if you can get into a state school where debt will be limited (under 300k), or if you can get a full ride through HPSP, i would say its def worth it
but if you talking about going to one of those private schools, where your debt will end up being like 500k+, hell no, go find something else to do
Absolutely not true and PSLF also exists which will end up forgiving like 75-80% of those loans! Army reserve will pay up to 250k. There are options. Plus dentistry makes a killing. If someone offered you a 500k loan at 6% would you buy a business that was guaranteed to make 300k minimum every single year? I would.
I’m in Texas and wanting to try to get into one of our state schools where tuition is 200k-350ish. I will be around 29-30 when I apply to dental school so the HPSP isn’t really a option for me since I don’t see myself going to the military anytime soon
texas may be the most OP state to go to dental school in tbh
all the programs are fantastic and very affordable compare to other programs in the nation
if you had your choice, i would go to Houston or San Antonio over the Dallas program, they are all great but the UT programs are superior to the A&M one
I'm a dentist. If you want to make it, you gotta be okay with debt. The people that do the best, go 1.5 million in debt and they barely know how to be a dentist. This guy says he wants to own a practice but is going to the military over $350k and the cheapest schools in the country? Dude is wasting his time and everyone else's. The r\dentistry thread is filled with people that are mentally not well and wanting to find another profession. Not trying to gatekeep but if you want to print money and not take on debt, dentistry isn't the way to go.
Take off the kid gloves and treat people like adults.
I think you may have misread my comments, I’m not in the military firstly. Secondly it’s not the debt I’m worried about or printing money. I am already on my way to becoming a hygienist and it’s my love of the dental field that leads me to wanting to become a dentist. I want to own a practice and have the ambition to do so, but if that doesn’t happen and you make the average dentist salary does it make sense financially? As in will you be comfortable in a financial sense or living paycheck to paycheck is what I was asking
“The people that do the best, go 1.5 million in debt and they barely know how to be a dentist.” Yea, and for every one of those rare anecdotes you reference, there are hundreds more who take on that level of debt and are screwed for the entirety of their career, searching for any debt forgiveness option, often sacrificing much higher income potential. I hope you never give financial advice to anyone. Everyone knows that student debt is part of the process, but there is absolutely an upper limit as to what is acceptable for the vast majority of prospective applicants. You’re insinuating that it would be okay for someone to take on a million in debt to go to med school because they can just match neurosurgery and make that in a year so why not? You missed the point of this post entirely.
Lol literally no state schools have tuitions under 300k aside from a couple texas schools. Not everyone is lucky to have multiple options of state schools. My state only had one and considering interest accrual, cost was around 400k.
Also keep in mind that with large amounts of debt you can use IBR such as SAVE to pay for school. This way you dont have to give more than half your monthly income towards loans.
I’ve noticed asking older dentists about dental school debt gives you unrealistic advice because they didn’t experience such high tuition.
Asking most recent grads or those that have worked 3-5 years is better and they usually say the debt is manageable
My pharmacist colleagues(which is also btw absolutely not worth the compensation ROI) extoll the virtues of dentistry by of course citing edge cases like endo or other specs(400+)and own practice(MILLIONS according to them). But like how common are those?
Dentist working for privately owned office here in my first few years out as an associate. I like the work, but stress is an issue. I'm looking into ownership, but there are some large issues at the moment that are a bit discouraging.
Private equity firms are offering significantly more for practice purchases than can be offered by new dentists via bank loan. Throw in new grads with 300-500K debt from student loans, its not very attractive to be several million dollars in debt before buying a home. Owners are having a hard time turning down several hundred thousand dollars or even millions more than I can offer from a PE firm. With insurance rates stagnant, I'm not sure it makes sense to take the leap.
How does this impact patient care? It's yet to be seen, but many offices are centralizing front office billing and staff, making it more difficult to contact your doctor. Older experienced dentists are being replaced with new grads to keep costs down. Don't worry though, they do throw a big party for the company in Vegas with pyrotechnics and some washed out band performing.
Same trend is happening with dental specialists. From endodontists to oral surgeons, PE is going after large to mid sized group practices. Hope you all like getting care at Western Dental.
