So this is what a Residency Paycheck Looks like

Well - It isn't really a scan of the paycheck up there, rather the paystub - and like you see, it isn't an amount to boast about ;-) ...but no matter how small, any first payments of labor are always cherished, aren't they ?

What you see is a typical two-week pay and the taxes for a typical resident. Here's summarizing:

Two-week gross:
$1925.00
Taxes:
Federal Income Tax: $234.33
Federal Medicare Tax: $27.91
Federal Social Security Tax: $119.35

Biweekly Take Home Pay:
Around $1543.00

Monthly Take Home Pay:
$3086.00

And here's what my approximate Monthly expenses look like at this point, in a not-too-big-but-decent Midwestern city:

Rent with Gas/Electricity/Car Garage: $600 : 1-bedroom apt
Car Payments: $400
Internet: $20
Cell Phone: $20
Food: $100
Hanging Out, Movies, Car Gas, etc. etc.: $100

Do keep in mind that both - the pay and the expenses, are highly variable depending on state, city and then area within that city...

Residents are not paid hourly, rather a get a fixed biweekly sum. If you divide the stipend earned by the actual total hours worked in a year, with the calls and all, that would be around a measly 5 to 6 dollars an hour.

Many residency programs are indulged in legal battles against the IRS to win back the taxes for their previous residents and exempt current residents, after the University of Minnesota won a case in 1998 when a federal court ruled that that residents are students working towards a degree and not 'workers' and therefore not tax-liable. Eventually, some programs who 'qualify' would have that advantage of lowered taxes - specially the university programs....(another advantage of doing residencies at University programs ? ) Read details on that here.