This is the Ramsey Call of the Day, part of the Ramsey Network. Today's question comes from Hannah in Maryland. Hannah asks, how do I guide my boyfriend in making a pivotal career move? I can stop you right there and say you don't, but we'll continue.
He's 32 and in residency. Most doctors go for clinical careers, but his passion lies in medical research. The problem is great. The problem is that a career in medical research pays significantly less than a clinical career.
Research grants pay about 60 grand a year and allow you to clinical work making up to another $100,000 a year. A strictly clinical career starts at about $300,000 and goes up from there. If money was not a factor, he would choose the research career. He has $500,000 in student loans.
We'd like to get married and have a big family someday. How do I help him make sense of what he would be giving up by going with the lower paying option? How does one way their passions with what makes financial sense is this a case where passion needs to be thrown by the wayside? There's so much here.
There's a lot going on, John. I'll let you go first. Hannah? You have already spent $500,000 of your future husbands' first year salary.
You've already spent it. You know what the house is going to look like? You already have the picture in your head of how many kids you'll have and what they'll all be doing in the big house that you'll have on the acres and wherever and wherever. This is less a question about your boyfriend's passion and moral question about do you love him enough to follow him into what he wants to do with his life?
Or do you love him because he's going to make you a whole whole bunch of money? Now he's racked up $500,000 in student loans. Right now he, because you aren't married, he has a problem. He dug himself a big old hole.
So if he was to call on the show, I would tell him it sounds like I would do both. I would be exhausted and do a clinical career and do research on the side until I could get this thing paid off and then lean over. And if he really wants to do research, you can do both. In fact, I think the researchers of the most validity are those who are also seeing patients.
That's a whole other conversation. But yeah, he's going to have to figure that out financially. But that's not the question you're asking. Question you're asking is, can I marry somebody who doesn't make that much of money?
Yeah, it feels to me that there's a security thing here of, well, if I marry someone who makes $300,000, I feel a lot better than if they made $160. I don't even see that security issue as much as a. She's living in a, she's got a fantasy. Yeah.
And you may have put your time in, you may have invested in this guy because he was going to be a big fish. But, woof. I mean, $160K is still a great salary and I'd rather be married to someone who loves what they do every day and comes home with something left in the tank than someone who goes, I hate this. But I'm glad we make good money.
Yeah. So I'm heading off to a thing that I hate and hope you enjoy spending it. And again, there's much more play here, Hannah. You've got to ask yourself, can I be with a guy who only makes $160?
Most people rolling their eyes going, oh my gosh, it's $160,000. I know. Yeah. Yeah.
He's going to have to solve that problem. But you need to have a broader conversation about is this the guy that you want to be married to. Can you slum it with a guy that just makes $160? And you'll need to be serious about planning what your finances are going to look like.
And when it comes to a budget and all those realistic things, but you can. How do I guide my boyfriend making a pivotal career move away from what passion what he wants to do that's going to make him six figures into how much money that's caused me. Yeah. Yeah.
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