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deleted903013
This is what I will be pushing my future children to do.
Any dentists out there struggling with loans?
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So you are ok with your children having these manual labor jobs. How about you? Do you want to work as a plumber or an electrician for the rest of your life? If someone offered to pay off the loan amount you have borrowed so far and told you to drop out of dental school now, would you do it?
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deleted903013
I so far don't have any dental school debt because I worked full time, 7 days a week, before dental school, so I guess I could comfortably drop out if I wanted. But I like dentistry so far and like what it will be able to afford me in the future. I want to live somewhere very rural and afford a family and dentistry will allow me to do that. So no, even if I had debt, I would not give it up, unless it was an expensive private school. However, the value of higher education has been completely inflated and there is a shortage on skilled labor. Your average tradesman will be able to afford to have a family at a young age instead of being riddled with debt with a potentially questionable degree. If my kid decides he wants to go into a marketable field like medicine, I will do everything in my power to help pay for their education and make that happen. However, if being an electrician will allow my son to afford a family, I would be enthusiastically supportive if he chose that route as well.
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All excellent points. Dentistry is a good career assuming you don't leverage years of your life to be a dentist. It's nonsensical to go into debt 400K or 500K plus interest to be a dentist. I mentioned it before that I work with a dentist in his mid 40's. He has a nice family. Wife is a teacher. Two young kids. Drives a minivan. He went to NYU DS. HE IS STILL PAYING OFF HIS DS debt in his mid 40's.
He's accepted his fate, but wholly crap .... I cannot imagine still paying DS loans in my 40's.btw: Not sure about being an electrician. Seems dangerous. My 40th HS reunion is coming up. Three guys from my class were electricians who lost their lives on the job.
I'm thinking AI or robotics would be interesting careers.
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With the associate income at the corp, I am not surprised to see that it takes him a long time to pay off the student loan. I guess he doesn’t want to take risk to start his own office. He drives a minivan and slowly pays back his student loans so that his 2 children can have a good happy life. My patient is currently in a BS/PharmD program and his parents pay for his education. His dad is a chiropractor and his mom is an optometrist. His parents are about my age and are still paying back their student loans. The parents have made sacrifices so their son can have a debt-free education.All excellent points. Dentistry is a good career assuming you don't leverage years of your life to be a dentist. It's nonsensical to go into debt 400K or 500K plus interest to be a dentist. I mentioned it before that I work with a dentist in his mid 40's. He has a nice family. Wife is a teacher. Two young kids. Drives a minivan. He went to NYU DS. HE IS STILL PAYING OFF HIS DS debt in his mid 40's.
Climbing up a 2-story building or going into tiny crawl space every single day is no fun and is also very dangerous. I’d be very sad if my son has to work like this for the rest of his life. Right now, he doesn’t even know how to use a hammer. I want to teach him but I am afraid that it may damage his piano playing fingers. It's ok. I will just work hard to save for my children in case they pick a wrong career.
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All excellent points. Dentistry is a good career assuming you don't leverage years of your life to be a dentist. It's nonsensical to go into debt 400K or 500K plus interest to be a dentist. I mentioned it before that I work with a dentist in his mid 40's. He has a nice family. Wife is a teacher. Two young kids. Drives a minivan. He went to NYU DS. HE IS STILL PAYING OFF HIS DS debt in his mid 40's.
btw: Not sure about being an electrician. Seems dangerous. My 40th HS reunion is coming up. Three guys from my class were electricians who lost their lives on the job.
I'm thinking AI or robotics would be interesting careers.
Almost all dentists I know are still paying their student loans, many are in their 40’s, few are in their 50’s. This is the new norm, until death do us part phenomena with these high student loans - or until a forgiveness with a huge tax burden happens.
The real scary part is, high student loans + starting a family with a stagnant income (like your friend with 2 kids) + trying to save money for retirement. All these factors are becoming more difficult every year for future dentists. Schools keep raising their tuition by about 5% every year. Kids are getting more expensive (as you know as a parent). Retirement planning is becoming a very illusive process.
I had more “accepted to DS” pre-dents sending me PM’s just last month than in the last 15 years on these forums. They are seriously cautious about the high student loans debt and the future of dentistry.
