By Dr. Margaret Curtis, WCI Columnist
I am a pediatrician married to a urologist. We are part of a fortunate, hard-working, and growing demographic: the dual-physician family. There are wonderful aspects to being married to another physician, and there are particular challenges.
When I was in medical school, an attending told me, “If you marry another doctor, you will always have enough money, but you won’t have enough time.” Turns out this is only half true. We never seem to have enough time, even now that we are both well out from residency, and there have been periods when (I’m embarrassed to admit) we actually felt hard up for cash. Anyone can live above their means, and we had to become good stewards of our finances. This is what we have learned along the way:
Managing Your Money in a Dual-Physician Income Household
Many aspects of your financial plan will be the same as any other high-income family: pay off your (double) student loans early, live within your means, keep your investments simple. Your financial needs will differ from those of other high-earners in a few ways:
- Insurance: As a rule, physicians need own-occupation disability insurance, but you may not need it for both of you. We decided to carry extra disability insurance for my husband but not for me when we did the math and realized we could get by without my salary. Since I am not in a procedural specialty, my risk of being completely sidelined by minor injury or illness is relatively low.
- Expectations: You may have outsized expectations for your lifestyle. Our single biggest financial mistake was sending our kids to private school (this is a topic for another day). Remember: “you can have just about anything you want, but you can’t have everything.” Although it seems impossible that two people can spend what looks on paper to be a ridiculous amount of money, it is easier than you might think.
- Length of Career: You will work very, very hard for your money, and you can’t count on both of you wanting to continue full-time work until a typical retirement age of 65. Your financial planning needs to include “escape hatches” for both of you right from the start. Our goal is that my husband can shift to part-time paid clinical work in the next three years and full retirement in seven. This is about six-and-a-half years longer than he would like, to be honest, but we still have three educations to pay for (see above). That will put him close to a typical retirement age, at which point he would like to segue into volunteer medical work, gardening, and building backyard hockey rinks. I can see myself working well into my 60s (I’m 50 now), largely because my job is not physically demanding and my patients are adorable.
Sticks and pucks in the backyard of the Curtis household
Managing Your Time
If you want someone to tell you it is possible to have two booming medical careers, a thriving family life, and time enough for both, I am not that person. I left medicine for five years to be home when my husband had a new solo practice and we had three kids under 6. We both think I had the harder job. I gave up some professional aspirations to do this but I will always be thankful that I could.
I have worked part-time since residency, and when I work more (say, an added clinic day), it feels a little like the wheels are coming off the bus. We are not alone in this: one study showed that only half of all women in dual-physician households worked full-time, while 87% of their partners did. Of course there are full-time medical couples who make it work, and I salute them. There is a lot of high-level planning that goes into that life.
There is also some expense required to work around uncompromising schedules, especially during residency and your early career. You will need reliable transportation, and I would argue you should live as close as you can to both of your workplaces. Minutes spent together is the single biggest predictor of satisfaction in two-physician families, so don’t waste them commuting. We live where our kids can walk to school, which is a huge saver of both time and hassle.
If you have children, you will need completely dependable childcare until your children are old enough to stay home alone, around 11 or 12. You will need backup childcare and night or weekend childcare when you are both on call. This will likely need to be in your home, since childcare centers generally won’t take kids with illness and can close due to inclement weather, etc. You might try to live near family or get a willing relative to move in with or near you. If you don’t have a willing Mae-Mae (as grandmothers are called here in Maine), this could be a nanny or au pair. My friend Lauren is an orthopaedic surgeon married to a urologist. She and her husband kept a calendar of who could leave work in case a kid needed to be picked up early on any given day.
An aside: no matter how well you plan your schedules, you will miss some of your kids’ events. I thought I was doing well getting to my kid’s hockey games until a teammate asked him if his mother had died. Decide your priorities, divide and conquer when you can, and forgive yourself for what you couldn’t get to.
Call is one of the biggest stressors on the two-physician household. You have to decide if you want to take call or work shifts at the same time as your spouse (and maximize your call-free time together) or stagger your call obligations (so one of you can manage the home front). When our kids were little, we tried to avoid being on call at the same time. I have done hospitalist peds and outpatient peds that included labor and delivery, and both of those made our lives much more complicated. My job now is call from home only, so this is no longer an issue for us (and is a major factor in why I chose this job). These time pressures ease up as your kids get older. Now that our kids are teenagers and can drive themselves to soccer practice, we have much more leeway in our schedules. (They don’t really want us around anyway.)
