October 2021 – Your Financial Pharmacist

YFP 227: Why Tim Baker, CFP® Bought a Depreciating Asset

Posted on October 28, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Why Tim Baker, CFP® Bought a Depreciating Asset

On this episode, sponsored by GoodRx, Tim Baker talks about his recent decision to buy a depreciating asset, how his journey becoming a Registered Life Planner® (RLP®) impacted his decision, and how he coaches clients considering big financial purchases.

Summary

Your Financial Pharmacist co-owner & YFP Planning Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, talks about his recent decision to buy a depreciating asset. He explains why he would purchase an asset that he knows will go down in value and how it became part of his financial plan.

Tim shares what the depreciating asset purchase is and how he and his wife arrived at their decision. After learning a bit about life planning and its incorporation with the financial plan, Tim realized that one of his goals was to make lifelong memories with his family. Tim and his wife decided that purchasing a motorhome was part of their life plan, allowing them to take adventures across the country, creating those lifelong memories, as Tim did with his own family growing up.

He explains how his journey to becoming a Registered Life Planner® (RLP®) surfaced this experience-based purchase and how the financial plan can and should support the life plan. Tim further details his coaching philosophy when working with clients weighing whether or not to make a large purchase. He considers the entire picture, not just the ones and zeros, creating a plan that benefits the client financially, balancing financial wealth with the client’s idea of a wealthy life. Investing in yourself in ways that align with what a wealthy life means to you ultimately makes for a healthy financial plan by taking care of the whole person.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Tim, welcome back to the show.

Tim Baker: Yeah, good to be back, Tim. Thanks for having me on.

Tim Ulbrich: Before we jump into your story of purchasing a depreciating asset, you and I were talking this past week about how grateful we are for the journey that has been this podcast over the past several years. We started Episode 01 back in July 2017, didn’t know exactly where we were going to go, how long we were going to do it, but are grateful to be here today, over 225 episodes in, three different shows on the channel each week, recently surpassing an important milestone: 750,000 downloads of the show, so pretty awesome, right, to reflect on that journey?

Tim Baker: Yeah, it’s incredible, really. You know, we talk with a lot of prospective clients that we work with one-on-one with YFP Planning. You know, when you get those comments of like, ‘I’ve been listening to you for so long,’ and you kind of build a relationship with your listeners and you know, after the red drains from my face experience in that, it’s also very something that I’m proud of and I think we should be. And it’s been a good forum to really showcase, you know, like what we believe and our approach to money, and I think this is — and wealth building — and I think this particular episode is another step in that. And you know, it’s just been a great forum for us I think to take something that maybe is a little bit — can be a little bit dry and boring for people and get them excited about it. And I think the podcast has been one of the most monumental things that we’ve done. And that was really kind of the first big thing that we’ve done together, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: And I think it’s been just a great launchpad for our partnership.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And one of the great joys we have is, you know, we get periodic emails from those that are listening to say, “Hey, Tim, I was listening to this podcast and I did this or it inspired me to take some action or to work toward this goal,” and you know, those mean so much to us. I think the goal with this podcast is to hopefully inspire, to motivate, to educate, and we believe this topic is a lifelong journey. It’s something that we’ve practiced in our own lives and I’m hopeful that folks find it as a source of inspiration. So all this to say thank you, thank you to the community for listening, for staying with us, for sharing the good news with others as well, and we appreciate those that have been listening to the podcast and many who have even contributed with being a guest on the show. Alright, Tim, it’s confession time. So I’m putting you on the hot seat in front of the 35,000 or so folks that listen to the show each month to really, you know, ask you why as a financial planner did you decide to make a purchase of a depreciating asset. And so let’s just start with the purchase. What was it? When did you make it? And give us a little bit of the why behind that.

Tim Baker: Yeah, so my wife and I, we purchased a Class C Thor motorhome over the summer. It’s about 30-31 feet. It sleeps 10, so it has a bunkhouse, you know, bunker with a cab, kitchen, bathroom, you know, the whole — dinette — the whole 9. And yeah, we purchased it over the summer from a guy here in Ohio. And it was a long time coming — well, I wouldn’t say a long time coming. It was and it wasn’t. But that was the purchase that we made, and for someone who is very much thinking about finances and things like this and growing wealth, this was not necessarily a move that helps in that department. You know, lots of storage costs and repairs and it’s a 20 — I think it’s a 2014 with about 40,000 miles on it, storage, insurance, the tax that we paid on all that stuff adds up. But probably one of the better decisions I think I’ve made, even in — it’s early, so check in with me later — but I think just great in terms of what I think this can do for our family and the experiences that we can have. And that’s really the crux of why we decided to kind of pull the trigger on this.

Tim Ulbrich: So it’s been over a month, right, now, maybe even two?

Tim Baker: Yeah. I think we bought it in August.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Tim Baker: So we’re recording here in October. I think August is when we purchased it. Yeah. So — and back up, like this was something — and I give my parents a lot of credit growing up. When I was preteen, my parents bought — we first had a travel trailer growing up, so like we had one of those old conversion minivans and a travel trailer. And we took a trip when the three of us were I think preteens. I have an older brother and a younger sister. And we did four weeks, and I grew up in south Jersey, kind of outside of Philadelphia. And we did a four-week trip to as far west as the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Alamo, Yellowstone. And for me, that was transformational. And I think that’s one of the words that I would use for this episode is really that. And you know, it kind of really changed my perspective, oh wow, when you drive west, there’s just — just the topography and there’s just so much to see and people are just different and they speak different. And it really broadened my — I don’t know if I would say worldview, but at least my domestic view of the United States and really kind of lit a fire for me to want to travel and see other things. You know, we did other trips outside of that and my parents would take it up to West Point for football weekends, and it was always like a great reprieve, like being able to go inside and like kind of hang — like chill and not always be buttoned up in uniform and things like that. So I kind of just equated that to freedom. And for awhile, you know, I was like, man, I would love to do this with — I was first thinking like when I retire, so like when I’m in my 60s, 70s, and you know, get a big old rig and drive around. But I just started thinking more and more, and as I went through my experience with life planning, really kind of changed my perception or at least my timeline, so to speak.

Tim Ulbrich: So Tim, I want to talk for a moment, you know, we talk on this show before we — I know the planning team does as well. Anytime you’re making a significant purchase or any purchase, for that matter, it means you’re not doing something else with that money, right? So the economic term here being opportunity cost. So you know, as you’re looking at making this large purchase, I know I’ve heard you talk about real estate as a goal, obviously something that you and I are both bullish on and see a growing interest in our community and in large part why we’ve got the podcast that David Bright and Nate Hedrick are doing a bang-up job leading each and every Saturday. So whether you look at say, hey, could this money go to real estate? Could this money go into long-term investing or a brokerage account? You know, could this money go into the 529 account? I think this concept of opportunity cost is — we often talk about it in terms of the dollars and making a decision, but I think there’s also an opportunity cost to not making decisions as we make the connections of how our life plan is supported by the financial plan. So just to nerd out here for a moment, if you were to put $40,000 or let’s say $50,000 and save that for 40 years at 8%, you know, that’s $1 million. So there’s the $50,000 purchase, and then there’s that hidden cost of what that could be if that money were to grow over 40 years. So just talk us through that process as you evaluated this purchase. I suspect others might be thinking the same as they’re weighing big purchases. Like, how did you both consider the opportunity cost and then eventually get to the point where you overcame just the mathematical aspects of it to determine that this was the right decision for you, for the family, and the goals that you guys have?

Tim Baker: Yeah, it’s a great question. And you know, I think for all the way up until almost like go time, you know, it was real estate investment. You know, we — my Ally account that this money was being, like where this money was, was called “Real Estate Investment Account.” It might still be called that. I don’t know if I ever changed it to like “Motor Home Account.” I mean, it’s fairly empty now. We paid cash for this, and I didn’t want to put a note on it, so I wanted to kind of keep in the budget that we were — that we had. But you know, I think it comes down to like windows, right? So I’m really bullish on real estate, and we have one property that we completely gutted and redid our home in Baltimore and are renting that out now since we’ve now moved out to Columbus, Ohio. And that’s been great. And I wanted, I definitely want to do more of this. But when I say “windows,” it’s kind of windows of time. And that’s what life planning is really about. And you know, specifically about the length of your life, but in this case, when we sat down and we were looking at our plan, I asked my wife Shea, I was like, “Is this really what you want to do?” And she’s like, “Yeah, of course it is. This has been — this is the plan.” And we kind of had this role reversal because I’m more of the — and I see this a lot in couples. I’m more of the person that is thinking like long-term and making sure that we’re doing what we need to do to have a wealthy life in the future. And my wife is typically like, hey, we’ve got to make sure that we’re doing — we’re living our life today.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: But in this case, it was kind of a little bit of a role reversal. And I asked like, you know, I asked the question, is this really what you want to do? And she’s like, well yeah, that’s the plan. But then once I said kind of a combination of these words, she’s like, you’re right. So I basically — what I said to her was, Olivia, our oldest — we have Olivia who turns 7 this Halloween, so in about a week or so. She’ll tell everyone about it. She turns 7 this year. And we have Liam, who turned 2 this year. What I was examining, like I was kind of thinking about this as like, we only really have with her, I don’t know, six, seven years maybe until, you know, we’re no longer cool, like she doesn’t want to hang out with us. You know, you get to the teen years —

Tim Ulbrich: And we’re running out of time.

Tim Baker: Yeah, we’re running out of time.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Tim Baker: And you know, I thought about that even with like the trip that I took that, you know, my brother two years older than me, he was kind of right on that preteen. And we had a good time, but I don’t know — like a summer or two after that, I don’t know if that trip would have worked. So when I put that in context in that kind of emotional tug that that gives you and specifically my wife, she’s like, where do we buy a motorhome? Like where do we do this? And that was really it. You know, that was really what brought us is that, you know, I view this purchase as an investment. You know, so many people view this as an expense. And if you do that, it doesn’t really work. And believe me, there are lots of expenses that are tied to this. But if you view this as an investment, you know, a memory-maker investment, that’s where it works. And I’ve had conversations, you know, we kind of bought the motorhome with my sister and her family in mind. They have twins that are a little bit older than Olivia and our boys are about 10 days apart, so they’re like best bros. So we kind of bought it with them in mind, hoping to share this with their family as well. But they’ve actually been thinking about buying their own and kind of doing big trips and like taking a year of that and all this kind of stuff. And for them, it’s hard to get — like they’re doing it down to the penny in terms of expenses. I’m just thinking — like it’s just tough, that’s a tough sell. It is a tough sell. And I get it. Like as a financial planner, it’s good to do that. But for me, this was really about letting go a little bit. And again, I know in the back of my mind that we’re going to be OK for the future and we’re doing a lot of things in that regard and we have a fully-funded emergency fund and all of those things. But to me, like the emotion, which is what drives our choices of I want my kids to experience similar things that I was fortunate enough to experience as I was growing up, and I think we only have a window of time — and not to say that when she’s a teen and things like that, but when you’re camping, like to me, it’s close quarters. Like you’ve really got to love your kids and your family and I think it gets harder as you get to be a little bit older. But that was the impetus, really. And a lot of that really is rooted in my own life planning journey of how we got to even make this transaction.

Tim Ulbrich: Such a good, reminder, Tim, about, you know, if we only look at the numbers — and here, you’re talking about one thing. I would argue that applies to other things as well where if you’re looking at this only as an expense, we would never make these life planning decisions.

Tim Baker: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: Or these decisions that spark the life, right? I mean, I get the numbers. If instead of buying a motorhome, whether that’s $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, whatever — let’s call it $50,000, if instead of buying the motorhome, you saved $50,000 and you put it into a long-term savings account and it grows for 40 years and you have $1 million. In one, we’re looking at $50,000 of a purchase that’s going to go down in value and has other expenses. And in the other, we’re looking at an investment that’s appreciating and is going to be worth $1 million or more. Like but what we’re really trying to highlight through this journey and through the discussion around the planning process and the importance of bringing out these goals and visions that you have for your plan and for the family and for you individually is that it can’t just be about the numbers and the expense. And Tim, you’ve mentioned a couple times now life planning. Tell us more about what is life planning and how did your journey in going through not only your own life planning but ultimately being registered as a life planner and being able to use that skill set for clients of YFP Planning and training the rest of the team? Like what is that life planning process? And how did going through that journey ultimately lead you down this decision here?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so I found out about life planning kind of George Kinder, who’s kind of the founding father of life planning, and his three questions. And it’s something that once I went through the three questions myself years ago, I immediately incorporated that into kind of our goal setting. We call it Script Your Plan at YFP Planning. And we’re — that’s what we’re doing is we’re kind of saying, OK, now that we know kind of where we’re at, we’ve gone through a get organized, where is all the — what do the finances look like, let’s talk about where we want to go. So we do the three questions with clients now, but I think for me, what I — it was powerful to go through that myself when I was answering those questions, and I found out that there’s a registered life planning designation, RLP, that I just finished this year. And really, it’s been a couple years in the process that I have been going through that. What life planning is, to back up, they say it’s kind of financial planning done right. It’s really about putting first things first. You know, we often live our lives by like a paradigm that is not ours. It’s been kind of something that’s been dictated to us over the course of our lives, you know, get good grades, get a good job, earn a lot of money, that type of thing. But for a lot of us, we kind of get stuck on that, stuck in that, and we can sometimes fall into this state of not really examining our lives and not really saying like, is this really what I want? Is this what I’m doing right now, is this what a wealthy life is? And again, it’s not just about the 1s and 0s, it’s about what are you passionate about? What enriches your life? So years ago, I went out to Arizona and I did the first step, which was the seven stages of money maturity, which kind of focuses on listening, believe it or not. So as planners, we need to shut up. And so much of us, we see like student loans, OK, this is what you do, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And there’s a plan. But it’s really about focusing on your client and being there with them, being present with them, and not trying to overpower or not listen. And it’s about communication, kind of the client-planner attitudes, the biases and behaviors that we grow up with, so understanding that. You know, one being money is the root of all evil. Like where does that come from? Or you know, don’t trust — like some of those things were built into me I think. You know, my mom came from a very — her upbringing was tough. And I think some of those were kind of implanted on me. And you go, I have to understand that. And we see a lot of clients with that type of thing. So that was eye-opening. And really the next stage, which I think was truly transformational, was a five-day in-person training called The Evoke Life Planning Training. And this is where you actually go through the different stages of life planning. So I was life planned myself. And I life planned my partner Dan, so shout out to Dan. And I think this for me was very transformational. I kind of went into that training not knowing what to really expect but came out saying like, I am burnt out. My schedule is not mine. You know, kind of what I’m doing right now is not healthy. And from there, you know, I changed a lot of things. But the big thing that I took away from that was my vision meeting, which is the second — you know, it’s all about uncovering your kind of most exciting, meaningful, and fulfilling aspirations. And when Dan went through that with me and lit my torch, it was about really the motorhome and doing that with my family. And I still remember that meeting like it was yesterday. And you know, you go through that and you know, you create so much energy that that’s all I think about. Like that’s all I thought about for a while. And it took me longer than I thought to get it done, but you know, you could run through walls. And then finally, the life plan that you go through like a mentorship, which is like a six-month thing where you go through case studies and one-on-one guidance and group conferences and things like that. So that finished this year. And to me, the challenge that I have now is how do I best inculcate and integrate, I should say, the life planning methodologies into what we’re doing with clients. Right now, we do portions of it, and I tested out kind of the full Evoke method on clients and trying to figure out how to best balance getting to the core of what a client is passionate about but also making sure that we’re soothing the pain that are student loans, investments, tax questions, insurance, home buying, all that stuff. So that’s my challenge going forward. But I think to me, it’s where you really create and have meaningful relationships, meaningful conversations. And that’s what the RLP is about. And I think without me going through it personally, I don’t think that we would be at this step. And like I said, to go back to the whole if you invest this money, what would it be in 30 years? $1 million. I’m like, that’s great. But I would suspect that if you asked a 30-year-older version of myself, I would trade that $1 million for I think the experiences that we’re going to have with this investment, the RV, and with my family. And that’s I think what this is really about.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think that’s what a good coach does, right, what you just mentioned there is ask that question or ask the right set of questions that get somebody thinking about what might 30-year-into-the-future self think of this looking back? And you know, I think there’s some good accountability in that process. I think as you’ve gone through the RLP and just briefly scratched the surface here, I think that has really enriched the planning process and obviously you seeing the value of that being able to bring that effort to clients of YFP Planning, so I’m grateful for that. Tim, I’m looking at your credentials now on LinkedIn. You’re starting to look like a pharmacist with all these letters after your name.

Tim Baker: Alphabet soup. Yeah, I know. I’m working on a few others.

Tim Ulbrich: I was going to say, you’ve got one coming down the pipe, right, the RICP is coming. So.

