Financial Clarity for Doctors

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Corey Janoff and Rachelle Vanderzanden of Finity Group discuss pertinent financial planning topics affecting doctors and other medical professionals.

Episodes

Monday Feb 05, 2024

Not Your Parents Financial Plan

Monday Feb 05, 2024

Most people get a little advice from their parents once in a while. A lot of times it’s great advice! When it comes to financial advice, sometimes our parents may be advising based on the economic reality they faced, not the one you’re facing. In this episode, Rachelle and Corey address some of the changes over time that have made financial planning different for our generation, and what may impact future generations.

Differences include:

Where people save money and how they use credit or debt as a tool.
Differences in housing affordability.
Staggering student loan debt for many of you.
A wide variety of retirement accounts and investment tools that are easily accessible to retail investors.
Less access to pensions and concerns about the future of Social Security Income.
And maybe the biggest difference – a willingness to talk about money! Not just with your parents, but with friends and colleagues as well at times.

The bottom line is that every person’s individual circumstances determine how we should approach paying down debt, saving for retirement, and many other financial goals. Chances are, your situation is different than your parents’. And different that your colleagues’ or neighbors’ for that matter as well!

For more financial planning tips from Corey and Rachelle, find them on social media!
LinkedIn: @CoreyJanoff and @RachelleVanderzanden; Instagram: @CoreyJanoff and @VanderzandenRachelle; and Twitter: @CoreyJanoffCFP and @RachelleFinance

Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professional before making important investment decisions. Securities offered through Registered Representatives of Cambridge Investment Research, Inc., a broker-dealer, member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a Registered Investment Adviser. Finity Group, LLC and Cambridge are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax or legal advice.

Monday Jan 22, 2024

What is Direct Indexing?

Monday Jan 22, 2024

Generally, Rachelle and Corey are big fans of keeping things simple on Financial Clarity for Doctors. But in some situations, a little more complicated can be a lot more helpful! For those in higher tax brackets, direct indexing can be a more tax efficient way to invest in the broader market than using mutual funds or ETFs. In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, learn a little more about it.

In this episode, learn:

How indexes are a measure of the performance of lots of different companies in a particular category.
How mutual funds and ETFs are designed to mirror that performance.
The difference between investing in an index fund and direct indexing.
- The index fund realizes gains and losses when it places trades to be more in line with the performance of the underlying index.
- With direct indexing, you can choose if/when/what to buy and sell to minimize capital gains.
The benefits of index investing and direct indexing.

This strategy may be more complicated than many people need in their financial plan, but can make a big difference in when and how you pay capital gains taxes, especially in large accounts. If you have a large sum of money to invest in a brokerage account, definitely something to learn more about and consider.

Monday Jan 08, 2024

Reflect on Your Financial Plan in the New Year

Monday Jan 08, 2024

The New Year is a great time to pause and reflect on your goals and values. Your financial plan is a huge part of that! In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Corey and Rachelle offer some suggestions of things to reflect on and how to use that to adjust.

What should you focus on?

Worried about anything financially? - Start there! This can be uncomfortable but is likely the most productive use of your time.
Reflect on your spending and ask yourself if you’re spending money on the things you value.
- Love good food? – Awesome!
- Enjoy traveling, but not enough to feel like your $20,000 spend was appropriate? – Plan smaller or fewer trips this year.
Double check your progress on debt repayment.
- Knocking out credit cards?
- Crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s for PSLF?
Review your progress toward short-term savings goals like a home down payment.
Add up how much you were able to save toward your long-term goals. Was it 10% of your gross income? 20%? 20% is often a good goal to work toward as a medical professional.
Take some time to make sure you have enough insurance coverage for your current situation.
- More kids and more income, may mean you need more life insurance for example.
Speaking of kids, check your progress toward any college savings goals and other goals you may have for them.

This is a lot! Sometimes you feel comfortable reviewing on your own, but this is also a great thing to do with your financial advisor. If you review a bit on your own and have specific thoughts or concerns for your advisor, schedule a meeting and make some adjustments. When you have a better understanding of how you’re doing, you can plan much more effectively.