This is not a relationship advice website, but it bears repeating that your relationship is your single greatest asset. Divorce is expensive. Finding yourself at the end of your career with a spouse you look forward to retiring with is, to borrow a phrase, priceless.
Entire books have been written about physician marriages, and I won’t try to address the research on gender roles, career trajectories, and what makes a marriage work. I will say that some of the traits that make a good physician (work ethic, maturity, generally being people-oriented) are helpful in a long-term relationship and some (perfectionism, stoicism, intensity) are not. And even if you are the most important person at your work, you are just one of the team at home. As I like to tell my husband: this is not the OR, and there is no one here whose job it is to do your bidding. (I have only had to remind him of this twice in 20 years of marriage. I don’t care what people say about urologists, he is a fast learner.) I think dual-physician families actually have the advantage here, as there is less potential for a power imbalance than in families with only one physician.
For us, the challenges have been worth it. There is comfort in being partnered with someone who understands the day-to-day life of a practicing physician. Try saying “that diaper had positive margins” to your accountant husband and see how he reacts. (Better yet, say it to your teenagers. They will remind you that this is why they don’t want you around.) Every couple makes their own roadmap, but the end goal is the same: two healthy careers, a happy marriage, and enough time to enjoy it all. If you are as fortunate as we have been, you will get to a point where you can quote my husband’s favorite song:
“Look how far we’ve come
When you and I were young
This is all we ever wanted
Look how far we’ve come”
Are you in a dual-physician marriage? How have you made it work? How have kids complicated the issue? Has two physician incomes been worth it? Comment below!
I appreciate this post a lot, especially since there have been several posts about the female physician in a 2 physician household leaving medicine altogether (obviously a valid choice, but lots of people make other choices). I’m in a 2 physician household early in our careers and family building (almost 1.5 years out of training, baby #2 due in March). It’s challenging and I can see how more challenges lie ahead, but so far I feel it’s worth it. I am anticipating some degree of part-time work for me once our loans are taken care of (maybe 80% FTE) but I don’t think I’d want to stay home full time. We pay a lot for childcare, house cleaning, lawn care, etc. but I’d rather do my job than the laundry. And the salaries allow us to outsource a lot and still save to meet our goals. I give up a lot of personal free time to feel like I have enough time with my daughter (get stuff done after bedtime or during naps rather than stay at work late) but right now I feel it is worth it as I do enjoy my career. In terms of making it work, I agree that high-level planning and lots of dependable childcare are necessary. Again it’s expensive but viewing childcare as a shared cost between husband and me helps, rather than framing it as all coming out of my salary since I’m the lower earner. Another crucial piece is letting some things go and lowering standards where you can! This has been hard for me to come to terms with as I like things to be neat and orderly, but at the end of my life I think it will have been worth it to spend more time helping my patients and spending quality time w my kids than constantly wiping down counters or picking up toys.
You are in the thick of it right now! Babies are wonderful but they are a lot of work and you probably don’t feel you have much breathing room – it will get easier. I am very glad I didn’t leave medicine altogether, and that I kept my career alive enough to return. At this point my kids don’t need me at home much (if at all) and my work keeps me grounded. Of course everyone should choose what works for them and their families – but the two-career path has worked well for us.
And amen to lowering standards :). You really have to choose your priorities. I read a poem years ago – wish I could find it now – about “killing guilt in its tracks when you leave the dirty dishes in the sink”. So enjoy your little(s) and hope all goes well with #2!
Thank you and thank you for writing the post!
Such great advice in the article AND in the comments.
Great advice and thanks for sharing your story! I’m not in a dual physician household but married to a non physician professional. The challenges of balancing professional and personal goals/life are real! For us, it requires constant communication
Any demanding career – by which I mean any career with deadlines and professional responsibilities – makes for a formidable combination with a physician career. When I was growing up a lot of my friends had doctor parents: a doctor father and a stay-at-home mom. That is no longer the norm. We all have to learn to balance our careers with the rest of our lives – and yes, I agree that communication is essential!
Third year IM resident, husband just started a 7 on 7 off job this summer after finishing fellowship, and we have an 18 month old. Still spending most of my income on childcare (down now that husband watches during his “off” weeks). Feels like the career demands more of me/us than it’s worth. Hard to keep up enthusiasm, but I have no plans to go part time or quit, though sometimes I feel adrift as I look out at the end of residency (plan to go into academic hospitalist job). How did other people regain their grounding and keep it together during a time like this?