Tim Baker: Yeah, if I can study, if I can get studying for it, yeah. I mean — and again, I think, you know, one of the things that one of our core values at YPF is optimize you and you know, I’ve been in organizations where it’s stagnant because hey, we’ve figured everything out and we’ve seen everything. And I think that’s just poison to an organization. So you know, I’m not necessarily one for designations just to get them, but I look at it in terms of what can this provide to our practice? How can this further benefit the clients that we serve? And you know, I think that is important. And you know, having that. And it’s funny. I always kind of go back to this story. When I graduated from West Point, I’m like, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m done with school. I never have to pick up a book or do anything.’ And you know, really that changed more when I became an entrepreneur and now I’m a — I read all the time and listen to podcasts and I’m always trying to figure out ways to do things. And I think, you know, that’s the message really even to our clients is keep evolving and keep sharpening the salt, so to speak. You know, I think that it just, it leads to more of an enriched life but also I think it just can continually improve your skill set. And again, like the RLP, the Registered Life Planning, there are advisors, financial advisors, that have taken this training and have stopped being financial advisors. Like all they do is the front end life planning and then they hand it off to advisors. And I actually thought of like even doing that internally is you know, having just life planners that are doing this front-end work that it’s a form of planning, it’s a form of coaching, and then hand it off to our CFPs to kind of, you know, put a lot of that into practice. So it’s an option that I’ve been playing around with. And I think the cool thing about this is you don’t have to have all of the other financial designations to do this, but to me, it’s how do we further enrich ourselves, enrich the lives of our clients?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and you mentioned Kinder and the three questions. We’re going to link to those in the show notes for those that want to dig a little bit deeper. And for those that are hearing this in real time saying, “Hey, I’m really interested in having a financial plan that also considers some of what we’re talking about here around the life plan,” we would love to have an opportunity to talk with you to see if the services offered at YFP Planning are a good fit for you and the financial goals that you have. We do a free discovery call, you can learn more, schedule that at YFPPlanning.com. Tim, talk me through the process not only that you use but in coaching clients of YFPP that are making a big financial purchase, right? It could be a home, whether that’s a first home, an investment property, a vacation home, could be a car, could be a motorhome. What questions are you prodding to help them reflect upon that purchase that hopefully leads to a situation where there’s a purchase that has confidence behind it and not one that leads to buyer’s remorse?

Tim Baker: I think that you know, this is a process, right? So it’s not — you can’t look at it in a silo. I probably wouldn’t have made this type of purchase without a good, solid foundation. So like you know, cash emergency fund, a good savings plan beyond that, I think doing well in the investments, stable job, all those things. But beyond that, you know, like what we often ask clients is if we get into the Delorean, the imaginary Delorean, and we go ahead five years, like what does success look like? You know? If we look back at those five years. And I like to kind of equate age with that because I’m turning 40 next year, Tim, so like in 30 years, I’ll be 70, which is kind of like where my parents are. My dad’s a little bit older than that. So like trying to put myself in their shoes and like what do I want to accomplish because the further away it gets, the harder it is for us to kind of like feel that time. So I think framing it — and just for a lot of us, it’s actually just sitting down and actually asking some of these questions of ourselves. Like I said, I always tell the story when I was — my first job out of the Army was Sears/Kmart. So I would drive to work in the dark at 5 in the morning, and I would drive home in the dark at probably 6 at night or 7 at night or something like that. And those drives I would never remember. Like I would get in my car, and I was on autopilot. And so many of us, like that’s our life is like we’re not really thinking. It’s kind of an automatic thing, so like even asking ourselves these questions, so I think it’s — that’s part of it. It’s just going through that process and examining is this what we want to do? And if it’s not, what the heck are we doing about it? So like one of the things I say to prospective clients, you know, we might go through the wealth-building stage of the financial plan and we’ll do a nest egg calculation that says, ‘Hey, Tim, you need $5 million to retire.’ And that’s typically where they look at us like we have 5 million heads, right, because it’s a big number that’s in the future that doesn’t really mean anything to me. So you know, we go through the process of kind of discounting that back to a number that says, OK, if you’re putting this into your TSP or this into your IRA or this into your 401k a month, you’re on track or you’re off track, right? So we can kind of break that down into more of a digestible number to see if we’re trending to that goal given, you know, a handful of assumptions. But the point of this story is if we do work together for the next 30 years, and you don’t have $5 million, you have $7 million, $8 million, $10 million, whatever that is, that’s great. Like those numbers are bigger than $5 million. But if you’re miserable because you look back at that list of all the things that you wanted to do over 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, whatever that is, and you haven’t done anything and you’re miserable because of it or you’re disappointed, the question I would ask you is what’s the freaking point?

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Tim Baker: Why get this education, why earn this money, why pay down this debt, why invest, whatever, if we’re not going to intentionally direct it to the things that matter to you most? And I don’t think that I’m going to be on my death bed and I’m going to say, “I wish I would not have bought that RV.” I just don’t think that in my heart of hearts because of just — I just think about the reaction that my daughter and my nieces had, just when we pulled that up. And even the two camping trips that I had, I think I snapped a few pictures and texted them to you, Tim, even in our first camping trips, it’s going to be an adventure. And to extrapolate that out, like that’s our lives. Our lives are adventures. But we have to be willing to take it, you know, and seize it. And I think that’s what life planning really tries to get to the surface is what is that adventure? And taking that road and not necessarily adapt to a paradigm that’s not yours.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and you talked about this, I think there’s some really practical things, right, making sure do I have a good foundation in place? We talked about that on Episode 212, you know, what does it look like to have a good, strong financial foundation in place. You know, looking at the value that this purchase is going to add, what are the alternatives, right? We talked a little bit about opportunity cost. You know, waiting a little bit before making that purchase and feeling that peace and the thought that went behind making the decision. But you know, as you highlighted, I think the example of fast forward looking back and really asking some good questions to reflect on that, so, so important. So and you mentioned that — if I heard you correctly — it’s the Thor, right? Which is great. I just see like Tim Baker behind the wheel of the Thor and think of the Thor films, which is fantastic.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: Where has it gone so far? Where is the Thor going in the future?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so we’ve just done basically weekend trips in Ohio. We’ve just done camping sites that are within a few hours’ drive. So we went up to Cedar Villa one — that was our most recent one. I think next year it’s really looking at some of the national parks. And it’s a lot — it actually is different than growing up. Like you have to book these pretty well in advance, so if we want to go to Yosemite or things like that. And you know, I kind of look at this as like, you know, some summers of adventure is really to get the kids, especially when Olivia is not in school, and go out and do it, you know? And you know, a lot of it is, you know, just being outside of your comfort zone. I don’t think I’ve ever driven something this big, but it’s fun. And you know, it can be a little stressful, and that can be true for whatever your life plan is is that it can be outside of your comfort zone. But it’s one of those things that, again, I’m tooling down the road and I look back and the two boys are in their car seat just gabbing on and the girls are doing their thing. And it’s brought me a lot of fulfillment already, and I think one of the things Shea and I have a long drive here this afternoon heading back to Maryland for a wedding. That’s one of the things we’re going to talk about too is what is the slate of trips? And start scheduling them. And I’m really excited for that. So it’s a journey. And I’m excited, I’m excited for what’s in front of us and again, to me, I look at this as a window of time with our kids. But just to extrapolate that out further, like we have a window of time, which is our life. And again, to kind of bring it back to life planning, it’s really important that we’re taking full advantage of that and not necessarily leaving anything on the table.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, one of the things we’re blessed with here in Ohio, Tim, shout out to the Buckeye State, is just some awesome state parks. So you know, trips locally and I know you’ve got a sabbatical coming up here. So one of the benefits we offer for the team at YFP is when you get to the five-year mark, we’ve got a month off and some funds to take a trip with the idea that we’re supporting the things that are central to the life plan. So pressure’s on, Tim, to be planning that, that sabbatical when it comes to the motorhome. Great stuff, Tim. Appreciate your willingness to share the story. And again, for those that are hearing this and interested in taking that next step with the financial plan, especially considering some of the dreams and goals that you have for you individually or for you and your family, love the opportunity to talk about the services at YFP Planning. You can learn more and schedule a free discovery call at YFPPlanning.com.

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6 Boring Financial Moves Worth Making

Posted on October 22, 2021June 30, 2023 by yfpadmin

6 Boring Financial Moves Worth Making

The following is a guest post from Dr. Jeffrey Keimer. Dr. Keimer is a 2011 graduate of Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and pharmacy manager for a regional drugstore chain in Vermont. He and his wife Alex have been pursuing financial independence since 2016. Check out Jeff’s new book, FIRE Rx: The Pharmacist’s Guide to Financial Independence to learn how to create an actionable plan to reach financial independence.

Today’s the day.

You’ve spent the better part of a decade getting your PharmD, passed your boards, and got the job. But today’s the day it’s supposed to all pay off; for today, you finally get that sweet first paycheck as a pharmacist.

Welcome to the club!

But now what?

Well…whatever you want, right? After all, the world’s your oyster now that you’re making good money. Live it up! And even if you don’t have the money on hand to do what you want right now, you’ve got a big income to support a big credit limit. Charge it!

Unfortunately, a lot of us (myself included) buy into this mindset and fall into a financial quagmire because of it. What starts as something innocuous like “I’ve worked hard for a long time and now I’m going to treat myself” has a funny way of becoming “Wow, I make six figures and live paycheck to paycheck!” And if you don’t believe that’s a thing, tell that to the majority of high-earning Millennials who report living that life.

It doesn’t have to be that way though. There are moves you can make to protect yourself from such first-world problems. But here’s the rub, most pharmacists (and people in general) don’t like making some of these financial moves because they can be boring, tedious, and might be outside your comfort zone. If you can get past that though, these moves could pay off in the long run.

So with that, let’s dive in!

1. Make and Keep a Budget

This one’s probably the most essential thing you can do to keep your finances on track. Knowing how much money’s coming in, how much is going out, and what can be saved is elemental to the financial plan. If you aren’t budgeting, I’d dare say that you’re going to find it very difficult, if not impossible, to meet most of your bigger financial goals.

So why does this one top our list?

In truth, budgeting can be one of the most boring activities that fall under the broad umbrella of things considered “adulting.” It requires you to take an accurate accounting of not just the money you have coming in, but the money that’s going out and where it’s going. Poring over pay stubs, bank statements, and credit card bills to get all this data isn’t just recommended, it’s required. Oh, and you’ll probably need to make a spreadsheet or two.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

And that’s just what goes into making an initial budget. To make budgeting work for you, you need to get in the habit of sitting down with all these numbers regularly (usually once a month, if not more often). Like a diet, success with budgeting is only going to occur when you practice it consistently for the long run. Fortunately, budgeting isn’t that hard to do and there’s even more than one way to do it.

For most of us, the thought of budgeting invokes a picture of sitting down with your finances once a month, going over your income and expenses, and seeing if there’s money left over to put toward goals. This kind of process, known as “zero-based budgeting,” is the most basic form of budgeting you can do and will likely be the first budgeting style you try. It can also be a pretty tedious process as you need to dissect each month’s spending and see how it compares to the goals you set for yourself ahead of time. For instance, say you want to set a budget of $150 a month for clothes, and this month you only spent $135. Great! The extra $15 can be added to the amount you can save this month. Conversely, if you went over budget in that category by $15, hopefully, you underspent in another category. If not, you’ll need to dip into existing savings to cover the shortfall.

Given the fact you need to repeat this process for every spending category, month after month, it’s not hard to see why many people don’t care for it. Still, it must be done. Don’t fret though, there are plenty of tools available to help you out along the way. For starters, you can avoid having to make a budget spreadsheet yourself and get one for free right here at YFP. This template will walk you through the steps required to make your first budget. Beyond that, there are some excellent platforms available to keep you on track. I was a big fan of the app Mint when I was getting started as it automatically drew all the data I needed from my accounts, aggregated it, and presented it to me on a clean interface.

Using that app, I was also able to get a handle on my spending trends over time and better predict my spending in the more variable categories (ie. food, clothes, entertainment, etc.) which allowed me to pursue a more convenient budgeting style. By knowing what I usually spent in those variable categories and seeing a consistency over time, I could also (in theory) treat the whole lot of them as a single line item. This led me to create a budget for myself which is sometimes referred to as a “reverse budget” in which money for savings is taken out first (in my case every pay period), and then you live off what’s leftover. It’s kind of like living paycheck to paycheck, but without worrying about how you’re going to pay the rent. For me, this style has worked very well as it involves little work beyond the initial setup. I get paid, my spreadsheet tells me how much extra I should have, and I send that money toward goals. The only time I revisit the numbers on the spreadsheet is when they change. That’s it! If you’ve been using a zero-based budget for a while or happen to have a few years of data showing relatively consistent spending, migrating over to a reverse budget might help you keep things going long term.

However you decide to do it, the bottom line here is you need to budget. Full stop. All of the other things we’re going to talk about in this post can be crucial to the financial plan, but they pale in comparison to the importance of budgeting. If you’re not already doing it, get started today!

2. Protect Thyself!

Ok, I tried to give this one a more exciting title, but this section encompasses the most boring things you can do as part of the financial plan. In this bucket, you’ll find riveting topics such as insurance policies, designating a power of attorney, and even writing a will! Hoo boy!

Pumped? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

But the truth is, taking steps to secure yourself against life’s uncertainties is never a fun exercise, and sometimes the process can even be a little uncomfortable. It’s worth it though, and you really should consider taking action here. After all, stuff happens in life and even the best-laid plans can get torn to shreds by the unforeseen.

When it comes to insurance, most of us are pretty familiar with health, home, and auto policies, and these are all essential and may even be legally required to have in some cases. But what about insurance that protects your income and those who depend on that income? Life and disability insurance policies typically aren’t given the kind of attention and essential label that the above do, but for many of us, they probably should. After all, your income is the lifeblood of you and your family’s financial plan, and securing it is important! It’s tough to think about dying prematurely or losing the ability to work, but preparing for the worst is always a good move.

Life insurance can be a pretty complicated topic, especially when you consider the fact that many policies out there combine insurance with investing. Rather than getting into the weeds on the pros and cons of different types of policies (for that, check out my other post Life Insurance for Pharmacists: The Ultimate Guide), I’ll just say that the most important thing to consider here is getting a death benefit sized to your situation for the lowest amount of premium from a reputable insurance company. And given the importance of getting that sizing right, it’s probably not a bad idea to work with an advisor or agent when getting a policy.

Be forewarned though, policies that have investing components such as whole life or universal life tend to have MAJOR financial incentives for the agents selling them. As such, those agents (who may also call themselves financial advisors) may not be acting in your best interest when pitching them to you. For most new pharmacists, these types of policies are rarely the best option. In general, term life policies that meet your basic need for insurance are what to look for.

If life insurance is a good fit for your financial plan, then you’ll want to consider getting disability insurance as well. Thankfully, disability insurance is a little more straightforward. At a basic level, you need to choose how long you want to receive benefits, the amount you’d receive, and how long it will take before benefits kick in (also known as the elimination period). In addition, you may want to get a policy that’s specified as “own occupation” disability insurance because receipt of disability insurance otherwise is predicated on the idea that you can’t work, period. Unless you have an own-occupation policy, disability payments can be denied if you could reasonably work in a different capacity, even at a much lower rate of pay. For more on disability insurance, be sure to check out this must-read on the YFP blog, Disability Insurance for Pharmacists: The Ultimate Guide.

Finally, when it comes to protecting you and your family in the event of the unthinkable, having other plans in place such as a durable power of attorney, will, and/or estate plan can go a long way. These things can make your wishes known in the event you’re unable to say them yourself. For more on this, be sure to listen to YFP Podcast Episode 222: Why Estate Planning is Such an Important Part of the Financial Plan.

3. Tackle Debt

Once you’ve started to budget, getting out of debt tends to be one of the first financial goals people set for themselves. After all, being debt-free is pretty awesome.

So why does this one make the list? Because while being debt-free can be exciting, getting there can be a pretty boring process. On top of that, if you have student loans you are trying to pay off, an optimal strategy may involve a suboptimal amount of paperwork to boot.

For most of us, eliminating a substantial amount of debt boils down to following a budget and applying the savings from that budget consistently. Put in the work, grind it out, and the debt will eventually be gone. That said, there are ways to optimize the process.

There are two main strategies for straight debt pay off: the avalanche and the snowball. The avalanche strategy involves you paying off debts in order of smallest to largest. With the snowball method, you’ll pay off the debt that has the highest interest rate first, eventually working your way down to the lowest interest rate. There probably won’t be much of a difference between the two in terms of how quickly you’ll pay off the debt, but these strategies do provide a roadmap to get you from start to finish.

But while the path to get rid of most types of debt can be straightforward, the best path to get rid of your student loans can be a little less clear. Depending on the type of loans you have, your employment status, and your level of discretionary income, you may find that the optimal strategy for addressing your loans is a lot different than simply grinding them away. For more on that, be sure to check out Tim Church’s comprehensive book, The Pharmacist’s Guide to Conquering Student Loans as well as the excellent post The Ultimate Guide to Pay Back Pharmacy School Loans.

If, after carefully considering all of the payoff strategies available to you, you decide that simply paying them off is the best course of action, visit the refinancing hub at YFP so you don’t pay a dime of interest more than you need to. You might be able to get some extra cash too!

