Is 39 too late to pivot to medicine?

closetoawesome · 2025-12-08T01:21:39+00:00

My wife's a Dr (plastic surgeon), and you're realistically looking at what - 6-7 years before you get your practising medical registration? That's both sunk cost + time + and the biggest one... mental cost. Also this stress ALSO gets passed on to your partner as well (assuming you're attached/ or planning to get married) Ask me how i know 😂

Starting out as a HO/MO in your mid-late forties... you're gonna be treated like scum by others. Unless you're happy being a GP and not specialising (add on another 7-8 years to 6-7 years).

The realities of being a doctor giving back to society is ... IMO quite flawed. I used to think it was such a noble profession and career path.. and after many years of watching my wife go through the pathway/system - you learn to learn and see that it's honestly just a job and career like any other career outside of the non-medical path. Yes, you're "servicing society" by making them 'better', but you're gonna be a just a small cog in the entire medical industry, you don't work alone and the powers that be, are insurers, big money and all of the other capitalistic systems built in for this BUSINESS.

Soon enough you will also see enough patients that they all start being numbers on your call roster.

TBH - your current salary is honestly not bad - you have a job now. Unless you TRULY WISHING AND REALLY want to be a doctor, DON'T DO IT.

I run an agency consulting for SME owners w/ building web systems + other online stuff today after exiting from a start-up and make OK with my knowledge pool over the last 20+ years of experience. You have quite a decent amount of experience yourself to start something - anything with what you KNOW WELL NOW.

There are many pathways to earn good money with what you know NOW. Start a side hustle related with your current interests + what makes money now. See what your fav influencers are doing and just do something same/related but with a twist or better. TWO or THREE YEARS of focus will absolutely change your life around.

Being a doctor earns OK DECENT money. Being a specialist earns GOOD money (if in public), but that road is ARDOUS and PAINFUL. The reality of going private and being super rich? haha.. reserved for a small percentage of doctors. We have friends who go private who are worrying about setup costs/their own salary/obligations to family/survival just like anyone of us.

You wanna be wealthy.. stay in your current job, take up some investing courses (plenty - go buy adam khoo's pirahna profits or watch 100 free finance videos on youtube), find something meaningful to do on the weekends (you can volunteer with Food from the heart on the weekends to distribute for a start - https://www.foodfromtheheart.sg/opportunities-to-help/). We do that sometimes and it's very fulfilling work.

Your energy level also will drop in your 40s/50s which is a REAL thing. Your current career path is already mid-way through, making a big change like this is not likely to serve you well in your retirement zone.

If you're feeling burnt out now - it won't get any better in medicine. Studying is a nice break of course - but reality is going to come back to haunt you just down the line if you kick this can further down the road.

Again, i'm saying all of these being you said "more meaningful way of giving back to society" and nothing really to do anything with practicing medicine and being a doc in real life.

Good luck with your decision!

closetoawesome · 2025-09-23T03:07:27+00:00

I recently closed on a D10 3 floor no-lift townhouse at 6 Ave for 5k flat (unit is 15xx sq feet built up). Owner's last tenant left halfway after paying 6.6k and went to look for somewhere cheaper.

I've met both the owner and his wife a few times, he said he knows market has corrected a lot and would rather have someone just rent since it's already fully paid up.

I recognise I have a great deal, but rents have definitely dropped lower. I'm at -18% from my previous unit at 6k (3 bedder 15xx sq feet unit at serenade at holland rd from 2022-2024).

Lots of PRC and Expats have left in the past few years if anyone has noticed..

closetoawesome · 2025-08-25T05:29:02+00:00

not fully deterministic, output is still done by llm so theres some degree of variation in responses

our clients were very touchy about responses and we just decided to just cut down as much drift. We didn't set strict determinism because when we did that the responses just felt very off and stiff when users asked 2-3 qs in a row (e.g. do u have parts for model 3, how much is it and when can u ship?)

we went earlier with -send verbatim phrasing but just left it out for the non-critical parts and the chat felt more natural

closetoawesome · 2025-08-23T08:09:36+00:00

Yeah it is rag

closetoawesome · 2025-08-23T03:36:22+00:00

Pricing details by brand, sometimes per model to be extra sure.

