It's just simple math.

But what complicates the situation is that as humans, we are intensely emotional creatures.

There's too much harmful financial advice being thrown around to pre meds, medical students and residents.

Physicians.

Here's the good, bad and ugly.

A future doctor financial advice.

Dr DePaul medical insiders dot com.

We're going to start in reverse order first with the ugly worst advice followed by the bad and then summarize the good financial principles of thriving medical students and doctors.

This video is not financial advice and is for informational purposes only.

There are three terrible bits of financial wisdom touted to medical students that I strongly disagree with.

The first is the scrutinizing focus placed on the daily $3 coffee.

We had a supposed financial expert.

Come give us a talk at the beginning of medical school about how our quote sexy coffee every morning was going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars in the long term.

It was so ridiculous.

It became a meme at our school and any time a student was drinking coffee, we would jokingly shame them for their sexy coffee.

The argument here is that if you were to save $3 per day and invest that intelligently or use it to pay your loan burden rather than purchasing coffee, you would be a deca billionaire in 30 years.

The Matthew doesn't lie.

If you take $3 per day and invested at an average annualized rate of return of 8%.

It adds up to something substantial After several years.

However, the focus is misplaced getting through medical school and residency is stressful enough and depriving yourself of the simple pleasure of coffee to save some money isn't worth it.

I was exceedingly frugal as a pre med medical student and resident and I wish I was a bit more willing to spend money to purchase convenience or make my life better in small, affordable ways.

If coffee does that for you, then by all means go for it ideally you're able to brew it yourself at home for a fraction of the cost.

And if you go that route then you should proudly drink that sexy coffee in our sexy new medical Insiders coffee mugs that you can find on merge dot medical insiders dot com.

But if you don't go that route purchasing a $3 coffee isn't going to lead to your financial ruin.

Either.

Focus on large financial principles.

The large boulders, not tiny pebbles The second is the advice to choose a specialty primarily based on compensation.

Do neurosurgeons make more money than pediatricians?

Absolute.

In fact, they're on opposite ends of the spectrum with neurosurgeons making high six figures and primary care pediatricians averaging closer to $200,000.

But if you're the kind of person who would be happy as a primary care pediatrician, you're almost certainly not the kind of person who would be happy as a neurosurgeon and vice versa.

The most important factor in choosing a speciality is finding something you are truly passionate about and love something, You can see yourself doing day in and day out for decades of your life.

If you thought college or medical school was long understand that once you choose a specialty that will occupy most of the rest of your working career, not one year or five years, but often 2030 or more years.

If you love what you do, you're less likely to burn out.

More likely to find the work enjoyable and more likely to be amazing at your physician job.

And if you're at the top of your game, you will be able to command a higher than average compensation for your specialty.

The third piece of terrible advice is to get rich off highly risky and volatile investments.

Ak going our Wall street bets YOLO and screaming.

Gm me to the moon.

Was I a part of that madness?

Yes.

I have been known to dabble in my ape tendencies from time to time, but only with a tiny fraction of my portfolio and for fun knowing there's a high chance I could lose most or all of it with risky investments, you should only use money you are willing to lose and as they broke premed or medical student, you likely don't have much money you are willing to lose.

Next up we have the bad financial advice.

The first is that you should choose the cheapest medical school available to you.

The argument is that medical schools more or less offer equivalent educations and attending one school over another is not necessarily advantageous.

Therefore, you should seek to minimize the financial hit and optimize any student loan burden.

This advice may be fitting for some students, but for many it will ultimately prove harmful.

Even amongst United States medical schools, not all medical schools are created equal if you want to match into neurosurgery, but don't have a neurosurgery program at your medical school, you'll be at a substantial disadvantage.

It will be more difficult to get involved in relevant neurosurgical research, gained significant neurosurgical clinical experience and have neurosurgeon mentors who are willing to bat for you and vouch for you during your residency interviews, You may object that you have no intention of pursuing something competitive like neurosurgery.

However, data suggests that over 50% of medical students change their mind about specialties between starting medical school and matching into residency.

I was one of those students initially set on pediatric gastroenterology.

Plastic surgery was never even on my radar until halfway through my third year of medical school.

For these reasons, it's a bad idea to choose a medical school primarily based on cost saving five figures and student loans.

Now for a chance of not being able to match into your desired specialty is not a good trade off.

Similarly, some suggest choosing a cheap city for both medical school and residency.

After all, your living expenses make up a substantial portion of your student loan burden.