4. Avoid More Debt

Once you get out of debt, it’s only natural to feel that your financial picture has relaxed a bit. After all, these are bills you’ve likely eliminated from your life forever. But now that they’re gone, it’s incredibly important that you don’t replace them with new ones. Believe me, keeping up with the boring grind that got you out of debt after paying everything off is easier said than done.

There’s a theory in economics known as the “wealth effect” which shares that as the value of people’s assets rise, they tend to spend more. I would argue that the same can be said when you get rid of debt. Your net worth rises and the cash flow available from your biggest asset (your income) increases. Taken together, the pressure to upgrade your lifestyle goes up as well. After all, you can afford nicer things now, denying yourself these pleasures would be on you alone, not the fact you have a loan payment due.

This is something I started to struggle with once the only debt I had in my life became my mortgage. With all the other big monthly bills gone, the amount of extra cash available every paycheck seemed to give me license to spend a lot more than I had previously. While my experience in personal finance taught me to avoid credit card debt like the plague (and I do), it’s a lot harder to keep thoughts of buying a nicer car or considering a home upgrade at bay; both of which have a nasty habit of getting you back into debt. Add temptingly low-interest rates into the mix and, well, you get the picture.

5. Force Yourself to Save More

Going hand in hand with keeping yourself out of debt is then using that money to save more. This can be tough because unlike getting out of debt, saving money doesn’t have a well-defined endpoint and the goal you set for yourself can shift over time. In addition, unless you’re in a group that likes to share financial successes, getting external validation (and motivation) about your savings habits is unlikely. After all, people see nice stuff, not nice balance sheets.

Thankfully, there’s a concept I’m going to borrow from the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement that we can use here to make savings a little less boring and give you a better-defined goal to work with. It’s called the “four percent rule.” In a nutshell, the four percent rule sets the amount you need to save to be considered financially independent as 25 times your annual expenses.

How does that make saving less boring? Easy. With a defined goal in mind, you can give your savings journey milestones to get excited about! For example, getting to a point where you have $100,000 in your investment accounts can sound pretty good on its own, but it can be much more meaningful in the context of where you are in your journey to financial independence; arguably the end goal for everyone taking charge of their financial futures.

6. Be Honest With Yourself as an Investor

Finally, I wanted to touch on this one not just because it fits the theme of boring things to do, but because I think as pharmacists (like other highly compensated professionals), we can easily fall into the trap of thinking we’re smarter than we are when it comes to investing. I’ve been guilty of this. But despite what you may hear in the news about small “investors” making scads of money on the latest meme stocks or cryptos, the truth is that day trading the market is a great way to lose money over the long run, or worse. For most investors, following a boring, buy-and-hold style of investing using a diversified mix of quality assets that aligns with your risk tolerance is typically a much better play.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the path to long-term wealth and financial prosperity isn’t always sexy. Along the way, there are things you’ll need to do that are, frankly, quite boring. But if you can get past that and put in the work to make and keep a financial plan that allows you to build wealth in a secure, consistent way, you’ll be well on your way to reaching financial independence.

Need help figuring out which financial move to make next?

If you’re interested in having support on your financial journey, I encourage you to book a free discovery call with the team at YFP Planning. YFP Planning is a fee-only, comprehensive, high-touch financial planning firm that’s dedicated to serving pharmacy professionals like you.

You can book a free call to see if YFP Planning is the right fit for you.

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YFP 226: How and Why this Entrepreneur Left a Successful Pharmacy Career to Start a Business

Posted on October 21, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How and Why this Entrepreneur Left a Successful Pharmacy Career to Start a Business

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, Tim Ulbrich sits down with pharmacy entrepreneur, Dr. Christine Manukyan to discuss her why for leaving her career in hospital pharmacy administration, her passion for building a business around functional medicine, growing pains she has experienced in her first year of business, and setting a bold goal of growing her business to $1M in revenue per year by age 42.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Christine Manukyan is the founder of the Functional Medicine Business Academy™, best-selling author, STORRIE™ podcast host, and an international speaker. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, she spent 13 years in corporate America. In the midst of a global pandemic, she made the wild decision to leave her reputable job as a Clinical Pharmacist to start her virtual practice. She is now disrupting the way clinicians are able to make an impact by coaching and mentoring them through the foundational steps of holistic practices and entrepreneurship. Dr. Christine created the world’s first Functional Medicine Certification Program which is a business incubator for clinicians to launch and scale their Functional Medicine Practice as they become Certified Functional Medicine Specialist™. Her mission is to pave the way for other burned-out medical professionals struggling to balance family, career, and their health to take control of their freedom and create their Functional Medicine Legacy.

Summary

This week, Tim Ulbrich takes some time to sit down with fellow pharmacy entrepreneur and all-around rockstar Dr. Christine Manukyan. Christine is the founder of Functional Medicine Business Academy™, best-selling author, STORRIE™ podcast host, and an international speaker.

Christine talks about her reasoning and motivation for leaving her successful career in hospital pharmacy administration. She shares her passion for building a business around functional medicine and how it aligns with her personal and progressional goals. As we know, when a business experiences rapid growth, there can be growing pains. Christine details some of her challenges during her first year of business and how coaching and professional guidance helped her overcome those difficulties.

There are no signs of her slowing down either! Christine talks about setting a bold goal of growing her business to $1 million in revenue per year by age 45 and why she recently decided to go bigger, moving that goal up by three years to the age of 42.

For Christine, mindset is critical for success! She encourages pharmacists and entrepreneurs alike to visualize what success and an ideal life look like and act upon that visualization by becoming all of the things you set your mind to become.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Christine, welcome to the show.

Christine Manukyan: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited. Thank you.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to this interview. We crossed paths after I heard the tail end of your session at the Pharmfluencer Summit that was hosted by Dr. Kimber Booth, and I heard a little bit of your story and said, “Hey, I need to learn more, and we have to share more with our YFP community.” And our listeners know that I have a passion for featuring various pharmacy entrepreneurs with the hopes of highlighting the many different paths that one may take with a PharmD. You know, I believe that the PharmD is a ticket, it’s a starting point, it’s certainly not the end. And I think your story, Christine, highlights just that. We also share a Buckeye connection, and we’ll get to that here in a moment, but before we jump into the entrepreneurial journey, dig into the business, the work that you’re doing now, Christine, give our listeners some background on your pharmacy journey, how you got into the path of pharmacy, where you went to school, some of your post-graduate training, and the work that you did prior to the business.

Christine Manukyan: Absolutely. Well again, thank you for having me on your podcast. This has been such a fun connection, as you were sharing like with the Buckeye connection too. Years later, who knew we are doing a podcast exchange here. This is called coming full circle, right? Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my story. Well, Tim, my story kind of goes back a little bit behind my life, what happened before coming to here in the United States because I was actually brought up in Armenia, and I came to the United States when I was 16 years old. And back home, we go to school for 10 years. So after 10th grade, and you graduate school at age 16, you are actually prepping for college. So for me to graduate, my last year of school to step into like I was going to go to medical school because I wanted to do something with medicine. And coming to the States, realizing that hmm, I’ve got two more years to figure out exactly what I want to do and really kind of gave me the opportunity to understand what I really want as somebody who just came to the States, is not speaking the language, just reinventing herself as a teenager. And what I realized at that time was medicine was not a good fit for me. And I wanted to be a mom, I wanted to be a full-time mom. I was still wanting to do something with medical field and healthcare, but I decided not to go into medicine. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon back home. And here, I’m like, no, that’s not a lifestyle I would be going into. So I literally just started doing what everyone else does, just asking people what they love about their job in the healthcare space and just kind of to narrow down my choices. And I was stuck between optometrist and pharmacist. And I realized I’m a talker. I like to talk to people. And those few minute conversation in the optometry space was not going to give me a whole lot of that connection, so I decided to go into pharmacy space. And started my undergrad — and so back then, we didn’t really have to have bachelor’s to get into pharmacy schools. And I remember, you know, applying to pharmacy schools. And I was actually put on hold on a wait list here in California at USC and also at Western, which is here in Pomona. And literally, deciding to — like maybe this is not my time. And they’re not calling me, it’s already end of July, schools are already starting. And my family decided to move to Florida, a better life and housing prices at that time. And my brother being in real estate, we decided to actually move across from California to Florida. And I remember like over the weekend, making that decision to move my entire family. On Monday morning, I get a phone call from here, from Western, saying, “Congratulations. You’ve been accepted to pharmacy school.”

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, gees.

Christine: Manukyan: And this is like what? I literally yesterday moved across from California to Florida. And I’m going to apply to become a resident here in Florida so I can go to school here. But you know, everything happens for a reason. And so the experiences that I gained becoming a graduate from the (inaudible) gave me a whole new opportunities of taking this profession to a whole new level because I was surrounded by people who did not have my background. And the reason I’m sharing this because here in California, there’s a lot of Armenians. And people know each other’s cultures, and a lot of us don’t have that voice to educate the rest of us what we do and what we’re passionate about because there’s just so many of us, right? This is not the first time they’re going to hear your story. But being in Florida and being actually class president too, it gave me the opportunity to share my story of who I am and the struggles I went through because I was the only person in my class, in the whole school, to come from where I came from. And the reason I’m sharing this is because there was a lot of learning and unlearning that happened during that process, and I had to let go of the mindset of like, everybody knows who I am to a mindset of like, nobody knows who I am and really using your voice and your experience to become that hope and inspiration for other people who may be similar like you are, but you’ve never met them before. And long story short, I had a great experience in Florida, and so I decided to continue my education in hospital setting working in undergrad and pharmacy school and retail pharmacies. I decided this is not the career path for me. I decided to run away from retail pharmacy, and I committed to a two-year residency at Ohio State at the health system pharmacy administration. And it was such an incredible experience being in Midwest, which was my first time, and experiencing that cultural shock. I’m like, whoa, this is whole new world that I stepped into. And literally being there for two years and learning so much. And I just remember like graduating, saying like, “I have so many opportunities to go anywhere I want and do so many different things,” but I really have to find something that was aligned with my passion and my soul, which was not only leadership but also making an impact that hasn’t been tapped into in the past. And I was looking for creative positions. I was looking for — the titles didn’t really matter to me. It was more about what I will get to do in the position that I’m hired to do, you know? And that questioning kind of brought me back to California again at that time. And I was hired as a regulatory compliance officer at Cedar Sinai, which was a brand new position that was created literally during my interview, I’m not kidding. It was created literally during my interview because they saw the passion that I have like creating new projects, and I was given this opportunity to do that. So — and that’s how my journey came from becoming, you know, here an immigrant starting to learn the language going to pharmacy school and residencies and landing to my one and only job that I had for 12 years at Cedar Sinai in different leadership roles, working as a clinical pharmacist and also different roles in the hospital before I left.

Tim Ulbrich: Such a cool story. And we’re going to talk about that journey out and why you made that shift, but you know, just to reflect for a moment, you mentioned being waitlisted at a couple pharmacy programs to then entering, of course I have a bias being connected to that program as well, but then entering into one of the top health system administration programs, highly selective programs, and then a job being created for you during your interview. So talk about making things happen, right? I mean, just an awesome example of that. So 2009 to 2020-ish or so, you’re in that position at Cedar Sinai, very stable career. You know, I think it’s a position many would look at in the profession and say, “Hey, I want a job like that. I want to do what Christine is doing.” You certainly invested a lot of time and money to be in a position like that, but as you noted in an article that was recently published on Yahoo — and we’ll link to that in the show notes — you noted in August, on August 13, 2019, you said, “I wrote a letter to myself manifesting how I will retire at 40. I had no plan how it will happen. I had no clue what would I do if and when I retire from corporate. I just had a huge why.” So what was that why, Christine? Why make that transition out and ultimately become what you’ve mentioned before of really being a corporate dropout?

Christine Manukyan: Oh my gosh, thank you, Tim. You’re bringing me back incredible moments of creating and manifesting. But when I wrote that letter, Tim, I was stuck. And I know a lot of us go through school, we land in this fancy jobs, our dream job, it’s happening, we’re making the income that we want, but I just knew deep inside I was not happy. You know, from outside, I had everything figured out. I was making the money, I was healthy at that time, and it was just — I was broke inside. And I just did not feel like — like why did I work so hard? Like is this it? Is this what I signed up for? I was just really like finding ways to get out of where I was stuck in. And I just didn’t know what it was going to look like or what it was going to be, as you’re mentioning. But my why was I was just so tired of choosing between family and career. Having two kids and back-to-back, and my husband also being in a hospital setting in the pharmacy administration, like we literally spent less than an hour or two at home together as a family. And I keep asking myself, why are we making all this money? Like for who? For whose dreams we are creating and building? And when I say I was broke inside, I was like, I was not happy. I would come home, I remember, and I would be so tired and so stressed out and you know, just physically exhausting as well as driving two hours every single day, sitting in my car. So I would come home and the kids like, of course they’re excited to see us, but I was not a happy person, you know? Because I was bringing that frustration, that stress from work, to home. And here I am, looking at myself saying like, I’m not a good parent. Like I’m providing the physical stuff, you know, we have a house, we’re so blessed to have a car and all these things that a lot of people would love to have, but I was not the parent who was fully present. I was not the parent who had the energy to like hey, let’s go out for a bike ride like at 7 p.m., you know, before it gets too dark, right? I was just not there, and my why was like, I need to become a full-time mom. I need to become a mom who is present and is no longer choosing between family and career. And I want to create a lifestyle that I get to choose how I spend my day, I get to choose who I spend the day with. And yes, I did not have anything figured out, but I just manifested and I wrote that letter to myself on Aug. 13, and just saying like, it will happen. It will happen. And I’ve been manifesting to kind of having an exit strategy for my 40th birthday, which was like literally a year later, and just focusing on who I want to become. And this kind of ties into like one of my favorite quotes, and I write about this quote in my book as well too. It’s by Paul Coelho. And it says, “Maybe the journey is not so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” And I remember reading that quote, and I said, you know what, I’ve been working so hard to become this person, to have this title, to have this impact in this pharma space. But I’m like, I’m not happy. My passion is in holistic health, which is like a couple — technically opposite of what I’m even doing as my job — and just really giving myself permission to say, it is OK to unbecome who I was thinking I was going to become so I can actually step into this space and create this identity, this new identity of who I am supposed to be becoming in the first place. So that was my why, like literally figuring it out, how I’m going to have an exit strategy, creating my own legacy, creating my own lifestyle so I can live my day the way I want to and I no longer have to come home and bring the frustration and stress to my house, to my kids. They didn’t deserve to have a mom like that. They did not deserve to be, you know, having somebody in the house who was like always like impatient and you know, not really having this deep down conversations, like taking the time and really enjoying parenthood because time was going by fast. And I did not realize how my son was going to be — my oldest was going to be 10 years old. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I’ve been a part-time parent for a decade. Like what the heck? What the heck? This is enough.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think in the experience I’ve had just getting to know you and I’ve read this in the Yahoo article as well, you talked about the importance of manifesting and visualizing the next big goal. What I love about what you did on Aug. 13, 2019, is you didn’t have the path figured out, right? But you knew there was a strong why. And you know, we talk about that often on the show about how the why becomes the compass of where you’re going. And that why and I’m guessing that step of writing that letter and the visualization that came from that really probably helped inspire so much that would come over the next year. So one year later, Aug. 13, 2020, you turned in your two-week notice. So tell us about what the plan was. You had a whole year to kind of reflect on, OK, I know the why of where I’m going but how I’m going to get there, you know, somewhat TBD. You turn in that two-week notice a year later, what is the path and the work that you’re going to be doing? And tell us more specifically about some of the passion behind holistic medicine and functional medicine.

Christine Manukyan: Oh my gosh, yes. So you know, when you put your ideas and your energy out to the universe, the right people will show up. And I remember as soon as I wrote that letter and started manifesting that, the first thing I did, Tim, I don’t think I’ve shared this a lot of places, but I changed all my passwords and everything around me to say that I retired at my 40th birthday. Like I was claiming that.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, that’s cool.

