EBAY. Amazing fashion heaven or bane of my wallet's existence?

After a large online adventure through the halls of eBay, I'm convinced this site is a huge waste of time and money if you're just looking to buy.

I discovered eBay in January.

I obviously knew it had existed for a long time prior, but I never put much thought into it. Bidding online and paying for things online seemed like such a dirty concept.

Anyways, I discovered a beautiful pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes on the site. You know, the Salvatore Ferragamo Vara shoe. You know, the shoe. The shoe of shoes.


This shoe.

Let me just elaborate. This is the perfect shoe. Although this looks a bit boring at first, this shoe is the ultimate chameleon - great for work, great for going out at night, great for every single possible occasion except the beach in Cabo.

And someone was selling a used pair - my size - for $15.99.

Did you just drool on your keyboard? I thought so. I thought I had just died and had to pinch myself. If you were in my situation, what would you have done?

Well, being my first time on eBay, of course I didn't win (eBay snipers, damn you to hell!). After the appropriate mourning period, I went right back to eBay to look for more. That initial bidding was enough to hook me.

In a matter of 2 weeks, I had bought a pair of Ferragamo heels, a Marc Jacobs shirt, and a pair of Cheap Monday skinny black jeans.

In total, this didn't cost me over $80 including S&H. But the dangerous prospect behind it scared me. No longer did I have to bus down to the Salvation Army in Kitsilano - I could bargain shop from the comfort of my own home. No longer did I have to go out of my way to shift through heaps of smelly clothing for the one thing that looked great - I could virtually gallop through the aisles of designer heaven with a click of a search term.

I needed to stop.

So I've gotten off eBay, and I've gone back to the thrift stores. It's just too expensive to continue shopping on eBay. I'm quitting after one month - it's for my own good.

That is, right after my shoes arrive.

The Business Side of Medicine

"In medical school, you never learn about the business side of medicine."

How many times have you heard this? My ears are sore from hearing about it. But despite all the harping and all these BiM clubs sprouting out of the ground, my entire Business in Medicine education in my 3 years of medical school still boils down to the following two points:

1. Incorporate yourself so you can pay lower taxes.

2. Consolidate your debt so you can pay less interest.

To me, #1 is interesting, and #2 is a no-brainer. Besides, there are a number of parent-like financial companies out there who will continue to goad you about #2 until you do it (like MD Financial for us in Canada, for instance).

Can that possibly be all? If that's all we need to know, what on earth are they teaching those students for a whole year in the halls of B-school?

More importantly, how will I find out:

1. Appropriate salaries for your MOAs/nurses.

2. Appropriate salary for yourself (negotiating this if you work in a hospital or medical conglomerate, as most city docs will)

3. "Customer service" - i.e. how to be a responsible doctor that doesn't schedule patients for appointments at 8:30 and then see them at 10:30

4. Entrepreneurship - i.e. establishing your practice with your priorities, or even creating and selling products, such as books, or your own line of hair gel, or a new cardiac stent, even. (Hey, I can dream.) This of course would include all the finicky details of entrepreneurship, including marketing, advertising, online presence, oh my god.

Anyways, I think there's a lot to be learned here.

I think I'm going to try and discover more.

How I got a 50% raise - just by asking for it

So because I was talking about salary negotiation in a previous article, I decided to muster up some girl power and practice salary negotiation myself. And I found that negotiation is an essential skill, and you have to practice to become good at it.

Because of my negotiation, I just negotiated a 50% increase (from $20/hr to $30/hr) for a part-time contract job!

So let's back this up. I'm a medical student, which means big debt. Plus, I love to travel, which means more debt. I've started living at home to save money to pay for this lifestyle, but that doesn't begin to dig into my $15,000/year tuition.

That's where the part-time job idea comes in. I looked around for something that could be:

1. Done from home.

2. Very flexible in work hours.

3. Good pay.

So I applied to a couple places, and got one reply, from a company's HR department. She said she loved what she saw and offered me a starting salary.

This is where it got smart. Before I had applied, I had already established in my head my lowest working rate, which was 50% higher than their offer.

At first HR Woman said it wouldn't work for her company. With HUGE butterflies in my stomach, I said that my stated salary was the lowest I was willing to accept given my level of expertise, and we ended the phone conversation. I thought I had blown it, that it was the end - but somehow I held myself back from calling her back and begging her to give me the job for the lower price.

Yet just an hour later, HR Woman emails me back and says they agree to my salary- 50% higher than what she had offered in the beginning!