Again, I'd point to the doors opened as a more important consideration beyond that, I'd also add that you need to be in a city you actually enjoy when you're not grinding hard on medical school.

Finding enjoyable ways to unwind with restore to fund is mission critical.

If you're in a city or environment you don't enjoy, you're much more likely to burn out and be miserable throughout medical school.

A big part of why I chose UC SAn Diego over some top five programs in the midwest and east coast is because not only is U.

C.

S.

D.

A strong program that opened many doors but it's also in a city I love and a short flight away from family and friends.

The last piece of bad advice is to pursue service scholarships as a way to save money.

It's not some quick hack but rather a massive commitment and you need to make that decision with both eyes wide open.

Prior to jumping in.

For example, the health professions scholarship program or H.

P.

S.

P.

Through the military will cover your cost of medical training.

But there are differences from the civilian medical training pathway and profession that you should be aware of.

We'll have more videos and blog post covering military medicine in the future to help you decide whether it's the right path for you.

If you haven't already, make sure you're subscribed and hit the notification belt.

So you don't miss updates.

Finally, let's talk about the good medical student financial advice.

The first being that you should take the initiative to educate yourself on financial and investing basics even though you aren't making any money yet.

This is massively important.

While finances are deceptively simple and straightforward, human behavior is largely irrational and driven by emotion.

This is why so many americans find themselves in debt and in precarious financial positions.

As a pre med and medical student, you're probably taking out loans knowing how student loans work, which ones are good, which ones you should avoid in the effect of interest.

And compounding long term is massively important by taking this seriously.

I was able to pay my own way through college and medical school and paid off all my student loans.

Not long after graduating, the decisions you make now will steer your future financial outcome.

If you want me to make a course on financial and investing basics for pre meds and medical students, let me know with a comment below so I can gauge interest.

The next piece of good advice is to live frugally by all means.

This is fantastic advice and it will only make it that much sweeter in the future when you allow yourself to loosen the purse strings and enjoy some of the finer things in life.

For now.

While you're a student embrace the frugal student mindset when you travel, stay in hostels rather than hotels, avoid upgrading your phone every year.

Be content with less.

Some students say that they're already in hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans, so adding another $1000 here or there is just a drop in the bucket.

This is nonsensical and a dangerous way of thinking with the compounding effect.

Working against you that $1000 is going to balloon into a larger number and the greater your loan burden, the longer it takes to pay off, which means the compounding effect snowball grows larger and larger.

Next the average premed applies to approximately 17 medical schools.

Only 40% of applicants gain admission and the average medical student graduates with approximately $200,000 in debt.

But as I always say, statistics apply to populations not to individuals and you have the power to be the outlier.

If you view medical admissions and financial outcomes through a cost benefit analysis lens, it becomes clear that applying to too many rather than too few medical schools is almost always worthwhile.

I always advise my premed clients to apply to at least 20 if not closer to 30 medical schools.

The downside is the marginal added cost for each medical school you apply to plus the time and effort you put towards writing secondaries.

If you're in financial need, the double AMC has the fee assistance program or F.

A.

P.

That you should look into.

On the other hand, the upside is tremendous.

Not only do you increase your chances of gaining a medical school acceptance and therefore avoiding the added pain cost and time of being a re applicant, but you may even have multiple acceptances.

This puts you in a position of power whereby you can choose the medical school.

That is best for you.

If you're a highly competitive applicant and have multiple acceptances, you can even have medical schools try to win you over to attend their program.

I did this myself and have helped several of my clients do the same in doing so.

I was the only student awarded a merit based scholarship that covered my entire tuition and most of my living expenses.

This alone save me over $200,000 in student loans.

I took out only about $7000 in student loans each year of medical school to help cover costs of living.

This isn't easy to do and there's no guarantee.

But unless you're born into a wealthy family, this is one of the most powerful things you can do to put yourself in a better financial position for the rest of your life.

And the way to get there is by being the most competitive applicant.

You can be someone who is highly desirable.

Too many medical schools don't be a statistic.

Be an outlier at medical insiders will help tutor you to a competitive M cat score finesse and bolster your medical school application, prepare you for your medical school interviews and overall make you a more desirable applicant.

We'd be honored to help you on your journey in becoming a future doctor or surgeon, investing yourself, work with the best and put yourself in a position to not only get accepted to your dream medical school, but also earn merit based scholarships to cover the cost.

Visit us on medical insiders dot com.

Much love.

And I'll see you guys there.

Yeah.

Mm.

Mhm mm.