Christine Manukyan: I retired at 40. I am retired. I am 40 and free. Like anything that was around the mindset of like my 40th birthday, which you know, was like a year later, like I am free. Like I’m finally free. And I’m creating this lifestyle. And as more I was saying that, typing those passwords every single day, and the right people came into my life. And that’s when like a complete stranger became my first business coach that I ended up hiring January of 2020 to learn all about functional medicine entrepreneurship in general. How do I take my knowledge that I’ve already created all these years into getting monetized for what I want to do? And this is where my passion is aligned. And around the same time too, January of 2020, I committed to becoming the biggest fan of Tony Robbins and really invested in his coaching, in his training with one of his mentor — one of his coaches, Chris Akutchez, KK, and really being in this mindset of like, I am going to create something that has never been created in the past because I’m going to stick through this process, I’m going to focus on my why, and the how will come. It was just the process. It was a process. And I remember, you know, getting ready to go to Tony Robbins’ event in March, and the event was canceled. And I was so looking forward for that event because I needed that breakthrough. I needed to be walking on the fire and just having the guts to like just go all in. And of course with the pandemic, everything got canceled, and I was like, maybe this is not my time. And again, we kind of hold back again because you’re looking forward for an event for this breakthrough and it’s being taken away from you. But I love Tony Robbins and what he’s done, and he’s such a visionary. And what he ended up doing was he actually created his event virtually, which he’s never done before. And between March and July, he created this online space. He built his own platform to deliver Zoom to 25,000 people. And I was one of those 25,000 people for the first time ever be on his virtual event, “Unleash the Power Within,” which was end of July of 2020. And coming out of that event, I did not walk on fire, but I did break a wood. I became a wood breaker and like really breaking through the fear of failure because, again, I was mentally stepping into the space of like, I’m going to retire. I’m going to get out. My birthday is coming up. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. And physically breaking that wood and really passing through that fear of like what can go wrong and focusing on what can go right and really coming out of that event, I said, “This is it. I’m going to be looking at my calendar. Sometime in July or August to pick a date that I’m going to tell my boss when my last day is going to be.” And as I’m like literally like, I swear to God, like literally staring in my calendar, right, and I’m like, which day will make more sense? Do I give a three- week notice? Do I give a four-week notice? Do I give a two-week notice? Because I’ve been there for so long, and I don’t want to just like leave people hanging. And I was highly trained. People didn’t have the job that I had. And I had to train people to come into this role. And as I’m like literally staring at my schedule, staring at my boss’ schedule, and literally at the same time, I get a pop-up message saying like, “You’re scheduled for your annual performance review on Aug. 13 of 2020.”

Tim Ulbrich: Oh my goodness.

Christina Manukyan: Tim, I saw that come through my inbox and I like literally like froze. And I was like, oh my gosh, what? Here it is, universe deliver — like helped me to make that choice of not overthinking what’s the right way to do it. And I was like, this is it. This is the date. And I keep asking myself, why is this date so familiar? Like what happened? And found my notebook and I saw the letter that I wrote. I was like, oh my gosh, it has to be on this date. And I remember just sitting going into the review — of course I didn’t say anything, and we start having conversations. And like a few minutes into the conversation, I said, “This is not going to be a performance review meeting as we thought. This is actually my two-week notice to turn in,” and because this is the legacy that I’m creating, this is where my heart and passion is aligned. And again, my why was like, I want to be home with my kids. I want to be home as a parent who is still making an impact and the income that she loves and deserves, but I’m also a full-time mom. I’m also present. And it was one of the hardest decisions to do. It was one of the scariest decisions to make. But I just knew that I knew that I knew I will figure it out. I will figure it out. And I said, “This is the time. This is the time for me to create. This is the time for me to step into this new identity that I always talk about,” reinventing yourself and aligning your passion to your purpose and bringing greatness to the world. So that was my story of how I turned in my two-week notice during my performance review. And that became my exit strategy because I had a plan, but again, I did not have everything figured out. I couldn’t wait any longer, and I’m going to say this too because there’s so many people who are probably listening to this and saying like, “Well, that was easy, like you just left your job.” So I wonder if she really made enough income on the side doing her side gig. And the answer is no, Tim. I did not have everything figured out because it was really hard to create this legacy on a full-time basis if I was still working full-time, miserable, in a job that I had. I could not physically and mentally create the legacy that I could have created if I did not have the job. You know? So no, I did not match my income. When I left, I left my job making less than $1,000 on the side. But I just knew I can make things happen because now I’m like 100% in, I’m all in, and my energy is flowing in the direction of creating and nothing can stop me. I am unstoppable. That’s my thing.

Tim Ulbrich: I think it’s a great reminder, Christine, too — I was actually listening to something this morning reminding me of Tim Ferriss’ work when he talks about really leaning into the fear, right? So you’re talking about giving a two-week notice and what does that mean, you know, in terms of not only next steps for the business, but you know, as you mentioned, it’s not like you had everything fully fleshed out, what does this mean for the family. But you know, folks might be listening that whether it’s a jump to another job, whether it’s making a decision to go part-time, whether it’s another fear that they may have, is that the thoughts that we have around that fear can quickly seem as if they’re reality. And we need to just sometimes lean into that a little bit. And I encourage like as you’re weighing a big decision like this and you feel like that fear is taking over, like literally think of the worst case scenario and start writing it down. Right? Because I think once we start to make it a little bit more objective and get it out of our head a little bit, I think we can start to at least begin to wrap our arms around it and process it and not be paralyzed by that fear. So it’s just such a great example of that. So tell us more about the work that you’re doing right now. We’re going to link to the website, of course, DrChristineManukyan.com, we’ll link to that in the show notes. Tell us more about the work that you’re doing with the business, the why behind that work, the problems that you’re trying to solve, and ultimately the products and services that do that.

Christina Manukyan: Absolutely. So I am a huge believer in giving people opportunities and choices. OK? And going into pharmacy space, like we were not really being given choices. It was just like, this is the protocol, this is how you treat stuff, and this is what we do, right? There’s no like, let’s try this, let’s try that. No. We were just given a recipe, we just go with that. Right? And when I was going through my own health transformation too, I realized like I was craving having choices in life. I wanted to have other options so I can weigh in and make that decision of like, how do I want to lead and treat my health? Right? And so that choice was given to me, which was functional medicine, which was holistic health, and really understanding like, let’s dig in deeper and get to the root cause of what’s making you sick. Again, part of my health transformation was at age 35, I was told by my primary care physician I was going to have a heart attack and I was going to die by my 40th birthday in the next five years because I was morbidly obese, I had extremely cholesterol, I was extremely burnt out. The stress was killing me. And I was told I need to take a pill. I was given a prescription for Lipitor, saying, “Go take this pill, try to lose some weight,” some weight — nothing about nutrition, right — and if you don’t do all these things, you are going to die. You are going to die. And this was not something that I wanted to receive. And I said, “Lord, there has to be a better way. There has to be something else that I can do that is going to save my life.” Not change my life but save my life. And that was holistic health and functional medicine. And when I incorporated that and started doing the cleanses, started bringing adaptogen into my life and really feeling like a new person and as a result, I lost over 100 pounds. As a result, I became a bodybuilding fitness athlete. And as a result, I ran the LA Marathon March 8 of 2020.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome.

Christine Manukyan: I mean, this was how I was stepping into my 40th birthday of being like healthy and fit and physically and mentally and emotionally and I was not broke anymore. You know what I mean? And when I saw this is a missing tool that a lot of us clinicians feel like there is a huge maybe stigma associated to like why would you recommend an herb versus a proven medication that has all these studies to that? Right? And I became the voice for other clinicians who are literally struggling themselves too to take care of their own health because burnout is legit. It’s happening to all of us. And they want to get healthy, but again, they just don’t know what else is out there. They may have heard about holistic health and functional medicine, but they have themselves not tried it because their mind has not been opened to learning what else is out there because we have not been given this education training. We can’t blame anybody else other than our education. Like that’s happening right now. And creating that space to train other clinicians, No. 1, taking care of your own health, utilizing functional medicine, but also as a result, as you’re working on your own health transformation, I’m going to show you how you can turn this into a business model that you can get paid for the same services that you’re applying for yourself for other people because there is always somebody out there that is praying for someone just like you with your own zone of genius to come into their life to save their life. So it becomes this process of like take care of your own health first, understand functional medicine is a tool for you, become your own transformation story, so now you can become a mentor for someone else. And that’s how the academy, the Functional Medicine Business Academy was born. It’s more than business coaching. It’s also reinventing yourself, who you are as a human being. And all of my clients and our clinicians and we are not only creating business models but we’re also transforming our own health because if we’re not healthy, we cannot serve everyone else, especially nowadays when there’s just so many moving parts and so much stress associated with life in general, so much uncertainty. And what we’re trying to create is like focusing on our own health. You’re not being selfish. You’re learning as you’re going, and you’re also creating your own functional medicine legacy so you can one day have an exit strategy if you choose to do that. And that’s how the academy has been growing and constantly adding new things into that. Collectively, we are all going to be writing a book that’s going to be published very soon, “Unleash the Story Within,” scheduled to be released on Nov. 9. And these are all clinicians who are telling their own transformation journeys, how they went from traditional medicine to functional medicine, and what their own health transformation with functional medicine and holistic health looks like. I’m a storyteller, so it’s all about getting your voice out there because there’s always somebody out there that is literally praying for someone just like you to come into their life to save their life. And really creating this tribe and starting the functional medicine revolution and giving our profession an upgrade, I’m going to say. Maybe not the right word to use, but really telling the world like, we are clinicians. Yes, we are pharmacists, we didn’t learn this in school, but we have tools to become certified functional medicine specialists through my program and really use our knowledge and experiences but not become a specialist in functional medicine space. So upgrading your PharmD to a specialist of functional medicine because this is an opportunity that was not given to us from any ways and now I’m becoming the voice for our profession to say, “You can do this too.” And the Board of Pharmacy will not show you how to do that because it’s not written there yet.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Christine Manukyan: Yet. It will one day. Yes. It’s all about starting the revolution and really giving us that platform to practice what we’ve already learned but also blend in and integrate functional medicine into our practice so we can give people options and give them choices, you know?

Tim Ulbrich: And we will link to the website, again, DrChristineManukyan.com, you can learn more about the academy, the Functional Medicine Business Academy, as well as an upcoming free master class on Oct. 25-29. And we’ll talk more about that here at the end. Christine, you know, I was thinking recently that I have lots of conversations with folks where they may have an idea and I think some of those ideas stay just as that, as an idea, a small percentage of those end up with some action of those that people take action, sometimes folks see results and then a lower percentage of those you actually see results where folks can replicate that, scale that, grow that to where they’ve got an actual thriving business. So as you reflect back on your journey from ‘I have an idea,’ and you mentioned leaving your position where you hadn’t yet fully fleshed that idea out to where you are today now and the business really growing and scaling. Was there a specific moment in that journey where you realized that this idea that you had was really an idea that had legs and one that could be sustainable as a business?

Christina Manukyan: Ooo. This is such a huge question, Tim. I’m going to say yes. And this all also is connected with who I am as an individual when I make decisions. And those of you who have not done human design, I would highly recommend all of you to do that because it also dictates how you make decisions and how you see yourself in this world. And I make my decisions, Tim, based on my gut. And that’s how I am the visionary who executes it, even though if I’m 80% sure, I will execute it to the finish. And that’s how I was humanly designed to make decisions. This is not for everyone because a lot of people don’t make decisions with their gut. They are actually thinking it, right? I have to feel it. So we’re all designed differently, and if you’re listening to me and you’re like, wow, I would never do that because that’s fine. Find the way that you can actually execute it based on your own human design. So do that thing, and there’s a website you can actually go and it’s completely free, will tell you who you are. But for me, it was knowing like I don’t have another choice. Because I can continue doing this, I can continue living my life, or I can take this other path of creating something that has never been done before. And this may be part of my process of coming to the United States and being an immigrant. I was not given a lot of choices when I was here as an immigrant. And I had to figure things out. I had to learn things that I have never seen or heard in the past. I gave myself permission to not be scared because your body cannot tell if you’re scared or excited. It’s the same neurotransmitter that you’re experiencing that. So instead of saying like, “I’m afraid to make this decision and execute,” I’m going to say, “I’m excited about the opportunities that are to come.” So really put that into excitement versus fear. But most people are stuck in the fear and not executing. And again, I wanted to have — I’m one of those people who likes to try new things and not being afraid of failure because that is just not an example of how you can learn and grow but also want to become a voice for my kids, Tim, because being an immigrant coming here, I watched my mom work like three jobs to provide for us. And I said, “This was hard.” And her sacrificing her own health to provide for our family is actually causing her have three autoimmune diseases, like here like 20 years later. You know? And I don’t want anybody to sacrifice their health because they’re trying to create the wealth that they need. I want everyone to have choices, and I want my kids to grow up saying like, “Mommy and Daddy made this decision,” and we are creating generational wealth. We’re not just taking care of ourselves now. I’m creating a generational wealth so my kids are growing up and they’re saying, “Mommy made this decision, you know, like when she was 40. And she created this legacy because now I get to do this.” So and it all starts with, again, going back to the simple things of understanding your why and why you want to do that, and everything else will fall into place. And just follow what makes you happy. And go back to asking yourself, what do you desire? Like I was desiring to be a full-time mom first. I wanted to be — I was desiring to be a somebody who was happy not for the world to see but I was happy inside. And I was not broke anymore. And I was living a fulfilled life, not for social media to see the highlights, but I was really, really like living that happy lifestyle that I know I can inspire someone else saying like, “You know what? Enough is enough. This is my time to rewrite my story,” and they can connect and make that transformation journey themselves and really step into the new identity that they should deserve and they’re part of it. So.

Tim Ulbrich: Christine, I am. I am. You said that if you’re inspired in any way — and I’m taking, again, this from the Yahoo article — if you’re inspired in any way, write a vision-casting letter to yourself and use the “I am” statement when you’re describing your life a year from now. And you say, “I challenge you to have this everywhere. I had it on my screensaver. I had it as my passwords that I was typing every day. I mean, it was everywhere. I was saying it until it became real.” Tell us more about that “I am” statement.

Christine Manukyan: There’s something about this like psychology and that again, I didn’t learn about this, but again, hiring a lot of mentors and business coaches and mindset coaching like and understanding your mind is capable of doing so much, and I decided to claim I am corporate dropout. Also I am Wonderwoman. And those of you who haven’t seen my Wonderwoman transformation as a fitness athlete on stage and really owning like having that mindset that goes with the image that I’m creating. Like who am I? Right? And Wonderwoman was actually my nickname in my fraternity, Phi Delta Chi, and I was like, who is Wonderwoman? I’ve never heard of her name, right? And when I was given that name back in pharmacy school, I literally had to Google like Wonderwoman because again, I have never seen her or heard of her, right? And I was like, this is somebody I want to be. And I think just even having that name that was given to me back then, like I was — I am Wonderwoman in my fraternity Phi Delta Chi. And what that allowed me to do is to become like a Ro Chi. It allowed me to become the class president and FSHP president and Phi Lambda Sigma president, right? Because I was stepping into this like who I am. My name might be Christine Manukyan, but I am Wonderwoman. I am unstoppable. And really claiming that and more excited — I’m not going to say scared — more excited you are when you’re saying those words and you’re owning it, psychologically and physically, you are going to become. OK? You’re going to become. And I have been, the last couple of months, I have been claiming of really having a million-dollar business in my business by age 45. But I’m actually, after attending this event the last couple of days, I am going to challenge it and change it to by 42nd birthday, so by next year, because I’m really pushing myself to the next statement of like who I am and also honoring the transformation that I’m going through myself. It’s not just like saying it, like “I am Wonderwoman.” Well, what does that mean to you? What does that mean to feel things and how do you show up? How do you talk? How do you dress? Who are you surrounded with? How do you spend your time? How do you spend your money? What relationships do you have? Right? Like who is that person that you’re stepping into? And when it actually happens, you’re like, ‘Of course it was going to happen.’ It’s like you’ve already done the rehearsal. You’ve already created that space. And you know, I talk a lot about this during my master class too, Tim — and thanks for mentioning that — understanding like the ideal life you want to create for yourself and why you want to create that. It sounds so simple, it sounds so cliche, but I want you all to actually physically experience like what would it mean if you say like, ‘I want to let’s say retire in xyz years,’ or ‘I want to actually wake up one day and not have migraine headaches anymore,’ right? Whatever it is that you’re desiring, whatever your ideal life looks like, I want you all to actually experience that right now. It’s like running a drill. It’s like running a drill, right? Like you practice it now so when the day comes when it’s the right time to show up in your life, you are able to receive that information, you are able to see the transformation that the universe will deliver to you because you’re focusing your energy and your mind in that direction.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, no, that’s great stuff. And I want to share, you know, as we feature more pharmacy entrepreneurs on this show, you know, I think that for folks that have an idea in mind and they hear someone who is taking some calculated risks, has taken that step, has had some success in that, they can get excited, right, about that and start to hopefully visualize and dream that if that’s something that they’re passionate about as well. But it’s also important that we talk about the growing pains, we talk about what we do when we feel overwhelmed or unfocused. You know, it’s not always rainbow and butterflies. You and I know this from firsthand. And so when we share these stories and we talk about some of the positive outcomes of these dreams and visions that we’re also talking about the reality of what it means to be running a business. So Christine, as you reflect on what has been a very short period of time and the success you’ve had thus far, as you’ve gone from idea to validation of that idea and now the business really growing, you mentioned $1 million business goal that you have by your 42nd birthday, I suspect there has been some growing pains as you’ve had some success, right? I know you and I talked a little bit about things like corporation structures, right, and tax situations, and other things that can feel overwhelming at times as a solopreneur. So tell me about some of the growing pains that you’ve experienced thus far.

