I certainly don't want to discourage you, but I think there may be a few things to think about before you take the plunge into physical therapy school. You certainly may have already considered some, or all, of these issues, and if so, please ignore the following.
First of all, you state your current job is quite financially rewarding. While you can certainly make a comfortable living with a career in physical therapy, you'll probably never rake in huge dollars, especially given the trend towards declining reimbursement from insurance companies for physical therapy services provided in the outpatient setting. Or perhaps more succinctly put, your ability to generate revenue for yourself or a company you work for will likely continue to diminish over time.
Secondly, your ability to earn money while in PT school is pretty limited, and obviously PT school tuition can be expensive, although I think UNLV is a state school, which should help. But, regardless, that's three years where you essentially have no job and no income other than you wife's.
In reagrds to opening your own clinic with your wife, I think your MBA may be helpful in that regard, but if that is your ultimate goal, and what you really want to do when you're out of PT school, I'd research that a bit before you take the plunge. As I referenced above, what insurance companies are paying PTs for the services they provide is shrinking. Additionally, Medicare is continuing to try to minimize what they pay for PT as they add on more and more layers of administrative responsibilities for the therapist, i.e. paperwork. Other insurance companies are following suit.
With the current economy, once you're out of school, the cost of running any business will be higher. So, you'll be looking at higher costs and a decreasing ability to generate revenue.
You'll probably also want to look at the location you will be likely to open your clinic in. Too much competition wil make it tough to market yourself, so if you live in Vegas (where I assume there are a lot of other PT clinics) you may have to open your clinic in a region that is underserved in regards to physical therapy (i.e. a more rural area).
Having said all of this, I should state as a qualifier, that I've been a PT for ten years and couldn't imagine doing anything else. I make a fairly comfortable living, but I'm not at six figures. I think the future of our profession is bright, but we're going to have some lean years ahead until Medicare gets sorted out and until the insurance reimbrisement trends start to reverse, or until they at least increse enough to stay even with cost of living and inflation increases.
I hope that you're not too discouraged by the post, but I often hear from students early in their PT school days that they want to open their own clinic, but are up against a financial wall by the time they get done with school. Some more frank info up front may have changed some of the decisions they made such as choosing a cheaper school, other cost cutting measures to incure less debt, etc.
Best of luck to you, in whatever you decide.
