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Month: March 2022

YFP 249: 3 Silent Killers to Your Investments

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3 Silent Killers to Your Investments

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, YFP Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker CFP®, RLP®, talks about the three silent killers of your investment pie and how to keep your investment portfolio fit.

Episode Summary

In this episode, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP®,  to discuss the three silent killers of your investment pie: taxes, inflation, and fees. After a brief discussion about the most recent success of YFP Speaking Engagements, Tim Baker gets into the weeds on strategies to ensure financial security and freedom by protecting your investments. Tim and Tim discuss, in detail, how to keep your financial portfolio fit through evaluating your fees, investment choices, and the utilization of tax planning. Tim Baker explains some of the most common fees associated with investment plans and that often, investors do not know what exactly they are paying in fees. He shares the impacts of inflation on your portfolio over time and how to ensure financial security after retirement. You will also hear Tim Baker speak on his personal experiences as a CFP® and how tax planning permeates all parts of the financial plan, despite many planning firms not offering tax planning as a service. Tim Baker shares his answers to frequently asked questions like: why is inflation overlooked concerning the financial plan? What is the solution to inflation? How can market stability and fees negatively impact your retirement investments?

Key Points From This Episode

  • An introduction to today’s topic.
  • The importance of including tax in your financial plan.
  • How tax permeates all parts of your financial plan.
  • Tim Baker shares some of his experiences regarding tax, working as a financial planner.
  • Some examples of simple tax reduction strategies.
  • How to ensure the withdrawal of investments after retirement in terms of tax.
  • A discussion on inflation trends.
  • Why it is important to consider inflation in your financial plan and investments.
  • We learn how investments can help you get ahead of inflation.
  • A detailed discussion on the issues and impact of fees on your investment.

Highlights

“I think what you can’t do is just not participate. I don’t think you can stuff your mattress and hope one day you wake up, and you’re going to have enough to retire.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:21:32]

“I think it’s really important that we understand those dynamics and know that we’re not always going to be in a low inflation environment.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:24:30]

“It’s really important to understand how inflation can play a role in your ability to sustain yourself in the future.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:24:34]

“I think a lot of people are unaware of what they’re actually paying, and the transparency is a real thing that needs to be overcome.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:24:09]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody, Tim Ulbrich here. Thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast, where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. 

This week, I had a chance to sit down with YFP Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning Tim Baker, to talk about the three silent killers of your investment by taxes, inflation and fees or easier way to remember as Tim, mentioned on the show, is how to keep your investment portfolio fit by evaluating your fees, investments and tax planning. A few of my favorite moments from the show include hearing Tim, talk about common tax mistakes he sees pharmacists making, and why he decided early on to bring a tax practice in house with the financial planning services. Why inflation is often overlooked? But an important part of the financial planning consider. What the antidote to inflation is? Why those nearing retirement should be looking closely at inflation and the volatility of the market? Finally, the common types of fees associated with the financial plan. Why these fees can have such a large impact on your investment portfolio?

Now before we hear from today’s sponsor, and then jump into the show. I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP Planning offers, fee-only high touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner, may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning financial planning services are a good fit for you, we know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. 

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor Insuring Income and then we’ll jump into my interview with Tim. 

This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation-disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top-rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies so that pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and make sure all of your questions get answered along the way. To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics, visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. 

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:41] TU: Tim, excited to have you back on the show. 

[00:02:43] TB: Yeah, Tim. Glad to be back. What’s going on?

[00:02:45] TU: It’s been an exciting start to the year. 

[00:02:47] TB: Yes. 

[00:02:47] TU: Lots of exciting things going on at YFP. We’re heating up the season of some of the speaking engagements that we’re doing for the year. Grateful for those opportunities, I think the team is humming and moving forward. It’s been a good, good first quarter of the year. You’ve got an exciting trip coming up tomorrow. I think you’re leaving, right, International.

[00:03:05] TB: Yeah, going international. My wife Shay, shout out to her. If she listens to the show, sometimes, sometimes not is running the Paris marathon. A couple of weeks ago she actually had fractured her foot in a misstep. She’s been doing a lot of cycling and pool work and things like that. She got the news a couple of weeks ago that she could run again. So she’s, yeah, she’s raring to go, heading out and excited to visit Paris again. It’ll be her first time and yeah, just enjoy some one-on-one time without the kids. It’ll be nice. I’m excited. I feel we’ve been so cooped up, because of the pandemic, haven’t really been traveling as much. Yeah, I’m pumped up. 

To go back to that thing Tim, I was shocked. I think when we actually sat down, and you tallied up the reach that YFP has had or the last couple years with, I think it was 72 different schools and associations that we’ve been speaking with and doing presentations and things like that. I think that was a little bit shocking to me but awesome to see that number and see it continue to grow. 

[00:04:12] TU: Yeah. We’re so grateful for that opportunity. We’ve partnered with just over 70 different organizations. It’s been Colleges of Pharmacy, State Associations, National Associations, Fellowship Programs, Residency Programs, some of the businesses that are out there and entrepreneurs, so super grateful for that opportunity. I think the reach to that has allowed us to have as we as we look to help more and more pharmacists on their mission towards achieving financial freedom. We’re looking to grow in that list here. If anyone is listening that, is looking to have a session on personal finance, financial education, we’d love to engage the YFP team, the YFP Planning team, so you can reach out to us at info at yourfinancialpharmacist.com. 

Tim. Today we’re talking about silent killers to your investment pie. We’re talking about things like tax inflation fees. We’ve talked about these separately on the show, but I want to keep coming back to these, we’re going to bring these together. We talked so often about the hard work of building your investment pie, right? Ultimately, we’re going to be paying ourselves out of retirement paycheck, we’ve got to do the hard work to save early, save often, take advantage of that time value of money. We might be underestimating the impact the silent killers like tax, inflation, fees that may not be as obvious or as front and center, but certainly can have an impact on our financial plan. 

We’re going to go through these one-by-one in three parts. We’ll start with the taxes, we’ll then talk about inflation, we’ll talk about fees, we’ll reference previous episodes, we talked about these for folks that want to dig deeper in any one of these topics. Again if you’re going to do the hard work, and you’re going to build that investment pie, we want to do as much as we can to maintain the integrity. Tim, let’s start with tax season. Could it be better timing, were about half a month now, away from the IRS tax deadline, the YFP tax team is knee-deep and making sure we get the tax filing and returns, and a shout out to that team if they’re listening to this episode. Here we are, it’s front and center for lots of folks, maybe they’re looking at the returns that they filed, and maybe they got it spot on, maybe they saw opportunities to improve, maybe they got a big refund, or were surprised by a bill that was due. So just talk to us about why this topic of tax is so important.

[00:06:25] TB: Yeah. I’m actually looking at the title of this, I see, Tax Inflation and Fees. I think if we were to go in reverse order FIT, this is I think, really about keeping your investment portfolio fit. We’ll go tax inflation fees as we talk here, but I think the reason we kick off with taxes because it just permeates everything, Tim. Every conversation that we have related to the financial plan, there’s a tax conversation close by, unfortunately. One of the numbers that always sticks with me is that we mentioned speaking over the course of a pharmacist career they’re going to make about $9 million. The actual dollars that flow into the bank account is closer to six. That’s alarming, because you’re like, all right, where’s 30 – where’s a good chunk of that go? 

That 3 million, that delta, a lot of that is being soaked up by Uncle Sam, the taxman. What we see related to tax is that there’s typically a lot of dollars left on the table in terms of what you can do to mitigate the amount that the government is taken from you. Again, I think everyone wants to pay their fair share, but no one wants to overpay if they don’t need to. Yeah, and I think for us, as a group I harken back to the day when we were starting, I have launched Script Financial now, YFP Planning, and even before that in my first job and financial planning, financial services. A lot of traditional financial planning firms do not do taxes. I found that to be very problematic, Tim, because, again, I think they’re just so closely aligned with what you’re doing on the planning side, that there needs to be some coordination on the tax side. 

Shortly after I launched Script Financial, we started to do taxes for our clients. It’s not a fun thing to do, the tax work, Tim, as we know, right now, it’s it can be hectic, you’re trying to cram so much work in a small window of time. It’s like trying to manage a lot of projects on a tight deadline that you have inputs and outputs from a variety of people. However, the reason that we do it is, because I think the value that it brings to the overall plan. I’ll give you some examples. When I would do planning for pharmacists, one of the biggest thing a lot of the pharmacists that we are working, with the tail that wag s the dog are the student loans, right? 

The student loans one of the major strategies there is the forgiveness strategy, particularly PSLF, or even non-PSLF, because in that strategy, one of the main techniques you could do if you’re married is to file separately to disallow the income of the spouse that doesn’t have loans and really just work off of the AGI and the student loan payment is off of one the spouse versus two. The problem is this, Tim. I say this like I would build out these dope, that’s the official term, dope, financial planning strategy related to the student loans. Then the client would say, “Hey, Tim, do you guys do taxes?” We’re like, “Nah, we don’t, but go work with his accountant across the street. They’ll hook you up.” We like what they do. But the problem is that, because most financial planners don’t understand student loans, so I think the stat out there that I saw is that 33% of financial planners will work with clients on their student loans. 

That doesn’t mean they necessarily understand them, but they’ll at least address them. That means the overwhelming majority don’t even really look at it. The problem is that because advisors don’t understand student loans, typically the accountant that they work with don’t understand it, and in 99 out of 100 times, for most people file in anything, but filing jointly for a married couple is wrong, but we just happen to work with a lot of pharmacists that it does make sense because of the huge benefit you get from maximize the forgiveness. I just got fatigued by building out this great debt plan, and then it being messed up by the lack of technical expertise on the tax side of things to see that through. 

Then I think the other piece of this is we’re planners, right? I want a plan. I remember, again, back in the early days, I would hire a tax person to do my own personal taxes, and I’m a business owner. So when I got a good referral from someone, I met with them, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we’ll be able help diagnose some things with your business and all this.” I’m like, “Great, that sounds awesome.” Then a couple months rolls around, I’m like man, it’s April 14th, where are my taxes? I sent out an email, and I get an email back, and it’s a PDF of the tax return some DocuSigns to sign, and then an invoice. I equate, it seems like a paper route, right? It’s like, here you go. Chuck the paper out the window, you figure it out. I just didn’t like that, because again, I was looking for things that and I’m a nerd like that. 

Again, as a business owner, I want to make sure like, am I doing everything to mitigate my tax exposure. I just got zero guidance, zero planning based on – planning advice based on last year’s activities. I really wanted that. To me, I think there’s a lot of people that want that and are trying to figure out ways to get in front of the taxman. Then finally, I think just the reason that we did it is like I said before, is I think it’s just the coordination of your financial plan. It’s not just the debt piece. We would work with clients in my last firm where there probably needs to be a healthy conversation regarding the investment portfolio, just that this wasn’t had. I understand. I get it, during tax season it’s really hectic. 

You’re just trying to move the return through, but at the end of the day, the reason that we make sure that everything goes through the lead plan of the CFP, it’s a check to say, “Okay, does this jive with everything else that we’re trying to do.” Not this debt, but the investments and whatever else is on the client’s plate just to make sure that there is a clear intention of, hey this reporting period and Q1 all the way up to April 15. This is really a reaction to what happened last year. But then what are the things that we can do or what are the things that we learned from this year that we can apply to the present year in this case, 2022? 

I think if you stack just the financial plan, I think if you stack years of doing that, you really shrink that delta, that 9 million to six. I think you really start to shrink that in terms of what you’re keeping in your pocket. I think for most people out there that’s worth the conversation and with the planning. 

[00:13:11] TU: Yeah. Tim, just to that point that the delta significant and of itself 9 million to 6 million, and you and I both agree, like taxes have value, right? They provide services we all appreciate. We want to pay our fair share. It’s not just the delta, but also how can that delta be put to use, and what is the effect to that?

[00:13:26] TB: Yeah, exactly. I think that there’s just a lot of – from things that we see with clients, there’s just a lot of meat on the bone. There’s a lot of opportunity to, hey, have you thought about this? Or as an example, HSAs those are our every week, we talk about them a lot, but a lot of people don’t necessarily fund them. Even things related to children FSAs, particularly for dependent care, making sure money goes through their, education planning. Sometimes there’s this singular focus on things like Roth IRA and conversions, and backdoor and all that kind of stuff. It’s like, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation yet. I think some of it is overconfidence for the taxpayer of what’s important and what’s not. 

We see a lot of things with taxable accounts, Robin Hood, things like that, where there are, there’s a focus there that really shouldn’t be or disallow losses due to wash sale rolls or things like that. We’ve seen lack of record-keeping for side hustles as we’re talking about Schedule C, income expenses, lack of coordination for charitable giving with a larger deduction these days. There’s a bunch strategy where you should be bunching your charitable giving versus doing a consistent year over year. Cryptocurrency, we could have a whole thing on that, Tim. Cryptocurrency and then just the overlay of, hey, there’s a huge refund or a huge tax bill, that I think sometimes it’s due to either a lack of planning or a lack of follow-through on the planning or just an understanding of how withholding or the W4 works. 

This is a sample of things of what we see and I think again if you can start to work through some those issues, Tim. I think you start to see. Again, it’s hard to quantify year over year, but these are just little tweaks here that I think we talked about the investment portfolio being a rocket ship, sometimes like fees and things like that is drag on that. I think the same thing could be the case with taxes and your net worth, your financial plan.

[00:15:20] TU: Yeah. It’s great stuff. The compound effect of those changes I think about someone who unlocks things like the HSA or is able to really look at some of the bunching strategies or other things that you mentioned dependent care FSA, etc. or priority of investment and making sure you got that, right. It’s not only getting that advice, recommendation strategy put in place today, but what does that mean going forward in the compound effect of that. We talked about lots of that. We had our director of tax, Paul Eikenberg, on Episode 233, we’ll link to that in the show notes. We talked about some of the common tax strategies, tax mistakes that pharmacists should be thinking about. 

I’m glad you brought up the student loans to kick off that conversation. Just last week, we had three PSLF success stories, and through those stories, we heard about some of the optimization strategies and of course, one of that would be the filing status, which folks may mess up if they’re not getting good advice there. Tim, one of the things I’m really excited about and shout out again, to the tax team that’s been hustling this season, is you and I think are really behind this vision and approach of, yeah, “We got to file the IRS as we have to do it, or else they’re going to come knocking on our door, that’s great, we’re going to keep doing that, but we’re going to do that, really, if it’s a part of the planning and the strategy.” 

So you gave that story of April 14th, here’s the DocuSign, sign it, here’s your bill, that’s great. I mean, that’s stuff that’s been done, it’s in our rearview mirror. Let’s talk about what we can do going forward to really optimize the plan and perhaps avoid some of the mistakes that were made throughout the year. So we’re excited about really shifting away from just that filing to more that year-round planning, that strategy, that mid-year projection, that pivot, how do we really optimize this with the financial plan? Well, this tax season, we’ve closed the doors in terms of new folks that we’re going to be doing tax returns. Again, we’ve only got about 15 days, couple of weeks left in the season. We are going to start to build out a list of folks that are interested in more that year-round planning optimization and you can go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax and get more information there. 

[00:17:19] TB: Yeah. I think the other thing that can take into consideration here is right now, we talk a lot about the accumulation of the portfolio and how tax is related to that. I think the other thing is really looking at the withdrawal. When you’re a pre-retiree, and again, simple if you have a million dollars in your traditional 401K, a million dollars, saying a Roth IRA, and a million dollars in a taxable account. Unfortunately, all of those dollars are not yours, particularly the traditional Uncle Sam so has to take the bite of the apple. But one of the main things that we look at when we’re trying to structure a paycheck that is going to be able to sustain that retiree for the course of their lives is the tax and minimizing the tax burden and how we draw on each type of account and the best strategy for it. A lot of that is a tax conversation. 

To me, it’s something that, it’s again, permeates every part of the financial plan, but it’s also every stage of life. There’s even conversations of okay, how do we structure, how much in this bucket or this bucket, as we are accumulating to get in front of that when we are starting to say, “Okay, I’m 65, I’m retired. We’re going to use 30 years as I’m going to live to 95, just to model this out. How do I draw from each bucket? Overlay things like social security and everything else, to make sure that I – the biggest I think stressor for a retiree is, “Am I going to have enough money? Is the money going to run out? I don’t want to be destitute or have to rely on family.” It’s really trying to, and again, if we can hold on to more of those dollars, that still have to be tax or take those moneys when you’re in a lower tax bracket, or whatever that is. It’s really important to have that coordination. It’s a frequent conversation. It’s not just, hey April 15th, come and gone, and it’s something that we continually look at and make sure we’re on top of.

[00:19:15] TU: Well, thanks for being a wet blanket, Tim.  If I’ve saved a million dollars, I might actually not have a million dollars. 

[00:19:20] TB: Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that.

[00:19:20] TU: Good plan. That’s a good summary of taxes. We’re going to keep coming back to this topic. So important for all the reasons we mentioned. Moving on to the second one is you mentioned in this concept of making sure and investment portfolios fit. The IB inflation. I think, normally we talk about inflation, and it’s like, nah, yeah, whatever. Especially for folks that are in the first half of their career, we have not seen inflation at the rate that we are seeing it right now. 

[00:19:46] TB: Yeah. 

[00:19:46] TU: Certainly it has been higher than that historically, but it’s well above what we had expected be on an annual rate. So we’ve got as of January if you look at the yearly rate we’re hovering around 7%. We talked about this in episode 239: Two Financial I’s You Might be Overlooking: Inflation, I-Bounds, will link to that in the show notes. Since that episode, I would say this has been exacerbated by the unfortunate situation in Ukraine. We see oil prices going up. We see the market volatility that’s happening. Tim, we know inflation is real, we’re feeling it in the moment. Jess and I were just talking about this and in terms of month to month with this is playing out to be in terms of expenses, but still, hard, I think sometimes put our finger on it, and the impact it can have on the plan. Why is that? Why is it so important as we think about the integrity of our investment pie?

[00:20:34] TB: Yeah. I think inflation is really one of the main reasons why we need to invest. I say that if you’re looking at the markets, and right now, the markets are very volatile, up and down, negative in some cases. What you feel is that you want to take your investment ball and go home and be like, “I just can’t take the swings, Tim.” –

[00:20:54] TU: I’m feeling right now. I’m not going to lie, Tim. 

[00:20:55] TB: Yeah. I don’t looking at my accounts and seeing X and then the next day and seeing X minus 10%, 20%, 30% if we have a major correction. I get it. I think, if you’re 20, 30 years from your retirement date, and that’s the purpose of your portfolio. I think you really have to train your heart and your mind to be like, “Okay, it’s going to come back. Let’s not worry about it now.” I mean, if you’re in retirement now, and you’re relying on that, and we don’t have a good bucketing strategy, or what have you to sustain those losses, then I think it’s more problematic. But yeah, you can’t – I think what you can’t do is, is just not participate. I don’t think you can stuff your mattress and hope one day you wake up, and you’re going to have enough to retire. 

I think the inflation piece is one of the main reasons why we need to invest. One of the examples I gave is that $4 latte that you buy at your local coffee shop in 2020. If you use historical rates of inflation over the next 30 years 2050, that same latte will cost $10. But I don’t know, that’s a great, good enough example, Tim. Let’s put it another way. If you make $120,000 as a pharmacist today, and we fast forward 30 years and we’re using historical rates on inflation, which is typically most planners are using about 3%, which we know this year is high. It’s low because we’re seeing seven-plus. 

$120,000 today as a pharmacist in 30 years, that would be equivalent to $291,000. Think about that, $120,000 today would be equivalent to $291,000 in 30 years. From a planning perspective, if we’re trying to build out a portfolio that can generate a paycheck that is some discount at that 291 because we know that social security is going to be there. It’s going to be limited than what it is today, so we can take a little bit off for that. Then you’re probably not saving some of that 291 would go to retirement savings, but if you’re going into retirement, you’re not going to be saving for retirement. 

There’s some discount to that, but the idea is that, let’s say it’s $200,000, or let’s say it’s $180,000, whatever the case is. We have to be able to build a sustainable portfolio so then, Tim, if you’re my client at 65, 30 years from now, or whatever the number is. You’re going to say, “Hey, where’s my $200,000? At 66. “Hey, where’s my $200,000.” All the way up until 95 or whatever we’re planning as nobody knows when they’re going to pass away. 

That is really important, because the investments particularly an equity portfolio, in your accumulation phase is going to be really important for you to stay in front of inflation, and the taxman, quite frankly. So yeah, and just a backup, we talked about this in the “Two I’s”, when we talk inflation, it’s really, inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. What it basically means is that a basket of selected goods and services in the economy will increase over a period of time. Sometimes that is due because the government is printing money, which is certainly true. In our case, we talked about quantitative easing and things that. It could also be supply and demand. So one of the things that you didn’t mention outside of the Ukraine crisis is all of the boats that are at the Port of LA or that are still need to be unloaded because of pandemic or whatever, that’s causing a lack of the supply demands, making prices go up. 

I think it’s really important that we understand those dynamics and know that we’re not always going to be in a low inflation environment. It can’t go up it has this year because of X, Y, or Z. Even back, if you look back in the 80s, in the early 80s, inflation was 13 and a half percent, and mortgage rates, as a result, were close to 17%. If you think about we know rates are going up now, there’s been a steep decline, and I think the government is trying to do what they can, but the fact is, we have printed a lot of money in the past that could rear its ugly head. I think the way that we can mitigate the impact of inflation is really to invest in equity stocks, and hold it over a long period of time, Tim. 

We know that we’re talking about 20 plus years, we know that the stock market is fairly predictable. Typically, over a 20 year period, the stock market will return about 10% on average, and if we have just that down for inflation that’s seven. So this year, that might not do a whole lot for you, because that’s the rate of inflation, so you’re breaking even at that point, but to me, it’s really important to understand that how inflation can play a role in your ability to sustain yourself in the future. Again, we’re feeling the pinch now, because inflation has gone up so high, and so much in a shorter period of time, where we’re starting to really notice. 

