Renumeration not that great actually

[NLengr]

Well I did a 55 week core clerkship (with electives and another core rotation yet to come) during which I received a stipend that admittedly lessened my debt slightly. How much call did you do in your internship? Any rounding at 6am? Overnights at the hospital 1-2 times per week? Just as long as we're comparing notes.

 

You're right that physicians do well. They (we) also pay taxes commensurate with that income bracket, even with incorporation.

 

Most people don't want to work 60 hours a week or deal with sick people or blood or any other bodily fluids.

 

 

 

No. I come from a smaller community that probably 95% of the people on this site. I live in a smaller city.

 

 

 

What other side of the coin? CaRMS couldn't even ensure their servers were working on match day, and a hundred odd people were told they hadn't matched when they had. Maybe you don't get what that means or why people would rightly resent spending $500 simply to apply for residency positions or having to spend thousands on electives and interviews.

 

 

 

I'm not in psych. I am not at all dissatisfied about future income, but I resent the opportunity cost of all the debt I'm servicing. Paying it off is comparatively trivial, but I'm clear why it's the expectation that we should graduate with debt levels 3-4 times the starting salary of PGY-1s.

 

A-Stark is saying things I completely agree with.

 

I think as people move through the system their opinion on debt and money changes quite a bit. When you are a resident taking home $3k a month, while spending a large portion of your salary to service debt or pay for exams, insurance, tuition, professional dues, on top of trying to pay for living and sometimes children, debt and money become huge issues.

 

Sure, you might be well compensated in the future, but when you are scraping by barely able to buy gas and groceries, while at the same time working 80+ hours a week including frequent holidays, evening and weekends in a high stress, dangerous, job where you are literally making life and death decisions, the the future money is cold comfort.

[The Ace of Spades]

deleted

[aaronjw]

A-Stark is saying things I completely agree with.

 

I think as people move through the system their opinion on debt and money changes quite a bit. When you are a resident taking home $3k a month, while spending a large portion of your salary to service debt or pay for exams, insurance, tuition, professional dues, on top of trying to pay for living and sometimes children, debt and money become huge issues.

 

Sure, you might be well compensated in the future, but when you are scraping by barely able to buy gas and groceries, while at the same time working 80+ hours a week including frequent holidays, evening and weekends in a high stress, dangerous, job where you are literally making life and death decisions, the the future money is cold comfort.

 

Simple solution: don't go into medicine

[PhoenixFlare500]

A-Stark is saying things I completely agree with.

 

I think as people move through the system their opinion on debt and money changes quite a bit. When you are a resident taking home $3k a month, while spending a large portion of your salary to service debt or pay for exams, insurance, tuition, professional dues, on top of trying to pay for living and sometimes children, debt and money become huge issues.

 

Sure, you might be well compensated in the future, but when you are scraping by barely able to buy gas and groceries, while at the same time working 80+ hours a week including frequent holidays, evening and weekends in a high stress, dangerous, job where you are literally making life and death decisions, the the future money is cold comfort.

 

I'm all for having a better reason than money to get into medicine, but it's totally true that sometimes, you just keep thinking about it to get you through sometimes, and I'm not even the one making life and death decisions yet.

[NLengr]

Simple solution: don't go into medicine

 

So basically your solution for residents concerned about servicing high levels of debt during residency is that they shouldn't have gone into medicine?

 

Unfortunately, it's a complex situation that doesn't fit well with your black & white simplistic point of view.

 

Congrats, you have contributed nothing to the discussion, although I suspect you are just trolling.

[aaronjw]

So basically your solution for residents concerned about servicing high levels of debt during residency is that they shouldn't have gone into medicine?

 

Unfortunately, it's a complex situation that doesn't fit well with your black & white simplistic point of view.

 

Congrats, you have contributed nothing to the discussion, although I suspect you are just trolling.

 

You know the stakes going into it therefore your consideration of this concern should be taken into account before embarking on this journey and if one doesn't like the high levels of debt then do something else otherwise silence the whining on debt servicing and opportunity costs, blah blah.

