March 2023 – Your Financial Pharmacist

YFP 301: On FIRE with Riley Protz, PharmD

Posted on March 30, 2023March 20, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

Riley Protz, PharmD, MBA, a pharmacist on the FIRE journey since completing pharmacy administration residency training, discusses his career journey, student loan philosophy, and pathway to financial independence while living a rich and fulfilling life.

About Today’s Guest

Riley Protz, PharmD, MBA is a pharmacy leader and an industry expert on the 340B drug pricing program. He is the Director of Optimization at SpendMend Pharmacy. He consults with clients on opportunities to decrease their pharmaceutical drug spending and increase revenue-generating services through the 340B program. Prior to his current role, Riley was the Pharmacy Inventory Manager and 340B Program Manager of a health system in Salem, Oregon.

Riley earned his Doctor of Pharmacy degree and Masters of Business Administration from Oregon State University. He then completed a PGY1/PGY2 Health System Pharmacy Administration & Leadership (HSPAL) residency with Providence Health & Services.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, discusses FIRE and the pathway to financial independence with Riley Protz, PharmD. Riley is a pharmacist on a FIRE journey since completing pharmacy administration residency training. During this episode, Tim and Riley delve into Riley’s career journey and what drew him into the profession of pharmacy, his student loan philosophy and strategy to tackle $80,000 in student loans given the climate with the pandemic and PSLF extensions, and how he is planning out his pathway toward financial independence. Riley speaks on his motivations for pursuing FIRE as a new practitioner with competing financial priorities, the various FIRE subcommunities, why he doesn’t identify with any specific group, the challenges of working towards FIRE, and how Riley manages to balance the importance of financial freedom with living a rich and fulfilling life now. Listeners will hear the strategies Riley has employed to reach FIRE, including having a financial plan, continuing to live like a resident, using high-yield savings accounts, not carrying a car payment, renting over buying a home, and mitigating early retirement risks through flexibility in investing. Stay tuned until the end of a library of FIRE resources, blogs, podcasts, and books that Riley recommends for those beginning their FIRE journey.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] 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.

Today, I welcome Riley Protz, a pharmacist who has been on the FIRE journey since completing his pharmacy administration residency training. In this episode, we’ll delve into Riley’s career journey, his student loan philosophy, and repayment strategy, and his pathway towards achieving financial independence. We’ll also discuss the challenges of pursuing FIRE and how Riley balances his desire for financial independence with living a rich and fulfilling life today.

If you’re new to the concept of FIRE, Riley will explain what it means and why he has chosen to pursue it. We’ll also hear from Riley about the resources that have been most helpful for him on his journey including books, websites, and podcasts. Whether you’re on the FIRE journey or taking a long, steady approach saving for retirement, at YFP Planning, we’re here to support you along the way. YFP Planning is a fee-only financial planning firm that is customized to the pharmacy professional.

The team at YFP Planning includes five certified financial planners serving over 280 households in 40-plus states. 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 by visiting yfpplanning.com. Again, that’s yfpplanning.com. Okay. Let’s jump into my interview with Riley Protz.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:29] TU: Riley, thanks for joining the show.

[0:01:31] RP: Yes. Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me.

[0:01:33] TU: Before we jump into your FIRE journey, which is going to be the topic at hand for today, tell us about your career journey in pharmacy, where you went to pharmacy school, and what ultimately drew you into the profession.

[0:01:46] RP: Sure, yes. I mean, I honestly wish I had a better way pharmacy story. but I went to Oregon State University for undergrad, enjoyed the science classes. When it was time to choose a major, I had a friend that was doing pre-pharmacy and I thought, “Hey, Oregon State has an advanced degree program, maybe I’ll go and do an advanced degree. That kind of makes sense.” I chose pre-pharmacy as a major and thought, “You know what, something will come up that I want to do more, something more compelling.” Really nothing ever, you know, piqued my interest more than pharmacy did. I liked those pre-pharmacy classes I took. I got into pharmacy school on the first try at Oregon State University. It was a very easy transition.

I kind of stuck with it ever since. I didn’t really have any experience prior to choosing pharmacy, and kind of navigated those waters as I got into school. It luckily worked because I kind of didn’t have a great plan going into the process.

[0:02:34] TU: You and me both, Riley. I think sometimes, we have people on the show that have very motivational, very inspiring stories around how they entered the profession. I’ve shared before on the show that I liked science, I like math, I was undecided. From a major standpoint, I had a guidance counselor said, “Hey, why not think about pharmacy.” I did one shadowing experience. I think it was an independent pharmacy and made a commitment for six years and a whole lot of money from that advice. Sometimes that’s how the story goes.

But you decided, Riley, “Hey, I’m going to get the PharmD, but I’m going to go as well and do a PGY1, PGY2 MBA combined program.” For many of our listeners, they may be familiar with these as a PGY1, PGY2 MS. Some do an MBA program, where you’re doing all that two-year period. Why did you choose that pathway? Then what is the work that you’ve been doing since completing that?

[0:03:26] RP: Yes, I chose to do – around P3 year, I had an internship in community pharmacy. I worked in hospital pharmacy a little bit and I kind of decided that I wanted to do something around leadership and administration. Then the career trajectory and platform, there’s a lot less opportunities in community pharmacy than there is in health systems and hospitals. There’s just a lot more opportunities to be a manager director, whatever it may be in the administration realm. When I kind of looked okay, I have to go towards hospital. Residency just made sense and if I want to fast forward that pathway. The dual PGY1, PGY2, it’s HSPAL now, which is too many letters, but Health System Pharmacy Administration and Leadership residency seemed like the correct option for me. I was very fortunate to match with that, and it had a dual MBA tagged onto the residency, so I completed the MBA in the middle of residency.

Ideally, you’re supposed to have a lot of good opportunities, completion of residency, especially doing administration residency, getting that additional MBA. I graduated in the summer of 2020. Very early on in the pandemic, when everyone’s pulling back. There were almost zero job opportunities. But I had a great mentor who had left the organization I was at for residency, became a chief pharmacy officer somewhere else, and was able to create a position that I was lucky to have.

I was a pharmacy manager for a couple of years at a health system focusing on their 340B program, as well as their hospital purchasing. Then the last year, I’ve switched to the consulting realm, which has been super exciting. Still around 340B, so I kind of consider myself a subject matter expert around optimizing 340 programs for clinics and hospitals. The company is called SpendMend Pharmacy. My clients now are our hospitals and we help them around finding more savings, and helping with their possible purchasing in general, NDC optimization, really anywhere around decreasing their huge drug expense in hospitals. That’s usually one of your top three expenses for health system.

[0:05:21] TU: Riley, let’s talk about your student loans before we jump into the FIRE journey in more detail. Since 2018, so you graduate 2018, $80,000 when you came out. For those that have graduated since 2018, it’s really been a whirlwind, right? We’ve had the pandemic pause that’s now been going on for more than three years. We’ve had the expansion of PSLF eligibility. We’ve talked about that on the show. Then right now, this week, at the time of recording, the supreme court is deciding what they’re going to do related to the Biden administration debt cancellation program. Not looking too favorable in the moment for that program going through, but we’ll obviously provide updates as we get some final news there.

My question is, $80,000, that is substantially less than what we see as the national average today for pharmacy grads, right around 160. What was your philosophy and strategy related to your student loans, especially knowing some of the wrinkles that have come in over the last couple of years with the pandemic and with some of the PSLF extensions and waivers?

[0:06:24] RP: Yes. I was lucky to have graduated with $80,000. I went to in-state tuition. I lived at home for two of the four years of pharmacy school, worked every summer and I think that helped with getting that number low at the very end. But once I graduated pharmacy school, I was like, “Okay.” Well, there’s a lot of decisions to make, right? Do you want to go through income-based repayment, there’s repay, there’s PSLF, which in 2018, people were less likely to see that it would go through, but now it looks like it’s a great strategy. There’s refinancing loans as well. I think I probably pulled up multiple calculators, maybe the YFP calculator o your guys’ website. And said, “Hey, what makes sense with my five, five and a half percent interest rate to do?”

Financially, it made sense to pay it off sooner rather than later, and not to go through the income-based repayment method. That’s what I started doing. I was paying off my loans throughout residency. I was about to refinance my loans when I completed residency when the pause took place. I was like, “Hey, 0% interest rates are a lot better than what I could have gotten, maybe three and a half percent.”

I just took that as an opportunity to pay them as fast as I could. My strategy completing residency was, live like I’m still resident, right? That’s what we tell people. Don’t let lifestyle creep come into play, and so I just paid those off as quickly as I could. I did end up stopping a little bit and saying, “Let’s just hold on to the money. I don’t really need to pay it off. There’s 0% interest.” Once I think I had around, maybe $30,000, $35,000 left, I did refinance it just to get that cash bonus, and then paid it off.

I didn’t told you this last time we chatted, Tim. I had tried to do this student loan forgiveness, get a refund back. Not [inaudible 0:07:52].

[0:07:52] TU: I remember that. Yes. Yes.

[0:07:54] RP: Yes. I think it was back in October, I tried to get a $10,000 refund back because my loans are at zero percent now, but I would have qualified for the student loan forgiveness. Because my income in 2020, I was a resident for half of it, so I didn’t reach that income limit. Literally yesterday, I got the check in the mail about $10,000. You know what, who knows if it’s ever going to come into play, but now I have a student loan balance of $10,000, which if forgiveness happens, that’s great. If not, I’ll take a zero percent free-interest loan, and I’ll put that in my savings account for a little bit of time. Literally, I didn’t even think it was going to come. It was a request I put in. Four to five months later, literally yesterday, I had the check.

[0:08:34] TU: I say, what timing, right, with us recording the episode here today. I think your story is a really good. One thing I’m sensing, which I love Riley, and I hope other listeners will take from it is just the intentionality around understanding the nuances of student loans. There’s lots of different pathways that go. You mentioned some of those – whether it’s forgiveness, non-forgiveness, refinancing. It’s more complicated of a system than it probably needs to be, but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt, whether we like it or not. It’s really up to the borrower to take the time to understand the nuances, and really get into the optimization, which is what you’re doing, right? You’re putting yourself in a position to optimize, obviously, see what comes to be of the Supreme Court decision when payments are going to kick back in. I love the intentionality behind the strategy.

I’m sensing that’s going to be a good segue here as we talk about FIRE because that also relies on the strategy of one being intentional. Let’s go there. Riley, when you and I talked last year, what really excited me was talking to a new practitioner who is really on the front end of their journey towards financial independence. I think sometimes, it’s new practitioners. I just talked with a new practitioner this week. He’s been out about seven, eight years. They’ve been working through student loans, they got married, they started a family. That concept of retirement planning. It’s like, yes, it’ll be there, something I’ll worry about a little bit later. I think for some folks that are planning a very traditional timeline to retirement, that pathway of savings may certainly work. Obviously, we’ll talk here today more aggressive, early investing in your career type of a strategy.

I think for many new practitioners, it’s hard to reconcile this idea that I can accelerate and optimize the wealth-building part of my financial plan, while I’m being saddled by student loan debt, getting started with my career and all these other competing priorities. I’m really excited to dive in with you, as you’re on the front end of the journey of the FIRE, why did you go this pathway? How are you employing strategies on the FIRE journey? What are some of the resources that have helped you along the way?

Before we get too deep, though, for folks that have not heard us talk about FIRE on this show before, and we’ll link to some of those episodes in the show notes as well. What is FIRE? From your perspective, what does it stands for or what does it mean? What’s the purpose? What’s the goal?

[0:10:57] RP: I don’t think there’s a true definition of FIRE. I think it’s whatever individual to each person, what they think it means. I think of it as a maybe a money philosophy or a life strategy. It stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. At the heart of that, I really think it’s, if you hit a point, there’s really a threshold where your passive income supersedes your living expenses. Passive income can include a lot of different things. Traditionally, people are thinking their retirement accounts, the 401(k). But you’ve got potentially rental income, you have Social Security, you have maybe a side hustle. I even put in PRN and part-time work. It’s definitely more passive than thinking about your classic W2 jobs.

If you hit a point where let’s say, it cost you $40,000 to live each year, and you have a point where your investments, and all of your other passive income, supersedes that number, then you really don’t have to work at your job anymore. That’s where that second half of retire early comes into play.

[0:11:54] TU: Let’s give an example, Riley. I’d love for you to chime in here about what you do and don’t like about this example. To your point, there’s no uniform, accepted definition of what it means to be financially independent. But as you’re alluding to, you get to this point of either assets diversifying your income, other sources of income, such that you really reach financial independence. Meaning that you no longer rely on your W2 income, but you can build essentially a retirement paycheck or an early retirement paycheck, however, you define that based on these other revenue streams or savings that you’ve built up.

The rule of 25 suggests that, hey, if you take your annual household expenses, we can talk about whether or not you include taxes and that. You multiply by 25. Once you get to that point in terms of savings, you’re able to get to that point of financial dependence. If our annual expenses are $100,000, multiply that by 25, $2.5 million. Really, this comes from the research on the 4% rule, which two and a half million dollars, if I safely withdraw, we can debate that 4%. I can replace that $100,000 and that becomes the source. Now, you start to get a little bit more wrinkles in that when you talk about, okay, is it coming from only your savings? Is it coming from rental income? Is it incoming from Social Security? But without getting too far in the details there, what do you and don’t you like about kind of that back-of-napkin math?

[0:13:22] RP: Yes. I think if someone’s going to Google FIRE financial independence today, at least in the first three paragraphs, they’re going to mention rule 25 or 4% rule because it’s simple, it makes sense. First things, people are like, “I don’t know if that’s true if I trust it. It almost seems too simple, right? But you know, the numbers don’t lie is a great point to make. Truly, we’ve seen people do it, it does work.

But as you mentioned, someone – I’m sure a lot of listeners have yearly expenses around $100,000. They plug that real 25 in, they say, “There’s no way I’ll ever get to $2.5 million.” They immediately dismiss the idea and say, there’s just no possible chance that I’m ever going to hit that point. They say, forget about it, I’m going to retire when I’m 65 years old. That’s my real hiccup with the 4% rule, is I think it dissuades people who might be interested in the idea. Of course, I’m not trying to push this this idea on folks, but I think it quickly dissuades people because they think there’s no way that’s ever going to occur for them.

But this rule puts a lot of assumptions in place, like number one, is they assume that you’ll never make another dollar again. Which, let’s say you’re retiring 10,15, 20 years early. The odds of you never making another dollar is probably pretty – I don’t think that’s going to happen. They assume that your nest egg, your 401(k), your Roth, everything, that meets at $2.5 million is all you have. But you could have a side gig, a side hustle. Let’s say your, for example, your expenses are $100,000 per year, but you’re still making – you’re working a little bit, you’ve got a side hustle going on, you’re doing maybe PRN work. That’s the benefit of being a pharmacist, is we can work one day a week, right? That’s a great aspect of our job.

You’re making $40,000 per year, much less than the average pharmacist makes. But then that decreases your yearly expenses to 60k. So your actual real 25 number becomes $1.5 million, so much more easily ingestible number to take. Another assumption, your expenses are going to remain constant throughout your entire life. But data shows that the older you get, especially at your 70s and 80s, you’re not going to be spending as much as you are in your 40s, 50s, and 60s. You take that in consideration as well. I think my last one is, compound interest is just really hard to visualize, and the amount of time and how it actually works.

If you’re telling somebody, “Hey, really, you should see that extra $2,000 because it’s going to grow to whatever it may be in 20 years.” I don’t know if that’s actually going to work. I can’t see it, but I can see a TV today, or I can see a new car today, and I can get those benefits now. I think it’s a great initial, just quick back-of-the-napkin math on how this works. But I think, too many people are just waiting and say, “Oh, there’s no way I’m going to get there.” A lot of those factors I just described, all of them would lead to a lower number. Potentially, if you can shave off five years of retirement, that’s great as well, right, because you can enjoy those years while you can.

[0:16:02] TU: Yes. I think that’s such a great point, Riley because you’ve highlighted well already that everyone’s plan is going to be different. I think that’s where we need to make sure we’re not falling into the trap of, that there’s one way to do FIRE. Are we talking about a retirement age of 40 or 55, or just a little bit earlier? Late 50s or 60? Is it more of an aggressive timeline, or just a little bit earlier than more of a traditional retirement? Might there be some side additional income? Are we interested in looking at real estate investment? Obviously, post-retirement. What about Social Security? What about health risks and health care. I mean, there’s so many layers to consider. But your point of the rule of 25, I think, often being overwhelming, especially to folks earlier in the journey is a really good one.

I can tell you the number of sessions or presentations I’ve done with folks where, when you talk about saving or investing for the future and compound interest, eyes gloss over. I mean big numbers, $3, $4, $5 million. One of things we really try to do at YFP, is how do we discount that back to today to make that a meaningful number, right? We can run an estate calculation and show that FIRE or not, you need three point, whatever million dollars. Okay. That’s scary. That’s overwhelming. I’m more depressed now about achieving long-term financial independence.

But what does that mean today, in terms of how much I need to be able to save, and what assumptions go into place. That number is probably still going to be big, maybe bigger than we want in terms of, maybe it’s going to take 800, 1,200, 1,500, 1,800 month, whatever, but we can start to put our arms around that. I think these big, huge numbers are like, “All right. Might as well just give up. I’m early in the journey. I’m just going to kind of focus on the here now. Point well taken. I think that can be a challenge.

Riley, let’s take a step back to your FIRE journey. What was the motivating factor or factors in terms of why you wanted to go down this pathway?