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Work-life balance in dentistry is a fallacy. It perpetuates because dentists tend to only count the hours they spend clinically as working hours. You get a reasonable work-life balance as an associate, but you rarely get any benefits and if you do get benefits they're usually pretty crappy unless you work for the government at an FQHC/military/IHS - then you may get good healthcare and a good match on a 401k/403b + some vacation time but you typically exchange those benefits for lower pay than your PP counterparts.
When you own a practice, you're working pretty much all the time - there's too much to be done, and getting a business off the ground is difficult.
If you're just looking at ROI, CS and engineering are the way to go and this is without a doubt IMO.
Right now - dentists are out of work and seeing ERs only.
My friends working for MSFT, FB, and Twitter....gainfully employed, still making 6 figures. Several have purchased homes exceeding 1.5M dollars over the past few years and they're all in their early 30s. They have what I would describe as a superior work-life balance than most general dentists ever achieve and they don't have the headache of small business ownership and did not have to pursue graduate-level education (while I enjoyed dental school and the friends I made, the overall process is garbage, and many students find it somewhat traumatic).
For those that think you get to skip out on being treated poorly by an employer or your customers because you are a "doctor"..that's a fallacy as well.
Dentistry has its rewards though - one of them being if you can set things up correctly, you can work a very reduced schedule profitably into your late 60s and early 70s in a sort of pseudo-semi-retired state. This allows you to continue to live in a high cost of living area without having to relocate to extend your retirement dollars.
When you own a practice, you're working pretty much all the time - there's too much to be done, and getting a business off the ground is difficult.
If you're just looking at ROI, CS and engineering are the way to go and this is without a doubt IMO.
Right now - dentists are out of work and seeing ERs only.
My friends working for MSFT, FB, and Twitter....gainfully employed, still making 6 figures. Several have purchased homes exceeding 1.5M dollars over the past few years and they're all in their early 30s. They have what I would describe as a superior work-life balance than most general dentists ever achieve and they don't have the headache of small business ownership and did not have to pursue graduate-level education (while I enjoyed dental school and the friends I made, the overall process is garbage, and many students find it somewhat traumatic).
For those that think you get to skip out on being treated poorly by an employer or your customers because you are a "doctor"..that's a fallacy as well.
Dentistry has its rewards though - one of them being if you can set things up correctly, you can work a very reduced schedule profitably into your late 60s and early 70s in a sort of pseudo-semi-retired state. This allows you to continue to live in a high cost of living area without having to relocate to extend your retirement dollars.
FunnyGirl1116
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If you're an associate dentist, it helps to be married to someone with a corporate job to get access to reasonably priced health insurance.
...but with people getting married later and later in life, that doesn't work out for everyone!
...but with people getting married later and later in life, that doesn't work out for everyone!
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it’s pretty damn difficult to get those. I’d say getting into med school/dental school is easier
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Absolutely. For 25 yrs in my private practice .... getting group health insurance for myself and my family along with my staff was a complete joke. EVERY year it was getting tougher and tougher to get reasonably priced health insurance. EVERY year ... the premiums increased. I played the game of having a larger deductible just to keep the monthly premiums doable. Now in Corp dentistry. The monthly premiums for my family are CHEAP.
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deleted972255
Getting into dental school is easier, getting into medical school about as difficult I'd say.
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The difference between Med School and Dental school is 0.1 GPA and taking the MCAT instead of the DAT
And the MCAT and DAT are both standardized so it doesn't matter which one is harder, you are not graded against the test but against your peers
And getting into a FAANG isn't necessarily harder than either. You need a high GPA and solid resume, and when Big Tech comes to recruit you need to network and secure internships. Perform well at the internship and most likely you'll have a job offer. The only thing "harder" about this path is that if you don't go to a target school, Big Tech probably won't be as heavy in recruitment at your school so you have to go above and beyond to secure internships/job offers.