 

Explain what's so complex about the situation when you're aware of the variables before A) embarking into med school and choosing a residency program?

 

Sounds like people want their cake and eat it too.

[NLengr]

You really can't imagine the stakes until you're in it, as cliche as that sounds. You come back haunted.

 

I agree with Brooksbane, you really can't comprehend what you are getting yourself into.

[holiday1001]

it's true even after a year

[lalab]

Simple solution: don't go into medicine

 

I'm interested if this opinion will change once the person has kids and they are interested in medicine.

 

Would they help the kids out financially? Or will this opinion be maintained as it's the hard-lined stance that debt is part of the sacrifice one has to pay?

[aaronjw]

I'm interested if this opinion will change once the person has kids and they are interested in medicine.

 

Would they help the kids out financially? Or will this opinion be maintained as it's the hard-lined stance that debt is part of the sacrifice one has to pay?

 

When I have kids, I would help my children out financially with their undergrad studies (as long as they choose something which has a chance at earning them gainful employment after school). Anything after that is their responsibility. Undergrad, these days, is fairly precarious in terms of securing a decent job after school so I'm willing to shoulder some of the burden to help them out as a way of making that transition time less difficult.

 

There is no precariousness surrounding an MD/resident. They will be extremely well compensated once done so they deserve to own 100% of their debt load. If they are concerned about the debt load then they should be more particular about their residency options.

 

I paid 100% for my education myself through lines of credit and working. It was difficult and stressful but at the end of it I wasn't guaranteed a $200K job which made life even more difficult knowing upon graduation I'd have close to $40K to pay back. I'm not sure I would change anything though. It taught me a great deal about financial responsibility and what it means to be an adult and take care of your business.

[rmorelan]

I think there is a point when you have to stand on your one two feet - by the time you are in medical school as a rule you are at least 21. Average age of course much higher. You have the means to complete the training, you have means to pay that debit off when you are done and you can do all of this with relative easy compared to other areas. Even though I think we need to be very concerned with tuition rises as it biases people attempting to go into medical school I don't think the burden currently is particularly high.

 

I am not sure but it should be mentioned a lot of residents do more than merely pay the interest on the loan during residency - some actually take a reasonable chunk out of it as well. Just about priorities I guess.

[future_doc]

I think there is a point when you have to stand on your one two feet - by the time you are in medical school as a rule you are at least 21.

 

Not in Quebec where 18-19 year olds get into med school from Cegep.

 

And Sherbrooke medical school has an intake of 80% Cegepiens, so there the average age for sure would be under 21.

[apache]

yeah, honestly, that's too much money for most psychiatrists, there's a real inequality in merit and financial reward in medicine, many specialties are overpaid, and many get utterly screwed. In reality no one should care what your debt load is, I finally went to hard biological psychiatrist (as in someone you'd see on wikipedia somewhere) and confirmed why it's so easy for me to be so inanely persistant. I literally have to take gross ammounts of stimulants to slow my brain down, I normally think a million mile faster, and process multiple things at once (like I need to type this, listen to a complex beat and have a convo, I can't do one, otherwise I just zone out. But literally I've never met a psychiatrist besides one, who could keep up to a fraction, as in like a tenth of what info I have in my head, and I have info about way more than physiology, pharmacology, neural networks, research design, neuropsychological design, like I can rail things down from the inorganic chem, to the organic chem, the biochem, of everything, clathrin, kinesins, subunit receptors on different receptor sites, all the hard biosynthetic synthesis cascades of nutritional deficiencies you typically see, can rail off 5 biological tests for all sorts of mental disorder, I can't explain it, I never forget what I read, hear, read inanely fast, can tell all about psycho-genomics, name 30 relevant polymorphisms your family practitioner should know, can tell you all about endocrinology, the pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, standard deviations, receptor specificity, the epidemiology, economic impacts, even recite the whole history of north american drug law off the stop off my head, ditto with the dsm, lol, i read the entire patents of everything that's out know, 30 years ago, comming 5 years from now, every street drug, every drug not available here, know the hard receptor biology of pertinent otc supplements. I know the immunology of PTSD, ditto with the endo. It's like, I find it easy to work 80 hours a week, have fun for 40, get a paradoxical effect on stimulants, honestly my brain make up is just a combination of extreme improbabilities so I'm not even bragging, but I've nailed stuff in an hour and a half people have spent 5-20 years trying to fix, and this isn't a one time thing, it's pretty normal for me to just rail this off every day. But my neurobio makes stopping hard for me to stop, I don't get down really. don't feel anxious, can stay up long periods, I never really feel defeated, like I don't ever lose, because literally, when I get emotional about something, well lets justs say that my brain just doesn't get tired, as in, it never does cognitively, in fact it goes so fast I have to follow multiple things at once, but I usually end up going to sleep because of a headache. Yeah, I've also read thousands and thousands of pages, in each of medicine, law, psychology, philosophy, sociology and on, honestly, I think 250,000 would be a fair amount for me, and I met a shrink doing her CME credits at a coffee shop once, and after 2 hours of talking, she just asked me how do you have the motivation to know all this, you literally know more than anyone I've worked with, and yeah, she wanted me to tutor her in imaging and research methods. It's like, **** it, why should I bs, I may not know someones niche approach better than them, but I'm pretty close, and I know every niche of behavioural and/or neurosciences, down to psycho-dynamic therapy.