[0:17:56] RP: Yeah. I think I reflected on this a little bit recently on why I was so hooked on it when I when I first found FIRE. I think my reasoning has actually changed in the short years since I found it. I’ll take you back to, let’s see, I think it’s 2019 now when I was a PGY1. We have a big cohort of co-residents. There were 16 of us. I think we were talking about what to do with our 403B. As you can probably tell, I have a passion for personal finance, so I knew a little bit more than everyone else, and just trying to provide a little bit of guidance, but didn’t feel super confident, especially talking about that topic.

In residency, we spend so much time talking about certain disease states, and we had antimicrobial stewardship conferences, and ethics conferences, and professionalism. We didn’t spend a single second on personal finance, I remember going to my RPD and asking, “Hey. Can we have someone come in and just talk to us for an hour or two?” There really wasn’t an option for doing that. I thought, you know, why don’t I do it? It was during that, I was trying to treat it like a topic discussion and doing – trying to find empirical and objective data, which I’m sure, you know, it’s very hard to find on the internet.

But I did stumble upon the concept of FIRE and was immediately hooked. I think in the midst of PGY1, I probably should have been spending a lot more time on residency and MBA classes. But all I wanted to do was read about this concept, and like, it doesn’t make sense. There’s no way it’s actually real. Does the numbers line up? There’s a lot of blogs online, that I just kind of took up as much as I could. I think the reasons why – I think there were two main reasons why there were motivating factors for me to pursue. Number one being, I’ve always been a natural saver but didn’t really have a reason for why I was saving, ever since I was a child. I filled a piggy bank up when I got money for my birthday but didn’t know what I was doing. I just felt like, “Yes, I’ll just save it.”

Financial independence was kind of became a Northstar. Whenever I’m making a decision, being very intentional with every dollar. If I’m not going to spend it on one thing, I’m not just saving it, actually. I have another reason. I’m putting it towards another purpose, which was a big idea. Then the second reason, which I think is a big pushback of people who pursue FIRE is, I was once again in the midst of PGY1, probably not loving life at the moment. It’s not sustainable way to live and work. The idea of not working, I think, I was probably drawn to. That’s what a big pushback is. You shouldn’t be pursuing this idea because you want to escape your job and retire early. But you know, now, I absolute love what I’m doing. You think that my desire for financial independence would wane, right? But I’m still – I have a different reason, I guess for pursuing it. Bear with me as I make this point.

I have kind of a strategy now of maximizing overall life happiness, and fulfillment, and meaning, whatever that may be. If I’m trying to solve for maximum happiness, then treating, bringing that down into like every day, what would that look like in different buckets on things that would make me happy, so that’d be a strong social life. Today, there’s spending time with parents and friends, but let’s fast forward 15 years, we’ve got a plan for the future, right? Probably spending time with future children. I don’t think I’m going to have five boys, – sorry, four boys like you do. But if I do, then that’s going to be a higher percentage of my time is me spending with children. That’s one bucket.

Second bucket being health. If I work out today, there’s benefits. But main reason I’m working out is for future me. I want to have as many healthy days as possible, maybe two more buckets here. One of them being philanthropy, giving back in some way, whether that be resources or money. That’s going to skew much more later in life. The last one here, curiosity or learning. I love to travel internationally, read, whatever it may be. I stick with my current W2 job. That satisfies probably three of those four buckets. I got to get sense of social life. Definitely, a sense of philanthropy. It’s a great thing about being a pharmacist, is we have very fulfilling jobs.

Then definitely fulfilling that, that learning bucket. But I spend 45, around 45 hours of my waking life per week on this job. So it’s not filling everything, every single bucket. There’s plenty of other buckets that I’m not going to go into. If I’m trying to solve for maximum fulfillment, and happiness, I’ve just got a pretty high degree of confidence that in 15 years, or 20 years, or 10 years, I’m not going to want to spend 45 hours per week on this one job. I’m going to have a lot more other pursuits that are going to help me lead fulfilling and happy life. Let’s fast forward, let’s say 15 years. Maybe I want to spend 20 hours per week at my job, maybe at zero. If I’m lucky, maybe it’s 60, maybe I absolutely love what I’m doing, then that’s great.

I want to give myself the ability, and flexibility to make that decision when the time comes. That’s where financial independence comes in. If you save a little bit more now, that gives you the ability to make that decision down the line.

[0:22:24] TU: Riley, that’s beautiful. I’m glad you address this equation of solving for maximum fulfillment, maximum happiness. Actually, the research on this topic is fascinating, around deriving happiness from money, and how we connect the two. I think that it’s a natural evolution to be thinking about that, especially when you build a strong financial foundation. It’s hard to see that when you’re in the thick of all these decisions when you’re, obviously, you work through the student loans, you’re making a good income, you’re working full time, you’ve got a lot of places you can optimize a plan. I think that’s when you can really start to have some of that peace of mind, and be worried about things like solving for maximum happiness and fulfillment. Because you’ve got a strong foundation of what you’re growing from. I think that, too often, when we talk about investing, or savings goals, we leave out the so what. What’s the purpose? What’s the point? What’s the why? I think pharmacists, especially very analytical folks, I think we can get all excited sometimes about the spreadsheets. Hey, I’m on path to save $2.4 million. What’s the purpose?

If we ask that question of what are we trying to accomplish, what are we trying to achieve, and how do we reconcile taking care of our future selves while also living a rich life today? Both are important. I think one of the knocks, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on. I think one of the knocks of the FIRE community would be, typically we’re looking at very aggressive saving rates, right? There’s all different types of FIRE and we’ll talk about that here in a moment. But usually, we’re defining FIRE, and aggressive pursuit of financial independence by fairly high savings rates, more than the typical 10% to 20%.

So one of the knocks may be, well, are you giving up living a rich life today for a future point, that may or may not be what we envision that to be, right? I’m thinking about this, because I just finished the book, Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. He talks beautifully in a very non-traditional, non-financial planner way about ultimately, the goal being that we die with zero. He makes a strong case, I think that in your 20s, and 30s, and 40s, there is spending that needs to be done towards what you’re talking about this maximum fulfillment.

How have you reconciled this poll between aggressive saving? I can punch that in the calculator. I see the compound interest growing, but I’m also at an age where I can and should experience some of these beautiful things in life. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[0:24:50] RP: Well, you beat me to it. I actually also did – I also finished Die with Zero recently within the last couple months. I’ll be honest, has shifted my mentality a little bit as I was someone that can delay gratification, right? That was kind of my philosophy. If I want to do something today, let’s wait. I can double it in 10 years. It’s going to be just as much benefit or more benefit when I’m so saving for my 40s, is kind of a mentality I’d had.

But what Bill Perkins says in that book is very good idea, and something I’ve taken into consideration is, let’s think about, “Yeah, think about our life as a whole. If my goal is to maximize happiness today, but also in the future, there’s a balancing act because you need to spend more money today. You need to spend some money today in order to enjoy your life today. I was, let’s say, for the last couple of years, I was probably a little low on that end. I was saving a lot more money, and decreasing my expenses, and focusing on student loans, and maybe sacrificing a little bit. I will shift and have shifted a little bit in that regard towards enjoying life today.

I will say, a benefit for myself and maybe other listeners is, we have above-average income. When you’re looking at financial independence, and decreasing your expenses, and having that difference in what you’re able to save, because you’re spending less than what you’re earning, it’s a lot harder for somebody with an income of $60,000 per year. But as a pharmacist, I really don’t even feel like we have to sacrifice as much as others, because we just – as long as you’re intentional with your spending, and you’re cutting out unnecessary things, then, you’ll be able to achieve some sort of savings goal. You’re not depriving yourself and eating rice, and beans every day.

For myself, as I mentioned, being early on, I’ve been able to reduce lifestyle as much as possible, so I don’t live a lavish life. If someone else has an expensive $100,000 per year, it’s going to be a lot harder to cut out. Let’s say $40,000 out of that budget, or $20,000. But I never allowed myself to reach that level. I’ve never really felt that I’ve been sacrificing anything on this journey.

[0:26:46] TU: Let me prod a little bit more here, Riley, because this to me is a fascinating topic where I can talk with two pharmacists making the same exact income. Let’s assume they’re living in the same cost-of-living unit type of situation. But one can be living 95% to 100% of their income as their expenses, and a lot of that even being fixed expenses. Someone else maybe has find a way for that to be, I don’t know, 25%, 35%, 45%, or even, let’s say 50% or 60%.

I think often, what you see is, the home, or the car, those are probably two of the biggest things that you see that might be contributing to that. Sometimes private education would be a big contributor, as well. Saving for kids college, things like that. But two pharmacists, same income, same position in terms of cost-of-living area, but very different in terms of cash flow margin that they created. I think it would be helpful for our listeners to hear, for you and your situation as much as you’re willing to share, what has the strategy been. You mentioned before, continuing to try to live like a resident while you’re paying on your student loans. I sense you’ve probably have pulled off of that a little bit. But have you intentionally kept down on house, or you’ve decided to continue to rent, not carry carpet? What has been the strategy that has allowed you to keep those fixed costs low?

[0:28:05] RP: I think first and foremost, financial confidence is important, knowing reasonable – knowing why you’re investing something, you’re saving in the correct location. For example, high-yield savings account. Just making sure that you know you’re doing correctly with where your money is going, has been important for myself. I’m not scared to look at my checking account, right? I think there’s a lot of people who say, “I don’t want to look at it.” If you can spend a little bit of time to just be confident in what you’re doing, and have some sort of strategy in place, and be intentional with – you don’t need to track every single dollar, but just the big things.

I think low-hanging fruit, is what I tell clients. Let’s not make 100 little decisions, let’s make two or three big decisions. For myself, yes, I don’t carry a car payment. I did actually upgrade from a beater of a car that probably I could – I did sell for $1,000, so I’ve upgraded in that realm, but I had drove that car throughout pharmacy school. I do still rent for housing. I live in the Pacific Northwest. So yes, housing a little bit more expensive, but it makes sense financially. I looked into purchasing. I was actually going – shout out to the real estate podcast with David and Nate. I was with the first cohort of the None to One Program. I was looking at actually purchasing a condo and house hacking didn’t make financial sense. It made sense for me to continue renting there.

[0:29:16] TU: Riley, let me just interject here because I hear weekly if not daily, that, Tim, what do you mean like equity and homeownership? It’s always better to own than it is to rent. I think this is one of the stories that we’ve just accepted without running the numbers. Don’t get me wrong, there are scenarios where certain parts of the country, owning based on the market, based on what’s happening, based on interest rates, based on cash you have, based on appreciation. That makes sense, but I think we blindly accept this, especially higher cost of living areas. We tend to vastly underestimate the cost of homeownership on an ongoing basis. So we look at rent value, we look at mortgage payment, and we stop there. I would just love for you to help me make this case, that sometimes, renting makes sense over homeownership, and I think we really got to run the numbers.

[0:30:11] RP: The problem is, it’s the numbers. Humans are humans, right? They feel – you take into consideration, “Oh, I’m much more safe. I’ve been told by my parents, and my parent’s parents that buying is, you have to go as soon as you can. That’s the way to go. Once again, it’s a lot easier to see a house value go up in five to 10 years, rather than really knowing exactly how much would I have put in if I’d invested in it. You can run those numbers as well, right? The numbers, once again, numbers aren’t lying to you. I think it’s just tough because yes, that’s what we’ve been told to do. It doesn’t make sense everywhere. Sometimes, that’s the caveat, as well, as you know, it does make sense maybe in the Midwest. But for other folks, it’s not the case. If we’re all robots, then I think a lot more people would be renting, but it’s just unfortunately not the case.

[0:30:56] TU: That’s good. Now, you can get the hate mail as well as me.

[0:30:57] RP: Exactly.

[0:31:00] TU: Hey, I want to ask you a question. Actually, I hadn’t planned on asking you, which is interesting. Something I’m picking up on as we’re talking here, is I sense that you’ve used some words around the emotional side of money. Confidence, I can tell you have a confidence around your money. I can tell that there’s not a fear associated with money. You obviously have more of an analytical mindset, but you’re also considering – we talked about living a rich life, and kind of balancing the two of those out. So often, myself included, and it’s true for everyone listening. How we approach our money today, is a conscious or subconscious reflection of how we grew up around money.

In some cases, we grew up in an environment where it’s a very open conversation, it’s one that’s not only talked about, but it may not be a stressful, relatively even emotions, more of an abundance type of mindset. Other situation, I talked with folks where it was a very hostile environment or an environment where you just don’t talk about money, whatsoever, and you see those patterns carry out. So I would love for you to just give us a sneak peek as I pick up on the themes of confidence and security around money and more of a positive emotional approach towards money. Can you attribute? Did you raise up in an environment where it was a safe emotional landscape for learning about and growing your knowledge around personal finance?

[0:32:22] RP: I would say it was definitely a safe environment, but it was not – I did not grow up with parents telling me how much money they made. Oh, you need to – I did – I mean, for example, I chose a state school, I knew enough to know about the cost of private school versus public school, and what that would be down the line. That wasn’t – told, “Hey, it makes a lot more sense for you to make a decision by peers, or my parents, or anything. I don’t really attribute a lot of it to them being extremely open. But for example, I did have a Roth IRA, I think when I was 18 years old, so my mom helped me with that. I’ll give her credit there.

[0:32:55] TU: [Inaudible 0:32:55] a tuner.

[0:32:57] RP: Exactly. That was all her, so I’ll give her all the credit there. But anyway, I also had a financial advisor that she put me in touch with who had me investing in a taxable brokerage account when I clearly could have put more money in my Roth and stuff that didn’t make any sense. So I had to pull away once I felt more confident in myself a few years after that. We weren’t experts, but I definitely – I think it’s rare for somebody to have a financial advisor in a Roth account in their teams. It will attribute some of it to that. Yes.

[0:33:22] TU: It’s something I’m thinking a lot about Riley with my four boys, and I would encourage the listeners. I’m fumbling through it, I don’t have the answers. I’ve read books on teaching kids about money. I’m convinced, I think, and maybe I’ll tell you otherwise in three years if I screw it all up. But I’m convinced that 80% of it is just what they are experiencing, they’re hearing. It’s not the intentional teaching. I think there’s a place for that, like, “Hey, let me sit down. We can talk about compound interest and investing in Roth IRAs. But I think it’s more of what they’re picking up on around the emotional cues, the stress or lack thereof, whether or not it’s an open conversation. I think that is so foundational to their relationship with money.

What’s so hard about that, I guess it can be encouraging or discouraging depending on how you approach money is like, that stuff tends to come out. We’re, again, carrying that on generationally. Often, the stress or the positive environment, if it’s the opposite around money, that just is the undertone of the house, and you’ve got to be really intentional to shift it. Another topic for another day, but I think around emotional relationships, how we grew up with money. Even hearing you talk about your mom, and a Roth, and experience with an advisor clearly had an impact on you and your journey.

Let me shift gears and talk about the types of FIRE. Again, I think for folks that are just learning about FIRE for the first time, they may read a few blog articles, look at very aggressive saving rates without realizing there’s a wide range of how you may approach this. Whether it’s more of a traditional FIRE, a lean FIRE, a fat FIRE. Tell us about that these different terms and the path that you are choosing as it relates to your own FIRE journey.

[0:35:05] RP: In my mind retirement is a number of value, not a date, or an age, right? But everybody’s going to be different, and your FIRE calculation takes into consideration mainly how much you’re going to spend each year. So someone who spends $40,000 in a year versus someone who spends $150,000, in a year is going to lead completely different lifestyles, and probably take different actions to hit that point of financial dependence throughout their lives. That’s where these different names come from is, you know, FIRE’s become big enough that there’s been subcommunities of people, lean FIRE. I don’t know the definition. It’s maybe less than $40,000. Fat FIRE is, people got five plus million dollars.

I’m happy that that makes sense because people can be like – like-minded folks can learn from each other in that realm. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really look at – consider myself in any of those categories. I’m early enough along the pathway that I don’t really spend time stressing over it, because I know enough that I know that things are going to change on the future. We’re great at acknowledging how much we’ve changed in the last five years, but we still think we’re going to be the same person in the next five years, which doesn’t make any sense. I know I’m going to be different enough in ten years. I’m going to change a little bit enough to know that my expenses can change, my family situation is going to change.

But for myself, I kind of have just general numbers. I’m probably going to spend more than $40,000 in a year. I know myself well enough that I’m probably going to spend less than $120,000 per year. Do that rule of 25. I’ve got a pretty big wide margin, but there’s enough time that’s going to pass. There’s really just no point in stressing over and running the numbers, and some people love running these calculators and saying, “Oh, this is exactly. That’s my point.” That’s going to change so many times. There’s going to be so many factors that I don’t really bother myself with it.

[0:36:41] TU: Let’s shift and talk more about the strategy of getting to that number. You mentioned early on in the episode that often, people run a rule 25, or some type of FIRE calculator. They see a big number, they get overwhelmed, they shut down the computer, and they say, “All right, let’s move on. I think, even if folks can work through that, the next step can be just as overwhelming, which is, “Well, how do I get to that number, right? I mean, when I get the chance to talk with groups about investing, what I often say is, yes, we’ve got to know where we’re going, but then we’ve got to know how we’re going to get there. Then we’ve got lots of wrinkles to consider, 401(k), 403(b), Roth IRAs, brokerage accounts, HSAs, all types of vehicles to achieve that. Then within those accounts, we’ve got to choose how we’re going to allocate that. That would be the asset allocation part of the plan.

Again, eyes gloss over at that point of, “Wow, this is a lot to consider.” Tell us about, not advice for everyone listening, but tell us about how you approach your investing strategy as it relates to not just identifying that number, but how you’re going to get there.

