How much money can a chiropractor make

How much money can a chiropractor make?
(part 2 of Assessing the Salary of a Chiropractor)

The BIG question…

How much money can a chiropractor make?

That is going to depend on a lot of factors. Those factors include but are not limited to… where you’re going to practice, how you’re going to practice, how many hours a day you intend to work, how many years you intend to work, if you plan on owning your own business or intend to work for someone else, and the list goes on. For the purpose of this article we are talking about money chiropractors earn while practicing chiropractic, not what they can do with their money once they have it.

It’s not necessarily how you make your money, regardless of the profession you choose, it’s what you do with your money that will make the difference between living a prosperous life versus living in poverty.

Can a chiropractor make $1000.00 per week, $2000.00 per week, $5000.00 per week, $10,000.00 per week, $20,000 per week, or more? The answer is yes. We have to get away from the “can” and hopefully address some of the “how” and the “why” or else none of this will make much sense. Remember, a chiropractor can also make zero dollars per day, per week, and per year, so the “how much” question is really rather ambiguous.

2017 Update: a local Southern California chiropractor that I know reportedly collected his 1st seven figure month earlier this year (a million dollar month). If I get his permission, we’ll get more details posted on what he is doing. This is a volume cash based practice in Los Angeles County.

Let’s get into a few basics. I assume someone is reading this that has never been to a chiropractor before, is not aware of how many years of schooling are required to become a doctor of chiropractic, and for some reason thinks chiropractic could be a good career move for them.

Remember I’m addressing three to four different groups of people here and the paragraph above addresses mainly those in group number one. There are people that have developed an interest in becoming a chiropractor because of stories they’ve read or heard about others.

Stories are nice but my advice for a person in that group would be to get a lot more information before making such a move. Chiropractic schooling today takes longer than it has in the past. Currently, a potential student can expect to be out of the workforce for up to seven or eight years while they are attending school. Tuition for chiropractic education is not cheap. Prospective students can expect to pay $25,000.00 – $65,000.00 per year for what is typically a four year graduate program. That’s four years after you have had your three years or more of prerequisites fulfilled. You can call the process anything but fun (although looking back on it I’d personally do it all again in a heartbeat).

Federal student loans are available for chiropractic education but borrowing money means that you’re expected to pay it back. Also, interest rates on federal student loans have been going up these past few years which is going to result in an increased monthly payment for soon to be graduating students as well as new doctors in the field.

The worst thing you can do is not have a clear understanding as to what you want to accomplish, borrow the maximum amount of loans, have no direction while in school, make no effort to succeed, go into financial loan default, file bankruptcy, and waste the rest of your life blaming someone else for your self created misery. You’ll become a drain on society, the educational system, the chiropractic profession, your friends, your family, and yourself.

That which blocks the way, is the way.

The longer I practice chiropractic the more I come to realize that only one thing stands in the way of my success, and ultimately that’s me. I don’t expect you to know that if you’re an 18 year old kid, and it can be tremendously difficult to maintain that thinking while in school or when just beginning your practice.

A chiropractic education for someone who has borrowed money for both schooling and living expenses could easily graduate with debt in the ballpark of $200,000.00 or more. Add an 8% fixed interest rate on that 200 grand, consolidated into a 30 year loan, and you’ve got a significant monthly payment whether you’re successful in practice or not.

That could be enough to scare someone straight into anything other than chiropractic as a career. But then there’s the flip side, the rub, the upside, or whatever you want to call it… chiropractors that are earning six-figure monthly incomes, or just a lot of money, and helping masses of people live healthier lives in the meantime.

There’s also other things besides money but they don’t pay off your student loans. However, what they may do is motivate you enough to drive in the direction of success. I am fortunate to live and practice where I do, but I hear many chiropractors say that. That’s one of the freedoms of practicing chiropractic, you can setup nearly anywhere.

Money may be your driver, sports may be your driver, your kids may be your driver, your spouse, laying hands on presidential candidates, celebrities, newborn babies, whatever. The point is to figure out what it is that motivates you, and move in that direction.

I have not located any online statistics on the big earners in chiropractic as of yet. I have good reason to believe you won’t find any reliable information either. I break bread with these folks regularly and income amongst the biggest of the big is rarely discussed openly. In nearly all cases, they’d rather talk about how many people they adjusted in the past week, how many new people attended their health orientation, how many pregnant moms they’ve been caring for who’ve just had babies, what their kids did recently in sports or school, what their last vacation was like. Do you recognize the pattern?

Read on to view some of the stats that I have collected regarding chiropractic incomes and salaries.

Coming up…
The stats on chiropractor salaries