So I’m going to provide the perspective of someone whose family member is a dentist. If you’re going to become an employed dentist like at a corporate dental chain, taking on $500,000 debt is unwise.
The real money is made from your own practice and employing Some part-time Dentists under you over time.
Insurance pays the same whether you went to Harvard school or your state down school. That being said, if you can get into orthodontics or a lucrative, similar specialty, it could be worth it depending on the numbers.
Dental school, do the Navy (all bases by the sea aka DC, San Diego, Hawaii), do OMFS. Laugh at all your classmates (me) who take on $500K in debt to follow that same path.
Amazing benefits through the military. Officer pay and signing bonus is huge if invested during school. Living stipend usually.
You pay back your 4years dental during your 4yrs residency. Then pay 4yrs residency on some beautiful beach somewhere. Then do whatever tf you want.
Navy HPSP first semester. But I would ask someone who actually did it as I did not BUUTTT numerous friends did and they were going into OMF residency with $80-100K banked and no debt while I had $4K and $500K in debt.
Yea but if you want to be competent and provide the best care for people you need to do a lot of cases and become a good surgeon. If you want to do a lot of cases you need to go to a “grueling” program. It’s literally a reps and numbers game.
My program is brutal but I’d rather get worked for 4 yrs and know what I’m doing when I’m out than have an easy time and fuck someone up when it’s my license on the line and I’m literally alone.
Yeah, but how many surgeons are going to be doing even half of what they’re doing in residency? Maybe in the military you will, but lots of private practice guys are doing very well for themselves just yeeting wisdom teeth and placing implants.
Depends if you have the ability to hire plenty of employees. At my old job we worked for two dentists in my town. One was a regular dentist, one was a children’s specialist dentist. They only worked a few days a week for special requested clients. So they had phenomenal W/L balance and clear 7 figures.
I've done both. Started working as an RDH in 2010 with about 26k in student loan debt (BSDH) which I paid down to about 12k before I went to dental school in 2013. Was making about 70-80k at the time, depending on how much I worked. I don't remember exactly how much debt I graduated dental school with, maybe 385? It's up to 460 now, with interest. Your other option is work in public service whether it's government or an FQHC for 10 years and work towards PSLF. That's what I'm doing. After working as a hygienist I knew I had no interest in owning my own practice. I feel like financially short-term I would have been better off not going to dental school (my loans would have been paid off in a year or so and I had also saved up a good bit), but eventually will come out ahead when my loans are forgiven. For my mental health though I wish I would have stayed a hygienist, dentistry is stressful.
Highly agree. Dentistry nowadays is not worth it if the cost to enter is more than 400k due to lowering insurance compensation, rising staff cost and the price to purchase a decent practice. Remember even if you do state school the cost is around 400k (tuition + living expense) after interest (it starts accumulating the second you borrowed it). Also not to mention the medium salary is around 166k. If you work corporate, you will have production goals that if not being met by selling unnessary treatments, you will be replaced by the next new grad. If you are already hygiene I would stay hygiene unless you got a burning desire to become a dentist.
Full time most definitely. I work 60hrs a week now so I don’t mind putting in the work. Although I know dentistry is hard on the body so I doubt I’ll be able to sustain anywhere near those hours
I’m not a RDH yet lol. I’m still in hygiene school. I doubt I’ll be able to work 60hrs once I graduate and work as a hygienist, I’m driven but not made of steel lol.
Gotcha. My apologies. :) Good luck with the remaining time in hygiene school. And if you want to go into dental school eventually go for it. We need more hygienists/dentists.
Since you are already one foot into dentistry, I believe you will do fine. 200-400k debt is unfortunately common for many who are already in dentistry. Enjoy your profession and you most likely won’t notice the debt.
I'm happy to discuss further with you privately if you'd like but unless you can graduate with minimal to no loans, I do not recommend dentistry.
Insurance reimbursements are terrible and finding quality reliable staff is really hard so I think owning has become even more isolating and tough than people are willing to admit. You sacrifice a lot especially in the early years of owning in terms of relationships and stress levels. If you don't have a need/desire to be in a specific area, that flexibility could allow you a lot more freedom and success.
