My view is that the more time one spends doing something he or she isn't fully committed to/passionate about, the worse off he or she is.
This is a very old thread, but the topic is perennial.
There is nothing more important than time. The resource is extremely limited.
In contrast to the above advice, for any future reader of this thread considering not going to residency, stop worrying about everything external (e.g., "do I need to do an intern year or full program first?") and run with your gut. That's hugely important. If you are ambivalent and not sure what you'll do if you don't go to residency, then double-consider pragmatism/feasibility, but if you do know what you want, then pursue that. (And for comparison, think about different people who have dropped out/not even finished programs to pursue their goals/passions)
I'm taking at least a year off after medical school to pursue "endeavours," and I might not return to practice medicine or even do an intern year. That's essentially against the advice of everyone I know. But yet again I'm aware that's just because they see it as against the norm/high risk and can't conceptualize what it means to have a deep passion for something. I truly believe however that if you have lucidity about what you want/need to do, it doesn't seem like risk at all.
The same way a painting is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, the true risk associated with any given situation is only as great as one perceives it to be.
One person might view the possibility of losing X-number of dollars as a big deal, whereas another might view the time lost not pursuing an endeavour as immeasurably more substantial.
What I've come to realize is that once you've found what you're passionate about, nothing becomes more important than pursuing that. Money is the least important thing on the priority list. If your reason for not going to residency is potentially lucrative, that's great. But if it's not, pursuing your goals is way more important than how quickly you pay off your loans. You'll find the vast majority of people in this world allow money to become a much more substantial restriction on life than it really is.
Before you know it we will all be old and life will be over. Not a single person out there should do anything apart from what makes him or her happy.
There's some truth to the spirit of this, and also some total BS.
Some people I know went from being on path to finishing residency and attending salary and dream job, to, well, not. And like the person below, they can live an impoverished life full of uncertainty and continued suffering in those fields, or finish residency.
Poverty sucks. Real poverty, sucks. It only doesn't suck I guess if you choose it, but I guess I wouldn't count that as poverty but a lifestyle choice. Some counterculture people like living off the grid and finding their next meal in a dumpster as part of their life adventure. Once the thrill of living a life you've only seen on a tele-drama wears off, eating out of a dumpster loses its sexy allure after a while.
The additional problem is one like mine, where I did not match and am trying my best to do something medically relevant, but there's not much out there where I can earn a living doing so. Sure, research positions are an option, but there are only so many. Currently I'm working doing over the phone medical interviews, volunteering one morning a week at a free clinic, doing research at my school where I graduated, and will soon be adding Uber driver to that, but there's only so long that a person can be stretched that many ways without breaking. I also applied to a bunch of paid research and pharma jobs, but hope has been in little supply in my life.
God forbid that you are single and at some point in your 5-7 year course of med school +1 yr internship/3 yr residency you become too physically disabled to finish or work something else full time. Than you're in Chicago2012's place, or looking at SSI $700 per month to live on.
It's not for nothing that some people wish they had never gone to medical school, or that some suicides have medical training in some form implicated in them.
Every time a patient says, "Thank you Dr. Idealist," it's like one of the happiest and most fulfilling moments in my life, and I would give anything for being a doctor to look anything like the highlight reel moments I've experienced or Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman or Doc Martin or any time it looked like being a doctor was more awesome than sucky, and was more spending time with patients helping them than making hand-massage-love to a computer keyboard, but it just isn't.
Get out now before you start, or ****ing finish in a residency and try to find a practice you enjoy to make the most of that MD and any security, happiness, and financial reward it might bring you, while trying to peel away its many leech-tentacle-suckers-of-misery from hollowing out the very marrow of your bones.
If like the dude above or some other people on here, you can make traveling the world as a DJ work or dumpster diving or Alaskan ice fishing, Uber driving, or being a birthing surrogate or mail order husband work for you instead, good luck.