[0:37:47] RP: Yes. Tim, we’ve used the word optimize quite a bit, but I’m definitely not – I’m not going to optimize as much as possible in this category, I like to keep things pretty simple. Yes, my strategy myself is, I’m actually currently 100% stocks, all broad-based index funds, keep the expense ratio as low as possible. That’s every account. All my 401(k)s, or HSAs, or my Roth IRA, everything is – different custodian will have a different five-letter or three-letter process, but as long as it’s US stock market or international stock market, that’s the process.

I know that numbers-wise if my investing timeline is, let’s say, 50-plus years, but the time to actually sell a stock is more than 10 years. To me, just the numbers, I just kind of try to pretend I’m a robot and don’t look at the stock market in the last year because I know that odds are, it’s going to go up in the next 10 years. And you want to hit the point where, let’s say, within five years of cutting back or selling any of stocks, and switching add bonds. You can do bond 10 to whatever it may be. But I keep things pretty simple now, just a handful of different low-cost, broad-based index funds.

Then the strategy around what accounts to put them in. Of course, prioritizing your tax-advantaged accounts. Kind of have a mental, financial order of operations, I guess what I would call it that I’ve been using, as I’ve gone through the process. For example, student loans is pretty high up on the list, and I’ve been able to cut that out. But first and foremost, think about this as an emergency fund, and then getting your 401(k) match. Then I put HSA up there at the top, because it’s your dual tax-advantaged account and my student loans filled in that slot there, and pulling that out, then it’s to a Roth IRA.

With my income now, very fortunate that doing the backdoor Roth IRA option. Then it’s back to the 401(k), and maxing out the 401(k). Those are pretty much all your tax-advantaged accounts. If someone’s gotten to that point, and they’re still able to invest in money, which I’m fortunate to be able to do it now is pretty – I think, if you look online, there’s a lot of people who say, yes, those are probably your top five categories, and list to go through in different orders, depending on each person. Especially if you have student loans, and you’re doing PSLF, it’s going to be completely different. You might prioritize your 401(k) first because you want to reduce your adjusted gross income.

But once you’ve hit all those tax-advantaged accounts, that’s why I did the None to One Program with the YFP Real Estate with David and Nate. Because you know, I was thinking, “Okay. Let’s look into real estate.” Since that didn’t pan out currently, and it probably will in the future, I just put the rest into a taxable brokerage account in the same low-cost, broad-based index funds. So keeping it simple once again.

[0:40:22] TU: Riley, address for me a common objection, which people have is, “Hey, I want to retire early.” I don’t know exactly when that will be, but let’s say late 40s, early 50s. Kind of a moderate to aggressive timeline versus a traditional retirement age. I’ve got all these assets tied up in retirement accounts, where I’m going to take on a penalty if I take it out before the age of 59 and a half. Insert brokerage account is one way to mitigate that. You astutely mentioned that you’re obviously optimizing your tax accounts before you get to that point. How have you thought through a reconciled what you may need from a point of retirement, which is unknown until you get to that age where you can draw from those accounts, and how you might mitigate some of that risk?

[0:41:05] RP: Yes. I think of them in these three different categories, your pre-tax, your post-tax, and then your tax brokerage accounts. I think there’s – I’m sure there’s an ideal percentage where if you’re going to retire at age 45, for example, you want to have a good amount in your taxable brokerage account, right? Because you can’t get to your tax-advantaged accounts earlier on. But there’s, for example, currently, a Roth IRA conversion ladder is one process that people take in place, and they’re able to do that.

I think a simple strategy is make sure that all of those buckets have someone in there, so then you have the flexibility to do what kind of, whatever you want to do, whatever makes sense to you at the time. In that time, luckily, since I’ve been able to, I started the Roth IRA early on. I think that’s the one that people are going to have less on in life since I had that at age 18. But at times, I’m at a point where I want to scale back, I’ll have enough in the three buckets, and I’ve learned enough about the different strategies in place that I’ll figure it out when the time comes, is kind of my philosophy.

[0:42:01] TU: Awesome, one thing you mentioned Riley as we wrap up here, I think you mentioned during your residency year, you’re out learning about FIRE, you’re on various websites. There’s some great resources out there, blogs, podcasts, books. Anything you’d recommend to our listeners that you found to be especially helpful and insightful in your FIRE journey at least on the beginning as you’re learning more about this topic.

[0:42:23] RP: I quickly moved from – I think that the most resources out there are going to be in the blog space. If you look up different blogs, there’s probably plenty of them. The first one I would recommend is called the mad scientist. That’s where you get into the numbers of it. Of course, Mr, Money Mustache is probably the next one that people are going to find. He’s probably the most well-known and – if anyone’s going to find FIRE, first, they’ll probably going to find him.

Then for podcasts, the first 100 episodes of podcasts called Choose FYI. One of the co-hosts there was a pharmacist. It might be a little bit outdated now since those first 100 episodes are pretty old. Other podcasts I like listening to, Earn & Invest by – he’s called Doc G, Afford Anything by Paula Pant. Then books-wise, there’s some great ones out there, some classic like your money and your life. It’s just great, because it’s learning about the concept of your trading, your life hours to make money, and then you’re spending that money to get more of your life hours back.

Touched a little bit on Die with Zero. I’ll definitely be promoting that. That’s for folks that are maybe learning to, like myself, to maybe spend a little bit more, and enjoy more of life today. If you want to have a stress-free confidence on index funds, Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins is a great book as well.

[0:43:30] TU: Great stuff. Library of information that you recommended. We will link all of those in the show notes. For folks that are listening, trying to write that down, don’t worry, go to the show notes. We’ll link those out. Great recommendations. Riley, really appreciate your time, your insights, your perspective. I love your intentionality around this topic. I love your financial IQ. I appreciate you sharing your journey, especially on the front end of this, and look forward to seeing, and track you along the way.

[0:43:52] RP: Yes. Thank you. This was an absolute blast. I love talking about this topic. Thanks for having me.

[OUTRO]

[0:43:56] 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’s not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast 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 archive, 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 analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates publish. 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 300: Celebrating 300 Episodes of the YFP Podcast!

Posted on March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

On this episode, sponsored by APhA, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, and YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP®, RICP®, celebrate the 300th episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast! From student loan repayment strategies and investment planning to wealth protection and entrepreneurship, this podcast has strived to provide valuable insights and practical advice to help pharmacists achieve their financial goals each week. Tim and Tim reflect on some of the most memorable moments and guests from the past 299 episodes.

Episode Summary

YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, is joined by YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP®, RICP®, for a special episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. This week, Tim and Tim are celebrating the 300th episode of the podcast! After taking a moment to express their gratitude for the YFP team, the YFP community, guests, and listeners, they take some time to reflect on the first 299 episodes and just how far the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast has come in the last six years.

Tim and Tim share some of their favorite moments from the show, illustrating the range and breadth of personal finance topics covered along the way and how each relates to the personal finance journey and financial planning for pharmacists. From student loan repayment strategies to wealth protection and entrepreneurship, the podcast has covered it all! Highlights include a snippet from the very first episode of the podcast, how YFP has fostered a community by sharing pharmacist debt-free stories, and stories of pharmacists working towards and achieving financial independence. Listeners will hear Tim and Tim examine common threads throughout the years, including the importance of balancing future financial needs with living a rich life today, entrepreneurship as it relates to personal finance, the emotional and behavioral side of the financial plan, and the importance of philanthropy and giving as part of the financial plan. Tim and Tim close with another sharing of gratitude and hint at plans for the future of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Welcome to a special episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. We are thrilled to be celebrating our 300th episode today, and we couldn’t have done it without you, our listeners, and supporters. Over the years, we’ve covered a wide range of personal finance topics tailored specifically to pharmacy professionals. From student loan repayment strategies and investment planning to wealth protection and entrepreneurship, we’ve strived to provide valuable insights and practical advice to help you achieve your financial goals.

To mark this milestone, we have a special episode lined up for you today. Tim and I will be reflecting on some of our most memorable moments and guests from the past 299 episodes. So sit back, relax, and join us as we celebrate 300 episodes of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:51] TU: Today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast is brought to by the American Pharmacists Association. APhA has 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.

Tim, episode number 300. Can you believe it?

[00:01:41] TB: I can’t believe it, Tim. It’s kind of surreal, to be honest. I thought when we started this thing way back in the day, that this would be a great project to dedicate some time to, to kind of lend our voices to the topic. But fast forward to today and where the podcast has gone and some of the things that we’ve covered and some of the guests we’ve had on, it’s kind of crazy. What are your thoughts?

[00:02:05] TU: It’s been an amazing journey. We’ll talk about some of the backstory. We’re going to feature some of our favorite moments from the show over the last, what now, six and a half plus years of doing this. Excited to revisit some of those exciting moments and some of the themes of the show. I don’t think you or I would have ever predicted where this would have gone, over a million and a half downloads of the show. But I think more than anything, that number I think certainly is an achievement.

But what gets you and I most excited is what we hear from individuals of the impact that the show is having. Hey, I listened to this episode and I took this action or it ignited a conversation between my spouse and I or connected me with another pharmacist or got me thinking in a different way. That’s the piece that gets me fired up, and I think the reason we started it in the first place and the reason we’re continuing to do it today.

[00:03:02] TB: Yes. I mean, it is such a – we’ve said this before. It’s such a great medium to get out there and kind of have listeners see a certain side of you and be able to educate, but also to share and be vulnerable. One of the surrealist things, and I don’t do them anymore, Justin Woods does, our Director of Business Development, but I used to get on calls with prospective clients that were looking for help on their financial plan. They would say things like, “Hey, Tim. I feel like I know you because I’ve been listening to the podcast for the last two years,” or whatever it looks like. After I – the red kind of drains out of my face. It is kind of quite flattering, and you kind of sit in front of this mic and this camera. You don’t really think that when you hit record that it really has an impact.

But I do think that what YFP has done, and I think the major tool in which it has done this is through the podcast, is really moving the needle for financial education, financial literacy, hopefully, wellness in the pharmacy profession. I still think that we have a lot of work to do. I’d be interested to ask you what you think is next maybe at the end of the podcast and where we’re taking this thing. But, yes, I’m just super excited. I’m super grateful. I think I’m kind of like – I guess I’m technically listed as the cohost, but I kind of just show up, Tim, to be honest. I do my research on what I need to do.

But I know you and Caitlin and Rose, so I want to give them flowers, just do such a great job of prepping. There’s so much work that goes into this that is kind of behind the scenes. Really, without you guys, we’re not at episode 300 in it. From my perspective, it seems seamless, although I know it is not. So I just want to make sure that I express my gratitude to you and Caitlin and Rose over the years because I think it’s been a team effort. As a fan of the show, as a cohost of the show, so to speak, I don’t take that lightly.

[00:05:01] TU: Yes. I’m glad you mentioned that here, Tim. I had wanted to say some thank yous at the end. But this is a great place to do it. Because when we started the show July 2017, we had talked about what would be the frequency, right? It’s going to be weekly? It’s going to be monthly. It’s going to be every other week. We had several folks tell us like, “Man, don’t do weekly. That is a huge commitment.”

I think in the only style that Tim Baker does, it’s like, “Hey, let’s jump in the deep end and figure it out.” We were doing A to Z, right? Editing, content planning, topics. But that would not be possible. We would not have been able to sustain that rhythm of weekly episodes here now at episode 300 without Caitlin’s help, without Rose’s help, without the team’s help, without your engagement, without the guests that have come on the show, the people that continue to listen, the folks that ask questions. So it really has been a community effort, and it’s been an incredible honor to be able to sit in the seat.

One of my favorite parts of the show, we’ll talk more about this throughout the episode, is I hadn’t really thought about like, hey, 300 episodes means 300 conversations that we get to be a part of, right? Sometimes, that’s a sneak peek into a story, a journey of financial wins. Sometimes, that’s media, another pharmacy entrepreneur, or an investor, or an expert on a topic. I get incredible benefit out of just sitting in the seat and learning from the guests that we bring onto the show each and every week. So I also want to give a shout-out to the many, many guests that we’ve had on the show. That’s something that we’re certainly looking to do in the future as well.

Tim, I want to bring back a little bit of humor as we get started here. But I was going back through some email in prep for this episode and found a string of emails from you and I back and forth, fall 2016. This would be before we officially partnered on the business or even making the decision on the podcast. We were talking about what are some name ideas. What are some taglines? What are some topic lines or topic ideas as it relates to the show? Some of the ones we threw out there are Pills and Bills Radio with Tim and Tim, Scripting Financial Freedom, Tim and Tim and the money, Your Financial Script.

Then all of a sudden, I remember this vividly, I was on vacation with my family in Hilton Head. You and I were talking on the phone, and you said, “Why don’t we call it the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast?” As simple as it sounds, like that was a very pivotal moment in the journey.

[00:07:26] TB: I think – I don’t know this for sure. But like we both kind of had two separate brands. We were doing very similar types of things. Obviously, you with education and the blog, and me with kind of working more one-on-one with pharmacists on their financial plan. But I think a lot of the underlying beliefs and kind of vision and direction was there. You’ve never said this, but maybe it was more obvious to you because like I think you had –

[00:07:54] TU: It wasn’t. Yeah. It wasn’t.

[00:07:56] TB: Yes. I don’t know. For me, like I love Script. I love Script Financial. That was the original name of my firm when I launched. It’s funny how much time you spend on kind of trivial things like logo and colors and things like that, which are they’re important. But you kind of overweight that. It’s kind of the same thing with this when I’m like, “Tim’s done a really good job of like developing a following in a very short time, and I don’t think I have much of an ego.” I’m like, “Why don’t we just use your banner and use kind of the goodwill that you’ve created?”

I kind of think you’ll remember because you were at, yes, Hilton Head. I think – I don’t know. Was it a phone call that I – because I kind of remember you sitting on like a back step or a front step, and I was having this conversation.

[00:08:41] TU: Yes.

[00:08:45] TB: It was kind of like that aha of like, “Duh, why didn’t we think of this 40 emails ago?” Yes, it is kind of funny. Sometimes, it’s like Occam’s razor, right? It’s simplest thing that’s in front of your face, so yes. But some of those names. I think we were kind of trying to trade a little bit on like the Mike and Mike, the ESPN tandem that they’re not together anymore. But I think using the YFP brand just made the most sense in every facet of what we’re trying to achieve.

[00:09:18] TU: So as we celebrate episode 300, as I mentioned, we’re going to go back to some of the most memorable moments from the show and highlight the various themes that we’ve covered over the past six-plus years. It all started with episode one back in July of 2017. Let’s take a listen where we talk about the origins of the show.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the very first episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. We are so excited to be here. It’s been a long time in the making, and we can’t wait to get started on this journey. In this very first episode, we’re going to discuss the origins of this podcast coming to life, our individual journeys to the world of personal finance, why we care about this topic so much, and what we have coming up and planned for future episodes.

So to the Your Financial Pharmacist community, I know there’s lots of you out there that have been following the blog over the past few years. So I am super excited to be bringing on Tim Baker to this journey. Tim is a certified financial planner, and he’s doing this business of personal finance and advising the right way. He’s a fee-only advisor, and he has a passion for working with pharmacists. He’s going to add tremendous value to this podcast and to the Your Financial Pharmacist community as a whole. So I can’t wait for you to get to meet him and know more about him.

So, Tim, you remember that time we met at Bob Evans off of I-71 in Mansfield, Ohio. How random was that?

[00:10:43] TB: Yes. It was great. It was a magical breakfast. I think we sat down. Back up a little bit, we met each other actually via Twitter. That’s his thing. I think we realized that we were doing a lot of the same things, and we had a lot of the same passion. So, yes, that breakfast then in Bob Evans was great for me. I think it kind of was the first step in this direction of kind of partnering up and really bringing great content under the Your Financial Pharmacist brand and really build out the community. So I am super excited, Tim. I’m really ready to kind of begin this journey with you and get this podcast off the ground.

[00:11:30] TU: Tim, I got to admit. That’s a little bit uncomfortable to listen to. I can hear the nerves and excitement in our voices. We had no idea where things were going to go at that point, as we’ve already mentioned. But we knew that the podcast was a good next step after we had that first meeting. We had this shared passion of personal finance and pharmacy. But that takes you back, right, hearing that?

[00:11:50] TB: It does and it was left out of that. I actually turned on the first episode, and you hear like the intro. It’s so different now. It’s a lot better now. But like, yes, I definitely do not go back and listen to those. But at the time, I’m like, “Hey, this is pretty good.” I’m sure, and given everything, like it’s not bad. But it goes back to that point of, and you’ve been posting this lately on LinkedIn, you just got to start. The more that you get paralyzed in your brain, the less you’re going to learn.

Obviously, 300 episodes in, I don’t know if I’m any more articulate or stutter any differently than I did then. But it was just so unknown. I think 300 repetitions later, I wouldn’t say it’s polished because – I will admit this. I edited, I think, the first 50 episodes of the podcast. I would take way too much time, Tim, to kind of take out like my ums and some of the imperfections. If you go through, like you’ll hear that probably episodes like 10 through 40 or something like that. But it’s just not genuine. It wasn’t really genuine. This is how I talk. I say lots of ums. I don’t say my geez.

So I think that it was kind of a lesson for me. It’s like don’t try to be something that you’re not. In a world where I think everybody can kind of give you praise or give you like criticism, you kind of have to like filter that out. I think sometimes, like we’ll hear something of like, “Hey, you suck.” That sits well like more with you than like some of the other things that we hear that are positive. That’s kind of been part of the journey too, just being authentic. But it’s just kind of crazy to hear that, which I don’t know if I’ve ever listened to that since that episode, outside of doing the editing. I feel like we’ve come a long way.

