This post isn’t intended to deter future physicians of the world—the world already has a shortage of healthcare professionals and will continue to see a greater demand for all healthcare workers in the next decade.
This post also isn’t to condemn all of us doctors who entered this career path to make the world a better place. In fact, we can all live a happy and wealthy life as doctors. WCI and PoF are two great guys in the medical field who have publicly documented their trajectory in building a comfortable financial safety net relatively early into their careers. I’m sure that there are thousands of other like-minded doctors out there who are doing the same thing but aren’t as easily found since they don’t have a web footprint.
Those of you who are still building into your careers—medical students, residents, fellows, law students—can start getting prepared to become a rich doctor by riding the wave and getting psyched mentally.
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The background: there are a lot of rich people out there.
According to a report by Credit Suisse in 2015, there are 15.7 million millionaires in the United States alone. Last I checked, there were only roughly one million doctors (MD’s and DO’s) in the United States. What this means is that among the ranks of millionaires are plenty of other professions: lawyers, businessmen, CEOs, computer programmers, writers, politicians, and both professionals of the like.
Some of the wealthiest people whom I’ve met are everyday guys you would see on the street (On the flip side, I don’t take care of any celebrities or high profile people, so the likelihood that I would run into anyone else is slim!) These multi-millionaires include the general contractor who owns his mega-home inspection business, the professional blinds installer, the septic-tank installer, the concrete manager, the car dealer, and the loan dispersement agent for home mortgages.
Sam from Financial Samurai recently featured a janitor in San Francisco who was able to earn more than $271,000 a year! That’s more than what a starting Hospitalist can earn!
What does all of this have to do with me if I am already a doctor?
We can all learn from others who have succeed before us. My view is that we all inherently have traits that can help us get what we want. What traits do you need in order to be rich? Why, the same ones that got you where you are now!
Motivation. You have to want something badly enough. Most doctors worked relatively hard and long hours to get to where we are right now. That requires motivation, whether internal or external. If you want to be rich badly enough, you should be motivated enough to get there.
Resilience. You will fail. But we can learn from our failures. Figure out what set you back, and what you can do to avoid failing next time. In medicine, setbacks come in the form of patient adverse events, administrative snafus, illness amongst family and ourselves. But we have ways to learn what to do next time and bounce back stronger. In finance, you will take risks and you will lose money. But we still use these experiences to help make us stronger.
Flexibility. We have to adapt to situations, learn from our mistakes, and keep forging ahead. We cannot be too proud of ourselves, and understand that we are not correct all of the time. You have to ‘own up’ to your mistakes. That is how we learn and improve.
Acknowledgement of your limitations. Just because you are a doctor doesn’t mean that you are the smartest person in the room! It almost has no bearing to you getting rich either, if that is your goal! You do, however, possess unique skills that you can leverage to reach your goals.
What have you done recently with your skills to improve your financial situation?
(Photo courtesy of Flickr)
Running a restaurant franchise ranks high on my list of fastest ways to lose a ton a money. Now if this were inherently true for every entrepreneur, there wouldn’t be any fast food restaurants or people getting rich from running food establishments. If you’re a busy doctor looking for a way to stash your hard-earned cash to work for you, keep moving along. Running a restaurant as a franchisee is by no means passive or risk-free. If you’ve always dreamed of owning a McDonald’s, it’s still an option for you once you’ve built up at least $2 million in the bank…literally.
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