Speaker 1 (00:01.804)
Welcome to the Physician Family Financial Advisors Podcast, where physician moms and dads like you can turn today's worries about taxes and investing into all the money you need for retirement and college. I'm Ben Utley.
And I'm Nate Renneke. It's 2023, a new year. Yep. It's that time of year, Ben, where you and I find ourselves guiding physicians on how to think and plan for their future. People think about that this time of year. And Ben, we're people too. So much like our listeners, we do that at Physician Family. In fact, at the start of the year,
Phew, made it.
Speaker 2 (00:39.03)
Our entire team gets together and we reflect on the business. We think about the families that we serve. Right. So we've been asking ourselves why some of the doctors that we have served move on from us after a year or two and why other physician families are so happy that they have stayed with us after decades.
kids.
So we started asking ourselves what kind of people are happiest here, which obviously that makes us ask ourselves what kind of people would not be happy here. So the question of the day is why not choose physician family financial advisors?
Why not choose physician family? Not. So this is like an anti-cast.
Why not?
Speaker 2 (01:26.24)
Yes, anti-cast. So when we were thinking about this, we thought, you know, if we came up with a few of these, it might be informative to share with the listeners so that in their quest on their financial journey, they know who they're looking for and maybe who to avoid or what they need. Right.
So if we're not in, they could just scratch this right off their list with this diamond cutter.
scratch, scratch, We truly do know that it's difficult to search and kind of get through the web of the financial industry. So this is meant to be informative and to get you where you need to go. So the first answer to the question of why not choose physician family financial advisors is you may not want to choose us if you just want investments.
Hmm.
So Ben, can you explain that a bit? Because that seems a little strange probably to some listeners. We're financial advisors. do invest.
Speaker 1 (02:28.01)
Right. Well, I think that many people, including some physicians, see financial advisors the same way that the public sees doctors. The public sees the doctors as pill pushers. Like you feel bad, there's something wrong. You go to the doctor, you get a pill, you go away, you never see the doctor again. Right. And in our world, people see financial advisors, it's amorphous mass of people that talk about money as stock jobbers.
You know, folks who sell stocks, talk about stocks, mutual funds, whatever it is, all this investing, investing, investing. Okay. And that's fair because that is part of a good financial advisor's job to talk about and do those things. But I think that for people who just want investing, they will not be happy here. And here's why it will be about just a month before they begin to realize that investing is actually pretty easy. And.
Another month after that, they'll begin to realize that low cost, passively managed, tax efficient mutual funds can be found on practically any street corner. They're damn near free. And then in the third month, they will realize that when their buddies are talking about their Bitcoin millions and their real estate fix and flip millions and all of those sundry things that come and go like the wind.
that they will have nothing to say because they have a handful of well diversified, balanced, buy and hold, forget about boring mutual funds. Yeah. And we know that that's a great way to go. You know, like I said in the past, you know, I've seen my dad retired with a big fistful of mutual funds and still successfully retired. So I know that it works, but
Yep.
Speaker 1 (04:21.582)
I think that if somebody's just coming here for investments, that they're going to see that trick and they're going to get bored and they're going to move on. So we're not about investment entertainment. We see investments as a tool or a vehicle. In fact, we discuss them very infrequently. It's just something that we got to use. We got to get through. It's like a doctor being all hung up on antibiotics. Oh, I just, I just want to talk about Moxicillin all the time. I just love it Moxicillin. Can we please, please talk about, you know, like really?
You want to talk about that? Okay, I can't be your friend.
Right. Well, yeah, I mean, the thing that we see all the time, I mean, we're on a podcast right now. There's podcasts, there's blogs, there's you can get investment entertainment and all sorts of places. And if you need more and you need so much more that you need to pay for it, you know, that's you just won't be happy with that. You
It begins to look a little bit like porn, doesn't it?
Yeah, it just you don't need more.
Speaker 1 (05:20.574)
It's everywhere, it's practically free, there's lots of it. It's not healthy for you at all. Yeah. So yeah, just stay away.
Yeah, your mind out of the financial gutter.
Yeah, exactly. So if it's just about investments, yeah, it won't be happy here. Just won't be happy. Seen it many times, won't be happy here.
Okay, so the next one is you just feel like you pay too much in taxes. What do think about that one, Ben? We love to save taxes. That's your only issue.
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (05:50.978)
Yeah, think that physicians pay more than their fair share of taxes, period. There are not a lot of tax deductions for physicians. There are not a lot of tax strategies for physicians. But I have met very few doctors who believe that they're getting all the tax breaks that they're entitled to. They feel like there's some magic bag of tax tricks out there. And the ones who feel that way often
have already looked and found all the magic nuggets. And they come here thinking, there's gotta be some way to cut my tax bill. And I have to tell you that it's just, it's not that hard. In fact, it is so not hard that most physicians show up with the tax breaks that they need.
