Just a curious question about the salary for resident

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Dr.Icandothisitsmyfuture

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Hi,
I'm a big fan of Grey's Anatomy, as I was rewatching some of the seasons, I noticed that Izzie (one of the resident) in season 6 episode 4, said that "we (her and her husband Alex, another resident) barely make 30 grand a year".....
Two residents can't barely make 30 grand a year together????
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How much would that be after taxes and monthly loan payments?
 
Each. They each make 30k. I am sure thats what they meant.

My supervisor who is now an attending finished MD ~2000/01 and said it was 35-45k for residency.

Nowadays it is closer to 45-50 for intern year and rises with each PGY. I've seen programs with PGY-5 stipends at 70-72k
 
It will depend on where you live for taxes due to state and local taxes and how much you have to pay on health insurance. You student loan payment will depend on what type of loans you have and what repayment plan you are doing.

Don't rely on Grey's to be accurate about anything. I love seeing surgery resident's alarms going off at 6am or even 7am......yeah right.
 
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From my interviews, salaries ranged from 45-62k for a PGY1. Seems like they go up ~2k/year after.
 
I've seen numbers from $45-60k depending on specialty, etc.

Grey's is pitched at a wide audience, most of whom are middle class or below. If working class people heard "Between us, we are barely making $100k..." It really wouldn't communicate the hardship the writers were going for. Since they aren't going to stop and do a mid-episode PSA to educate the public on the dismal financial realities associated with medical education, they just picked a number low enough to make their plot advance.
 
allenlchs said:
How much would that be after taxes and monthly loan payments?
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You can estimate roughly 20% in taxes. Monthly loan payments are going to vary much more widely, because it depends on how much you took out in loans, which payment plan you qualify for (whether you're doing IBR vs forebearance, etc), whether you're married and your spouse has loans, etc. Estimate $500-$1000 each month for loans.

correctlywrong said:
I've seen numbers from $45-60k depending on specialty, etc.
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It doesn't vary by specialty. All specialties within the same hospital get paid the same amount according to PGY year. It varies based on location and hospital.
 
mvenus929 said:
It doesn't vary by specialty. All specialties within the same hospital get paid the same amount according to PGY year. It varies based on location and hospital.
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I thought that it did based on seeing two separate residency programs at the same institution offer significantly different rate schedules on their websites. Maybe one was not updated from the previous year? I don't pretend to know all there is to know about resident salaries, but it seems odd to me that they would increase by 10k year to year, and there was definitely a 10k difference between the PGY1 salary in one program and the PGY1 salary in a separate specialty listed on the same hospital website. I only noticed it because I thought that it was strange.
 
Dr.Icandothisitsmyfuture said:
Hi,
I'm a big fan of Grey's Anatomy, as I was rewatching some of the seasons, I noticed that Izzie (one of the resident) in season 6 episode 4, said that "we (her and her husband Alex, another resident) barely make 30 grand a year".....
Two residents can't barely make 30 grand a year together????
Click to expand...

I make 56k as an intern.
 
correctlywrong said:
I thought that it did based on seeing two separate residency programs at the same institution offer significantly different rate schedules on their websites. Maybe one was not updated from the previous year? I don't pretend to know all there is to know about resident salaries, but it seems odd to me that they would increase by 10k year to year, and there was definitely a 10k difference between the PGY1 salary in one program and the PGY1 salary in a separate specialty listed on the same hospital website. I only noticed it because I thought that it was strange.
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Post it then.
 
fahimaz7 said:
I make 56k as an intern.
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mvenus929 said:
You can estimate roughly 20% in taxes. Monthly loan payments are going to vary much more widely, because it depends on how much you took out in loans, which payment plan you qualify for (whether you're doing IBR vs forebearance, etc), whether you're married and your spouse has loans, etc. Estimate $500-$1000 each month for loans..
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So if I take these numbers, then 56k -20% taxes = 45000 - 1000/montly (assuming the worst loan scenario?) = left with 33000 or $2750 month, which is not too bad, but in some parts of the country isn't much at all considering the cost of rent (and that's not even considering things like financing a new car). I see now why doctors I've met were so unwelcoming of people living off government assistance while they were working their butts off in med school and then residency.
 