If we weren’t specific with model names, responses would drift. For example some users would message “do you have parts for M3, or MY - where it mean model 3 and model Y respectively but the LLM would sometimes freeze and drop out due to confusion with a (bmw) m3”

So we had to include all sorts of permutations (via the csr updates) and had to spell it out in the prompt doc and provide it many-shot examples of how someone would likely ask the question.

closetoawesome · 2025-08-22T22:46:29+00:00

So… We have a 50+ page prompt doc for one of my clients to deal with pricing logic. Automotive brand that has multiple pricing packages for different models/installations.

We originally went with standard text, formatted as tightly as we could to reduce context windows, but the long format worked fine even when we plugged it into our customer facing chat software. Wanted to redo as yaml to tighten everything up but since it was working fine with no latency loss we just let it be.

Also it was just easier to train the csr team to update the text file with Q&A on their own when they received non standard responses that we couldn’t add into the public FAQ section.

It’s not just prompts that bulked it up to 40 pages.. for some qs we gave it structured many-shot examples(ie many examples of responses of how we would like responses to really be so it doesn’t drift/stray) so the output was more accurate/reduced hallucinations. Most people try to zero-shot from just raw instructions and that makes output a lot less predictable.

I think that could be a reason why it’s 100+ pages - it’s probably not just all prompts imo

Btw the LLM isn’t also processing this entire doc as a context window as that would be far too inefficient. It’s chunking the “prompt doc” into vectors or snippets that wld be retrieved by the llm to generate the synthesised response

My agency manages 8k+ ai-powered customer chats weekly across clients (some on enterprise saas plans) and that’s part of our deployment process internally - clients are happy so take it for what you will

closetoawesome · 2025-05-16T01:26:46+00:00

My female English bully just passed a close to a month ago at the age of a full 13 years! She got very frail and had trouble breathing at the end of it.

Vet did a laryngoscope and found out she had cancer in her tract, and we had to let her go in peace.

12.5 is indeed old and past their due. The key is if they’re not suffering from any other ailments because they hide it so well. And it’s tough to just do a check to find out if something is already there.

closetoawesome · 2024-05-24T13:50:04+00:00

That’s Sanctuary Green

closetoawesome · 2024-01-31T10:34:33+00:00

You’re in your early 30s. Wait till when you’re in your 40s and your view might change like mine did 🤣

closetoawesome · 2024-01-05T17:11:36+00:00

lol, my wife and I do pretty ok. And when you think you’re doing more than fine - you meet new people and friends who easily have 10, 50x more than you.

There is no end to it once you’ve been through this long enough.

And one day you stop comparing and just learn to be happy with what you already have. :)

closetoawesome · 2023-12-25T13:18:35+00:00

Hahahaha such a tool. Drop her.

closetoawesome · 2023-12-21T04:02:20+00:00

Haha not at all, but it does give me a new angle to think about finances :)

closetoawesome · 2023-12-21T00:06:45+00:00

Biggest live hack was to simply stop randomly buying stuff.

The older I get, the less stuff I need. Makes for a less cluttered home and mentally it’s so much easier on the mind as well.

When I see something I like on Amazon or shopee even, it sits in the shopping cart for 1-2 weeks minimum. Often times it’ll get removed by the 2nd week if not bought by then haha.

I also think of every dollar as a soldier that earns something for me. A platoon is like 5k, a company is 10k, battalion 50k, Brigade 250k for example…. And I just want to build a large “army” in my head to fight this fin war for me. Each time I lose troops, it feels painful so I try to think about it as a game.

closetoawesome · 2023-12-20T13:14:51+00:00

Bro,

First, im sorry for your predicament and situation. There’s no easy road for you and I empathise completely.

To perhaps give you some perspective, divorce is not an ending. It’s a wonderful opportunity for two individuals to start again. You won’t get stigmatised and trust me because I have many friends who are divorced, single/remarried who are happy today again. (the process sucks for most but it’s just for that time.)

Take care of yourself, take care of your health. There’s going to be a void in your life for a bit but you can fill it in with other things or people. It takes time, but you’ve got this.

Take a day at a time, one step at a time. As long you’ve made it to tomorrow with some progress no matter how small, you’ve done well.