 

Honestly, I'm tired of whining from self-entitled people who think having an MD means they deserve a big check... most do, because the nature of their practice necessitates that they're held to the extreme standard of excellence we expect from any other profession making those kind of bucks.

 

Honestly, let's say my brain is so intense, I can do the work myself, rather than drop 200 g on legal rep, and not be kicked to the curb after 20 years of practice, sort of a first, and im soon to be 11-0, and these are all corporations, the rcmp, other people no one ever beats.

 

Honestly, why would you want to practice in a system of mental health/behavioural neuro, that limits you from using 75 percent of the treatment modalities, that doesn't even teach you or give you the resources to use, even if you were taught, biological testing to make much more precise diagnoses, in addition to requiring you to know everything.

 

If you want to get paid like a cardiologist, you have to work like one. That's why I'm doing a pst-doc in neuropsych + clinical with masters in RX, I don't want to be be the guy on the belt line that works to fast and makes the big collectivist union look bad because I really give a **** about what I like, and frankly, put in 3 times the work (yeah, medicine's a pay cut in fields where we place a glass ceiling on skill base) I can crack seven figures if I cared about money, working in the states, lol, I could just have fun suing doctors about minutia they don't even know exist but has a population pervelance high enough to warrant knowing about it, well, if you read 4-5 hours a day, and not the cme credit bull****, I'm talking genomics, case studies, biochem, thereapy, immunoneuroendocrinology... lol, like my buddy at the pool does delivery systems on a nanotech level, plus cell scaffolding research and design to prevent autimmune reactions in case stem cells are ever fully used in human treatment, and we talk basic chemistries affects all throughout, down to steric hindrance, van der wals forces, bond stability, everything, and i know organo-metalic chem too so were always giving each other ideas, and the people that gravitate me all seem to be at the top of thei field, probably because I'm a real person, and it's obvious I'm interested in whatever they do, which makes it just natural to takj to someone, so it's like, I'm not bragging, but in psych neuro, probabilistically you'll never even come close to my level, and I think 200 grand is a ton of money, and it's not even about the money, it's the fact that I spot the minute things that really screw with people's lives, it's like I can't be blissfully ignorant and believe my buddy who's on risperidone, and ssri, and rivotril for his bipolar is getting proper treatment. God, I could just make a killing doing ADHD, my doctor knows the world expert, and honestly I know more than he does by quite a bit. Personally though, I don't want to kill someone, I've seen enough negligence, lol, and we live in such a silly society where we like to compartmentalize roles, and use the medical times or whatever that monthly newspaper is to slam augmentary health providers.

