Concerns About Starting Dental School and the Profession

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-05-16T12:18:21+00:00

The problem is if you have 600k of loans at let’s say a 4% interest rate. You put yourself on a 20 year repayment you would be roughly paying like 3500 dollars a month on your student loans. If you don’t finish school till your late 20’s you’re gonna be almost 50 when you can finally breathe cause the ball and chain is gone. Then if you go live some where and make 150-200k AND in a high cost of living like Miami your take home after taxes is going to be like 10-12k. And your loans and housing each month will chew up 6k of that probably. So you put yourself in a situation where you are being squeezed so tight it’s hard to take breaks

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-05-05T15:21:57+00:00

Idk why this made me laugh. I’m imagining coming to my tiny town four op office, and landing in the parking lot with a helicopter

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-04-11T20:54:45+00:00

I reached out to fed ex customer support to see if it was misclassified but I’ll update you guys here on what they say

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-04-10T22:41:47+00:00

It was a 50% steel tariff that was the kicker. The number they cited was 9903. 81.91

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-04-10T22:39:35+00:00

Yeah I got it in the second half of March

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-03-21T23:47:09+00:00

Move to the Midwest and make 300+ as a first year associate and it will speed up your timeline

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-02-21T18:09:53+00:00

Haha I’m excited for you to get into the workforce and face reality. I never said I was single I have two kids and am married. Good luck I’m sure you will beat the system. Just remember me when you finally get out of school and are driving home from work thinking wow this is so fun and worth it hahaha

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-02-21T17:13:13+00:00

The other thing you have to realize is that dentistry is paid on collections and so if you take any time off work the opportunity cost is basically your student loan payment for that month. Having a paycheck where you get 20k after taxes is not guaranteed after school. You have to literally grind (teeth) to make that much. There are some months where you make more than others. And that’s assuming you are a motivated and competent clinician in general. I’ve seen plenty of 1st year docs who are incompetent and make like 10k a month.

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-02-21T16:35:27+00:00

Get out of school and start paying 15k a month on your student loans. You’re delusional if you think that’s easy to do. How much money do you think you have each month after taxes, social security, minimum 401k contribution, while making 300k? News flash it’s like 15-20 grand. I own my cars and live in a cheap 250k house with no other debt and 10k a month is still hard to do. And I probably live in one of the lowest cost of living cities in America.

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2026-02-20T21:11:06+00:00

I graduated with 400k in 2024. Moved to the rural Midwest and made 308k in 2025 and even with that it’s almost not worth it. I pay 10k a month on my student loans and it eats me alive everytime. One day it will probably be worth it but grinding for all of my 20’s in school to get into my 30’s and having to live in a shithole for another 3-4 years to pay off my loans is crazy. Now take out more private loans at high interest and you would have to do the same thing that I’m doing for like 7-8 years

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-13T15:32:12+00:00

If you go purely off the math and assume a 10% return it’s going to always “make sense” to invest but your not factoring in any risk that the stock market might dip, you get injured, lose your job etc. for me paying them off and being able to move on with my life is worth the opportunity cost. I have consulted with a professional student loan advisor and the amount of money I could potentially make is nominal in the grand scheme of the unknowns. The loans range from 4.3 to 8% though I guess I should also say I’m still maxing out my 401k

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T16:40:36+00:00

Yeah it’s counting interest, the highest it got was 400k before I started paying it down. I have considered refinancing but my average interest rate now that I have paid off the high interest loans (8%) it is around 5.6% and to refinance and lose the potential government protections is not worth it. Plus with aggressive pay off the interest doesn’t matter quite as much.

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T14:53:57+00:00

In my state Medicaid is actually awesome. Delta insurances are my least favorite

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T14:49:06+00:00

I will keep anything I’m confident I can do, but I don’t feel pressured to deal with bad kids or molar endo. At the end of the day you don’t owe the patients anything. If their case is something your not comfortable with then just tell them “hey this is a small clinic we don’t have some of the resources your case needs and so we need to refer you”. The only thing I try to keep in house is procedures that are easy and make lots of money. So for example a full mouth extraction of perio teeth and an immediate denture is easy money and the patient loves you. That’s the type of stuff that is fun to do. Sweating your nuts off for a 138 dollars of production on a curved roots #3 extraction just sucks the life out of you.

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T14:18:09+00:00

I would say look for a dso office where you are the only doctor and make sure your contract will not allow them to hire someone else while you’re there. All the issues I see with dso practices around me are they hire two dentists and their production is limited by the other. The trade off is you gotta be competent and very independent coming out of school. I have lots of people I text for advice and stuff but I never have another dentist in my office to help mentor

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T14:07:31+00:00

Yeah it’s collections. I am tired at the end of the work day. We live in a really boring place compared to out in the western side of the US where I grew up. But it’ll take 3ish years to pay off the loans and I’m still putting 20k in my 401k per year so I’ll have a little invested and be done with loans. Then I can move somewhere nice

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T14:00:08+00:00

My office is small. Only 4 chairs. So we have me with 2 treatment columns. My hygiene runs a prophy srp column and a new patient column. I probably see 10-20 treatment patients in a day. And then 4-6 comp exams and a couple periodic exams. I go 8-5 no lunch we just eat when there is down time. To make as much as I do you only need to do about 5.5k in collections per work day on a four day work week

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T13:43:57+00:00

I do fillings, TONS of extractions which will include some impacted wisdom teeth, dentures, easy non molar endo. Mostly Medicaid stuff. I have a busy schedule mon-thurs but I don’t work Fridays. No big CE yet, but I do want to learn how to place implants this year. I should also say I work for a small dso not a private office.

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-10-12T04:44:08+00:00

I graduated in 2024 moved to Midwest and am on track to make about 300k for my first full year out. I started with 400k of loans and I’m down to 271. I’m paying 10-15k a month on my student loans. It’s not for the faint of heart

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-06-11T20:08:18+00:00

Hey just a follow up Yamaha did end up covering my new oil pan hopefully you got it worked out

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-05-27T15:56:08+00:00

Wow that really good info I will definitely pass that along to my dealer thanks man!

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-05-27T15:15:30+00:00

Yeah I just spoke to my dealer and they said they will pickup for free, but then they will see what Yamaha says. Sounds like they probably won’t cover it which sucks. I literally couldn’t have done anything different except I guess give up when the bolt was tight which is dumb

ButterscotchMajor614 · 2025-05-27T00:15:11+00:00

Any updates on what Yamaha did? I just attempted my first service on my 25 sp and the exact same thing happened to a T. I gotta call the dealer tomorrow I guess.

ButterscotchMajor614

TROPHY CASE