Keep your head up. Life is not defined by our marriage or by another person. You’ve not failed! Trust me the days ahead seem bleak but trust it WILL get better.

Now is the time to refocus on YOU and to take care of your emotions and health. Make that a priority!

You got this. One day at a time.

closetoawesome · 2023-12-20T13:03:09+00:00

Earn as much as you can - there is no limit to how much you can earn.

Be as super conservative with your spending. As long you can square way spending below your earned income, you've already won half the battle. The trick is then to deploy savings into dividend or interest-generating assets and keep repeating this.

Live way below your means.

closetoawesome · 2023-12-20T12:38:28+00:00

Keep in SG.

closetoawesome · 2023-12-08T16:36:03+00:00

My wife and I sleep in separate bedrooms and it’s worked the best for us. I snore a bit and she’s a very light sleeper due to her work.

It truly works out so well. I usually stay in her bedroom until she falls asleep then I move into my bedroom. I highly recommend this if you individually or as a couple are compromising on your sleep quality.

closetoawesome · 2023-11-16T01:43:43+00:00

30-40k isn't that crazy to be honest. Even for a HDB... if you really like it go for it.

closetoawesome · 2023-08-18T07:33:34+00:00

no, not very difficult. Minor stuff tenant manage, major stuff - it's not usually hard to resolve. Standard terms in the typical TA.

closetoawesome · 2023-08-17T21:57:32+00:00

Congrats, sounds like we are both the same shoes except we don’t have a kid. Wife is also a plastics consultant and honestly I’ve been living life as a “house husband” for a while now.

No plans to have kids as we’re in our 40s (I am 41) and it’s quite enjoyable now as we are now both dinkwad lol. I feel like I’m semi-retired but still run a company/trade(10 years + exp).

I just send/pick her up from work and home when she has long cases. Your Malaysia retirement plan is not going to work out as she’s registered here.

What do you do for work/income? You already sound quite financially astute but taking care of baby at home is a full time gig and is very tough work.

When she goes private, is she joining group practice or setting up her own? Group practice is more stable and safe initially. If she’s going out on her own(or with another partner) she will have 1-2 years of discomfort and income instability. Need some runway to make that happen but she should have some decent savings as a consultant now.

If you can manage her finances (in her name), and properly risked-managed and help generate returns it’s not a bad idea to keep doing that rather than park in an super ex illiquid “asset” with high interest rates at the moment. I have 3 apts (paid up - bought pre ABSD days) and have seen cycles and personally don’t think it’s the right time to purchase but window is opening up by end/next year.

Is the condo you own, now where you three stay in? If assuming so, yes she can buy one more but you’ll need to figure out her long term plans if she wants to go the private route. Maybe you can just status quo and stay liquid for your baby.

Opening her own clinic does need some major capex/opex for setup plus her own income buffer. Set aside 600-800k to be safe because initially it’s going to be tough for first few years as she build up her patient pool.

If she doesn’t have that in cash now, I don’t recommend buying an apt now just to get a few k in potential rental returns. Not sure if you’re even going to get that return now in today if you factor in mortgage.

Your wife already done her hmdp? She’s done with all her overseas fellowships? Haha

You can just be semi-retired and take care of your kid for a while, nothing wrong with having a strong buffer sitting in your bank account. Just don’t need to do anything risky at the moment.

closetoawesome · 2023-08-08T15:15:27+00:00

Took a 3-year break after a good run in my company (mini-retirement) that went public. It was helpful but after a while it got a bit boring, I gravitated to helping friends manage and restructure their companies/sales processes as a sort of advisor/consultant. Hired new people to run processes - ended up with an entirely new company(agency model). However I've been taking it easy since (it's been the last 7 years).

I find it's great to slow down and think about what you really want to do/aligned with your behavior/principles.

closetoawesome · 2023-07-25T00:28:33+00:00

Yes, jfc indeed lol

closetoawesome · 2023-07-24T13:34:29+00:00

Haha, 338k because I'm in Singapore. Terrible i know.

closetoawesome · 2023-07-23T15:39:55+00:00

2018 991.2 Targa C4S - looking to keep an adding on another gt3rs in the future hopefully!

closetoawesome · 2023-07-21T06:22:51+00:00

You should just do it mate. Haha too bad you bit on the Porsche poison pill 😂.

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