Finances of a Doctor

A general overview of the cost of becoming a doctor and their salaries

Becoming a doctor

There are significant financial barriers to becoming a doctor.

• Undergraduate School: Average of $150k

• Medical School: Average of $240k

• Standardized Tests/Board Certifications: Thousands of dollars

What are the average salaries?

The average salary of a resident is $60k/year.

Source: The White Coat Investor

As you can see, there’s a wide range of salaries depending on the specialty. And within some categories above, there is an extensive range of salaries.

Primary care doctors are on the lower end of the range.

Private practice doctors’ salaries also skew these averages higher. Doctors who work at hospitals may earn much lower wages.

Somehow, society has lumped all doctor salaries with the higher-paying specialties like cardiology/dermatology/surgery (curiously, they are the most often portrayed in media). Those specialties are making more than double the lower-earning specialties.

Fun? Facts? Thoughts?

• It’s weird how much lower pediatric salaries are; it’s like the lives of children are worth less than those of adults? The system has lower insurance reimbursement for children than adults.

• Most attendings don’t get paid parental leave. Residents do.

• Many doctors I’ve talked to think it may have been a much better financial decision to have gone through technology/engineering. This may be true if you consider the cost of medical school and the years of salaries that could be invested during the years of training.

• Physician/Doctor mortgages exist since doctors often have many student loans. These mortgages can often be 0% down but often have a higher interest rate (nothing in life is free).

• Based on personal experience, doctors are most often in relationships with other doctors (it makes sense since they spend so much time together and don’t have to explain the commitment to medicine). However, the second most common is a relationship with someone in engineering/tech; this could be because the engineers/tech people are often financially stable straight out of college. There’s probably much more to it, but it’s not here to explore.

• It was fun seeing residents earning money for the first time in their lives while working >80 hours a week. It was fun helping some of Dr. Viv’s co-residents with their basic finances.