 

In the end though, the boxes don't work, it's like yeah, I go to my GP, order my own panel, look at the results, and I teach my shrink, and honestly, every one of the 200 plus I've met about neurobio, and what they'll be doing on intuition and clinical skill, because we like to believe details and the big picture is too rduous and useless in treating patients, because no one gets to the point where they know everything, and can do stuff other people find intuitive, except they realize it;s not, because I can realize my entire though path process of commingto a conclussion, whereas others may think more non-verbally and can't, so we call it intuition, no, I'll name the fifth step in the nuclear modulation cascade pathway and how it relates to everything, and that's why I spot so many anomalies, and notice so many nuances people never think off, the god complex in some creates a self affirming confirmation bias. But honestly, it's like, yeah, it's ironic because I'm never certain because I see so many different underying possibilities, and my volume of info in my head is, without using hyperbole or trying to show off (I'm tired of faking the fact that my brain just thinks way faster than everyone else all the time, just so someone on here isn't like you're arrogant, I'm not, I haven't had a professor that didn't think I was a freak of nature after talking to me in private because they can keep up with me in their discipline, and when we shift topics, it's like I don't know why but I know that much in like 35 areas, and can link them all together. Even saying I don't know why, lol, that's bs, I know the whole epigenetic basis of rare events, that are known to specifically interplay with specific polymorphisms and anxious avoend attachment styles in youth, and complex ptsd, and ll of the neuroimmodulatory molecules which interplay to create paradoxical reactions. I also know the neuropsych of how dealing with a visual problem allowed me to hhabituate my auditory and spoken language skills and interpretation where the latent inhibition many people have with auditory stimuli that keeps less complex verbal cognition from being processed at higher cortical levels, simply because it would be overwellming, becomes an advantage to me, cause I have more higher corticol auditoryinput, and instead of being overwhemed I can process it all. I also use my verbal working memory, those temporal lobes, which functionally uts me from like the 20th percentile you see when you focus on giving stimulants simply to deal with the much less reliable, and inter-event-specific induction of retrieval of repeated informational clusters causing schematization, verbal working memory also served as my short term memory when my vision treatment killed that, until pharma releases an inverse agonist for the subreceptor on the allosteric site responsible for casing that and packages it toa sppoth delivery system so they can jack the price pentuple, just like they do with most acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, which were nostly invented in hungary in the 40s and can be found in high end nutrition stores... yeah, people think I like to rant and stuff, but I just like to write, they don't also realize that I likely think verbally 3-9 times as fast, so this doesn't take long for me.

 

If you want to do psych do a combined res in neuro and psych in the states, or do behavioral neuro in the states, cause if you're really good, you get screwed for pay here, if you're anti-establishmentarian, and scary scary good, then people attempt to suppress you, only to fail, and honestly it's just a big pain and waste of time, because yeah, imagine I could keep thinking clearly and writing like this for 14 hours, cause I could, you sort of get the picture that it's a waste of time because I'd rather have free time, plus you'll lose anyways, and I can be reactively aggressive, and as much as I'm the nicest guy in the world, if you force me to retaliate, you've already dug yourself in such a rabit hole, because you've probably failed a few times and realized your reputation now prevents you from turning back, which means I, for my own livelihood, have to waste 500 hours on whoever, and they get screwed, inofar as life is tit for tat, I don't hold grudges, but when you take enough, I take it back, because even though my limits for retaliation are so extreme it could be called delterious, they do exist, and honestly, unless you want to pay your top lawyers 200 hours times the three of them, you're still going to lose, I've read enough for a law degree and a half, have superior knowledgebase, and the vocabulary and detail orientedness which is uncharacteristic from a big picture thinker becaue I see how everything is intertwined... essentially, you can't buy my head or my intrinsic motiation, just luck, so eventually you realize I'm not worth fighting and the person who's the real nuissance is anyone who'd have someone do anything which puts them in the way of my goals in life, which

I know are rather grandiose seeming, but on the other hand I never cared about A's, impressng people, so working triple the hours is a pleasure, not even difficult, and the motivation is very emotional, and it's obvious at some point that I'm not nuts, I just want to do more anthropocentric things with my life, because that's what makes me like work and life, and with that comes a motivation which builds an extreme skill set with much less forced suffering of studying so to speak.

