When asked for my best tip for doctors and others to grow wealth and become financially independent, I usually answer with three words that echo the warning from the loudspeakers as you enter the subway car in London’s “tube.” Mind the gap.
When you tell yourself the big money is coming for a decade or a decade and a half and then it finally arrives, well, it seems like time to buy a bunch of stuff you’ve been putting off for pretty much, well, forever.
They see that their salary after residency will go up by five or six times, so they assume they can spend 5-6 times as much as they did during residency. They forget that 1/4 to 1/3 of their earnings will go to the taxman.
Another major difficulty for doctors is that everyone else sees them as rich, even if their incredibly negative net worth actually ranks them as being some of the poorest people on the planet.