- Oct 28, 1999
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Background: My wife always wanted to do Med School. She went into undergrad with that in mind, ended up liking chemistry way more than she thought she would and started looking into Pharmacy. Did the homework on that and realized it was a pretty sweet gig, applied, was accepted and the rest was history.
Fast forward 7 years later...
She's been residency trained, works in a very critical care facility staffing ICU and emergency rooms as the clinical pharmacist. She's working with docs and residents on a daily basis and hears constantly "Why aren't you a doctor? You're too smart for pharmacy" ect. The MD residents come to her for questions when they are scared to talk to their attending. When she's working the ED the docs there are always telling her she needs to go back to Med school to be an ED doc because she does so well in that environment ect.
All of that flattery and reinforcement is adding up and starting to eat at her since that was her first thought way back before chosing Pharmacy. And to make it worse she's just totally burned out with her dept, inept managers, and a weak administration that buckles to the wishes of some terrible physicians even in the face of horrible patient outcomes.
It's a storm brewing that I can't really navigate around easily.
Problem is that we are in our early 30's, just starting to get our feet under us, have two kids, nuclear family...suburbanites...white picket fence..401k yadda yadda yadda. I don't know how to really wrap my head around this.
Med School is a 4 year commitment. She wants to do Emergency Medicine which another 3 year residency. First year of Med School is 2 hours away so she'd have to rent an apartment and live there for a year while I solo it with kids. Next three years are in town and practically across the street from where she works now. All clinicals/rotations would be in the same hospital/city as we live now. She'd do her residency in the same hospital as she works at now. First year would blow ass. The kids would have a Mom on the weekends only. Next three years aren't too bad, she'd probably be around more than she is right now working full time. Residency would be okay first year, and then progressively start to suck ass again as her call nights start to add up and she's staying overnight at the hospital.
The coursework would be pretty simple, she's had more than a dozen people tell her that. She knows he stuff. And the clinicals would be even easier. So it's not a question of ability.
To be able to afford things we'd likey have to cash out her 401k and pay the penalty. Plus still need to take out student loans. In addition to that I'd likely have to drop my 401k back to the minimum at the very least through her med school years. At least her residency years she would be paid. One perk is that she'd keep her pharmacy license up to date and can bank $500-$700 a day working PRN shifts. One of those a week if she can manage it is significant money. But it's not something to count on based on course work volume.
But we are talking serious money here.
She'd be leaving a $125,000+ a year job. She'd have to cash out a 120k 401k to give enough of a blanket to pay mortgage, day care, taxes, 2nd apartment ect. She wouldn't be accrueing any more money into her retirement funds during that time. And mine would be scaled back to the bare minimum.
On top of the lost income, she already has a $70,000 student loan debt for her first round of schooling. Over the 4 years of med school that'd likely inflate up to $250k. During residency she'd at least be making $45,000 or so and we could maybe start using that income to pay back down stuff.
But the golden light at the end of that 7 year tunnel is that she'd be looking at a $350k+ salary (mal practice is covered by the employer) and more control over her career and life. ED Docs aren't salaried by the hospital and are halfway independent consultants with benefits.
What I can't fully figure out is the cost benefit of this. We're basically torching 7 years of prime income earning and wealth building for a deferred amount of debt with the bonus of tripling her income. But she wouldn't be making that until she's nearly 40 years old.
Stress on the family aside, I just don't know how to do the math on that. :|
It's basically 7 years of hell on everyone. Then 4 years of more hell trying to dig out of debt. 6 years of playing catchup on savings games to bump retirement . Then when we finally hit 50 it'll be pretty damn nice. House would be paid off, loans paid off. College for kids would be saved for. I'd likely be able to retire 5 or more years earlier and she could go half or 3/4 time and make more than she would working full time in her current gig.
And I don't know how to put a price or cost of sacrafice on that either.
And even more...what I *REALLY* don't know how to plan for is her being 50 looking back and not even remembering her kids 4th, 5th, 10th, ect birthday's, Christmas mornings, ect because life was a blur.
I'm really not feeling comfortable with the financial side of things going through schooling, and even less comfortable with the family stress and have voiced that. But her outlook on her career almost gets worse by the day and has been speeding up since returning from maternity leave this spring. She's just not a happy person with her job right now. She really wants to do this and probably can do it much easier than many other people. I just can't really digest the costs and long term benefits.