[00:13:41] TU: Tim, one of the things we focused on very early on in the show, and we’ve continued, is sharing pharmacist stories. We really wanted to do this for a couple reasons. One, the topic of personal finance can be pretty dry. Two, we really wanted to foster and create a community where pharmacists were empowering and motivating one another. It’s one thing for us to teach and preach, and we certainly do that sometimes. It’s another thing to teach concepts and principles through stories. I think it really helps foster that sense of this isn’t just you or I delivering material. This is us as a collective community of pharmacy professionals coming together to help empower one another on the path towards achieving financial freedom.

That was a really intentional decision, and I think we have seen the fruit of that throughout. Let’s listen into one of the many debt-free stories that we have featured. This is episode 31 with Adam and Brittany Patterson, starting with Adam talking about making the mental transition from student to new practitioner.

[00:14:49] AP: I would say throughout pharmacy school, I tried to mentally prepare myself going towards graduation. Listen to everybody tell me, “Hey, you’ll be making six figures. Don’t worry about it.” What a lot of people don’t consider at the time was that we actually don’t bring home six figures at the end of the day. They don’t factor in all the taxes and everything that cuts out of your paycheck.

I didn’t really have a plan at how I was going to tackle the debt but knew that I had a grace period, six months, to figure it out before I started making payments. My wife and I always joked about how much it would take us or how long it would take us to pay off our loans. But it wasn’t until close to the end of the grace period that it all started to settle in. I think once we actually sat down and started to think about how much money we would owe in the long run, looking at the debt, looking at how much interest would build up, that we really started to focus on attacking that debt. So at first, I would say at graduation, it really doesn’t set in until that first payment is due.

[00:15:53] TU: Tim, you know the Pattersons well. This journey that was featured on episode 31 was when Adam and Brittany had paid off $211,000 of debt in 26 months. This really was a catalyst for their family and for their financial plan, right?

[00:16:08] TB: Yes. Shout out to Adam and Brittany. I hear Adam’s voice, and I’m like, “Man, I like that guy.” I haven’t talked to him in a while, and I need to reach out and see how they’re doing. They’re the face of our website. So you see their face when you go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com.

Yes, I mean, they were really at the jumping-off point in terms of like, “Hey, what’s next? And how do we transition?” They’re just a great example of some of the behavioral finance that we’ll talk about some more in this episode. But just great – I was more thinking of it of like, as I’m listening to Adam, just some of the great people that I’ve got to work with, got to converse with, got to break bread with. They visited me and my daughter when they came through Baltimore, so just great people.

But, yes, they’re just another great example of, I think, how they’ve approached, again, this mountain of debt and then how they’ve, I think, done a great job of transitioning from that. The big thing from them I think when they started working with me, they were renting a house. Then they bought a beautiful home there outside of Atlanta and Georgia. It’s just kind of awesome to see, to be honest, like the progress. I’m kind of more stuck not necessarily on the numbers but on like the people and the relationships that you develop.

So, yes, I definitely jotted down a note that I got to reach out to Adam and Brittany and see how they’re doing. Hopefully, we can meet up with them soon. But just another great conversation and another great example of just being intentional with your financial plan, which I know is a common theme that we try to hit on.

[00:17:47] TU: Yes. That’s what I really remember from their journey. I’m so glad you’ve mentioned the personal relationship side of it, right? Because, I mean, the numbers on the debt repayment or the savings and investing, we love seeing that progress. But it’s about what does that mean for them and their family and living a rich life. It’s been fun to watch with the Pattersons. We’re going to come back and talk about that through the episode.

Tim, one thing Adam said that really hit me was when he said, “I didn’t really have a plan for how to tackle the debt.” This is something that we hear on the regular. Maybe this is a little bit of a pat on our own back, but it feels like the conversation in pharmacy around student loans has become more nuanced in a good way, right? Pharmacists today in 2023 are asking us questions about student loans that demonstrates a level of baseline knowledge that we weren’t hearing back in 2017.

[00:18:38] TB: There’s a couple of shifts that are going on there. One, back in the day in 2017, 2018, 2019, there was a lot of pain around student loans and a lot of pain coupled with where the heck do I even start? Like, “How do I even take a proper inventory?” Then I think as the years went on, it was a pain. But I have a good baseline knowledge of what I have and what I need to pay back. But like how do I – what are the Xs and Os to do that?

Now, since the pandemic, obviously, one of the things that’s happened since we launched the podcast, among other changes that have happened, the long pause that we’ve had, I think it shifted. We don’t hear a lot of pain around student loans because they kind of been out of sight, out of mind. I think that will shift back when the loans come back online and people are paying. But it’s kind of just been like this hibernating bear. But I would agree with you, Tim. I think I’d like to, hopefully, take some credit of why that shifted a little bit in terms of definitely a more nuanced, a more thoughtful approach to inventory or even like talking about different repayment plans, which were just non-existent before and, be honest, non-existent even in the financial planning world because a lot of this was just so new.

So, yes, I mean, a lot of this is, obviously, Xs and Os. But I think when it comes down to what we’re trying to do is soothe the pain that a lot of our listeners had at the time and I still think will have once the pause basically is over. But, yes, it’s kind of been interesting to see that transition over time to where we’re at today. Then, again, in a couple of months, what that will look like when the payments start coming back on.

[00:20:28] TU: Again, shout out to the Pattersons. Grateful for their contribution, sharing that story. That is one of many debt-free stories that we’ve shared on the podcasts. We’ve covered student loans A to Z. So if anyone’s looking for either content, knowledge around student loans, or debt-free stories and journeys, go to some of the throwback episodes that we’ve had throughout the show.

So student loans we’ve covered in detail on the show, a big part of the early days of YFP. But we’ve also focused heavily on stories of pharmacists that are working towards financial independence and living a rich life today, while taking care of their future selves. Let’s take a listen to one financial independence journey that of Cory and Cassie Jenks that we featured on episode 134.

[00:21:15] CJ: Yes. So you’ve had a couple of great guests talk about their FIRE journey, but it’s essentially financially independent, retire early. So you save enough, and the number that is commonly used is you save enough till you have 25 times your annual expenses. Then theoretically, you can withdraw that indefinitely at a four percent rate. To get there, basically, you’re going to have to really bust it for 10 to 20 years, depending on what your savings rate is, depending on what your own spending rate is.

As Mister Money Mustache and hundreds of other bloggers and people have shown, it’s a very viable path. I think that if we had found that in our mid-20s, before kids, like, okay, we could have sucked it up and both worked full-time hardcore to get there. But then we had a kid and realized we want to have time with him, as much as he can be a little pain. So I came across this idea of CoastFI, and so the FI being financially independent. This says that if you saved enough at a high rate for a short period of time early on in your life and career, you’re going to have the time and compound interest to have it grow to what you need it to be by the time you retire. So that if you hit this CoastFI number, you can scale back the work you’re doing. You can take a job that has a little bit more risk, knowing that you don’t need to continue to contribute to your retirement in order to hit that number.

Now, I love how you like to personalize this idea of personal finance because traditional FIRE people would get angry at you for not just going all the way through. Maybe CoastFI people will get angry at us because our version of it is to try to get to a number. But then still work some in order to save some. I don’t think we want to hit a number and then stop. So our version is to like get to the number we want and then have the freedom to contribute a little bit less as our lifestyle changes with our family.

[00:23:20] TU: Tim, one of the reasons I want to bring back this story is I’ve stayed in touch with Cory and Cassie. Great people, shout out to them. This was really a key pivotal moment for them and their family, this journey that they run towards financial independence and being intentional with the financial plan, just like we’ve talked about with the Pattersons. Since that point, because of the groundwork they had laid, Cory has been able to pursue his entrepreneurial efforts as an author, comedian, speaker. Cassie has been able to shift jobs to be more in alignment with what she was looking to do, which has really given them a lot of the flexibility that they were looking for with a young family, to be able to have that time together but also to be pursuing the things that they wanted to be doing professionally.

So I think that that is such a great example of the combination of the financial plan and what we’re ultimately trying to achieve. One example of many, Tim, of something you often say, which is, hey, we’ve got to find this balance between living a rich life today and taking care of our future selves. Why is this such a central theme for you, personally, as well as for our planning team that works with our pharmacist households all across the country?

[00:24:35] TB: That’s a great question, Tim. So why is that important? I think like before I answer that question, when I was listening to Cory, I was just thinking like it was a little bit of the same conversation we had when we were on a recent road trip because you kind of had mentioned planning for your boy’s college and kind of going all the way to one end of like, “Hey, I had this experience of having a lot of debt, so I don’t want them to experience that.” For me, the thing that was screaming, as I was listening to Cory speak and then kind of relating that to our conversation in the car, was planning is greater than the plan. What I mean by that is like it’s kind of the Mike Tyson quote. It’s like you have a plan until someone punches you in the face, or life happens, or you have a kid, which those are things. Having a kid, those are things that have happened since like we started the podcast, for me at least. I know you’ve added a couple to your crew.

So it’s more about planning and less about the plan because the plan is going to change because change is an inevitable part of our life. I think the better that we can cope with change and plan around that, the better we will be. But the answer to your question about live a rich life today, live a rich life tomorrow, I think that a lot of the – and you’re starting to see it swing back the other way. A lot of the mantra is like save, save, save. Have enough for retirement and make sure you’re doing all these things for like the 30-year older version of yourself.

But then there’s a lot more content and stuff out there. What was the book that you’ve recently read? Die with Zero or whatever. That’s kind of shifted that back. I think like the dangerous thing is that if you follow those kind of rules of thumb, you get to the end of the rainbow and you retire. Say you retire with five million. But if you would have taken that trip or those trips throughout the course of the year, or if you would have taken that one day a week to kind of work on a side hustle or spend time with your family, maybe you retire with two or three.

To me, like the question I would ask the client would be like, “Well, what’s the point? What are we really trying to achieve? Is it to amass a bunch of ones and zeros in a bank account? Or is it to really live a rich life as you age through your 20s, 30s, 40s, hopefully, to your 100s?” I think that because we get so busy, we’re on to the next thing. Pharmacists are very type A. It’s, “Okay, I’ve done this. What’s next? Okay, I’ve done this. What’s next?” But I think what planning really does or I think if it’s done well, it really allows space for a conversation of is this what we really want. Is this a wealthy life?

I think we can – this was me completely. I was raised, and I love my parents. But I was raised that the key to success or happiness, if you want to intertwine those two, is, Tim, you have to get the best grades that you can get to get into the best college that you can get into, to then graduate with the highest GPA, to get the best job, to make the most money. I realized in my first probably 30 years of life that like that didn’t necessarily add up to me, that I was often happiest when things were simpler, when I wasn’t making a lot of money. I had a lot more control of my time. I think it really forced me to kind of question and to evaluate what were the important things in my life.

Unfortunately, especially if you kind of get into that trap of, man, I’m working 40, 50, 60 hours, there’s no capacity to really question am I on the right track or not. Sometimes, like it takes you to do that. Sometimes, it’s you and a partner. Sometimes, it’s a third party, an objective person like a therapist, like a financial planner, maybe a priest or a minister or whatever to kind of ask those pointed questions and to challenge the paradigm in which you are in.

I’m happy to see that a lot more of the content or some of the discussion around this is not to – again, I kind of think about corporate America. Right or wrong, but corporate America is running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace, and it’s really not a sustainable thing. So whether that’s your profession, whether that’s the way that you’re spending money, the way that you’re spending your time, I really think that question of are we living a wealthy life today or are we living a wealthy life tomorrow. I think having balanced between those is such an important question to ask yourself, as you are kind of proceeding through life.

Because I know, for me, like there’s been parts of my life where I’m like – it’s kind of like, all right, when you’re little, you kick your soccer ball into the sticker bushes, and you just stick your head down. You’re running and you get out as quickly as you can. Then you take some lumps. But sometimes, we just get stuck in those thorny bushes. You wake up and you’re 40 years old, 50 years old, 60 year olds. You’re like, “What the heck am I doing?” So I think being self-reflective, it’s really about that more than anything.

[00:30:02] TU: Yeah. Tim, you’ve role-modeled this firsthand. Let’s take a listen back to episode 227, where we discuss this further, right? How much is enough, the importance of balancing experiences today with the future. This included your decision to buy your motorhome. Let’s take a listen.

[00:30:19] TB: One of the things I say to prospective clients, we might go through the wealth-building stage of the financial plan, and we’ll do a nest egg calculation that says, “Hey, Tim. You need five million dollars to retire.” That’s typically where they look at us like we have five million heads, right? Because it’s a big number that’s in the future that doesn’t really mean anything to me. So we go through the process of kind of discounting that back to a number that says, “Okay, if you’re putting this into your TSP or this into your IRA or this into your 401(k) a month, you’re on track, or you’re off track, right?” So we can kind of break that down into more of a digestible number to see if we’re trending to that goal, given a handful of assumptions.

But the point of this story is if we do work together for the next 30 years, and you don’t have five million, you have 7 million, 8 million, 10 million, whatever that is, that’s great. Those numbers are bigger than five million. But if you’re miserable because you look back at that list of all the things that you wanted to do over 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, whatever that is, and you haven’t done anything, and you’re miserable because of it or you’re disappointed, the question I would ask you is what’s the freaking point?

[00:31:31] TU: That’s right.

[00:31:33] TB: Why get this education? Why earn this money? Why pay down this debt? Why invest or whatever if we’re not going to intentionally direct it to the things that matter to you most? I don’t think that I’m going to be on my deathbed. I’m going to say I wish I would not have bought that RV. I just don’t think that in my heart of hearts because I just think about the reaction that my daughter and my niece has had, just when we pulled that up. Even the two camping trips that I had, I think I snapped a few pictures and texted them to you, Tim, even in our first camping trips. It’s going to be an adventure.

To extrapolate that out, like that’s our lives, our lives, our adventures. But we have to be willing to take it and seize it. I think that’s what life planning really tries to get to the surface is what is that adventure and taking that road and not necessarily adapt to a paradigm that’s not yours.

[00:32:29] TU: Tim, that was great stuff. It has been a memory maker for your family.

[00:32:33] TB: Yes. I was getting a little teary-eyed listening to that because it’s also like a good reminder for me to be completely honest. Sometimes, Shane and I will look at it. I’m like, “Man, is this worth it because they say it’s just a money suck?” But then when you look at it in totality, like just the things that in the short time that we’ve had it, it’s been a game changer. I don’t know, it’s – listen to that. The two things that were kind of evident to me is when I repeat myself a lot. So I say a lot of the same things over and over again, which I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just kind of like part of my messaging.

But also, like it’s a reminder. Because sometimes, like – and again like we’ve asked the question, even since we got it. Man, is this worth it? It’s a lot of money. Gas prices have gone up and all that kind of stuff. But it is. I mean, we recently changed where we store it, and I’m driving it from one to the other, and I’m just getting so jacked up. My son will see it parked out front. He’s like, “Oh, are we going camping?” He just lights up. He’s like, “I want to go camping.” I’m like, “No, buddy. We’re not going to go camping until it’s a little bit warmer.” He’s like genuinely upset.

So, yes, we have a lot of plans for it. Obviously, we have to make sure that we budget and we have our plan built around it. But I would reiterate the same thing that I had said is like I don’t think that I’m going to be on my deathbed saying like, “I wish I wouldn’t have done that.” I think it’d be the opposite. I wish I would have done it sooner. I wish I would have done it longer or did more trips. So, yes, I think it’s just so important too.

That’s the thing that I really enjoy about the work that we do after the podcasts turns off, and people say, “Hey, I want to work with you guys.” I think our planners do a really good job of like bringing forward, yes, we got to do the Xs and Os and the technical stuff. But bringing forward like that trip that you want to take or this goal that is not necessarily – it’s money-adjacent, right? Because a lot of the things we have to like plan the dollars for, but it’s not necessarily like traditional investing or an insurance policy.

I think those things are just as important. I don’t know if a lot of planners feel that way. But to me, if you have that trip to Paris or the Pacific Northwest out there, I’m like, “Where’s the money for that? Let’s get this going. Let’s do this, and let’s cross it off the list and then move on to the next one.”

[00:34:57] TU: Great stuff. One of the things I mentioned earlier, Tim, is the joy that it’s been to get to know some of the guests that we’ve had on the show. Many of which have led to some awesome friendships and collaborations and just a ton of fruit that has come from that. Most of our guests have been pharmacists. But we’ve had the opportunity to interview several New York Times bestselling authors, gurus in personal finance. This has been an honor. I mean, it’s been a ton of fun just to learn from these folks. I’ve been amazed at how gracious people can be with their time.

Let’s take a listen back to my interview, one of these with Rachel Cruze, episode 215, where she discusses the emotional and behavioral side of the financial plan, including how we can write our own financial story.

[00:35:42] RC: When there’s so much hope, and I think even the money piece of my message that I communicate with people, it’s like no matter what mistakes you’ve made, yes, maybe you do have a ton of debt. So on a more logistical side, yes, you have a deeper hole to dig out of than the person next to you. But no matter what, you get to make decisions to say, “No, I actually want to change how I view something or the habits around money.”

The same is true with your classroom. Some people – a lot of people, I would say, grew up in a hard environment when it came to money with their parents. But, yes, but you don’t have to just mirror that story, right? You can take charge of your life to say, “You know what? I’m not going to sit here and bash my parents, but I’m also not going to defend them. I’m going to just tell the truth and what happens. Here’s the truth. Okay, there’s some good stuff, and there’s some bad stuff. The bad stuff I can forgive, and I’m going to move forward, though, to choose something different for my life and my family.”

I think it’s powerful, and I think we have to do that in all our parenting. I’m not a parenting expert, by any means. But I’m like, my husband and I have said, “Okay, this is our family. What are we going to choose to do in this? So the money piece is part of that.

