Thread: Should I become a doctor just for the money?

I didn't know where to put this thread, you can move it if you feel necessary. So I heard that becoming a doctor for the money is not worth the effort, but is this really true? I mean the effort in getting a job with 150k+ salary is very difficult if you are going into other fields.

I've finished my undergrad in Biology and my only options are either to go to the carribean next semester or go to grad school and then to med school, which just seems to stretch the time to becoming a doctor to ridiculous lengths. I've never really enjoyed medicine, but when looking at other career paths, I've found that I primarily look at what the salary would be. Becoming a doctor would take 6 more years of schooling including residency, and going back to school to follow another career path would take a similar amount of time, but I would get a lower salary. If I were to be an economist for example, I would have to redo my bachelor's which would take 2 years, and then take 3+ years of grad school. And I would have to make it BIG in any field I was in to even reach the starting doctor's salary.

EDIT: I guess I could get an MBA, which would take 4 years tops, but meh for 2 more years of schooling/residency I would make more as a doctor I think.

All of the opinions above - craigslist's; I agree that it is not an issue of thinking about finances, but doing it for "JUST the money" as you put it. Time is also money and assuming you do medicine and are good at your job, regardless of your skill as a doctor, you will be well past your 30's before you start making those 100 or 200 K figures post-residency. Then you add the debt and payments (assuming you don't get a full military or NIH year for year repayment scholarship or something sweet-(er) like that) and you will be well into your late 40's or 50's before your money translates to wealth post loan repayment.

This is just the medical school and post-med years, as a pre-med you have to pull 70+ hour weeks doing research, job shadowing, volunteering, patient care, other extracurriculars on top of hard core science pre-req's to make yourself a competitive candidate in the 120+ medical schools in the U.S. Even though you're a Bio major, if you haven't done the other stuff, you still need to do it and might not get repaid for the pre-med investment for a long time depending on how long it takes you to get into med school (lots of applicants don't get accepted the 1st time) and finish it.

If you get a decent wage job at age 22-25, and invest at least 10-15% of your income in an S&P 500 non-stock involved investment rate (which has averaged ~10%) in the past few years, then compound interest, youth, and planning will do the same job for you that becoming a doctor and getting a doctor paycheck might or might not.

Short, Bottom line: if you want to ONLY want to make money, I can think of another 5 ways at least that are easier and less stressful than medicine.

Originally Posted by Craigslist

Because your handful of miserable people that i bet say to themselves, "Well atleast im not poor" is a great sample pool.

Sorry, but that makes no sense... (grammatically, or otherwise).

First off, they are not "my" handful of people, and I never opined that they say anything of the sort.

I find it intriguing that you have never met a miserable rich person. You have not yet met doctors who have made a ton of money and are on their third marriage with screwed-up kids and no life outside of the hospital? You have not yet met doctors who regretted their decision to go into medicine, or their particular specialty in medicine, despite an enviable income level?

Look, if money was the only thing that mattered, then it would be your guarantee of quality of life. That just ain´t so. If you haven´t seen that, then I honestly don´t know what to say about your sheltered existence to this point.

I do not think that money is a bad thing. Hell, money is awesome -- it is a lot easier to live with it than to live without it. I plan to make plenty of it. But I will gladly leave a significant portion of potential income on the table to have time for my family, dates with my wife, ice hockey, camping in the Alps, and fly fishing. Feel free to spend your entire life in the halls of medicine earning that paycheck, so you can drive home at night in a car that cost more than mine. I´m fine with that swap if you are.

You can love medicine all you want... it still doesn´t love you back.

Going into medicine solely for the money is probably the worst idea ever. You will be neck deep in debt by the end of medical school, followed by hell called residency (I haven't heard of anyone who has "enjoyed" residency) and then years of paying back your debt while doing tons of paperwork and fighting insurance companies to reimburse you. Save yourself the headache and go into another business.

Also--if you do decide to become a doctor, I hope you get a little more "interest" in medicine, because the last person I want treating me or my family is someone who has no interest in medicine and did it just for the money.

Absolutely not! A good salary is amazing, of course, but being a doctor is a great responsibility, you should have a real passion to help people and possess lots of skills and personal qualities to become a top specialist and make people trust you. If you want to apply for a doctor's position just because of the money, that would be unfair towards your potential patients who will expect to get quality health care and moral support (if necessary). You have to be empathetic, resilient, hard-working and do your best to help other people.