I wanted to bring up a couple of concepts or ideas to get you thinking about what you should expect to be making when you graduate. And realistically what kind of money you should be thinking about bringing in.
As a new grad, it is not critical to think about the total amount of money that you’re going to be making over the course of the year. Rather, you should be thinking about how much money you’re going to make over the course of the year per day that you worked. The reason I bring that in is because very few graduates have a full time 5 or 6 days-a-week job right when they graduate. There’s going to be some of you that do that but not very many new grads do that initially. For example, when I first graduated, both my wife, Kristi, and I moved to the Seattle area and we had a job 2 days a week (she was also a newly graduated optometrist). That was me practicing 2 days a week and within about a month, Kristi had a job as well. But we didn’t have work every single day that we potentially could. So if we intended that when we graduate “Hey I’m going to make 120,000 this year as a new grad. Realistically, our finances wouldn’t have sat very well. Instead just to general rule of thought and a good way to think about how you may be making money is that you may be making around $400 per day. And we typically recommend that you think about your dollars per day cumulatively over the course of the year. So if you were to generate $400/day at one day a week, you’ll be making about $20,000 per year that you worked. So if you have a job where you’re working 2 days a week guaranteed at a rate of $400 a day, you’ll be generating about 40,000 for that year. If you’re working 4 days a week, you would take 20,000 x 4 and would be getting about $80, 0000 a year. It’s not an exact science, but it can give you an idea of what to expect, and most importantly, how to plan your finances around that.. Be sure to make the most of your time in these cases. For example, the days that you are not guaranteed, you can do fill in work or use in ways to professionally develop yourself.
Keep in mind that this won’t be the case for everyone, because with hard work and proper planning, it is possible to attain a full time position. I hope this gives you a ground-work to base things on. Wish you the best of luck!
-Dr. David Kading,OD, FAAO, FCLSA