[00:36:44] TU: Tim, I felt like this episode was oozing with wisdom, and I loved her authenticity. But one of the things she really hit on, we spent most of the conversation talking about, is really the behavioral side of the financial plan, the emotional side of the financial plan. She was alluding there to the money classroom that we grew up in, the money scripts that we hear growing up, and how much of an influence, whether we realize it or not, that that has on how we approach our finances today.

So, Tim, from your perspective, either individually or also what you see with clients, like how important is that money classroom, is that money script in understanding what perspective you’re bringing into the financial plan to ultimately achieve the goals that you want to achieve?

[00:37:28] TB: Yes. I mean, we all have these money scripts. It could be money is the root of all evil, or money solves all your problems, or there’s – don’t trust people with money. There could be a lot of different things that based on your parents, their upbringing, and how they imprint that on you. It’s a big factor. I always kind of point to the Advisor’s Alpha Vanguard study, and that highlights if you work with a financial advisor. They’re supposedly returning three percent per year on your assets. Half of that is really attributed to not technical or any type of special analysis. It’s really like the behavioral coaching.

That’s significant. I think that whether we want to believe it or not, like we all have these scripts, this baggage. It could be a positive thing. It could also be something that’s a limiting factor for us to really kind of achieve the goals that we have. I think that I’m dabbling more into it. I don’t think I’ve even told you this, Tim. But I’m dabbling more into like stoicism, so reading some books on stoicism and Marcus Aurelius. One of the big things that I’m pulling out of that is like you can really only control what you can control. A lot of our thoughts and a lot of the things that preoccupy us are things that are completely out of our control.

It’s kind of what she was saying. You can think about your upbringing and how you were taught, and you can hold on to that and not let that go but probably to your detriment. It’s really about what are you doing today. What are the intentional actions that you’re doing today to better yourselves? That could be financially related. It could be something completely outside of that, just general wellness.

I think that part of, again, working with a therapist, an advisor, whoever that is, is to kind of pull back some of that façade. Ask good question. Ask pointed questions. Challenge you to say again, are we really where we want to be. Or when you said this, let’s dissect that. Where’s that coming from? What is this? How is this serving you or not serving you? What are the limiting factors?

We see this, I think, more often with people that are wading into spaces that they’re completely unfamiliar. So I’m thinking about like a business, and we hear things like impostor syndrome or – but it is true for that individual that is working a shift at a hospital or like a farm. All of that is there. So to me, again, it’s about reflecting on these behaviors and then questioning, does this serve me today. If it doesn’t, let it go, and then move on. I think building that as part of the plan is important.

I was talking with one of our lead planners who’s doing a certification on financial like kind of psychology counseling. A lot of that is to kind of, again, uncover some of the things that she sees in clients to be able to better serve them or challenge them, when they utter X or Y in terms of how they approach their finances. So it’s really, really important the behavioral aspect of it. I think having the pulse on your own, which is very hard, is, I think, part of the building blocks of creating a plan that serves you and not others. So great episode.

[00:40:49] TU: Tim, as we’ve evolved in our own journey as entrepreneurs and have had the opportunity to connect with various pharmacists that are falling in a similar pathway, we quickly came to the realization that finance is a threat across so many not only individual stories but so many business stories. Whether it’s people that are dreaming about their idea, those that are in the thick of launching something or those that are looking to scale, it’s really hard to separate out our personal financial plan and goals from the business.

That’s in part why we started featuring more and more of the show, I would say, over the last 100 episodes or so on pharmacy entrepreneurs, knowing that personal finance is a common thread to pharmacy entrepreneurship to that community. But also, given our personal passion for entrepreneurship, we wanted to give some examples and on some level inspire others with the many different ways that a pharmacist degree and license can be valuable.

Let’s take a listen back to one of these pharmacy entrepreneurs’ interviews that we featured in 2022. That was Kun Yang, the Co-Founder and CEO of Pricklee Cactus Water, and he was featured along with his co-founder on Shark Tank.

[00:42:02] KY: I think there were a lot of moments. When I look back, it wasn’t like I think one specific – I mean, I do have a specific moment that I’ll share. But I think there were a lot of feelings that I think that felt familiar to me, even in that moment that I can kind of trace back and say, “Okay, this kind of makes a lot of sense.” So the moment really was walking into – I just finished our fellowship and program, and had started a new company. It was a spin-off of our existing fellowship business. I kind of just walked in and had really, really fallen in pretty deep appreciation for the opportunity and the people that I was working with.

But I think one of the days I kind of walked in, and I looked around, and this was still pretty early on in our journey. But something hit me that I had always thought that through all the different career changes and exploration of getting to that point, that going this “non-traditional” path would have led me to move away from this feeling of “impostor syndrome” or feeling like everything that I was doing was actually getting more and more specific. It was because it was leading me to a point of clarity, right?

Really, over time, I realized that impostor syndrome and point of clarity had a lot to do with an understanding of who I wasn’t, as opposed to understanding of who I was. I think that’s something that probably a lot of us can relate to is growing up in your 20s and even maybe sometimes early 30s, you have a lot of ideas of maybe what you don’t like to do, right? Or what are some of the things that don’t excite you? What are some of the general things that do excite you? But you may not really understand specifically why or what you’re really good at to allow you to succeed in those roles.

Again, all those feelings led to that one moment I walked in. I looked around in this open office setting, and I was kind of like, “Man, there’s a lot of incredibly talented and smart individuals around me. If I work really, really hard here for another 15, 20 years, I can really be like one of them.” These were at the time, again, all my heroes I looked up to that kind of forged the pathway for us before.

I guess it hit me in that moment that there wasn’t a specific role that I could look at and say like that is exactly in specific what I wanted to do. I think that that was my – I call it a quarter-life crisis moment of all that impostor syndrome bubbling and kind of blowing up all at once, realizing that, “Wait a second. How could I have done all this and pursued all this specificity, only to feel this still in this moment?” There’s not much more specificity I could pursue. That was when it really kind of became an introspective question of like, “Is there something outside of pharmacy that I can apply my skills to still within the health and wellness space that we’re really passionate about, that I could find truth and clarity?”

[00:44:37] TU: Tim, that was one of my favorite episodes of 2022 and just the opportunity to cross paths with Kun. We would later find out we’ve worked at the fellowship program. Shout out to the MCPHS fellowship program, Amee Mistry, who’s been our collaborator now five-plus years and some really incredible graduates that have come out of that program. One of which is being Kun. But just to hear his reflection on that episode of his quarter-life crisis of coming to this moment of, hey, my pharmacy degree and the experiences I’ve had are valuable. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to be identified by that or be identified by a traditional career path. I suspect maybe that connects a little bit with you as well on your own journey.

[00:45:21] TB: Yes. I think going back to Cory, like I think early on, Cory Jenks, like we definitely wanted to give a voice, more of a non-traditional path. I mean, you yourself, Tim, since we started the podcast, again, what’s changed? You’re no longer full-time in academia. You’re full-time with YFP, so more of a non-traditional. So I’ll preface this by saying like being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. I think that that’s important to say out loud because there’s a lot that goes into that. It’s not necessarily for every personality type.

But I do think that, for me, personally, being an entrepreneur, I get a lot of juice and a lot of just energy listening to other entrepreneurs kind of share their story. This one in particular, obviously, we had them on the podcast and watched their Shark Tank episode. It’s very inspiring. I do think that one of the common things that comes out with a lot of these sources is the financial piece. That is a financial thread, whether it’s before, during, or even after the whole journey of being an entrepreneur.

So I think, selfishly, we highlight some of the stories because like it’s part of the things that you and I are both interested in. I can hear my own story when I listen to Kun in this episode, and I’m sure a lot of other pharmacists that are going down this path. But I think that it’s another thing that for us to kind of give voices or to highlight. You don’t have to necessarily color within these lines. There’s a life outside of this. For some people, that clicks. For some, it doesn’t. These particular types of episodes, for me, personally, being a fan of the show, are just super inspiring. Again, I can hear my own story in a lot of them, so.

[00:47:13] TU: Yes. Tim, one of the things that comes to mind here is when we started doing more of these interviews, I’ve often shared with folks. I grew up in small business. We’ve had a family business. My dad’s been in business, advise businesses. I think that probably has stayed with me over time. But I just can’t get enough of talking with other entrepreneurs. What are you building? Why are you building it? What’s working? What’s not working? What are you learning about yourself and the journey? It’s incredible to have those conversations.

One of my goals with these conversations was, hey, I’m not necessary expecting that any listener is going to listen to Kun’s story. Or I think about Allyson Brennan, the Founder of Emogene & Co. or Karine Wong, who founded My Guiltless Treats we had on the show, Victoria Reinhatz with Mobile Health Consultants, and the many stories we featured, Kelley Carlstrom and the awesome work that she’s doing. Not that a listener is going to say, “I’m going to go do exactly what Kelley’s doing.” But rather, it’s going to give them a different way of thinking, perhaps a source of inspiration or motivation of like, “I had no idea, like a pharmacist went that same traditional path that I went at one point or I am currently in.”

If students are listening, and they went and did something that was non-traditional, they colored it outside of the lines. Again, we’re not suggesting that path is for everyone. But we want to give a voice to that, and I think we’re in a really exciting/disruptive time in our profession. Depending on how you look at disruption, it can be scary. That’s fair. But it also can be exciting. It means there’s opportunity for new ideas, new innovations to come to – and we’re seeing that out in the pharmacy entrepreneurship community. It’s really exciting.

[00:48:55] TB: Yes. I mean and I think the writing’s on the wall. I would love to have maybe when I answer the question of like, “What’s next, Tim?” I actually have more long-form discussions about this, like the profession of pharmacy. I know there’s some other podcasts that, obviously, are strictly focused on that. But, yes, I mean, I think the writing’s on the wall for a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about with AI and Amazon and different legislative things that are out there that I think it is ripe for disruption. You can be on, “Hey, you embrace that,” or you could be on the, “I’m going to dig my heels in.”

Yes, I think that when I look back at my journey before even meeting you, it was a podcast that I listened to over and over again. It was about financial planners that had a very similar story to me that were kind of leaving the traditional big siloed firm and doing it themselves. I’m like I remember having that like aha moment of, “I’m a pretty smart guy. I feel like I can figure this out.” I just took that leap.

For me, and you see this in a lot of entrepreneurs, because unlike you, I didn’t grow up in that environment. I grew up in the environment of kind of what I was saying like, “Get the best job, i.e. the safest job.” Why would you ever like leave a steady paycheck to go start from zero? That’s a completely foreign concept in my family. I think for me is like once I made that switch, I kind of want to say like the chemistry of my brain change because, again, like I always talk, I said this on a recent post that you had, I was definitely that. A lot of pharmacists can relate to this. Every decision that I made, it was I’m going to dot all the Is. I’m going to cross all the Ts. I’m going to analyze every angle of this decision. Time will go by and I’ll be paralyzed by what should I do.

Now, since becoming an entrepreneur, it’s really like I’m going to cannonball in and figure it out. I might swallow some water, but then I’m going to iterate, right? So I’m going to figure out what works or what doesn’t work. I’m going to save a lot of time doing that, and I’m still going to do a general analysis. But I think that mindset for me, I almost kind of equate it to like the chemistry in my brain. It’s like changed because and, again, I think you talk about entrepreneurship comes in a lot of forms. But it could be a side hustle. But it could be where you’re leaving your job in academia, and you’re doing this full-time. You’re uncapping your income potential.

There’s just a lot of things that are attractive about it to me. Again, as a fan of the show and highlighting the stories, one, part of it is like I’m interested to see like what are people doing with our PharmD that’s related or even unrelated to the profession of pharmacy. What are some creative things that people are doing, and how is the profession going to pivot? Because I think to your point, it is ripe for disruption.

So, yes, just super grateful to have, like I said, the individuals that you mentioned come on and share their story. I’m hoping to do much, much more of these in the future because they’re inspiring in the least, so.

[00:52:14] TU: Yes. It’s so fun to give a voice to the stories here, the passion that comes through. One of the things I think I’ve shared with you, Tim, before, when I think about the traditional pie chart of the profession of pharmacy, right? You’ve got half or so that are in community practice. Maybe 20% or so that are in hospital practice, a smaller segment that’s an industry, smaller segment that’s in academia and research. Then that final five percent or so is very splintered between all these different opportunities.

I think, if I had to put a crystal ball in the future of the profession, we’re going to see that splintered part of the pie chart become bigger and bigger with pharmacists pursuing more and more non-traditional options, which is exciting. The role of the pharmacist is an important one in our healthcare system. I think we’ve got some really cool ideas of things that our people are doing, and I have a feeling we’re going to reflect upon this period as one that was really disruptive in a good way for the profession.

[00:53:07] TB: Absolutely.

[00:53:09] TU: So the last clip I want to share centers around the giving part of the financial plan. Let’s hear from pharmacist educator and Rising Suns Pharmacy Founder, Sarah Adkins, who came on episode 276 to talk about her why for giving, including the journey of starting a nonprofit pharmacy in Southeastern Ohio. Let’s hear from Sarah Adkins.

[00:53:30] SA: I was raised in the church. I think regardless of the spiritual realm in which you’re raised, a lot of my upbringing was about giving and making sure that those who were not as fortunate, that I gave to those people who were not as fortunate. I was taught that, I mean, since a young age. I think that, for me, that is – I don’t have a lot of money right in my – I never have needed that or wanted that. But I have time. Do I have time? That’s the question.

[00:54:05] TU: That is the question.

[00:54:07] SA: I think I don’t have time. But I definitely give wholeheartedly of my time is what I give. So I have given – it makes me feel good, truly. When I am at the free pharmacy, it is a lot like community pharmacy, right? It’s a lot. You’re on your feet. You’re taking phone calls. You’re answering questions. You’re trying to figure out cost of medications, spending a lot of time on the phone, asking patients about their insurance coverage or why are you not eligible and how much is your copay for this.

I have a couple people, just because it’s come to my head. I have a woman who has an $8,000 deductible on her plan, $8,000. That always comes to my head about people with their deductibles. So why giving? Because I can, because I can. I’m bright. I have a good job. I have a lot of support from my family and my community. I can and I’m able, so why not? It makes me feel good. I feel like I’ve done something to make myself proud and to make my community proud and my family proud.

[00:55:14] TU: Because I can. All the fields there from Sarah, someone I have a great amount of admiration and respect for. Tim, her passion and mindset around giving of time and money is contagious. I know one of the things you and I are both excited about is as we work with thousands of pharmacists across the country and have the impact I think that we hope to have on improving the financial wellness, pharmacists working through paying off their own debt, getting a solid financial foundation in place, I think that, naturally, the next question for many pharmacists is how can I help. How can I help in whatever capacity means most to me?

That might be something that’s more traditional in giving; nonprofits, churches, organizations. It might be family members, friends that are in need, other types of areas. But we really see this when we talk about the evolution of YFP and kind of the next phase of the podcast and other things we’re doing. I think the giving part of the financial plan is going to be a really important one.

[00:56:16] TB: I think sometimes there’s a little bit of guilt around this, especially kind of going back to the money scripts. I think this is a good money script to have is to give back. But sometimes, you got to put your own oxygen mask on before you can do that. So, yes, I think that this is one that I think naturally as people, again, kind of continue on their journey. They’re going to be looking for ways that they can kind of give back because a lot of people have been helped along the way as well. It’s something that you and I, again, have talked about in terms of like where does YFP fit in in this whole realm of giving. I think there’s going to be some things that we’re going to announce here in the future around that, which I’m really excited about.

But, yes, it is one of those things that I’m hoping that we can shine more of a light on of stories like Sarah’s because I think it is so important, and it goes back to like what’s the point, right? She mentioned it, how it makes her feel. I think if you can incorporate that into your own financial plan or kind of the vision of what you’re trying to achieve, I think kind of all boats rise. So love the stories as well. I definitely want to make sure that we highlight more stories like this in the next 300 episodes.

So, I guess, Tim, I guess, I’ll ask the question as like what do you think? What’s going to – what do the next 300 episodes have in store for us?

[00:57:45] TU: Well, this is the last – No, I’m just kidding. I think that there’s so much opportunity here. One of the things we’ve talked about is bringing this community together, right? Pharmacists empowering one another. This is not something that just Tim and I are leading or even our team at large. We really feel this vision and work around financial wellness for the profession of pharmacy is ongoing. The work needs to be done. That’s only going to happen at the level it needs to happen with the impact that it has the potential to have, if we can bring that community together to help one another empower one another share stories. So more stories are definitely on the horizon.

Another thing that I have as a vision for the future is more voices on the show. I love doing this. But I recognize that there’s a ton of value and other perspectives, both internally and externally. So we’re going to have folks externally that are really passionate about certain topics. We’re working on this year with Corrie Sanders, Founder of Huna Health, leading our new pharmacy innovators series, featuring pharmacy entrepreneurs but also internally with the team, having more of the expertise of our certified financial planners, our tax professionals, other members of the YFP team to bring some other voices to the show.

Then I think from a content standpoint, Tim, we’ve already started to make this transition that we want to make sure we’re representing the gamut of the pharmacy professional, right? From student pharmacist, new practitioner or mid-career, pre-retiree, retiree, we really feel like this topic of financial wellness in the profession of pharmacy is not narrowed into any one of those groups. It really spans the entirety because those topics are changing naturally as our phase of life evolves. So that will be done in content that we’re bringing to specifically more on that mid-career, pre-retire, retiree, as well as stories in those phases of life about that transition into retirement.

I was just having a conversation yesterday with a pharmacist who’s mid-career. Kids are starting to get to the point of getting out of the house, was taking care of elderly parents. Totally different challenges and opportunities in different parts of the financial plan and wanting to make sure we’re bringing a voice to that as well. So that’s the future I see. We’ve been doing this long enough to know that you can only plan so much, right? There will be some pivot points that will naturally happen and, hopefully, some opportunities that come as well.