 

So short answer, do psych in the states, be really good at it, and you'll make a lot of money. But start studying 80 hours a week now, and doing the whole social life thing too. Yo could always do cardio, and plastic surg on burn victims, even gen IM, those guys make good money, and deservedly so. How abut neurology, it's easy to match into, because people think it's hard, funny party is I think it's easy because I can only think in terms of connecting things and knowing the whole picture, minutia that's cld retrieval kills me, see, it's so much a better brain, but we're all suited to different things, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses are important, honestly, I'm way to ADHD to do any kind of surgery , U'd like go nuts standing there, precisely cutting for long periods, just not the way my brain works, and I can even explain verbatim the differntial dimer we have in our striatum which leads to a different cause of the endpoint release of endogenous enkephalins, I'd explain, but even confused my ADD specialist psych, who thinks GABA is always inhibitory, it's funny, in early development glutamate is, and GABA excitatory, but certain cellular signalling reverses that, so gaba can be excitatory in very few circumstances, lol, it can also be involved in long term potentiation, the receptor that is, the other one GABA-B, not GABA-A, but don't worry, not many people know that, lol.

 

I've been doing some research into renumeration of physicians in Canada. I would consider living in British Columbia or continue to live in Ontario. Big city.

 

Renumeration as a psychiatrist for example is on average 180 000. That's not a lot considering the debt load I will have (let's say 200 000, including debt from student loans from undergrad).

 

Is this why people are focussing on a specialty with great renumeration? I honestly do not blame them!

[apache]

my psychiatrist topped 700 k one year, only 300 public billing, and she works crazy hours, on average she does around 400 k or so, around 200 k - 250 k or so from the gov. honestly, she just does private work because she spends 2.5 hours with people and will only build your typical one hour session, but yeah, there's innumerable private means of earning substantial income in certain specialties. Even clinical psychologists have a forensics post doc or a neuropsych post doc can make 500 k doing legal work if theyre sharp, 60 percent comming from the latter, in addition to assesment. You can also do consulting on psychometric testing for companies... as a psychiatrist you can hire a multidisciplinary health clinic, with a psychologist, some counsellors, a dietician, do a little boutique thing, which actually improves patient care, plus yeah, I know another psychiatrist that does hard biopsych, does imagine, eeg, full bio workup, neuropsych assessment. Does a whole endo, neuro, standard blood panel, yeah, he bills for interpreting that.

 

Hey!

 

I've also seen the stats on how much psychiatrists make and I was curious, so I asked someone (a physician, albeit not a psychiatrist)! Apparently, psychiatrists do a lot of work in the private sector. The salary listed is for solely public sector work. That income could easily be supplemented and most psychiatrists end up earning roughly what someone in a "better remunerated" specialty might earn.

[Lonney]

dafuq muse

[apache]

It's simple, you're job has consequences, people's lives are in your hands, the fact that you got a 4.0 in your BSc doesn't mean anything. If you want to get paid equivocally in dollar value to what people in non non billing code, unionized disciplines make (I call it the real world) you should be in the same percentile of excellence as the latter would be in their discipline, there's no such thing as CEO school, there's get the job done if you want the good pay. In medicine, it's moreso to me, because people suffer or die, if you dont know everything, ask my five friends who've commited suicide due to gross psychiatric errors, or my other two friends who became grossly psychotic, one of whom lost his ability to get a professional designation after nearly finishing their degree, the later lost two years of their life, and is a pre-diabetic... fully functional, no longer psychotic, and with a 4.0 in their last two degrees.