Christine Manukyan: Oh my gosh, yes, Tim, we were talking a lot about that. And again, sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Christine Manukyan: And for me, I have made a lot of bad decisions hiring people. OK? And this is huge because we always say, you know, when you have business growing, you need to hire help. Well, that’s great. But who do I hire? How do I know they’re the right fit? How much do I pay them? Are they a contractor or are they — just so many things. And I have made really bad decisions the last few months because I was desperately looking for someone that my unicorn, and I was like, OK, I will train them. I’ll give them this opportunity, but they were not the right fit for my company. They were not seeing the vision that I want to go. Like I’m creating, I’m revolutionizing how our system and how people are going to learn about holistic and functional medicine and creating legacies. Like there’s nothing has been done the way — the scale that I’m going. And the people I was bringing on board, they didn’t see the long vision. And they were just focusing on the tasks that I was giving them at this moment, so I’ve spent a lot of money, close to like $20,000, let’s just put it out there. It’s a lot of money because I just didn’t know, and I was go-go-go mode. I was like really working off of my masculine energy and just go-go-get things done and not slowing down and saying like, let me reflect who I want to bring into my company. Anybody wants to take a job right now. Like right? And they want to work with you, but did I really give myself permission to really ask like who I want to work with? I know they want to work with me, but do I really want to work with them?

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Christine Manukyan: But it was coming from the mindset of desperation because I was like, I’m growing so fast. I need help. And I was like literally hiring people left and right. Like literally had no structure in place, I had no SOPs in place.

Tim Ulbrich: And you have an administrative management background, right?

Christine Manukyan: Yes. But again, that was structured for Corporate America, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s different. Yeah.

Christine Manukyan: It was structured for Corporate America. I cannot go get an MBA to have an online practice running. An MBA is not teaching you what to do. It’s not. And the minute I started asking myself like, why is it that I’m bringing more help but I’m even more stressed out right now? Here I am working like 12-hour days. I went from like 8 to 10 12 now. And what is going on? And I asked this to my business coach, Kelly Roach and her program “Unstoppable Entrepreneur,” and she was like, “Christine, have you put systems in place when you’re onboarding? What does your onboarding process look like?” I’m like, “Kelly, I don’t have an onboarding process. What do you mean? You don’t just hop on on Zoom and tell them what to do and where to look for information when they need your help?” They’re like, no. I’m like, oh my gosh. So I’ve spent a lot of time, which is, again, my most valuable asset that we have, bringing people on board who are not a right fit for my company. But I was doing what people told me to do, go hire some help. So I did. I went and hired some help versus asking, education — like smarter questions like what does the process look like? Explain it. Because I’ve never hired someone before. So understand that just because somebody’s telling you to go do something, like stop and say like, can you explain what that looks like? Can you tell me what would be a better fit for me and for my company? Ask those questions, and it’s OK to ask questions. You may sound like, oh my gosh, that’s such a dumb question to ask, but let me tell you, those dumb questions you feel like there’s — No. 1, there’s no dumb questions to ask. Those questions can not only save you time but money and education because you’re learning. And running a business, especially if you’re scaling and you’re creating something that hasn’t been done before, like there’s not a lot of people to like go study for you to create. You just have to go with it and put it in place and pivot when needed. And I know a lot of people say like, ‘I have the best product I’m bringing to market. And this is it. It’s going to be a game-changer.’ Well, honey, I’m sorry to tell you that, but you might have to learn how to pivot and how to make changes.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Christine Manukyan: If you feel like your ego is getting into your way to really create the product, the services that everyone needs and loves and become your biggest fans, like you have to grow and you have to pivot when it’s the right time. But a lot of people say, ‘No, I can’t do that. Like I already spent so much time and money on this.’ Well, if it’s not working, please change. It is working, keep going.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think that’s a great example — and I have one in our business where, you know, and I think ego can be such a barrier. But we had a service that we launched that we thought was going to be a home run, and the key as I reflected on that is, you know, that was very much framed by what we thought was going to be needed by our audience and by the community not necessarily by exactly what that group was telling us what they needed. And once we could get over the ego, we’re able to move forward and cut those losses. But it’s easy to hang onto those losses, say, ‘Hey, I spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of money developing this,’ but at the end of the day, you’ve got to pivot. I think that’s a good lesson. Last question I have for you, Christine, you mentioned in this time where you’ve hired folks and sometimes that hasn’t necessarily been the right fit, probably you spent more time than it would have been without having some of those people on board, I suspect times, you’ve felt maybe overwhelmed or unfocused. What do you do in those moments? You know, as an entrepreneur, you find yourself in a period of time where it’s stressful, you’re overwhelmed, you feel like you’re unfocused, perhaps a little bit separated from the core mission of what you want to be doing in terms of spending your time and working on, what do you practically do in those moments where you’re feeling that?

Christine Manukyan: First, take a deep breath and remind myself that I am fortunate to have this type of stress in my life because sometimes, we forget this was a choice and this is an opportunity for me to overcome those barriers and recreate what I want to do, right? So first, celebrating that this was a choice. I am alive. And I get to stress about things like this, OK? But just kind of going back to like really go back to the basics. OK? And I’m such a huge like a checklist person. If you see my to-do list, you probably would have a heart attack. But it’s long. It’s very like detailed, right? But that’s also psychologically, it’s overwhelming. And what I learned was I need to break it down to like literally like maximum three decisions I have to make today. What’s the next right thing for me to do today? Maximum three things to get me closer to the next place. It may be going down the checklist, maybe re-evaluating my checklist, maybe learning how to delegate some of this to-do list to other people on my team and elevating them and training them. OK? But really asking yourself like, going back to the basics and really asking myself like what are the top three choices, decisions I need to make today, to get me a step closer? What’s the next right thing for me to do? The next one. And then like one at a time. One at a time. And that’s it. Versus getting overwhelmed with a large to-do list and it’s just too much and just you will — like you will have those days when you’re going to ask yourself like, what the heck did I get myself into? And I want you all to celebrate that feeling because again, you’re feeling stuck, but I want you to celebrate that feeling because you’re going through a transformation. And instead of getting stuck in that like oh my gosh, like what the heck did I just get myself into, just saying like, ‘Who can I call to help me just to talk?’ and maybe the one decision you need to make that day is for you to get rest, for you to have the time out, for you to create time on your schedule to create content, to create lifestyle, whatever you want to do. Like give yourself permission to block off time on your calendar to create. And you have to create that time in your schedule because we all have the same 24 hours, OK? You don’t have to do anything. Everything you do in life is based on your choices you make and decisions you make. So you don’t have to do anything. So create that time for you to like slow down and really ask yourself, what is it the maximum three decisions I need to make today that’s going to make me closer, get closer? And that decision, one of them can be like, you know what? Today, I’m taking a day off. I am just not even going to do anything because physically, my body needs to rest. And that’s OK. And that’s perfectly fine.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. This has been fantastic, Christine. I really appreciate you joining and sharing your story with the YFP community. We’ve only scratched the surface. We didn’t talk about the book that you’ve co-authored along with 17 other female entrepreneurs and business owners, “Pivot with Purpose.” We’re going to link to that in the show notes. I hope folks will check that out. And as I mentioned earlier, Christine has an upcoming free master class Oct. 25-29. You can learn more at DrChristineManukyan.com. We’re going to link to that in the show notes. And this master class is really meant to help folks learn how to blend the years of education, the professional experience you have, folks that are passionate about holistic health and ultimately how to create your own functional medicine practice. And it’s going to be on Zoom Oct. 25-29. Five days learning how to identify your why, handpicking your dream clients, taking the center stage as personal branding, looking at your definition of wealth and success, and then finally redefining your scope and practice. And so much of, Christine, what I’ve heard in this interview is a lot about mindset and really thinking about how your personal mindset is going to have a positive impact on the future growth and hopefully realizing what’s possible within yourself. So Christine, thank you so much for joining us and looking forward to watching what you do in your business over the coming year.

Christine Manukyan: Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so grateful for your time as well too because you added so much value in my community a couple weeks ago, and I’m just so grateful for our relationship, our friendship and collaboration. It is definitely making this world a better place when you have amazing partners next to you. And we all share so much and I just cannot wait to see what’s next and yes, we can always, always connect with me and share your biggest takeaways because like you said, Tim, life is all about making connections and really getting to knowing people who are going to change your life. And this conversation that we had can probably change someone’s life. And I want to hear from you.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Thanks again, DrChristineManukyan.com, you can also connect with her on LinkedIn and as always, we thank you for joining for this week’s episode and look forward to having you again back here next week. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 225: How to Navigate Open Enrollment and Employer Benefits

Posted on October 14, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How to Navigate Open Enrollment and Employer Benefits

On this episode, sponsored by GoodRx, Tim Baker, YFP Co-founder and YFP Planning Director of Financial Planning, joins Tim Ulbrich to talk about open enrollment and evaluating employer benefits. Tim and Tim dig into:

Considerations for choosing a health insurance plan
How to determine whether or not your employer-provided life and disability insurance is sufficient (one of the most common questions we get)
Understanding the differences between an FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and HSA
What to be looking for when putting money into your employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Summary

This week on the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, Tim Ulbrich sits down with YFP co-owner and Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, to discuss open enrollment and the process of evaluating employer benefits. As you go into making your benefit selections for 2022, Tim and Tim share some considerations for choosing a health insurance plan and how to determine whether or not your employer-provided life and disability insurance are sufficient. Tim and Tim provide a general overview into understanding the differences between an FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and HSA and what to be looking for when putting money into your employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Whether you are reviewing your benefits for the first time or are a seasoned professional with open enrollment, there are many factors to consider. Pharmacists may not think to consult with their financial planners when it comes to open enrollment or the process of evaluating employer benefits, but these decisions affect the financial plan. When choosing a plan for the coming year, pharmacists should consider future life events or changes impacting money spent on medical expenses such as a child being born, marriage or divorce, coverage for a significant other, or a child aging out of medical coverage. The open enrollment period is a time to review history in medical spending, how much is spent out of pocket, and how to optimize benefits and cost savings based on those findings.

Tim Baker touches on life insurance and disability insurance, how to calculate your total need, transferability issues to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase a policy outside of your employer policy, and tax considerations.

Tim Ulbrich closes out by breaking down the differences between an FSA, DCFSA, and HSA. He also touches on retirement savings accounts in conjunction with open enrollment and the opportunity to re-evaluate investing and savings goals and how each fits in with the financial plan.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Tim, glad to have you back on the show.

Tim Baker: Yeah, good to be here, Tim. Looking forward to getting into open enrollment discussion. ‘Tis the season. So yeah, I’m ready for it.

Tim Ulbrich: ‘Tis the season indeed. Fall is in the air officially here in Ohio, which does mean it’s almost time for open enrollment and ensuring that we’re taking the time to understand and maximize employer benefits. And I think whether someone is reviewing their benefits for the first time, whether that’s accepting a new position, going through another round of open enrollment, a lot to consider here, including insurance, retirement accounts and HSAs, FSAs, to name a few. So Tim, our team at YFP Planning includes employer benefits as a part of the planning process, perhaps an area that folks don’t necessarily associate working with their financial planner on. So how does this part, employer benefits, factor into the financial plan? And why is it so important that we’re looking at it in the planning process?

Tim Baker: Yeah, I think this is another area, Tim, where like when we say, “comprehensive,” we mean comprehensive. And it’s just like kind of the same conversation with things like home purchase. Most financial advisors are not going to kind of walk you through kind of the A-Z of buying a home because most of the time, a financial advisor is working with people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, right? And the reason for that is because those are the people that have assets, and that’s how they charge their fee. We have many, many, many clients that are in their 20s and 30s. And things like home purchase is really important and is often a big step in their financial journey and their financial plan. So we kind of take the time to go through that based on, I know you’ve said it, I’ve said it, we’ve messed those transactions up in the past, and we just don’t want to see our clients do the same thing. So open enrollment is kind of the same thing. A lot of financial advisors don’t really talk about this stuff because if you’re working with people in their 50s, 60s, like they’ve done it dozens of times, right? So they’ve gone through this. And a lot of our clients haven’t. You know, it’s not something that is kind of what we understand. And so to define open enrollment, open enrollment is the period of time where you can purchase or apply for health insurance for the upcoming year without a qualifying event. And usually a qualifying event is something like a marriage or a divorce or a birth of a child. So it’s typically very centered on the health insurance plan because that’s the big piece of the benefits. But then what the employer does is kind of have you opt out of other benefits that they might offer, which might be life insurance, disability, I’ve even seen things like pet insurance and things like that. You know, some things that are not insurance-related could be like a legal benefit. So that’s what this is is open enrollment. And it’s important because your employer benefits are a major component of your compensation package. And you know, this is kind of the conversation that goes back to things like salary negotiation is I’ve seen clients, they’ll say, “Hey, I’m making $110,000,” and they get an offer for $120,000 but they take a major step back with regard to their total compensation because of the benefits that are associated with that. I think it’s really important to understand what the employer benefits are and how to assess that. So that’s really what’s at stake here is really understanding that piece. And we know this, Tim, because when we plan to hire someone, we know that it’s not just about the salary pay. We apply a multiple on top of that because we know that the benefits that we’re going to provide for the employee are going to be above and beyond that. So that total cost or what I would say is an investment in that person is really beyond the salary. So this is what is really that bell to that. We’re trying to assess an an employee to say, OK, how can I best optimize this part of my compensation. And I would say that there is a lot, you know, a lot of people that don’t necessarily fully optimize this part of their financial plan or give it the attention that it needs because it sneaks up on us or bad information or what have you. So that’s really kind of the overall picture here of what it is and why it’s important.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and Tim, I think when you say sneaks up on us, bad information, it’s important I think for folks, basic stuff before we jump into individual benefits, you know, know your dates, obviously what’s the time span. You know, a lot of employers, depending on how they organize this, will do informational sessions, open Q&As, one-on-ones, group, and some of that might be automated, depending on the system and the platform they’re using. But making sure, understanding the dates, you know, simple things, how much time do you have if you’re going to be on vacation, things like that, making sure you can coordinate with HR. And then also, you know, just taking a look at your pay stub and your benefits. What do you currently have? And really taking a pulse on — and I think just a chance to go back and what’s gross pay, what’s net pay, what’s coming out in benefits, and taking this time that comes around every year as a chance to revisit some of these things that we want to be looking at often. And then of course, just thinking about upcoming changes, right, that might be happening. You know, I think of things like children that might be beneficiaries on the healthcare side, aging out if you think about 26 or folks that might be expecting or perhaps getting married, things that might have an impact on their benefits, considering those things as you’re in the benefits selection. And then of course just refreshing and updating the evaluation of who are the beneficiaries that are listed on certain policies. Tim, I want to start with health insurance. You know, I think it’s the one that typically carries the biggest price tag as we think about it relative to the other insurance and typically carries more options than things like dental and vision and life and disability, which I think for many employers it’s more of a one-way type of option. So the big question here is how do I determine which one to get? And of course, all plans are created differently but when folks are looking at these and you’re evaluating the deductibles and maximum out-of-pockets and premiums and copays and coinsurance, unfortunately, it’s a system that even though our audience is comfortable with all of those numbers because they live in it in the job that they’ve done or have been trained in it previously, there’s just a lot to consider. And if you look at plans, let’s consider a three-tiered plan where you’ve got like a bronze, silver, gold option, you know, you’re looking at OK, less out of pocket, more out of pocket, better coverage, but perhaps I could have lower out of pocket and I could use that money elsewhere. Like general framework, how do you begin to help clients think through this decision and not just look at it in a silo but also consider it in the context of the rest of the plan?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so I think it’s — you know, everyone can say it with me — it depends, right? So you know, I think a lot of it depends on past history or — you know, you mentioned a few things like what’s kind of on the horizon? Is it getting married or having kids? And some of those will allow you to kind of elect insurance outside of the open enrollment period. But those are typically qualifying events. But you know, an example is when we had Liam, when Shea was pregnant with Liam, we opted out of the bronze package, you know, the HSA plan to more of a gold package because we knew that the doctor bills and the hospital bills were going to be there. Our thought process was, you know, although in most cases we’re not going to the doctor a lot, you know, during a normal year, well, electing to a higher deductible plan, which means less coming out of our paycheck but then when we do go to the doctor, there’s going to be potentially more coming out of our pocket. So we did that to get in front of it a little bit. And you know, that’s really important from a planning perspective and kind of mitigating as much of the costs — and we probably saved ourselves if we did the math $1,000 by doing that. So that’s an important part of the plan. Now, sometimes things are going to come up and you’re just not going to — you know, it’s kind of like that emergency fund. You’re just not going to know for the future. But I would say is it’s a little bit of an exercise in looking at your past history, so looking at how often you’re going to the doctor and how often you’re reaching into your pocket to pay for things like copays and things like that. But then also projecting it forward, so that’s kind of where the conversation starts is that, you know, if you’re a younger, healthy professional and you’re not really going to the doctor, then you probably should really consider kind of a bronze, high-deductible, HDHP plan and couple that with the HSA, which we’ve said is a great forum to stash dollars. If you’re looking at regular doctor visits because of a chronic issue or something like that, that’s not going to be for you, regardless of your age. You just know that you’re going to be in and out of the doctor’s office. So I think it’s really looking at, again, kind of the budget and seeing what money has been spent on healthcare costs in the past and then what you think, project those going forward. And like I said, like this is not — it’s important, but these are taking it like snapshots one year at a time. So you can — like after Liam was born and the medical expenses were gone, then we went back to the high-deductible plan with the HSA. So I think it’s really important to kind of take stock of kind of your history, your medical history, your spending on healthcare, to form the baseline of your decision in that realm. The other comment I would make, Tim, is not all 401k’s are created equal. And as many of us know, not all health plans are created equal. So some are really, really great, and some are really, really terrible. And sometimes, that has to do with the size of the organization, sometimes the economies to scale, the bigger that you are, the less that each participant pays, whether that’s the 401k or the health insurance plan. So you kind of have to work with the sandbox, you know, that you’re playing in, so to speak, and something that can be very much out of your control.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think, Tim, your example of Liam is a great reminder of not putting open enrollment on auto pilot.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think that’s what we’re trying to stress here is like, using this as a chance to re-evaluate each year, you know, what happened last year? What worked last year may or may not be what makes sense for this year for a variety of reasons. And I think this is certainly a place where we want to be evaluating what does the cash position look like? What does the reserves look like? And how do we feel about that? Especially if we’re going to be opting into a high-deductible health plan, you know, thinking worst case scenario — hopefully never happens — looking at those out-of-pocket maxes and really asking yourself, how comfortable are we with that happening? How does that make us feel? And could we weather that storm if it were to come?