Fast forward 7 years later...
She's been residency trained, works in a very critical care facility staffing ICU and emergency rooms as the clinical pharmacist. She's working with docs and residents on a daily basis and hears constantly "Why aren't you a doctor? You're too smart for pharmacy" ect. The MD residents come to her for questions when they are scared to talk to their attending. When she's working the ED the docs there are always telling her she needs to go back to Med school to be an ED doc because she does so well in that environment ect.
All of that flattery and reinforcement is adding up and starting to eat at her since that was her first thought way back before chosing Pharmacy. And to make it worse she's just totally burned out with her dept, inept managers, and a weak administration that buckles to the wishes of some terrible physicians even in the face of horrible patient outcomes.
It's a storm brewing that I can't really navigate around easily.
Problem is that we are in our early 30's, just starting to get our feet under us, have two kids, nuclear family...suburbanites...white picket fence..401k yadda yadda yadda. I don't know how to really wrap my head around this.
Med School is a 4 year commitment. She wants to do Emergency Medicine which another 3 year residency. First year of Med School is 2 hours away so she'd have to rent an apartment and live there for a year while I solo it with kids. Next three years are in town and practically across the street from where she works now. All clinicals/rotations would be in the same hospital/city as we live now. She'd do her residency in the same hospital as she works at now. First year would blow ass. The kids would have a Mom on the weekends only. Next three years aren't too bad, she'd probably be around more than she is right now working full time. Residency would be okay first year, and then progressively start to suck ass again as her call nights start to add up and she's staying overnight at the hospital.
The coursework would be pretty simple, she's had more than a dozen people tell her that. She knows he stuff. And the clinicals would be even easier. So it's not a question of ability.
To be able to afford things we'd likey have to cash out her 401k and pay the penalty. Plus still need to take out student loans. In addition to that I'd likely have to drop my 401k back to the minimum at the very least through her med school years. At least her residency years she would be paid. One perk is that she'd keep her pharmacy license up to date and can bank $500-$700 a day working PRN shifts. One of those a week if she can manage it is significant money. But it's not something to count on based on course work volume.
But we are talking serious money here.
She'd be leaving a $125,000+ a year job. She'd have to cash out a 120k 401k to give enough of a blanket to pay mortgage, day care, taxes, 2nd apartment ect. She wouldn't be accrueing any more money into her retirement funds during that time. And mine would be scaled back to the bare minimum.
On top of the lost income, she already has a $70,000 student loan debt for her first round of schooling. Over the 4 years of med school that'd likely inflate up to $250k. During residency she'd at least be making $45,000 or so and we could maybe start using that income to pay back down stuff.
But the golden light at the end of that 7 year tunnel is that she'd be looking at a $350k+ salary (mal practice is covered by the employer) and more control over her career and life. ED Docs aren't salaried by the hospital and are halfway independent consultants with benefits.
What I can't fully figure out is the cost benefit of this. We're basically torching 7 years of prime income earning and wealth building for a deferred amount of debt with the bonus of tripling her income. But she wouldn't be making that until she's nearly 40 years old.
Stress on the family aside, I just don't know how to do the math on that. :|
It's basically 7 years of hell on everyone. Then 4 years of more hell trying to dig out of debt. 6 years of playing catchup on savings games to bump retirement . Then when we finally hit 50 it'll be pretty damn nice. House would be paid off, loans paid off. College for kids would be saved for. I'd likely be able to retire 5 or more years earlier and she could go half or 3/4 time and make more than she would working full time in her current gig.
And I don't know how to put a price or cost of sacrafice on that either.
And even more...what I *REALLY* don't know how to plan for is her being 50 looking back and not even remembering her kids 4th, 5th, 10th, ect birthday's, Christmas mornings, ect because life was a blur.
I'm really not feeling comfortable with the financial side of things going through schooling, and even less comfortable with the family stress and have voiced that. But her outlook on her career almost gets worse by the day and has been speeding up since returning from maternity leave this spring. She's just not a happy person with her job right now. She really wants to do this and probably can do it much easier than many other people. I just can't really digest the costs and long term benefits.
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