Start planning now for the childcare and career post residency and try to get enthusiastic about what’s in store 6-8 months from now. Sounds like you should NOT become chief resident or do your fellowship straight away. Also maybe plan a 1 month or more break between residency and your next job. I was pretty miserable my last year of work before retiring- ill health and covid strains making me want to give up early- but the carrot of finishing five years to get my pension if I could just stick out the last few months got me through (that and FMLA paperwork just in case- but that isn’t something for which you qualify!). In contrast to your mindset at times now of “it just isn’t worth it” think of attending level money and a few solid weeks off before the next job. I used a refrain from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale- a man who worked seven years and when finished was paid “a lump of gold as big as his head”. When I was really miserable, marking off days until I could retire if I wanted with the pension, I actually wrote “lump of gold” on my bathroom mirror. Of course also plan how a month off won’t seem a drudgery of housework and baby care! Hope pandemic calms enough you could tour the country visiting relatives you want the baby to meet.
When my spouse deployed (our boss said “I presume I should deploy the one of you not breastfeeding?”) having Mom move in for 6 months helped us but that is not an option for you apparently. Also live in nanny less safe covid than… hmm. daycare? Maybe not but surely more costly.
Jenn’s advice is spot-on. Remember that you didn’t go to medical school to become a resident, you went to be a doctor. If your entire career was what you are doing right now then absolutely would not be worth it. Life, work, everything will seem a lot different in less than a year. One day at a time for now. Then give yourself a good break to catch your breath, and trust that your next steps will become clear. You will have many options, including hospitalist, outpatient, fellowship, part-time, no-time. Your only job right now is to get through the end of residency. And, now is not the time to stress about money so ignore all the advice on this website 🙂 that tells you to save every penny. You can do this.
Instead of saying “ignore all the advice” it’s probably better to say “optimize for longevity”. It’s basically don’t be penny-wise and pound foolish, i.e. cheap out now and burn out instead of doing what it takes to ensure you can stay in the career for decades.
I appreciate everyone that replied; consider my spirits buoyed! I will add that I started following this blog as an MS4 and started my first Roth then on my husbands income, I only wish I had heard about WCI before I took out my first couple years worth of maximum loans. This blog was the foundation for my financial literacy and changed how I handle money. As it is, my savings and index fund investments just surpassed my loan amount this past year and now I’m about 20k positive net worth. I’m using the primary care loan opportunity (PCLO), so account has been frozen with no interest these past three years. With the income my husband is pulling in now, my main financial question is whether I’ll be able to contribute to my Roth this year. I’ve learned the value of time above all else thanks to starting a family in residency. Mostly I’m excited to start work as an attending, but I feel the weight of all the years, 12 since starting college at 18, and I want to enjoy my life after residency. Being in a dual physician household gives me the freedom to select a career that aligns with my values (both caring for indigent populations and working closer to 8-5 so I can be there for my family). I don’t think it would be worth it to get a private hospitalist job and either never see my husband, or have neither of us see our son every other week, plus most of the excess income would probably go to the tax man anyway. I hope my spouse changes to a more relaxed job soon as well for his health and sanity.
Yay!
Back to Broke!
Come on the podcast!
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones
And yes, you can always contribute to a Roth IRA, you just might have to do it through the backdoor. Get it done before the end of the year though because Congress is talking about outlawing them.
Sorry WCI, a better way to say it: now is not the time in your life to try to maximize savings and be super frugal. You will catch up financially. Now is the time to do what you need to do, and spend the money you need to spend, in order to make your life work.
And resident Mom, sounds like you are doing GREAT financially. You are right that the dual-physician salaries can give you both enough freedom to have a satisfying career and still enjoy your lives. I love my job: 0.75 FTE, largely underserved population. If my salary were our primary income we would get by just fine but we wouldn’t have many of the comforts we have. I would also feel pressure to work full-time (and maybe moonlight).
Many don’t have a choice. They’re single, a sole earner, or have massive student loans. They have to work hard coming out of residency. Perhaps you have more choices available to you which can affect enthusiasm for sure. You might need a little time off to regain your love of medicine, but I bet it’s still in there somewhere.
Agree it will get better. My husband and I both finished training when our daughter was 18 months so I feel you, it’s a tough time. He would actually moonlight overnight 1x per week in addition to his regular fellowship work so that we could afford our nanny. Better hours plus higher income plus older child will truly feel different in 6 months. Around that time I also started following Laura Vanderkam’s work and read her book “I Know How She Does It.” Lots of inspiring and practical advice and methods for mothers in demanding careers who also want to be intimately involved with their families. Highly recommend to all the physician moms out there.