Tim, I’m sure with four boys, you’re noticing it with your food bill, or even we’re seeing in at the pump. Those are things that you were seeing it with housing prices, right? Those are things that get our attention, but we’re probably not thinking about how this affects us in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, depending on your timeline for retirement.

[00:26:15] TU: Yeah. As a shout-out to your 76 years, you got to trust the process.

[00:26:18] TB: Trust the process. Yeah.

[00:26:19] TU: When you say investing is the antidote to inflation, a lot of people hear that in the moment and they see the volatility, and they’re like, “Ah, it’s the opposite of what I’m thinking.” 

[00:26:30] TB: Right. 

[00:26:30] TU: We’ve got to zoom out. I think this is where the power of accountability and a coach and having that long view is so valuable. Tim, I’m also thinking about the folks that are listening that are, “Hey, I’m nearing retirement.” Or I thought I was going to make that decision here and the next year or so and here we are when I’m going to be going into retirement in a high inflation period. I’m going into retirement, while there’s also a lot of volatility in the market. Just talk to us for a moment and another episode for another day about the timing of that decision of retirement when we start to draw from our portfolios, and how in high inflation period, and a high volatility period could have an impact on that.

[00:27:07] TB: Yeah. It’s probably – so what we’re talking about here is sequence risk. Sequence risk is essentially where what you’ve accumulated over the course of your career takes a hit. We’re talking 20, 30% which could be very well beyond the horizon for us in terms of a correction of the market. So now you’re will use a million dollars, let’s say your portfolio was a million, and then it bottoms out to $700,000, but then you’re also taken $80,000 a year, or whatever the number is. 

So in two years, and three years, you could see where your portfolio is almost half of what it was when you actually went to retire. You’re like, “Well, I had a million and now I have $560,000.” Or whatever the number is, that’s where you really see a higher rate of failure to the portfolio failure meaning that the money runs out, that balance goes to zero before you reach your end of plan year, which a lot of people use 30 years, so if you retire at 65, 95. It’s the combination of the portfolio being down, and then drawing down the portfolio at the same time, you almost can’t make it up. 

I have a little bit experience, it’s just a proxy. I remember, my first job out of the military was with Sears Kmart. It actually took over – I was a trainee for my first year. Then I took over for a lady that retired. This was right around ‘08, ‘09, and that’s when the market just completely got, the market was completely down, because of that subprime mortgage crisis. I think she actually had to go back to work because her portfolio took a beating and then she was actually drawing on it. She quickly realized that she needed to not draw on that portfolio. So really, in these periods of time right leading up, you could probably say about five to 10 years before retirement, maybe in five to 10 years after retirement, that’s where you need to be the most conservative. It’s the eye of the storm. 

In for some people, it makes a heck of a lot of sense not to retire than – and try to push it off, sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes 40% of people retire sooner than they think either because of illness for themselves or for a family member or, or it could even be being pushed out of the workforce. Sometimes it’s out of your control, but when you overlay these decisions with things security, when to claim that and all that, it’s super important. You could do everything correct for 30 years leading up to retirement and then that those first couple of years in retirement be blow up your playing completely. That sequence for us at its finest.

[00:29:59] TU: We’re going to come back to some more episodes, we have planned out on building that retirement paycheck in consideration as you’re making that transition from all the hard work you’ve done, and now making sure we’re able to sustain that. We’ve talked about taxes, we’ve talked about inflation, certainly not least, but last on our list is fees. We know that fees can have a major impact on how much wealth one is able to build and something that many folks may not realize of how big that implication can be. We went into detail about fees on Episode 208, Why Minimizing Fees On Your Investments is so Important, we’ll link to that in the show notes. 

Tim, summary here of fee something that we harp on over and over again, that folks may not be aware of those fees often are not as transparent as perhaps we’d like them to be. So as we continue this theme of some of the silent killers of the investment pie. Talk to us about fees.

[00:30:52] TB: Yeah. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right, Tim? When you’re investing or if you’re working with an advisor, there’s typically a costs associated with that. I think the thing that I think bothers me as an advisor, but then also as a consumer is the lack of transparency, right? We know even in healthcare, there’s people get upset about what is the actual price or even we talk about PBMs, and things like that. I think a lot of it comes down to transparency, and what’s going on behind closed doors. To me, and we see this a lot and actually, we recently, we have clients that are prospective clients booked time with us to see if they would be a good fit. 

We’ve added a button that they can upload a statement so we can talk at a high level, if they’re working with advisor what they’re actually paying, because most people either have the notion of, I’m not paying anything, which that’s actually a common belief or they know that they’re paying something, they just have no idea and often is the case that they’re paying a lot more than what they think. I always go back to this story. I remember, so my first job out of the military with Sears then I had another job with a construction company. I was like, “You know what, I want to do something completely different, go into a new industry.” I was like, “Hey, Mom, I think I’m going to become a financial planner.” I think verbatim, she said to me, “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” I’m like, “Why?” She’s like, “Well, we work with this as advisor and we don’t pay them anything.” I’m like, “That can’t actually be true.” Years later, when I understood the landscape a little bit, actually peeled back the onion, and they were paying over $8,000 in fees, unbeknownst to them so. 

To me, I think, it’s fees are aren’t necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s the transparency around that I think needs a lot of work. Really, the fees that we’re talking about here, Tim, that are most common are things advisor compensation. These are things that you would, these are fees that you would pay or commissions that you would pay to an advisor to either provide financial planning or investment advice to you. One of the more common things that we see is an assets under management fee. This is like, “Hey, Tim you have $500,000, and I’ll manage for you, I’ll charge you 1% in the fees. 5000 I’ll bill that right out of your investment accounts.” That’s very common. 

To be honest, that’s one of the reasons that pricing structure is one of the reasons why when we do find younger pharmacists that are working with advisors, so they’ll either be shut out, meaning the advisory would say, “Hey, young pharmacists, I’d love to be able to help you, but I can’t.” It’s not really because they can’t, because they don’t have those assets for you to manage that – in term of that that 1%. They’re either shut out of the market, or they’re sold, I would say less than suitable products, so they can make a commission and do some work with them. They kind of wait for the assets to build over time. 

This is where, if you’re out there, and you’re in pharmacy school, or shortly thereafter, someone tried to sell you a life insurance policy, a disability policy, those are the next best thing for a lot of advisors that can earn a commission, “help the client” and then stay in touch with them until they have some assets for them to manage. It can be the same things like, “Oh, well invest your Roth IRA, and we’ll sell you in A-share mutual.” I was looking at a statement where there’s both an AUM fee but then A-share. Any share mutual fund is a front loaded commission. You pay five and a quarter percent on that and the advisor gets the commission and goes from there. 

There’s lots of other fees there, Tim, related to advisors, hourly flat fee, there’s could be a hybrid unrelated to the investment portfolio, but still in mix, there are things like Life Insurance Commissions, Disability, Annuities, we recently saw a non-traded REIT, which is really sweet for the advisor, because that’s sometimes 6, 7, 8% terms of commission. So that’s a big piece. I think a lot of people are unaware of what they’re actually paying and the transparency is a real thing that needs to be overcome.

[00:35:08] TU: Great summary. We’ll get rolling back to Episode 208. Why Minimizing Fees in your Investments is so important. I think the transparency is one piece, Tim as you mentioned also just the tendency, we have to underestimate the impact of something like 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 right? As we look into individual investments.

[00:35:24]TB: Yeah, absolutely. I think if you’re not working with an advisor, there are other things that are present probably the biggest one is expense ratio, Tim. Justin probably – Justin was our director of business development, working with another advisor for years, before he came on to YFP. His portfolio, his all in expense ratio was about – it was almost 1%. 0.91 to be exact. What the expense ratio, it’s what the fund takes. If you have ABC mutual fund that’s managing billions of dollars, they might take 0.91% to pay for the mutual fund manager, the analyst, the fancy office on Wall Street, pay for information. They do that to keep the lights on. You basically buy that to get exposure to lots of different stocks and bonds, because that’s what a mutual fund is, or an ETF. 

0.91% on a $100,000 portfolio is $910 per year, whereas if you do something YFP portfolios, .05, so why would I pay 1000 bucks if that guy pay 50 bucks and have similar results and things like that, but so that the expense ratio is a huge one. Platform fee, some, when I was in the broker deal where we would charge $50 or whatever, just to have an IRA open. There’s things like annual account fees, closing account fees, retirement, especially in a low interest rate environment like you’re just trying to eke out fees, because you can’t make money on the float, but things trading costs, all of these things add up. 

Again, this can just be drag on a portfolio. Those are the four big ones I would say is advisor, compensation, trading costs, platform fees, and then internal to the funds that you’re in expense ratio. What we try to say to clients is like we try to minimize those as best we can, because at the end of the day, we want that portfolio to grow uninhibited as best we can. So there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

[00:37:25] TU: Yeah. That folks are going to pay for advising fee, and we’re not shy about the fees that we charge and the value they bring. The point being is you want the value to bring, right? So as you look at the coaching, the accountability, the holistic nature of comprehensive financial planning. There’s a fee there, and it’s transparent, you want to understand it, you want to feel good, that’s the return on the investment. We’re talking I think about in terms of minimizing other fees or fees that maybe don’t add value, or that are not transparent, so really evaluating closely the impact that those can have on your overall investment pie. 

I’m going to link to a blog post from way back when, that I wrote, we looked at two different individuals that were saving about $1,000 per month between the ages of 30 and 65, because of some of the difference in fees and things expense ratios, or other hidden fees, they ended up with a nest egg that was about a million dollars difference. Again, the impact that we can see over the long run and what those fees can have. 

For folks that want to learn more about the financial planning services that are offered by the team at YFP Planning, perhaps you’re working with a planner and interested in a second opinion. Want to have an analysis of that statement just to get some different thoughts as well or if you haven’t worked with the planner, we’d love to have a conversation as well. Folks can book a discovery call to learn and see if that’s a good fit with our Director of Business Development Justin Woods, also pharmacist and you can do that by visiting yfpplanning.com. Tim Baker as always great stuff and wishing you and Shay the best as you get ready for your trip to Paris. 

[00:38:54] TB: Yeah. Thank you my friend. Good to be on the episode here. I think some good stuff to be – to chat about and probably even expand on in future episodes. So yeah, I appreciate you having me back on.

[OUTRO]

[00:39:05] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacists Podcast, I would like to again thank this week’s sponsor, Insuring Income. If you are in the market to add own occupation, disability insurance, term life insurance or both, Insuring Income would love to be your resource. Insuring Income has relationships with all of the high-quality disability insurance and life insurance carriers that you should be considering and can help you design coverage to best protect you and your family. So head on over to insuranceincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist or click on their logo or link in the show notes to request quotes, ask a question or start down your own path of learning more about this necessary protection. 

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information to the podcasts and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements that are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. 

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacists.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 248: How 3 Pharmacists Had $700,000 of Student Loans Forgiven

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How 3 Pharmacists Had $700,000 of Student Loans Forgiven

Robert Lopez, CFP® and YFP Planning Lead Planner, discusses the current state of the PSLF program, plus three pharmacists share their PSLF success stories.

About Today’s Guest

Robert Lopez, CFP®, is a Lead Planner at YFP Planning. Along with his team members, Kimberly Bolton, CFP®, and Savannah Nichols, he helps YFP Planning clients on their financial journey to live their best lives. To go along with his CFP® designation, Robert has a B.S. in Finance and an M.S. in Family Financial Planning. Prior to his career in financial planning, Robert worked as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician in the United States Air Force. Although no longer on active duty, he still participates as a member of the Air Force Reserves. When not working, Robert enjoys being outdoors, playing co-ed volleyball and kickball, catching a game of ultimate frisbee, or hiking with his wife Shirley, young son Spencer, and their dogs, Meeko and Willow. 

Today’s episode also features PSLF stories from three pharmacists, Kimberly Gale, Ashley Hicks, and Kyle Sobecki. 

Episode Summary

YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, talks with Robert Lopez, CFP® and YFP Planning Lead Planner about the current state of the PSLF program and why the Biden Administration’s PSLF waiver is resulting in a lot of forgiveness earlier than expected. Robert kicks off the conversation with some advice relating to PSLF, who qualifies, what changes have occurred recently, and what it means for you. With over $700,000 forgiven tax-free combined, Kimberly Gale, Ashley Hicks, and Kyle Sobecki share their PSLF journeys and ultimately how they attained PSLF. Each pharmacist shares how they came to decide on PSLF, what challenges they faced along the way, and how pursuing PSLF helped accelerate the process of pursuing other goals. Kimberly Gale shares the story of how she first became aware that PSLF was an option, communication challenges she faced early on, and how forgiveness has enabled her to attain the lifestyle she wanted for her family. Ashley Hicks tells us about roughly $200,000 in forgiveness and the challenges that uncertainty and anxiety posed for her in the process, plus her optimization strategy surrounding the PSLF process. Lastly, Kyle Sobecki shares the details of how PSLF pertains to pharmacists in the non-profit space and tells his story of having over $189,000 in student loans forgiven. 

Key Points From This Episode

  • Introducing today’s topic: the PSLF success stories of three pharmacists.
  • A reminder of who Robert Lopez is and his role at Your Financial Pharmacist. 
  • An overview of the first and second half of the show and what we will cover.
  • The basics of PSLF, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and who qualifies.
  • Which changes were made to the rules of PSLF. 
  • What the big news comes down to: you don’t have to rule out forgiveness.
  • What the limited waiver meant for those in the military.
  • Optimization strategy with PSLF and how Robert recommends you reallocate your finances.
  • The benefit of switching to a lower payment plan while achieving a long-term forgiveness plan.
  • An introduction to Kimberly Gale’s journey into the world of pharmacy.
  • The amount of debt she graduated with and how much was ultimately forgiven.
  • How she discovered PSLF through a friend’s recommendation.
  • Challenges she faced along the way, including communication at the beginning. 
  • How PSLF helped her to afford the lifestyle she wanted for her family.
  • Ashley Hicks’ story of gravitating towards pharmacy because of her love for people.
  • How much Ashley ultimately had forgiven through PSLF.
  • The challenge that uncertainty and anxiety posed within her PSLF process.
  • How optimization and strategy can help navigate late discovery loans.
  • The opportunities that PSLF opened up for her and her husband to focus on other goals.
  • Meet Kyle Sobecki and learn about his work as a pharmacist in a nonprofit hospital.
  • Kyle’s story of having had exactly $189,038.72 forgiven.
  • Homework he has done along the way leading up to choosing PSLF.
  • How PSLF works when you work for a non-profit.
  • Uncertainties and challenges he had along the way. 
  • His advice with regards to filing your paperwork on time each year.
  • Goals the PSLF plan freed Kyle up to pursue including paying off personal debt.

Highlights

“That really is the big news here. Many folks that may have ruled out forgiveness before or thought that forgiveness was still a few years in the future. We’re actually seeing some of those dates come to fruition.” — Tim Ulbrich, PharmD [0:07:00]

“There’s an old adage that says: money is power. I don’t believe that’s true. I think options are power and money gives you options.” — Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:13:33]

“The intent of the program was true. That’s really what they did, is make sure that, if you work for a non-profit for 10 years, you are eligible for forgiveness. They wipe away some of the intricacies that maybe held some people back in the past.” — Kyle Sobecki, PharmD [0:38:43]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here, and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast where, each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, we have a special episode for you, highlighted by three pharmacists sharing their PSLF success stories, in total, more than 700,000 forgiven tax-free. Some of the highlights from today’s show include talking with YFP planning, lead certified financial planner Robert Lopez, about the PSLF program and why the Biden administration’s PSLF waver is resulting in a lot of forgiveness earlier than expected.

We hear from those successful with PSLF about how they determined that PSLF was the best option for them, what bumps along the road they experienced, and how pursuing PSLF helped them accelerate achieving other financial goals. 

Before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 household in 40 plus states. YFP planning offers free only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. 

If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. 

Okay, let’s hear from YFP Planning lead certified financial planner, Robert Lopez followed by three pharmacist PSLF success stories.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:41.9] TU: Robert, glad to have you back on the podcast.

[0:01:43.7] RL: Happy to be here.

[0:01:45.8] TU: For those that haven’t heard you before on the show, I know it’s been a while, tell us a little bit about yourself and the role that you have with YFP Planning?

[0:01:52.2] RL: Yeah, Robert Lopez, certified financial planner, lead planner with Your Financial Pharmacist, been on the team for a little over two years now. I work with clients, mostly pharmacists, we help them figure out how to adult financially, how to pay back student loans, how to be most efficient use of their assets and their income to make sure that they’re living their best life.

[0:02:13.7] TU: I wanted to bring you back on as one of our student loan experts, obviously, you do much more than student loans but have worked with many clients through the public service loan forgiveness, we’ve seen some wins recently and the way we’re going to do this show is we’re going to breakdown some of the nuts and bones of PSLF briefly. We’ve covered that on the show many times before, we’ll talk about some of the updates with the PSLF waiver.

Some of what you’re seeing and working with clients at YFP planning and then the second half of the show, we’re going to feature some YFP PSLF success stories. Robert, before we get into the waiver and make making sure folks are aware of the opportunity out there as a result of that waiver, just quick high level, nuts and bolts of PSLF, who qualifies, who doesn’t, number of payments, how the taxes work.

I know we’ve covered this before, we’ll link in the show notes episode 214, we talked about this as well as episode 90 of ask a YFP CFP but just give us the basics of PSLF.

[0:03:09.0] RL: Yeah, PSLF, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, it’s a program created back in 2008 to offer loan forgiveness opportunities for people who are working in the public sector, right? If you work for a government organization, a not for profit, any organization listed as a 501(c)(3), that just means not for profit, it’s a way for them to get their loans completely forgiven, it’s tax-free forgiveness. 

There are some qualifications, the original PSLF qualifications, which you had to have direct federal loans, which are a type of loans that were created 2010. Anybody who started school after that is probably what they have. It also works for direct consolidated loans, they had to be entered on to an income-driven repayment plan which would have been pay as you earn, which is payee, revised pay as you earn, which is rep payee or income-based repayment, which is IBR.

They had to make 120 on-time payments and that is cumulative, not consecutive, so roughly 10 years but if you took a break you continued counting right back where you left off and that forgiveness just gets wiped away like it was never there. One day it’s on your books and one day it’s not.

[0:04:16.1] TU: We’re going to hear some, I think we need to talk about this, Robert. Three, four years ago, especially when there’s a lot of negative press around PSLF, it was kind of that feeling of, “Is this for real?” We’ve got success stories to share and as you mentioned, especially with the tax-free forgiveness, one day it’s there and the next day it’s not. 

You mentioned the original rules of PSLF and you just outlined those. Suggesting that things have changed. Give us a summary of the Department of Education PSLF waivers, some of the updates that came in fall of 2021 and why that’s such big news for folks out there that may qualify.

[0:04:50.2] RL: Yeah, big change came October 6th, that’s 2021, the Biden administration passed a limited waiver. Limited, meaning, you have one year, you have until October 31st of this year, 2022 to apply for this different waiver. The way it changes, is it changes the types of loans that can be forgiven, it changes the types of repayment plans that can be forgiven, then kind of just how those accounts work. 

The new rules are any previous federal loans, that includes direct, that includes FFEL loans and that include Perkins loans, those are all eligible for forgiveness under PSLF now, assuming you go through the consolidation process. For some people out there who are aware of the consolidation process, it’s where just all your loans gets smashed together and you get a weighted average interest rates, it’s no change, it’s no benefit mathematically.

What it did do is it took loans that didn’t qualify and it made them qualify because it turned it into a direct loan, so you still have to do that but it used to restart your 120 clock when you did that because it’s a new loan and now it does not, so you actually get the oldest loan count on there. Anybody with old loans, it’s a great way to do about it. 

They’ll go back in time and they’ll recalculate all those payments and if you made payments not on an income-driven plan, if you were on, say, the standard 10 year or the extended or the graduated payment plan, those previously did not count as 120 but now they do, those are the biggest change now. All that’s required is you work for a public organization, government or 501(c)(3) not for profit and you have 120 payments.

[0:06:20.0] TU: That was why Robert, as we talk about this and my goal and part of this episode is to continue to shout from the mountaintops so folks are aware and assuming that October 31, 2022 deadline stays for the temporary waiver, obviously, we’ll keep an eye on that but we don’t want folks to miss this window of time, right?

Because one of the things we’ve heard over and over again is, “Hey, I’m four, five, six years in the payments but didn’t consolidate” right? I had FFEL loans, Perkin loans or you know what? I was an extended graduated plan but I wasn’t in an income-driven repayment plan. As you mentioned, once that consolidation piece happens, still an important part of what needs to happen but those payments are then going to count. 

That really is the big news here of many folks that may have ruled out forgiveness before or thought that forgiveness was still a few years in the future, we’re actually seeing some of those dates come to fruition. As we’re going to hear with a couple of stories here in a little bit, that’s something, Robert, I know you and the planning team have been seeing as folks that maybe thought forgiveness was still another two, three, four years away but they’re starting to see that happen now, right?

[0:07:22.3] RL: Yeah, the big thing that everyone needs to be aware of is if they’ve already consolidated their loans and they currently work for a not for profit or government organization, all they have to do is submit the employment certification form and they’ve actually simplified that process even farther. If you just Google PSLF help, it will take you to the government’s PSLF help tool at studentaid.gov.

You fill that out, it’ll create the document for you for you to give to your employer, once that form is submitted, they will automatically go back and recalculate all your payments. Automatically with the government could mean three or four months but it is a process that you no longer have to do anymore work. 