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allenlchs said:
How much would that be after taxes and monthly loan payments?
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Depends on if you live in a state with state income taxes and/or a city with a city income tax. A $50k/yr salary is about $35k/yr after all taxes and fringe benefits deductions. Loan payments are about $3k/yr once you sign up for PAYE, so figure $33k/yr to live on.
 
Don't forget that some residents moonlight to supplement their income and gain more experience.
 
fahimaz7 said:
Post it then.
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I knew I could count on SDN for someone to demand a reference. I don't retain the URLs of every site that I have visited in the last year. I am not presenting evidence that I am correct. I am explaining that at some point I encountered information upon which I based an inference. I know that you don't hear a lot of pre-meds admit that they don't always know everything about everything, but if you will refer to the post you quoted, you will see that I did admit that I am not any kind of authority on resident salaries.
 
allenlchs said:
So if I take these numbers, then 56k -20% taxes = 45000 - 1000/montly (assuming the worst loan scenario?) = left with 33000 or $2750 month, which is not too bad, but in some parts of the country isn't much at all considering the cost of rent (and that's not even considering things like financing a new car). I see now why doctors I've met were so unwelcoming of people living off government assistance while they were working their butts off in med school and then residency.
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It seems that a very small minority of SDNers actually understand tax brackets and their application. 56K means you are in the 25% tax bracket but will pay an effective rate of 17.86% (~9800). You only pay 25% tax on the income you earn past the upper limit that defines the 15% bracket. All dollars below that value (around 36K last time I looked) are taxed at 15% until the last few dollars are taxed at the lowest 10% rate and all claimed-income has been taxed at the appropriate rate.

If you simply took your tax percentage times income, a salary raise that moved you into a higher bracket could potentially cost you several thousand dollars. Our tax system however, is structured so that this scenario is not possible.
 
correctlywrong said:
I thought that it did based on seeing two separate residency programs at the same institution offer significantly different rate schedules on their websites. Maybe one was not updated from the previous year? I don't pretend to know all there is to know about resident salaries, but it seems odd to me that they would increase by 10k year to year, and there was definitely a 10k difference between the PGY1 salary in one program and the PGY1 salary in a separate specialty listed on the same hospital website. I only noticed it because I thought that it was strange.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what to tell you without looking at the specific example. But I can tell you that as a peds intern, I make the same as the ED interns, IM interns, and surgery interns at my institution.

Maybe the difference is who funds the residency. The hospital where I did my 3rd year peds rotation had residents from 3 different programs rotating through--their salary differential may have been real, since they were all based at a different institution. Children's National is technically affiliated with GW, but I'm pretty sure they fund their residency differently than all the other GW programs (and the peds residents get a couple thousand more than everyone else).

F1rstGen said:
If you simply took your tax percentage times income, a salary raise that moved you into a higher bracket could potentially cost you several thousand dollars. Our tax system however, is structured so that this scenario is not possible.
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The 20% was an estimate. It's going to vary depending on where you live, what exactly you make, etc, but it's a good rough estimate to figure out take home pay in this scenario, especially since we're not working with the specifics. And as you demonstrated, it's an overestimate, which is better than underestimating.
 
mvenus929 said:
The 20% was an estimate. It's going to vary depending on where you live, what exactly you make, etc, but it's a good rough estimate to figure out take home pay in this scenario, especially since we're not working with the specifics. And as you demonstrated, it's an overestimate, which is better than underestimating.
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It might actually be an underestimate considering that 17.86% did not include state tax
 
mvenus929 said:
Maybe the difference is who funds the residency. The hospital where I did my 3rd year peds rotation had residents from 3 different programs rotating through--their salary differential may have been real, since they were all based at a different institution. Children's National is technically affiliated with GW, but I'm pretty sure they fund their residency differently than all the other GW programs (and the peds residents get a couple thousand more than everyone else).
Click to expand...