Thank you for the book recommendation, will check it out. Usually I cringe when I hear “having it all” because – well, what does that even mean? I think I have it all now: a good job , wonderful family and even a backyard hockey rink!
How big is the rink?
44×36
Jealous. Hard to keep ice in Utah.
I agree with the suggestion to take some time off when you transition jobs. I think a lot of graduates worry that the group needs them to join asap, or will think less if they don’t dive right in. Keep in mind that your training is incredibly valuable and your future group, just like you, can take the long view that all will benefit from having you practicing happily over many years. In my experience at an academy group, 1) a 2-3 month break is a great option and one of a few ways to take some valuable time and 2) no one actually cares if you take a break. Also be aware that you have much more control over your schedule once you become an attending. Admittedly there are a lot of boxes to check, and many doctors are over scheduled. But you can decide where to practice, what kind of job, how much to work, and much more.
Not quite dual physician, married to an NP. You’re right about having someone in the home to help with the kids, we have four and having a grandmother in the home was priceless. Until we discovered her massive tumor, with post surgical and post chemo complications leading to permanent urinary catheter (and multiple hospitalizations/ICU for sepsis), followed by needs a new heart valve, all in less than three years. And still needed help with the kids.
Most of us will deal with parents getting old and sick at some point. Seeing it first hand is different, and there’s a big difference between “oh crap my mom’s sick, I can’t get there, I’m going to need some emergency leave” and “oh crap my mom’s sick, this is the second time this month, I’m the only one who can get her to the hospital and the kids to school, ok which of us is leaving work early the next few days to pick up the kids since she will probably be admitted…” And then having to do all of that again just a couple months (or in some cases, couple of days) later.
Having her has been a big help much of the time, but if you’re going to have a live in grandparent as a major part of your childcare plan…ensure you know what you’re going to do for major illnesses. I went almost all night shifts and my wife burned all of her saved up leave over the course of about six months just to get my mom to and from chemo, leaving us run ragged by the time the complications actually started.
I’m so sorry about your mother (mother-in-law?). You are doing super-hero work right now. And if no one else has said it lately, I will: thank you for doing it. I was my parents’ financial caregiver for years but I didn’t have primary responsibility for their physical care. If it helps at all: don’t worry about your wife’s savings (easy for me to say, I know), you will do fine over the long-term. Great advice about being realistic in planning for older relatives’ needs. Hang in there.
I have a lot of compassion for dual doc families. We’ve had just a taste of this with both of us working in WCI, and we both work part-time from home and we find it hard to take care of all that needs to be done. I can’t imagine two full-time docs pulling this off without hired help.
Dual physician family with kids 6, 3, 1yo right now. Lots of outsourcing. Lots of mom guilt but I cannot see myself as a SAHM. My husband and I met in residency so we understand each other’s workday & that helps a lot. What works for us: being on the same page with the budget, valuing each other’s time and effort in household work and child rearing, and similar approach in decision making. For our sanity, we’re making plans for both of us stepping back to 0.75 FTE in the next 3 years and 0.5 in 10 years. No amount of money is worth us missing out on our family life. Luckily, we both value family time and traveling. I don’t claim to have it down pack but I like the path we’re on.
Mom guilt is real, and it is brutal. If it helps, your kids won’t remember all the outsourcing you are doing now and they will be aware of having you around more when they get a little older. Sounds like you are doing great.
same here with the mom guilt. I have a 5 yr old and 1 yr old. am a hospitalist and felt so guilty when i placed my 6month old in a day care . but at the same time i cant bring my self to cut down on the work. my identity as a doctor is tied very strongly to my feeling of self worth and fullfillment and am grappling with how to reconcile my mom duties with my work duties .
I understand. I would feel adrift without my work. Please believe me that your kids will do just fine, and if anything they will learn some good life lessons from having a mom who works and helps others. And now that I am looking at an empty nest in just a few years, I am glad I have work I can do for many years.
I am dual doc family at end of career but not of life. Have long recommended “Getting To 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All” (as well as The Price of Motherhood) and the two line summary is that childhood is short and hectic, throw enough money and energy at keeping your career and sanity at this time because there are many years after that stressful time, you’ll appreciate the career and the money for another few decades. Especially in our field too long away can be career ending not just mommy tracking for you.