Then we don’t have specifics on this yet, Tim, but both you and I share the vision of some more long-form content, bringing some more video in. We’d love to deck out YFP HQ with the studio and do some more video as well. So stay tuned. We might crack that down here in 2023. But what are your thoughts on that, other ideas you have for the vision as well?

[01:00:30] TB: Yes. I mean, I think we kind of follow the – At the time, when we launched the podcast, it was like keep it to like a commute, so like 30 minutes. We’re seeing a lot of successful podcasts go where – you just kind of turn the mic on and you’re just talking about a subject. A lot of the podcasts I listened to are an hour, an hour-plus. So I’m not necessarily advocating for us to kind of drone on about HSAs or things like that. But I would like to be talking more about – when I was looking at some of the statistics, some of our most listened to episodes are more or less about money and more about the broader profession and things like overall wellness. I think that is really important for us to discuss.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to sit in our conference room here with you, Tim, and just kind of talk about broader issues. I think that some of those discussions, if we actually record it and put those out to the masses, would be valuable. Kind of getting your perspective, obviously, my perspective and kind of how I’ve worked with pharmacists over the years and even an outsider. So I think if you’re listening to this, we’re definitely open to feedback, whether that’s more long-form, broaden our scope a little bit.

Are there people out there that are like, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for you to interview X, Y, or Z.”? Nominate yourself. We’d love to get more voices on the podcast and really make the next 300 episodes better than the first 300. Like I said, I want to do more. We talked about more shift in mid-career and retirees. I want to do more for my own kind of education on like money and kids and how we should approach that and what are some of the things that we should be teaching our kids. So we don’t kind of imprint some of these money scripts on them.

There’s lots of things that I think we still are – we need to dust off and really work through. There’s probably a lot of guests that we need to have back on and get updates. So all of that is on the table. But, yes, I’m just super bullish about the work that we’ve done on the podcast, but also the work that’s yet to be done. Excited about the conversation and excited about the journey and continuing to learn on my end. Like I said, I’m a huge fan of the show myself. Yes, just excited for the next 300 in store.

[01:02:53] TU: I am too. It’s going to be a fun journey. It has been a fun journey. As we wrap up, I just want to, again, say thank you to the listeners. Tim, a thank you to you for the many hours you have put into the show, to the planning team, as we’ve had folks from there come on to the show, the many guests, just a few that we featured today. Again, a huge shout-out to Caitlin and Rose from the YFP team that are really the engine behind us putting out this content each and every week and being able to make the show go on. So big thank you to them.

As Tim mentioned, and I’ll reiterate again, if you have an idea for the show, topic, guests, format of the show, we would love to hear that. You can email us, [email protected]. Last but certainly not least, if you’ve been a listener and you’ve liked the show, do us a favor. Leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. That will help others find the show as well.

Tim, great stuff. Looking forward to the next 300.

[01:03:46] TB: Oh, yes.

[01:03:47] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, I want to, again, thank our sponsor, the American Pharmacists Association. APhA is every pharmacist’s ally advocating on your behalf for better working conditions, better 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 pharmacists.com/join and using the coupon code YFP. Again, that’s pharmacist.com/join using the coupon code YFP.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[01:04:27] 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 is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in 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 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 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 299: Home Buying for Pharmacists: What to Know, How to Determine If You’re Ready, Finding an Agent, and More!

Posted on March 16, 2023March 16, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

On this episode, sponsored by The Real Estate RPh, Nate Hedrick, PharmD, The Real Estate RPh and co-host of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast, discusses home buying for pharmacists, how to determine if you are ready, how to find an agent, and much more.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, has a chat with Nate Hedrick, The Real Estate RPh and co-host of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast, about home buying for pharmacists and the many considerations that should be taken into account when pursuing home ownership. With a focus on first-time home buyers, Tim and Nate cover knowing when you are ready to buy a home. They share the importance of having a solid financial foundation so that when you purchase your home, it doesn’t become an additional stressor on your financial picture. Nate shares his checklist for home-buying readiness, including tackling bad debt, having an emergency fund, building a down payment fund, and understanding why you want to buy a home. With many pharmacists impacted by the student loan pause, there is a discussion on preparedness for when that ends and how home buyers will have to plan for that change to the financial plan, including changes in the affordability of home buying. Nate touches on additional costs of home ownership that first-time buyers should be aware of and plan for, taxes, utilities, maintenance, and capital expenditures. First-time home buyers should also consider assembling a team for the home-buying process, starting with an accountability partner, a lender, and a real estate agent. Listeners will hear about lending options and words of wisdom from Nate on the real estate landscape in early 2023.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hello and welcome to the YFP Podcast. I’m Tim Ulbrich, and it’s great to have you here, as we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

Today, I’m excited to welcome back a friend of YFP, pharmacist, real estate agent, and real estate investor, Nate Hedrick, aka the Real Estate RPH. In this episode, we’re going to delve into the world of home buying for pharmacists. We’ll discuss what you need to know, how to determine if you’re ready, considerations for balancing a home purchase for student loans, the differences between lending options, and the various members to consider on your home buying team. Stay with us until the end of the show when Nate and I talk about the current economic environment that first-time homebuyers find themselves in and what to expect going forward.

Are you planning to buy a home in the next year or two? With the state of current home prices and mortgage rates, the home buying process can feel overwhelming. But what if you can leverage the knowledge and ongoing support of someone who has worked with dozens of other pharmacists through their home buying journey all at no cost to you? I’m talking about Nate Hedrick at the Real Estate RPH.

Nate is a pharmacist who has been a partner of YFP for many years now and offers a home buying concierge service that can help you find a high quality agent in your area and support you throughout the entire process. So head on over to realestaterph.com or click on the link in the show notes to schedule your free 30-minute jumpstart planning session with Nate.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:32] TU: Nate, welcome back to the show.

[00:01:33] NH: Hey, Tim. Always great to be here.

[00:01:35] TU: So today, we’re going to focus specifically on first-time homebuyers. Few areas we’re going to cover, how to determine when you’re ready, including rent versus buy, how to potentially balance a home purchase with student loans. I think, Nate, this is a timely topic, although we’ve addressed it in the past. We’re getting ready to come out of this freeze period. So I have a sense that this is going to be a topic that is top of mind for many folks again. Then we’ll also talk about the key differences between some of the lending options, a common question that we get. Hey, I’m looking to buy a home, looking for an agent. What are the loan options that are available? So we’ll tackle that as well.

Nate, we have covered this topic before. But you and I talked and really thought this is worth bringing back for a couple reasons. One, first-time homebuyers, we recognize that at the time we publish that content previously, they may not have been in a position to buy at that point. So we wanted to reach them in this moment. But also, there are just some factors right now that are unique. I mentioned one with the student loans coming back on board, waiting to find out when that will be and then also just the reality of the market.

We felt like this was worth coming back to, and I think that we want to make sure that we’re covering this topic well, especially for those folks that are looking to buy for the first time.

[00:02:47] NH: Yes. There’s been a lot of changes, just in the last six months, in market conditions and interest rates. Like pharmacy, right? It’s a dynamic space, real estate. So you can’t just set it once and forget it.

[00:03:00] TU: So let’s start with the elephant in the room, I think, when we talk about first-time homebuyers, especially relevant to today’s market. Should I rent? Should I buy? I think this is timely, not only because of interest rates, but also because of rising rent rates. I think that this is a topic we know we hear often from our community. So my question for you is in today’s market, how do you advise someone to think through this question, should I rent, should I buy, and really to keep the home purchase within the context of the rest of the financial plan?

[00:03:34] NH: Yes. You hit the nail on the head right there, Tim. I mean, this is such a – like any financial decision, you’re not going to make it based on one factor, right? You have to look at a number of factors. So things like how long do I plan to be in this area might be just one piece of this bigger picture of, well, is it worth it to buy here because I’m only going to be here for two years of residency or whatever.

Other questions become what is the local rent rate. Like you said, the rents have been going up just about everywhere, to the point where now mortgages are looking a lot more attractive. But you’ve also got this higher interest rate you have to deal with. Things are just getting pricier. So I think there are lots of different pieces that go into that financial decision, and it’s not just a one-size-fits-all. But really taking a step back and truly evaluating it.

I think the one thing that I see more often than not is people just kind of put a feeling into it and say, “Well, it’s probably cheaper to buy. So I’ll just do that.” Or, “It’s probably better for me to rent right now. So I’ll just do that.” But I really encourage clients and anyone I talked to to take a minute, sit down, figure it out. Look at actual numbers and then help make the decision using that information, rather than just kind of a gut check.

[00:04:39] TU: Yes. I love that, Nate. You and I have talked about this before, but I think there’s a underlying tone of like rent is bad. Buying a home, equity is good. We’ll talk about all the costs involved. But I think what you’re saying is really astute, which is like, hey, let’s put some numbers to that, that feeling, and that statement. Maybe that ends up shaking out to be true. Maybe it doesn’t, based on how loans are structured, based on how much we’re putting down, based on what else is going on in the financial plan.

Sometimes, it does make sense to stay where you’re at renting-wise. Especially, we see this in higher cost of living areas. We have a chance to work with a lot of fellowship programs, folks that are based out of Boston and the northeast. Buying a home is not a possibility as they’re getting started. Or if it is, they might be giving up, “Hey, I’m going to have to move an hour, hour and a half out, and then commute in.” So everyone’s situation is different. An important piece to keep that in mind.

What would you say makes your checklist? So if I’m talking with you, Nate, help me out, first-time homebuyer. I want to make sure I do this in a way that is wise, considering the rest of my financial plan. You’ve been through this. You get the chance to talk with prospective homebuyers all the time. What is that checklist that says, “I’m ready to buy a home.”?

[00:05:48] NH: Yes. It’s a great question. Like anything else, this is going to differ by person. But I think there’s kind of a core set of things that you should be looking at before you say, “Okay, yes. We’re ready to start down this road of buying.” The first thing I would look at is looking at “your bad debt,” right? So making sure that if you’ve got a lot of credit card debt or other bad debt sitting out there, don’t let that rule your financial plan, right? Don’t try to work around that to buy a home. It’s going to be a lot more difficult, and you can set yourself up for a lot more success if you get that bad debt going first. So that’s kind of an easy – I say easy, but it’s a good first step, at least, to get started.

From there, you really want to make sure you’ve got an emergency fund. This is more important now, more so than ever, because the way that the economy has been changing, the way the market has been changing, there’s a potential for more disruption, right? More chances for either a layoff or changes in hours or all the things that can happen that constitute an emergency. Those expound when you buy a house, right? You might have a furnace go out or a roof that needs to be replaced. There are lots of different things that can pop up. So making sure you’ve got that emergency fund as kind of your core, and it’s separate from your down payment fund, which is kind of the next step. But making sure that emergency fund is there first, and then start saving separately for down payment.

This is where I get the most resistance from people that I talk to is, “Well, that’s so much money to save up, Nate. You’re talking about maybe a $20,000 emergency fund and then another $50,000 down payment. How am I supposed to do that? I want a house now.” But truly, to really make sure that you’re ready, making sure those pieces are in place ahead of time is a key to success.

Then ultimately, once you’ve done all that and started down figuring those pieces out. Throughout that, you should be keeping your why behind buying in mind, right? This is not a decision, like I said before, that you can take in a silo. It shouldn’t just be, “Well, I want a house, so let’s go buy it.” Figure out what that why is. We want to set ourselves up for financial success. We want to rent this house out in the future. We want to be in this area for 10 more years. So it makes a lot of sense. What is that why? Then allow that to support all those other pieces before you ever start clicking through Zillow and looking at pictures.

[00:07:58] TU: Yes. You and I both know, right? Well, once that point comes, like we may say, “Hey, we’re going to buy in 6 to 12 months, 12 to 24 months.” Start looking on Redfin, Zillow, realtor.com, whatever. Man, three days later, we’re looking at homes, putting in offers. What just happened?

What I really hear there, Nate, is a theme of having a strong base, having a strong foundation so that when you move into a home, right? We’ll talk about additional costs here in a moment, but things will happen. Things will pop up, whether it’s unexpected costs, expenses, remodels, additional furnishing, or just life changing. We don’t want the home to become another stressor exactly of the financial plan.

So, yes, this takes discipline. We’re not suggesting that every penny of debt needs to be gone. We’ll talk about how to balance this with student loans. We’ll talk about different down payments that may exist. All of those are nuances and details that are really important. But more than anything, we want to be able to move into the home, have peace of mind. Let’s be frank. That’s becoming challenging in today’s market, right? Home prices are going up, which means down payments are going up accordingly. Interest rates are going up, which means monthly payments are going up. So we recognize the challenge with this.

But we’ve seen it in our own situations. We’ve seen it with thousands of pharmacists we’ve talked with and worked with, is that if we can keep this home purchase in check and in consideration with the rest of the financial plan, it’s going to give us a lot. Not only a peace of mind but also breathing room, as we look at accomplishing other goals. You said something earlier that I want to come back to in this checklist, which is potential timeline of being in the home. I underestimated that. I suspect this is common for first-time homebuyers. We look at a home. We say, “Yes, I think we’ll be here forever.” Then job opportunities come. Kids come into the equation. Things shift or change.

Really, when you look at the profitability, if you will, or the return on investment of the home, it really comes with a long time period of being in that home. So what advice would you have for folks that are thinking about the timeline, knowing every market is different? But is it five years? Is it seven years? What might be that timeframe when we think about closing costs and other things, that transition if it does happen isn’t going to set us back financially?

[00:10:17] NH: Yes. It’s, like you said, very specific, based on location, right, that there’s a common phrase? Real estate is local. So it definitely matters where you’re buying. I think the average in the United States is something like 2.8 or three years, something like that, is the break-even point, right? If you can stay in that house longer than three years, you’re good. If it’s less than three years, you’ve probably lost a little bit money.

That totally gets thrown out the window, though, when the market shifts like it has, right? If you bought at the beginning of 2021 and sold at the beginning of 2022, just a year later, you probably made bank, right? Appreciation was going through the roof, and so you did fine. Similarly, you might buy today and have to sell in six months, and you might lose 10% of value, right? There’s no way for us to know.

So you can prepare. You can plan. But as you said before, things are going to change, right? You might find a new job in two years that you had never anticipated. Now, you’re moving across the country for that, right? So you can try to set this up as best you can. Definitely look and use what information you have to make that decision. But don’t get so hung up on we have to plan to be here for five years. If we don’t, it’s not worth it, right? Because that’s just going to make the decision more stressful. Plan with the information that you have and then kind of roll with the rest.

[00:11:28] TU: I think this is another vote in the bucket of making sure that we’ve got a solid savings plan and solid emergency fund, additional savings. Because from personal experience, when you move, it’s not just the closing costs. It’s not just, obviously, the fees that are associated. But it’s the physical move. It’s the, “Okay, we’re in a new home. We want to make some updates. We need some new furniture.” Depending on the size of the property and so forth, taxes may change. Insurance policies may change.

That takes me to my next question for you, which is around some of the additional costs of homeownership that I think, speaking from personal experience, when you’re going in this as a first-time homebuyer, you tend to overlook these because there’s so much excitement around getting in the home. Personal finance, author, speaker, podcaster, Ramit Sethi, talks about estimating an additional 40 to 50 percent of the mortgage payment for these additional homeownership costs, things that he calls phantom costs, right? Taxes, insurance, maintenance, furnishing, utilities, lawn equipment, et cetera. What are your thoughts on that number, and what folks need to be thinking about here?

[00:12:32] NH: Yes. That’s probably not far off. I mean, if you look at the average mortgage payment, just the mortgage payment by itself, it’s right around 25 to 28 percent of the typical American’s income. That’s what they spend on just their mortgage payment. If you look at what they’ve spent on housing expenses, it’s closer to a full like third or more of their full income is going toward their housing expenses. So there’s a big chunk of that other stuff that’s not just in a net mortgage payment.

I know when I was buying my first home, the things I missed, just because, I don’t know, I didn’t know what to look for, were the simple stuff like property taxes, right? I never paid property taxes in my life. I’ve rented forever. Now, I’m 22 years old or whatever, buying a home. All of a sudden, I have this every six-month bill I have to deal with, right? I didn’t expect that. Something simple like utilities too. Those might be baked into your rental costs today, right? You might have to cover sewer or water or trash or electric. Or maybe you’re just paying for Internet today, right? All those utilities become yours.

Then the biggest thing, maybe the most obvious but also the most expensive is the maintenance and capital expenditures. So this is the regular everyday stuff that breaks and you have to replace, but also the big ticket items, right? The roof, the driveway, the furnace, all these larger dollar expenses that can pop up. I’ll give you an example from our own life. We were sitting having dinner the other day. Our like sort of dining room/kitchen area has this big, gorgeous window that looks onto our backyard. It’s like five-foot by four-foot, this huge window. In the bottom left corner, I saw a crack in the window, like in the actual glass itself. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. We need to look at that.”

So then the next morning, we get up and the crack is clear to the middle of the window. It’s like, “Oh, shoot.” So we were like, “Okay. Well, I guess we have to replace this window,” which I hadn’t done in our house before. We got a couple of different options. One person that wants to replace the glass, somebody else that wants to take out the whole window and install new windows, right? All these different things. It’s anywhere from like 1,000 to 3,000 dollars, depending on what thing we pick.

It’s like, “Whoa.” Okay, this just went from a small crack we noticed at dinner to, “Here’s $3,000 expense, potentially.” So those are the kinds of things that can spiral. If you’re not planning for it, it can really make or break your budget every month.

