Originally Posted by Unregistered

Op here.
I have met friends who made 300k-400k last year based on locuming alone. And with their investment portfolio and options trading (selling covered calls etc, not speculation on crypto btw) they are almost financially free. Some of them who locum for a few more years already bought house and earning passive income from rental.

I think the general point is to locum agressively for 5-10 years, once you made your pot of gold early, they don't care how much locums get paid in 10-20 years as they are likely financially free by then. Having said that I must emphasize that the sample size of people I meet is small as I only just started locuming for 3 months.

I used to think like a typical mo/resident, work hard for residency, strive for mmed, at least got secure reasonable paying job for life (can always return to public sector when old etc). It's only in the last 2-3 months when I started my "locum life" before I realize how stupid that idea was. I met doctors younger than me who broke bond and go full time locum have their net worth 4-5 times of mine.. (of course covid is a once in lifetime opportunity for locums and may never happen again in our lifetime)

To be fair, I guess it's also a mentality thing. Most of these locum doctors think like finance people, chiong hard for 10 years, build your pot of gold, try and create source of passive income (investment, property etc) and retire by mid 40s, whereas throughout my residency and mopex years I am surrounded by senior doctors who focus on things like pursuing your passion, lifelong learning etc. (I.e there is less hunger/emphasis on wealth/money).

I don't want to say which option (public vs private) is better, as I am very new to private sector and to a large extent learning as I go along. I just wanted to comment here as I feel that junior doctors should know of their options outside and the financial opportunity cost of staying in public especially if they have the necessary mentality and hunger for money.