I am a FIREd doc who misses my career- I did not sacrifice it because the kids needed me when they were little (worked part time and took sabbaticals some of those years) but because I have too much money to endure the hassle of working fulltime while sandwiched now between both our mothers needing occasional attention, my own middle aged health issues, husband retired and wanting to travel etc., and the sweet reward of becoming a grandparent soon- uncertain how much time out of town I will want to/ can manage to devote to that. I also don’t see a viable part time option given my location and concerns re maintaining skill and proper patient follow up (not to mention malpractice coverage hassles/ expenses/ risks to our retirement savings). Just let me be proof that any parent docs giving up a career in their 30s or 40s because it’s all too much will have 1-2 more decades to regret that step than I have at wishing there was an easy alternative for me now near 60.
BTW every time I stayed home- once to have a baby and home school over a year’s time- I confirmed my theory that I am a much better mother when I outsource some childcare and do some work outside the home than when I stay home full time with the kids.
Even when I was home with my kids I kept a little active by teaching at med school. I also got a babysitter so I could ride my bike and not lose my mind. I have all the respect in the world for full-time parents but that was not for me, forever.
I have more thoughts about part-time work and maintaining a non-mainstream medical career than I can put down here. I can certainly understand what you are saying about both the appeal of career and the obstacles that get in the way once you are in mid-life and -career.
The books sound great, will check them out. And I completely agree that when your kids are little you do whatever it takes to get by and (hopefully) enjoy them.
I’m interested to hear the private school mistake story. I’ve starting paying for private school this year in a 1 income physician family. It’s scary to think a 2 physician family couldn’t handle it and I’m in a low pay specialty. It’s been a nice school and great to have a school that was actually open during Covid but I’m hoping it won’t end up being a big financial mistake.
At least I had paid off my house before doing it so I look at it as the same expense as my old mortgage payment. It does reduce the room for other mistakes so I’m crossing my fingers none of those happen (divorce, disability, extreme burnout leading to cutting back at work)
Will definitely share my private school story :). Long story short: it’s a luxury, hardly ever a necessity, and eliminates any margin for error in your finances. And it gets harder to take kids out as they get older.
Loved your post. Thanks for writing.
IMHO, private schools are not a luxury. There is a difference. You get one shot at educating your children. Unfortunately, not all kids are challenged or fit into the local public school. Your kids are young and have just begun their educational journey.
It’s all about choices and what you think is important.
thanks for the article! I laughed out loud at the part about the kid asking if his mom has died – reminded me of when neither one of us could go to “donuts with dads” or “muffins with moms” school event starting at 730 because I’m a gastroenterologist and my wife’s an anesthesiologist, so our nanny ended up taking the kids.
We started our family in residency, and barely saw our first baby, had to switch to formula due to lack of weight gain between 2-4 months because my wife’s wasn’t able to pump enough milk, almost got admitted for FTT. Talk about mom guilt!! And one of our entire salaries went to child care with our nanny sometimes pulling 60 hour weeks (with me on q3 call in the ICU and her showing up for first start at 530, no day care would have worked). Those were tough times.
Now, we’re three years out now with kids age 7, 5, 3, and 10 months, and we now have a nanny who works 30-40 hours a week and my wife now works 0.4 FTE and I work 4 days a week most weeks. Even so, life seems hectic – we are at our best when we do one “work date” a week, where we look at calendar and events that need to happen while uninterrupted by kids, and one “fun date” a week where we DON’T talk about all that stuff and just spend time together.
We don’t outsource a lot, both of us from middle class backgrounds and fairly frugal, so it just feels weird to pay people to do things we can do ourselves. We should probably do it more though. We had cleaners for a while but then our kids started saying things like “this toilet is dirty, when will the cleaners come” and we decided they needed to learn how to clean the toilet themselves. (sometimes also a decision that we feel like reversing!)
Cool study from Mayo about minutes spent with the spouse. A good reminder for us to prioritize that.
We did decide to get life and disability insurance on both of us. We’re both procedural and still have a lot of kid years left is something happens to one of us. But we’ll probably cancel them in the next few years once we hit FI.
When I would work several evening shifts in a row the kids sometimes didn’t know I wasn’t out of town. They haven’t asked if I was dead yet though.
We also tend to DIY a lot. We both enjoy it and hate spending money on stuff we think we can/should do. I’m sure our neighbors wish we hired someone to do our landscaping.
Great article. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
“that diaper has positive margins” ROTFL 🙂
Thank you for this great article Dr. Curtis! I am in a dual-physician couple as well. Very curious re: your thoughts on private schooling – are you planning to address in a future article? It is a thought that comes up often as my little guy gets older, and one that my wife and I often debate.
