Reference · Federal Reserve SCF, 2022 wave

Physician net worth by age, benchmarked against numbers you can check.

The median U.S. family headed by someone 35–44 holds $135,600 in net worth, and families in the top tenth of income hold a median $2,556,200 — the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022 wave, the latest published. No government survey publishes physician-specific net worth, so the honest physician benchmark is those two lines plus a decade shift for training: a typical attending starts near −$200,000 around age 31 and, saving 20% of a median family-medicine income, crosses $1 million around age 50 — the arithmetic is worked below.

Verified against Federal Reserve SCF (2022 wave), BLS OEWS May 2025, AAMC · rule year 2025 · reviewed August 2026 · every source is linked in “Sources” below.

Net worth by age — every U.S. family

Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022 (October 2023), Table 2. Figures are in 2022 dollars. Medians describe the typical family; means run four to five times higher because wealth is concentrated at the top — when a headline number looks flattering, check which one it is.

The cohorts physicians actually belong to

Age bands understate a physician’s peer group. The BLS puts the median family-medicine salary at $244,180 (OEWS, May 2025) — one median physician salary, before any second household income, already exceeds the $189,200 median income of families in the 80th–90th income percentile band (SCF Table 1). Attending households therefore live in the top income bands, and those cohorts hold far more than their age-mates:

The training-decade shift

Standard age benchmarks assume earning began in the early twenties. A physician starts an attending income around 30–33, typically from a hole: the AAMC puts median education debt for indebted MD graduates at $200,000. So a 36-year-old attending comparing against the 35–44 median is grading themselves against families with a decade’s head start. The honest reads: shift your age band back by the length of your training, or benchmark against the income cohorts above — which is where a physician balance sheet should land by mid-career, not in year three.

A worked attending trajectory

Every input cited, every assumption declared. Inputs: starting net worth −$200,000 (AAMC median education debt); income $244,180 (BLS median family-medicine salary, May 2025). Assumptions: 20% of gross ($48,836/year) goes to debt paydown then investing; 5% real annual return; the debt balance is carried at the same 5% rate, a declared simplification; income flat in real terms, which is conservative.

Break-even lands around year 5; $1 million lands just past year 19 — about age 50 for a physician who starts at 31. Higher-paid specialties, a second household income, or a higher savings rate pull every milestone earlier; the shape of the curve — five underwater years, then compounding taking over — is the part that generalizes.

Why there is no official physician net-worth number

The Federal Reserve’s published SCF tables break families out by age, income percentile, housing status, and education — not by occupation. Physician-specific net-worth figures do circulate, but they come from self-selected, self-reported industry surveys behind sign-in walls; none could be verified against an openly resolving source, so none appear here. Every number on this page can be checked against the documents in Sources in under a minute.

Sources

1. Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022 (Federal Reserve Bulletin, October 2023) — Table 2, net worth by age, income percentile, and education; Table 1, income by percentile. All figures in 2022 dollars.
2. BLS OEWS, Family Medicine Physicians (29-1215) — annual median wage $244,180, mean $255,820, May 2025 estimates (retrieved via the BLS public data API).
3. AAMC — Student Debt — median education debt for indebted medical school graduates, $200,000.