If you’ve already submitted an employment certification form in the past, they’re already going to update you. Some of our clients have had those letters come out the mail that says, “Hey, congratulations, we recalculated 60 extra payments for you” and their numbers just jump from say, 65 to 125 and congratulations for this forgiveness but that’s all that’s really necessary.

Anybody that has those FFEL loans currently, you can go and get a consolidation as well again, studentaid.gov. Come to YFP, we’ll help you through the process as well. 

[0:08:25.0] TU: One of the other benefits, Robert, I’ve heard from several folks is, because of the administrative forbearance, not only are some folks finding that this is happening sooner than they thought it would but also, they haven’t had to make payments for now, going on a couple of years and those have been counting as well, correct?

[0:08:40.6] RL: Yeah, ever since the administrative forbearance for COVID started in March of 2020, no one has been required to make payments and the interest rates have been set at zero. No one’s accruing interest in this time period as well. If you chose to make payments throughout the time, that’s great. You’re just paying off a crude interest, if you had any or paying down principle, you will continue to make payments. 

If not, that’s going to continue until May 1st as of today. It’s always subject to change as we’ve seen with the government but as of right now, those loan payments will turn back on in May 1st and the interest rates will turn back on as well. Yeah, this has been – it’s going to be 27 free payments I believe and then all have counted towards PSLF as long as you qualify for PSLF.

[0:09:23.8] TU: One other thing briefly Robert, I want to touch on that you mentioned before the show that we have not talked about in much detail but for those in the YFP community listening that are in the military pharmacist position, there’s also an important part that they need to be considering here as well. Tell us more about that?

[0:09:37.6] RL: Yeah, as a part of the limited waiver that came out last October, they basically said, if you were in the military and you made payments, those all count on PSLF now as a part of that waiver. Any active-duty military members, any full-time military members, just complete that employment certification form, submit it to your superior officers and you’ll get all your payments to count.

We actually have a client that that’s going to happen for, they’ve been in the military 10 years, they have the wrong loan type, they’re on the wrong repayment plan, none of their stuff counted and now, all the payments are going to count and they’re going to get forgiveness this year.

[0:10:09.4] TU: Awesome example. One of the challenges you mentioned was you know, timeline when we think forgiveness and say, hey, one day you had your loans, the next, you didn’t, we might think of that as an overnight thing, that might be months, right? By the time papers get processed as we talking about PSLF, that could be a challenge or an uncertainty.

Anything else you’re seeing out there? I know there’s been a lot of concern with loan servicing companies that are going to be changing, there’s certainly a fair amount of horror stories with PSLF that are still out there from before the waiver. Other challenges that you’re experiencing, Robert, as you’re working with clients that are pursuing PSLF?

[0:10:43.7] RL: Yeah, the uncertainty is the big one, we know that some loan servicers have ended their contracts with the US government. FedLoans in particular is ending their contract and FedLoans is important because they actually manage all the people who are in the PSLF program.

FedLoans contract is going to expire at the end of this year, they got extended so then we have until the end of 2022 and that’s going to switch over to MOHELA. Anybody that is actually making that move and they apply for the employment certification form to get their loans counted, their loans are going to transfer to FedLoans and then transfer again later this year to MOHELA, it’s unfortunate but it’s just the way of the world at this point.

That’s kind of the biggest thing that we’re seeing is just, who do I make payments to, how does this work? If I make overpayments, will they get repaid to me? Which historically has been yes, but we haven’t seen since the admin forbearance if it’s going to be the same.

[0:11:32.8] TU: Last thing I want to pick your brain on is, I think we’ve done a decent job talking about the benefits of tax-free forgiveness, obviously less money that’s paid out of your pocket, somebody else playing the bill, that’s a good thing.

I don’t know if we’ve done as much on the optimization strategy and the optimization side of this as folks are considering this strategy among others. As we look at someone who maybe making that decision of PSLF yay or nay, I think there’s the tax-free forgiveness but there’s also the question of, what else could I be doing with dollars to move forward my financial plan if I’m not having to put as much towards those loans because they’re going to be forgiven?

I know this is an area that you and the planning team do a lot of work with our clients on. Talk to us more about the optimization strategy here with PSLF.

[0:12:19.6] RL: They, the opportunity cost is that big decision point thereof, “How can I better utilize these dollars?” Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the PSLF route, right? I had a PGY1, PGY2, I was making not a lot of money, I don’t want to make extra payments, I’m going to go income-driven in the meantime and then when I get out of my residency, I’ve got 24 months of payments but I only owe $100,000 in student loans.

I could probably pay this back if I’m going to keep working but if you don’t, we have clients paying $3,000 a month to be aggressive towards your student loans and if that’s your prerogative, awesome but if you were to switch to staying income-driven, maybe your payment drops to $500 a month and now you can better utilize that $2,500 difference there.

Maybe that’s paying down other debts. Some parent plus loans that your parents took out and helped you with to get through school, maybe it’s paying down some credit card debt that you used to travel for residencies, maybe it’s to pay down auto loans, maybe it’s to save for that home that you’ve been – that delayed gratification you’ve had for the last 10 years probably.

Maybe that’s something you want to go towards or maybe it’s starting a family. We see a lot of spouses that decide to go part-time because we have lower student loan payments. There’s a lot of flexibility that that money gives you. There’s an old adage that says, money is power, I don’t believe that’s true. I think options are power and money gives you options, right?

If you have the ability to switch to a lower monthly payment while still achieving this long-term forgiveness plan, it’s saving dollars in the long run but also giving you the option in a short-term to best utilize those dollars for your personal financial life, I think that that’s really powerful.

[0:13:54.5] TU: Great stuff, Robert. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise and experience you’ve had in working with clients at YFP Planning. Now, we’re going to transition here in PSLF success stories.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:14:05.7] TU: Kimberly, thanks for coming on the show.

[0:14:07.3] KG: Thanks for having me.

[0:14:08.8] TU: Before we talk through your PSLF journey, tell us a little bit about yourself including your journey into the profession of pharmacy, where you went to school and the work that you’re doing now?

[0:14:18.5] KG: Sure. I actually came to pharmacy a little bit later in life than most people. I went through my undergrad program like many, I think do, just kind of floundering around, trying to figure out what was a good fit, so undergrad took a little longer than usual. During one of those kind of times in my life where I just wasn’t sure of my direction, my mom suggested, “Hey, why don’t you maybe take a little time off school but maybe go work in a pharmacy?” we’re always interested in that aspect, she was a surgical nurse so I grew up around medicine. 

I was like, “Okay, sure” so I went and applied as a clerk typist for a long-term care pharmacy in my town but ended up never taking the time off school, so I was doing full-time work and full-time school. I decided to get a business degree and just be done with it and then, I just never left the pharmacy, I worked as a clerk typist and then became med tech and I spent about eight years there and then I finally was like, “Well, I’m at the top of my game with what I can do here and I want more.”

So I decided to go to pharmacy school. I went, I started at Touro University of California in 2007 when I was 30 years old and graduated from there and am now after a stint in some in-patient pharmacy work, I am now anticoagulation pharmacist.

[0:15:44.5] TU: Very cool, thanks for sharing the journey. Tell us more about the amount of debt that you graduated with when you came out of Touro and how much was ultimately forgiven through PSLF?

[0:15:56.2] KG: I think, ballpark at graduation was right around, I don’t know, like 280, 290,000 when I entered repayment and then what ultimately was forgiven was about the $352,000.

[0:16:12.4] TU: Okay, obviously some interest that would have naturally accrued on that amount and then more was forgiven than the original balance and amount you had upon graduation.

[0:16:22.2] KG: Yes.

[0:16:22.8] TU: Okay, so our listeners know, we’ve talked a lot about PSLF in the show, they know that PSLF is one of many options when it comes to paying off student loans. My question here for you is, for folks that are – especially on that front end of making the decision about, is it PSLF, is it refinancing, is it something else.

That decision, although it’s very significant numerically can be paralyzing at times and so, tell us more about how you came to the decision to pursue PSLF, especially at a time, I would argue that there wasn’t as much information, tools and resources out there to support those that were on the PSLF journey?

[0:16:59.1] KG: Yeah, I was introduced to the PSLF program while I was still in school. There was an upper classman year ahead of me, had learned about it and was sharing the information about it and then I said, “That sounds like what I’m going to need to do” just because knowing how much I was going to graduate with what a standard repayment plan would look like. I didn’t know a whole lot about refinancing outside of the Department of Education kind of loan programs.

My loans had a variety of interest rates, anywhere from three to almost 8% just across the board and just looking at what extended repayment plan would be, was basically a mortgage payment in it of itself. I was like, “I’m not going to be able to do anything else with my life while I’m under this student loans” you know? The thought of, especially in the Bay Area of being able afford a house, have a child because childcare was going to be $1,500 a month. I was just like.

I’m already older than most of my classmates and this is just going to be part of my life but if there’s a chance that I can get it forgiven in 10 years and be done with it then that was what I was going to pursue, I really didn’t consider anything else.

[0:18:23.3] TU: That makes sense Kimberly, when I think of 280 to 290, especially at a higher cost of living area, out in California, other expenses, you mentioned childcare and so forth, you know 280 to 290, that’s a big monthly payment. You mentioned a mortgage payment that would be a really big mortgage here in Ohio but in California no. 

[0:18:41.2] KG: Right, not so much.

[0:18:42.0] TU: Yeah, I certainly see why that directed you down the PSLF path. Fair or not, there still a lot of skepticism and uncertainty about PSLF and one thing I mentioned to you before we hit record is that, I think there’s some lingering’s of horror stories of early situations and missteps that folks took and that’s still having an impact on perspective PSLF individuals today that are considering that as an option.

My question here is, were there any uncertainties that you had, any challenges that you faced along the way? That is just a long process, it’s a lot of time and I think often, folks are like, “What if it doesn’t go right?” What if something happens along the away? You got to the finish line but any uncertainties or challenges along the way?

[0:19:26.6] KG: Oh yeah. There was a lot of just they were not really forthcoming early on. The servicer wasn’t ensuring that you were in the right type of loans, there’s yeah. I, for the first maybe year I was in, a couple of my loans weren’t in the appropriate format. I finally got the right information, consolidated all my loans but that restarted the 120-payment clock. 

I was already a year later than into the program and so I was like, “Okay, well that’s fine, it’s just I’ll be maybe done in another year” but there was a lot of trepidation because nobody had reached that 10-year mark for a long time so we didn’t know how hard it was going to be, how many we’re going to be rejected. It was just blind faith, all we could do was make sure we were making payments on time in the right type of loan that we were certifying our employment.

I made sure that I was annually and any time I changed job, I changed job one time that I got my employment hours certified and submitted every year and made sure that everything was in line and cross my fingers. One thing that I didn’t realize, what was considered part-time, if one employer considers 32 hours a week full-time, that’s great but if your next employer doesn’t consider 32 hours full-time, then that doesn’t certify.

That is something you have to take into account when you’re thinking about changing jobs as well is that you know, does this job meet the requirement and/or is there going to be some payments that are going to be qualified, that just extends the timeframe.

There was a lot of learning on the go that had to happen and just kind of staying on top of everything and making sure that the documents are all in line was basically all I had to do and then once – 2017, I think was when the first people reached their 10 year mark and started doing their applications and oh my goodness, so many of them weren’t getting approved and for one reason or another, all the things that you started to hear and the reports and you guys were reporting on it, it was just like, “When my time comes up, what’s going to happen?”

Yeah and I think in the back of my mind, I was always a little worried about some administration’s going to come in and they’re just going to gut this thing and before I even get to that point, it’s not even going be in existence anymore. I had that anxiety as well.

[0:22:15.0] TU: Yeah, one of the things I shared with folks, Kimberly, when we were talking on this topic is that I think there’s been more angst previously about administrative changes that might come into program. I think that’s been eased more recently just because the tone has been a lot friendlier towards PSLF and backed up with some actions here in the last couple of years.

I’ve often said, I’m not sure that’s the biggest risk, I think the risk folks need to be thinking about is, what if for some reason I can’t find myself working for qualifying employer, you know? I think, what mobility or flexibility do I have if I need to pivot or move employers, I think that’s often something that folks need to be thinking about.

[0:22:53.9] KG: Right.

[0:22:55.2] TU: Kimberly, my last question for you is, one of the things I often encourage folks to be thinking about is, if you’re going to go into PSLF, go all in. The goal is to maximize forgiveness and minimize what comes out of your pocket. We certainly don’t want to be in the middle, right? Where we’re paying more than we have to and ultimately, those dollars could be forgiven and those dollars could be used elsewhere in the financial plan.

I think PSLF affords folks an opportunity if it’s a good fit for them to be able to pursue and prioritize other financial goals beyond student loan repayment. How did PSLF for you, help you be able to pursue other goals and was that a reality for your situation?

[0:23:33.3] KG: For sure. PSLF and being an income-based repayment, so a lower repayment than standard, did definitely free up some money just on the month-to-month basis and being able to have that meant that I could maybe move to a slightly lower cost of living area but still remain in California and purchase my first home with my husband and we had a child and we could afford to do all of that and then now without any, you know, having the forgiveness taken care of, now I can shore up the other parts of the financial picture. 

You know, making sure that we’re set for retirement, making sure that the kids provided for, for his education and feel a lot more safe and financially sound, so it’s been a blessing. 

[0:24:28.3] TU: That’s awesome. I was really excited when I heard the news of the $350,000 plus that was forgiven, so really excited for you for what lies ahead for the financial plan and thanks for taking time to come on the show and share your story. I really appreciate it. 

[0:24:41.5] KG: Thanks for having me. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:24:45.0] TU: Ashley, thanks for coming on the show. 

[0:24:46.3] AH: Thanks for having me.

[0:24:47.5] TU: Before we talk through your PSLF journey, tell us a little bit about yourself including your journey into pharmacy, where you went to school and the work that you are doing now? 

[0:24:55.6] AH: Sure, so I came to pharmacy to pursue my love of working with people, my passion for healthcare, and really just my desire to give back and so that helper mentality really brought me to my career path of pharmacy and in terms of what that path looked like, I did all of my schooling at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I am a local, so that’s pertinent to know that I paid in-state tuition the entire time I was doing my seven total years of pharmacy course work there in Madison. 

After graduation, I did do two years of residency in Minnesota to specialize in oncology pharmacy and so I graduated in 2011, so after my two years of residency, I took my first job in Chicago at Northwestern specializing in hematology, oncology as well as bone marrow transplant pharmacy and so I was an in-patient pharmacist there for about five or six years before I took another detour and discovered Informatics and so I am currently back in Wisconsin working for UW Heath and I am working in Informatics now, so it’s been a fun journey and I guess now I am somehow about 11 years out of pharmacy school. 

[0:26:20.4] TU: I can relate to that as well. I mean, cool story of chemo training. Obviously you spent time specializing, transition to Informatics not one you commonly hear, so really cool, glad to hear you found that path that you enjoy. Tell us a little bit more about the amount of debt that you graduated with. You mentioned 2011, two years of residency. How much did you graduate and how much was ultimately forgiven through PSLF? 

[0:26:41.4] AH: Sure, yes, so throughout – I mentioned I was in school for seven years in state but it was a pretty direct path and I worked my way through school as well and in spite of that, I had about $200,000 that I took out total in loans throughout that seven years, so that’s the grand total. Actually, I don’t even know if I looked at that number very closely until the last few years when things are really – when I was working with YFP and really starting to get serious about some things. 

[0:27:15.1] TU: Our listeners know if they’ve been listening to the show for any time, we’ve talked a lot about student loans. I mean, they know that there is many options when it comes to paying them all. PSLF is certainly one of those options, so I am curious Ashley, how did you come to the decision to pursue PSLF especially I think at a point in time, 2011 when you graduated where the information tools, resources to support those that were on the PSLF journey just weren’t as good as there today, to be frank? 

[0:27:40.4] AH: Yeah, I would completely agree with that. You know, I think that I sort of by luck even came across the fact that the program was available and new to me, so I truthfully don’t know that I knew a lot about my other options but I did know though was that as a part of PSLF that I had a chance of having my loans forgiven after 10 years and that my payments would remain income-based and so having done two years of residency, it made sense to me that those two years, when my payments were next to nothing would count towards those 10 years. 

Then given the leg in recalculating payments, I kind of determined that almost half of my ten years, my payments would be extremely low and that actually ended up being true. I didn’t really hit what I would consider to be really high payments until the last three years of my PSLF, which luckily for me, two of those, almost two of those ended up being during the pandemic and so it was a lot of faith and believing that the program would work for me and knowing for me that I didn’t want to deviate from kind of the academic setting. 

I think that was another consideration is I knew that I would be tied to a qualifying not for profit organization and for me that didn’t feel like a restriction based on what my projected career path looked like and so you know, given the amount of debt that I had, I kind of took a leap of faith and went for it. I will say I did encounter another professional who was able to tell me that I was doing all the right things to be in the PSLF program about four years in. 

However, I did find that I had about $35,000 worth of loans four years in that weren’t in the program and so for me, that was a point where I was like, “Gosh, do I just pay it all off or do I continue in the program?” and what I ended up doing, my husband and I saved up $35,000 over the next couple of years and earmarked it for that portion of loan that wouldn’t be forgiven in my initial 10-year mark and so that was kind of my backup plan so that I could hopefully be done with all of my loans at 10 years regardless of what was all part of PSLF at that point. 

[0:30:14.0] TU: That’s a common thing Ashley that we hear, where folks realize you know, several years in. I am hopeful as time goes on that that’s going to happen less and less. You know, I think that there’s more and more information out there but especially for folks that were early on in the PSLF, we have to remember 2008, you know, this was enacted legislatively 2007. 2008 was the first group that was really the beginning of the 10 years and so you weren’t too far off from the beginning of it. 

So again, not as great of information that was available. Besides the 35,000 of loans that were not eligible and obviously was a wrinkle in the journey that you and your husband had to kind of work through, were there any other uncertainties or challenges that you faced along the way in the PSLF journey? 

[0:30:54.0] AH: You know, I think that that was the main one. I was very – you know, I’m a pharmacist, we’re all type-A so I was very diligent about completing the paperwork. I was also very skeptical when the program did hit 10 years based on the very low number of people who are seeing forgiveness being successful but other than the late discovery of loans that weren’t consolidated, I think that that was the main hiccup. 

You know, other than that, it’s just that anxiety and that uncertainty about not knowing if you are actually doing everything correctly and when you call the loan servicer, you get a different answer sometimes depending on who you talk to and that’s not a very good feeling and so that’s why I was very excited when I came across the YFP Podcast and I was able to start working with you. 

I actually got a lot of reassurance that made me feel like I was doing all the right things, that I was doing everything in my power to ensure that I was keeping myself eligible and in a position to be forgiven when that day came around. 

[0:32:01.3] TU: Yeah, maybe easy right now that we look back 10 years, you know? It may feel like, “Oh it wasn’t that bad but in the midst of it, you know, especially if there is five plus years ahead of some of that uncertainty, having that reassurance can be really valuable. Optimization of PSLF is something that we’re trying to talk more and more about. Yes, it is nice to have debt that can be forgiven and forgiven tax free, that’s great. 

But there is also this whole other strategy of because you are not making as big of student loan payments, it allows other dollars to be put to work at other parts of the financial plan and you already mentioned earlier Ashley that because of two years of residency and because of the delayed timing of how that income-based repayment amount has increased. You made a comment about five years out of ten, we’re really at a pretty low loan payment amount, certainly much lower than what it would have been like the standard ten year. 

[0:32:52.5] AH: Right. 

[0:32:53.1] TU: Then you also had to adopt at that two years of pandemic and so you saw some great opportunity throughout that ten years because of the residency, because of the pandemic. My question here is, because you weren’t having to make massive student loan payments throughout that entire journey because ultimately it was going to be forgiven, did that allow you to optimize other parts of the financial plan that perhaps you might be playing catch up on now? 

[0:33:14.9] AH: Yeah. I mean, I think it had a number of benefits allowing my husband, myself, and our family to do some things that we may not have otherwise been able to do and so in terms of just the payment strategy, I think it allowed my husband, for example, to work in a startup industry where maybe he wasn’t making his salary that he would have been if he had been working in a more corporate environment. 

You know, I think the payment strategy allowed us to purchase our first condo in Chicago, which ended up being really great investment than when we sold it. It allowed us to purchase the home that we live in now and it also allowed us to kind of put ourselves in a financial position where my husband was able to purchase a gym that we now own and that he runs, I should say we own and that he runs. 

I think the overall strategy has allowed us those opportunities really to kind of see some of our dreams come to fruition and now that we have this money that we’ve put aside in the event that the $35,000 worth of loans get forgiven, we have a big chunk that we can put to finish our basement, which is something that we didn’t really think was going to happen so soon and so yeah, I think overall the strategy and committing and staying in the program has had a number of benefits for our financial goals. 

[0:34:40.2] TU: That’s excellent. I really appreciate you taking time to share your journey. Congratulations on getting to the finish line and wishing you and your family the best going forward, so thank you so much Ashley. 

[0:34:50.0] AH: Thank you. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:34:52.8] TU: Kyle, before we talk through your PSLF journey, tell us a little bit about yourself including your journey into pharmacy, where you went to school and the work that you are doing now. 

[0:35:00.8] KS: Sure, yeah. Thanks Tim, I am really happy to be on the show today and just give a little story about myself. So I am Kyle, I work in a hospital, a non-profit hospital system. I have been in that position for a little over 10 years. I graduated in 2011 from NEOMED and then I did my residency a year after that, so I’ve been kind of in the non-profit world for the last 10 plus years. 

[0:35:22.7] TU: First graduating class of NEOMED, so exciting. That’s where our paths crossed back in the day when I started on faculty there. You guys had a great class and we had the opportunity to work together for a period of time there as well, so excited to get an update on what you’re doing as well as your success here with PSLF. Tell us more about the numbers, amount of debt that you graduated with Kyle and how much was ultimately forgiven through PSLF. 

