Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments High school and busy work

I work in IT, and yeah, you can get to 100K with 5 years' experience, depending on the local market. In places where there's a high cost of living, that's certainly attainable.

But 250K with 10 years' experience? No.

500K as a manager? No.

60 hour work weeks? Possibly, at times. It depends on whether you're working on a time-sensitive project, or if you're doing consulting. Otherwise, if you're consistently working 60-hour weeks, you're not doing it right.

The "bill" that people get doesn't reflect what the doctor gets. A bill for $138 doesn't mean either that the insurance company gives the practice $138- often it is $50 or less.
When I worked at our local university/medical school, the bill for an ablation that I did was $100,000. Wow! I got maybe $300 for my 3-4 hours of work. I have no idea where that $100,000 went.
My point was simply that, like most fields, being a doctor isn't as lucrative as it might look or as it was in previous years. My friend's son is going to a private medical school in NY- it's $75,000 a year! For 4 years. That's alot of money to pay.

You can pay it back pretty quickly, though. It took me 4 years to pay off $120,000 back in 2000-ish, and that was with an $80K starting salary. You just send your entire salary to Sallie Mae. I think I was paying them off at a rate of $3,000+ per month.

So there are two threads in one here? One is about busy work, and the other is about the personal finances of physicians?

Overall, medicine is friendlier than law. In medicine, you seem to make partner. In law, unless you somehow figure out how to sell and market, you're out on the street, so to speak, after 7-10 years. Plus, law has a much more severe pyramid structure. Last I checked (about 5 years ago), equity partner at one of the larger firms was requiring $2,000,000 in billable value. Less than that and No Soup For You.

Doctors have been much better at limiting supply, which increases the strength of the guild.

If I went into medicine, cardiology is already off my list of specialties. It's pretty high-stress. I've already represented one cardiology burn-out who was nearly dying from the stress.

Also, with respect to the actual content of this thread, I agree with Dude.

Right, I know that. As I noted, my insurance paid something like $25 per kid and the doctor's office billed the remainder to me. I work in the medical field, so I know that there are some write offs for agreements w/ insurance cos, but in this instance, the dr's office got nearly $300 for 15 mins of work btwn what my insurance paid and what I am paying. I know that covers office staff, supplies, insurance, etc., but it is still a good pay rate.

Back on topic, though, since I am the OP and someone else did bring up the original issue. We're going to try to make it through this year and, if things aren't better as the year goes on, consider something different for next year. I want her to give it a fair shake and see if it is going to be this much in terms of quantity long term. She's holding up grade wise and mostly emotionally for now. We took last night off and went to a concert and I'm trying to work with her on balancing life with school.

lol

We can talk about the IQ of physicians, too!

10th percentile - 105
90th percentile - 133 (?)

The most intelligent of all the professions!

http://sq.4mg.com/IQ-jobs.htm

Wisconsin men only.

Note: Intelligence may vary outside of Wisconsin. Void where prohibited.