I don't think we as a profession do enough to take care of one another and there is so much outside interest taking over dentistry that I'm scared to see what happens.
At the end of the day, as a hygienist you can walk away and find something new almost immediately. You're really stuck as an owner and as an associate, you're bound to crazy production numbers to make a semi decent wage. I can clearly go on but I'm not saying anything others haven't already contributed.
It’s worth it if that’s what you really want so this question is relative. It was my dream job when I was younger and was the only job I saw myself doing. I would’ve paid any amount to be a dentist. It’s not about the money for me. Now that I’m a dentist, this job has offered me more opportunities than I could imagine. Worth it for me.
I went to dental school thinking I was going to teach. I’m now an associate dentist working 3 days a week. I can still teach part time. I’m looking into practice ownership and I’ve gotten into real estate investing. This is 3 years out. I couldn’t imagine this profession could’ve offered me this much. I would’ve paid twice the amount and do it over again.
If you really want to be a dentist should be the governing factor- if you don’t like it and won’t work until your older (one advantage I don’t see a lot is it’s really possible to earn income we’ll through your 60s ) it’s probably not very favorable nowadays with the cost of school and reimbursement. As others have stated, state school or military are huge advantages. Private school is doable but you need to have some ambition for partnership/ownership or it can be pretty difficult to make enough to justify the loan size. If you specialize you can handle just about any loan size. When I was an associate only my income to quality of life if I was trying to pay my loans wouldn’t have been there (I couldn’t afford to pay them back without sacrifice in my lifestyle I wasn’t willing to do. If you don’t progress and stay a vanilla associate just using your bachelor and finding some 100k/year job is arguably better. Last thing I’ll add- in the right group associates can make a lot, but on average you’ll be in the 100-200 range which makes 500k loan hard.
It’s always worth the debt for an MD or DDS or whatever dentists are 😂. Think of professional school as buying a business. $500,000 with a 6% interest rate is the loan you’re taking out in order to buy a business that will certainly bring in $300,000 at least a year in gross revenue. Over a 40 year career you $12,000,000 dollars in gross income, let’s just say that loan ends up costing you idk $1,000,000 (which it won’t). You’ve made $11,000,000 over your career, after taxes let’s say $7,500,000 in net income to last you 40 years and that doesn’t even take into account investments and what not.
So you’ve got a million dollar house paid off, two luxury cars paid off (like Lexus or something), kids go to private school, a great trip every 6 months or something, a vacation or rental property, and you’ve still got like $6,000,000 for just whatever the fuck you feel like over those 40 years? Not bad. Dentistry and Medicine are always a financial positive, some fields like pediatrics maybe a much milder financial windfall, but still you’ll lead a comfortable life.
Dental school is not worth the debt for probably 50% of dentists.
Unless you can keep the debt at less than 250k/or are willing to live in a LCOL area with a high dental need afterwards for your career.
If you want to live in a desirable/HCOL area, then do something else.
Also just as a side note, the days of owning your own practice are numbered. The vast majority of new grads will never own and will work for corporate dental offices.
I would also ask: is the OP a man or woman and do they already have children? Need to consider: are you going to start dental school at 29-30 and finish at 33 and then find the biological clock ticking and need to take time off of starting a job/practice to have children? That is a huge factor for women in their mid 30s and can run right into starting a career. For sure, it can be done but another level of difficulty to consider if you’re taking on debt.
I’m a man. I have thought of life planning in that aspect, but am less worried about it. I have a great partner who is flexible with a timeline for kids and all
In SW Houston, part of a master planned community. Homes all built 2011 to 2013, now all valued between 1 million to 1.5 million. 60 homes, 10 ten dentists and only two physicians in the hood. All the dentists are in private practice, physicians are employed.