That was my guess about the discrepancy, actually, but since I knew that I would be speaking out of my depth, I didn't advance it as a possibility. I don't know everything about resident pay, so I thought that if I suggested that maybe what I saw was the result of different funding sources that someone would shout me down to tell me how illegal that would be, etc.
 
allenlchs said:
How much would that be after taxes and monthly loan payments?
Click to expand...
I'm graduating from residency this week. My take home pay as a resident was about $3000 per month after federal/state income taxes, required retirement contribution, health insurance, and parking. The resident stipend is not going to make you a millionaire, but you should have enough to live decently if you have a reasonable budget.

J Senpai said:
Don't forget that some residents moonlight to supplement their income and gain more experience.
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Opportunities to do this are more restricted than you may think. Every state at minimum requires you to complete at least an intern year and get your full license (which costs mega $$). Many states, including where I did residency, require you to be a PGY3 before they'll let you apply for a full license and moonlight. It takes several months to get a full license, and we could not even apply for the full license until the end of our PGY2 year. Some of my residency classmates did it anyway, but I didn't think it was worth the money and effort to get a full license for my last 6-8 months of residency, especially since I knew I'd be leaving the state as soon as I graduated.

Also, you cannot moonlight if it causes you to exceed your duty hours, which are currently limited to 80 hours per week averaged over four weeks with one 24 hour period per week off. Since many residency programs are already close to that limit (I usually averaged 60-80 hours per week depending on the rotation), again, it makes it difficult to do much moonlighting.

Finally, your program director can choose to forbid moonlighting for any reason. If you are at a program that does not allow moonlighting, you obviously won't be able to do it.
 
F1rstGen said:
It seems that a very small minority of SDNers actually understand tax brackets and their application. 56K means you are in the 25% tax bracket but will pay an effective rate of 17.86% (~9800). You only pay 25% tax on the income you earn past the upper limit that defines the 15% bracket. All dollars below that value (around 36K last time I looked) are taxed at 15% until the last few dollars are taxed at the lowest 10% rate and all claimed-income has been taxed at the appropriate rate.

If you simply took your tax percentage times income, a salary raise that moved you into a higher bracket could potentially cost you several thousand dollars. Our tax system however, is structured so that this scenario is not possible.
Click to expand...
The majority of SDNers haven't worked a real full-time job like you would post-graduation, and seeing as how a large proportion of the community is still in undergrad they haven't experienced this nor many of the other financial aspects of paying for all aspects of your life from your paycheck either. Can't really fault them though, most people in undergrad don't really think about these kinds of things until they graduate, get a job, and are forced to deal with these things along with 401k's, etc etc. It isn't like schools teach any of these things haha

QofQuimica said:
I'm graduating from residency this week. My take home pay as a resident was about $3000 per month after federal/state income taxes, required retirement contribution, health insurance, and parking. The resident stipend is not going to make you a millionaire, but you should have enough to live decently if you have a reasonable budget.
Click to expand...

Congrats!!!
 
lmn said:
The majority of SDNers haven't worked a real full-time job like you would post-graduation, and seeing as how a large proportion of the community is still in undergrad they haven't experienced this nor many of the other financial aspects of paying for all aspects of your life from your paycheck either. Can't really fault them though, most people in undergrad don't really think about these kinds of things until they graduate, get a job, and are forced to deal with these things along with 401k's, etc etc. It isn't like schools teach any of these things haha
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That reality hit me hard out of undergrad, lol. Thank god I have a fiancé who works in finance who actually understands all of this so I don't dig myself into a bigger financial hole.
 
ciestar said:
That reality hit me hard out of undergrad, lol. Thank god I have a fiancé who works in finance who actually understands all of this so I don't dig myself into a bigger financial hole.
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You want me to pick my insurance plan out of this huge list? Can I throw a dart? hahah
 
lmn said:
You want me to pick my insurance plan out of this huge list? Can I throw a dart? hahah
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Haha I would likely approach it that way too! How do you decipher any of it? Knowing the life cycle of a plant didn't prepare me for this!
 
mvenus929 said:
I'm not sure what to tell you without looking at the specific example. But I can tell you that as a peds intern, I make the same as the ED interns, IM interns, and surgery interns at my institution.