[00:14:41] TU: That’s such a great example. Sorry, you guys had to go through that. But that is the things that just happen, right? I think we think about objectively looking at the numbers. Speaking from personal experience, when we made that decision to go from rent to buy, I looked at the mortgage payment. I looked at the interest. I looked at the taxes. I looked at the insurance, which is a good start. But I vastly underestimated all these other things that we’re talking about.

Some of them are things that we just have to expect are going to happen, right? You mentioned the big ones; the roof, the furnace, et cetera. But then there’s just kind of the normal wear and tear or, “Hey, we want to make some updates and upgrades.” As much as we tell ourselves like, “Hey, this is the home as is. It’s our forever home,” like human behavior is you’re going to want to make some updates. You’re going to want to make some changes. So if we can plan for these and have margin in the budget, going from a rent to buy situation.

Does the budget not only allow for the principal, the interest, the taxes, and the insurance? But does a budget also allow for some of these other expenses and planning for these things along the way? Again, we want to be in the home, enjoying that large biggest purchase we’re going to make without having the additional stress of like, “Ah, cracked a window. This is now a headache.”

[00:15:57] NH: Something we stole from Tim Baker, actually, and that has been really helpful for us is we have a bucket in our ally accounts. One of our ally accounts is just for home stuff. There’s something powerful about seeing that money go in there and seeing that fund kind of increase and then ultimately decrease when you have to fix something. That makes it more realistic. If you just kind of roll those expenses into your budget every month, it’s easy to overlook them. But if you can plan ahead and actually see those dollars going in and out, it makes it a lot more real.

[00:16:23] TU: Yes, absolutely. All right. So we’ve talked about the expense associated with the home purchase, some of those that are obvious. Maybe some of those are not as obvious. We’ve talked about the readiness to buy, evaluating that rent versus buy. Let’s talk about putting together a team, Nate. I think this is a piece that we get on. We start driving around neighborhoods. We start looking on websites and looking at homes. All of a sudden, we’re off and running. We may not take the time to step back and say not only what is the why, right? What’s the big picture? What are we trying to accomplish? But who do I need on my team before I get too far in the process, and things kind of take off?

When you think about assembling a home buying team, why is it important to have that team in place? Ultimately, who is on that team? Who are the members that are part of that?

[00:17:11] NH: Yes. This is something that I know when I bought my first house, I sort of overlooked or kind of ignored. Probably because even though it was being recommended to me like, “Hey, Nate. Make sure you assemble your team before you get started,” that just sounds overwhelming. It sounds like it’s something I don’t know how to do. What I do know how to do is go on Zillow, see a house that I like, and show up at an open house, right? That’s easy. I can do that.

But what I encourage and what I talk to a lot of my clients about is try to build this mini team in advance, and it will just make the whole process that much easier and smoother. It doesn’t have to be a big ordeal, right? Start with just an accountability partner, right? That’s the first member of your team. This could be a spouse. This could be a parent. This could be a sibling. Somebody that maybe either is or is not involved in the transaction that can be that accountability piece.

I told the story before. But when my wife and I bought our first house, one of the first houses that we really liked was this gorgeous property on like 15 acres, right up, backing up against Cuyahoga Valley National Park here in Cleveland, just absolutely gorgeous property. We fell in love with it. It was way outside our budget. The house was literally falling down. Until we brought our parents out to come like see it for a second showing, and they clearly thought we were insane, we couldn’t see it, right? It was just too easy to get enamored by the vision that we had rather than the reality. So get that accountability partner first because that can really make decision making easier and get you back on track.

From there, the biggest pieces you need from there are really a lender and a real estate agent. I typically recommend people get one or the other first. Then you can kind of expand from there. Good agents are going to know good lenders. Good lenders are going to know good agents. But the agent is the one you’re going to be working with on a daily basis. So if you have to pick one, I generally recommend going with the agent first, and then letting them recommend several lenders and shopping around for that.

That’s typically where the team starts. Then you can expand with needs beyond that, right? You might need a financial planner. You might need a lawyer. You might need a tax professional. All of those people are people you can add on to the mix. But for truly the initial process of buying a home, start with that agent, get that lender, and then start to expand the team from there.

[00:19:16] TU: Nate, I love what you share here with starting with an accountability partner, whether that’s someone involved in the process or not, right? Because I think that reinforces what you’re saying earlier about defining the why, someone who can really help ask good questions, get you thinking more about that. But that also maybe can be a little bit prodding where needed about, “Hey, we’re looking at this beautiful property in Cuyahoga Falls. Yes, the land is perfect. We have this amazing vision. Hey, Nate and Kristen. Have you guys thought about like what it’s going to take the managers to repair it, remodel it? What does this mean for the rest of the financial plan?”

We had a very similar experience. We looked at a property up in Northeast Ohio. I remember vividly. Jess and I walked in. It was kind of a huge lodge type of property, really open. As many warts as there were and the costs that it was going to take to get it up and running, of which we have no – not only that financial means. We have no handiness in any bone of our body, let alone wanting to kind of manage that and take the time. But we just went in eyes wide open of like what this could be.

Thankfully, we kind of eventually got off that ledge and looked at something that was a little bit more reasonable. But I think that speaks to some of the emotional sides, especially on the first-time homebuyer, and how important it is to have that partner. That, once you then define the framework of, “Okay. What are we looking for? What’s the budget? What’s the game plan? How does this fit within the financial plan? Okay. Now, let’s move forward with selecting an agent. Let’s move forward to looking at lending options.”

Because I think we see this over and over and over again because of good marketing practices and other things. Someone is often running with a bank. We have to remember that that bank, that institution, as nice of a person as they are, they aren’t asking you all the questions about how is this best going to fit in with your long-term financial plan, your long-term goals. Sure, you might get approved. We’ll talk about lending options here in a moment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good fit for your personal situation and the overall financial plan. I can’t say enough about the team and making sure you’ve got that accountability partner and that the folks are there that are going to help you ensure that this lines up with your long-term plan.

Nate, let’s talk about the loan piece. I think for many pharmacists, this is where we’re itching to get started. We want to know what’s the best rate, how much do I have to put down. Conventional approach is 20% down, which allows for no PMI, no private mortgage insurance, a healthy cushion in terms of equity in the home, if for whatever reason the home drops in value, or you end up moving, needing to tap into equity. But it feels like more and more borrowers are seeking an option that is less than 20% down. I suspect this is coming from a few different areas.

One, the desire to buy a home. We’ve talked about that, right? To get out of a rental situation. The second, I think, is that because of rising home costs, that means that if we hold true to that 20%, that’s going to take more to save for that down payment. It’s going to take longer. Then the third is, I think, for many pharmacists, first-time homebuyers, student loans are eating away at their ability to be able to save for that down payment. So home prices are going up, 20% takes longer to save. Because I have these pesky student loans, it’s harder to save for that down payment. So would you agree? Is this a trend that you’re seeing in terms of a shift away from that conventional 20% down?

[00:22:38] NH: Yes. I do see quite a bit that he’ll move in that direction. Some of it is simply because, like you mentioned, the rising depreciation we saw over the last two, two and a half years completely outpaced people’s ability to save. I mean, if you were – let’s say you were saving $1,000 a month, right? That’s a really nice chunk of change you’re setting aside every single month for a down payment.

But home prices are appreciating at 20% a year in 2021 and about 22% a year in 2022. Unless you’re adding another $200, another $200 every single year on top of those monthly payments, you’re not going to catch up. You’re actually losing money toward your down payment, just by appreciation outpacing you. So that alone is forcing a lot of people in all buying points, at all price points to say, “Well, what other options do I have? Can I spend less upfront and then just ride the monthly payments out over the long period?” Yes, we’re absolutely seeing that, and people are just looking for new options.

[00:23:38] TU: Let’s get to that here in a moment. What are those options? What might be the pros, the cons? What do we want to be thinking about? But I want to first address the student loans. This has become – prior to the pandemic, I would say this is an issue we’ve heard over and over and over again. Hey, I’m itching to getting a home. I’m looking to buy a home. But the student loans are really a big barrier to allowing myself to either fit this into the budget or be able to save for that down payment.”

That tone has shifted because of the pause now for three years. Obviously, that’s going to be ending here in the foreseeable future, unless something changes, which it could. But I want to talk about this balance. You wrote a blog article on this topic, balancing student loans with the home purchase. We’ll link to that in the show notes. But what advice at a high level would you have for our listeners, as they evaluate their options with buying a home with student loans, also knowing that we might have folks that haven’t been used to making payments for the past three years that are now going to be entering back into those payments?

[00:24:35] NH: It’s actually something that I’m worried is the wrong word but I’m concerned about because there are so many people out there today that either have bought a home, where they have entered into a rental situation sometime in the last three years and have not taken stock up their loan payments or what they’re going to be. I think if there’s one thing that people are missing more than anything right now, it’s that they’re pretending those don’t exist because they don’t exist today. I think that’s really dangerous.

If you look at how the lenders were handling these over the last couple of years, most lenders were basically taking your loan balance. Let’s say you have $100,000 in loans. They were saying, well, one percent of that is going to be your payment, right? We’ll just guess one percent. Some lenders were guessing half a percent, and they didn’t even look at what your actual payment was. They just guessed, right? They just picked a number and rolled with it.

Again, I think that if you’re not paying attention to that and then you suddenly restart, you could find yourself very, very house poor or just in a situation where you’re not prepared for that level of financial strain. So if there’s one thing you can do in terms of the loans right now, it’s look at what your actual payment is going to be, figure out what that number is, and build it into your budget. If you really want to stress yourself out and stress the finances a little bit before you make that home purchase, put that money that that loan payment is going to be into account that you that you can’t touch, right? Just throw it into a new ally account or a new bucket, and pretend you can’t touch it at all.

Make sure everything still works without you being able to touch that because it’s coming back, right? Just banking on the fact that it’s going to go away is not going to set you up for success. So that is definitely an important piece to keep in mind.

[00:26:07] TU: Yes. We got to build that muscle right now, right? I think what’s happened is it’s been an incredible benefit. Zero dollar payments, zero percent interest has been incredible, if we’ve been allocating those dollars to other parts of the plan, expecting it to come back at some point, budgeting accordingly. But I think the unintended consequence has been with multiple extensions of the pause. With each one, it’s becoming more and more, as you alluded to, like pretending that they may not be there.

This is the moment to start building that muscle back up if we haven’t been. For those that are looking, I think there’s the consideration for those that are in a home, that bought a home when the pause was happening. Then I think there’s a consideration for those that are looking to buy a home and have yet to have their student loans start back up or start for the first time as well. What you’re saying is just such a classic example of trying to avoid the trap of looking at any one part of a financial plan in a silo, right? So we’re looking at the overall budget. We’re looking at the impact of the student loan payment. How do we address those student loans, right?

Someone who pursues a loan forgiveness strategy, income-driven repayment plan, what they may or may not be able to do on a home is very different than someone who’s looking at an aggressive debt payoff period. So how you tackle your student loans and the repayment plan you choose is going to have big implications on what that means to the budget, which, of course, connects to what you’re going to be able to afford and look at on the side of the home buying. Great reminder. We’ll link to that article again in the show notes. I think it’s really relevant, as folks start preparing for this pause to pick back up.

[00:27:42] NH: Yes. Keep in mind, something – I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom, right? You can absolutely purchase a home with student loans. Just don’t ignore them, right? We bought our first house and had tons of student loan debt still. It’s absolutely doable. What I’m concerned about is people that are ignoring it and pretending that it’s not coming back. That’s where you can fall into a trap.

[00:28:00] TU: Yes. We got to look at the numbers, right? Look at the budget. Kind of objectively see what’s there. So at a broad level, Nate, define the different types of loans that are available. We talked about conventional 20% down, no private mortgage insurance. But again, we see more and more folks are pivoting away from that. So that certainly is one option. What other options are out there that individuals should consider before they kind of get off and running with any one individual lending institution?

[00:28:27] NH: Yes. I think, typically, when I’m talking about loans, I break them down into three types. Obviously, not a lender, right? Real estate agent and pharmacist but not a lender. But the three basic types that you’re going to deal with are what we call conventional loans. This is typically your 20% down, maybe 10% with PMI. But these are kind of your good credit score, run of the mill. Every bank has them type of loans, right? Conventional loans, and they’re backed by Fannie and Freddie Mae or Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Excuse me. Those are going to be just, again, standard underwriting practice, right?

You’ve also got government-backed loans. These are those that are attached to some sort of government-backed program. Either these are FHA loans, or these are USDA loans or VA loans. But there’s some sort of government-backed entity with these, and you might need to qualify for those, in the case of like a VA loan. Or you might just be able to offer this up through a certain type of lender. So those are available. Typically, the advantage of these loans is a lot lower down payment. But you might have different terms and a higher interest rate. Or you’re paying private mortgage insurance or things like that.

Then the third type is kind of a hybrid. Really, it’s closer to a conventional loan, but that is a professional loan. We’ve got lots of different types of these. The ones that most of our audience would be dealing with as a pharmacist is home loan, but they’re also called physicians’ loans or doctors’ loans. The idea is that you’re taking the conventional loan product, and you’re underwriting it using the fact that the person buying the home is going to be a physician or a pharmacist, right? There’s a lot more earning potential there, a lot more stability in their career, a lot more income-earning potential down the road. So they underwrite those a little bit differently.

Typically, what that means is that you can get the lower down payment of a government-backed loan, but you get the conventional terms that come with a conventional loan. So you get no PMI, for example. Or you get the lower interest rate that others are getting. So there are some advantages there. Each one of those loans has an advantage and a disadvantage in certain situations. It’s really on the individual to evaluate those with somebody that knows what they’re doing to make sure that you’re finding what the right product is for you.

[00:30:28] TU: Which comes back to the advocate or an agent like yourself that really has a good look into these different types of options. It can be a third party to have you thought about this because there’s really, you said earlier, the suggestion of looking at multiple lenders, which I certainly would agree with. I would add on to that looking at multiple lending options with multiple lenders, right?

We’re talking about conventional loans, government-backed loans, pharmacist home, doctor type loans. All of those differ, as you alluded to, in terms of down payment, potentially the interest rates, the nature of loans, it fixes a variable, and then, obviously, credit scores, other factors as well. So I think what I’m trying to advocate for is to really do that homework. Work with someone that can help you understand those options. Do your research because once you’re running off with a lender, at that point, you’re starting to really kind of box yourself into one option. So making sure you’re looking at the full spectrum of options before you move forward.

[00:31:28] NH: This is where a really good agent can start the conversation in the right direction too, right? As real estate agents, we are not lending experts. But we know a ton of lending experts, right? So if a client comes to me and says, “Hey, Nate. I’m thinking about buying a home. I’ve only saved up $10,000 for my down payment, and my credit score is not that great,” well, that’s fine. Let’s see if we can make that work. I’m going to get you in touch with three of my favorite FHA lenders. Talk with each one of them, explain your situation, and let’s see what that looks like, right? We can guide people to the right individuals to get that information, rather than having them just guess and start Googling things.

A good agent, if you’re not sure what the lending process or not sure which the next step is, start with a really good agent. Explain your situation. While they are not going to be able to give you all the answers themselves, they’re going to know the right people to talk to so that you can get those answers from the right individual.

[00:32:16] TU: For folks that are going through this right now or looking to get started here in the near future, as we mentioned on the introduction, Nate can really be that advocate for you. So we built through the home buying concierge service. Nate can connect you with an agent all across the country. So you don’t have to live just in Northeast Ohio to be able to tap into Nate’s expertise. Regardless of where you’re buying a home across the country, he’s vetted agents in certain areas is there to be alongside of you in that journey to talk about lending options, to answer questions that you have, and to be the advocate that he talked about earlier.

We’ll link to the page. You can get in contact with Nate in the show notes. You can also email him directly. We’ll link to his email address. I think that’s a great first step for folks that are getting started on this journey. Or as we talked about before, even if you’re thinking, hey, six months out, 12 months out, we know that timeline can collapse. So it can’t hurt to start the conversation now as well.

Nate, let’s wrap up by talking about some current trends, right? The past couple of years, since the pandemic, I would say is an understatement, have been a whirlwind, limited supply, high demand. You talked about the appreciation rates, rising interest rates. I think this creates an overwhelming situation for many first-time homebuyers. Here today, we’re recording today. We’re expecting an announcement on a jobs report, which the Fed is looking at, based on that what they’re going to do to be more or less aggressive on interest rate hikes.

There’s news that’s coming out daily that I think for first-time homebuyers, it’s like, geez, not only is the price going up. The interest rates are going up. We’re talking about student loans starting. So my question is if you had to look at your crystal ball, we won’t hold you to it, what is the outlook potentially? I’m a first-time homebuyer. I’m listening. I’m looking maybe this spring, this summer, next fall. What words of wisdom would you have for them, as they look at this pursuit of buying a home?

[00:34:05] NH: Yes. Like you said, no crystal ball, but at least the pulse that I’m getting. David and I on the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast are lucky enough to talk to individuals from all over the country in all different walks of life, and understanding the lending and the markets and different agents from different locations. So that helps to give us a better perspective on kind of nationally what’s happening.

What we’re seeing right now is that most markets in the last three to six months have pulled back in their valuations. Some have been flat. Like here in Cleveland, we’re actually flat to up. I think we’re up like two percent year over year or something like that. So we’re very, very small increase year over year. But then there are some markets like Houston who pulled back 20% or more. It’s just incredible.

So a lot of that, again, goes back to what I said earlier about real estate is local. So understanding your local market can help you make a decision moving forward. What we’re seeing right now is that pullback or that flattening is making it a little bit more affordable, as the people save up more money and the appreciation isn’t outpacing them nearly as much. It’s making it a little bit more affordable to buy. But there is still a supply issue. We’re still dealing with a lot of people that aren’t ready to sell because if they sell, they have to go buy something else with a higher interest rate.