[0:35:44.1] KS: Sure. Yeah, I’ll kind of run through my numbers here. My total debt loan was $186,301.07. Just a little bit of breakdown on that, about 18,000 of that was from undergrad that I kind of rolled into the loan after I graduated. About a 168 or so, 160, 170 was from just pharmacy school going through that for four years because we were in a two plus four program and then after the $186,000 or so that was the principle, I also had accrued a little bit of interest. That number was $2,737 of interest, so if you look at the total, the principle plus interest that was recently forgiven was $189,038.72. 

[0:36:28.4] TU: Awesome, love the specificity too, so tells a bit you are doing your homework along the way, which is obviously important when it comes to loans in general but specifically with public service loan forgiveness, making sure that we’re crossing T’s, dotting I’s. Now Kyle, our listeners know that there are many options when it comes to paying off student loans. I often tell folks when I am teaching this topic, you know, whether we like it or not, the system around student loans and the complexities, it is what it is. 

It’s the hand that we’ve been dealt and so we’ve got to do our work to understand it and PSLF is just one of the many options that were out there. I am curious to know, how did you come to the decision to pursue PSLF where that was what you had thought was the best strategy for you individually especially at a point in time. You mentioned graduating in 2011 where the information tools and resources to support those on the PSLF journey just weren’t as readily available or good as they are right now. 

[0:37:21.5] KS: Yeah, that is a great topic and one that almost every pharmacy student that’s graduating should have some serious discussions about is the repayment plan but for me, we started pharmacy school in the fall of 2007 and if you remember the program for PSLF was started in October 2007, so we were just hearing about this program and certainly nobody had been in the program 10 years to have anything forgiven, so we didn’t know much about it. 

By the time I graduated in 2011, we were hearing more about the program and its availability and I always knew that I wanted to do residency, which in the hospital is most likely going to be a non-profit hospital depending on if you do one year or two year, you are probably going to have two years of non-profit work and I also knew I wanted to work in a hospital, so at the end when I graduated in residency and moved into a position, a clinical position and a shared position at NEOMED it was something that kind of fit the PSLF mold. 

Where I would be working for a non-profit and as long as I work ten years and made my on time payments, everything should be forgiven. The option for me was I always kind of have it on the back burner that this might be a perfect repayment plan for me because I had already planned to go the non-profit route and work at a hospital and then it kind of just all fell into place with this and then certainly as everyone is aware, the Biden administrations, their work on expediting the PSLF program and making sure those – 

You know, the intent of the program was true and I think that’s really what they did is make sure that if you work for a non-profit for 10 years that you are eligible for forgiveness, and they kind of wipe away some of the intricacies that maybe held some people back in the past. 

[0:38:58.4] TU: That exactly is Kyle why we are seeing so many folks now come forward with, “Hey, we’ve been forgiven. We’ve been forgiven” it felt like it was at snail’s pace for so long and part of it has just been time. You mentioned the timeline of when this was an active legislatively, so we are seeing more pharmacist that are coming forward but also because of some of that work that the admiration has done to help expedite the process and remove some of the nuances that are there as well. 

With that being said Kyle, there still is a lot of skepticism that I hear, a lot of uncertainty about PSLF and I think some of that comes from, you know, maybe some horror stories that have gotten over-glorified, some things that haven’t been updated in a period of time. Tell us about for you, any uncertainties you had along the way or challenges that you faced in the pursuit of PSLF? 

[0:39:42.3] KS: Yeah, that is a big one for me, so my story, I mentioned kind of having a little bit of some undergrad debt when I started in residency, I made sure to file the paperwork right away and get into the program just in case the program was done away with that way. They usually grandfather people in that were in there but one thing that I didn’t realize is I had FFEL loans while I was in the program for about a year and then I had called them. 

They basically said, “Well, you have to consolidate your loans into direct loans” and then at that point, it was probably 2012 when I did that and I consolidated them all together but in doing so, they also told me that’s going to push back my repayment date. Before the Biden administration updated their standards and how things will be forgiven, my repayment date or my payoff date was going to be May of 2023. 

I still technically had 15 months from now to go but because they moved everything up and actually some of those payments the first year didn’t count then and they had to restart their clocks so to speak, so that’s one thing that I don’t think was the intent of the original program was to make it so difficult with the type of loan you had to be eligible for the program. I think that is one kudos to the Biden administration for trying to solidify that plan.

That hey, it really doesn’t matter what type of loan you have if you are working in non-profit for 10 years, you really should be a part of the program and I think they’ve done a really good job of that, so that was probably the biggest challenge, in the beginning, was that I lost some payment time. The other challenge I would say for anybody who is in the program is just make sure you’re – one thing I did was I filed my paperwork on the dot every year. 

When I hit my anniversary at work, which for me was August 1st, every August 1st, I would file a new sheet with PSLF and send it to FedLoan to update my payment account and that way, any kind of mailings that they sent me, any kind of confirmations, I would have a file that I was tracking it along with them. I was religious to that, I did it every year to make sure how many payment accounts I had left and then I would know when my repayment date would be. 

That was another challenge I think that as long as you’re on top of it, once a year is probably enough to do that but you don’t want to delay that because your payment accounts won’t be updated until you send in your sheet. 

[0:41:55.8] TU: Great insights Kyle and one of the things that we like to talk about in the show is, when it comes to PSLF, often the strategy side of PSLF might get overlooked, and what I mean by that is that you know, typically the goal of PSLF is usually to maximize forgiveness and minimize what comes out of pocket and one of the advantages, therefore, can be allowing someone to pursue and prioritize other financial goals beyond student loan repayment if they have that mindset of what can I be doing to maximize forgiveness, minimize what is coming out of pocket. 

For you Kyle, how did the PSLF strategy help you be able to pursue other financial goals for you and your family? 

[0:42:32.7] KS: Yeah, another great thing that I think this program allows you to do to coincide with paying off the debt or being in the program is to prioritize other things that you want to do. In my case, just taking a step back for a minute is if you notice the numbers that I stated earlier, I didn’t pay a dime of principle through the entire ten years. My 186,000 and some change, that was the number that I graduated with and it didn’t come down one penny. 

When you talk about maximizing public service loan forgiveness, you know, that’s ideally what you want to do. You want to have the most available to forgive at the end of the 10 years. One thing that my wife and I did is we ended up filing our taxes separately. We were in the old IBR plan, which I am not sure you’re allowed to get in anymore. I think they have updated and there is a new IBR plan. 

That plan if you file separately, it will only look at my income as oppose to our total income, so we would file our taxes separately. Typically, that’s not advice that you would see for most tax professionals. For most people in the United States except in the scenario where you have student loans and you are in a program like PSLF and then you know, it is just allowed us to maximize some other things we did along the way knowing that hey, we’re making our payments, the payments count and now we can invest in other things like our IRAs. 

My wife and I both have IRAs, we have 529 accounts for both of our kids that were started when they were born, and then we actually had somebody left over, so we started a taxable account so we kind of maximized retirement and then we were able to save for some other things, you know, just house renovations and things that probably wouldn’t be able to be done had we’ve been paying, understand the repayment plan, which would have ended up costing us about 800 or 900 dollars more per month. 

[0:44:12.4] TU: 800 to 900 more per month, right? I think that’s where the numbers and the PSLF math can become so favorable. You highlighted so well Kyle, you know, how can you use that additional margin to expedite prioritize other goals, right? You talk about the tax strategy, super important, you know, college accounts, IRAs, 401(k)s, brokerage accounts and again, not to say having to wait until those student loans were gone to be able to pursue those goals, which we know is so important because of compound interest and time value of money. 

Kyle, I really appreciate you taking time. Congratulations, excited for you and the family to get through this important milestone and really appreciate you taking time to come on the show. 

[0:44:51.2] KS: I’m glad to come on and just wanted to at least give some evidence that the PSLF program can work for everybody and those are in it to stick with it and make sure you’re trying to maximize the amount forgiven at the end. 

[0:45:03.2] TU: Thanks Kyle, I appreciate it. 

[0:45:05.0] KS: Thank you. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:45:05.6] TU: Well, as we wrap up today’s episode hearing about some PSLF updates with lead planner, Robert Lopez, from the YFP Planning team as well as three PSLF success stories, now is the perfect time as we await the end of the administrative forbearance to make sure that you’ve got your student loan repayment plan knocked down. 

You’ve heard firsthand through these stories about why identifying the best repayment plan, whether it be PSLF, refinancing or another repayment option is so important to make sure that you’re optimizing your student loan situation and considering it as a bigger part of your financial plan. 

That is why we’re excited to have a one-on-one student loan analysis service that is offered by the team at YFP Planning that is specifically focused on having you identify the best repayment plan for your personal situation. 

For this service, you’ll work directly with one of YFP Planning certified financial planners to inventory your loans both federal and private, evaluate eligible repayment options including student loan forgiveness, income-driven repayment, private refinancing and ultimately determine that best repayment strategy for your personal situation. 

You can get started by visiting yourfinancialpharmacist.com/sla. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/sla and you can use the coupon code, “YFP” for 10% off. 

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:46:25.4] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts, and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. 

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END] 

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YFP 247: 10 Common Financial Mistakes Pharmacists Make

Posted on by yfpadmin


10 Common Financial Mistakes Pharmacists Make

On this episode, sponsored by APhA, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, talks about ten common financial mistakes pharmacists make.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, flies solo to dive into ten common financial mistakes that pharmacists make. Tim talks through the math behind the age-old retirement advice that we have all heard, “save early and save often.” He discusses some common mis-prioritization of investments that leave tax savings on the table, like prioritizing non-tax favored investment accounts. Tim further discusses two common student loan mistakes that can cost folks tens of thousands of dollars and in some cases, much more than that; paying too much interest and not maximizing PSLF. Tim shares about the importance of having an emergency fund, protecting your income, and saving for your kid’s college in the correct order. He details common financial missteps such as accepting that income is fixed (because it will change) and failing to or delaying retirement savings, plus some long-term impacts of each. Tim then wraps up with another look at tax planning and how proper tax planning each year (not just tax filing) can affect the financial plan. Lastly, Tim explains how having a financial planner that does not have your best interest in mind can be one of the biggest mistakes that you don’t have to make. 

Key Points From This Episode

  • The number one mistake on our list: paying too much interest on your student loan debt.
  • Tim shares the way to shift your mindset away from the ‘monopoly money’ feeling. 
  • Diving into student loan strategy and the different buckets to consider. 
  • Talking about service loan forgiveness and PSLF strategy, and how to maximize these.
  • Why emergency funds take a back seat and how to avoid delaying getting one. 
  • Some tips on starting your emergency fund.
  • Mistake number four: protecting your income.
  • Accepting your income is fixed, and factoring in inflation and debt loads.
  • Putting numbers to the retirement savings saying of ‘save early, save often.’
  • Investing in a way that maximizes your tax savings!
  • A reminder of why it’s crucial to create a tax strategy and do your tax planning.
  • Talking about saving out of order for kid’s college.
  • How to get a certified financial planner who has your best interests at heart.

Highlights

“We tend to underestimate how much interest we’re going to pay over the life of a loan and therefore, we tend to underestimate how much we’re going to actually pay out of pocket.” — Tim Ulbrich, PharmD [0:08:37]

“When it comes to insurance, the balance point here is we want to not be underinsured, we want to make sure we can protect the time but we also don’t want to be over-insured.” — Tim Ulbrich, PharmD [0:19:23]

“You can borrow for your kid’s college, but you can’t borrow for your retirement.” — Tim Ulbrich, PharmD [0:30:48]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. 

This week, I fly solo to talk about 10 common financial mistakes that pharmacists make, no judgment as I’ve made many of these mistakes myself. Some of the highlights from today’s show includes talking through two common student loan mistakes that can cost folks tens of thousands of dollars and in some cases, much more than that, the math behind the age-old advice that we’ve all heard, save early and save often, as well as talking through some common mis-prioritization of investment that leaves tax savings on the table 

Now, before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP planning offers free only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, and then we’ll jump into the show.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast is brought to you by the American Pharmacist Association. APhA is partnered with Your Financial Pharmacist to deliver personalized financial education benefits for APhA members. Throughout the year, APhA will be hosting a number of exclusive webinars covering topics like student loan debt payoff strategies, home buying, investing, insurance needs, and much more.

Join APhA now to gain premier access to these educational resources and to receive discounts on YFP products and services. You can join APhA at a 25% discount by visiting pharmacist.com/join and using the coupon code, YFP. Again, that’s pharmacist.com/join and using the coupon code YFP.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:08.5] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here, welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. I’m flying solo this week and we’re going to talk through 10 common financial mistakes that I see pharmacists often making, that we see pharmacists in the YFP community often making. As I mentioned in the introduction, there is no judgment here in these mistakes.

I’ve made many of these mistakes myself. My hope with this episode, through sharing some of those experiences and other common mistakes that we see folks making, is to hopefully prevent those, right? For others that are perhaps on this journey towards achieving financial freedom.

Before we jump into the 10 common mistakes that we’re going to talk about in today’s episode, I am not going to be covering a few things that are worth noting because I’m going to assume that you’ve got these bases already covered, right? Those would be things like having a budget and being intentional with your spending, so important, right? 

We’ve ultimately got a certain amount of income to work with each month, we’ve got a lot of things that are competing for our attention financially, various goals, various expenses and so that budget is going to allow us to be intentional with our spending. I’m going to assume that that is already in place. 

I’m also going to assume that we’ve either eliminated any high-interest rate, credit card debt that is revolving each month in a current interest or we’re going to avoid that if we possibly can, right? Very important is, we look at how the impact of that interest can really hurt us as we look at trying to achieve other goals. 

Finally, of course, we need to minimize our lifestyle creep, right? For many pharmacists, we know that we see, certainly, a great income overall but that income often can be relatively flat throughout one’s career. Expenses tend to creep up on us over time, perhaps families grow, home expenses, other types of things throughout one’s career and so, we got to do our best to keep those expenses at bay and so that we can focus those limited dollars that we have on other goals each and every month. 

Again, things I’m not going to cover, having that budget, being intentional, spending, avoiding, eliminating credit card debt, minimizing lifestyle creep. Now, what we are going to talk about are some common student loan mistakes, we’re going to get really tactical with some numbers that highlight why these mistakes can really have a significant negative impact and really ultimately leave a lot on the table that could be put elsewhere in the plan.

We’ll talk a little bit of our emergency funds and protecting the income. We’ll talk about a couple of things in the long-term savings, retirement side, in terms of prioritization and delaying of savings. Then I’ll wrap up by talking about tax planning as well as looking for a planner that has your best interest in mind. 

All right, I hope you’re ready, I’m going to go quick, we’re going to hit a lot of information and we’re going to reference several resources throughout the show and we’ll of course, link to those who you could deep it to those deeper after the recording.

[0:04:49.0] Number one mistake on our list is paying too much interest when it comes to paying off our student loans. Now, you’ve heard me say a hundred times on this show, that pharmacists are facing significant student loan debt. The cost of 2021 to be exact, median debt load, have $170,000 as reported by the American Association Colleges of Pharmacy Graduating Student Survey.

Now, the good news is for the first time in over a decade, we’ve seen that number come down was $175,000 for the class of 2020. Bad news is, that’s still $170,000 and when we look at how interest accrues on a $170,000, those start to be really big numbers. One of the things I often say is that for me in my journey of paying off debt, when I was in school and even early on in the repayment journey, to be frank, it felt a little bit like monopoly money, right? 

Once we get into active repayment, once we see the impact of that interest accruing, it starts to become really real, really quick. One of the ways I like to shift that mindset away from that feeling of monopoly money is to calculate the daily interest that is accruing on our loans. The way you do that is take your loan balance that currently remains, you multiply it by your interest rate and you divide it by 365 days.

If you were to have $170,000, let’s just say the Median debt load, $170,000 if we multiply that by 6% and assume that’s an average interest rate across our federal loans, and we divide them by 365, we’re looking at about $28 per day of interest that is accruing. $28 per day. Now, of course, as that $170,000 gets paid down to 160, 150, 140, et cetera or, and/or, we’re able to reduce that interest rate either through our process of refinancing or perhaps some forgiveness opportunity.

Then of course we’re going to see that impact of interest go down but that really is the opportunity cost that we need to be thinking about. $28 per day, if we look at the median debt load of a pharmacy graduate that is going towards interest alone as they begin that repayment period.

[0:06:47.8] One of the feelings I had early on in my repayment journey is I felt like I was spinning my wheels in terms of making substantial monthly payments but not feeling like I was really making a whole lot of progress and momentum towards getting that debt load paid off.

The reason that was and the reason that is for many of you that might be listening to this show, is because the amount of that payment that goes toward interest, right? When we look at big debt loads like 170, 180, $200,000 or perhaps even more at interest rates, six, seven percent, maybe higher on some private loans, what we see is pretty big monthly payments but we also see a lot of that that is going directly towards the interest. 

Let me give you an example. If somebody has $170,000, again, let’s just use a 6% average interest rate, if we assume they’re going to pay that off over a 10 year period, that would be the standard repayment option, 120 fixed monthly payments, what we see is a monthly payment of about $1,900 per month for 120 payments or 10 years. $1,900, fixed payment for 10 years.

Now, of that $1,900 that first payment, about $1,000, 45% or so is going to go towards principal and about $850 is going to go towards interest. Right out of the gates, we see that in a standard 10-year repayment about half is going to put a dent in the actual principle and about half is going to go towards interest. And of course, with each monthly payment that we make, we’re going to see a little bit more going toward principle and a little bit less going towards interest.

[0:08:19.2] This is why folks often feel like, “Hey Tim, I’m making big monthly payments but I don’t feel like I’m progressing as quickly as I would like to in terms of getting this paid off” and that’s because of the interest that is accruing on those payments.

One of the common mistakes here that we’re talking about in terms of paying too much interest is we tend to underestimate how much interest we’re going to pay over the life of a loan and therefore, we tend to underestimate how much we’re going to actually pay out of pocket. 

I see this all the time and talk with the pharmacy students, they may say, “Hey, I’m borrowing $20,000 a semester” let’s say for tuition cost, the living expenses, they multiply it by eight semesters and they think, “Hey, that’s roughly my student loan debt number.”

Now, what they’re forgetting is of course the interest that’s accruing while they’re in school, outside of administrative forbearance period, such that we’re in right now, and they’re also not including the interest that’s going to accrue while they’re in active repayment, right?

If we’re looking at a 10 year, perhaps for some it’s even a little bit longer repayment journey, then we’re going to see a significant amount of interest that’s also accruing throughout the life of a loan. 

That’s why often, folks look up and say, “Wow, that’s a lot more that’s getting paid back than I really had anticipated was going to initially be the case.” What we want to be thinking about here as we talk about this first common mistake, paying too much interest is, what can we be doing to minimize the interest that we’re paying?

[0:09:38.9] That’s where we really get into student loan repayment strategy, right? A topic we have covered, lots of different ways on this show and there’s several different buckets that we need to consider. 

That could be tuition reimbursement programs, forgiveness programs, either public service or nonpublic service loan forgiveness programs or we’re going to pay them off but we have an option perhaps to move our loans into the private sector through a refinance that’s going to help us reduce that interest.

The first couple of areas that come to mind if I’m thinking about, “Hey, how can I avoid paying too much interest?” is number one, could I have somebody else pay the bill, right? That could either be through a tuition reimbursement program or through forgiveness, whether that’s PSLF offer or non-PSLF, if that’s not viable or of interest, then perhaps, might I be able to reduce my interest rate through a process of refinancing.

One of the things that we want to avoid is staying in a status quo position in terms of staying in the federal system, paying a high-interest rate, or paying a high private rate, if there’s a better option out there, whether that be forgiveness or whether that be considering a refinance.

A couple of things to think about as we talk about that first mistake of paying too much interest and I’m going to reference a resource here where you can dig more into student loan repayment strategies to evaluate that further.

[0:10:50.9] Number two mistake on our list of 10 is not maximizing public service loan forgiveness. Now, we have talked about this on the show extensively but I feel the need to continue to shout from the mountain top about this topic because there’s a lot of folks that maybe have the option or pursue public service loan forgiveness and for whatever reason aren’t making that choice or folks that are kind of half in and they’re half out, right? 

We’re leaving something on the table. When it comes to public service loan forgiveness, assuming that’s the right play for you and your personal financial situation, if we go that pathway, the goal is optimize and maximize forgiveness and minimize what’s out of pocket, right?

When I say, the common mistake here is not maximizing PSLF, what I’m referring to is that we’re leaving something on the table, either we’re paying more interest that we could have forgiven, or/and potentially, we’re not optimizing certain situations that would allow us to be able to also save through our forgiveness period. 

One of the things we need to do here is actually break down the numbers of what this means for your personal situation. Now, I’m not going to go through the rules of PSLF, again, we’ve talked about that extensively on the show before, highlights here, we have to work for the right type of employer so 501(c)(3), not for profit or federal government agency or organization. 

You have to be in the right kind of loan, so a direct loan, we’ve had some provisions with the Biden administration that have allowed some forgiveness and latitude on that, we’re going to talk about that more in an upcoming show. You have to be in the right repayment plan, which is an income-driven repayment plan.

[0:12:22.8] You have to make 120 payments and be consecutive but 120 qualifying payments before you’re ultimately applying for and receive tax-free forgiveness. Now, one of the things folks often omit, when they’re thinking about optimizing PSLF is really trying to figure out what can I be doing to pay less towards my student loans so that more is forgiven and that really gets to how the monthly payment is calculated towards your student loans when you’re in PSLF through an income-driven repayment plan.