Maybe the difference is who funds the residency. The hospital where I did my 3rd year peds rotation had residents from 3 different programs rotating through--their salary differential may have been real, since they were all based at a different institution. Children's National is technically affiliated with GW, but I'm pretty sure they fund their residency differently than all the other GW programs (and the peds residents get a couple thousand more than everyone else).
Click to expand...

That is the most likely cause. Different funding sources (ie, funded by a university, hospital, department or private sources) will result in different salaries however *most* of the time every level is paid the same regardless of specialty; benefits such as book funds, vacation and CME is often funded by departments and is therefore quite variable.
 
correctlywrong said:
I thought that it did based on seeing two separate residency programs at the same institution offer significantly different rate schedules on their websites. Maybe one was not updated from the previous year? I don't pretend to know all there is to know about resident salaries, but it seems odd to me that they would increase by 10k year to year, and there was definitely a 10k difference between the PGY1 salary in one program and the PGY1 salary in a separate specialty listed on the same hospital website. I only noticed it because I thought that it was strange.
Click to expand...

It is quite likely that one of the charts was quite outdated. I've seen some dept pages at my hospital that haven't been updated since 2007, b/c they expect applicants to use FRIEDA and a newer website they've created while the old one just sits there untouched and forgotten. At my hospital there was a raise of 4.5k after union negotiations, which followed by annual raises actually wouldn't take that long for an out of date table to become $10k in error.

You could have been looking at numbers that weren't base pay for one of the depts -- if you add meal stipend, educational stipend, "finishing charts on time bonus" and tech stipend at my program, you're up $4000...at someplace, I'm sure the discrepancy is bigger, b/c we have a piddly meal stipend, and then some of these incidentals get funded by a different source and CAN vary by program.

Lastly, sometimes residencies in different fields belong to different sponsors even though they seem predominately based at the same hospital. You need to compare residencies from the same sponsoring institution & not simply the same location of practice.
 
Last edited:
Dr.Icandothisitsmyfuture said:
Hi,
I'm a big fan of Grey's Anatomy, as I was rewatching some of the seasons, I noticed that Izzie (one of the resident) in season 6 episode 4, said that "we (her and her husband Alex, another resident) barely make 30 grand a year".....
Two residents can't barely make 30 grand a year together????
Click to expand...

These days you'll start as an intern at around $45k-47k (or mid fifties in very high cost of living areas like NYC). Your salary will go up 1-2k each year of residency. It wasn't really that long ago that a resident made in the $30k range (each, not as a couple). Bear in mind that this is training, not your final job, and there are actually a few fellowships (not residencies) out there where the salary can be dramatically less (I've known people who took single digit fellowship salaries to train with certain big shots.) In general I recommend pretty much ignoring the salary figure in residency -- it's always better than tuition/more debt and it's still really just part of the investment in your education. At the end of the day when you are earning a nice six digit salary, whether you were earning 45k or 49k is going to be sort of meaningless.
 
Law2Doc said:
These days you'll start as an intern at around $45k-47k (or mid fifties in very high cost of living areas like NYC). Your salary will go up 1-2k each year of residency. It wasn't really that long ago that a resident made in the $30k range (each, not as a couple). Bear in mind that this is training, not your final job, and there are actually a few fellowships (not residencies) out there where the salary can be dramatically less (I've known people who took single digit fellowship salaries to train with certain big shots.) In general I recommend pretty much ignoring the salary figure in residency -- it's always better than tuition/more debt and it's still really just part of the investment in your education. At the end of the day when you are earning a nice six digit salary, whether you were earning 45k or 49k is going to be sort of meaningless.
Click to expand...
National average for PGY-1 was $49,394 back in 2011. https://www.aamc.org/download/265452/data/2011stipendreport.pdf
 
Grey's Anatomy is set in Seattle. Looking at Washington University's stipend rate for Residents and R1/PGY-1 will be payed a $51,216 stipend. Other residency programs in the region would probably pay within that range.
 
allenlchs said:
So if I take these numbers, then 56k -20% taxes = 45000 - 1000/montly (assuming the worst loan scenario?) = left with 33000 or $2750 month, which is not too bad, but in some parts of the country isn't much at all considering the cost of rent (and that's not even considering things like financing a new car). I see now why doctors I've met were so unwelcoming of people living off government assistance while they were working their butts off in med school and then residency.
Click to expand...