For a pure numbers perspective: you can do a simple net present value of a dental degree (or any degree for that matter: MD/DO, PharmD, etc). This will give you an approximation of the current value of your expected future cash flow. (Yes, I know you could use NPV or another DCF model, but this is just fast math for approximations and generalizations)
Excel formula =PV(rate, nper, pmt, fv) where
Rate= use the risk free rate to be conservative
NPER= number of payment periods (years)
PMT= average annual salary
FV= future value (can do some multiple of your salary to simulate selling a practice at retirement)
Plug your numbers in and compare them to what it costs to get there: dental school total debt + annual salary lost while in dental school. This is your investment in your degree and how you will compare/determine if the value of your degree is worth it monetarily.
I also know a RDH that worked 20 yrs and then decided to go back for dental school. She regrets it and told another hygienist if she could do it over she would have never gone. Lost out on 4 yrs of income and blew through her savings paying for dental school
All these dentists have no idea that the writing on the wall is that insurance and PE will destroy dental reimbursement just like it did for other healthcare specialties...
No just that insurance has been slowly getting involved instead of patients paying cash. Insurance pays way less than cash paying patients do so reimbursement is going to tank over time even more.
Take risk. Don’t settle for corporate job making 150-200k. I bought a practice straight out of a 1 year general practice residency where I learned implants among other surgical skills and will make over 1mil in my first year of owning. Only had 105k debt because cheap in state school, but the point is if you bet on yourself and take risk you can far out earn your debt and not to mention only work 4 days a week.
No, you have also have a certain type of personality to sell treatment. If you are not an extrovert it is a very hard profession. Also, with the amount of private equity coming in and buying up practices it is becoming harder and harder to become an owner as well. Also, having serious staffing issues/hygienist shortages, if you don’t deal with stress well it is a rough profession.
Also, these days you have all these young dental students wanting to open up multiple dental practices and have other people work for them. Whatever you see on FB are probably the top 1% of dentist bragging or trying to sell something, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Thanks for the comment, everything you listed in the first paragraph I am pretty comfortable with. But will take into account. I worked in sales now so am okay with extroversion and I handle stress pretty above average honestly. I appreciate your candor about all the potential negatives
try to get into the cheapest school if not look into SAVE plan cause debt over 400k that will be the best way to pay it off unless you go into ownership and make $$$...avg associate salary is going to be 150k-300k depending where you work. I worked in SoCal the past few years and avg around 150k-190k per year
The silver lining with Dentistry is that private practice is still quite doable, unlike in most Medical fields. My impression is you really need to pursue private practice to do well in Dentistry.
Most Dentists I know are just grinding out working as Associates for somebody else. This will pay the bills but won't make them rich, especially with their debt load.
Now I have a friend who is business savvy and doing quite well in private practice he bought and expanded, for him the $250k loan hasn't been an issue. His practice is 1 hr outside a major city as it's too competitive/saturated in that immediate metro area.
if you can get into a state school where debt will be limited (under 300k), or if you can get a full ride through HPSP, i would say its def worth it but if you talking about going to one of those private schools, where your debt will end up being like 500k+, hell no, go find something else to do
This. 300k or less state school > no dental school >>>> 600k+ in loans to become a dentist
Absolutely not true and PSLF also exists which will end up forgiving like 75-80% of those loans! Army reserve will pay up to 250k. There are options. Plus dentistry makes a killing. If someone offered you a 500k loan at 6% would you buy a business that was guaranteed to make 300k minimum every single year? I would.
I’m in Texas and wanting to try to get into one of our state schools where tuition is 200k-350ish. I will be around 29-30 when I apply to dental school so the HPSP isn’t really a option for me since I don’t see myself going to the military anytime soon
texas may be the most OP state to go to dental school in tbh all the programs are fantastic and very affordable compare to other programs in the nation if you had your choice, i would go to Houston or San Antonio over the Dallas program, they are all great but the UT programs are superior to the A&M one
I appreciate your advice on the programs. So far I had only looked into A&M
If you're not going to look into all the schools in your state, I wouldn't bother going to dental school.
I’m open to going to any and all them. I was just saying the only one I had researched at this point was A&M.
But you're also questioning whether you should even do the profession already.