Tim Baker: Yeah, and you know, and we’ve had some tough conversations with clients that are deep in credit card debt and they really need as much of their income to kind of like right the ship and get going, so sometimes it means sacrificing or being uncomfortable here. You know, one of the things I look at is like if we look at all the debts that are out there, medical debt is not necessarily a bad debt in terms of like they reformed a lot of things with it hurting your credit because it’s kind of been a nightmare, you’re typically not gouged with higher interest rates and things like that. So typically more forgiven. I would even say push back on a lot of medical debt because it’s wrong. I think Tim, you had a story about that when one of your sons was born. So there’s a little bit more give I would say than some of these other ones that goes like right to collections and you’re in a lot of trouble. So it’s kind of — this is all about like mitigating the risk and trying to understand where can we give a little bit so we’re OK.

Tim Ulbrich: I want to shift gears, Tim, to life and disability. Probably one of the most common questions that we get is, do I need to purchase additional life and disability insurance beyond what my employer covers? And of course the answer is it depends on a large part of the individual’s situation and what they have going on and what they’re trying to do with those policies and so forth. But you know, general thoughts and discussion on how one goes about making this decision in terms of understanding what coverage is there from an employer standpoint, determining what total coverage may be needed, and some of the gap and differences between an employer plan and if they purchased a policy out on the open market.

Tim Baker: I think if we look at most pharmacists out there, you know, professionals that are making a six-figure salary, I think there’s going to come a time when there probably is a need to purchase policies outside of what the employer provides. Now, the problem with the financial services industry is that a lot of “financial advisors” are trying to push those policies on a young professional when they probably don’t need them. That’s when you’re a pharmacist that has maybe six figures of debt that’s going to be forgiven if you die or are disabled with no dependents and really, you know, not much on your balance sheet. So there’s kind of like this gap of do I really need this? Or can I just make do with what my employer provides? I’ll say this about the employer-provided policies: Outside of health insurance, which is a health plan, I would say that things like life and disability insurance are not plans. They’re really perks. So they’re meant to supplement or meant to provide some type of benefit that will help the employee but also it’s a way to kind of retain you and things like that. So I really view these as perks and not necessarily plans. I would say, to your point, Tim, I think it’s really looking at the individual and say OK, does it make sense to buy a policy outside of that? Most employers will provide some type of life insurance benefit, whether it’s something like $50,000 or one or two times income, which you can then elect to either increase your coverage or not. I think the downside of that is, you know, if you’re working for an employer as a 30-year-old and you have all of your eggs in that basket and you’re saying, “Hey, I have $1 million” or a lot of times, they’re capped. Most times, pharmacists need a lot more than what their employer can provide. So that’s one of the drawbacks. But if you’re working with that company for 40 years and then you leave to go to another organization, which maybe that isn’t provided or it’s a lot less of a benefit, you have a gap, then you’re going out in the market 10 years older where you’re paying a lot more for that particular policy. So that’s one of the things that — sometimes they’re portable, meaning that you can take them with you, and sometimes they’re not. So for both the life and disability, you know, it’s really looking at your own situation. Just like open enrollment itself, this is one of the things that often overlooked, just insurance. And I know we’ve probably done a podcast in the past about what’s proper life and disability and things like that.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: For the disability, the coverage is typically going to be a percentage of your income. And again, it could be capped, and some employers will offer both long-term and short-term disability. You know, both are great. But you know, oftentimes, because of one reason or another, there’s going to be a gap in the coverage either because of taxes or just that a pharmacist, what they make and what most professionals will say that you need to kind of cover down and typically, that can be anywhere from 50-80% of what your income is, that there is a need to go out onto the open market and buy individual policies. But from an open enrollment perspective, I think if you don’t have those policies, it’s really important to understand, you know, what is there for you? And what can at least tide you over until you get those policies in place? And again, it’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s not important to you until it’s important to you. And it’s really hard to kind of, to show that to clients unless they’ve experienced that pain themselves or a close family member.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Tim Baker: But it’s going to be a really important piece of protecting the overall financial plan, which is — this is really what this is all about is, you know, insurance is really protecting the financial plan from a catastrophic event and ensuring that you can continue to build wealth and survive into the future.

Tim Ulbrich: Episode 044, Tim, How to Determine Life Insurance Needs, 045, How to Determine Disability Insurance Needs, two that we’ll link to in the show notes. We’ve got more information on the website as well, YourFinancialPharmacist.com. Tim, I think one of the common mistakes I see made here just relating to that discussion on gap in coverage is not digging into the policies to really understand, you know, life insurance is maybe the most obvious example where if you have a policy — if you have a need for life insurance and you have a term policy that’s offered for $50,000 or $100,000 or one times salary or two times salary, typically, those have a cap on them. For many folks, there’s going to be a gap and a shortage. And I think this is where, you know, sitting down one-on-one with someone to really calculate the total need, think about the transferability issues that you mentioned and what does it mean if you pick up employment, tax considerations, and really getting into the weeds of some of the nuances of the policies and things like own occupation, we’ve talked about that before and its importance. And again, thinking about how this fits in with the rest of the plan. And just a shoutout here to our fee-only financial planning team at YFP Planning, this is really where I think the value of fee-only comes in in that really sitting down with someone to determine what is their true need in their best interests. Not too much coverage that there’s dollars being spent that could be put elsewhere in the financial plan, but making sure we’re also not exposing the plan to unnecessary risk.

Tim Baker: Yeah, I mean, you know, this — what we’re talking about here are products. Like insurance is a product. So any time that you talk about dispensing a device, “Hey, Tim, you need life insurance,” and you say, “OK, great. Like where do I get it?” Like we can sell you this product. There’s going to be a conflict of interest. So having someone that is a fee-only fiduciary that is not further enriched by the advice that they’re giving, you know, strips away a lot of that, well, am I being advised in my best interests or in the advisor’s best interests, the one that’s advising me. So that’s I think the beauty of fee-only.

Tim Ulbrich: One example I just want to give here, I just pulled up, Tim, our long-term disability coverage that we added recently for the YFP team.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: And you know, if you look at it on kind of the main benefits platform, it says, “60% monthly income up to $6,000.” But this is an example where digging deeper is so valuable. You know, you get into things like what is the definition of earnings? So our policy, it’s base wage. So how you’re compensated could have an impact here.

Tim Baker: Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: What’s the elimination period or the timeframe from when the disability happens to when the benefit starts to pay out? Here, it’s 90 days. But if it’s shorter than that, perhaps longer than that, what’s the game plan to fund. Does it have own occupation coverage? We’ve talked about the importance of that before. What’s the maximum benefit? Our policy goes up to age 65. And then things like coverage restrictions, other incentives. So really, just a reminder of this time period and using this point here to really dig into this information and read the policies.

Tim Baker: Yeah, you know, and again, going back to those episodes you mentioned there, that’s where we kind of talk about the nitty-gritty, but I think the beautiful thing about this is like when we’re reviewing this and we kind of look at the — kind of go through the open enrollment optimization stuff is like as a planner, I’m looking at your balance sheet. So I’m like, alright, does it make sense to bolster — you know, because a lot of these, you can opt in. So like our policy doesn’t do this, but a lot of policies, they’ll say, “The employer pays for a 60% benefit of your earnings.” But then you can opt in to get that up to 80%. So you pay an additional — you pay out of pocket out of your paycheck for that additional 20%. If I’m looking at your balance sheet, Tim, and I’m saying, “Man, you have plenty of cash,” I would say, “Let’s not opt into that.” Or we might say, “Let’s do it,” because we know because the employer is going to pay for it, that that benefit’s going to be taxed.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: If the employer pays for the benefit, it’s going to be taxed. That’s the gap. You know, so the idea is looking at your situation and overlaying what’s out there. I think the open enrollment, what I say is we want to look at the things that you’re paying for and say, does it make sense for you to be paying for it? I see a lot of AD&D insurance, and I kind of look at this as like — and again, this is not advice — but I kind of look at those as like when you buy something at Best Buy and they ask you about the warranty. You know, most of the time, you say no because it’s just not worth the money. Some of these things in open enrollment, it’s the same thing. It’s like AD&D, for those to pay out is very rare. So even if it’s $2 per pay period, I’m like, I just don’t think it’s worth it. So we’re trying to make sure that you’re not paying for things that don’t necessarily provide you much benefit, much utility. But then you are paying for things that do. And you know, kind of finding that Venn diagram of sorts to make sure that, again, we’re fully optimized with regard to this part of your compensation package.

Tim Ulbrich: AD&D, for folks that are wondering, Accidental Death & Dismemberment insurance.

Tim Baker: Oh yeah. Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: Tim Baker dropping some financial lingo here.

Tim Baker: Sorry about that. Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: Tim, next I want to talk about FSAs, dependent care FSAs, especially since we’ve had some changes that have happened there as well as HSAs. And we’ve talked probably among these to the greatest extent, we’ve talked about HSAs because of the value of what that can provide as well as these other options. And we’ve talked about it on the podcast, we’ve got some blog posts, Episode 165, The Power of a Health Savings Account, also have an article on the blog, which we’ll link to, about really more of the strategic investing side of an HSA if you’re able to do that. So Tim, high level overview, FSA, dependent care FSA, HSA, and some of the differences and considerations for these accounts.

Tim Baker: The very crude way that I remember the difference between FSA and HSA is FSAs are really use-or-lose. So when you fund these with pre-tax dollars, if you don’t use those monies for the purposes of healthcare for an FSA for healthcare or dependent care for a dependent care FSA, you lose it. So it’s F-udge. Like I don’t get — you don’t get to use that money. Whereas the HSA, this is — can potentially be an accrual account, meaning that year over year, you can stack Benjamins and hopefully one day becomes that kind of stealth IRA that we talk about that has that triple tax benefit. So like I said, we’ve talked about the HSA ad nauseum. It has to be paired with a high-deductible health plan. You know, you can put the money in. It has a triple tax benefit, which means it goes in pre-tax, it grows tax-free so you can invest it like an IRA, and then you can distribute it in the near term for approved medical costs or when you reach a certain age, you can use it basically for whatever. So that’s the beauty of the HSA. But you know, again, it only works or you only have access to it when it’s paired with a high-deductible health plan. The FSA for healthcare is similar, but very different. So you’re allowed to use — you’re allowed to fund it with pre-tax dollars, meaning if you make $100,000 and you put $1,000 in there, you’re taxed on as if $99,000. So I think the limits for FSA for 2021, I think it’s like $2,750.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right. Yep.

Tim Baker: Yeah. So the idea is that what you’re trying to do here — it’s a little bit of a game of chicken. So what you’re trying to do is really, again, see into the future and say, “OK, what do I know is a baseline that I’m going to use on my out-of-pocket healthcare expenses?” And if you know for sure that you’re going to spending $2,000 on that, then you should fund it with $2,000. And typically, there is a little bit of give at the end of the year where you can either carry some over or you have some time into the New Year to use it on.

Tim Ulbrich: Two months or —

Tim Baker: Yeah. And every plan is going to be different in its design. So you might be loading up on kind of some of the over-the-counter stuff. I’ve had a client buy a bunch of stuff for like contacts and things like that. So it’s going to be really important to kind of — again, this goes back to the spending plan, the budget, to understand what have you been spending in the past? Is that going to be indicative of what you will spend in the future? And then fund that with at least that baseline amount so you don’t lose it. The same thing can be said for the dependent care FSA. So this is a pre-tax account that you can fund that is used for care for your child who is age 13, for before- and after-school care, babysitting, nanny expenses, daycare, nursery school, preschool, summer day camp, and then also care for a spouse or a relative who is physically or mentally unable to care for themselves and lives in your home. So this money — this has actually been amended under the American Rescue Plan Act. So I think for single and married filing jointly couples, the pre-tax contribution limit went from where you could $5,000 a year, now it’s I think $10,500.

Tim Ulbrich: Significant jump. Yep.

Tim Baker: Yeah, very significant. So the higher limits apply to the plan year beginning Dec. 31, 2020 and before Jan. 1, 2022. So it is a temporary thing, but it allows you to park some dollars that you would otherwise — so if you’re in a 25% tax bracket, it’s as if you’re saving 25%, kind of thinking about it that way. So that’s what really — and for the FSAs, unlike the HSA, the FSA is — it has to be provided by the employer. I think we had a question on the Ask a YFP CFP about the HSA. And you don’t have to necessarily go through your employer. Sometimes, the employer doesn’t offer it. So you can go out and set up your own HSA. The FSA has to be provided by the employer for you to have access to it. So that’s really important. Again, these are all going to be — when you elect it, it’s going to take money out of your paycheck and basically fund these accounts for the appropriate purpose.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and this to me is where when we’ve talked with Paul Eikenberg, our director of tax, and working with our clients, one of the things he talks about here is these being untapped areas of potential.

Tim Baker: Totally.

Tim Ulbrich: And so I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in the financial plan. And I think really evaluating these and perhaps the dollars of any one don’t jump out as being super significant, but I think as we start to add these up with other strategies, there certainly is value. And Tim, you had mentioned we did tackle a question recently on Ask a YFP CFP 084. The question was about fees on an HSA account, but we did talk about the opportunity to access an HSA account independent of the employer. So we’ve talked about health insurance, we’ve talked about life and disability, we’ve talked about FSAs and HSAs and dependent care FSAs. I want to wrap up our discussion by retirement saving options. And I think, again, this is an opportunity to take a step back, look at the overall progress on the investing part of the plan, overall goals, perhaps gap between the goals and where you’re currently at, and then to evaluate where does investing fit in with the rest of the financial plan. And so when we think about, Tim, employer-sponsored retirement accounts, two main buckets we have, which are those that are Roth contributions and those that are traditional. So define for us the difference between those two for folks that are — maybe have some outstanding questions about those or unsure as well as the limits of what we’re able to do in 2021.

Tim Baker: Yeah, so — and I’ll preface this by saying that most of — you know, open enrollment is a good time to check in on your retirement savings options. You’re not necessarily bound to that because you can go in —

Tim Ulbrich: Correct.

