| Topic Name: |
life as a physician |
| Message Name: |
From a Wealthy Physician |
| Date Posted: |
03/20/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
I think when you are sitting in a position where the floor salary is $130K or higher if you are in a specialty, you forget that (or maybe never have known) that there is no floor for MBA's. If there is a floor, it might be something as low as $40-50K. When you view it that way, $130-$220K or whatever doesn't seem so bad.
The vast majority of the people I know who go into medicine do it because its stable, good money with a lot of prestige. Their parents tell them to do it, and these are often people who are speaking from long experience who know how difficult it is to make it big in other professions.
I think a lot of doctors mistakenly think that making it into med school and finishing the rigorous training means that they could have been huge successes in other fields, like business. This is definitely not the case. It may take a while, but eventually you'll discover that success in business is not about grinding and intellectual horsepower. It's more intangible, salesmenship, creativity, luck, connections. A lot of the most successful businessmen are not smart or hardworking, but have something else. Take our President, a man who intentionally works moderate hours but has been very successful.
The other myth is that doctors work a lot more than anyone else. If you are an investment banker, lawyer, high-level exec, etc... or a well-paid footsoldier in any of these professions, you are definitely expected to work 60+ hours per week just to keep your job, and have to keep it for, well, indefinitely. There is no equivalent of the 3 12-hour shift per week, ER physician, pulling in $200K in any other field.
Medicine can still provide a great life and that's why people are still breaking down the doors, trying to get into the field. If you don't want to work insane hours, don't become a surgeon. People become opthamologists, radiologists, dermatologists, etc... specifically for great lifestyle, high pay. It's not like all doctors work that hard. |
| Message: |
I'm a doctor. My wife's a doctor. We live well, as do most of the physicians we know.
Having said this, we would not be considered "wealthy"--at least not in Manhattan--if it weren't for family money. And no one in my family before me was a physician.
Our income from medicine is lucrative, by most standards, and pretty secure. But in most specialties, it doesn't approach the huge nets realized by the MD's of our parents' generation.
Most of the doctors we know drive mid-size BMW- or Lexus-type cars, a definite notch below the full-size Benzes that seemed to fade away in the 1990's. And the only MD I ever knew who drove a Rolls Royce (at least in public) was a ophthalmologist neighbor when I was a kid; he was eventually imprisoned for Medicare fraud.
It's true that our starting salaries were higher than most; it's also true that our incomes will probably peak during middle age, and that peak will likely be less than double our starting salaries. As an AMA member I should also add that it seems to be true that most published data re: mid-career physicians' incomes is, to say the least, conservative. (For instance, I've never met a 50-yr-old urologist who makes only $250K per annum.)
We have friends in law and investment banking. My trust attorney makes more in law than I do in medicine, but he's a partner in a big NY firm, and his job satisfaction is, well, waning by the year. I have a friend in his late 20's who made almost $500K last year as an investment banker. He made $300K last year, and he only has a BA. But most of his income was from generous sign-on bonuses, as he travelled the circuit of major banks which were courting young talent. There aren't that many more banks for him to transfer to, however, so it's unlikely that his windfalls will continue. And he's worried about the prospect of more lay-offs in the finance industry.
One trait seems to be pretty common among physicians: living right up to or beyond their means. After working so long and so hard for this career, an opulent lifestyle is often presumed the just reward--and as quickly as possible, please. Some physicians had parents who practiced in medicine's golden era; others came from rich families who wanted "the best" for their children; still others amassed the large debts one reads about while living rather meagerly as students and residents. Any of these scenarios can lead to conspicuous consumption, but it should be remembered that flash does not equal wealth. I think a lot of doctors out there appear much richer than they really are.
There are indeed risks assumed when practicing medicine. Malpractice is the most common, of course. And an alarming number of NY physicians lose their licenses each year for any number of reasons, many of them having nothing to do with the practice of medicine or the oft-cited "moral terpitude." Still, there aren't many MD's out there pounding the pavement.
All this is to say that, in my opinion, medicine is still a good career. It's more likely than not to be lucrative, it's stable overall, and it's certainly a necessary entity. And as most advanced countries with nationalized health care are rethinking their systems, it seems unlikely that medicine will ever truly socialize in America. We're no longer idolized, but we're well-respected. And while some studies have shown that female doctors sometimes have a hard time finding spouses, a male with an MD is usually considered pretty eligible.
But remember: I make most of my money the old-fashioned way, not from the practice of medicine.
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