The formula that is used is they take an amount that’s called your discretionary income and that is included of your adjusted gross income, so your taxable income reported on your tax returns, so your AGI, minus 150% of the property level, that is your discretionary income and then that gets multiplied by a certain percentage.

Just by definition of that calculation, there’s some things that we can do if we look at that discretionary income. That AGI minus that 150% poverty level, hopefully, you’re asking yourself, “What could I be doing to lower my AGI?” right? We don’t want to make less money but, “What I could be doing in terms of optimizing strategies to lower my AGI so that I can pay less towards my student loans, increase the amount that’s forgiven, and perhaps also, move forward other financial goals at the same time?”

What we know, what you know from listening to the show is there are strategies that we could do to lower our AGI, right? We think about accounts like 401(k) contributions, 403(b) contributions, HSA contributions. This is where we get to the strategy and the numbers start to become pretty wild in terms of not only optimizing what is forgiven tax-free but also, what could we be putting towards investments that over this repayment period of 10 years with PSLF, we also take advantage of compound interest and compound growth over that period of time. 

[0:14:16.0] You know, it doesn’t take a whole lot of whole numbers in terms of putting money away at three, five, seven percent of compounded growth each year. Again, it’s not just the tax-free forgiveness that of course is a huge benefit but also, what can we be doing to moving forward in accelerating our investment plan. That’s the second mistake, not optimizing our PSLF strategy. 

Now, a couple of resources I want to point you to here. Student loan repayment, you’ve heard me say it many times, one of the most important decisions pharmacists are going to make early in their career, one that we don’t want to walk into blindly, one that we don’t want to replicate what somebody else is doing that may not be a good fit for our situation.

This decision can be the difference, easily of tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, based on the option you choose and so, I really want you to invest the time and the energy to understanding this loan repayment options, as nuanced as they are. We’ve got a great comprehensive resource, The Ultimate Guide to Pay Back Pharmacy School Loans. It’s a free blog, comprehensive, almost like an ebook, to be honest, you can download that, read that blog at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/ultimate and we’ll link to that in the show notes.

Now, for those of you that are saying, “Hey, the information is great but I want one-on-one help with an expert that knows this in and out.” We do have a one-on-one student loan analysis survey that pairs you up with a YFP Planning certified financial planner and the goal of that is to analyze all of your options and ultimately decide on the best repayment plan for your situation.

You can learn more about that service at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/sla. Again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/sla. All right, that’s number two, not maximizing PSLF. 

[0:15:57.3] Number three is delaying the emergency fund. Now, we just came off of talking about student loan repayment, right? That’s a gorilla that is often in the room. Many folks are also trying to think about saving and investing for the future, perhaps there’s a home purchase, kids that might be involved, kid’s college, the expenses, and the list of expenses goes on and on. 

Sometimes, the emergency fund can take a back seat for a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s not very exciting, when you think about making progress on our debt, to become ultimately debt-free whether that’s by paying them off or forgiveness or saving for investing for the future.

Those are typically a little bit more exciting goals to be thinking about. Putting money away in a savings account that’s going to earn minimal but not too exciting amount of interest and it’s there if we need it but hopefully, you don’t, not super exciting, right?

This often may fall by the wayside but the purpose and the goal of that emergency fund is to protect the financial plan when, not if, but when an emergency happens, and work from a position of financial strength with the rest of the plan, right? 

[0:16:57.2] This could be a short-term job loss, gap of employment, this could be a health emergency, an emergency with the home, the list of things that could be involved here obviously go on and speaking from personal situations, something will come up at some point, probably not too distant in the futures that is going to require you to tap into this emergency fund.

Generally speaking, our target here is three to six months’ worth of essential expenses. Not to say three to six months’ worth of income but three to six months’ worth of our essential expense because there can be a place where we have too much in this emergency fund. Obviously, we want to be comfortable with that amount but too much means opportunity cost of dollars that could be used elsewhere in the plan.

Now, in terms of where to put it, generally speaking, we’re going to be looking at a long-term savings account, a money market account, somewhere that we can get to the money, it’s a liquid, it’s accessible, it’s running a little bit of interest more than you’re going to see in a checking account, typically which is closer to zero. 

Maybe you’re going to getting 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 right now, not too exciting, we’re getting a little bit of interest but it’s a liquid, it’s accessible, this is not the place we’re trying to take a risk with our financial plan, right? We’re going to do that in the savings and investing for the future. 

[0:18:05.9] Now, one of the tips that I could share with folks is I think it’s incredibly helpful to get these dollars out of your checking account, right? This really gets to the intentionality of the financial planning.

If we have a bunch of money lumped into our checking account that is for our month-to-month expenses and then we say, “Yeah, I’ve got some of that, that’s earmarked also for an emergency fund,” get it out of the checking account, put it in a separate savings account. Number one, out of sight, out of mind. 

Number two, we’re really going to call that account an emergency fund and that’s going to show us our intentionality towards building that and protecting it and getting that out of our month-to-month checking account where we’re either doing our expenses or that we have tied to a credit card where those expenses are charged, so that’s number three. 

[0:18:44.0]: Number four is not protecting your income and this obviously gets to a whole laundry list of types of insurance we need to be thinking about including health, home, auto, renters, and so forth, professional liability. 

The two that I just wanted to touch on briefly here are term life and long-term disability, and one of the things I often share with pharmacists is “Hey if you are going to do the hard work to really figure out how we’re going to manage just a $170,000 student loan debt if you are going to do the hard work to build a nest egg and a retirement portfolio, we’ve also got to invest some time to make sure we’re playing defense so we are preventing the catastrophic from disrupting that progress in our financial plan. “

When it comes to insurance, the balance point here is we want to not be underinsured, right? We want to make sure we can protect the time but we also don’t want to be over-insured, which is something we often see folks might be in a position of a policy that has been sold to them that is not necessarily coverage that they need or that is in their best interest. 

When we are talking about term life insurance what we are talking about here is insurance that would be able to replace your income and what that income provides in the event that you were unexpectedly passed away, right? We’re big advocates of term life insurance. Other types of life insurance out there are whole life, permanent, value types of policies not to say that those don’t have a place anywhere but for the vast majority of folks that we talk with, a coverage with a term life insurance policy might be a 20 or 30-year term. 

A million, two million dollars, it really depends on your personal situation but that is going to allow for an affordable monthly payment that is a fixed monthly payment that is going to then allow us to free up dollars to be able to put towards other parts of the financial plan. 

[0:20:24.9] In terms of a term life insurance by definition, let’s say somebody buys a 30-year term policy for a million dollars and they’re 30 years old, they are going to pay a monthly or annual premium, depending on how the policy is set that is a fixed monthly payment over that policy length, so it will be a 30-year policy in this case. From 30 to 60 years old in that situation, they would pay a monthly or annual premium. 

Now, if they were to die unexpectedly at some point, so let’s say at the age of 50 that person passes away, well at that point their beneficiary would receive the money that’s known as the death benefit and that would be a tax-free policy that would be paid out to the beneficiary. Now, if they don’t die in that 30 year period, which is a good thing that’s the goal, a term life insurance policy, you’re paying those premiums on but you are not going to get those dollars back, right? 

If we get to 60, we’ve made it, we are still alive at that point, the policy ends and we are not going to recoup any of those dollars. We are really preventing things on the catastrophic side. We are not looking at this as an investment vehicle. Now, on the disability side, what we are talking about here is really trying to address a scenario where what if you are unable to work as a pharmacist because of a disability?

Car accident, chronic illness, whatever it may be, and obviously at that point, you are disabled and so you are unable to work, in that case, your expenses still live on but your income now here is in jeopardy. A long-term disability policy is the one that we’re often referring to here, again, monthly or annual premium, typically a percentage of your salary that you are going to purchase a policy for. 

It could be a five-year, 10-year, 20-year policy up to the age of 65 so it depends on the type of policy, lots of nuances here to think about and then if you were to become disabled, there is going to be known what’s an elimination period, which is the time period between when the disability happens and when your policy kicks in and you have to self-fund that period. It might be 30 to 180 days depending on the policy and then after that point, your monthly policy kicks in to help replace your income. 

[0:22:16.8] This is one of the areas we see pharmacists often overlooking and both with term and long-term disability, you may have some base coverage that is provided by your employer. It works a little bit different on the tax side of things of how that benefit is taxed or not taxed depending on where the policy lies and how the premiums are paid and really the question here is, what additional coverage might we need beyond what we have offered through our employer? 

If you go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/insurance, we’ve got two additional resources pages on term life and long-term disability where you can learn more about those and see where that fits in with your financial plan. So that is number four, not protecting your income. 

[0:22:57.1] Number five is accepting that your income is fixed. Now, many pharmacists graduated in 2008. If you look at the average of pharmacists in 2008 versus what it is here in 2022, if you factor in inflation, not a whole lot has changed, right? Pharmacists tend to make a great income coming out of the gates but depending on the area of practice that they are in, that income may be relatively flat throughout their career. 

All the while our expenses are going up and we also see debt loads continue to creep up through that time period. One of the things we want to be thinking about here is how can we potentially maximize our income, right? This would be a benefit to both diversify your income, so I talk with many pharmacists that might let’s say, full-time at a community pharmacy pick up some PRN hours at a hospital pharmacy so they have their foot in the door at a couple of locations. 

Again, additional income but also to diversify, pharmacists that are working on side hustles and doing some medical writing or other businesses to generate additional revenue, also areas of interest. And so this could help us diversify but also can help us accelerate our financial goals, so lots to think about here and this really is very much an individualized decision and we’ve got a great resource available, 14 Extra Ways That Pharmacists Can Consider Making Additional Income. That is a blog that we have in the YFP blog, we’ll link to that in the show notes with this episode. 

[0:24:19.5] Number six is delaying retirement savings. Now, many of us have been told by parents, grandparents, perhaps multiple people that you need to be saving as early and often as you can, right? Time value of money, compound interest, as Albert Einstein said, it is the eighth wonder of the world and so what we’ve been told, what we’ve been taught is the longer we delay our savings, the harder it is going to be to catch up. 

I want to put some numbers to this because I think sometimes we hear that, were like, “Yeah, yeah, easier said than done. You don’t have $170,000 in student loan debt, you aren’t trying to purchase a home and doing all of these other financial goals at the same time” but the math here is really compelling. 

If we look at a pharmacist who is making about the average salary of a pharmacist that’s out there if we assume they are putting away about 15% of their income and they are getting an average annual rate of return on their portfolio around 6%. So if you look at the historical rate of return of the stock market around 10% net of inflation closer to 7% and so if they are putting away 15% of their income and they have a desired retirement age of 60, what we see is by putting away about 15% of their income each and every year, if they start at the age of 25, when they get to the age of 60, they’re going to have about 2.6 million dollars saved. 

Now, if they wait to the age of 30, that 2.6 turns into about 1.8. If they wait to the age of 35, that 2.6 that could have been if we started at 25 turns into 1.2 and if we wait to the age of 40, that 2.6 turns into $800,000. So that value, that advice is real, right? The earlier we invest and save, obviously we are going to have more time for that money to grow and to do its thing in terms of compound interest throughout many, many years.

Again, we’re just talking about one factor here in a vacuum as we talk about delaying retirement savings. We of course have to zoom out and consider this with other financial goals that we’re working on but ultimately, as we are able to do. We want to be focusing on starting as early as we possibly can. 

[0:26:17.9] Number seven here is prioritizing non-tax favored investment accounts. Now, we talked in episodes 72 through 75, we did a series on kind of an investing 101 series meant to be a crash course for those that are wanting to learn more about investing in terminology, some of the biases associated with investing, some of the information on fees, types of accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs, et cetera and so that is a great primer if you want to go back and listen to episode 72 through 75. 

What I am referring to here is investing potentially out of order. Now, this is certainly not investment advice, right? We don’t know anything about your personal situation but there is some low-hanging fruit from a tax advantage investing standpoint, right? When you think about 401(k), 403(b), employer-sponsored retirement accounts especially when we think about employer match, free money, right? We have all been told that before. 

If we keep working down there, we think about things like health savings accounts, triple tax benefits. We have talked about that on the show before, Roth IRA accounts. Again, another account where we might be putting dollars in that have already been taxed but they’re going to grow tax-free, we pull them out without a future tax burden, so if we are contributing to let’s say a brokerage account, whether it is through a tool like Robin Hood or Acorns or Betterment or whatever be the app or tool. But we are not yet taking advantage of some of those other things, the question we want to ask ourselves is, are we investing in a way that’s going to allow us to maximize our tax savings, right? 

Are we investing in appropriate priority? There certainly is I think a place and a role for a brokerage or taxable account but let’s be thinking about the order in which we are doing that relative to employer retirement accounts, IRAs, HSAs, and so forth. 

[0:28:02.1] Number eight here is tax filing without tax planning and strategy. Now, we’ve been hitting on this in the show in the last three to six months, shout out to the team at YFP Taxes doing a great job servicing the clients of YFP planning as well as some new clients here in 2022 and what I am referring to here is someone who is doing tax preparation but is not thinking more strategically on the tax planning side. 

So, if we look at a pharmacist on average, if they are making an average income working 40 years or so, and if we adjust up that salary for inflation of pharmacists throughout their career as going to earn about $9 million in their career. But only about six million of that depending on their tax situation is going to hit their bank account, so that delta of $3 million is what we want to be thinking about to pay our fair share, right? But we want to optimize how we can be able to use dollars elsewhere if we can allocate those towards a financial plan. 

Tax preparation, that’s what we are all doing, we’re required to do it, right? If we don’t file our taxes by April 15, the IRS is going to be coming knocking on our door unless we file for an extension. Tax preparation is historical. It is looking backward, so it limits the impact that we can truly have on our tax liability because things have been done at that point in time, so it is mechanical, we have to file, it’s looking back. 

Where tax planning is more of the forward-focus strategic part of integrating the tax plan with the financial plan. Here is where we can avoid common issues in advance, right? We can look at how we can adjust withholdings, do some projections, how can we optimize our savings accounts, how might we look at our savings and philanthropic contributions to be able to optimize those as well. 

Lots of things to consider, there’s optimization strategies around long term savings accounts HSAs, 529s, we know there is tax saving strategies with PSLF, lots of child-related optimization strategies, child care credits, dependent care FSAs, maximizing charitable contributions, you know really the list goes on, right? If we are able to do more of that planning and strategy work and look ahead, then we’re obviously able to take advantage of those, so that when we do the filing, we know we have optimized the situation throughout the year. 

I would reference folks to episode 233, where our director of tax, Paul Eikenberg and I talked about some tax moves to consider from an optimization standpoint and we’ll link to that in the show notes. 

[0:30:27.2] Number nine here is saving for kids college out of order. Guilty as charged, right? I found myself in this trap and as I reflect on that, I think about, “Well, why was that the case?” right? I knew about tax advantage, retirement vehicles, I knew that I have been given the advice over and over again that you can borrow for college, you can borrow for your kid’s college, but you can’t borrow for your retirement, so why was I not focused on the correct order of that? 

The more I thought about that, was that it was my reaction to my own journey of not wanting to see my kids incur a couple hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt, right? I think for many pharmacists, that may be the same thing where they are going through their own journey, they are living through that, obviously, the pain of it may be right in front of them right now. And therefore, they might be looking at saving in a 529 account with good intentions, but are we doing that in the right order, right? 

This is a great example of where we don’t want to look at one part of the financial plan and the silo because if we just answer the question, saving for kid’s college in a 529, is that a good financial move? Sure, there is tax benefits in doing that especially if we look at the potential growth over 10, 15, or 20 years. If we zoom out and look at what else we’re doing to financial plan that may or may not be the move to make at that time. 

We talked on episode 211, the ins and outs of the 529 college savings plans and we’ll link to that in the show notes for more information. 

[0:31:51.5] Finally number 10, hiring a planner that does not have your best interest in mind. Now full disclaimer of the bias of the planning services that are offered by YFP Planning, we wholeheartedly believe in fee-only financial planning and we’ll talk about that here in the moment. Obviously, I have a bias towards the services that the team at YFP planning offers, so we need to keep that in mind as we talk about this tenth point. 

Now, we talked on episodes 15, 16, and 17 way back when we did a three-part series on working with a planner, what to look for, questions to ask and we also talked about why fee-only financial planning matters. When you think about working with a financial planner here, is the term financial planner or adviser in it itself does not necessarily mean something that we can hang our hat on, right? 

We, in the pharmacy world, we’re used to the PharmD board certifications and residencies. We know exactly what those credentials mean and there is a relative amount of consistency in those credentials, so that when someone says, “I completed a PGY-1 residency.” We know what that means. 

When it comes to financial planning, financial advisors, wealth managers, wealth advisers, there are a wide variety in terms of education, training, and experience. And what those services look like that will inform and help inform whether or not those may be a good fit for you. So we need to be looking at, what is the educational background of these individuals, what is the credential, how are these individuals regulated? 

We firmly believe in the certified financial planner credential, we’ve got five CFPs on the YFP planning team. The CFP is certainly not a credential that is required to do financial planning but very robust in terms of the requirements of the educational portion of the CFP or rigorous examination to pass as well as an experiential component that we would think of as like appys in terms of pharmacy education. 

[0:33:42.7] Other things to consider here, I have mentioned the term fee-only, so fee-only by definition is that you are paying the planner and the planning team for the advice that they are giving, so they are not getting paid by recommending products such as insurance or investments where they’d be on a commission, and obviously a potential bias on that recommendation. And then we also really encourage folks to look at whether we are or are not the solution that is the best fit, someone who really offers comprehensive financial planning. 

The reason that’s important is that historically, the industry has focused a lot on investments and insurance, you know, think of folks that might be a little bit further along in their career, they have a substantial amount of assets to manage. And so, often there may be a minimum of assets to work with a firm, but when it comes to other things that might be of significance like student loan debt, like some of the early insurance discussions. 

Like, “Hey, I am thinking about starting a business or a side hustle” or “I’m looking at purchasing a home or investing in real estate” or “What about the estate plan?” or “What about the tax part of the financial plan?” Making sure the adviser regardless of the stage that you are in of your career, making sure the adviser and the advising team has the expertise and the experience to be able to serve you and the needs that you have for your financial plan. 

When it comes to working with YFP Planning, we’re really proud of the work that the planning team does. I mentioned five CFPs, shoutout to our lead planners, Robert Lopez and Kelly Reddy-Heffner who lead those two teams, working with Robert is Kim CFP and Savannah, working with Kelly is Christina, CFP, and Sarah. And then we also have a tax team that supports the financial planning. 

We are currently working with about 250 households and over 40 states all across the country, very robust in terms of the comprehensive nature of the plan. For folks that are interested in learning more about that service and what it would look like in terms of working one-on-one with a YFP certified financial planner, you can visit, yfpplanning.com, and you can book a free discovery call with Justin Woods, also a pharmacist who is our director of business development.

[0:35:40.8] Well, that’s 10 common financial mistakes that we see pharmacists making. I really appreciate you joining me on this week’s episode and we’ll see you here again next week. 

[END OF DISCUSSION]

[0:35:48.4] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, I want to again thank our sponsor, The American Pharmacist Association. APHA is every pharmacist’s ally advocating on your behalf for better working conditions, fair PBM practices and more opportunities for pharmacists to provide care. 

Make sure to join a bolder APHA to gain premier access to financial educational resources and to receive discounts on YFP products and services. You can join APHA at a 25% discount by visiting pharmacist.com/join and using the coupon code, “YFP”. Again, that’s pharmacist.com/join and using the coupon code “YFP”.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:36:28.5] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. 

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END] 

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YFP 246: Why This Pharmacy Entrepreneur is on a Mission to Make Pharmacy Profitable Again

Posted on by yfpadmin


Why This Pharmacy Entrepreneur is on a Mission to Make Pharmacy Profitable Again

Dr. Lisa Faast, Founder & CEO of DiversifyRx, discusses her mission to make pharmacy profitable again. 

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Lisa Faast is an innovator, experienced business executive, and leader in the independent pharmacy industry. With over 20 years of experience as a pharmacy owner, consultant, compounder, and businesswoman, she is able to bring a unique perspective to the industry’s problems. Her passion is helping independent pharmacy owners thrive by focusing on diversifying and then growing revenue streams. She is currently CEO at DiversifyRx, a consulting and education company, in addition to being a wife and mom of 4.

Episode Summary

Every single independent pharmacy wants to thrive, but the leap from pharmacist to pharmacy owner is a big one for many reasons. Today, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with Dr. Lisa Faast, founder and CEO of DiversifyRx, to talk about what she learned from this journey and how it became her mission to help make pharmacy profitable again. Dr. Faast begins by talking through her career arc, from her first job out of pharmacy school to opening and ultimately selling her first pharmacy. She shares about launching DiversifyRx, a business that aims to educate and support pharmacy owners through resources, membership, and a ton of free content. Dr. Faast dives into how she’s developed a “figure it out” mentality as an entrepreneur and how failure, or perceived failure, set her up for later success. The conversation also touches on that balancing act most pharmacists know all too well, juggling the financial demands of owning a business and raising a family, something that Lisa jumped into when she opened her first pharmacy while pregnant with her first child. Even if owning your pharmacy is not in the cards right now, this episode holds some fascinating insights into the industry. 

Key Points From This Episode

  • Hear the story of Lisa’s grandmother and how she was drawn into this profession.
  • The roundabout path from her first job out of pharmacy school to pharmacy ownership.
  • What gave her the confidence to take a leap of faith and start Faast Pharmacy.
  • The biggest lessons she learned as an entrepreneur and business owner!
  • Juggling life as a first-time mom and first-time business owner.
  • About selling the business and making marketing her best friend.
  • How she started DiversifyRx and created a profitable buffet table for pharmacy owners. 
  • How pharmacists often have different priorities to business people. 
  • Scaling the business to reach more pharmacists at once. 
  • Hear about Pharmacy Badass University.
  • About all the free content Lisa puts out and where you can find it.
  • How characteristics that help you in pharmacy school can hinder you in business.
  • Tackling ideas of what failure is and how perfectionism impacts business.