 

Like Aaron said, you can't have your cake and eat it too, most medical disciplines have checks and balances which ensure physicians meet that standard of excellence, because it's easy to backtrack and objectively see sloppy work, or incompetence, which holds doctors accountable. I don't worry about my general surgeon or radiologist not being held accountable because it's far more concrete as to the fact that they're incompetent, which is more rare, because if you underperform in residency, it's obvious, and concrete, hence why I think their is an inequitable distribution of pay, rather than a general overpayment to physicians, some specialties are underpaid, and some are grossly over, or should be paid more n say a national health service based model, because it's more nebulous to extrapolate competence and efficacy, if not for high population sample outcomes.

 

dafuq muse

[NLengr]

I think there is a point when you have to stand on your one two feet - by the time you are in medical school as a rule you are at least 21. Average age of course much higher. You have the means to complete the training, you have means to pay that debit off when you are done and you can do all of this with relative easy compared to other areas. Even though I think we need to be very concerned with tuition rises as it biases people attempting to go into medical school I don't think the burden currently is particularly high.

 

I am not sure but it should be mentioned a lot of residents do more than merely pay the interest on the loan during residency - some actually take a reasonable chunk out of it as well. Just about priorities I guess.

 

Priorities is bad word for it. Circumstances is a better one.

 

Some residents are very fortunate/lucky. They may have a partner with a well paying job, or parents who helpd them out, or a large amount of money at the start of medicine (so they required less loans). They may be lucky enough to live in a city where they don't need a car, or where housing is very cheap.

 

Other residents may have more difficulty. They may be single, have one income for two people, have a family or sick relative to support etc.

 

Circumstances are frequently out of your control & you deal with it as best as possible. The ability to pay down loans is more related to luck/good fortune vs. prioritization much of the time.

[NLengr]

It's simple, you're job has consequences, people's lives are in your hands, the fact that you got a 4.0 in your BSc doesn't mean anything. If you want to get paid equivocally in dollar value to what people in non non billing code, unionized disciplines make (I call it the real world) you should be in the same percentile of excellence as the latter would be in their discipline, there's no such thing as CEO school, there's get the job done if you want the good pay. [\b]In medicine, it's moreso to me, because people suffer or die, if you dont know everything, ask my five friends who've commited suicide due to gross psychiatric errors, or my other two friends who became grossly psychotic, one of whom lost his ability to get a professional designation after nearly finishing their degree, the later lost two years of their life, and is a pre-diabetic... fully functional, no longer psychotic, and with a 4.0 in their last two degrees.

 

Like Aaron said, you can't have your cake and eat it too, most medical disciplines have checks and balances which ensure physicians meet that standard of excellence, because it's easy to backtrack and objectively see sloppy work, or incompetence, which holds doctors accountable. I don't worry about my general surgeon or radiologist not being held accountable because it's far more concrete as to the fact that they're incompetent, which is more rare, because if you underperform in residency, it's obvious, and concrete, hence why I think their is an inequitable distribution of pay, rather than a general overpayment to physicians, some specialties are underpaid, and some are grossly over, or should be paid more n say a national health service based model, because it's more nebulous to extrapolate competence and efficacy, if not for high population sample outcomes.

 

CEO's frequently run companies into the ground and still get bonuses and a huge golden parachute.

[apache]

True, and I feel the same way about the fact that corporations are treated as legal entites, when there's such gross neglegence to obviously constitute malignant intent, or careless risk to such an extreme extent that you bankrupt people, you should face criminal charges, period. That's a different issue though, lol

 

CEO's frequently run companies into the ground and still get bonuses and a huge golden parachute.

[bloh]

Oh hey, another thread with a lot of preclerks and nonmedical students brushing off the exorbitant debts that residents and staff physicians have to deal with.

 

Don't worry, in a few years you'll come around.

[dagobear]

If they are concerned about the debt load then they should be more particular about their residency options.

 

Uhm I thought the whole vitriol towards me was that I am doing exactly that, and openly expressing this.

[dagobear]

Oh hey, another thread with a lot of preclerks and nonmedical students brushing off the exorbitant debts that residents and staff physicians have to deal with.

 

Don't worry, in a few years you'll come around.

 

Well I'm sweating bullets since May 14th of this year.