And the MCAT and DAT are both standardized so it doesn't matter which one is harder, you are not graded against the test but against your peers
And getting into a FAANG isn't necessarily harder than either. You need a high GPA and solid resume, and when Big Tech comes to recruit you need to network and secure internships. Perform well at the internship and most likely you'll have a job offer. The only thing "harder" about this path is that if you don't go to a target school, Big Tech probably won't be as heavy in recruitment at your school so you have to go above and beyond to secure internships/job offers.
yes... for me and most of my dental school friends very few, in my opinion, have the profile to be a computer scientist (or at least a good one enough to work for a top company). Engineering seems different and I'm sure a lot of dental students could be a good engineer. Interestingly some of my classmates were engineers and came to dentistry because of dissatisfaction in the engineering profession. What is the value of a degree? That Is the purpose of this discussion and whether the debt is serviceable. The answer is unequivocally "it depends". Healthcare professionals are somewhat protected because it is illegal to operate without a license making the barrier and financial cost of entry high and the degree itself having some inherent value. (just ask smile direct club how much they will pay you to use your degree, it'll be above $0 i'm sure) To work for tesla you just need to apply and prove your worth:
Elon Musk says you still don't need a college degree to work at Tesla. Here's what he looks for in job applicants instead.
"If there's a track record of exceptional achievement, then it's likely that that will continue into the future," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in 2014.
www.businessinsider.com
I think a lot of new graduates (millennials) are snake bitten because we remember going to our family dentist with ourselves having good teeth and we saw how 'easy' the job was. A lot of us also thought we'd be orthodontists (every dentist I shadowed- which was only 3 family dentists- pulled me aside and told me to specialize specifically into ortho). For me personally dentistry wasn't the best decision because I do not enjoy the patient communication aspect and patients inherent distrust for our profession. Also, I believe our profession has a problem of eating our own and there is a lot of bad blood among colleagues in town. (maybe its just where I'm at)
I've lurked these pages for awhile and noticed some trends and numbers from other posters but the dead horse is worth beating:
-> Dentistry is not a great ROI if you take on $400k+ student loan debt and become a corporate employee/ associate for life. Some may have this debt and are doing well but these are not your "average" employee dentists or they may be on the unethical side of treatment planning.
-> Dentistry is not a great ROI if you want to live in a populous metro. I've never understood the entitlement to live in certain states or metros and expect to be rich from dentistry. Those in California, Seattle, or enter your favorite big city here:______ have to grind it out and compete in a cut-throat free market for business. eat or be eaten, but please don't do it at the cost of throwing your colleague and the profession of dentistry under the bus. In my opinion you are essentially buying yourself a job that allows you to be upper middle class in these saturated cities.
Read Charlestweed's posts. Spoiler alert: he will tell you to work 6 days a week as a GP and tell you his sister did it so you can too. I couldn't work 6 days a week as I find GP work physically and mentally demanding but maybe its because I am a lazy millennial or not in enough debt, idk, but the sentiment is to work hard EARLY and pay off debt aggressively dave ramsey style. Still waiting to meet someone who says " I still wish I had student loan debt" (yes I know you can make more money investing in other assets but the only caveat to paying student loan debt off aggressively IMO is if you are going to open a practice because then you want the lowest monthly payment possible to allow flexible cash flow and you can always pay extra towards your student loans if you want to)
This post Is getting long but for people worried about debt they need to do one of 3 things in my opinion:
1) don't go to dental school. if you do keep the debt low (<$300K). go into finance, chemical engineering, or accounting if you need a "what should I do instead" answer. my friend made $120k last year selling cars. another friend made the same working for yelp.
2) work for underserved populations in public health or Indian health services and get the government to pay your debt off for you. military, etc are all great options. if you are an above average clinician (speed and skill) open a practice asap. I'm not an above average clinician and I work public health- its tough but has been worth it for me. (I thought I was above average in school but unfortunately not the case in the real world)
3) go to where you are needed. if you have to live in California or a populous metro then see recommendation #1 or be ok with the new normal of income based repayment and being a dentist with the same financial strength as someone who elected to forego dental school and chose option #1.
since a new argument has been created as I've typed this I'll throw in my 0.02 there too. Getting into an MD school is really hard, harder than dental school. A DO med school is probably as competitive as a low cost dental school. I cant speak for how hard it is to get a computer science gig at a FAANG company but I know my chances would be 0%.
*comments using extremes such as "always" and "never' should be taken with a grain of salt and of course there are exceptions.