Highlights

“That was just one of our mantras: if we can do it, we do it. That’s just the way that we operate.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:11:59]

“When you own your pharmacy, marketing needs to be your best friend.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:14:23]

“These pharmacy owners can’t afford hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month. It’s just so hard these days. Providing a solution that is affordable and cost-effective is really at the core of my offering.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:31:32]

“I put so much stuff out there for free because if I can help a pharmacy owner for free, I am A-okay with that and if you get all you need from that, perfect.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:36:24]

“You really have to reassess what failure is and what it is not when you are looking and making decisions as the business owner, as the owner of the pharmacy, rather than looking at it as a pharmacist.” — Dr. Lisa Faast [0:41:02]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had a chance to sit down with Lisa Faast, founder and CEO of DiversifyRx. During the interview, Lisa and I talked through her career journey, up to launching DiversifyRx, the “Why” behind the business including her mission to make pharmacy profitable again. How she balances the financial demands of owning a business and raising a family, how she’s developed a “figure it out” mentality as an entrepreneur, and how failure or apparent failure set her up for later success.

Before we jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP planning offers free only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. 

Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Lisa Faast, co-founder and CEO of DiversifyRx.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:24.8] TU: Lisa, welcome to the YFP Podcast.

[0:01:26.4] LF: Thank you so much for having me, this is an honor and I’m excited to chat with you. 

[0:01:30.5] TU: So happy to connect with you here and to have you on the show. I’d like to start with before we get into your entrepreneurial journey, I’d like to start with some of your pharmacy background, where you went to school, when you graduated and what really drew you to the profession, to begin with?

[0:01:45.1] LF: Yeah, I graduated from UOP, the University of the Pacific over in Northern California, and what had kind of drew me, you’re in high school, you’re kind of trying to decide and I was looking at becoming a doctor. And I realized that 12 years of school didn’t sound really fun at all and I was hoping to take care of my grandma at the time, she was a diabetic and she had pretty much lost all her fine motor control skills and her eyesight was terrible. We were having to go over to her house twice a day to do her insulins and things like that.

That’s kind of what got me on the path to pharmacy and then what really solidified it is, one of those school projects that you’re – you know, handed out to go follow this profession, do a report kind of thing. Me and my best friend at the time, we were like, “I don’t know what we’re going to do.” He’s like “Hey, my mom is dating a pharmacist, let’s just go do that.” I was like, “Okay.” We went and followed his mom’s boyfriend at the time and did all that and I realized, “Hey, this pharmacy thing sounds really interesting.”

Looked into the school and looked into all the different things because chemical engineering was kind of like the other alternative as supposed to medical school and, bam, it just felt right. I applied to one pharmacy school at the very last minute right before the deadline and thank goodness that I got accepted. I guess you could say, the rest is history. I graduated from UOP back in 2001, so a little over 20 years ago now.

[0:03:07.2] TU: We’re going to talk, when I talk, when I think about chemical engineering and I think about pharmacy, it’s very linear, structured pathways typically, right? The degree as well as career. But you have taken, I think, a very unique and somewhat non-traditional pathway throughout your career. But also into the work that you’re doing now with DiversifyRx and leading that mission and company. And we’ll get to that here in a minute.

UOP 2001, you graduate, tell us about your first job out of pharmacy school and what that experience was like?

[0:03:35.8] LF: Yeah, all during pharmacy school, I wanted to be a nuclear pharmacist. I just thought that’s what I was going to go do and I even did one of my rotations in my third year, I did nuclear pharmacy at Syncore, which is kind of the gold standard. And so I graduated, they didn’t have any space in their class because you have to go and get certified and all those kinds of things, and I was kind of like, “Man, what am I going to do?”

I graduated at the time when there were still some pretty good signing bonuses and all of that kind of stuff going on. I had worked for Rite Aid at the time as an intern and I knew I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to go do that and so, I was lucky enough that actually, my mom had worked for Kmart for many years. That was her main job with us growing up and so, I looked into that. Kmart at the time was looking for a pharmacist and it ended up being the best job ever, not just because Kmart was a good corporation to work for. 

Of course, now, I don’t even know if they’re still even in business anymore, but the way they treated pharmacy, because it wasn’t their main line of business, I pretty much got to run it like I wanted to. They were pretty hands-off, which actually was really great training for owning your own pharmacy and so, Rite Aid – interned as Rite Aid, went to Kmart, and then my friend, one of my friends came up and said, “Hey, I’m going to be selling my pharmacy, do you want to maybe buy it?” And I was like, “Okay.”

I did all this work and all these business plans, all the things that you can expect of going through the SPA process and it was taking forever. The SPA takes forever, FYI. Yeah, I finally got an approval and I called him and I was like, “I got the approval.” And he’s like, “I signed to sell to Rite Aid yesterday.” And so then, I was left with this big dream and nowhere to go. I just decided to go ahead and open my own and started that path. That’s what eventually became Faast Pharmacy, which was my first pharmacy and I started that from scratch. 

Kind of a roundabout way of winding up into pharmacy ownership, never expected it when I was in pharmacy school, might have taken like their joint MBA course and things like that that they offer but that’s kind of how I ended up there.

[0:05:40.4] TU: 2001 you graduate, you take a position with Kmart, you mentioned the way Kmart had run their pharmacies, and I can remember that. Some of my classmates and colleagues worked for Kmart. Very different than a corporate pharmacy position today, probably an experience that you’re able to get that started to be the learning ground for you before ultimately moving to own your own pharmacy in 2006.

I don’t want to overlook that, that’s still a big decision and transition that a lot of folks might have an interest in but aren’t willing to really take that leap of faith and feel confident in themselves to move forward and that step of ownership. Just tell us about your mindset and that transition of what gave you the confidence, what gave you, ultimately, the path? Or that said, “I’m going to go from this stable position, this stable income to really taking that leap of faith and owning my own business.”

[0:06:32.2] LF: Yeah, it feels, looking back, because it’s my own life, it doesn’t feel like a huge leap of faith but even you describing it right now, it really was. It really was a leap of faith and I think there was a couple of things that gave me that confidence.

One, I knew I was a good pharmacist and I was also a nerd, I liked numbers. I understood financials, again, going back to Kmart, I got to see all their financials of the pharmacy. I knew what drugs cost, I know what they got reimbursed and I was able to kind of hone my skills that way. But the thing that I told myself is – and I was in my early 20s at this point, I think I was 25 or something like that. I said, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

I painted a worst-case scenario. Nobody comes to me, I make no money, I go out of business, I go bankrupt and I go back to my $150,000 a year because I was working tons of hours job from now. I guess that’s not such a bad case, worst-case scenario.

I kind of figured that I could live with the downside, and that’s something that I’ve learned, and just decision making as a mature – just kind of saying, “What’s the upside, what’s the downside, and can you live with the downside?” I didn’t really know I was kind of living by that mantra back then. Essentially, that’s what I told myself as like, what’s the worse that can happen, and can I live with that? Can we have a plan for that? We figured out that we did, that we could have a plan for that.

And I just – I really wanted to do pharmacy my way. Kmart gave me a lot of leeway but not total leeway, there was always more than I wanted to do for patients. And I was getting into functional medicine at the time and getting into all these other interests, and I just wanted to offer more. So really, that desire became an obsession to come up with bigger, better, and more awesome services to offer to the community. And it was really, probably that desire just outweighed the fear with owning your own business.

[0:08:18.3] TU: Yeah, that desire for autonomy, right? Being able to be kind of in control of that future, and even pursuit of some things that might not have been traditional or allowed or under your scope of responsibility in that role with Kmart. The ‘worst thing that can happen’ exercise, I hope folks will hear that and apply that. Tim Ferris talks about that in The Four-Hour Workweek, he gives several examples where when you’re facing a decision, you mention, Lisa, using that in the context of decision making. We often tend to over-emphasize in our minds what is truly the worst-case scenario, and I think many pharmacists, even with the challenges we’re seeing in the profession right now, being able to fall back on a six-figure position is a pretty worst-case scenario. 

I think sometimes in your profession, perhaps because of the student loan debt which is near and dear to our heart and what we do here at YFP and helping pharmacists or perhaps pharmacists are graduating at a relatively young age and stepping into that great salary, there’s sometimes is that mentality of, the golden handcuffs and not willing to take those risk and sometimes perhaps allowing those fears to be greater than might even be the reality of that situation.

Owning your own pharmacy, tell us about that experience, so April 2006, your pharmacy is open. Tell us about the pharmacy, what your focus was, the skills that you learned throughout that 10 years as you owned that store, give us some more details there.

[0:09:37.7] LF: Yeah, I did just about everything right and everything wrong that I think you can do in a pharmacy and in a business. Because back then, in 2005 and 2006 when I was planning on opening this, Facebook groups weren’t a big thing and I didn’t know any pharmacy owners. I didn’t come from a long line of pharmacists or even pharmacy owners. I was really just figuring it out for myself and so certainly, a lot of things that I did wrong and a lot of things I did get right.

I think the biggest thing that really happened is I understood niching and I understood that I didn’t want to be competing for the same people that the other independents in my town were. The place that I picked was far away from lots of other independents but yet close to chains. I was actually sandwiched between CVS and Walgreens, which ended up being a perfect location.

I wasn’t near any other independent pharmacies, there was kind of a little independent pharmacy desert in my town. And so to me, that became really important, going above and beyond. I just served my patents as the best I could and if it was physically humanly possible, I did it.

I remember very early, I was probably opened a month or two, there was a dermatologist across the street, it was a Saturday, she had a prescription for biaffine, a  patient forgot to get it before the appointment kind of thing. And biaffine is like a chemotherapy but it’s also used after laser treatment in dermatology. It was a popular drug back then and I didn’t have it in stock, she hadn’t sent me any of the prescriptions for it, I was only just open but I knew another pharmacy that had it, it was actually my old employer, Kmart.

I knew we had it on our shelf because I had dispensed it at that store and I was able to arrange for the biaffine to get filled, I went and actually picked it up, delivered it to the patient, and all for basically free of charge because I wasn’t the one filling it and – but I went above and beyond and when I started to do that, people started to realize that I was in it for the long haul. 

Business is all about relationships and you know, I may not be very good at social relationships but when it comes to business relationships, I know how to go above and beyond and always be the one that provides the extra value. That’s how I started to gain such a loyal following of prescribers and patients because they saw that in me, and then eventually, my staff, as I started to get staffed and started to grow, that was just one of our mantras.

If we can do it, we do it. That’s just the way that we operate and you know, we eventually grew to seven million annual revenues, had 35 employees, I had a really awesome thriving pharmacy and – but still, that was at our core, was just, whatever we could do to serve the patient is what we’re going to do and that paid us back in dividends year after year.

[0:12:23.5] TU: Between opening your own pharmacy in 2006 and we’re going to get here in a few moments about talking about your current efforts and work with DiversifyRx, I know you had several other roles in between there as well. Talk to us more about those positions and ultimately, the additional skills, those help you hone as both the pharmacist and eventually as a business owner.

[0:12:41.6] LF: Yeah, so when I opened the pharmacy, we were – one of the first positions that I added was mom, becoming a mom. I was actually pregnant with my first child when we opened our pharmacy and I bring that up because I think that’s actually a very good skill set. I had my children at my pharmacy for the first year of their lives but I had to learn how to juggle. I’m one of those people that, I don’t believe in such a thing as work-life balance, especially when you’re an entrepreneur and you own your own business.

There is no separation. Calling work-life balance makes it seem like there’s a separation and they’re at different ends of the spectrum. And that’s not the way that I live my life now and I learned not to live my life. When I’m with my kids and I’m present with them, I’m 100% focused on them but when I’m at work, I’m 100% focused at work. It’s a mixture and I learned very quickly that the whole work-life balance really doesn’t exist, that it’s all a mish-mash. And the better that I accepted that and went forward, actually, the more effective I was and the better I was at being both, at being a pharmacy owner and being a mom.

When I sold my pharmacy in 2012, I went to work for Pharmacy Development Services, PDS, which is fairly well-known in the industry, and there, I did just about every job that you can do. I think the only position I never held was like CEO. And you talk about skillsets, you know, having to do all the various coaching and the project planning and project management and new program implementation, and then I went into marketing. And I’ve done all the business development, all the marketing, all the sales, that kind of stuff. It really did give me a well-rounded education if you will on kind of C-suite activities.

It was a lot of the stuff that I did in my own pharmacy because I do believe that when you own your pharmacy, marketing needs to be your best friend. You’ve got to develop certain skillsets because you can’t go around paying for all of it, you know? Just like some things you’re going to have to do for yourself, definitely doing that and also, other entrepreneurs. 

I never stopped being an entrepreneur, even if it wasn’t a pharmacy, my husband and I have always owned some other types of businesses. Before we had the pharmacy, we had a used car lot with my brother and then we had the pharmacy and then we opened franchises and then we opened up just other startup businesses. We always had that entrepreneurial thing going, “on the side” type of thing.

I was always constantly going back and forth with my skills and I think that really honed me to that I can accomplish a whole lot in a small amount of time because my desire to spend time and be present with my kids was really strong, and to spend time and do things like be able to take a vacation or to go to a conference or something like that. I had to get the work done.

When you give yourself a finite amount of time, you realize how to get really efficient and really good at things and so really, the experience that all of that gave me was working with a ton of pharmacy owners, I mean, probably thousands of pharmacy owners and I’ve spoken at all the major events, anything that you can think of, I’ve probably spoken at.

Also, being in other institutions or systems or franchises got me a lot of exposure to other ways of doing business as well. I try to bring some of those lessons into the pharmacy world because there isn’t a whole lot of pharmacy business education and training and so, I try to bring a lot of the other industries, the best of the best of what they have to offer and really bring that in and apply it to pharmacies.

[0:16:05.4] TU: As we make the transition here to talk about the work that you’re doing with DiversifyRx, I want to pause for a moment and just reflect on the point you are at now, has been 20 years in the making, right? I think sometimes, especially in a day and age where entrepreneurship is glamorized, right? I think, where we can hear stories and examples and founders and IPOs that are happening and we don’t often see a lot of the skill development, the sweat and the tears and the hard work that go behind it as those stories continue to come forward.

When you shared, not only the experience you had at Kmart, the experience you had in running your own business for six years and even getting into that, having some obstacles to overcome a business that you thought was going to be available for purchase that was not. All that’s involved in skill development of growing your own business. Other franchises you’ve been involved with, used car lots, rolls that you have, chief revenue officer, marketing skills that you gained. All of that that over two decades has allowed you to obviously continue to grow as an individual but also, grow as a business owner. I think that leads to the efforts that you’re doing right now. Tell us about DiversifyRx, what is it, how did it start and what problem are you trying to solve?

[0:17:21.1] LF: Yeah, wow, that’s a fun thing to talk about. DiversifyRx was really just started almost as therapy for myself. When I was deciding to leave PDS in the summer of 2020, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was kind of at that conundrum where I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, you know?

I was looking at a ton of jobs, I had just moved to the Dallas metro area and the economy here is booming and there was all kinds of executive jobs and I was strongly considering leaving pharmacy and going and doing something else and so, the only anxiety that I had about that was I’m not going to be able to help pharmacy owners. I just kept filling this pool and that was the only thing that I was sad about.

I started DiversifyRx really as just a way to have a weekly email and a weekly blog and kind of stay connected to my brethren that I had been in the trenches with for the last 20 years and I was happy with that. That was great, that’s all it was and I took another job, chief revenue officer, within pharma industry and that was great, then I actually ended up getting fired from that job in February of 2021 and you might say, “Fired holy heck.” Yeah, it was the first time I ever got fired but it was a gentle loving firing, we just agreed that we just didn’t – we weren’t having the same vision for the company and so it was very amicable I guess as firings can go.

I was kind of left again with ‘what I want to be when I grow up.’ I was like, just had an “aha moment” with my husband where I turned to him and I said, “I know what I love doing. I am the happiest when I’m talking to pharmacy owners and I help them get “Aha, that’s my favorite”. It’s when I help them become aware of something or achieve a win, that’s when my face lights up and so I was like, “I think we just need to figure out how to do this full-time, I don’t know what it looks like.”

Again, kind of back to that leap of faith, I have no idea what it was going to look like, I had no idea what the plans were but I was like, this is where I’m happy and I need to be happy if I’m going to be a good wife, a good mom and a good person to everybody else in the planet.

Really, was in the beginning of 2021 where I said, all right, I’m going to do full-time diversify, let’s go figure that out and what that is. And really, the whole name comes from my fundamental belief that pharmacy owners need to diversify their revenue streams, you can no longer just be a passive pharmacy that just dispenses whatever prescriptions happen to walk in your door, you’re not going to make it that way. Being average and being normal is not going to keep you in business for long. 

Profitable pharmacy strategies do not just fall from the sky. You have to go out there and look at them but gosh, there’s so many bad things out there, there’s so many great things out there. And pharmacy owners, when do you have time to vet, when do you have time to decide, when do you have time to go through all of that and so, essentially, I took all of my skills and all of my industry, contacts, and knowledge and things that I gathered that it’s like, I felt like it was kind of my job to create that pharmacy ownership profitable buffet table if you will.

Where it’s like, “Here is all the opportunities” because I firmly believe that there is more opportunity now to succeed as a pharmacy owner than there has ever been but it’s not in the typical way that it’s always been done in the past. I feel like my mission on earth here is to create that buffet, that smorgasbord of profitable opportunities because what fits for one pharmacy isn’t going to be a fit for another, it’s going to be the perfect fit for somebody else and so, if I can just come up with all of the opportunities and help pharmacy owners decide what’s going to work for them based on their demographics, their own passion, and their insight, then let’s go do that in your pharmacy so you can have a profitable thriving pharmacy.

Really, that’s what DiversifyRx is all about, is helping pharmacy owners diversify and optimize their revenue stream so that every single independent pharmacy that wants to stay open, that wants to thrive, that wants to be a generational business that they can hand down to their children and grandchildren, that they’re able to achieve that dream. 

[0:21:20.5] TU: Lisa, I love the mission, I love the passion, love the why behind what you’re doing and I don’t want to lose as well that as folks go on your website, we’ll link it in the show notes and they see all that you’re doing now, it started with the idea and you mentioned a newsletter, right?

That important action step that I think, often folks will look at other pharmacy entrepreneurs, other businesses out there and get paralyzed by seeing the current state. It started in a very different state, right? It has grown over time and you know, I think taking that first step is such an important one and to some degree, put yourself out there in terms of, “Yeah, I have this vision, I have this belief, I see a need in the market and I’m going to be a voice in this space.” And allowing you to sit in that uncomfortable space of, “Is this going to resonate, is this not going to resonate, where is this going to go?” and I love that first step in action that you took. 

I want to ask you that when you say there’s more opportunity than ever for independent pharmacies, from an outsider’s perspective, I can’t claim to live in the independent pharmacy space. I have been in the profession for 13 years, largely in the academic world prior to moving full-time with the work that we’re doing at YFP but when I look from the outside looking in and even as you say in your website, the onslaught of DIR fees, abusive PBM audits, low margins, poor cash flow, clawbacks have many owners on the verge of tapping out. I mean Lisa, from the outside looking in, why go into this business? 

I mean, how can one even plan when you think about things like DIR fees, PBM audits, clawbacks like even trying to build out a proforma from that seems like a nightmare and it really feels like the deck is stacked not in the favor of the pharmacy or the pharmacist, so give us the compelling argument of, why is this a better opportunity than ever before? 

[0:22:57.8] LF: I think the reason why it’s a better opportunity more because pharmacies and pharmacists are more than just dispensing destinations and that really comes from, we do so much more. Yes, our primary function is to dispense, we’re not getting rid of that but to me, where the opportunity comes from is consultation, functional medicine, cash-based services, supplements, compounding. 

You know, all kinds of things that really are available and the broad – whether it’s under your “scope of practice” as a pharmacist or it’s completely outside of your scope in the sense that you don’t need to be a certain licensed person to recommend supplements or something, why would somebody go to a GNC and listen to a 19-year-old about supplements when they could come to your pharmacy and get somebody that is far more educated and probably get a higher quality product that’s very specific and tailored to their exact needs, you know? 

These people out there are spending cash everywhere. You know, they are spending cash at GNC, they’re spending cash at the gym, they are spending cash at the spa, you know for all of these different kinds of services that really pharmacies should be in my opinion the place that the healthcare that healthcare destination, people kind of use that as kind of a catchy phrase nowadays but what does that really mean? 

It’s really, pharmacists are positioned to really help patients to take care of their health in ways like never before. There is more testing available. You know, one of my favorite supplements has a neat little saliva test that you test the patient to even see if they need it, you know? It’s like then you can test them to see if it is working. There is just so many great things out there nowadays that pharmacies can be the conduit for if we’re willing to look up and outside of solely dispensing. 

That’s really where that comes from because yes, if you’re just going to bank on patients coming to you and they’re just going to pay their copays and they are going to grab their bags and turn around and leave then yeah, it is going to be a very tough ride being a pharmacy owner. 

[0:24:54.2] TU: Yeah and what I love about that vision Lisa and I think this is a healthy discussion for us as a profession, you know I have always felt that arguably, we’re just incredibly well-positioned across the country already having a physical footprint in many, many communities, right? 

As we think about the dispensing of medications perhaps becoming a commodity to some degree and we look at the many threats that are there, if we can begin to diversify that and begin to really even look at, perhaps the dispensing of medications is kind of the entry point and at some level though lead generation to other opportunities where pharmacists is well-positioned, just a completely different way of thinking rather than that is the core business model, right? 

