Why 28? For starters, working for six or seven years after college at a nonmedical job would let doctors put crucial funds into retirement and real estate. For many physicians, part of their current collective disillusionment with medicine is financial. Instead of enjoying incomes proportional to their sacrifices, they tussle on the phone with professional payment deniers at insurance companies and watch as money slips away to paying off massive student loans, licensure fees, and malpractice insurance. Plastic surgeons may buy mansions, but geriatricians clip coupons. It is no wonder that a geriatrician shortage looms.

Unlike their nonphysician counterparts, who have been growing their nest eggs since their early-to-mid 20s, many physicians worry about having to work past retirement age due to foregoing buying that fixer-upper or missing the years of compounded investment gains accrued from putting money into retirement accounts before starting medical school. For students and medical residents with little to no disposable income, the cash flow just doesn’t permit it. But both adult goals can be achieved before starting medical school. The proceeds from selling or renting out that home or the dividends from early investments can help offset the costs of medical school, as can doing work on the side in one’s “twenties profession” during medical school.