 I feel like a rapper. Let me fan it out. Stacks on stacks. Welcome back to my channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Cellini. I'm a radiologist in my final year of training in New York City, specializing in interventional radiology. On today's video, we were going to talk about something that I've been asked at a lot lately and I don't know why. We're going to do a deep dive on just how much doctors make during our training. Let's get into it. There's been a lot of videos out there on YouTube that have gone over resident salaries and how much we make during our medical training. But for some reason over the last couple of months, I've gotten a ton of different messages about how much I make as a doctor in residency and if I can't afford it and all that good stuff. So I think a lot of it stems from me recently moving to New York about six months ago and the notorious cost of living that comes with living here. So that's why I'm making this video today. So first and foremost, we need to start off exactly where medical training begins, which is med school. By now you've seen my other video I recently posted about how much it costs to attend med school. If you haven't seen that, you should probably check it out up here. I'll leave a link up there. You can go check it out after this video. Now the first four years of medical training are spent in medical school. Like most schools, you don't get paid for being a student. In fact, you actually pay to be a student at these schools and in med school, you pay a lot of money to be that student. Like I mentioned in my last video, the cost of medical school is somewhere between $37,000 and all the way up to $65,000 per year. So let's just meet in the middle and call it $50,000 a year, which ends up being about $200,000 at the end of four years in medical school. In fact, the average medical school debt in 2020 was $215,900, but if you factor in all of the debt after graduation, which includes some of those premedical school or undergraduate loans, the average debt was around $241,600 in 2020. So congratulations, you now have become a doctor and you have negative $241,600 to your name. Congrats. But along with that debt, at least you have a doctorate degree, which is worth a lot, right? We'll see. Now once you have this doctorate, you should be all good from here, right? I mean, you're a doctor. It's about time to start making those big bucks, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars start coming your way. But there's a little something you have to get through before you start making those big bucks. And that little something is called residency, which is a really little at all. But there is some good news to soften the blow of that $241,600 of debt looming over your head day and day, night after night, because at least you'll be getting paid now in residency, which is a plus. Now we might as well provide some real world examples during this video. So we'll use my salary during training as an example. So first and foremost, we'll start with my intern year where I did a surgery intern year. An intern year for those of you who don't know is your first year of residency or post-grad year one or year one, a residency. Now I did my surgery internship at a hospital in New York City that was notorious for paying the residents pretty well. During my surgery internship, I made a base salary of $70,000 per year. Coming out of med school, having negative $241,600 to my name, making $70,000 a year was pretty good. Now this does sound good until you really break it down because living in New York City, you're taxed pretty heavily. You get taxed by the federal government. You get taxed by New York State. And if you live in New York City, you also get taxed a New York City tax. Pretty quickly, your salary starts to dwindle before it hits your bank account. I'll never forget the first paycheck I actually got from this hospital. I was pretty pumped to get that first paycheck and then I saw how little it was after all of the New York taxes and I wasn't happy at all. So $70,000 per year divided by 12 comes out to $5,833.33 per month before taxes and after taxes ends up being around $4,000 a month. Which honestly isn't that bad. However, the reason salaries are inflated in New York City is because the cost of living is so high in New York City. Even though I had housing subsidized by the university, it was still expensive. I paid $1,800 for a small outdated shoe box in the Upper East Side with the refrigerator in the living room. I'll show you a picture up here. I still have it. Now $1,800 rent for a small shoe box apartment may seem like a lot, but for New York City, it's actually pretty good. Especially since it was directly across the street from the hospital. So all I had to do was wake up, roll out of bed, cross the street, and how does that work? Honestly, they could have probably charged me like $2,400 a month and I'd still pay it because of the convenience factor. So basically what I'm trying to say is almost half of my paycheck was going to my monthly rent every single month. Now if you follow that general rule of no more than 30% of your gross income should go towards your housing, I kind of somehow fall in that 30%. But after taxes, it ends up being about half of my monthly pay. So when you think about it, I only had essentially about $2,000 to spend on everything else per month because half of it went to my rent. And like I've said in the past, I kind of say it jokingly, but if you even leave your house in New York City, you're probably gonna spend $100. Every time you walk out that door, just go ahead and spend $100. Now I do say that in jest, but what I'm trying to say is it's expensive to live here. Okay, so I made $70,000 my first year of residency in New York City and honestly, it was pretty manageable to live on. I didn't necessarily save a ton of money every month, but I wasn't hurting and I could do anything I really wanted to do. So to me, it was fine. I had a great time. I never missed out on anything. I went everywhere I wanted to go, spent whatever time with friends I had and it worked out fine. Next, I started my radiology residency in North Carolina. Now in general, in residency, your salary tends to go up every single year. And the thought behind that is you're becoming more valuable each year. You're becoming closer to becoming an independent practicing physician