Now there are some things that they might be missing out and this is where you could go get our overtax doctor's guide to retirement, which is a list of things where if you're feeling FOMO, you can get that list and check all the boxes and go, yep, yeah, I've got everything. So I'm done searching for tax stuff. So that would probably be a good thing, but it's not that hard. Most of what you're gonna get, you're gonna get from just a straight up.
certified public accountant, if you're getting anything that is not coming from there, then you're probably getting something that's bordering on being on the IRS's dirty dozen tax schemes. And so the reason people like that are not happy here is because they come in and just, you know, within a matter of a tiny bit of time, they realize that they've got everything. And when we do a tax strategy, we do it through
retirement planning and college planning because that's where most of the gain is for physicians. find something that they're simply not doing that's non-exotic, but it is something that helps out.
Speaker 2 (07:35.53)
Yeah, it seems as though the where There is some meat on the bone, but it's not now you have to wait You can prepare to pay a lot less taxes in the future and we do that Yeah, but everybody wants their to cut their tax bill in half, know this year and that's just yeah Not how the system is set up. In fact, they're buying
The sizzle not the steak and the steak is a long-term tax breaks and that's done with simple moves these days.
Exactly. I have a story about that of a family that I don't I don't I wouldn't describe them as unhappy, but they cared so much about taxes that the only reason they were willing to save for college is to reduce their tax bill. And so what that meant was they were not willing to save as much as they needed to save to get to college with all the money they needed for college, but they were willing to save just enough.
to reduce their tax bill and what they found was it was just a minor savings and maybe saved them a few hundred dollars a year.
So let me see if I feel you. So in a lot of states, well the states that have income taxes and the states that allow people to actually get a tax break, sorry Californians, that's not you, in those states, usually you can contribute five or $10,000 to your 529 plan and you get a tax break and it might be worth maybe $500, right? But what I'm hearing you say is if you're lucky. If you're lucky. So if I contribute my $5,000 and I get my $500 tax break, but I don't save anything beyond that,
Speaker 1 (09:08.098)
My child is definitely not on track for college. Exactly. Especially if I have like three kids, then I'm way, way, way not on track for college because all I did was let the tax tail wag the financial planning dog.
Now, now that that is the sizzle as you said the stake is tax-free growth. So when you get to college There's all this tax savings that nobody really realizes but If you if you do the long-term, you know Straightforward strategy of saving in the right accounts same same with retirement you get to
I've you say before that like, you go all in with something like a 529 or tax deferred strategy like that, that the tax things alone are worth about half the pile, which is to say, you didn't do that, get this, this is not obvious upfront tax break. If you didn't get that tax break, then you'd be missing out on like about half your college fund because the rest comes in tax deferred growth.
Yeah, the growth is about half, which means that the taxes are about a quarter. So it's a year's worth of college.
Yeah, so you're like throwing away years worth of college because you ignored the long-term tax breaks and focused on the short-term tax breaks. Yeah. Yeah. So not happy here because this is not the land of immediate gratification and unicorns and rainbows. It's like personal finances, hard work. It's chipping away.
Speaker 2 (10:40.43)
Exactly. Yeah, so if you just want to solve the 2023 tax problem that every physician has I I just don't see you being happy here
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (10:53.122)
Right. Agreed.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. So.
You got me worried now though, Nate, because you're, like we started the show by saying, where physician moms and dads like you can turn worries about investing in taxes and we just threw investing in taxes under the bus. So hopefully it's getting better.
What's three? Well, we'll bring it home. OK, but the the next one, number three, you probably will not be happy here if you are a young doctor who just wants to retire.
My heart, my heart hurts when I hear that. I love, love, love, love young doctors because the young doctors haven't made mistakes yet. And so we can keep them out of the ditch. But as I hear you say that the thing that makes my gut hurt is young doctors who just want to retire. So I've got a joke for you. Okay. What do you call a guy who went to med school for the money?
Speaker 2 (11:56.238)
Definitely not family medicine.
Right, definitely not family medicine. Here it is. A dentist. All the dentists I talk to get into dentistry and they cannot wait to retire. And so, you know, we don't serve young doctors who just want to retire and we only serve physicians. don't serve dentists. So, but anyway.
That is part of the culture in the finance culture. There are some doctors that are like that. I mean, they get into this and they want to get out as soon as they can.
