Dr. Josh Daily joins Dr. Michael Jerkins for a candid conversation about a quiet crisis in medicine—one hiding in plain sight on every trainee's loan statement and every attending's pay stub. As a pediatric cardiologist, program director, and co-director of a medical student course on financial essentials for physicians, Dr. Daily has a clear view of why only 9% of doctors say they feel extremely confident managing their finances—and why that number, troubling as it is, makes complete sense given how little financial training physicians actually receive.

Dr. Daily walks through the tools doctors are rarely given but desperately need: how to think about net present value when your debt looks bigger than your starting salary, why the timing of promotion can shape lifetime earnings more than the specialty you choose, and how recent federal loan caps of $200,000 could quietly reshape who gets to become a doctor in the first place.

The episode also takes on the harder cultural questions underneath the numbers: What happens when "medicine as a calling" becomes the language used to justify being underpaid and overworked? Why is the pay gap between pediatric and adult subspecialties widening at exactly the level where trainees decide their futures? And when does additional training actually pay off—financially and otherwise?

Throughout the conversation, one truth anchors the discussion: financial literacy is not the opposite of a meaningful medical career—it is what protects it. Understanding the math is how physicians stay in medicine, stay whole, and stay free to practice the way they always intended.