[0:25:36.0] LF: Exactly, so pharmacy owners generally aren’t business people in the sense of what they’re really truly not thinking about their business from a marketing sales funnel conversion, all of those types of things that lots of other businesses do. I mean, there are so many businesses out there that would kill to have the traffic that independent pharmacy does. 

They pay tens of thousands of dollars a month just to get people to come in and yet people are freely walking into pharmacies and it’s just pharmacy owners don’t have the skillset and the knowledge to know what to do with that traffic. And that’s where I feel like I come in like, “Man, that lowest hanging fruit is every single time you have a physical person walking into your pharmacy is an opportunity to sell them something else that they need.” 

[0:26:19.5] TU: Talk about warm leads, my goodness. 

[0:26:19.8] LF: They need something else, exactly. Yes, you have that traffic and that’s what most pharmacy owners, they don’t even understand the word traffic in the sense of how it applies to marketing. And so that’s where I really get my passion from is teaching them those fundamental business skills that are often taught for other solopreneurs and other types of verticals of businesses but really isn’t taught in pharmacy. 

You know, really getting them to understand that that dispensing of a prescription is your front in offer. You know, that might be something that people know you for but where you make your money is on the back end offers and you know it started with drug-induced nutrient depletion. In my final year of pharmacy school when you have to do your big project, you know, I did mine on drug-induced nutrient depletion and that was back in 2001. 

Nobody was talking about that then and so it’s like there’s always a way, I truly believe there is always a way for every pharmacy to thrive and survive, you know? We just have to figure out what that thing is and that’s to me the extremely fun part like I get just so much joy. It is like I am a little Sherlock Holmes and everybody’s little pharmacy figuring out what’s going to help work for them and because there is always something that’s going to work. 

It doesn’t matter your demographics, it doesn’t matter the income level, there is always something that those patients are paying for, they are spending their hard earn money on and you just have to offer it to them. 

[0:27:37.2] TU: Yeah and they are probably spending it elsewhere, right? To your comment about, yeah.

[0:27:40.4] LF: Absolutely, yep. They are spending it, they are spending it somewhere else and you just need to capture that. 

[0:27:44.0] TU: Love it. So you are bringing this business mindset and perspective to independent pharmacy owners and you are trying to do it really on a level that I see as being scalable, so not necessary one-on-one. I am working with this pharmacy but really this membership type of model, which gets to the aspect of how you’re monetizing the business, so tell us more about the membership model and why you came up with that approach to be able to provide this solution to independent pharmacies. 

[0:28:08.7] LF: Yes, so ultimately the mission that I am on is to save independent pharmacy and I am never going to accomplish that if I have to talk to every single pharmacy owner out there for an hour a month and help them that way and that one-on-one consulting. I have to figure out how do I scale it and to do many to one and frankly, I personally, my zone of genius kind of understanding when you’re a pharmacy owner, whether you’re a solopreneur or running your own PGX business or whatever, you need to understand what you excel in. 

I learned early on that I do not actually excel in that one-to-one type of interaction. I excel in the many to one and frankly, it is the only way I am going to ever reach my mission, so I set out. I eventually figured it out, it took me a couple of months after going full-time into Diversify that I wanted to start a digital membership, which you see in lots of other verticals of companies out there but it just didn’t really exists in the way that I wanted to bring it to pharmacy and so, we named it Becoming a Pharmacy Badass, so Pharmacy Badass University. 

My podcast and my YouTube channel is kind of like becoming a pharmacy badass and that’s a bold brand and you know there is some people that are like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you said that” but to me, if you’re going to survive in this world because we do have so many things stacked against us, you can’t be average. You can’t even be good, you have to excel and you have to become something different. 

Pharmacy Badass University is our digital membership and you get it all. It’s you log in, you get your membership and it’s like, “Well, what’s included?” it’s like you know, all of those online e-courses, we are constantly creating them. I am creating the initial ones because we’re just going to be launching but how do you manage your inventory, how do you do that? Well, I don’t know. Here, let’s go and let’s just watch this on-demand course that either you can give to your technician, you can give to your pharmacist or if you are a startup, you know maybe do it yourself. 

How do you control your cost? Well here, here is how, the method I go through and how I can look at my PNL and how I control my cost and what those costs should be. And so it is going to be on-demand courses, a ton of done-for-you stuff because you know, as easy as Canva is or some other graphic designs, not many pharmacy owners are going to have the time to go do that, so it is like every month, we’re going to be creating those templates and those emails and those things for them. 

We’re going to have those office hours because I get calls all the time from pharmacy owners and I’ll end up doing a podcast or something about it. I am sure you kind of get this too, it’s like, “Man, everybody could benefit from that question. That was such a great question and I had such a great discussion with you but I didn’t record it and I can’t share it” and so it’s like we’re going to have those open office hours where everybody gets in that kind of shared knowledge.

Those monthly mastermind calls where I bring in other experts, I bring in sometimes outside of the industry, sometimes within the industry and so it’s really going to be this super low-cost no complications at all, no contracts, no minimums. My golly, if you don’t want to be a member anymore, you know, cancel and we’ll make it happen because I only want to serve people that are truly getting value. I want to be the best value in pharmacy because I know, I am still a pharmacy owner myself now. 

I sold my original pharmacy but I got back into pharmacy ownership. I actually have parts of three different pharmacies and I know how tight money and time is for pharmacies. Those are the two tightest things and so we want to help you save time and we want to help you use your money wisely. So we literally we’re trying to be stupid cheap as I say because it’s just you know, these pharmacy owners can’t afford hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month. It’s just so hard these days and that’s part of that is providing a solution that is affordable and cost effective is really at the core of my offering. 

[0:31:46.1] TU: Well, I love what you’re building Lisa. It reminds me of, for folks who have not read Tribes by Seth Godin, you know what you’re building as, yes, Lisa is the founder of the company. Lisa, you have the idea, you’re obviously growing it from the ground up but you are developing a community of folks that are coming together that are passionate about this topic of making independent pharmacy profitable again, right? 

Bringing a business mindset to independent pharmacy and obviously you are building it in a way that you can then scale that going forward. And it’s not about Lisa, it is about Lisa being a facilitator of this community that’s coming together towards this common mission and I think that speaks volumes. I love that business model when you look at memberships, especially when memberships have a community component, where you as the owner, you then move into yes, I am providing some service but I am really a facilitator among this community. 

I think that people really resonate with and stick with those groups long-term because they really feel like there’s value in being part of that community. 

[0:32:45.3] LF: I could not have said that any better myself. You are absolutely right and that is exactly what I’m going for because I might know a lot about a lot of things but I don’t ever claim to be an expert on everything. There is always going to be somebody else out there that can share some of their wisdom and if we’re all committed to helping independent pharmacy owners thrive, then everybody wins when you share what works and sometimes, what doesn’t work. 

Sometimes you learn more from what doesn’t work and so no, you’re absolutely right and along with the membership aspect, we are doing our own live events that are very focused around pharmacy profit, like, I am unabashed and unashamed. We help pharmacies increase their profits and that’s not a bad game. 

[0:33:27.8] TU: As you should, it’s a business. 

[0:33:28.9] LF: Yeah, it is a business you know? Pharmacy owners are the worst people, you know, the saying that I founded [Long Deer 0:33:34.5] ago, is profit is not a four-letter word. Now granted, can you make profit bad ways? Absolutely, everything comes with the good and the bad side but making a good profit in your pharmacy is not something you should be ashamed of. There is right ways to do it and there are plenty of them out there and it is not a four-letter word and something that should be avoided. 

I am unashamed in helping pharmacies improve their profitability. So we have the Pharmacy Profit Summit, which is a two-day event and then we have the Pharmacy Badass University, which is centered around the six pillars of pharmacy profit, so we are unashamed in helping pharmacies improve their profits because that is the only way that they are going to stick around and be able to help and continue to serve their communities. 

[0:34:17.0] TU: That’s right and we are going to link to the website and you can get more information by checking that out in the show notes but just to bring that full circle, right? If we’re not profitable as a business, you can’t continue to offer the service, which is providing value to the community, which is why you started doing that in the first place. Amen to what you just said there Lisa. 

Let me ask you as a follow up then, you know, I often think about differential advantages for businesses and so when I think about independent owners and other things that are already out there for them, right? I am thinking about organizations like NCPA, I am thinking about state organizations and interest groups within state organizations. I am thinking about buying groups and what they often will offer independent pharmacy. 

What is different about what you’re doing and how are you differentiating that from other services that are already out there to serve independent owners? 

[0:35:01.2] LF: Yeah, so I look at NCPA and a lot of the state organizations as legislative efforts. I mean, I think that’s all their ultimate goal is to affect things either on state and national levels from a legal standpoint, which I certainly support and I am not doing. Diversify does not do that, not to say that I won’t write my own letters to my congressman or something like that but I am certainly not starting a legislative moment on anything. 

I think that is one important distinction there but sometimes when you get into buying groups and things like that, you kind of start to wonder who they’re actually fighting for, who is ultimately the best interest of what they’re recommending because sometimes what they recommend does not make sense when you are looking at it from that financial standpoint. It’s like, “Hmm yeah, buying my products from you is actually costing me money, so how is this better?”

You know, you kind of just maybe start to wonder where their ultimate loyalties lie and so really, what I am doing is I am bringing together that 20 years’ experience, I pretty much know just about everybody in this industry. I know what the companies are doing, a lot of people reach out to me, even startup companies, I often hear about companies that are just getting started a year before they launch for the public and those kinds of things. 

I really try to keep my pulse on this industry and a lot of what I do is free. I try to put out a ton of free content, you know just follow my social media, follow the podcast, follow the YouTube, any of those kinds of things. I put so much stuff out there for free because if I can help a pharmacy owner for free, I am A-okay with that and if you get all you need from that, perfect. 

If you want to go up to the next level where you kind of want some done for you, you want to be able to ask some questions, you need that little bit more of handholding, that’s where Pharmacy Badass University comes in and we’re less than $200 a month. I mean, we’re talking I am trying to keep it as low as possibly low as it can be and so really, I think that’s how it difference is, is that I am truly here for the success of other pharmacy owners not just to charge them by the hour or something like that in terms of helping them. 

Where there’s lots of consultants, some good, some not so good, it’s just a different model because they are doing that one-on-one, well, you can only have 10, 15 maybe pharmacies when you do that one-on-one so you have to charge higher prices and you have to do things because you still got to put food on the table. 

We’re a business as well and so my approach of the many-to-one I think not only benefits the industry because I am able to help more pharmacies, but it also benefits the individual owner because the cost for them interacting with me is next to nothing, $200 a month. It’s like, it doesn’t get any cheaper than that. 

[0:37:36.1] TU: You know, just another different advantage of outside looking in is you are an owner. You’ve lived it, right? You are in it and I think you can resonate as both the leader of this community as well as somebody who is in the community looking to learn from others. I want to come back just for a second here talking about providing value. For folks that have not listened to Pat Flynn has a site podcast, a resource called Smart Passive Income, we’ll link it in the show notes but was very influential to me early on in my journey of starting YFP. 

He often talks about, if you lead with providing value to address a problem that people care about and you have a solution, which is one that they eventually be willing to pay for, lead with value and the business will come. And I think you are demonstrating that very well. You mentioned leading with a lot of free resources and then you’ve got kind of next level opportunities for those that are willing to make that further investment of both time and money. 

Lisa, I want to come back, final question for you is this aspect of figuring it out. If I reflect on your past 20 years, I would argue that less than 5% of the work that you are doing today and the success that you’ve had from your career is from what you learned in your training to become a pharmacist. 

And you know, I think as I think about folks that are going down the path like you have gone down, there is this hunger to learn and there’s this mentality through all these different roles that you’ve had both as an employee, as an owner of just figuring it out, right? Being willing to learn and to grow and to get better and perhaps making some mistakes along the way. Tell me about that mentality for you and where has that come from? Am I right in reading that as a part of your success? 

[0:39:13.7] LF: No, I think you’re spot on. I have a very – you know, I’ve taken probably every personality and skill test out there and I do have a very high figured it out factor partly because that’s the fun part to me. I like problem solving. I always like math in school, I like coming up with the right answer, it gives me my little dopamine hits and so I really do like the figuring it out part but I think what comes in as you mentioned a big thing about fear and we kind of started off with that is the fear of failure. 

Even pharmacy owners, you know, I will sometimes get on the phone call with a pharmacy owner and give them 10 different options of what they might want to focus on for the next year or something like that. It is really the only ones, the ones that fail or the ones that don’t succeed or don’t implement are the ones, that – we’re afraid of doing it wrong. And as pharmacists, I think that particularly hinders us because in pharmacy school and in your primary pharmacists job, you want to be perfect. 

You strive for perfection, you never ever want to make a mistake on a prescription, which is a perfect mindset for a pharmacist working the bench. However, when you take your bench hat off and you put your pharmacy ownership hat on, you cannot bring that thought process into your pharmacy ownership decision making. It is okay to make mistakes in business. In fact, I’m a big fan of fail fast. If I am going to fail, I want to figure out what’s not going to work as soon as I can so I can move on to what is going to work. 

I am very much a subscriber to that belief of failing fast. And you have to understand that business mistakes are not the same as dispensing or pharmacist mistakes. If you try a type of advertising on the radio and you spend $1,500 and it was a raging success, great and if it was a raging failure, well, you lost $1,500 but nobody died, nobody was hurt. You probably did some good, you probably got something out of it even if it wasn’t what you thought. 

So you really have to reassess what failure is and what it is not when you are looking and making decisions as the business owner, as the owner of the pharmacy, rather than looking at it as a pharmacist. And I think that is the hardest part for pharmacy owners who also happen to be pharmacists. It is really hard for them to separate themselves and I do a lot of what I’ll call therapy sessions on that in trying to help them figure that out because as you said in the beginning, the first step is just taking that first step, just putting out a newsletter. 

I look at my very first newsletter that I sent out and I cringe. I’m like, “How did anybody read that and enjoy it?” but you know what? I got a ton of complements on it, you know? But looking back it’s like, “Oh just remember you’re always your worst critic but you can never succeed if you never try.” And you know, failure in business is to be expected. You know, perfection is not the gold standard and so we just have to understand that that’s different from when we’re working the bench as opposed to working on our business, and I think that’s the biggest lesson that pharmacy owners can learn. 

[0:42:04.9] TU: That’s so good really differentiate what failure is and what is not and the difference between that mindset as a business owner versus as a practicing pharmacist and to be fair, you know, if I think back to my PharmD training, Lisa, we’re taught rightfully so, you know, when we are thinking about our roles as a pharmacist and mitigating and preventing medication errors. 

That mindset is drilled into us of, failure cannot happen from that standpoint. And that makes sense from the pharmacist-patient perspective but to your point, which is spot on, very different when we think about that as a business owner and how we can learn and grow through that failure. This has been awesome. I am energized from this interview and I think that’s going to go to our community as well and those that are listening, so thank you so much for your time. 

Finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about the work that you’re doing at DiversifyRx and to connect with you further? 

[0:42:49.7] LF: Yeah, so our website is diversifyrx.com, that’s probably the easiest way. You can send me an email at [email protected]. Feel free to find me on all of the social channels either by the business name, DiversifyRx or my personal, Lisa Faast and then we have a podcast, we have YouTube and you can find all of those resources plus tons of free downloadables all on our website. 

We try to make it super easy to help people for free as a primary method, so head over to that website and that is where a great place to get started. 

[0:43:22.3] TU: Awesome, thank you so much Lisa. We’ll link to those in the shownotes and I really appreciate your time coming on the show today.

[0:43:26.9] LF: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate your shows. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:43:29.9] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. 

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END] 

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YFP 245: Getting Under Contract in a Competitive Home Buying Market

Posted on by yfpadmin


Getting Under Contract in a Competitive Home Buying Market

On this episode, sponsored by First Horizon, mortgage manager, Tony Umholtz, discusses getting under contract in a competitive home buying market.

About Today’s Guest

Tony Umholtz graduated Cum Laude from the University of South Florida with a B.S. in Finance from the Muma College of Business. He then went on to complete his MBA. While at USF, Tony was part of the inaugural football team in 1997. He earned both Academic and AP All-American Honors during his collegiate career. After college, Tony had the opportunity to sign contracts with several NFL teams including the Tennessee Titans, New York Giants, and the New England Patriots. Being active in the community is also important to Tony. He has served or serves as a board member for several charitable and non-profit organizations including board member for the Salvation Army, FCA Tampa Bay, and the USF National Alumni Association. Having orchestrated over $1.1 billion in lending volume during his career, Tony has consistently been ranked as one of the top mortgage loan officers in the industry by the Scotsman’s Guide, Mortgage Executive magazine, and Mortgage Originator magazine.

Episode Summary

If you’re looking to buy a home shortly in an area with a competitive market, this episode is for you. Today we welcome Tony Umholtz back to the show, a mortgage manager for First Horizon, formerly IBERIABANK. In this episode, Your Financial Pharmacist Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with Tony to talk through the tips for securing a home purchase contract in a competitive housing market, the current state of the housing market, the current housing shortage, and reasons behind that shortage. Tim and Tony discuss interest rates and trends Tony has seen through his experiences working with pharmacists across the country. Hear why the lender and agent you choose to purchase a home through matters, why the type of loan you choose to get matters, top advice for first-time homebuyers looking for a low down payment, and the pros and cons of various strategies to make an offer stand out. Tony also shares information on how to get out of your contract if necessary without losing your earnest money. From escalation clauses, and appraisal gap clauses, to waving inspection contingencies, this episode breaks down everything you need to know as a pharmacist trying to secure a home in the current real estate market.

Key Points From This Episode

  • Hear about Tony’s background and the work he’s doing right now with First Horizon.
  • How we’re still at historically low-interest rates, even with the recent rise we’re seeing. 
  • Some context on the current market and why we currently have a housing shortage.
  • Tony shares why it matters what type of loan you get.
  • Important factors to consider when evaluating and considering the lender that you choose. 
  • What an escalation clause is and some of the potential pros or cons to look out for.
  • Tony comments on the recent trend of waving inspection contingency.
  • Whether the earnest dollar amount is going up in this market and if offering more makes a difference.
  • The three pieces that will allow you to get out of the contract and not lose your earnest dollars. 
  • Some advice on what to do if you’re looking for an option with a lower down-payment.
  • Why there are so many cash offers out there at the moment.
  • We talk about some great strategies to help out with the seller cost.

Highlights

“We’ve had the lowest interest rates we’ve ever seen as a country the last couple of years during the pandemic. Now they’re just slowly going back up again and we’re still at historic lows, even with the move higher that we’ve seen in the last six, seven months.” — Tony Umholtz [0:04:47]

“I think having a very good realtor who is trusted in the market and has a good reputation can really help you get a contract right now. That’s a big thing, a big deal.” — Tony Umholtz [0:15:00]

“We have the housing shortage and rents are escalating at a faster pace than appreciation on housing is, so that is why owning real estate is valuable right now.” — Tony Umholtz [0:26:26]

“Learning as much as you can about the seller and the situation can help you in getting that under contract.” — Tony Umholtz [0:29:15]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU1: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

 This week, I had a chance to welcome back on to the show, Tony Umholtz, a mortgage manager for First Horizon, formerly IBERIABANK. During the interview, Tony and I talked about some tips for securing a home purchase contract in a competitive housing market. If you’re looking to buy a home in the near future and live in an area that has a competitive market, this episode is for you. 

During the show, we talk about the current state of the housing market interest rates and trends Tony has seen through his experiences working with pharmacists across the country, why the lender and agent you choose to purchase a home matters, and the pros and cons of various strategies to make an offer stand out, including escalation clauses, appraisal gap clauses and waving inspection contingencies.

Before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP planning offers free only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. 

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor, First Horizon, and then we’ll jump into my interview with Tony.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:01:38.0] TU: Does saving for a down payment on a home feel like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20% for a down payment may take years. We’ve been on the hunt for a solution for pharmacists that are ready to purchase a home with a lower down payment and are happy to have found that option with IBERIABANK/First Horizon. IBERIABANK/First Horizon offers a professional home loan option, AKA, a doctor or pharmacist home loan that requires a 3% down payment for a single-family or townhome, has no PMI, and offers a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on home loans up to $548,250.

The Pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii. To check out the requirements for IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to start the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:42.2] TU1: Tony, welcome back to the show.

[0:02:44.0] TU2: Tim, thanks for having me, always good to be here with you.

[0:02:46.4] TU1: Really looking forward to this, our first recording together in 2022. We’ve had you on the show many other times before, we’ll link to those in the show notes for folks that are looking for guidance in the midst of that home buying process. We’ve talked before about the professional home loan option, the pharmacist home loan and we’ll get to that at the end as well but if folks want other references and resources on that, we’ll certainly link to those previous conversations in the show notes.

Tony, I don’t want to assume that all of our audience knows who you are and so if you just take a moment to give us some background on yourself and the work that you’re doing with First Horizon.

[0:03:21.5] TU2: Sure, well, I’m a mortgage banker and I’ve been doing mortgage lending now for almost 20 years I’m afraid to say, it would be 20 years in October but we handle residential lending and I run a team here, we’re based in Florida but we lend all over the country, we are actually in 48 states. The lower 48 we’re licensed in and we handle the residential financing both purchase loans, purchase money, and refinancing but it’s been a lot of fun, I’ve had a lot of fun in my career. We’re in a very interesting time now, Tim.

[0:03:53.4] TU1: We are and I appreciate you as always, sharing your expertise, and today, we’re going to be talking about some tips and strategies for getting under contract in a competitive home buying market, I would say that’s a timely topic for sure. Tony, we’ve been talking over the last few years and it seems like each season we talk, it’s just a wild time to be buying a home, the home market as a whole. 

Here we are in another time period, I think there’s some uncertainty, we see some changes that are happening to interest rates, for those especially, they are first time home buyers, I think it right to be a little bit anxious about the process and the competitive nature of what’s out there. From your viewpoint of working with pharmacists and others all across the country, just give us a quick summary of what you’re seeing as we really get into the beginning of spring of 2022. 