Yeah, and I think that's kind of rare. Honestly, I think it might be maybe five or 10 % of the physicians that I talked to are like in it for the money. I think that's really rare. think that most physicians get into it for the heart game. You know, it's like, usually what I hear is I say, why did you get into medicine? They say, well, I was one of those geeky kids in science. And then my parents took me on a mission trip or I went on an overseas trip with my family. And I saw these people that were impoverished and I wanted to do something about it. And I just thought,
Doctors are cool. I think I'll become one of those and I mean I've heard that story over and over and over again Those people are a good fit for us But the ones that are like, you know, I just want to I want to flip crypto on the side while I'm running my practice and maybe gin up a blog and make a bunch of money selling ads, know, it's like Won't be happy here because we're not about that. The thing we're about is empowering medicine that's the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning knowing that
Speaker 1 (13:26.262)
My work is going to help somebody relax as they go into their day and that they can feel like things are going to be okay with their money. And they get to focus solely on what they do in their practice or they get home and they get to focus on their kids. know, so I think financial independence is good. think retire early is a, it's a death sentence for life for a physician. So I'm into the F I, but not the RE. In fact, I'm into the F I N E financial independence is now enough.
We don't have to set ourselves on fire. So yeah, so I think folks that really want to be doctors, that love the practice of medicine will be happier and everyone else will find themselves frustrated and tearing their hair.
That's right. Yeah. So let me recap here. If you just want investments, if you just want to solve your tax issue, your current tax issue, which is you should pay a lot in taxes, or if you just want to retire and it's early, you know, in your career, probably won't be happy here. But Ben, you said you got nervous. So let's talk about
why this is strange we're saying this because there's some overlap here. We do all these things. Do you know we plan for retirement. We have a tax strategy page on our site. Right. And we do we look at taxes through every angle that we possibly can because of course we don't want physicians to pay too much. And we have a solid investment strategy that we've implemented for hundreds of families. So make that make sense for me.
Wee.
Speaker 1 (15:08.45)
Well, I think the linchpin key is that wanting one of those is be something that makes somebody unhappy here over the long haul. But wanting all three of those is a balancing act. So if you had $20 million, if you had more money than you ever needed to worry about, there would be no need for any kind of planning because you just go to the bank, you take out some ones you spend on that day, you go back to the bank the next day. I mean, you're never ever going to run out of money that way. Okay.
But when you're making, you know, a quarter mill, a half million, you have a house, you have a couple of kids, you want them to go to a good school, then you have to balance consumption between now and later. As I like to say, I want you to spend every dollar you make, every single dollar, and everybody's stunned and say, but I don't want you to spend it all right now. I want you to spend it over time, all before you go, but not all right now. And that calls in the need for planning and planning balances out.
the journey toward retirement and the savings for college and the tax aspects of all those things. And of course, the investments, which are the engine behind the growth of these things. So it is a balanced approach that we provide here along with perspective on the journey. Here's what has not worked for other physicians. Here are the mistakes that caused them to be derailed. These are the things that you can do to avoid those mistakes that will cause you to have a happy, fulfilled life. It's all
in the name. When we think about why not choose physician, family, financial advisors, it's about physicians. It's about people who want and love to practice medicine. It's about families. It's about people who want to spend time with their spouses, their husbands, their wives, their children. They see joy in that and they want to stretch that out for years rather than race through childhood and patch up their marriage later on. It's about finances. It's about people who are looking for financial security, which is that
that feeling that you know that you'll have enough for retirement and college and the other big things in life. And finally, it's about advisors. It's about a connection between you and the person that's guiding you through a lot of the decisions that you'll make and being there with the losses and celebrating the wins with you as well. So if that's you, if you heard that and you're like, yeah, I want that kind of connection with the people that are gonna help me out with my money and my family stuff, then.
Speaker 1 (17:32.014)
Reach out to us. mean, why not choose Physician Family? It's a brand new year. It's 2023. Anything is possible. We're right here. Just a phone call away. You can also touch base with us at podcast at physicianfamily.com. Of course we have our website, physicianfamily.com and you can also.
Look at all the great new things that we have to offer, including signing up for our newsletter at physicianfamily.com slash go again, it's physicianfamily.com slash go. Thank you so much for listening to the physician family financial advisors podcast. Have a great 2023.
Thank you for listening to the Physician Family Financial Advisors Podcast. Is there a question you would like answered on our next show? Go to PhysicianFamily.com to record your question. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter and gain access to tools you can use to turn worries about taxes, investing, and extra money into a lifelong feeling of financial security. That's PhysicianFamily.com.
