Did you know that 50% of doctors said if they could choose again they wouldn’t choose to be a doctor? If you’re thinking about becoming a doctor, you should know the true cost of becoming a doctor so you can make an informed decision.
Table of Contents
Why do many people want to become a doctor?
It’s many people’s dream to become a doctor. And if you ask them, they’ll generally give you the following reasons:
- To help people
- Love science and medicine
- Doctors make a lot of money
- Doctors get lots of respect
- Exciting and never dull
- Job stability (Not true, many nonemergency room doctors got fired during Covid)
- Establish meaningful relationships
- It’s one of the hardest things to do in life, one that offers a tremendous amount of pride for accomplishing it
- To prove intelligence
- To show someone who doubted them wrong
- To make parents proud
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How much do doctors make?
If you look at some of the highest-paid occupations, a lot of them are in medicine. Depending on the specialty, doctors make different amounts but typically as a doctor, you can expect to earn between $150,000/year — $500,000+/year.
One of the highest-paid types of physicians is an Ophthalmologist, they deal with surgeries relating to the eyes. They can make $1500 for a 15-minute surgery. They make an average of $200k per year.
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How do you become a doctor?
In order to become a doctor, you’ll have to:
- Get a high school diploma
- Get a bachelor’s degree
- Take the MCAT and score high enough to apply for medical school
- Pass 4 years of medical school
- Get matched into a residency program. Not everyone gets matched so you may have to try again next year.
- Pass residency (3–8+ years) This is when you train in the specialty of your choice
- Continue to take exams every 1–2 years to prove that you are fit to be a doctor
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How much does it cost to become a doctor? How much is the tuition?
An average medical school student pays $35k per year in tuition for medical school. International students pay $90k per year in intuition.
The total amount paid in tuition can range from $150k to $250k for all 4 years.
Those who study at the Caribean Medical schools typically graduate with $300k in debt.
You also have to add on the interest that you’d pay over the years. In total, you could pay half a million just to get your MD diploma.
You should also take into account how much money undergrad costs and the interest that would accumulate on that as well.
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The true total financial cost of becoming a doctor
Some doctors who own their clinic instead of being hired by a hospital can earn $2–4M or more per year.
The true take-home pay of a doctor
However, there are some costs you should consider that drastically impacts how much a doctor makes:
- Tuition: $500k (include all the interest to be paid by the time they are done paying)
- Insurance: Up to $70k/year (If you’re dealing with people’s lives, you’d expect to pay a lot in insurance)
- Personelle cost: $150K-300k+/year (If you own your own practice and hire receptionist, nurses, cleaning crew, etc)
- Equipment: $10k-30k/year
- Electricity: ??
- Loan to open the clinic: ??
- Exam: ??? You’ll have to get retested every few years and it’ll cost you money to do so
- Books: ??? You’ll need to spend money on books, access codes, apps, every year even as you become a fully licensed doctor
- Taxes: $30k+/year
You’ll be paying a lot more in taxes as a doctor compared to a business owner who makes the same amount of money you do
Missed out potential income
You also have to take into account the money you could’ve earned had you chosen another career.
A programmer who graduated at the same time as you could be earning $60k-100k+/year straight out of undergrad.
Someone who went to 2 years of community college straight out of high school could be earning $50k/year when they’re done with their schooling. At which point, the premed student is still getting their Bachelor’s as they enter the third year of undergrad.
$50K/year X (4 years of medical school + 2 years that you were still in undergrad) = $300k of missed income. Assuming if a person makes $50k/year without getting any raise.
All the while, you’d be incurring debts and interests. You may also need to take out more loans to fund your lifestyle, pay for your rent, feed yourself, put gas in the car, etc.
You’ll also be $150k-250k in debt from medical school tuition when you graduated medical school. That doesn’t include the debt from undergrad.
You’re already $500k behind compared to someone who makes $50k per year after spending 2 years at a community college by the time you’re done medical school at age 25
Missed opportunity in the housing market
Houses are getting more and more expensive. For the past several years, there has been a steady 10%-18% year-over-year rise in housing where I live.
A person who makes $50k/year could buy a property 6 years into their career assuming they are able to save up $10k per year in the past 6 years. They’ll have 60k saved up for the downpayment on a house and the closing cost. They’ll be able to afford a small condo worth $350,000 at a $50k/year salary.
