A Week In Inner City Sydney As A Junior Doctor On A $155,000 Income

Occupation: Junior Doctor
Industry: Health
Age: 27
Location: Inner City Sydney
Salary: $125,000 base salary with about $30,000 in overtime.
Net Worth: $75,000 ($80,000 in savings, $5,000 in ETFs, and $30,000 in super)
Debt: $40,000 in HECS debt
Paycheque Amount (Monthly): $3,500 to $5,000, depending on overtime.
Pronouns: She/Her

Rent: $1,300. I live with a housemate in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment.
Netflix: $17
Electricity: $100 - $150
AMA (Australian Medical Association) Membership: $56
Spotify: $12
Internet: $40
Phone: $30

I completed a five-year undergraduate university degree and used a HECS loan to pay for it.

We rarely spoke about money growing up. It was almost an awkward topic to bring up with my parents. We still don't really talk about money. I don't remember ever receiving an allowance, but they always bought me things that I needed.

My first job was at a Coles when I was 16. I worked two shifts after school, usually working more during the school holidays. I got it because most of my friends at school had part-time jobs and because I wanted to save money for a school trip to France.

I didn't worry when I was growing up and living with my parents. But when I turned 21, at university and living out of home for the first time, I worried about money because I was relying on the Youth Allowance and money from my parents. That being said, I always had enough to buy food, clothes and things I needed for university.

Not in a day-to-day sense, but I would like to buy a house, which I think is challenging in the current climate. I was aiming to have enough money for a deposit by the end of the year, but I ended up spending more money than I'd anticipated on medical college fees, exams and courses. Housing prices are going up, so I'm going to wait at least a year until I start thinking about it again.

I became financially independent when I started working as a doctor at 23.

No.

6:00am — My alarm goes off. I get up and make a coffee using my machine, then have a shower and get dressed. 

7:00am — I leave home and walk to work. I start at 8am and it takes me 40 minutes to walk to work, but I want to arrive early because I have some paperwork that I need to do. 

8:00am — The work day starts with a handover from the weekend team. Then we do the ward round of our current inpatients. I’m working as a registrar on a busy subspecialty team. My role includes looking after about 20 to 25 inpatients, doing outpatient clinics each week and supervising junior doctors and medical students. I also spend one weekend each month on call.

10:30am — We stop for coffee and the consultant pays. Then we continue the ward round. We're busy today because two of our team members have Covid and are on leave. The wards are also full, so we don't stop for lunch until 2pm. I didn't bring lunch today because I was working throughout the weekend and didn't have time to go grocery shopping. I buy lunch and have another coffee — $16. 

5:30pm — I finish work. I go home, get changed and meet a friend for dinner at a local pub. I went to school with them and they've just moved to Sydney, so I haven't seen them for a few years. I order a chicken parma and a beer. We split the bill, so it’s $30 each. We end up talking for ages and I don’t leave until 9:30pm. I get an Uber home ($9) because it’s late and I need to get up early for work tomorrow. $39

9:45pm — I get home. I put on a load of washing. I go to bed. 

Daily Total: $55

5:30am — I wake up early this morning because I have exams coming up. I'm trying to get in an hour of study before I head to work. I feed the cat, have a shower and buy a takeaway coffee from a cafe near our house. $4.50

7:15am — I walk to work, coffee in hand, which takes me about 35 minutes. On the way, I listen to a recorded lecture on melanoma. The medical college that I am training with releases a number of recorded lectures each year on various topics that we need to know about for exams. They have PowerPoints as well, but often I will listen to a lecture on the way to work if I am walking or on long drives. They're still useful even without the slides.

8:00am — This morning is busy. We have a multidisciplinary meeting at 9am, so we try to do some of our ward round before then. I buy a coffee for myself and my colleague before the meeting. $9

1:00pm — Our team orders UberEats for lunch from a local bagel shop, coming to $17 each. $17

5:00pm — I finish work early today and walk home. I stop at the IGA on the way, buying some bread, fruit, Neapolitan ice cream and cat food ($20). I should have gone to the large supermarket because it’s cheaper, but I can’t be bothered getting into the car. $20

7:30pm — I have an evening appointment to get my eyebrows waxed. $30

8:00pm — I cook dinner with my housemate. We make a very basic noodle dish using ingredients that we have tucked away in the pantry. My housemate is also a doctor and is about to spend three months working in the country as part of her training. Fortunately for me, she’s going to keep renting our place in the city because she’s planning on coming back on the weekends a fair bit. 