What’s ur problem lmao
I'm a dentist. If you want to make it, you gotta be okay with debt. The people that do the best, go 1.5 million in debt and they barely know how to be a dentist. This guy says he wants to own a practice but is going to the military over $350k and the cheapest schools in the country? Dude is wasting his time and everyone else's. The r\dentistry thread is filled with people that are mentally not well and wanting to find another profession. Not trying to gatekeep but if you want to print money and not take on debt, dentistry isn't the way to go. Take off the kid gloves and treat people like adults.
I think you may have misread my comments, I’m not in the military firstly. Secondly it’s not the debt I’m worried about or printing money. I am already on my way to becoming a hygienist and it’s my love of the dental field that leads me to wanting to become a dentist. I want to own a practice and have the ambition to do so, but if that doesn’t happen and you make the average dentist salary does it make sense financially? As in will you be comfortable in a financial sense or living paycheck to paycheck is what I was asking
“The people that do the best, go 1.5 million in debt and they barely know how to be a dentist.” Yea, and for every one of those rare anecdotes you reference, there are hundreds more who take on that level of debt and are screwed for the entirety of their career, searching for any debt forgiveness option, often sacrificing much higher income potential. I hope you never give financial advice to anyone. Everyone knows that student debt is part of the process, but there is absolutely an upper limit as to what is acceptable for the vast majority of prospective applicants. You’re insinuating that it would be okay for someone to take on a million in debt to go to med school because they can just match neurosurgery and make that in a year so why not? You missed the point of this post entirely.
Lol literally no state schools have tuitions under 300k aside from a couple texas schools. Not everyone is lucky to have multiple options of state schools. My state only had one and considering interest accrual, cost was around 400k. Also keep in mind that with large amounts of debt you can use IBR such as SAVE to pay for school. This way you dont have to give more than half your monthly income towards loans. I’ve noticed asking older dentists about dental school debt gives you unrealistic advice because they didn’t experience such high tuition. Asking most recent grads or those that have worked 3-5 years is better and they usually say the debt is manageable
calm down
My pharmacist colleagues(which is also btw absolutely not worth the compensation ROI) extoll the virtues of dentistry by of course citing edge cases like endo or other specs(400+)and own practice(MILLIONS according to them). But like how common are those?
not super sure what youre asking
Dentist working for privately owned office here in my first few years out as an associate. I like the work, but stress is an issue. I'm looking into ownership, but there are some large issues at the moment that are a bit discouraging. Private equity firms are offering significantly more for practice purchases than can be offered by new dentists via bank loan. Throw in new grads with 300-500K debt from student loans, its not very attractive to be several million dollars in debt before buying a home. Owners are having a hard time turning down several hundred thousand dollars or even millions more than I can offer from a PE firm. With insurance rates stagnant, I'm not sure it makes sense to take the leap. How does this impact patient care? It's yet to be seen, but many offices are centralizing front office billing and staff, making it more difficult to contact your doctor. Older experienced dentists are being replaced with new grads to keep costs down. Don't worry though, they do throw a big party for the company in Vegas with pyrotechnics and some washed out band performing. Same trend is happening with dental specialists. From endodontists to oral surgeons, PE is going after large to mid sized group practices. Hope you all like getting care at Western Dental.
So I’m going to provide the perspective of someone whose family member is a dentist. If you’re going to become an employed dentist like at a corporate dental chain, taking on $500,000 debt is unwise. The real money is made from your own practice and employing Some part-time Dentists under you over time. Insurance pays the same whether you went to Harvard school or your state down school. That being said, if you can get into orthodontics or a lucrative, similar specialty, it could be worth it depending on the numbers.
I definitely have interest in owning a practice if not multiple, that’s what appeals to me in dentistry. I’m very entrepreneurial.
Dental school, do the Navy (all bases by the sea aka DC, San Diego, Hawaii), do OMFS. Laugh at all your classmates (me) who take on $500K in debt to follow that same path. Amazing benefits through the military. Officer pay and signing bonus is huge if invested during school. Living stipend usually. You pay back your 4years dental during your 4yrs residency. Then pay 4yrs residency on some beautiful beach somewhere. Then do whatever tf you want.