Let’s be conservative and assume that each year, the property goes up in value by 5% each year.
350,000 x 1.05 ^ 4 = $425,427
The condo they bought for 350k will be worth $425k 4 years later. At which point, you had been making $50–80k/year as a residence training doctor working 50–120 hours a week for the past 4 years. You’re nowhere near paying off your student loans and you most likely haven’t saved up enough to buy into the already hot housing market.
Now, there’s a possibility that the housing market could collapse but no one knows when that will happen. Your friend could luck out and buy at the crash while you’d still be in school or be out of school but haven’t saved up enough to cash in.
Missed opportunity had you invested
Your friend who makes $50k/year can also choose to invest in the stock market. With an average annual return of 8%-10% of index funds, if your friend invested $500/month at the start of their career, their investment would grow to $46k by the time you’re done medical school and start making $50k/year in residency.
Below is a screenshot of what your friend would have when they retire at the age of 67 after they invested $500/month starting at age 19. She’d have $3.37M!
If you retire at the age of 67 and start investing $500/month at the age of 25 after you graduated medical school and start earning in residency, you’d have $2M.
You’d have to invest $820/month starting at age 25 to catch up to your friend who started investing $500/month at age 19.
Remember, we’re assuming that your friend never gets a raise and never invests more than $500/month. There are other jobs out there that pay you $100k/year or $200k/year (ex. programmer, engineer) straight out of undergrad and those people can invest a lot more per month. They also don’t have to get through a costly 8 extra years of school and training to make that amount of money.
In total
You see, doctors don’t make as much as you think when you take into account how much they’d have to spend on insurance, paying student loans (with interest), taxes, etc.
Not to mention the opportunity from the money you could’ve earned had you chosen another career, bought a house sooner, invested sooner, etc.
It’s not about comparing your life with someone else but it does give you an honest financial look at what you’ll be missing if you choose to become a doctor.
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What you’ll be giving up as you become a doctor
Aside from the money that you’d be spending to become a doctor, there are other things you’d be giving up as well.
Money had you chosen other careers
You’d give up the money that you could have earned if you chose another career.
Romantic relationship
You’d be giving up the time that you could use to start and maintain a relationship. A lot of people only start to date after they finish medical school and realized just how much fewer options are available to them now. A lot of good partners do get chosen in their early or mid-20s.
Even if you do manage to get into a relationship in undergrad, it’d be hard to maintain the relationship with medical school going on. As if it wasn’t hard enough to maintain your relationship in undergrad already.
Non-romantic relationships
It’s not just the romantic relationship that takes a hit. You’d also have a lot less time for family and friends.
There’ll be times when all your family and friends are doing something fun together and you have to stay at home and study for an exam happening the next day.
At least they’ll send you some pictures of them having fun on vacation!
Starting a family
You’ll have to start a family later in most cases if you want to be a doctor. It’s hard to juggle medical school and parenthood at the same time. A lot of people would also push back the time they start a family to after they completed their residency at 31.
While 31 isn’t too old to start a family, be prepared to watch your friends and siblings announce pregnancy news and have more kids while you’re still in school and deep in debts.
Time for yourself
Whatever it is that you want to do: travel, learn a new instrument, learn a new language, try out a new hobby, revisit old friends, redecorate your old room, etc. Understand that you may have to put it on hold.
Being a house owner sooner
When you’re paying $35k per year in tuition, buying a house would be the furthest thing from your mind. Your friends may be able to buy a house sooner than you and you’ll watch their properties go up in value every year while you haven’t even made a single penny from your career.
Emotional stability
Being a doctor isn’t all heroic and fun. You’ll see a lot of people who are injured in all kinds of states. Some of them would be kids and babies. If you think you can avoid seeing all that by choosing to become a dermatologist? You’re wrong. You’ll have to shadow different types of doctors in medical school, including emergency doctors. You’ll come across all kinds of casualties. It’ll have an emotional toll on you.
Sometimes you can’t save your patients. Sometimes you’ll be yelled at and assaulted for not being able to save someone’s family member.
You’ll easily feel burned out. You’ll close your eyes and see people suffering — something you’ll think back on not so fondly. You see, some things you see as a doctor will stay with you even after decades.
