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Becoming a Doctor Is a Dream
Until the Bills Come Due
When most of us think of side hustles, we think of struggling actors waitressing or stay-at-home moms with an Etsy store on the side to fund coffee runs. What we don’t picture is doctors or young residents (hello, Scrubs, how you’ve aged terribly) going to second jobs. But it’s more common than you think. Physicians and surgeons tend to leave college with some of the most prohibitive amounts of debt — the kind of mountains of debt that can really dampen planning for the future. And, though doctors have always held positions of prestige and admiration, some are wondering: is the stress and financial commitment up front worth it?
According to the Education Data Initiative, the average medical school graduate owes $202,453 in student loan debt. And that figure doesn’t even include undergraduate debt. If you tack that on, the total often soars beyond $250,000. That’s a quarter of a million dollars, before you even start earning real money.
And the earning doesn’t start for a while. A newly minted doctor typically begins their career in residency, working grueling hours for a salary that averages around $60,000 per year. That might sound like a decent income, but in the context of six-figure debt — plus interest, cost of living, and in many cases supporting family — it’s not a lot. Especially when you…