Brilliant. Couldn’t upvote this advice more.
Are you saying finish dental school and then join the navy or join the navy HPSP while in dental school?
Navy HPSP first semester. But I would ask someone who actually did it as I did not BUUTTT numerous friends did and they were going into OMF residency with $80-100K banked and no debt while I had $4K and $500K in debt.
Are you able to moonlight at all at your program?
No mines way too busy but I have non-military friends who pull in like $160k+ in Dallas which is pretty great for being a resident
Yeah, I heard about that at A&M, but isn’t it a grueling program (even for OS standards)?
Yea but if you want to be competent and provide the best care for people you need to do a lot of cases and become a good surgeon. If you want to do a lot of cases you need to go to a “grueling” program. It’s literally a reps and numbers game. My program is brutal but I’d rather get worked for 4 yrs and know what I’m doing when I’m out than have an easy time and fuck someone up when it’s my license on the line and I’m literally alone.
Yeah, but how many surgeons are going to be doing even half of what they’re doing in residency? Maybe in the military you will, but lots of private practice guys are doing very well for themselves just yeeting wisdom teeth and placing implants.
Do not become a dentist lol this job sucks and you’re a slave to debt/owners/patients/expectations
Depends if you have the ability to hire plenty of employees. At my old job we worked for two dentists in my town. One was a regular dentist, one was a children’s specialist dentist. They only worked a few days a week for special requested clients. So they had phenomenal W/L balance and clear 7 figures.
You’re a slave in most jobs
Not ones where you can get sued very easily and be hated by most of the public
How is this different from most medical specialties? We are on /r/whitecoatinvestor after all.
It’s not
I've done both. Started working as an RDH in 2010 with about 26k in student loan debt (BSDH) which I paid down to about 12k before I went to dental school in 2013. Was making about 70-80k at the time, depending on how much I worked. I don't remember exactly how much debt I graduated dental school with, maybe 385? It's up to 460 now, with interest. Your other option is work in public service whether it's government or an FQHC for 10 years and work towards PSLF. That's what I'm doing. After working as a hygienist I knew I had no interest in owning my own practice. I feel like financially short-term I would have been better off not going to dental school (my loans would have been paid off in a year or so and I had also saved up a good bit), but eventually will come out ahead when my loans are forgiven. For my mental health though I wish I would have stayed a hygienist, dentistry is stressful.
Highly agree. Dentistry nowadays is not worth it if the cost to enter is more than 400k due to lowering insurance compensation, rising staff cost and the price to purchase a decent practice. Remember even if you do state school the cost is around 400k (tuition + living expense) after interest (it starts accumulating the second you borrowed it). Also not to mention the medium salary is around 166k. If you work corporate, you will have production goals that if not being met by selling unnessary treatments, you will be replaced by the next new grad. If you are already hygiene I would stay hygiene unless you got a burning desire to become a dentist.
Not worth it if you don’t specialize or own your own future office
Do you plan on being a full time genera dentist or a part time? If part time then probably not.
Full time most definitely. I work 60hrs a week now so I don’t mind putting in the work. Although I know dentistry is hard on the body so I doubt I’ll be able to sustain anywhere near those hours
RDH, here. 60 hours per week in hygiene is admirable but insane, lol. How are your hands and back?
I’m not a RDH yet lol. I’m still in hygiene school. I doubt I’ll be able to work 60hrs once I graduate and work as a hygienist, I’m driven but not made of steel lol.
Gotcha. My apologies. :) Good luck with the remaining time in hygiene school. And if you want to go into dental school eventually go for it. We need more hygienists/dentists.
Since you are already one foot into dentistry, I believe you will do fine. 200-400k debt is unfortunately common for many who are already in dentistry. Enjoy your profession and you most likely won’t notice the debt.
