This post is intended to have only one reader - Me ! ;-) Lol..yea..a 'vanity post' , which certainly makes me feel good - especially when i see these numbers despite slacking off from any blogging lately ...2 Million sounds good to me. Hmm...must be those comments from you guys that keep the Google pagerank rolling !
Well since I am posting something anyways, why not make a quick reference to what surveys show about the salary benefits that doctors with MBA / MHA / MMM degrees see:
"Physician executives earn on average 11% more with a Master of Business Administration (MBA), 8% more with a Master of Medical Management (MMM), and 10% more with a Master of Health Administration (MHA) compared with those without a post-graduate business degree"
Makes me glad I got my management degree....you thinkin' ? Indeed, some residency programs do offer a combined medicine residency + MBA training curriculum !
Also, from the same survey:
"Chief executives and presidents earned $383,500, up 13 percent. Chief medical officers earned $324,750, up 11 percent, and department or division chairs earned $330,000"
And that's even more that the £270,000 (More than US $600,000 in Dec'07 rates) made by Britain's highest paid General Practitioner in 2007. In Aug 2009 exchange rates, £380,000 translates to $622,000 US Dollars. (Yup, Pound has depreciated against the US greenback)
These salary rises have been occuring ever since a 2004 NHS payment contract that gave rich bonuses for extra work, weekend work and for taking care of certain conditions that NHS denotes as high priority. Appears that docs can easily take advantage of this by ignoring non-paying conditions like dementia and focusing more on the paying conditions. Before 2004, the average GP income lay in the annual £70,000-£80,000 range.
"In some cases the figures include cash GPs have to pay out for staff salaries and rents - But in Norfolk, one GP takes home £310,000 even after these are subtracted"
All this has obviously led to a public taxpayer outcry - Read Story Here
Family docs in the United States on the other usually lie at the bottom rungs of the MD incomes ladder with annual national averages around $160,000 like many US MD salary surveys show
Yet another example of "Danger Pay" like a previous post about Canada paying upto $155,000 per month to docs to work in war-zone Afghanistan, the Alberta providence in Canada is thinking about paying doctors more than $500 an hour to treat swine flu patients in case on a pandemic. Many countries are stepping up their contingency plans for the coming fall. (As for me, I have made sure that I always have 2 weeks worth of supplies minimum at home...)
The question : Is it 'Hippocratically' ethical, if you will, for doctors to accept more pay or even be offered more $$$ for working in conditions of grave personal risk ? A tough question to answer ! One hand putting themselves, their families at risk and on the other hand the tacit duty of stepping up to help one's society...
Attending urges me to consider "Roth IRAs" during Residency
This post is geared more towards International Medical Graduates starting residencies in the US and are planning to settle in the US, since I expect the American Grads to already know about this.
An IRA stands for 'Individual Retirement Account', a provision of tax-sheltered or exempt investments for the purpose of retirement. It is money you start saving with the intention of not using until you hit retirement. There are several types like Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, Simple IRAs, etc.
A Roth IRA is different from the rest in that while your yearly contributions are not tax-exempt, all interest earnings & withdrawals at retirement are tax-free - it is the opposite for other retirement accounts, including the 401(k)s, where your withdrawals are taxed like regular income. My attending made a good point to me about saving money during residency to take advantage of the Roth IRA for the following reasons:
1. Once a physician finishes residency / fellowship and starts a job, he/she is likely never going to be eligible for investing in a Roth IRA - why ? Because Roth IRAs come with income limits. A single person is not eligible to contribute to a Roth IRAs account in a given year if income exceeds $120,000. For a married person filing income taxes jointly with wife, that income limit is $166,000 - See Roth IRA limit calculator
2. The power of compound interest favors the young, which is a no-brainer - but implies that since all of us will mostly retire at 65, the only way to make more money with compound interest is to start early ! A great example:
Ben puts in $2000 each year at age 19 in a 10% interest growth fund and stops adding more at age 26. His money keeps growing, when he is 65, assuming sustained compound interest growth at 10%, his investment grows to $1,035,161. While his elder Brother John, starts investing into a similar 10% growth fund starting from age 27, and puts in $2000 every single year until he turns 65..and yet his total amount at 65 is much lesser than Bens at $883,185! Makes you wish you could travel back in time...
Putting the above points 1 & 2 together should make you understand that it's a great idea to try and save up some some money during residency for your small Roth IRA investment window period ! So maybe getting a used car instead of a new one & making other adjustments to free up money for investment isn't bad after all !
It is beyond me to cover all details of Roth IRAs and other investment types, I am learning myself ! But to give a general overview, your residency program may be providing Roth IRA accounts, or you can open your own accounts with banks, mutual funds, money market accounts, etc. About the rate of interest - You can designate any investment as a Roth IRA and the rate of interest will depend on type of invesment - remember a higher rate comes with a higher risk. So stock market investments could potentially give you 10-20% interest rate but carry a risk of losing money or not being consistent. A stable Bank saving account might be much safer, but then the rate of interest will really suck at less than 1%.
My personal take would be going for a high interest fund with your Roth IRA, because: 1. You will not be investing much (Maximum $5000 allowed each year) and because its always a good idea to invest only so much in stocks that you can afford to lose.. 2. Because stocks generally perform good over the long term.
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