Originally posted by pimpfromdayone
two words: medical degree.
You are indeed naive.
Lets break this down step by step-- here are just some of the obstacles that you will have to jump over to make it big as a medical doctor these days:
1. School. Lots and lots of expensive school. You have college and then med school. If you're starting college now, be prepared to devote roughly the next 10 years of your life to education.
2. After you get out of med school, you're going to have to find a job at a hospital or clinic, and even when you do that, you're going to be in the minor league for a few years where you will be paid less. Why? Simply b/c you are fresh out of med school and are relatively inexperienced. why should a hospital pay a newcomer as much as an experienced veteran doctor? This isn't communist Russia, here you have to pay your dues and prove your worth. It will probably take you at least 10 years to gain the reputation you need to move up the pay ladder.
3. Malpractice insurance. Suppose you fvck up one day, and your scalpel slips. Now you have a lawsuit on your hands, and a very pissed off patient is going after everything that you have. We are talking huge liability here. if you're smart, you and the other doctors you work with will form a corporate entity to provide some liability protection, but it still won't be enough. Malpractice insurance is
EXPENSIVE. You have to have it or you could lose everything.
4. Taxes. Doctors are not typically self-employed, they generally work for some hospital or clinic. Doctors are therefore employees--- highly paid employees, yes, but employees nonetheless. Being an employee gives you very few tax shelters compared to the shelters you get with some basic real estate investing. The people who are employees in the upper income bracket routinely get hamered by high taxes, and there's not much they can do about it.
Long story short-- does being a doctor still sound like a good idea? You will be hemmoraging money during med school (tuition and other related costs) , and right into your career (malpractice insurance and tax). If you still want to be a doctor, go for it, but remember that these days, doctors are in it to help people, not for the money. If you want ot become rich, thinking you are going to do it with a medical license is going to make you waste several decades of your life before you finally figure it out. Even the highest paid doctors are not truly financially independent if they have no other investments (besides stock) -- if they were to quit working, their financial situation would deteriorate rapidly before long.