or attending physician. So every year in residency, you should get a little bump in your pay. Now keep in mind I was a PGY2 when I started my radiology residency because you can't start radiology residency until you finished your first year of residency, also known as your intern year. Now the salaries I'm about to show you are the most recent salaries in 2020. I'm gonna have to drop it down one notch because technically these were the salaries now and five years ago, there were a little less than what's on this chart. But I can't find the chart. So even though I'm gonna start at the PGY1 year, I was still a PGY2 because that salary was the same as my starting salary. So for my second year, I made $54,000, which was quite a big pay cut coming from New York City making $70,000 a year. And it was actually a little over a 23% pay cut to be exact. And I definitely felt that 23%. So why did I take a big pay cut going into my second year of salary when I'm supposed to be making more each year? Well, that's because I'm coming from a place in New York City who has inflated salaries and also pays the resident at the top tier of salary range. And I went to a place in North Carolina with a low cost of living at a place that is notorious for paying the residents at the lower tier of salary. I went from the highest high to the lowest low, which means I took a huge pay cut. But what I wanna do is break down these salaries because a lot of people see these salaries and think they're pretty high and they're not that bad because technically they are at or above the national average salaries. So let's go ahead and break it down in terms of being a resident on the salary. Say you're a surgical intern like I was working 80 hours a week. Let's take the average salary of a surgery intern at North Carolina, $54,662 over 52 weeks a year, which comes out to about $1,051.19 per week. Now let's divide that by 80 hours per week worked. And that comes out to about $13.13 an hour, which is below minimum wage in a lot of states. Keep in mind that's $13.13 an hour for someone who has eight years of education after high school and also has a doctorate degree with $241,660 in student loan debt, which doesn't include the interest at this point. Keep in mind interest doesn't sleep, it doesn't get tired, it doesn't eat, it keeps going. So when you break it down like this, that $54,000 a year salary doesn't sound that good. So let's pull back up that North Carolina residency salary chart and we'll have to back up a notch because that's where I was five years ago. So PGY two year, I made $54,662. That was my first year of radiology residency. My second year, I made $56,618, followed by $58,656, followed by $61,422, my final year of residency in North Carolina. Coming into North Carolina from New York City, I knew the cost of living was going to be low. So I didn't really worry about that lower salary. But now that I look back on it, the cost of living in North Carolina wasn't that much lower than New York City, so low that you could take a 23% pay cut. I kind of felt it more living in North Carolina because I still had other expenses. I had to get a car and pay insurance and I didn't have some of that stuff living in New York City. For me, I felt more comfortable living in New York City on this $70,000 a year salary than I did in North Carolina on the mid $50,000 a year salary. So that's North Carolina and that was my PGY five year where I ended there. Now let's go into my sixth year of residency where I'm doing my interventional radiology fellowship. And as you all know, I moved back to New York City. Now I'm in my sixth and final year of training now and my salary is pretty high. It is $86,000 a year, which seems pretty legit. I felt pretty good coming into New York City again on that salary because heck, I already lived off $70,000 a year. I'm sure I can live, why is this on? Heck, I lived on $70,000 a year. I'm sure I can live on $16,000 a year more, right? Well, the difference is I work quite a bit more from my money here. If you watch my channel consistently, you see all of these seven days straight on call where I'm working 168 hours on call per week, which is essentially like combining four 40 hour work weeks into one full week. Now I know what you're saying, you're not actually working in that whole 168 hours but technically I kind of am because I'm answering pages and calling back patients and even if I'm not in the hospital, I'm still technically working though I may not be awake during all those times. Either way, I'm working way more for this $86,000 a year salary and keep in mind that I work 12 of those 168 hour call weeks. So I'm working quite a bit. Also, let's not forget, even on my non-call work weeks, my just normal regular work weeks, I usually work about 10 to 12 hours a day so that's a good 50 to 60 hours per week when I'm not on call. I may be getting paid pretty good money but I'm working a lot of hours for it and keep in mind at this point, I'm five months away from being a fully autonomous practicing, attending physician and I'm getting paid a fraction of my value because I'm still in fellowship but we're almost there. Only five more months to go. The whole point of this video was not to discourage you from becoming a doctor but simply to shed some light on what we actually get paid during this long, long, long process of becoming an attending physician. Yes, you will have a good salary once you become an attending physician but the road is very long and the journey is very tough. This isn't a get rich quick scheme, you're pretty much in it for the long haul. Once you finish this, you are rewarded. If you have a passion for medicine, this is the field for you but if you're going into it for the money you may be miserable during this 10 to 14 years of very difficult and long training. There are other jobs out there where you can make a ton more money in the same amount of time spent in training as a physician. Now that pretty much sums up this video. Hope you all enjoyed it. I hope you all had your eyes open to how much we actually get paid during our medical training. As always, make sure you smash that like and subscribe button, follow me on Instagram if you don't already. Leave a comment below if you have any questions about resident salary or resident training or becoming a doctor or all that stuff and I'll see you all on the next video. Peace.