 

Let's say I come in with 200K debt, as an attending monthly income net being 7K. I'd have to pay 2K towards the loan for 10 years to be in the clear, roughly speaking.

 

5K a month for my kids and living expenses. Let's say I live in Vancouver and the rent is obnoxious at 1.5K for a 3BR apartment in Vancouver proper.

 

So that leaves me with 3K for food, entertainment, and kids. Let's say I want 3 kids. Especially since there'll be babysitters needed, music lessons, swimming lessons, camps, maybe even a special school.

 

That's going to be doable but tight. Especially if I want to save some towards retirement.

[ihategunners]

Well I'm sweating bullets since May 14th of this year.

 

Let's say I come in with 200K debt, as an attending monthly income net being 7K. I'd have to pay 2K towards the loan for 10 years to be in the clear, roughly speaking.

 

5K a month for my kids and living expenses. Let's say I live in Vancouver and the rent is obnoxious at 1.5K for a 3BR apartment in Vancouver proper.

 

So that leaves me with 3K for food, entertainment, and kids. Let's say I want 3 kids. Especially since there'll be babysitters needed, music lessons, swimming lessons, camps, maybe even a special school.

 

That's going to be doable but tight. Especially if I want to save some towards retirement.

 

Lol and you magically created those kids with a spouse who has ZERO income to contribute, right?

[dagobear]

Lol and you magically created those kids with a spouse who has ZERO income to contribute, right?

 

My partner is a writer. So potential income hard to predict.

[rmorelan]

Well I'm sweating bullets since May 14th of this year.

 

Let's say I come in with 200K debt, as an attending monthly income net being 7K. I'd have to pay 2K towards the loan for 10 years to be in the clear, roughly speaking.

 

5K a month for my kids and living expenses. Let's say I live in Vancouver and the rent is obnoxious at 1.5K for a 3BR apartment in Vancouver proper.

 

So that leaves me with 3K for food, entertainment, and kids. Let's say I want 3 kids. Especially since there'll be babysitters needed, music lessons, swimming lessons, camps, maybe even a special school.

 

That's going to be doable but tight. Especially if I want to save some towards retirement.

 

Ok, let's go with that example - First off it assumes any potential partner earns absolutely nothing. That could be true certainly - but is a relatively rare situation now a days. You also happen to be selecting more than the average number of children which is a bit less than two on average - but dealers choice

 

Next 7K a month is next 84K a year net. That is at the effective tax rate of 30.2% on 125K salary - I am using the 2012 rates for Ontario if anyone is curious. I am assuming the government corrects the dividend vs salary differential that they promised and took steps to do in the last budget.

 

edit - the rate for BC is actually 28.5% on 125K so you are actually better off than my numbers suggest.

 

Now that is is really on the low end end for a doctor - Unless that doctor is leaving a lot in their corporation for the future - if so that resolves that entire retirement problem you mentioned. Even the lowest ball family doctor income thrown around on the forum - say about 225K at a relatively high operating cost of 30% overhead is about 160K a year. So you would be saving 35K or so in the corporation still for retirement. Saving roughly 20-25% of your gross income is pretty good numbers for retirement. A lot better than most.

 

This is the scenario when we are taking everything possible at pretty much worst case - and since you would be single income family that is yet concerned about income there is little reason for you to operate at worst case. Overhead can be reduced quite a bit (say to 20% which is not uncommon for a group practise), practise income can be increased relatively easily, spouses do often work, your loan will eventually vanish, you selected to start with the maximum possible LOC you could have, which would be rare, you are choosing to work and live in basically the most expensive city in the country, there are a bunch of other tax savings through your corporation, we haven't even started on what happens if you are working in perhaps another specialty, you will have considerable working life after you children leave.........

 

You know the funny thing about all this I find is that doctors of course have and are living quite well all around us. The numbers are reassuring but not as much as just seeing everything work. I know I was involved a bit more than most in student politics and thus was often at the homes various doctors but through that I have seen how it works - it is a pretty good life you know