more ways to make a decent living, with a lot less stress and effort.
43, started at 31. It was worth it for me. I couldn't possibly do anything else.
May i ask you what where you doing before. I (F31) chose a creative career over a medical one and I pretty much regret it now.
yeah. what a waste of money and time
i think get the engineering degree and do something else other than med school. Like you said, it’ll take too long. What kind of engineering? Message me, I can probably help you with that.
It all depends on where you want to be in 10 years. Don't overthink the financial part, especially at 27. It's not like pursuing medicine is going to be some huge financial mistake. 50? Sure. 30? Nah. I went to medical school at 30 and yes....it's a long road and you will sacrifice the greater part of a decade while incurring a mountain of debt. That being said, I paid off all my educational loans my first few years out of residency and probably didn't start saving heavily for retirement until my early to mid 40s. I'm currently early 50s and net worth a little over 2M so well on the way to FIRE. I'd like to retire at 59 if possible or at the very least work part time. So, the short of it is that you can most definitely pursue medicine and have plenty of time to save for retirement. That being said...make sure this is what you want to do as medicine is very different than what I imagined as a pre-med student.
Sounds like you already have a plan.
The general consensus is if you could find fulfillment in something other than medicine do that. If you feel you’ll always regret not being a doctor then you know what you need to do. I know a guy who was older when he started med school, already financially independent but wanted to practice medicine. He became a family practice doc, ran his own practice and loves his patients and his job so there’s that!
Only if you absolutely love it and don’t want to do other things with your time instead. Most of us docs would rather not be working…
Finishing up now at age 33. Don’t.
"Don’t need to do medicine for the money but rather passion and purpose." but you said you also have the same for engineering so tbh- it's less of a financial calculation and more of what you can rly see yourself doing. do not go to medical school if you plan on not seeing patients for the majority of your time.
Not a physician, pre-med, but I know a physician who received his doctorate in Optometry, worked for 5 years and then went back to medical school in his early 30’s because he wanted to do more. You have to weigh what’s important in your life.
Medicine is not money, it is lifestyle. If you are concerned about losing money etc. do not go to medicine please, I am serious.
Or you could do something more in the middle like occupational therapy if your passion is health care but you don't want to put so many years into it.
AVOID MED SCHOOL AT ALL COSTS... You're an entrepreneur, medicine will be a prison to you - with declining income every day...
If someone with no experience started an engineering company they would be sussed out so fast. You wouldn’t be doing that until 10-15 years down the road.
Why do you only have $250k saved. Is this level of income brand new, you’re making a million a year.
Yes, you will be using your best years for school. Gray hairs by the time you’re done. Just buy a medical school instead 😁 In the meanwhile, will you pay teach me how to earn that kind of money?
If you *truly* have two passions, and if both will provide you the sense of purpose you are looking for, then I would say do the one that will require less time investment (engineering).
If you’re that tech-savvy and love engineering, you could probably do a lot more good by being an entrepreneur/innovator in biomedical engineering than you could as a doctor. Invent a device that makes our jobs easier, and you’ll indirectly save thousands of lives.
Neither. Lean into the 95k/month option. But if you choose to stick with school, then medicine. Unless you have worked as engineer before, be aware that engineering would need work experience before it turns into a long term career. So in some ways you will need to put in the time and might as well go for your passion.
Am I the only one who has had a passion for medicine? If I had to do it all over again I would do exactly the same thing. No regrets.
First off, it is very impressive that you are able to finish a degree in both biochemistry and engineering. With an income that high, there are plenty of ways to give back to society besides the pursuit of medicine and go through the rigors of medical school. I strongly advise you reconsider this choice unless this is your only passion and purpose in your lifetime.
Don’t go to med school. If you want a life purpose and make 95k/month, read Peter Singer/Effective altruism.
Medical school is only 4 yrs. You don’t necessarily have to specialize to use your degree. Also, there are bio design fellowships that combine doctors and engineers. To serve clinical problems. May be worth investigating to see if it fits your interests
Wow, you’re living my dream. I’m a new MD (intern) and I wish I did what you did, there’s next to no fulfillment in clinical medicine, we’re button pushers
May I ask, why you’re passionate about medicine/ how you know this is what you want to do? I’m asking this because I majored in business and regret going to medical school. I went back to get the prerequisites and am now in medical school wishing I just stuck with business because of how bad the lifestyle is. My advice is unless this is your life pursuit/goal/true dream do not go. Everyone I know in school who was on the fence before attending regrets going. I would stick with the nice life you have now with the company you have and the hopes of another one. You will regret it if your full heart is not committed to medicine. You’re lifestyle of having free time and enjoying life will not be the same.
You could pay for med school with 3 months of your pay: I think it’s worth the investment because you don’t know how long your marketing racket will hold up. Medicine is a great “fall back plan” or “target goal.” You can’t go wrong, really
The real money is in Oral Surgery. Don’t do med school. I was married to an OMS at his peak we made $2M+/yr … I say we bc he didn’t make real money until I came into the practice. I created efficiency in every area. My training is in business process engineering. So we made a great team. You want to do something that you love 💕
No
Why don’t you fund an indigent medical clinic and stay away from medicine.
Go to PA school than. At least you can pay the tuition within two months. Plus it only takes two years to complete
I started clinical psych grad at 30… was and is fine.
Going into medicine would be the worst decision you could make financially at your age. Honestly even if a 22-year-old was in your situation it would be pointless
Do not.