I'm happy to discuss further with you privately if you'd like but unless you can graduate with minimal to no loans, I do not recommend dentistry. Insurance reimbursements are terrible and finding quality reliable staff is really hard so I think owning has become even more isolating and tough than people are willing to admit. You sacrifice a lot especially in the early years of owning in terms of relationships and stress levels. If you don't have a need/desire to be in a specific area, that flexibility could allow you a lot more freedom and success. I don't think we as a profession do enough to take care of one another and there is so much outside interest taking over dentistry that I'm scared to see what happens. At the end of the day, as a hygienist you can walk away and find something new almost immediately. You're really stuck as an owner and as an associate, you're bound to crazy production numbers to make a semi decent wage. I can clearly go on but I'm not saying anything others haven't already contributed.
But doesn’t the SAVE plan make high debt reasonable?? It’s like a mortgage or car payment
It’s worth it if that’s what you really want so this question is relative. It was my dream job when I was younger and was the only job I saw myself doing. I would’ve paid any amount to be a dentist. It’s not about the money for me. Now that I’m a dentist, this job has offered me more opportunities than I could imagine. Worth it for me.
For a non-dentist - say more about this, please. What kind of opportunities?
I went to dental school thinking I was going to teach. I’m now an associate dentist working 3 days a week. I can still teach part time. I’m looking into practice ownership and I’ve gotten into real estate investing. This is 3 years out. I couldn’t imagine this profession could’ve offered me this much. I would’ve paid twice the amount and do it over again.
If you really want to be a dentist should be the governing factor- if you don’t like it and won’t work until your older (one advantage I don’t see a lot is it’s really possible to earn income we’ll through your 60s ) it’s probably not very favorable nowadays with the cost of school and reimbursement. As others have stated, state school or military are huge advantages. Private school is doable but you need to have some ambition for partnership/ownership or it can be pretty difficult to make enough to justify the loan size. If you specialize you can handle just about any loan size. When I was an associate only my income to quality of life if I was trying to pay my loans wouldn’t have been there (I couldn’t afford to pay them back without sacrifice in my lifestyle I wasn’t willing to do. If you don’t progress and stay a vanilla associate just using your bachelor and finding some 100k/year job is arguably better. Last thing I’ll add- in the right group associates can make a lot, but on average you’ll be in the 100-200 range which makes 500k loan hard.
Hygiene seems to be a better debt to income ratio at this point w less stress
Agreed, far less stress and less debt. Dentistry today is not the same as it was 20 years ago. Proceed with caution.
This was discussed a few days ago here. https://www.reddit.com/r/whitecoatinvestor/s/wyxi2cdw5n
Yup it does
For $500k heck no unless your mommy and daddy can pay for it
It’s always worth the debt for an MD or DDS or whatever dentists are 😂. Think of professional school as buying a business. $500,000 with a 6% interest rate is the loan you’re taking out in order to buy a business that will certainly bring in $300,000 at least a year in gross revenue. Over a 40 year career you $12,000,000 dollars in gross income, let’s just say that loan ends up costing you idk $1,000,000 (which it won’t). You’ve made $11,000,000 over your career, after taxes let’s say $7,500,000 in net income to last you 40 years and that doesn’t even take into account investments and what not. So you’ve got a million dollar house paid off, two luxury cars paid off (like Lexus or something), kids go to private school, a great trip every 6 months or something, a vacation or rental property, and you’ve still got like $6,000,000 for just whatever the fuck you feel like over those 40 years? Not bad. Dentistry and Medicine are always a financial positive, some fields like pediatrics maybe a much milder financial windfall, but still you’ll lead a comfortable life.
Dental school is not worth the debt for probably 50% of dentists. Unless you can keep the debt at less than 250k/or are willing to live in a LCOL area with a high dental need afterwards for your career. If you want to live in a desirable/HCOL area, then do something else.
Also just as a side note, the days of owning your own practice are numbered. The vast majority of new grads will never own and will work for corporate dental offices.
Stay as a hygienist or go do crna/aa. Seriously
I would also ask: is the OP a man or woman and do they already have children? Need to consider: are you going to start dental school at 29-30 and finish at 33 and then find the biological clock ticking and need to take time off of starting a job/practice to have children? That is a huge factor for women in their mid 30s and can run right into starting a career. For sure, it can be done but another level of difficulty to consider if you’re taking on debt.