I think this worked because:

1. I knew they wanted me
2. I had expertise for a specific project that no one else on their staff could efficiently handle
3. I was willing to walk out.

Ladies (and gentlemen) - negotiation works. Use it. This is also fabulous practice for bigger fish later when I graduate.

Save $9,000+ per year - live at home

I have plenty of friends going through med school while living with the 'rents. They love it! Free food, reduced chores, a loving family. Just what every med student needs while stressing out about seizure etiology.

Plus, they save ooooodles of monay.

Maybe this is just a Vancouver thing. My Toronto/Montreal friends have long since flown the coop and would never think about moving back home. Here in Vancouver, however, it seems to be quite the trend.

I can think of three reasons right away:

1. Rent prices. Vancouver prices are insane. And no self-respecting, zero-income medical student in their right mind (okay, except for THE MAJORITY OF MY FRIENDS!) would spend $1,500/month for a beachfront downtown apartment just to escape the insanity of family life. Right?

2. Asian parenting. I'm allowed to say this because I'd say my family is pretty similar (applicable to anyone with Failure to Launch-nurturing parents), who love it so much when you're at home and never want you to leave. Ready-packed lunches every day and hot piping dinner waiting for you when you get home? Yes please.

3. The obvious: this saves you a hell of a lot of money.

Rent in Vancouver is about $750/month for a shared place with a roommate, and $1000+ for a one-bedroom. Generally downtown this goes up to $1500.

Let's say, being the frugal Student Sophsticate, you decide to share a place with a roommate.

$750/month x 12 months = $9000

Yikes.

I think this one is really up to you.

Financial case study: post-graduation, new doctor

Let's look at an example of a friend of mine, D.

All medical students dream of the day when they finally start "making the big bucks". This is not entirely because everyone wants to run out and buy a Mazzerati - it's more because everyone wants to finally climb out of the deep hole of debt that we willingly dig ourselves into.

So D went to a school where his tuition was low - around $7000 per year.
During medical school D tried to cut down on expenses and worked to pay off some loans in the summertime.

By the time D graduated, he had $25,000 in loans.

That's really, really great.

He paid off his loans during his first year of residency. Now he's living the life - but he's in Kamloops!

So where's the logic? What is the point in having all this money if you're not able to go and spend it where you want to - when you're away from friends, family, and everyone you know?

Given the tough job market, D had two options upon graduating:
1. Go into a fellowship (continue making residency-like salary)
2. Go work in a rural community (make big bucks, have lots of choice where you work)

So it wasn't really tough for him to decide. But I can understand where the issue comes in for a lot of other people.

What does medical school mean?

Here's what I just found on Urban Dictionary:

"Medical School: The place Biology majors go to have their dreams of becoming an ethical physician brutally slaughtered whilst simultaneously getting into insummountable debt."

"I have a 4.0 GPA, 10 years of my life I'm not doing anything with, masochistic tendencies and the desire to owe an unforgiving financial institution $200K at 24% interest...I know! I'll apply to medical school."

A place where one wastes the prime of his youth studying ridiculously long, hard, tedious, dry, and unbelievably boring subjects, which he will totally forget about after the exams. Most likely going suicidal and severely depressed in the process, the stress will eat his life span like fire through wood, his hair starts to fall quite early, said subject's diet consists of energy drinks and caffeine.

Not only is one expected to be an academic genius, and a a God-like clinician, society demands that you become a social angel, smiling at everything and everyone, treating everyone like a king/queen, excellent with small talk, ..etc. Basically you have to be the enslaved incarnation of Mother Teresa.

If you manage to pull it off, you will then discover a fact that will shake the boundaries of your life, and either drive you mad, or causes the return of the suicidal thoughts ... The fact that Medicine is the absolute most inaccurate science on the face of the earth, and I mean light years more inaccurate than chaos math; each case presentation will make the text book seem like a fairytale book.


Wow, talk about nihilistic!
Now, bearing in mind that that UrbanDictionary is not the best place to get your advice, I don't think the situation is necessarily that bad. At the same time it definitely makes me think about what I'm doing here. Maybe I'm just a mover at heart.

November Budget

Woohoo! $600 scholarship.

Current bank account $1688.26

Current debt:
BCSL $4730
Canada SL $25,403

Expected expenses:
Still owing uni for this year: $2826.53
Other expenditures: $1000

Expected income:
December $500
January $500
February $1500 grant
$5720 BCSL

Total debt @ August: $35,853
Total cash @ August: ~$8000