Is A Veterinarian Salary Worth The Debt? | Student Loan Planner

Is a veterinarian's salary worth it? You might be thinking yes, because a lot of veterinarians you know might make $80,000 to even $120,000 if they're really good at producing for different procedures for their practice that they work at, right? $80,000 to $120,000 is the typical range that we see for clients of student loan planner that we've held, and that veterinarian salary is pretty solid, but there's a couple things that that number is missing. A lot of veterinarians that are not producing lots of procedures will top out in their earnings at the $100,000 to $110,000 level. That's decent, but remember that the additional earnings that you will make above what you would have with a bachelor's degree, that earnings amount gets taxed, so you don't actually take home that full difference. So that means that after taxes, a difference of veterinarian salary of $100,000 versus a college grad salary of $60,000, that's $40,000 difference, but that $40,000 difference is going to be smaller because of taxes. So instead of $40,000 difference, maybe that's more like $25,000 to $30,000 more that you'd make as a veterinarian, not including loans. Now when you throw in loans, typically what we see is a 10% cost of your income going to loans under a pay-as-you-earn or revised pay-as-you-earn plan. In addition, you lose about 5% of your income to put that towards a tax bomb account in a brokerage account like Vanguard, where you're preparing long-term for the tax bomb that you will owe to the IRS. So if you think about the 15% loss on top of taxes, right, so we said that you have $40,000, and then you're probably left with $20,000 after loan payments and taxes and, you know, just also the tax bomb account that you're saving for. So it should be maybe around $20,000 more than what you would earn with just a bachelor's degree in most cases for a veterinarian salary compared to what you would make just coming straight out of college. Now that is more money, even if you have $400,000 of vet school debt from a private vet school. So veterinarians do make better salaries than your typical person, and that's good. That means you can have financial independence, you can have a lot of high savings rate, you can actually retire a lot earlier than you thought you could if you get a student loan plan in place. But veterinarians' salaries do not match up with the high cost of tuition that is charged, and it's becoming worse and worse by the year. Now that just to say that to be a veterinarian you must be very passionate about it. We have a lot of veterinarian clients, and we've advised hundreds of them, that have made all kinds of mistakes with their loans where they try to pay their loans back directly when they shouldn't, or they will pay maybe on a 30-year type plan and not refinance when they can afford to and they should. Really, we see a ton of mistakes made with veterinary student loans because veterinarians don't get that good financial counseling when they're in school. Yeah, the VBMA is there, and those chapters do a lot of work and help veterinarians and prepare them to be practice owners one day, but the VBMA is doing all it can, and it's just not enough with the size of the problem that exists out there in the profession. So if you're a veterinarian, I would say that you should have the expectation that you'll make anywhere from $80,000 to $120,000. If you become a practice owner, you might have the option, you might have the ability to make more money. You might be able to make maybe like $150,000 if you're doing pretty good. You know, the top running veterinarians probably earn a little bit over that. So just keep that in mind when you're going to school, that if you want to be rich, veterinary medicine is not for you. If you want to have a comfortable life, don't mind being a little frugal, driving paid-off cars, and living like you are a teacher or a nurse, even though you are one rung above that on the economic ladder in terms of income, then you can have a wonderful financial life as a veterinarian. And if you are trying to figure out your big veterinary student loans, we would love to help. Just send us an email, help at studentloanplanner.com. We would love to get in touch with you about how we might be able to help you figure out a way to pay back your vet school loans. I'm Travis. Thanks so much for watching.