I don't think this has really been covered in this thread, so I thought I would shed some light and perspective. If, as many posters have said, you were "only" making 90k per year, then you would be in the 80th percentile for income in the US as of 2007 (sorry no newer data than that). If you are like most of us students, right now you are living on a little less than $2,000 per month. At this measly salary, after taxes of let's say 20%, you would be making $6,000 per month. Obviously, you have some serious loans to pay off. If you have $200k in student loans and they are evenly distributed among the 4 different types (which they are not but for simplicity's sake we'll say they are), you would be paying about $2300/mo for 10 years. This knocks you down to a mere $3,700 per month, which is still almost double what you are currently living on. I believe there are tax deductions for interest paid on student loans, so it is actually a little more than this. Now take into consideration that you will probably increase in income in your first 3 years to making more around the average which is about $104k according to "PayScale", which is averaged over the whole country. So your after tax income has increased by about $11k/year or about $1k/month. Now you are making $4,700/mo and are in the 90th percentile for income.
Now for a little perspective. These numbers may not seem like that much, but 90th percentile means that there are approximately 270 million Americans who live on less money than you. If they can make it through, I'm sure you can manage. Another interesting statistic is the world bank in 2005 published a paper that measured the average income of an average person in the world. At $90k you would be making about $82,000 more than the average person in the world. While making money is important, it is also important to realize that there are a lot of hurting people out there, many of whom would gladly take the reported paltry sum of $90k for 35 hours a week of work. Sure many of them did not apply themselves and are where they are because of their own choices. Dentists are part of the elite, and as you can see, we are paid as such. I come from a lower class background, and I can attest to the fact that if your biggest worry is that you can't afford a brand new Mercedes and a $750,000 house within the first 5 years out of school, you're doing pretty well.
I am well aware that there are many dentists out there who make money the second priority in their practices. I would encourage all my fellow students and dentists to do the same.