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How many years would it take to catch up to a FedEx driver?
There’s an interesting study by Med School Insider on YouTube that breaks down how long it’ll take you until the age of 41 to catch up to the networth of a UPS driver who makes $40k per year if want to become a doctor.
Here’s the video if you want to check it out.
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These people become rich or made a living on the internet without a traditional job
- Parakeet slime ($65k/month)
- Makinsenseofcents ($100k/month)
- Pinchofyum ($30k/month)
- Anatasia blogger ($30k/month)
- Nate O’Brien ($40k/month from just ads on YouTube, he also has several other streams of income)
- Graham Stephen ($160k/month)
Many of these people don’t have a fancy degree nor did they study 8 hours a day for 10 years to make the amount of money they have now.
There are other ways to make a living in today’s age that doesn’t involve going to school or obtaining a traditional job.
To many, the lifestyle of pulling in a good 6–7 figure per year, working 5–10+ hours a week on something they love while having the freedom to travel, hang out with friends, and live life is something they want more than the admiration, respect, and money that come with being a doctor.
Many of these people making a living on the internet are way ahead of those their age. They’re making more than what a typical doctor is making without spending 20 years to get there.
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My personal story
I always wanted to be a doctor since I was little. I went to school for it. I was a premed student at some of the most prestigious universities in the world. I worked extremely hard.
To me, failure wasn’t an option. I had some backup plans but I was deadset on becoming a doctor. I just had to.
There were many reasons why I later on decided not to. I won’t discuss that today.
One of the reasons that made me rethink the plan was that I realized just how much influence my grade 11 biology teacher had on me.
One time, in class, she asked everyone to raise their hands if they wanted to be a doctor. About 4 kids in class including me raised their hands. Then, she proceeded to tell us how we aren’t smart enough to be a doctor. I tried to laugh it off like everyone else but I felt mocked, disrespected, and belittled.
I had switched to biology class and chemistry class two weeks late due to some scheduling conflicts and had only 3 days to prepare for two weeks’ worth of exams. All 4 of them. The teachers didn’t give me more time. I didn’t do well. I felt so stupid. That thought probably rang true in the back of my head for a while until I got the highest grade (97%) in a stat class in uni — a class where the average grade was 50% and 1/3 of the class dropped out.
I thought about how it’ll feel to one day attend the school reunion and prove my grade 11 biology teacher wrong. 2 of the other kids gave up on the doctor dream before they graduated high school. She made sure to give those kids a harder time. I ended up taking my biology course online and chemistry in nightschool and did well in them.
I was already doubting whether being a doctor was for me after my 1st-year uni. I think a huge part of me was holding on because of what she said.
It would be a very pathetic life if I ended up pursuing something that I ultimately won’t enjoy just to prove a person who I don’t care about wrong. I haven’t seen or heard from her in years and I couldn’t care less about how she’s doing now.
If you want to be a doctor, think very carefully about your reasons. Make sure you’re doing it for yourself, not to prove anyone wrong or to make anyone proud of you. It is a lot of financial, time, relationship sacrifices that would make even the most passionate of us think twice.
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Final thought
Money shouldn’t be the main motive for you to want to become a doctor but a lot of you will think it’s a big bonus. Think again. You’ll realize just how much you’d actually take home as a doctor, how many sacrifices you have to make, and what you’d be leaving on the table as you go down this career path. This could be a wake-up call. It’s better to realize that this isn’t what you want now than to realize it after spending thousands on tuition and years doing something that you don’t fully enjoy.
If you really want to help people, there are many different ways to do so. You can volunteer, you can start a charity, you can invent something that helps a lot of people, etc.
You should also understand the opportunity there is to make money on the internet. In today’s ages, you don’t have to pursue a traditional job anymore. There are people making a living on the internet with their blogs, YouTube channels, TikTok, Instagram accounts, etc.
Give it a bit more thought, it’s not a decision to take lightly. Think about the lifestyle you want and what you really want to get out of being a doctor. Is it reputation, respect, money, passion, wanting to help people, proving somebody wrong?
Is proving someone wrong more important to you than pursuing a life of freedom. A lifestyle where you can work 5 hours a week and spend the rest of the time doing whatever you want with your loved ones?
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Tell me, why do you want to be a doctor?