Tim Baker: — really at any time and say, “Hey, I was putting in 5%. I talked to a YFP planner, and they said I should put in 8%. That’ll put me on track to get my $5 million nest egg, so that’s what I want to do.” I can really do that at any time. Or I can say, “I want less Roth and more traditional,” or whatever the case is. So it’s just a good opportunity, it’s a good checkpoint to say, OK, where am I at and should I make any tweaks? So — and one of the things that they often do here is they allow you to put in an escalator. So you know — and you can do this any time too, but it’s a good thing to do in open enrollment so every year, you can increase that by 1% or 2% or whatever that looks like. So to answer your question, Tim, the Roth v. traditional, so most employers will offer a 401k or a 403b or if you work for the government, a TSP. So when you elect your retirement options here, a lot of them will now — you’ll have a traditional — so think of two buckets. You’ll have a traditional 401k and a Roth 401k.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: And they’re all under the same plan, but they segregate the monies because for a traditional, these are pre-tax dollars. So that example I gave you is if you put in $1,000 into your 401k and you make $100,00 — your traditional 401k — and you make $100,000, you’re taxed as if you made $99,000. For a Roth, it’s after-tax. So same example, if you put $1,000 into your Roth 401k and you make $100,000, you are taxed as if you made $100,000 because you’re not getting that pre-tax deduction. So for these dollars, the money is either taxed going in or coming out. So for a traditional, you’re not taxed going in, but then it grows tax-free inside of that account, and then you’re taxed when it is distributed, hopefully in retirement. For the Roth 401k, you’re taxed going in, so you don’t get that deduction, but then it grows tax-free and when it comes out, it’s not taxed because it’s already been taxed going in. So a lot of people will say Roth, Roth, Roth. And again, it’s going to depend on your plan. It’s going to depend on what you’re trying to achieve. And a lot of people get this wrong as well. So this is another good check on it to make sure that you’re putting the dollars in the right spot. Your match that your employer provides, if there is a match, is always going to go into a traditional account.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Tim Baker: So if there is a match, you’re going to have — some people get it twisted like, I’m 100% in my Roth 401k, but I see money in my traditional, like what gives? And I’m like, well, this is the money that your employer is matching. It’s going to go there, you know, regardless. So it’s really important, you know — so to kind of give you some numbers with 2021, to max out a 401k, a 403b, it’s $19,500. So you can put that in regardless of how much money you make. So that’s really going to be the limit for the 401k. IRAs are a completely different animal. They’re $6,000, this completely separate accounting mechanism. And that’s going to be dependent on your income whether you can put it in directly into a Roth or a traditional IRA and if you get the deduction. And I know we’ve had podcasts on that as well. But the point of this, Tim, is that the open enrollment exercise is a great opportunity to kind of just do a once-over for your retirement savings options and just make sure that one, you’re in the proper allocation but then it’s also in the Roth v. traditional, and then just making sure that you don’t get stuck in that hey, my employer matches 3%, so for 10 years, I’ve just been putting in 3%. You don’t want to do that because more often than not, it’s not going to be enough for you to retire comfortably. So this is another way to kind of check those things and push the envelope a little bit.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I point folks back to Episode 074, when we talked about evaluating your 401k plan, also more recently, Episode 208, when we talked about why minimizing fees on your investments is so important. Certainly relevant here as we talk about employer-sponsored retirement plans where we can see a lot of variabilities in those investment options and in the fees. As we’ve said a couple times now throughout the show, open enrollment is such a great time to take a step back and evaluate the financial plan. And for folks that are going through this process and think, you know, I really see the value in working with someone one-on-one to look at the financial plan holistically, to determine how to prioritize the goals, make some of these decisions around open enrollment, could be debt repayment, investing, tax evaluation, and so forth. We’d love to have a chance to talk with you about the YFP Planning comprehensive financial planning services that we conduct on a one-on-one basis. And you can learn more about those services as well as schedule a free discovery call by going to YFPPlanning.com. As always, thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a great rest of your week and look forward to having you join us again next week.

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YFP 224: How & Why One Canadian Pharmacist Paid Off $100K of Debt

Posted on October 7, 2021November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

How & Why One Canadian Pharmacist Paid Off $100K of Debt

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, Sachin Duggal discusses his career journey, how and why he aggressively paid off $100k in debt, and trends in pharmacy education and practice in Canada.

About Today’s Guest

Sachin Duggal is a clinical pharmacist and consultant practicing within the Toronto, Ontario area in Canada. Sachin’s current areas of practice are community-based with a focus in complex geriatric care, diabetes education, and hypertension management where he works with family physicians to optimize treatment plans. He also works as an Academic Detailer, engaging with physicians on the latest evidence in different disease states.

Sachin obtained his Doctor of Pharmacy and Honours Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Waterloo and has gone on to work in a variety of practice settings including hospital, community, and family health teams across the province of Ontario in Canada.

As a recent graduate, Sachin has taken a keen interest in personal finance, building wealth, and optimizing student loan repayment using various financial incentives and products within Canada.

Summary

This week, Tim Ulbrich welcomes Sachin Duggal, a pharmacist from Canada who works as an Academic Detailer, to the show. Sachin discusses his career journey, how and why he aggressively paid off $100k in debt, and what trends in pharmacy education and practice in Canada are similar and different to those in the United States.

Financial freedom was a driving force in Sachin’s debt-free journey. He felt the pressure of student debt and didn’t like the feeling of debt looming over him. By contributing up to 70% of his income to education loan repayment, Sachin is now debt-free with maxed-out retirement investments. Now he is looking forward to his future, investing in real estate, and enjoying the feeling of making his money work for him.

Sachin shares his observations on the differences in the education system and trends in the current state of pharmacy in Canada compared to the United States. While many Canadian pharmacists take on a slightly lower student debt, there are additional educational benefits. Professional students may be eligible for a line of credit, as in Sachin’s case, which can be used to drive down student debt with some intentional financial moves. Sachin’s observations on trends include a downward trajectory on pharmacist salaries in urban areas, similar to that of the United States, based on the supply and demand of pharmacists. He shares that in more rural areas, the salaries may be more competitive. He notes, pharmacists in the United States may be less willing to work multiple part-time positions versus a single full-time opportunity due to the necessity of medical benefits. Universal health care in Canada permits relatively low-risk opportunities to piece together part-time jobs when full-time positions aren’t available.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Sachin, welcome to the show.

Sachin Duggal: Thanks for having me, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich: Well I really appreciate you reaching out to me via LinkedIn several months ago to provide some of the viewpoint of a pharmacist that’s working in Canada, a topic we haven’t talked about on the show, which is exciting. And during a follow-up call that you and I had, I really enjoyed learning more about some of the similarities and differences of the profession that we both love in pharmacy and some of those differences in Canada versus here in the States. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to share that information with the YFP community alongside your journey to becoming a debt-free new practitioner. So Sachin, let’s start with your background and work in pharmacy. What drew you to the profession? Where did you go to school? And what type of work are you doing now?

Sachin Duggal: Sure. So you know, initially what drew me to the profession was I was in high school, didn’t really — I knew I wanted to do a career kind of in healthcare — didn’t know exactly which avenue I wanted to go down. And being a relatively healthy kid, I kind of had a little bit of a health scare kind of in my senior year of high school. I had appendicitis, had kind of the first time I was exposed to the medical system to kind of that degree. And then you know, I was thinking in my head, ‘I’m missing all this school, I’ve got to apply to college’ — in Canada, it’s universities, but I guess the U.S. equivalent would be colleges. I’m like, ‘I’ve got to apply to all these universities, I’m missing all this school, I’ve got to kind of recover.’ And being able to interact with different healthcare professionals in that environment, for whatever reason, the pharmacist was kind of the one that I was most drawn to. And I think part of it was just that empathetic listening, just taking the time to kind of understand my concerns, kind of where I was. And then I dug a little bit deeper after I got home into the pharmacy as a profession and how much schooling it would require. And it just seemed like the fit that would work best for me.

Tim Ulbrich: And so that led you to the University of Waterloo. So tell us about when you graduated, when you got licensed, some of the early work that you did in long-term care and then the work that you’re doing now as an academic detailer.

Sachin Duggal: Sure. Sure. So yep, so it led me to the University of Waterloo. In Canada, there’s about 10 pharmacy schools. The University of Waterloo is one of two in the province I’m in, so Ontario is the province. It’s kind of the first co-op pharmacy school in Canada. So what that means is they have designated placements or placements to apply to within kind of the program in between kind of periods of studying. At the pharmacy school I went to, it’s a four-year program. It initially starts as kind of 12 months of pure school, so you don’t really get summers in those four years. It’s 12 months of school and then it’s basically four-month increments of school and then a placement or a job placement. What’s really cool is that job placements are — all the potential jobs are on a portal and they’re in completely different environments.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s cool.

Sachin Duggal: Hospital jobs, government jobs, you’ve got community jobs, outpatient jobs, right? And you apply to them and you interview for them. So it is a little bit competitive with your classmates or cohort, but really great experience and there’s always more jobs than I guess students, so you’re definitely going to be able to find something or find a role that hopefully is right for you. Kind of fast forwarding a little bit, you know, finished school, there’s a little bit of — the way we get licensed in Canada, we do the PBC, so it’s a little bit different than the U.S. But there is a bit of a lag time between when we graduate versus when they offer that exam. It’s about — you have like a four-month lull there. You graduate in August, you don’t write the exams until November. And in this four months, you have the opportunity to travel, work, take a break, whatever you’d like to do. For me, knowing that I was kind of looking all this debt, I was like, hey, I really want to kind of get a head start on this a little bit, so I ended up starting right away and just working, working in the pharmacy, getting that exposure, and it also provides you a little bit of practice for those boards, getting exposed to different medications, counseling, all that kind of stuff.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Sachin Duggal: You know, fast forward, get licensed — you don’t find out you get licensed until around Christmastime, so it’s kind of like the worst Christmas of your life or it could be a great Christmas present. So for me, it ended up working out great. It ended up being a great Christmas present and then in January, I ended up taking a job in long-term care. It was about an hour and a half from where I live. I live in a suburb outside of Toronto with about a million people. It’s interesting, so one of the biggest challenges at least I’ve found in kind of the Canadian marketplace is especially for new grads is it’s almost like getting your first job again when you’re 16 in the sense of everybody wants experience, but how do I get experience, like pharmacist experience, if no one’s going to give me a job? Right? So one of the compromises I made was hey, look, time is kind of the essence in the sense of paying off this debt, and I really want to kind of move on it. And one of those sacrifices I made was location. So I was willing to sacrifice location if the right opportunity kind of arose and I didn’t have to necessarily stay at home and stay within kind of the environment I’m comfortable in. So I moved about an hour and a half outside of kind of where I lived, a city of about 300,000 people, working that long-term care environment. I was kind of in charge of about 14 different nursing homes. I was working in clinical operations, which means I was kind of on the bench or kind of in the pharmacy. It was a closed-door pharmacy, so patients can’t walk in and out. We really just focused on servicing these kind of retirement homes and nursing homes. And I was kind of the pointman or kind of in charge of all the new clinical orders that would come through on a daily basis, probably had anywhere from 200-250 new clinical orders. And the way long-term care is set up is really interesting because you don’t learn a lot about it in school is the pharmacists there completely focus on clinical verifications. And what that means is you look at lab values, you look at the drugs being prescribed, and you look at what patients are on, their histories, and is this medication appropriate or not? And if it’s not, you kind of go through the process of getting things changed or making recommendations that may be a little bit more appropriate. You have a large team. So I had a team of about four licensed technicians that would do a lot of the refill requests and the repeat prescriptions and then a whole kind of army of assistants doing all of the order entering, so I didn’t have to handle the start-to-finish that you may typically see in kind of a retail environment. You know, I did that for about a year and we were getting close to kind of paying off all that kind of student debt and some of the things that I employed while I was kind of out in this community was, I mean, one of the big things was it’s a kind of a student city, so there was a big university there, I guess the U.S. equivalent would be like a college, out there. And I lived in student housing, paying about $500 a month to kind of live there really cheap. And then I also cooked large — basically I didn’t eat out very often at all. So I cooked a lot of meals myself, almost like I’m back in school even though I’m not, right? So I was living that kind of student life of just trying to save every dollar and trying to put as much of that paycheck towards the debt. And I threw about — on a biweekly basis — about 65-70% of that check towards that debt repayment.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Sachin Duggal: So huge — basically, my car was fully paid off, didn’t have any debt from that perspective. I had basically apart from student loans, really didn’t have any other kind of debts to worry about. And I saved about 10%, you know, used about 65-70% on that debt repayment, about 20% was on living expenses like food, gas, rent. And then I took a little bit of a risk in not building that emergency fund necessarily right away, but I did try to pocket away about 5% every check or so towards that emergency fund. And you know, I really didn’t have, like I said, very many kind of expenses.

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Sachin Duggal: No mortgage, right? No car payment. So my expenses were really low from that perspective anyways. That was kind of my time. I was there for about a year in that environment and then I was getting really close to paying off this debt and I was thinking, what are kind of the next steps and where do I kind of want to go from here, right? So I ended up taking a pharmacy manager position kind of closer to home, about 10 minutes away from where I was originally from.

Tim Ulbrich: Nice.

Sachin Duggal: Was able to negotiate a really great salary there as well. And then it was a Monday-Friday kind of 9-5 opportunity in a specialty clinic. And then everything was looking great, we had the balls kind of all kind of rolling, and then COVID hit, which kind of stalled that whole operation as a new pharmacy and a new pharmacy practice. When COVID kind of hit and everything just kind of locked down and shut down and you know, a lot of the physicians were working from home and had cross appointments in hospitals and everything was kind of sporadic. We lost a lot of that patient flow within the clinic, and it made it really challenging to keep kind of the pharmacy practice financially viable at the time. So in that instance, myself and kind of the team — it just kind of made sense to just kind of leave that opportunity on the back burner and it may be something we’ll revisit in the future. So now I was kind of stuck in a little bit of a limbo. And you know, I had opportunities. The fortunate thing about going to the university that I went to is those co-op experiences and being able to build that network and having kind of a couple of mentors and a couple of people that can really help guide me in the profession, especially — I’d only been about a year and a half out, right? So I had an opportunity from that point to really take a step back, take a little bit of a break, especially with COVID and seeing how impactful or how dangerous the virus was, right? At that time, we didn’t know a lot. This would have been about April 2020. Took some time and before I kind of jumped into my kind of next role — and that next role was taking a manager position in Toronto at a — basically, it was a pretty underserved community in kind of the northern end of Toronto. Again, another opportunity to be really resourceful and help these patients get access to care and to medications that may be challenging for them to get access to just with kind of some of the experienced I had and just knowing how the healthcare system works within the province. At that time, I saw an opportunity — this was where kind of the academic detailing piece comes in. I saw an opportunity that was posted in one of our — it’s like a Facebook group for our school and for any kind of job opportunities that have come up. And I had a previous preceptor that had done this role. So I reached out to them just to ask them about the role and I was like, this is really cool. I mean, I can’t believe you can kind of make a living basically looking at literature, looking at evidence, providing some of those resources to busy clinicians, so I can kind of explain what an academic detailer is briefly. But basically what we do is it’s a knowledge translation service, typically. So what we’ll do is we’ll pick a disease state. Maybe it’s a disease state that there’s been a lot of kind of evolution or changes, right? So for instance, diabetes.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Sachin Duggal: In the last 5-10 years, there’s been a lot of changes in diabetes and medications that are used to treat the condition. So it’s an opportunity for us to look at the evidence or look at the literature, see which medication if there’s new ones, see where they fit within the whole kind of treatment algorithms, right, from a cost-benefit perspective as well as from a harms and benefits perspective. And then once we kind of as a team with myself and a team of five other pharmacists that kind of come together as well as some other people on the team that kind of gather some of the literature and some of these studies. And we sit there and we sift through the literature and we kind of think about some key points or key highlights physicians will care about, right? Say they’re strapped for time and they really want to know, OK, I’ve got five minutes, tell me what I need to know about this change. We distill those down from mountains and mountains of literature and then we have an opportunity to kind of go out in the field and talk to physicians. And the beauty about it is our academic detailing program is not industry-funded, so there’s no industry bias. It’s funded by the government, so the Ministry of Health. Our healthcare system is a public healthcare system for the most part. The government kind of funds this program knowing that there’s a lot of literature that states from when medications or algorithms change, for them to actually be able to maintain the practice can take anywhere from 10-20 years.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Sachin Duggal: So there’s a big lag between fundamental changes or new breakthrough literature and actually seeing them implemented in practice for patients. That’s kind of the gap we try to fill. And the specific work we do is with family physicians, and we try to tailor every conversation to that specific practice, to their specific patient population, and work with them to see what we can do to help lubricate some of that transition and see what we can do to help them basically practice kind of the best available evidence we have in some of these different disease states.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, what a great use of, you know, a pharmacist skill set, expertise, and education. And I think the role that folks in the U.S. here will connect that to — also very different because you mentioned a publicly-funded healthcare system — would be an MSL position that is industry-funded. I do know a couple of pharmacists that work for the Veterans Affairs, VA, here in the U.S. that do something very similar. One of the things I love about your role, which is similar to what I’ve seen in the VA as well is a component of both practice and academic detailing. So you’re keeping your hand in practice while also providing the expertise in terms of evidence-based cost-effective prescribing. Sachin, at the risk of overgeneralizing an entire country of pharmacists, I suspect our audience is curious, as I was, to hear about some of the similarities and differences with pharmacy education and pharmacy practice in Canada compared to the U.S. And so let’s just start with debt loads. You know, a typical debt load here in the United States for a pharmacy graduate after 6-8+ of education, about $170,000 for the Class of 2021. So generally speaking, what were you seeing among your peers and graduates today when it comes to debt load?