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Here is an interesting article that predicts a bleak outlook for dentistry from now through 2021.
www.bloomberg.com
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Dentistry at ‘Virtual Standstill’ and 2021 Isn’t Safe Either
The American Dental Association warned that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic’s unprecedented impact is likely to slash dental spending into 2021, a stark warning that contrasts with some optimism of a quick recovery.
www.bloomberg.com
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deleted972255
Basically, we are at the point now where it makes no sense to go to dental school unless you plan on specializing in a program that offers paid residency after dental school. That way no more debt is added on and you make more by being a specialist.
If you go to dental school now and take out 400k-600k in loans and plan on being a general dentist, it just means you are not thinking logically. The only way it makes sense to be a general dentist is if youre debt is 200k or less, which almost no one is able to do anymore due to skyrocketing tuition.
Of course no one will listen to this though.
If you go to dental school now and take out 400k-600k in loans and plan on being a general dentist, it just means you are not thinking logically. The only way it makes sense to be a general dentist is if youre debt is 200k or less, which almost no one is able to do anymore due to skyrocketing tuition.
Of course no one will listen to this though.
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When the student loan bubble bursts, everyone will listen.
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We will listen...from this point forward there shall be no more general dentists only specialists. Problem solved.
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deleted903013
The problem is, dental students are laser-focused on getting into dental school and don't think twice about finances. They might not even look at costs until they're applying or even until they're accepted.
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I think most pre-dents know about the cost because every school posts the total cost of attendance on it’s website. My nephew knew exactly how much each of the schools that he applied to charges him. And like most pre-dents, he desperately wants to become a dentist. He couldn’t find anything better out there. His dad is an ex-engineer who got laid off in 2008 and hasn’t been able to find another job since. Since he didn’t have a stellar undergrad GPA and DAT score, he purposely applied to more expensive schools with the hope that he would have higher chance of getting in. He will be a D1 student this coming Fall.
The problem is most predents are living on borrowed money or their parents’ money. They don’t know how to budget their money. Some are not willing to downgrade the lifestyle by sharing room/apartment with roommate(s) while in dental school. Some dental students even used the loan money to travel. And after graduation, they are not willing to continue to live like a student for 2-3 years because they are now “doctors”….and doctors don’t move back to live with their parents….doctors drives Mercedes.
Another problem is dental students don’t realize how hard an associate dentist has to work in order to earn $120-150k/year salary. Many of them never had to work (during their HS/college years) before; therefore, they had zero experience in working with a boss and with the co-workers. They don’t realize that the main reason the owner dentists (and corp) hire associate dentists is to produce $$$.…and they are shocked when they face things like no respect from the owner and staff, limited supplies, medicaid patients, hopping from chair to chair, long work hours etc. Therefore, they regretted their decision to become a dentist.
When the predents shadowed successful dentists, they saw an easy lifestyle profession. But they didn’t realize how hard those dentists had to work when they first started their offices. I brought my son to my offices a few times to see how I work. My son saw how easy it was for me to treat my 60-80 patients (because the assistants do most of the work) in less than 4 hours. And he sees that I have nice house, drive nice cars, and I give him and his sister a very comfortable lifestyle. I had to explain to him that it wasn’t easy like this when I first started. I had to do most of these clinical work myself. I cleaned the operatories myself. I mopped the clinic floor. I worked past 9pm on some days. There were a lot of sleepless nights due to stress. And in order for my offices to attract such high patient volume, I have to keep my fees low and I have to accept lower profit margin. I have to do things most orthodontists are not willing to do. My son is only 15 and I am not sure if he understood what I told him. To be safe, I push my son to work hard and does well in HS (and hopefully in college) so he’ll have more options later on.
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Agreed. My future son in law earned a 4 yr finance degree from ASU. BTW: he had a 4 yr full scholarship there .... so no debt. He works for EPIC in Wisconsin. Epic is a LARGE software company much like Google. They provide software services to most hospitals. Their campus is amazing. Looks like a disney theme park. Point is .... in his third year of work ... he makes more than 150K.
Theres no way a dentist will ever catch up to him financially...