Monday Dec 25, 2023

Predictions Sure to Be Wrong

Monday Dec 25, 2023

In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Rachelle and Corey try to predict the future! We know we’ll be wrong about lots of things, but it’s still fun to try. From predictions about the economy this coming year to thoughts about Taylor Swift and aliens, this episode has a little bit of everything.

Prediction highlights include:

Will the US economy be in a recession by the end of 2024 or not?
Will the housing market finally slow down?
What will happen to tax rates over the next few years?
Will we continue to see good long-term returns in the stock market?
And most importantly, are we going to meet some aliens here on Earth?

To be clear, we don’t know the answers to any of these questions! Lots of people try to predict the future, but if they get it right, it’s probably just luck. Humans are great at speculating though, and we are no exception. Send us some of your predictions, and we can do an episode in the future about what we all got right and what we got terribly wrong.

Monday Dec 11, 2023

Gifting Thoughtfully This Holiday Season

Monday Dec 11, 2023

For many of us the holidays are joyful, and for others they are stressful (realistically, a combination of both!) – family stuff, cold and flu season, anxiety about gift giving? There is something for everyone! In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Corey and Rachelle discuss some ways to approach gifting a bit more thoughtfully to reduce your stress around at least one aspect of the holidays.

Gifting with family and friends:

When giving gifts to family and friends, make sure you establish reasonable expectations that work for everyone.
- You don’t want to make competitive gift-giving a sport in your circle, creating stress and possibly spending more money than necessary.
- With kids, redirect their attention to things that are not gifts. So many things to enjoy during the holidays! Yes, they will want presents, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing that brings them happiness.

Charitable giving:

There is no right or wrong answer here, but if you are charitably inclined, this is a great time of year to gift.
- Set a budget for gifting and then find causes that align with your values (Charity Navigator has a great search function).
- Sometimes there are matching donation campaigns which make your impact larger.
- You can involve family and/or kids! They can help you select organizations or even participate in activities like putting together cold weather kits for the houseless.

Giving is supposed to be about bringing joy to those receiving gifts, not stressing out the person giving the gift. We can get back to that with a little thought. Happy Holidays everyone!

Monday Nov 27, 2023

Investing During Geopolitical Uncertainty

Monday Nov 27, 2023

The world is constantly in flux, sometimes in ways that are scary or violent. This can sometimes cause us to reassess everything. But it when it comes to your investments, that may not be the best strategy. In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Corey and Rachelle chat about how to approach investing during times of geopolitical uncertainty.

Reviewing your investments:

Take a moment to review the reasons you are investing. Is it for retirement in 20 years? A home down payment in two years?
- With a period of time like two years, ideally, you are protecting your dollars from the risk associated with the stock market (whether there is some global turmoil or not).
- For your long-term money, if you don’t need to sell out of those investments soon, we don’t need to worry as much about what is happening in the short term.
Put the current situation into perspective.
- On a global scale, terrifying, heartbreaking, surprising things are happening every day.
- Some of them affect us more than others, but the turmoil itself is not new.
- For the stock market, it has weathered a lot of storms over the decades.
Keep in mind that for long-term investors, time is on your side.
- When Corey was born, the S&P 500 closed at 244.
- When Rachelle was born, the S&P 500 closed at 162 (she’s older!).
- On 11/15/2023, the S&P 500 closed at 4,502.88. That’s huge!
- Focus on what you can control, and don’t let the rest affect your investments.

All that being said, you can (and maybe should) care about what’s going on in the world. Just don’t necessarily make big investment decisions based on those events.

Monday Nov 13, 2023

Which Health Insurance is Right for You

Monday Nov 13, 2023

For many folks, it’s open enrollment season! In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Rachelle and Corey discuss the ins and outs of health insurance and how to decide which one is the best fit for you.