Sachin Duggal: So from a debt load perspective, I believe in Canada, it is a little bit less than the U.S. or could be quite substantially less, depending on the school you go to. So typically on average, you’re probably graduating with anywhere in the ballpark of $100,000-140,000 of debt. Now, it just depends on the city you live in and the school you go to.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Sachin Duggal: So for instance, you live in Toronto and you’re going to pharmacy school in Toronto, cost of living is typically higher there versus where I went to in Waterloo or in the Waterloo and Kitchener kind of area, which is about an hour outside of Toronto. So it kind of depends on the school you go to, but I would say that would be kind of the range as far as the debt load you’re graduating with. Now, there are some opportunities in trying to help manage some of that debt load and there’s resources available to professional students within Canada. So one of them is the provincial loans. So in Ontario, there’s something called OSAP, which is a provincial loan kind of service. It’s also a federal loan service. So they kind of just mash it all together. A portion of it’s federal, portion of it’s provincial.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Sachin Duggal: Yeah, so they don’t have separate applications for a federal one and a provincial one. They kind of just lump it all together. Now, that service is great and basically, you know, it’s an application process through the program you’re in, the school you’re in. Based on the program and the school, you go get basically that — and of course your own financial situation with your family and the money you make — they’ll basically spit out a number and be like, every term — a term here is about four months — so every four months, this is the money we’re going to spit out at you or we’ll give you. It could be like $5,000. It could be like $8,000. It could be more. It just depends on your situation. It is a loan, though. So it is money you have to pay back eventually. The beauty of applying to OSAP is even if you don’t need it out here, I would encourage you to apply as kind of being a student just because I think even if you don’t need money, there’s opportunities that open up where you’re able to get grants from the government as well for continuing your postsecondary education. Again, some of these grants, they range in value. It could be $500, it could be $1,000, could be more. It also opens up the opportunity at your own university to apply to bursaries. So bursaries are opportunities to just get, again, free money from your university to help pay for your education. But one of the qualifications typically to apply for those are you’re in need of some sort of financial assistance or you have some sort of OSAP application in progress or in student loans, basically.

Tim Ulbrich: And then in terms of repayment, you know, here — you and I talked a little bit about this — we unfortunately have a very complicated, overly nuanced federal loan repayment system, which includes about nine federal repayment options, we’ve got forgiveness, we have non-forgiveness, there’s of course private options, there’s income-driven repayment plans, there’s fixed plans. So you know, I think while that provides borrowers with a lot of options, as we’ve talked about many times on this show, sometimes that complexity prevents folks from really analyzing those options and determining which of those paths may be best for their personal situation. So when it comes to repayment of those loans, you mentioned both the more federal type and the provincial type, what does that look like? Is it a simplified repayment option in Canada? Or what does that repayment path look like?

Sachin Duggal: From my understanding, it’s a pretty simplified process. So if you’re going down the kind of, the student loan perspective, OK, so you graduate. Let’s just say you have $100,000 of debt. Now a portion of the debt is going to be a — and you can see it all broken down in your, like on the OSAP website in your portal. But you’ll see like, let’s just say $35,000 is federal and the other $65,000 is coming from a provincial student loan. Their interest rates are different. So I would just say the interest rate is anywhere from 5-7%, depending on if it’s a federal portion or the provincial portion. So when it comes to interest, when you’re looking at kind of the student loan that you’ve taken out, once you graduate, the school kind of notifies the student loan office that, hey, they graduated, you can kind of start that kind of clock. And basically, interest starts accruing from the moment that you graduate. However, you don’t need to make any payments on your loan, your student loan, for six months. It’s called like a six-month grace period. It gives you some time to get your kind of feet under you, find a job, figure out your situation and how you’re going to begin to I guess start repaying these student loans.

Tim Ulbrich: And when it comes to the profession, the market, you know, as it stands in Canada, you know, it’s well known here in the U.S. that again, generalizing for the sake of the conversation, but there’s some downward pressure on pharmacists’ salaries. We have supply of pharmacists and new graduates that’s been going up, so that has led to — again, very much depends on the field — but it’s led to an overall flattening, in some cases a reduction and pressure down, on salaries. And so we’ve got this debt load going up, and we’ve got this salary component that’s flat and in some cases decreasing, which obviously presents a financial challenge. So when it comes to the practice of pharmacy in Canada, what types of trends are you seeing that do or don’t align with what we’re seeing here in the U.S.?

Sachin Duggal: Yeah, so a couple trends that I’m seeing, but I think the U.S. and Canada are very similar situations when it comes to kind of pharmacy and the profession currently. One of the main things is currently, in some of the more urban areas, you know, salaries have been driven down pretty substantially from where they were kind of in the mid-2000s. Part of that is just, again, like you mentioned, that supply-demand piece. There’s just a lot of pharmacists out in urban areas, and the demand — the demand is there, but it’s just not quite where you’d want it to be in order to get those salaries a little bit higher. When you venture a little bit outside of kind of some of those urban areas and go to some of the smaller cities and even towns, I mean, the salaries are still very competitive and even in some cases, depending on just where — how far out you’re willing to go — you can really get, you can really have some good leverage in negotiating a good salary. Other trends I’ve kind of seen or something else I’ve kind of noticed — and part of that kind of lends to pharmacists who are willing to be a little bit more flexible and see if they think this lifestyle is right for them is there’s a lot of part-time opportunities. And there’s a lot of opportunities to blend multiple part-time opportunities to get that full-time equivalent. And I think that avenue, although it may not necessarily come with benefits and some of the other things that you may want from a stable kind of career, if salary is kind of a main kind of point for you and you’re like, hey, I’m relatively young, healthy, we have a public healthcare system, if I get sick, I’m taken care of, right, I don’t really need — you know, maybe I go to the dentist a couple times a year just for a cleaning, like everything’s pretty good, right, like I don’t need some of these other benefits, then maybe pursuing an opportunity or multiple part-time opportunities to get that full-time equivalent may lend well to negotiating a good kind of compensation package.

Tim Ulbrich: I think that’s a really interesting thought. And I will say, we do see I think some graduates that are taking that approach, partly out of need — maybe there’s not an offer for full-time — partly out interest, you know, two different opportunities that they want to explore past a little bit further. The challenge we have here, of course, is that healthcare benefit, right, and other benefits. So unfortunately, healthcare and purchasing that independent of an employer is definitely a pressure point. But I think we do see new graduates that are taking that approach, and certainly that can be viable. Sachin, when it comes to your own debt-free journey and some of the work that you’re doing now to really accelerate your financial plan, you mentioned that a typical graduate in Canada might have somewhere between $100,000-140,000. You know, you mentioned earlier that you went down this path of very aggressive debt repayment, you know, upwards of 65-70% of your salary that you’re putting toward your student loans, decreasing your expenses. So what was your debt position, No. 1? And No. 2 is what was really behind that goal of aggressive debt repayment? You know, why did you really want to press that forward, perhaps at the expense of other goals that you had in mind financially?

Sachin Duggal: For me, I think the No. 1 motivator was you’re in school — so I was in I guess from the start of university into graduation from pharmacy school, about a six-year process for me. And you know, the whole time, you’re just getting more and more in debt, right, trying to just live within your means comfortably and know that you kind of have some of that I guess that loan money in case you need it for emergencies and of course paying for your tuition and everything like that. But part of the journey for me was I didn’t like that feeling. I just didn’t like the feeling of being in mountains and mountains of debt that can’t be leveraged, right? Like student debt is not really, you know, it’s not a mortgage on a house, right? It’s not an asset, right? So it’s just kind of this debt that kind of just looms over you, kind of just sitting in the background like, ‘Hey, don’t forget about me. You’ve got to pay me back one day.’ And I just really didn’t like that feeling. And the idea — once I graduated, I went from making very little money in some of those co-op positions to now being able to make a pharmacist’s salary and kind of seeing those paychecks flow in, it really got me thinking, OK, this is a lot more money than I’ve kind of ever seen in my life up to this point. Like I need to make sure I set myself up so that I don’t ever have to feel like I’m in a position where I need this paycheck or anything like that. So that idea of freedom and working towards that was the kind Goal No. 1 for me in my life, right? So I looked at that debt and I went, OK, this is not serving me in any way, right? How can I aggressively pay this off? And one of the big strategies I used once I kind of fundamentally made that decision and one thing I recommend to some of my friends when they’re at a fork in the road, right, and they’re kind of like — for me, it was do I pay this debt off very aggressively or do I pay it off a comfortably kind of over x amount of years and save up for other things? And for me, I just kind of sat in a coffee shop and kind of, you know, I was like, OK, I’ve got a little piece of paper, I’ve got one side of this fork and I’ve got the other side of the fork, and I literally went through the pros and cons of each, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Sachin Duggal: And for me, it just stuck out that freedom piece on being debt-free, really having very little expenses, being able to kind of do whatever I wanted — if I wanted to go on a little bit of a vacation, right, I could. I didn’t have to worry about that paycheck-to-paycheck situation. And that really just stuck out to me. And at that moment, I was kind of committed to paying it off. And from that moment, I kind of looked at all the resources available to me and one of the big resources was leveraging my professional student line of credit. So I haven’t mentioned kind of here yet, but in Canada when you’re in professional school — or specifically at least I can speak for Ontario — when you’re in a professional program like dentistry, medicine, pharmacy are kind of the main examples, banks are willing to kind of offer you a line of credit that’s given to you in increments based on your successful completion of studies like —

Tim Ulbrich: Interesting.

Sachin Duggal: Basically, they’ll give you $30,000 per year. Once you’ve proven that you’ve completed Year 1, you haven’t failed, you haven’t flunked out, they’ll unlock the next $30,000. Once you complete Year 2, just shows proof you’re moving onto Year 3. The proof is really simple. It’s just kind of your schedule that you’re in third-year classes. And they’ll unlock another $30,000. So pharmacy school specifically, the major banks, they may have their own kind of rates on what they offer, but the one that I went with offered about $120,000 over the four years, unlocked in $30,000 increments with an interest rate of prime. So for us in Canada, the prime interest rate time I think was — it was around 2.2% or 2.25%.

Tim Ulbrich: Nice.

Sachin Duggal: Much lower than student loans.

Tim Ulbrich: Student loans, yep.

Sachin Duggal: Yeah, so an opportunity right there that I saw was OK, look, student loans, I’m not getting any more student loans. It’s just going to sit there. It’s going to have a much, much higher interest rate. You know, once I graduated, I really started dipping in that line of credit and just thought, let me just pay off these student loans with my line of credit. Much lower interest rate, right, in paying off the line of credit with the bank as well as you get to build your credit score as well. You’ve got a big loan here, you’re paying it back. With the student loans, you may not necessarily be able to build I guess as good will with the bank and kind of show, hey, I can pay off a large amount of debt in a reasonable amount of time.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. That’s really interesting. I’m not aware, Sachin, of anything we have like that here in the U.S. Maybe I’ll stand corrected if a borrower lets me know something or perhaps there’s a unique situation here or there, but makes sense, right? I mean, most of our federal loans, you know, rough numbers, looking about 6%, many for pharmacy school outside of this time with the CARES Act and the pandemic and the administrative forbearance is unsubsidized. So makes a whole lot of sense in that strategy. Is that a widely-known strategy? Or is that something that you were able to crack the code on, you know, in terms of when you had that day at the coffee shop and not as many folks know about that?

Sachin Duggal: I would say like a handful of people in the school definitely know about it, at least when I was going through pharmacy school. So this would have been 2015, around that time. I think the program, at least from what I’ve seen in recent years, has been a lot more aggressive with different banks in the sense that everyone’s trying to I guess capture the professional students and providing that kind of service or kind of that option, right? At the time, there was really only one or two banks that understood the pharmacist, the potential salary, right, the safety of that kind of — giving up that kind of money to a professional student, right? I think now, there’s a little bit more of an acceptance with some of the other banks after some of the success of those that kind of pioneered or started it.

Tim Ulbrich: It makes sense, you know. Here, the banks are very much, for good reason, interested in health professionals but long-term relationships, right? Purchasing a home, eventually you might have a business, a line of credit, perhaps you do investments, you know, which wouldn’t necessarily be our choice, but that’s an option of where folks may go to do other things related to the financial plan as well, so they’re very much looking at that from a long-term relationship with an individual who has a good — in theory, a good financial trajectory that’s ahead of them. Sachin, were there specific resources, books, podcasts, blogs, you know, things that were really helpful and motivating to you in your own personal journey?

Sachin Duggal: For sure. So one, of course, was the YFP podcast. I discovered it close to when I graduated. I think it was around probably January of — like around when I got fully licensed. And I was staring at these biweekly paychecks like oh my goodness. Like I need to save this or invest this or pay off — I need to figure out what I’m doing with this stuff instead of having it just sit in my bank account, right, and not working for me. So YFP podcast was huge at the time. And you know, it’s still a great resource and I still listen to it and see what kind of episodes and I love the evolution and the trajectory you guys have taken. Some of the books that were really impactful for me, No. 1 — and it’s a common book I think that you’ve talked about was “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” by Ramit Sethi. That’s a huge book in the sense of there’s one thing that always sticks out to me, and I’m going to butcher kind of the quote, but he basically says, you know, cut back frivolously on the things you don’t care about and spend kind of extravagantly on the things you do care about, right, or you do want. For instance —

Tim Ulbrich: The money dials. Yep. I love that.

Sachin Duggal: Yeah, yeah. So it’s, for instance, like I’ve got the same laptop I’ve had — the personal laptop that I’ve had since 2012. Don’t really care about upgrading it, right? It’s been a decade, but it still works fine. But if I want to go out and eat and have a good dinner, I don’t want to feel guilty about that. I think setting those money dials and setting that up for yourself and being comfortable with that is huge. Another really good book was just “The Psychology of Money.” It’s by Morgan — I think it’s Morgan Housel.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep. Right.

Sachin Duggal: It’s basically a book about just our relationship with money, and this goes back to what I was talking about with — you know, as a student without very much money going to a pharmacist, right, with some money and how that relationship should evolve and should mature and should change and as you get older and get some responsibilities as well in your life. I thought that book was really great. And the last one for my Canadian listeners I have to mention is a really interesting book. It’s specifically on Canadian finances. It’s called “Beat the Bank.” Yeah, it’s called “Beat the Bank” by Larry Gates.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Sachin Duggal: It’s a great book on — so he’s a — basically, our equivalent of Wall Street is kind of Bay Street in Toronto. Let’s just call it Wall Street, right, for all intents and purposes. But basically, he was a big hotshot banker for one of the big banks out in Toronto. And he just saw how some of the bank would leverage the average Canadian and he saw an opportunity there to kind of write a book about some of the things Canadians should kind of look at and be cognizant of when you’re kind of working on that financial freedom journey or saving and investing. And he kind of breaks it down to a really easily digestible book on the different avenues of investing and what row advisors are and all those fundamentals. So I think it’s a really great fundamental book if you’re just getting started with investing.

Tim Ulbrich: Appreciate the recommendations. We’ll link to all three of those in the show notes, “The Psychology of Money,” “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” and then “Beat the Bank.” I’m going to have to bring myself up to speed one, because I’m really curious, two, one of my boys wants to move to Canada. So I feel like I’ve got some homework to do to be able to help him in the future. Great stuff. You know, one of the last questions I wanted to ask you is we don’t talk enough, I don’t think, you know, as we do stories like yours where we share a debt-free journey, we don’t talk enough about that life after debt-free. And one of the things I felt in my own journey is that, you know, I had always the debt being paid off as somewhat of a finish line in my mind. But it very much is just a starting point. And you know, once you get to that position, then it’s like, alright, what’s next? What are the goals? What are the plans? So as you went through this very aggressive debt repayment, putting away 65-70% of your salary towards the debt, here you are, obviously in a good financial position with a strong foundation going forward, if you look ahead over the next 3-5 years, what’s happening? What’s the priority? What’s the goals now that you’ve got this debt behind you?

Sachin Duggal: It kind of goes back to that little fork in the road, right? I’ve been really trying to has out kind of the next steps and where I want to go. And one of the big pieces is owning a piece of real estate. It’s just been really challenging with where the market’s at right now and kind of seeing how that evolves and where that goes. But for me right now, it’s kind of staying the course and continuing to invest. So a lot of my money now goes into investments. You know, I’ve maxed out kind of our equivalent of kind of that Roth IRA and 401k as well. So our equivalents are kind of maxed out. It’s really just kind of seeing where the opportunities are. I think especially with the pandemic, it’s almost like — I’ve kind of never seen such a bounceback in the economics so quickly after I guess something that would be considered kind of a recession, right? When you look at kind of where the stock market was initially when the pandemic hit and where it is now, it’s crazy. It’s only been a year and a half. So I think right now, it’s just investing, looking for an opportunity to invest in real estate that makes sense. And then kind of going from there, I think the most important thing is just not letting your money or that paycheck kind of sit in your bank account and kind of die or lose to inflation. Have that money working for you in some sort of avenue.

Tim Ulbrich: And that’s what I love about the intentionality of what you shared. And I’ve heard among others as well is, you know, if we think about the debt-free journey for some just being the starting point, you’ve got years and repetitions of behaviors now, right? So you’re obviously not forever going to be living on the low expenses that you did. But you’ve done that hard work, you’ve got the mindset. And now it’s about OK, how do I be more opportunistic in terms of growing wealth, taking those next steps with investing in real estate and other goals that you’re going to have in the future. Greatly appreciate, Sachin, you coming on the show. Loved this conversation, learning more about what some of our pharmacy colleagues in Canada are facing and some of the opportunities. And I’m hopeful that not only your peers in Canada will find this helpful but also the YFP community and pharmacists that are practicing here in the U.S. So again, thank you for your time and for coming on the show.

Sachin Duggal: Thanks for having me, Tim. I really appreciate being on and looking forward to more great episodes.

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