9:30pm — Even though it’s late and I’m tired, I’m presenting in journal club next week, so I know that the rest of the week is going to be quite busy. I lose track of time and work on my presentation for two hours. Then I buy a moisturiser and cleanser from Go-To Skincare ($140) because I’m almost running out. I go to bed at 11.45pm. $140

Daily Total: $220.50

6:30am — I wake up and get ready for work. I have a WhatsApp group chat with some of my close friends from university. We're all working at different hospitals now, but we still talk every day and catch up whenever we can. One of my friends tells the group that she's moving into her new house today! She bought it with her partner who's also a doctor. I get curious and look up the house to see that the sale price is $1.4 million! I have no idea how she has afforded to buy that, as she’s been a doctor for the same amount of time that I have — but the place looks great and I’m happy for her.

7:15am — I leave home and buy a takeaway coffee on my walk to work. $4.50

7:50am — I arrive at work. This morning, I'm doing an outpatient clinic. Halfway through the clinic, I buy coffee for myself and my colleagues ($35). I still haven't had enough time to go grocery shopping, so I also buy lunch today ($15). Half of today's clinics are telehealth appointments and the other half are in person. I find the telehealth reviews quite challenging because you can’t properly examine the patient. Some of our elderly patients are hard of hearing, which makes it difficult to communicate. It just doesn’t feel as personal. That being said, I think that telehealth helps make healthcare more accessible to patients who have trouble leaving their house, have issues with transport, or who live remotely. $50

6:00pm — After work, I go out for dinner with a friend from uni. We head to a Japanese restaurant and order some share plates and two cocktails each. We split the bill — $70 each. I walk home, which takes me about 20 minutes. $70

9:00pm — I get home and have a shower. It’s tax time, so I start preparing my tax return. There are so many expenses that I need to cover with my job. I’ve spent over $4,000 on medical college fees and almost $6,000 on study courses and my medical registration is about $800. Fortunately, I can claim all of this on tax. It looks like I’ll get about $3,000 back, but I need to go through it all properly again. I go to sleep at about 10:30pm. 

Daily Total: $124.50

10:00am — I have the day off work today, so I sleep in. When I wake up, I clean the house, do some meal planning, and head out to buy groceries. I need to stock up for the next seven to ten days. I buy fruit, vegetables, fish, cat litter, bulk cat food and some laundry and cleaning products which make my shop a bit more expensive than usual ($120). On the way home, I fill up my car with petrol ($90). $210

1:00pm — I unload my groceries and unpack the dishwasher. Then I study for two hours. This time, I watch a lecture on lung cancer. Then I read some articles on UpToDate, which is an online medical diagnosis/treatment platform that doctors use. After studying, I look at flights because I want to go visit my parents who live interstate. Because I’m booking in advance, I end up getting a good deal — $80 each way ($160 total). My parents live in Melbourne. I grew up and went to school there, but then I moved to NSW for medical school and ended up staying here for work. I really like living in Sydney, but I miss seeing my parents. Unfortunately due to Covid and domestic travel restrictions, I didn’t get to see them for about 18 months. It was really hard, so now I try and visit them as much as I can. I also have three younger siblings and one of them still lives with my parents, so I’ll get to see them too. $160

6:00pm — I cook mushroom, chicken and bacon risotto with my new groceries. I cooked in bulk so that I have leftovers to take to lunch for the rest of the week. My housemate is watching Season 4 of Stranger Things. I'm tempted to join them, but I've only watched up until Season 2. I want to watch the rest, but I'm making myself wait until after exams. They're about six months away, but they're pretty big exams that people usually study for over a year for. I'll be having a written and a practical exam. If I pass both of them, then I can apply for a specialist training program.

Daily Total: $370

5:30am —  I wake up and study for an hour before work while drinking a coffee. I get ready and leave home at 7:20am to walk to work.

8:00am — Today is an extremely busy day at work. One of the wards is shut because of Covid and we have lots of people on sick leave. I also have an outpatient clinic this afternoon, which is where I see new patients that have been referred by their GPs or patients with illnesses that my subspeciality looks after. I enjoy outpatient clinics because you get to see patients with illnesses that you don’t usually see inside the hospital. I have a medical student sitting with me during this clinic which is great — she’s very enthusiastic. Even though it’s a busy clinic, I try to make time to teach her.