Health insurance:

Most importantly, make sure you have health insurance!
Some plans have a higher deductible and a lower premium. Other plans have a lower deductible and higher premium.
When it comes down to it, you want to estimate how much you may pay out of pocket for medical expenses over the year and compare that to the cost difference for your insurance premiums over the full year.
- Pick the one that might save you money! We say “might”, because there is some element of unpredictability with your health!
When calculating estimated costs, consider:
- Deductible – How much do you pay out of pocket before some expenses are covered?
- Co-payment – Do you just have a co-payment for office visits and prescriptions or do you have to pay for all of it before you hit your deductible?
- Co-insurance – What percentage of costs are you responsible for paying?
- Out of pocket maximum – Very important to know the MOST you can be on the hook for in a serious medical event.
Other things to consider – Can you put money into a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Spending Account (FSA) to pay for costs pre-tax? Keep in mind that the FSA is a “use it or lose it” account.

These decisions can save you a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand dollars over the course of a year, but if you have coverage, you are in good shape! Don’t stress about it too much.

Monday Oct 30, 2023

How Does Stock Have Value?

Monday Oct 30, 2023

In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Rachelle and Corey talk about the hypothetical value of shares of stock. Sometimes financial markets can feel very opaque and mysterious, and that’s for good reason! This is confusing sometimes! But when you buy a share of stock, you are buying something that is backed by tangible goods and services. It’s real, but still very hard to determine its worth.

The value of stock is:

Driven by the goods and services provided by the company behind it.
At any given time, the value is the price that a buyer and a seller can agree is fair.
There are two main ways that a shareholder can earn money from owning stock, which influences how much they may pay for that share:
- Dividends are profits that are distributed by shareholders.
- Stock price appreciation is when the value of the stock itself goes up. You realize gains, when you sell your shares when the price is higher than what you paid. You can also lose money!
Human nature makes things more complicated!
- People get excited about new companies doing new things.
- Personal values can influence whether you think a company’s stock is worth buying or not.
When deciding a fair price for buying and selling stock, larger buyers and sellers have an advantage. Retail investors generally don’t.

It can be very exciting to buy and sell individual shares of stock, but that is partially because it is much riskier than buying shares of an index fund. You can do a lot of math to determine if you’re buying at a fair price, but you have no control over what other people will think is a fair price in the future. More diversified investments are less exciting, but also less risky.

Monday Oct 16, 2023

Gradual Improvements Go Unnoticed

Monday Oct 16, 2023

Do you feel like you are spinning your wheels with your financial plan? In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Corey and Rachelle talk about how it can be challenging to see improvement in your finances because those improvements can be slow. When trying to view progress, look over a longer period. And remember, that progress can be very challenging when you are still in training.

Change is often gradual:

Your physical health doesn’t improve overnight. Medical advances don’t happen overnight. We shouldn’t expect to become millionaires overnight either.
To see progress:
- Calculate your net worth over time and compare today to two, five, or even ten years in the past. This will look better once you reach that attending phase of your career.
Things that improve your net worth include:
- Building your emergency reserves
- Paying off debt
- Retirement savings/investing

Remember to focus on what you control. Investment returns can have a huge impact on your overall progress year-to-year, but what you are saving (and spending) matters a lot as well.

Monday Oct 02, 2023

Retirement Distribution Strategies

Monday Oct 02, 2023

In this episode of Financial Clarity for Doctors, Rachelle and Corey tackle some strategies for using all your hard-earned money in retirement. This is what a lot of us are working toward, and using your money efficiently in retirement means there may be more of it to use and to leave behind.

In this episode learn about:

Where to put money that you need immediately, in the medium-term, and in the long-term.
- Even when you retire, some of your money is still for use decades in the future!
Spending patterns in retirement.
How each of your investment accounts will be taxed in retirement (and when inherited).
- And how to withdraw in ways that are as tax efficient as possible.
Other sources of income in retirement, including social security and home equity.
Potential large end-of-life costs.

Saving as much as possible is the best way to make sure you don’t run out of money later in life, but we can also stretch those dollars as much as possible.