30 Y/O Associate (Corporate) Dentist. Graduated in '22. With 375,000 dollars in debt. I made a post here last year with my 2024-2025 numbers...
2022 July --> 120,000
2023-2024 --> 240,000
2024-2025 --> 340,000 NW -80,000
2025-2026 --> 355,000 NW +50,000
Median Dental Income is 180-200k USD. However there are very high earners (over 1 M a year) as well as very low earners (as low as sub 100k).
As me anything!
Nice job! I'm a specialist in the field and fairly plugged into real numbers.
I always remind GPs starting out to tune out the noise when it comes to other dentists talking about their income. Every field has an issue with people lying about their income, but I feel like dentists compete with each other and inflate their numbers moreso than most fields and it creates very unrealistic expectations. Anyone who goes out of their way to brag to you about their income or production numbers, it's probably safe to assume the real figure is 50-75% of what they are claiming lol
Anything over $300k as a young associate is really, really good. Congrats! Keep grindin'!
Thank you! I fell into an extremely fast moving / high volume office. I was able to flourish here with the support of my great mentors (who are all outproducing me too. The lead doctor here makes around 550k a year). I'm considering going back to school for Endo. Time will tell.
Yeah volume is key in a DSO setting. If you can move fast and manage the stress / avoid burnout, they're fantastic gigs. Be honest with yourself with burnout, though. I know a handful of GPs who raked in $400-500k at a DSO and all but one began struggling with burnout after a few years. Some people just love the grind and don't hit that wall, though.
About endo... Dude... Just do it. Endo makes way more than people even imagine. As an associate in a busy private practice you can hit high 6-figures routinely and 7-figs as an associate is reasonably possible depending on the practice, workload, and pay structure (endo usually pays associates 45% of adjusted production, give or take). A buddy of mine did a start up a few years ago and his FIRST year produced $1.25 million on ~30% overhead. Think about that- $900,000 netted on 1.25 mil gross. Insane efficiency. I net only slightly more than that and produce three times as much lmao
And he's doing much more than $900k now. Endo is the dream. Only reason I didn't do it myself was because it stresses the shit out of me and it was the only thing I just genuinely was bad at at. I still have PTSD from when the rotary file is spinning slowly near the working length and I'm sweating and praying it doesn't bite and blow out the apex 🤣
Based on your first statement (assume the real figure is 50-75%…) and your claimed income (slightly more than $900k…) it’s safe to assume you actually make about $450-675k?
Touche 🤣 but no. I don't know a single solo OMFS owner in that range lol
That’s what they all say…
Have you thought about opening your own practice?
I have considered it. However, there is plenty of risk to do such a thing. I know it costs around 1-1.2M to buy a practice. Then you have to manage it, fall into the common traps / pitfalls.
There's, ofcourse, many upsides. Being your own boss, setting your own hours, significantly higher pay, hiring / firing control, etc.
Way to tackle that debt. Now I need to go brush my teeth and floss so I don’t have to pay you.
This is a great post and a good reminder of how wide the spread is in dentistry. That income ramp is no joke, especially only a few years out, and props for being transparent about net worth and debt. Getting from deep negative to positive that quickly is a real win that doesn’t get talked about enough.
I’m an OMFS and had a similar experience on a different timeline. Spent my 20s and early 30s making very little while taking on a ton of student loan debt, then saw a steep income jump once training ended. Early attending years were way more about digging out of the red than “feeling rich.”
People looking at raw income numbers without context really miss how much the training and debt phase matters. Trajectory > snapshot.
Curious how much of your jump was improved efficiency/skills vs moving into a better comp setup.
with the shortage of dentists, you're gonna be making a lot more
Shortage in rural areas and saturation in desirable metro areas, so the shortage statistics are misleading and not helpful unless you look at them in a more micro, area-specific way.
This is why rural dentists and specialists make a killing.