Glad you enjoyed it! Yes, an article on private school is in the works!
I second this! Do you use 529s as a pass through for a small tax break? Interested to hear if yall qualify for tax deductions on education expenses that are above those that might be funneled through 529
Great article! Thank you.
I am curious about your return to the clinic work after a five year break. Did you need to go through a reentry program? If not, how did you re-acclimate? I am asking because I’m in a similar situation now, away from my clinics for several years now.
Thanks again.
Step one in any break, before or during, is investigating your state and potential state licensure requirements. Of course it’s better to maintain your license and board certification than to surrender it and then reapply, so ensure you are paying your fees and completing your required CME and any other requirements if possible. Some states might spell out if you have to justify or return to training etc for prolonged gaps; I can’t recall if this was the actual case when I took sabbaticals but expected it as a consequence for a two to three or more year gap.
Step two is remaining employable. You are competing against folks who haven’t taken time off; consider what you would be concerned about as a potential employer and consider asking mentors and current former or potential employers about their views on this.
Employers want to be certain or hope they are certain that you were not in prison or in a mental hospital during your absences. Luckily my only medical reasons were maternity leave. I expect they would also be concerned if they thought your health was likely to cause another gap in your ability to work, careful how you describe those gaps despite ADA protections. I also leveraged patriotism by pointing out that my absences were due to my husband’s military career.
I was careful to keep my actual 100% sabbaticals as short as possible. I performed locums or volunteer work sometimes only a few hours a month or so average to have only a few actual total gaps which I kept under a year or two. This also permits you to file schedule Cs even though there’s a loss if you pay for CME and with your licensure and board recertification fees.
I really hope you are being facetious when you say your kids don’t really need or want you around at all in their teen years. I pray this statement (or excuse, perhaps) doesn’t live in infamy as a foreshadowing for you. Our kids, afterall, are our treasure. Not money. I would gladly live my entire life a pauper if only that were necessary to give my kids what they needed (which isn’t money) and to always be there for them. A medical career (or 2) isn’t ever worth a wrecked family. I’ve known far too many physicians in my (albeit brief) physician career, who always seemed to try to paint a rosy picture around their kids’ multiple drug and legal problems that all come back to them and their absence from everything. But hey, at least they’re rich, right???
My wife stays at home with the kids and I can’t imagine having her work just to pay for someone else to take care of our children. I don’t understand why a job in medicine is “fulfilling”, it’s a way to make money doing something you’re good. Honestly I can’t wait to get home from work to spend time with people I love.
Amen to that, Remy. Your kids are incredibly lucky to have parents like you and your wife who have their hearts in the right place. Her job is the most important job of all, which is to help make your girls/boys into outstanding women/men. When I asked my wife if she would like to stay at home and raise our kids, she said: “I don’t want to give up my career.” So I happily took that very important job upon myself. I gave up my medical career in a heartbeat for my kids. Having done this very important job for a number of years, I cannot possibly comprehend how so many women have allowed the feminist movement to dupe them into foresaking their God-given right to this very important job so that they can go out and work at a job for some boss. But hey, as a man I have a lot to thank for the feminist movement. If not for the feminist movement brainwashing my wife, I guess I’d be the one waking up at 4AM, busting my hump at a job for some boss instead of staying at home to care for the ones I love. I’m blessed.
I’m very curious to hear what your wife says when she learns you have written that she is brainwashed on the internet.
She is well aware of my perspective and truthfully doesn’t care who knows it. And neither do I. And it wasn’t the internet that brainwashed her, it was “women’s studies” courses in the very liberal college we attended.
And she regrets that decision she made. Just as life (not I) has taught her to rethink all of the other nonsense they tried to put in her head in college. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t regret her decision enough to give up all that money she plans to make in the years ahead, despite the fact that we could easily retire right now. But, oh she will regret more so when our kids start graduating from high school and she learns all that crucial time with them can’t be made up through her early retirement. Oh well, to each their own I guess.
Residents/fellows always need to remember that once you are done with training, you are one of the most highly trained, expert professionals in the world. You are being hired because you are needed. This means you can be master of your own schedule to at least some degree. You just need to find a practice/group/employer who recognizes your worth and KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH! I remember when our group was hiring a female GI MD and tried to play hardball in getting her to start in July when she wanted to delay until later in the year. The older partners threatened her with, “We can find someone else that will start in July!” and she responded, “Well then, you should probably do that, I know I can build a successful practice somewhere else”. She started later that year–KNOW YOUR WORTH.