I don't have time to eat lunch, but I buy a coffee at 4pm ($4.50). The clinic doesn't finish until 5.30pm, then I spend a few hours doing some paperwork. I get an Uber home ($14) because I'm tired and don't want to walk in the dark. $18.50

8:00pm — I get home and heat up some leftovers for dinner. My study group started at 6pm, so I've missed most of it but I join in for the last 45 minutes. I'm frustrated because since work has been busy, I’ve been missing a lot of study groups. I’m worried I’m falling behind. I’m on call for work for the weekend which means that nurses and doctors can call me overnight with any questions they have. I’ve been on call a lot lately because people have been on sick leave and I'm finding it really exhausting. We only get paid a very minimal amount for it and it's the same amount whether we get called zero or ten times during the night. When I first started it, I really enjoyed it as a learning experience. I still learn a lot, but I generally find it stressful, a little socially isolating and very tiring. 

9:00pm — I talk with one of my friends from work over Messenger. She's having a hard time with one of her colleagues. She's training in a surgical subspecialty and is working in a very competitive environment. She needs to get a certain number of surgical procedures done to progress with her training, and she’s finding it really hard because one of her colleagues is going into the operating theatre more than she is and is putting up unnecessary barriers. She’s working a lot of overtime as well as studying for exams and seems really burnt out. We organise a time to meet for dinner next week.

10:00pm — I get a call from the emergency department about a patient who needs to be admitted under my team. I give them some advice and have a look at their blood tests. I have access to the hospital medical records on my laptop, which can be both a blessing and a curse. I think it became more common for doctors to have access to medical records during Covid lockdowns, but now I sometimes feel obliged to look things up and check results when I’m at home. It can be quite stressful. It also means that I take work home with me more frequently, which isn't great for work/life balance. I finally head to bed at about 10:30pm.

2:00am — I'm woken up by the emergency department about a new admission.

4:00am — I'm woken up again about an unwell patient on the ward. I don't bother going back to sleep because I have to chase up an X-ray and some blood tests for a patient as I'm a bit worried about them. Since I'm still fairly junior, I often need to wake up my boss when I get calls overnight as I need to ask them a question. I feel bad about waking them for things that probably seem basic to them. I never sleep very well when I'm on call, and generally wake up feeling pretty unrefreshed. My subspecialty is particularly demanding on call because our patients often become unwell quite quickly.

6:30am — I get out of bed and get a takeaway coffee on my way to work ($4.50). I'm driving to work because parking is free on the weekend. $4.50

8:00am — I buy coffee for myself and a colleague ($9) and we do the morning ward round. We finish it at 11:30am, but then I have some paperwork to do, so I don't leave work until 2pm. Luckily I've brought a toasted sandwich from home to eat for lunch today. $9

2:00pm — In the afternoon, I study in the hospital library. I’m really tired because of the number of times that I've woken up overnight. My next day off work isn’t for another six days, which makes me stressed because I’ve got so much study that I need to do and I'm already exhausted. My study time isn’t very productive and I go home at about 4pm, where I lie in bed, scroll Instagram, and chat with my friends for an hour before I get ready for dinner.

6:00pm — I meet some friends for dinner at a casual pizza place. We don't buy drinks because we're all on call. I get a margarita pizza and a non-alcoholic cocktail ($35). Then I head home for an early night. $35

Daily Total: $48.50

7:00am — I didn't get woken up overnight! I wake up and buy a takeaway coffee on my way to work. $4.50

8:00am — I do the ward round. We have 20 patients to see, plus another two in the emergency department. Normally there is another junior doctor with me over the weekend, but they’re on sick leave today so I have to do a lot of paperwork by myself. 

1:00pm — I finish work and meet a friend from uni for lunch ($25). We go to a small Vietnamese cafe near my house. She’s a GP trainee and I haven’t seen her for a while because she’s been working in rural NSW. We mostly catch up on gossip related to our shared uni friends but we also chat about the pay discrepancies between GP and hospital trainees. This is her first year in GP training and her salary has gone down by about $30,000, which seems wild since the country is in such dire need of GPs. I go home and study in the afternoon, finishing my presentation for the journal club. $25

7:00pm — For dinner, I cook at home with my housemate and have some non-alcoholic wine that I bought on my way home ($30). I bought non-alcoholic wine because I’m on call — I could have a glass or two of alcoholic wine, but I’m really tired after a busy week and I don’t feel like I need alcohol. I’ve also been trying to limit drinking alcohol to one or two nights each week whilst I’m studying for exams because I feel like I sleep better.  I'm really tired, so I watch Netflix in bed (old Kath and Kim episodes, of course). While I watch, I look up my outpatient clinic patients on the electronic hospital records for the following week. $30

9:30pm — I call my mum before I go to bed because I’ve missed a couple of calls from her this week. I just haven’t had time to call her back. I tell her that I’ve booked flights to visit soon which makes her happy. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes into our phone call, I get a call from work. It takes me about 30 minutes to sort out, so I send a message to Mum letting her know that I'm going to bed but that I'll call her during the week.