[0:04:41.6] TU2: Sure, Tim, you’re exactly right, the market has been changing here this year. We had some of the lowest interest rates – the lowest interest rates we’ve ever seen as a country the last couple of years during the pandemic. Now, they are just slowly going back up again and we’re still at historic lows, even with the move higher that we’ve seen in the last six, seven months. We’re still near very historic lows. 

Back when I started in the industry, 7% for 30-year fixed was actually not bad, it’s trended lower during that time frame but it’s – we’re in this time right now where we have a housing shortage throughout most of the country and a lot of that happened post the downturn of ‘08 and ‘09, we just didn’t build enough homes and apartments for the population growth. We saw people moving in together, builders couldn’t get financing for a number of years so we went through a decade of underbuilding and now, this is the consequence. 

We don’t have enough housing inventory and housing stock and what’s caused the further delay is that builders can’t build as quickly as they like to because we have supply chain issues. Builders can’t – I work with builders as well and they’ll tell me, “You know, it’s taking me six months to get roof trusses” and different things, different components of the building process are constrained. 

They can’t output the number of units for demand and I think that’s a good thing over time, I mean, they’re going to catch up eventually and it will normalize but we’re going to be in this type of market for the foreseeable future until they can catch up.

[0:06:19.1] TU1: Naturally, Tony, what we see then is, and of course, we’re generalizing across the country, certainly different in parts of the country, different markets but that means, home prices going up significantly, supply and demand, more people that are looking for homes. And we’re hearing from our community, as to be expected, whether it’s their first home, second home or third home, that they’ll be on the pinch, right? 

For many pharmacists, we see salaries – great salaries coming out of school but are relatively flat over the course of one’s career. Obviously facing many folks is significant student loan debt that first decade or so of their career and now, we’ve got rising home prices that are layered on top of that and so, all the more reason that we’ve got to be thinking about the home buying decision and the context of the rest of the financial plan. 

Before we go into individual tips or strategies for getting under contract in a competitive home buying market, I’d be remiss if I didn’t first say that we need to make sure that we’re not losing perspective on the budget for buying a home and how that fits into the rest of the financial plan, right? As we say many times in the show, we can’t look at any financial decision in a silo, and if the end goal is to get under contract but we do that in a way that significantly disrupts the rest of the financial plan, we’ve got to obviously put that in check.

Really taking a step back, what is your home buying budget, what is your personal situation as it relates to investing and saving for the future, other debts that you have incurred and are paying off, and how can we make sure we’re purchasing a home in a way that also allows us to thrive with the rest of the financial plan?

Tony, first question I have for you as it relates to getting under contract in a competitive market is, does it matter what type of loan someone may have? If I’m a seller and I’ve got 10 offers that are on the table and some folks are coming with maybe an FHA loan, a VA loan, a conventional loan, perhaps something like a doctor loan, a pharmacist home loan product, that does that really matter in terms of what type of loan someone is bringing to the table as they’re trying to bring that competitive offer forward?

[0:08:18.6] TU2: Well, it certainly does. I think it’s a really good question because when you get an FHA or a VA pre-approval letter, if you’re a seller and if you had experience with that, there’s typically a much stricter appraisal that’s done on your property versus maybe a conventional loan or like a special pharmacy or doctor product. It’s going to be a much more stringent appraisal and it’s just because those loans, FHA and VA loans are federally backed loans that are backed by what’s called Ginnie Mae, which – anyway, not to get into the complexities of the mortgage market and everything else, they’ve got sets of guidelines for these products. 

Now, they’re good programs, they have opportunities for individuals to qualify for different things but as a seller, you’re going to probably, if all things being equal, right? If that price is the same, you’ll probably going to want to avoid those offers just because they do come with some extra sets of eyes. And the other thing too that both these types of loans, if you get the home appraised and that appraisal comes back lower or whatever it might be, that’s attached to the home for quite a while.

[0:09:31.1] TU1: Yup.

[0:09:31.3] TU2: That seller cannot – if another buyer comes in, they have to use the appraisal that was done on your unit. It’s – there is some overlays to those two products so that will probably put you in a more inferior position.

[0:09:44.6] TU1: One tangible story I have here, Tony, personal experience, we were selling, my wife Jess and I are selling our home up in Northeast Ohio before we moved to Colombus and the buyer had FHA loan and I remember during the inspection process, this was my delinquency as the homeowner, I think one of our boys had pulled the railing off the wall or just something normal that happens in our house with four boys.

I was in the process of kind of getting that back up of the rail going up to the stairs and at the time when they came out to the inspection and there wasn’t a whole lot of notice, they take a bunch of pictures and whatnot and they had requested that that be put back on and they had to come back out to see that it was put back on. This was in the pre-pandemic time period so maybe now they allow for photos or other things but that time gap could be significant, right? 

If you’ve got multiple offers and things that are going on and if folks again are looking for ease of closing and they’ve got options of different buyers with loans that may not be astringent, it certainly could be something that can come into play.

[0:10:41.6] TU2: Absolutely, there’s no question, it happens all the time. When we do approvals for – we do FHA and VA loans too and when we have them, I have listing agents call me and tell me these things. This is just from experience and – but there’s no question that can put you at a disadvantage but again, those programs are there to serve a purpose. They’re not bad loan programs for different people, they have pros and cons. 

I don’t want to downplay it but they certainly, if you are qualified with you, those products are going to put you in an inferior position going into getting the offer, for sure, and to getting it accepted, the contract accepted.

[0:11:15.6] TU1: Next thing Tony, I want to ask you about is the who on your team. Specifically, first, I want to talk about from a lending standpoint and then second, from the agent standpoint and really highlighting that not all options are created equally. And I think when it comes from a lending perspective, speaking from personal experience as a former first-time home buyer, I was very fixated on getting the best rate, right? 

That was something that had been drilled into me that you’re looking at something over 30 years on a 300, 400, $500,000 purchase, 0.1% or whatever would be the difference, can be significant. But not stopping there, of course, a competitive rate really matters but other things, communication, timing to close, accessibility of that individual during the process, so important to bringing a competitive offer for it. 

Tell us more about how we can really evaluate and consider the lender that we’re using.

[0:12:07.9] TU2: Yeah, another good point, Tim. I mean, during this time where everything’s so competitive, most markets around the country have less than two months of inventories, that’s very much a seller’s market and very competitive. We had a situation happen this weekend with my team and we had a borrower that said, “Hey, I’m going to go in at this set purchase price for a home.” And they actually had to pay quite a bit more and the seller was going to go with them but they didn’t have a letter stating that, and they were approved for that amount and even more than that. But they thought like a negotiating tactic would be, “Hey, let’s go in at this, what my offer price is going to be.” Which was under value.

They almost didn’t get the contract. Fortunately, a member of my team was able to send them the updated pre-approval letter this weekend so they could get the house under contract. Communication is really important and especially during this time. And I will say also that the listing agents call us, and we don’t disclose anything personal and we don’t – we can’t do that but a lot of them will want to know, “Hey, can you close on time? Can you get this done, can you get an appraiser out there and have an appraisal done in a meaningful matter of time?” 

And also, the commitment letter deadline, a lot of contracts call it commitment letter, which is basically a formal underwriting approval where you’ve been through underwriting formally, a lot of orders are done within a few days and other lenders, some other lenders may be like this too, but having it done quickly is so important. And being able to get underwritten quickly and having open communication is critical with the lender in this time because it’s – I always tell people, you can go with certain lenders if you’re just refinancing, if it takes 90 to 120 days, it’s okay, it might cause some stress a little bit for you but it’s just a refinance, right?

On a purchase, you have to hit these deadlines, you have to hit these timelines or you could be out of contract, and not only lose the contract but also lose your earnest money too. Yeah, it’s very important. And I would also say with the agents too, your real estate is very important that you have a good real estate agent that knows the market and I’ve seen just from my years of experience, I’ve gotten feedback where listing agents would call me and say, “Hey, this buyer’s represented by so and so,” we’ll call it Mr. Smith, “Everything he brings me has been over the years has been great.”

“He’s always transparent with me about his buyers, he keeps things together and I have these six offers but I think all things being equal, he’s always treated me right so I’m going to go with him.” I’ve heard that, just because they feel all things being equal, right? All these other buyers’ kind of equal pricing, whatever else, I know that he, what he’s telling me from experience is going to happen. I think having a very good realtor who is trusted in the market and has a good reputation can really help you get a contract right now. That’s a big thing, a big deal.

[0:15:12.3] TU1: Yeah, it’s the second or third time Tony, you’ve mentioned, with all things being equal, right? I think that’s worth highlighting, that you can have the best lender and the best agent but if you’re not bringing a competitive offer for it, brother, that’s not going to help you. But I would argue, a good lender that’s a partner and a good agent who really knows the market, assuming it’s within your budget and other goals and whatnot, they’re going to help you put forward a competitive offer, right? 

Those things I think do go hand in hand. Shout out here to Nate Hedrick, a friend of YFP who does our home buying, concierge service who helps connect pharmacists with agents in their area, that are certainly going to be coming forward as someone who is reputable and able to take someone through that deal. We’ve got a home buying page where folks that are looking to get connected with an agent, looking to learn more about the First Horizon professional home loan option, if you go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com and then click on home buying, you’ll see all that information and can read through that further.

Tony, one of the things that I’m hearing a lot in this competitive market is escalation clauses and why it’s potentially valuable to have an escalation clause built into the contract? What is an escalation clause and what are some of the potential pros or cons that people need to be on the lookout for?

[0:16:26.0] TU2: Well, the escalation clause are essentially saying, we’re going to pay – we’re going to stay in this bidding war, right? We’re going to stay at this bidding war for this property and we’ll go up X amount. I have seen these happen where you’re putting in your offer and you’re willing to go X amount higher than just to keep up with the next guy, right? Whatever that number might be, $10,000, $5,000, 10% or 5% and you’re escalating above the sales price essentially and we’re seeing that happen, right? 

There is a bidding, a bid up of housing. You know, the pros and cons, clearly the pros are you can stay in the transaction and maybe it will help you secure the home. The cons are you may be bidding at more than it’s worth and when we have that appraisal done, you are going to have an appraised value that might be at the original sales price where they started. 

Now, you are paying, let’s say $10,000 more than where you started because you participated in the escalation clause and now when we get that appraisal, you’re $10,000 under the value. So lenders can only lend off the original appraised value and if you owe $10,000 more, because if you want the property that’s what you are going to have to do because there is other buyers that are willing to do it too, then you’re going to be bringing your down payment plus the $10,000. 

That’s the risk, Tim, is that you’re getting in a situation where it may not appraise and you are having to bring more money to the table than you anticipated in the beginning. 

[0:18:13.5] TU1: Yeah and I think this is a very natural feeling in the moment, right? Where people are living in areas where they are hearing of 30 showings in a weekend and 25 offers that are on the home. And so you come in maybe asking a little bit more and then you put these clauses that go up another 20 or $30,000, but then the risk, as you mentioned, which is part of just the reality of the market, but also one that somebody has to plan for is, what happens when you have to bring more cash to close? 

Are you ready for that, right? What does that mean for the rest of the financial plan? Is that coming out of savings? Is that putting you behind on their goals or is that something you can cash flow without causing too much headache or concern? Tony, the other thing I am hearing a lot, of course again, as we are talking about just a competitive market, is waving an inspection contingency, and that one gives me a little bit of heartburn but I didn’t buy a home in the chaos that is today’s market. Has this become a norm, what is this all about? 

[0:19:11.4] TU2: Well, I never recommend it so I come in the same boat as you. You know, I’ve had a few of my clients ask me this, and you just never know what you’re getting into and you want to know, “Is my roof going to last? Is there another major issue, a foundation problem or whatever it might be?” I always think you get an inspection and then you know what you are getting into, and so I am not a big believer in that. But I do know some clients have waved it especially if they are familiar with the property and if they have been looking at it for a number of years. 

I had someone that had – it was a property they had been in before, someone that they knew they lived there and they wanted it and they knew it was good and sound. I think I would not be in a case where I would not wave it personally and I do not recommend it. But you know, that would be my opinion. But again, it happens and as lenders, we don’t look at the inspection. We look at our appraisal but we don’t look at the inspection, so we don’t need it. 

We don’t require it, so anyway, that is just some feedback from us. And I would say that I am a big believer in getting an inspection though. 

[0:20:19.4] TU1: Yeah, just to define this further for those that are first-time home buyers. Inspection contingency meaning that the offer would be contingent upon the completion of an inspection and that inspection often would allow folks for an out if something significant would come up. And so, by waving that, you are essentially waving the contingency of that result of an inspection. 

[0:20:41.4] TU2: That’s right. 

[0:20:42.1] TU1: You either have a really good understanding of the home or you are taking on that risk that there might be something there. 

[0:20:48.2] TU2: Or what happens too, Tim, if they wave their inspection rights and they decide not to buy the home and they put $5,000 in earnest money to secure the contract, they walk away from the contract, they lose the $5,000. 

[0:21:00.0] TU1: Yeah. 

[0:21:00.6] TU2: That’s what’s happening and I’ve had people call the listing agent and say, “Hey look, we’ve got two offers but they’re waving their inspection contingency.” And you know in that case, what it is is, if they put their earnest money up, they’ll lose it. They can still get an inspection but if they walk away from the contract, they are going to lose their money. 

[0:21:24.7] TU1: Got it, good clarification, thank you. Since you brought up earnest money Tony, let me ask about that. Maybe I am dating myself, the last time we bought a home 2018 would have been, I feel like the earnest money was more than the house in dollar range. You just mentioned five, is that something that we have seen go up in terms of earnest money that folks need to be planning for? Hopefully they would be able to re-coop those dollars but you give an example where that maybe wouldn’t happen. 

Is that earnest dollar amount going up in this competitive market and does offering more earnest money make a difference? 

[0:21:58.7] TU2: Well, I normally see a couple of things here. I think I normally see Tim, earnest money is more tied to the price of the home. If it is a larger contract, usually a bit more earnest money versus a smaller purchase price. I think on average that there’s earnest money – earnest money has gone up a bit but I haven’t – you know, I would say on average it has, but I definitely believe the more you put up, the stronger your offer is going to look. 

If there, again, all things being equal, you have the same price and one person puts up a thousand dollars in earnest money and the other puts $5,000 and all things are equal, well, if I am the seller, I am taking the $5,000 because I have a little bit more if something goes wrong, right? In this transaction. I think a larger earnest money deposit definitely puts you in a better position. 

Again, you want to have some – typically in the contract, there is going to be an inspection contingency and appraisal contingency and a financing contingency. Those are the three main pieces and if you have those in place in the contract and one of those things falls through, you have the ability to get out of the contract and not lose your earnest money, so that is what the importance of having those pieces in the contracts. 

Again, all things being equal, I think the more you can put down, the stronger you’re going to represent yourself to the seller but then again, a lot of these programs we offer don’t require a lot of money down.

[0:23:26.7] TU1: That’s right, you can ask that, yeah, exactly. 

[0:23:29.3] TU2: Yeah, so I will say this, there’s another program, I had a builder call me and said, “Hey, we require 10% to build the house for this client and I see that your approval letters is 95% financing, so are they basically going to get 5% back at closing?” And I said, “Yes because they advanced money to you to build the home, and then when we do the loan at the end, we are going to give 95% financing so 5% of their earnest money will come back.”

So different situations but clearly, everyone is different in how much they can put up and I think in speaking with their realtor so they can get a better idea what’s a good offer. 

[0:24:10.8] TU1: Tony to that point, you know I would imagine if someone is selling a home and there is, I don’t know, 10, 12, 15 offers, I would expect we are seeing more cash offers that maybe are out there. If I am a first-time home buyer and I am looking at an option that has a lower down-payment, I am wondering, do I even have a shot in that market? In terms of competing with cash offers or even offers that have more earnest money down, what advice, what thought would you have there? 

[0:24:37.9] TU2: In that case, I mean there are all sorts of sellers out there and you’re right Tim, a lot of cash offers. Typically cash offers are lower-ball offers, a little bit lower than the market, right? Most of them do that because “Hey, if I am paying cash I want a better value.” They are going to ask a seller to sell it for it less. A lot of times, people with financing will pay a little bit more and that’s how you are able to secure it above them, because you are paying a little bit more than the lower-ball cash offer. 

Now the other thing with cash is, not all but a lot of them are investors, right? They are investors, it might not even be people. It might be corporations that are buying rental properties and some sellers, I mean not everyone but some sellers, if you have raised your family in a home or your kids have been in this house and your family has been in this house, you kind of like the idea of another family moving in, right? Or another owner occupant moving in. 

Not necessarily a family but just someone that is going to live in my house and take care of it like we did, you know? That is the mentality that some sellers have versus some investor coming in, right? I think that that sometimes can connect with people too and you know, you might have to write a letter or say, “Hey, this is who we are.” And again, I am just giving an idea here but I think that can hold value.

All things being equal, if I have a pre-approved person, they are going to pay $5,000 more than the 10 cash offers are, “Hey, I am going to live in your house and this is where we are living and I own it.” Owner-occupied versus those 10 cash offers where 90% of them are investors, right? I think that is a good way to kind of position yourself differently. And I think we are talking about all of these things, guys, and it sounds scary and it does this like, “Why would you want to compete with and deal with this?”

Well, the reason there’s all these cash offers is, we have the housing shortage and rents are escalating at a faster pace than appreciation on housing is, so that is why owning real estate is valuable right now. Because rental, the rental market is going up faster than the percent appreciation. But I guess all things being said, any connection you can have with the seller can help you in this market and help you compete with cash but naturally, you are going to have to typically pay a little bit more than cash normally to get the home. 

[0:26:59.1] TU1: Yeah, a good clarification that often cash offers might, generally speaking, might be a little bit lower and also might have a greater pool of folks that are looking at that as an investment property. Again, if somebody was selling this owner-occupied and they want to maintain that as an owner-occupied unit, that could be good, be able to communicate that to the seller.

[0:27:17.0] TU2: That’s right. 

[0:27:17.9] TU1: Tony, other strategies out there. I know there is a myriad of things that I have heard different folk use in terms of helping out with seller cost. It could be moving expenses, it could be having some flexibility to seller align and to stay in the home longer. Other strategies that you are seeing or recommending that seemed to be working in terms of again, getting under contract in this competitive market?

[0:27:42.0] TU2: Well again, we mentioned the seller. I did see, I have another contract that came in where some folks connected with the seller and that seller stayed with them, even though they could have gone and got a higher price on the market if they listed it. So that connection with the seller anyway is important. Now, what they did do, I will say this, they are letting them stay in the house 60 days after close so they can move all their stuff out and take their time because their place won’t be ready until then. 

Clearly, any sort of connection with the seller on some other variables is going to help you get the contract. And if you allow them to stay in the house, now you got to be careful with post-occupancy agreements because meaning that the seller is going to rent back from you or stay in the house a set amount of time after you purchase it, because most buyers that are listing are buying to owner-occupy the property. 

If you are essentially buying it and letting them lease from you for a period greater than 60 days, it can be looked at as a problem with the lender. So you do have to keep that in mind when you are allowing someone to stay, but I think flexibility is really an important way to help you look stronger in the eyes of seller, just meeting them on other terms that aren’t just financial, you know, giving them that extra time. 

Because a lot of sellers are maybe moving into a new condo or they’re downsizing into a new community where it’s being built. And then the builder is taking a little bit longer to build a property, so there is always these other variables. I think learning as much as you can about the seller and the situation can help you in getting that under contract. 

[0:29:23.0] TU1: Great stuff Tony. As always, I appreciate your insights from your experiences each and every day talking with pharmacists and others across the country looking to purchase a home. I think this is a good segue and transition to talking more about the pharmacist home loan product that is offered by First Horizon formerly IBERIABANK. And we’ve got lots more information, educational information. 

You can learn more about this product and other information related to purchasing a home, at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Tony, give us some of the highlights, some of the key facts as it relates to the First Horizon pharmacist home loan product, down payment, how that works with PMI, maximum loan amount and then we’ll reference folks to more information from there. 

[0:30:06.0] TU2: Sure, so we will allow up to 97% financing if you are a first-time home buyer with 3% down and then if you have owned a home before, it is 95% financing, so 5% down. As Tim mentioned, there is no PMI insurance, which is the most compelling piece of this and we do have a minimum credit score of 700, a maximum loan amount currently of $647,200, which serves plenty of markets at that size. 

Then we do offer a 30-year fixed mortgage and the rates tend to be every bit as good as if you put 20% down for a normal buyer so that’s what’s been compelling too as you are not getting penalized to put less money down. And there are no prepayment penalties, so it’s got a lot of flexibility for those that are in this occupation. And we can write it, as Tim mentioned, in 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii are the only two I can’t write it, so we haven’t gone that far yet. 

[0:31:02.9] TU1: Yeah, that was really a big part of, when we formed the collaboration a few years back, was a national option for pharmacists that were looking to make that home purchase, right? You mentioned the lower 48, obviously, we’ve got a community of pharmacists all across the country, so really grateful for your insight and the contributions you made to the YFP community. 

Again, if folks want to learn more about that product, you can go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Tony, great stuff as always, and looking forward to continuing the conversation as we go throughout the rest of 2022. 

[0:31:37.4] TU2: Thanks again Tim, I enjoyed being with you today. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:31:39.8] TU: Before we wrap up the show, I want to again thank this week’s sponsor of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, IBERIABANK/First Horizon. We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20% for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists in the YFP community have taken advantage of IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3% down payment for a single family home or townhome and has no PMI on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. 

To learn more about the requirements for IBERIABANK/First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to get started with the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan. Again, that is yourfinancialpharmacist.com/homeloan.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:32:21.8] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. 

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. 

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END] 

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