Salary
Average Salary: $60,000
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,504,880
You're probably not going to get filthy rich cracking backs, but you could make a comfortable living. Mostly it will depend on your location, reputation (also known as "how much you can get away with charging"), and how many patients you have, which is the most critical component.
You can join an established clinic or even a chain of clinics. These places usually make a decent amount of income through patient insurance policies, and often put their employees on set salaries.
The mean income for chiropractors in the U.S. is just shy of $60,000 per year, which includes both independent and chain offices (source). And that's personal income, not gross clinic income that has to be split a thousand ways.
You could also strike out on your own, but then the costs and profits get a little more complicated.
An adjustment brings in anywhere from $35 to $65. Let's go with $50, just for easy addition. If a chiropractor adjusts ten patients per day, totaling fifty patients per week, that sounds pretty good, right? Ten patients per day isn't bad—that's $2,500 per week.
Actually, though, you're going to need a lot more than that. You have to pay rent on your clinic, because you don't own the building outright, plus any technicians and secretarial personnel you hire.
Then there's new equipment, broken equipment that needs repairs, utilities, and one of those silly little tabletop gurgling waterfall-things doctor's offices always seem to have, as though the sound of babbling water is soothing for their waiting patients, or something. Or maybe there's an only-in-the-industry theory that patients are easier to treat if they have to pee. Let us know if you find out.
Plus, there's the little snag about losing money when you take time off work. $2,500 a week over the course of a year, if you work every week, is $125,000. Not bad, but you're not going to work every week, are you?
You want Thanksgiving and Christmas off, maybe New Year's, then there's the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day—oh, and St. Patrick's Day, plus President's Day—can't forget that one—and whatever other days you decide not to go to work. So, let's see, that's...around six weeks total that you won't be working, if you also take normal vacation days into consideration. That lowers the figure to $115,000.
Anyway, just to finish off the numbers: fifteen patients a day, based on the formula from earlier, equals roughly $172,000, and twenty patients a day would mean $230,000. So as you can see, patient volume is pretty crucial.
The idea of insurance is worth a mention here, too, seeing as it's related to how much money you can make. Some policies cover chiropractic care and some don't. Most do when it's related to trauma. If an insured person has a car accident, their auto policy will probably pay for a certain number of chiropractor visits, or maybe for visits up to a particular dollar amount.
If a person is just looking for general chiropractic care, that's more of a coin toss, coverage-wise. The official answer on whether they'll pay and how much, according to numerous trustworthy sources, is, "Who Knows?" It'll all depend on the kind of policy the company purchased and offers to its employees.
If a person bought a policy through health care exchanges set up through the Affordable Care Act, it's literally impossible to guess because the exchanges don't advertise costs. These are all considerations you'll have to understand as a chiropractor, because peoples' coverage will affect your bottom line.