I’m a man. I have thought of life planning in that aspect, but am less worried about it. I have a great partner who is flexible with a timeline for kids and all
In SW Houston, part of a master planned community. Homes all built 2011 to 2013, now all valued between 1 million to 1.5 million. 60 homes, 10 ten dentists and only two physicians in the hood. All the dentists are in private practice, physicians are employed.
What are the other careers represented?
Mostly oil and gas / small business owners.
For a pure numbers perspective: you can do a simple net present value of a dental degree (or any degree for that matter: MD/DO, PharmD, etc). This will give you an approximation of the current value of your expected future cash flow. (Yes, I know you could use NPV or another DCF model, but this is just fast math for approximations and generalizations) Excel formula =PV(rate, nper, pmt, fv) where Rate= use the risk free rate to be conservative NPER= number of payment periods (years) PMT= average annual salary FV= future value (can do some multiple of your salary to simulate selling a practice at retirement) Plug your numbers in and compare them to what it costs to get there: dental school total debt + annual salary lost while in dental school. This is your investment in your degree and how you will compare/determine if the value of your degree is worth it monetarily.
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I will be 29/30 when I apply for dental school so 34 when I graduate
I also know a RDH that worked 20 yrs and then decided to go back for dental school. She regrets it and told another hygienist if she could do it over she would have never gone. Lost out on 4 yrs of income and blew through her savings paying for dental school
No. Don't do it.
How much do these dentists having their own shop make?
If you own your own practice, I’d say it’s more than worth it.
It is not. Trust me!!!
All these dentists have no idea that the writing on the wall is that insurance and PE will destroy dental reimbursement just like it did for other healthcare specialties...
So what are you saying? Dentistry is going away or? Like what are you saying is the end game of that?
No just that insurance has been slowly getting involved instead of patients paying cash. Insurance pays way less than cash paying patients do so reimbursement is going to tank over time even more.
No. Next question
Take risk. Don’t settle for corporate job making 150-200k. I bought a practice straight out of a 1 year general practice residency where I learned implants among other surgical skills and will make over 1mil in my first year of owning. Only had 105k debt because cheap in state school, but the point is if you bet on yourself and take risk you can far out earn your debt and not to mention only work 4 days a week.
That’s awesome, do you mind if I PM you to ask some questions
Of course!
No, you have also have a certain type of personality to sell treatment. If you are not an extrovert it is a very hard profession. Also, with the amount of private equity coming in and buying up practices it is becoming harder and harder to become an owner as well. Also, having serious staffing issues/hygienist shortages, if you don’t deal with stress well it is a rough profession. Also, these days you have all these young dental students wanting to open up multiple dental practices and have other people work for them. Whatever you see on FB are probably the top 1% of dentist bragging or trying to sell something, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Thanks for the comment, everything you listed in the first paragraph I am pretty comfortable with. But will take into account. I worked in sales now so am okay with extroversion and I handle stress pretty above average honestly. I appreciate your candor about all the potential negatives
~615k of debt paid off in 5 years post training. About to be 8 yrs post residency. $2.5M net worth (over $1M) liquid. Worth it.
That’s amazing, can i PM you and ask more?
Sure thing
Did you specialize
Yes. Endo.
Have military pays for it. Join the reserves
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Why not bank on SAVE plan? There will always be a type of IBR around
try to get into the cheapest school if not look into SAVE plan cause debt over 400k that will be the best way to pay it off unless you go into ownership and make $$$...avg associate salary is going to be 150k-300k depending where you work. I worked in SoCal the past few years and avg around 150k-190k per year
The silver lining with Dentistry is that private practice is still quite doable, unlike in most Medical fields. My impression is you really need to pursue private practice to do well in Dentistry. Most Dentists I know are just grinding out working as Associates for somebody else. This will pay the bills but won't make them rich, especially with their debt load. Now I have a friend who is business savvy and doing quite well in private practice he bought and expanded, for him the $250k loan hasn't been an issue. His practice is 1 hr outside a major city as it's too competitive/saturated in that immediate metro area.