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not if the dentist went to dental school through military/nhsc route or have rich parents
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deleted721052
i'm wondering.. what's the maximum amount of debt that is still reasonable for a dentist for it to be worth it?
i'm graduating with 110k and i think it's terrible (20k was undergrad) and it really makes me doubt trying to specialized. i know that if i don't try i will regret but i'm also scared to graduate as a perio with 250k of loans and hating life even more than as a general dentist running around all day.
i'm graduating with 110k and i think it's terrible (20k was undergrad) and it really makes me doubt trying to specialized. i know that if i don't try i will regret but i'm also scared to graduate as a perio with 250k of loans and hating life even more than as a general dentist running around all day.
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You are golden. Open up your practice. Hire desperate new grads at $500 a day. Profit
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Graduating as perio with 250k loans is not bad at all.
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what about graduating dental school with 250k?
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i graduated with around 250k of debt. its not awful. i would say at 300k dentistry isnt worth it, but that's all dependent on the person.
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I graduated w 500k w interest so
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How's life?
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Could be better
This is what I try to preach everyday. Thank you.
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What year did you graduate?
I graduated 2010 with $280k. Same school is graduating students today at about $600k.
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2018
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In 10 yrs, future young docs (with $1M+ student loans) will say your $500k student loans was bargain. Just like today’s new grads are saying my $280k from 10 yrs ago was a bargain.
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I feel this is a constant cycle. Older dentists feeling bad how much younger dentist seat on debt and so on.
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True. But in relative terms, income for new dentists was stagnant the last decade or so for the most part, and at most went up 10–15% in that period - while student loans went up 200-300% depending on the program.
Imagine if this trend continues for the next decade or more, where the annual interest payments on student loans debt = 50% of annual pre-tax earnings , or 70% of annual post-tax earnings.
Whenever anyone asks the question... how much do dentists make after dental school? The answer should be based on after student loans and taxes (which could be as low as what an amazon warehouse employee makes - without benefits). That’ll show them!
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I went to a state school, took out the total cost and graduated in 2018 with under 250k. Did a paid AEGD and I owed less than the other 12 residents, with the average debt close to 500k. Worked for a year as an associate and paid some of my loans off. Going to another state school for perio, where I anticipate my total debt will be somewhere around 500k with interest. The way I see it, if you can become a specialist for under or around 500k, you're ahead of the average GP graduating in our generation. As we all know, nothing is "yes or no", "0 or 1", "Black or white" you need to make that determination for yourself.
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You feel like perio is lucrative these days to offset 500k debt?
If I were you I would keep reapplying until you got a paid residency. You've managed to come out of dental school in a relatively good position, and you could be in a good position if you get a paid residency. Personally I think 500k debt as a specialist is a pretty similar position to 250 as a general dentist when you factor 3 years lost wages for the specialty
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That is a good point, but this isn't a bad time to be specializing either, considering the amount of money dentists are losing right now it could be a good move to enter into his specialty program sooner rather than later.
I still think a specialists at $500k is a lot but better than being a GP with $500k no doubt. And who gives if a specialty is lucrative or not. You do a specialty because you are interested in just those topics and nothing else. General dentistry is lucrative if you find the right opportunity too but lets be mindful and make smart financial decisions. Let's not be one minded here.
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While I do agree with your assessment, and I would have loved to match at a program that is stipend based, I ended up with UW. If COVID didn't happen and there was no recession, I would lean more heavily in your direction. I think insulating myself from GP woes for 3 years and be in the same financial position I am in now makes a lot of sense.
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Agreed and thats how I made my decision. I believe in the long run, perio will be a financially stable and lucrative due to more GPs placing implants that need to be fixed, and all the AEGDs and "implant fellowships" that keep propping them up. I came from an implant heavy AEGD, thats what got me into implants in the first place. But I also saw how different individual implant education can be. I placed 30 in my year there, while others only placed a hand full. There will always be a need for OMFS and perio to fix implants or place them.
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Oh yea, more and more GPs are placing implants and misdiagnosing periodontitis every day. Implant fellowships and AEGDs makes practitioners good implant placers but not good complication handlers. Thats why OMFS and perio will always be needed: not just to place the difficult ones, but to also fix the GPs errors.
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have you talked to recent grads about job prospects? Starting salary etc
Good point
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I have not, but I intend (at the moment) to return to my home town that only has a hand full of periodontists and a rapidly growing population in Texas and open my own place as soon as financially possible.
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