No. No intern or resident pays full loan payments. I'm married and my wife has a good job and loans of her own. I pay $250/month on 200k+ of loans using IBR during residency. So much doom and gloom on this thread. It's really not that bad.
 
Shjanzey said:
Grey's Anatomy is set in Seattle. Looking at Washington University's stipend rate for Residents and R1/PGY-1 will be payed a $51,216 stipend. Other residency programs in the region would probably pay within that range.
Click to expand...

It's definitely over-exaggerated. They have residents living in slum-like apartments and izzie and Alex were living in a camper in the woods. Yet, they have attendings making 2 mil+/year
 
Eh, it's a tv drama, they're all exaggerated for effect, hah.

Take criminal minds for instance, the BAU is a big deal and has a private jet and a swanky office. Hardly the case, they work in a very tiny building and don't travel via private jet. Every profession on tv is amped up for effect. Problem is, people actually believe it's reality for these jobs.
 
You might want to see what your take home pay and all your expenses are before buying that new car. you may not be able to afford it. it is ok to get a cheap used car and wait till after residency to get the new one. my car is 9 years old and still running great. not going to buy a brand new one until I have worked a few months as an attending and have a good down payment.
 
Moonlighting is a good way to supplement your income, if your state allows it, if you program director allows it, and if you can afford the upfront costs. Full state license are a few hundred (VA was $300, TN $400 for example). Then you have to get your DEA number ($730). Some places will require you to have your own malpractice since you will not be full time. Best case, you would not be able to moonlight till probably Oct of your second year at the earliest (most likely not until 2nd half of your 2nd year). And again as mentioned above, you have to have permission from your program and not go over your hours. I ended up not moonlighting but will with my job 1 weekend a month eventually (purely for an extra $1.5K to put toward loans a month)
 
My PGY3 salary is 55k. Moonlighting is forbidden except during research years. Until my wife started working (was in law school), we paid virtually zero federal income taxes between exemptions and saving appropriately.
 
mimelim said:
My PGY3 salary is 55k. Moonlighting is forbidden except during research years. Until my wife started working (was in law school), we paid virtually zero federal income taxes between exemptions and saving appropriately.
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What kind of moonlighting can you realistically do? Anything surgically related (i.e. something that makes money), or more along the lines of medically related stuff for $50/hr like the IM or FM residents do?
 
circulus vitios said:
What kind of moonlighting can you realistically do? Anything surgically related (i.e. something that makes money), or more along the lines of medically related stuff for $50/hr like the IM or FM residents do?
Click to expand...

What are they doing for $50/hr? That is low. Urgent care moonlighting where I'm starts $75/hr on the low end. Rural ER is $100/hr for a 36 hour shift. This is for resident moonlighting.
 
drcrispmd said:
What are they doing for $50/hr? That is low. Urgent care moonlighting where I'm starts $75/hr on the low end. Rural ER is $100/hr for a 36 hour shift. This is for resident moonlighting.
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I hope that 36 hours implies three 12 hour shifts as I cannot imagine how anyone could work for 36 hours straight.
 
drcrispmd said:
What are they doing for $50/hr? That is low. Urgent care moonlighting where I'm starts $75/hr on the low end. Rural ER is $100/hr for a 36 hour shift. This is for resident moonlighting.
Click to expand...
Ditto, a few FM residents from my area have told me they are earning ~$100/hr for a "standard" 10-14hr day depending on how busy things are/paperwork
 
circulus vitios said:
What kind of moonlighting can you realistically do? Anything surgically related (i.e. something that makes money), or more along the lines of medically related stuff for $50/hr like the IM or FM residents do?
Click to expand...

Typical moonlighting at the local LTACs is about $125/hr. Cost of me getting my state medical license is about $3200.
 
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