READ IF YOU REALLY WANNA KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO BE A PHYSICIST!
With a physics degree you can do a lot. I am being serious. The technology advancements of the present day are constantly increasing and the need for a well "trained" person who can think outside the box and do complicated mathematics and also understand the properties of how something may work, the need is increasing. A physics degree should be done because it is something that you enjoy, after all you will be doing it for the rest of your life. The advancement of your career depends all on how much you put into it. To be simply honest with you if your just beginning your college career then within about 5 to 10 years, the time it will take you to get a B.S. to PhD, the industry need for physicists will be very abundant. My prediction is it will be the "degree to have". I must admit that actually doing physics research can be tedious at times. You must really like excel and creating graphs such as histograms and then on top of all that recording every little detail down (and I mean every little detail) in a engineer paper book, because this is simply how being a physicist works. The reason for this is in order for a physicist to report on anything then he/she must perform experiments and create data tables and histogram graphs (usually) to compare and analyze a data set. For example by just looking at a data chart with a bunch of numbers and a histogram a physicist can tell exactly what a satellite in orbit is doing, its path, and if there are any anomalies with it. And as for keeping that log, what if your doing this (the satellite as an example) for a company who is paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you, for some reason, drive off a cliff. They will hire a new physicist to replace you, of course, but they will have to start all the research over which puts them back millions of dollars. You will get paid good but you will have to run experiments, collect data, put it all together, and do it all over again and again, and then you will have to write litterally just about every little detail down in your little book, because if something happens to you, the next physicist needs to be able to show up and tell the temperature and the exact spot down to 1 mm (millimeter) +- .05 mm, and needs to be able to know pretty much exactly what you are smelling at that moment (this is a stretch to an extent, but I want you to understand the process will be very rewarding but tedious). But with a degree in physics, if its something that sparks your interest, then it will be very beneficial. It will be rewarding (both mentally and physically), and it will give you a constant challenge that will keep your interests on the edge. As for being worth it, It definitely was and is for me! A career in Physics can lead you down several paths, but I hope this gave you a better understanding of what being a physicist is actually about. And to me I am glad I am not an Engineer, because you want to talk about work! An engineer must take every little detail into account, while a Physicist might decide to take something out or ignore something such as air friction ;), this is all hypothetical of course. To be honest, and this may piss off some engineers, but they are simply a "baby physicist" who in there own right learn a few different things (which in there own right, is difficult) than a physicist. An example is 200 start out in school as a physicist and 199 become engineers instead. A physicist can work as an engineer but an engineer cannot work as a physicist. I hope all this helped and make your choice wisely, but by having a B.S. in Physics background, that will lay out the ground for you to become anything if you decide to change degrees, also a B.S. is really as far as you need to go for most fields, but just like with anything the more you put in (I.E. going for a PhD) the more you'll get out, so YES IT IS WORTH A PhD, it is a difference form being middle class to living well and sometimes very well. NOTE: If you get a B.S. in Physics then you can BS anyone at Physics ;)