Financial independence has become the new buzz word for the elite. The idea of having enough money to quit your job and still live the way you’d like is something most people would love to experience.
However, as a medical student, I felt completely lost on the subject.
How could I, a person with nearly $200,000 in student loan debt, even begin to think about financial freedom, investments, or retirement plans when I had no job and was still in school?
Truth is, I had to start somewhere. I simply couldn’t afford not to.
The more I waited to educate myself on money management, the longer I would spend making bad financial decisions that could dig me deeper in debt and delay my life of prosperity.
Things needed to change ASAP.
The thing that really got me going was my decision to become a general family medicine doctor before specializing in sports medicine.
While being a doctor may sound like a lucrative job to many outsiders, those within the actual field will tell you much differently.
Family medicine is one of the lowest paid medical specialties. When you add in the massive medical student debt (close to $200,000), the seemingly endless years you spend in medical school in which you can’t work (4 years), and the years of residency (aka your first years as a physician) in which you are paid a government salary of around $60,000 (for 3-7 years), becoming a general practitioner doesn’t sound all that appealing or lucrative. It certainly won’t get you rich.
Although it’s true that after our 3 years of residency, the pay increases substantially, the average doctor is still hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and has to find some way to pay off those loans while still paying for basic necessities.
So even though I won’t exactly be living a life of poverty, achieving wealth (and avoiding more debt) would take some serious work and planning.
How are things looking on your end?
Whether you’re a budding physician like me or in some other career field, it may be time to take a look at your finances and start thinking of a plan. If you aren’t sure where to begin that’s okay. You can use my blog as a starting point.
Let me teach you some of the basics and point you in the right direction of where to go from here.
Are you ready to become money savvy?