We talked about this on the show before, you and I, about if you had a three percent mortgage today, and you switch to a six percent mortgage somewhere else, you could have a much, much less expensive home but the exact same monthly payment, right?

[00:35:32] TU: Yes. There has to be a really compelling reason to move, right? When you’re going for – yeah.

[00:35:35] NH: Exactly. That’s hurting supply a little bit. I don’t think I see that getting considerably better until the end of the year. So what we’re seeing right now, and again it varies based on location, is that houses are still coming on the market. They’re a little more affordable, just because their prices have not continued to skyrocket. But the limited supply is still creating competition out there. I wish I could say it’s 100% better than it was last year. It’s better and it’s still not a bad time to buy. But the competition is still out there.

I mean, I offered on a house yesterday with a pharmacist. It came on the market two days ago. We put an offer in. There was a three o’clock deadline. We were almost six percent over listing price on our escalation clause, and we still lost it to somebody else who waived inspections. So like that’s still happening. It’s still out there. It’s getting better, but we’re not quite there yet.

[00:36:25] TU: Yes. I’m glad, again, to your point. Everything’s local. But that one example really highlights, I think, something important for folks that are on the front end of this journey as you’re looking. I’ve almost now, Nate, as I just observe homes and kind of keep an eye on what’s in the market, whatever I see is the list price, I just increase in my mind, right? I think that maybe that’s true in some markets, more so than others. But what I’m getting at is there can be a very creepy and effective looking of, “Here, our budget’s 300. Well, why don’t we put the search range like up to 350?” Then we go see the home that’s 350. Really, it’s going to take 380, 400 to get that home, right? All of a sudden, we’re $100,000 off what we had budgeted.

Again, I think finding someone on your team that can really help you understand the local market, what is happening in terms of putting together competitive offers, how far above our homes typically go into value, and then working that in your plan to make sure you’ve got a realistic view of what it’s going to take as you make that purchase.

[00:37:21] NH: There are opportunities out there too. I mean, we’re still seeing deals where a house is sitting on the market for a couple of weeks because maybe they overpriced it to begin with. It loses that initial flurry of activity. I mean, we as agents know that the first three weeks of listing a home are the most important, right? If you don’t sell in that first three weeks, right now anyway, your chances of selling it list price go down dramatically, and they just drop and drop.

If you’re someone out there looking for a home and you’ve not had success so far, and again this is going to vary by location, but what I’m encouraging some of my clients to do is look at those houses that have been in the market for two months. Those are the ones where you can potentially go find a deal because they initially overpriced it. They thought they were going to sell in a week. Now, it’s eight weeks, right? That’s where you can come in and make a deal.

I’ve had success with clients offering on those properties and actually getting quite a bit off of that listing price. So it’s softening, but it’s not anywhere near where we want it to be yet for the buyers that we’re working with.

[00:38:13] TU: So stay tuned. We’ll have Nate back on the show this year as well. Again, we’ll link to his information in the show notes, his email address. You can go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com. You can click on home buying. You can get to Nate that way as well.

Nate, as always, great stuff, and I appreciate the perspective you bring on this important topic to our community.

[00:38:31] NH: Yes. Thanks for having me on, Tim.

[00:38:33] TU: Nate and I have covered a ton of information in this podcast. So imagine working with Nate one-on-one through your home buying journey and having his support to give you much needed peace of mind. We know many pharmacists want to feel confident about big financial decisions, including a home purchase. So if you have fears of being house poor, concerns about the impact a home purchase might have on your other financial goals, Nate and his home buying concierge service can help, all at no cost to you. You can visit realestaterph.com or click on the link in the show notes to schedule your free 30-minute jumpstart planning session with Nate.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:39:12] 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 is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in 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.

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 298: Preparing for Retirement with Dean Emeritus Dr. Gary Levin

Posted on March 9, 2023March 16, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

Dean Emeritus Dr. Gary Levin dives into the details of preparing for retirement. He shares how his career evolved from serving in the Navy to a career in pharmacy and then nearly 30 years in academia. He talks through how early investing and saving in his first job laid the foundation for his retirement, how he dealt with market volatility throughout his career, and why he started a charter company in retirement to supplement his income.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Gary M. Levin is retired following a career in academia moving up the ladder from Assistant Professor at Albany College of Pharmacy to Founding Dean and Professor of the Larkin University College of Pharmacy in Miami, Florida. He was recently awarded emeritus status upon his retirement. Dr. Levin has worked in numerous Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine including his alma mater the University of Florida where he also completed a residency in psychiatric pharmacy with the Gainesville VAMC and a Fellowship in Psychopharmacology and Pharmacokinetics at the UF College of Pharmacy.

Dr. Levin has been board certified in psychiatric pharmacy practice (BCPP) since 1996 as a member of the inaugural group to become certified. He is an elected fellow in the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (FCCP). He is a founding member and was the first elected president of the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists (CPNP). During his career, he precepted students, post-doctoral residents, and research fellows in pharmacy and psychiatry. This has been his greatest professional passion, to introduce students and other learners about the impact a psychiatric pharmacist can have on improving people’s lives.

Dr. Levin has been active in many professional pharmacy organizations and has held various appointed and elected positions. He has reviewed for many journals in both pharmacy and psychiatry and has served on several editorial boards. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and scientific abstracts and has received close to 1 million dollars in research and training support over his career.

His research interests have included improving outcomes in patients with psychiatric disorders, pharmacokinetics of psychoactive agents, and pharmacogenomic applications in patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders. Since 2013, upon becoming a CEO Dean, his research interests shifted to the scholarship of teaching and learning.

In his retirement he is enjoying spending more time with his wife, Toya Bowles, Pharm.D., MS, BCPP who works as a principal MSL for the Janssen neuroscience division of J&J, more time boating, traveling regularly to the Florida Keys, The Bahamas, and Mexico, and working with a private tutor to become fluent in Latin-American Spanish. He is also preparing for his US Coast Guard Captains License. He trains in Pilates and weights and has a 47th-floor balcony garden including many fruits and vegetables and a Key Lime tree that is producing too many limes in his home in Brickell Miami Florida.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, chats with Dean Emeritus, Dr. Gary Levin, on preparing for retirement. In their discussion, Gary explains how he found his way into pharmacy, ultimately pharmacy academia, from his early start in the Navy. He walks the listeners through the early stages of his career to where he is today, with guiding advice for pharmacists in all phases of their careers. Gary shares how investing and saving while working in his first faculty position laid the foundation for his retirement and how even small investments can profoundly impact the retirement paycheck.

Throughout the episode, Gary provides his top tips for those pharmacists in the first half of their careers, experiencing market volatility and how to keep a long-term mindset in preparation for retirement:

Don’t panic.
Recognize the value of having a good coach, trusted advisor, or financial planner.
Start planning for and investing for retirement as early as possible.
When you get a raise, save the raise.
Minimize withdrawal.

In closing, Gary dives into the story of how he started his charter company, how he plans to utilize the company as part of his retirement strategy, and the services used to automate the process so he can fully enjoy his retirement.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here, and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast, for each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week, I had the pleasure of welcoming onto the show Dean Emeritus Dr. Gary Levin. Some of my favorite moments from the show include hearing his career journey from the Navy, the choosing pharmacy to spending nearly 30 years in academia, how early investing and saving in his first faculty job laid the foundation for his retirement nearly 30 years later, how he dealt with the market volatility throughout his career, to avoid panic and to keep that long-term mindset and why he decided to start a business, Captain G’s Charter Company in retirement to supplement his income and to help build his retirement paycheck.

Now 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 280 households in 40-plus states. YFP Planning offers fee-only high-touch financial planning that is customized to 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 Dr. Gary Levin.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:26] TU: Gary, welcome to the show.

[0:01:28] GL: Hi. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me.

[0:01:30] TU: I’m really excited to dig into your pharmacy journey a little bit, how you planned for retirement and how you’ve thought about the financial journey throughout your career, and then we’ll wrap up and talk about the business that you recently started in retirement as well. I have a feeling just based on some back and forth conversation that we had on LinkedIn and email that you’re going to have a lot to share in terms of pearls of wisdom for our listeners, whether it’s new practitioners that are listening, that are just getting started, maybe it’s some mid-career pharmacists that are feeling they’re in the thick of it as they look ahead towards the future, or perhaps folks that are nearing retirement and are able to gain something from someone who has recently made that transition. Let’s start with your career journey. What got you into pharmacy and where did you end up doing your pharmacy training?

[0:02:17] GL: Interesting story, but I was in the Navy for seven years right out of high school. I had just really been done with school. I didn’t really like school. Once I graduated, I was just working at local restaurants. I was working at a gas station back when you had an attendant pumped your gas. I mean, still New Jersey has that, but it was everywhere and I was in – I grew up in Philadelphia. Really just wanted to get out and do something completely different.

My best friend said, “Hey, let’s join the Navy on the buddy program.” We did. We went to boot camp together. Right after boot camp, we were separated. He ended up on a ship out of San Diego. I ended up as an airdale, so I actually in seven years in the Navy, I never saw a ship, except from the air. I flew on a plane that was too big to land on an aircraft carrier. When I say I flew, I didn’t fly the plane. I was back in the middle of the plane. They called us a two rat back in the middle of the two. I operated the equipment that helped us hunt Soviet submarines. My job was actually aviation anti-submarine warfare operator.

I liked it so much that I started college during some off time at – and I was stationed in Jacksonville, Florida. What we would do is we would train for about 10 or 11 months in Jacksonville for the next location that we were going to go to, and then our whole squadron of 11 planes and about 400 people would just move to a new location for six months, and then we would operate out of that location. I really got to talk about enjoying the world. I got to live for six months at a time in Sicily, in the Azores, which are Portuguese islands in the north Atlantic, Bermuda, which I was there during the height of vacation season. Was in Bermuda from April to October. That was an amazing – Not a tough deployment place to be. Okinawa and the Philippines and Spain.

I really did get to see the world. From all of those places at any given time, they would send us to another location. For example, when I was in Spain, they said, “Well, Greece wants to play some more games.” We’re going to go try and find their submarine, so we would go to Greece for a week at a time, or we would go to France for a week at a time. I really did get to see almost everything. While I was in though, I knew I wanted to go to college. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian and that was always my plan. My classes were pre-vet. After four years in the Navy, they wanted me to re-enlist. I had really just started to take classes. While I was in at my particular rating, as long as you got an A or a B in your class, they would pay for 90% of the tuition.

I took two classes while I was in Jacksonville. At the time, it was Jacksonville Community College. I think now it’s Florida State College in Jacksonville. I took two classes and just really loved it. When I re-enlisted, my squadron was going to Keflavik Iceland for a full winter deployment. I thought, Iceland is a place where people now go on vacation. My wife said, “I can’t believe that you didn’t go to Iceland.” I said, “Well, when people go on vacation, they go for two weeks and they go in the summer.” This was six months solid winter. I think it was September to March, maybe. Full winter I said, “No, I’ve done enough of my sea duty time. I’m ready to go to shore duty.”

Because they didn’t want me to leave the squadron, they wanted me in Keflavik, Iceland, they said, “Well, the only place we can send you is Memphis.” I said, “Well, that’s fine. I’ll use that time to go to college full-time.” I did go to college full-time while I was there and still doing my pre-vet. I went to Memphis State University, which is now University of Memphis. Anyone who is a former student of mine, or interviewed at any of my colleges that I’ve worked at as a dean, probably have heard this story, because I would tell it before the actual interview day started, what my background was. I apologize to any of those that have already heard this story.

I finished my sophomore year as a pre-vet, but pre-vet, pre-pharmacy, pre-dental, pre-med, they’re all the same courses. I had friends that were going to pharmacy school. At the time, this was the early and mid-1980s. Most people, really it was the BS in pharmacy that was the predominant degree. If you were not in California, there were only about four colleges in the country that offered an entry level Pharm.D degree. My wife was in pharmacy school about the same time and she went to University of Kansas and it wasn’t even an option. She had to do her BS and then she worked for a year and then applied and went back to get her post-back Pharm.D.

We didn’t know each other at the time. We didn’t meet until 15, 20 years later at University of Florida. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to go straight through. Because I was already a resident in Florida by being in the Navy there, I went back to Florida to go to University of Florida. I thought, “Okay, what do I do? I’m now halfway through my junior year and I’ve been pre-vet the whole time.” I went and talked to a health career advisor. Of course, the first thing they say is, what about medical school? Oh, I didn’t say why I didn’t want to be a vet. I worked for a vet in my last year at Memphis part-time. If you’re not an owner and nobody can own a practice right out of vet school, you could do residencies if you want to specialize, but they don’t pay well. We had an associate vet, so he wasn’t one of the owners. He was just working for them full-time.

Now, again, this was 1985. At that time, pharmacists were making about 35,000 a year. I said, “Do you mind me asking, what do you make?” He said USD 18,000. He paid about a 100,000 in tuition. I said, “I mean, how long is it going to be for you to pay off your student loans? USD 18,000, that wasn’t much really more. It’s a little bit more than minimum wage.” He said, his goal was to work there about five years, build up enough of a clientele that ultimately, he can own his own practice. Very similar to what dentists do and even physicians right out of training oftentimes. That was really why I decided, vet school wasn’t for me. I wasn’t going through all these years of college to make at the time, what was just half of, or a third of what a pharmacist can make.

I still didn’t think pharmacy was for me though, because a lot of my friends that were in my classes in college were going to pharmacy school, and they were going at the time, it was the BS degree. At the time, they would even say, I would say, “What is your job going to be?” They would say themselves, “Well, we take it from the big bottle. Count by fives and put it in the little bottle.” I said, “You’re going to go to school for five, six, seven years and that’s what your job is going to be for the rest of your career?” They would tell me that there’s other things to do, but you have to do advanced training. Typically, you have to get a Pharm.D.”

At the time, Florida was transitioning to – I never even thought of pharmacy school. When I talked to the health care advisor at UF, they set me up to meet with a few of the faculty to explain that there were other jobs. It doesn’t mean to say that I didn’t want to work in the community. I actually worked in the community many times as a pharmacist in my residency, in my fellowship as an assistant professor, ultimately when I got to that point. I really enjoyed working with patients.

Med school was out, because I didn’t want to do another three or four years of residency. I said, when I graduate, I just want to graduate and be able to go into practice, or training, or into my career. UF was just transitioning from the post-back Pharm.D to the entry level Pharm.D. We had to make our decision after our first year. Everyone was together in one class. After our first year, we had to decide, okay, are you going to go into the Pharm.D track, or the BS track? It was about in my year, about 40 students went into the Pharm.D track and about 60 went into the BS. Interestingly enough, probably half of those people that went into the BS track ended up doing the program that Florida had, which was the working professional Pharm.D program, because they wanted to do something different, or just advance their career, beyond a chain, or a independent pharmacy.

They wanted to move up. Even if they wanted to stay with the chain, they wanted to move up into administration. They wanted to do something different. I went the Pharm.D track. Really, my goal was still at that point, to get my Pharm.D and to work as a pharmacist, not to do any post-doctoral training. A friend of mine was working for an independent in Tampa that had three different pharmacies. He had contacted me and said, “I would like to hire you. I don’t have any Pharm.Ds at the time, but I would really like to promote the fact that you can work with patient counseling, that you could do things beyond what are behind the counter pharmacists are doing, and we’re going to promote that we have a doctor of pharmacy. You would be probably one of the few in Tampa at the time.”

Again, because most of the people that were doing – that did the post-back program, a number of them are my friends now, went into hospital pharmacy, or they went into industry. Very few were doing community pharmacy. It sounded great. After I graduated, I went to do that and nothing was any different. I was doing the exact same job as all the “retail pharmacists,” and I was working behind the counter, not doing anything different. I did that for about six months and I left to go to the VA in Tampa.

While working at the VA, a number of my friends and colleagues, and by the way, I encourage people, I always encourage people to join, either be active in your student pharmacy organizations. For me, I was most active in Kappa side. That has really helped me throughout my career. A close friend of mine, who probably many people at least in the Florida area know, Doug Covey, was working as a clinical specialist at the VA in Tampa. I said, “Doug, I want to do what you do. I want to be a clinical specialist, not just working in the pharmacy.”

The VA had said, “We want to do an experiment. We have clinical specialists who are Pharm.Ds that have either been a Pharm.D for a long period of time and have either done a residency, or if they haven’t done a residency, they’ve been a Pharm.D for a while and they’ve built up trust with the clinicians that they work with. But at your level, you’re going to be in the middle.” I got to work with him in a cardiology clinic in the Coumadin Clinic and in a refill clinic. People that ran out of their medication, but they couldn’t get an appointment with a physician for probably three months. They would meet with us. It was me and three other Pharm.Ds from my class and we would actually review their chart, make sure that everything was stabilized so that we can actually write a prescription for them. This was before pharmacists actually wrote prescriptions in the VA.

What we wrote was a recommendation and the physician had, I think, about 72 hours to review it and say that he agreed with it. In all sense, we were writing prescriptions and this was in 1990. I really enjoyed doing that, but it was really only one day a week and then a half day a week working in the cardiology clinic with Doug and a half day a week doing the Coumadin Clinic, but I wanted to do that full-time. His best advice was, “Gary, you really need to go back and do a residency.”

The two things that I enjoy the most in pharmacy school, at least through my rotations, actually three. One was emergency medicine and toxicology. A friend of mine, who many people know in Florida and around the country is Joe Spillane. Joe was a year ahead of me in doing a two-year program in Jacksonville. It was considered a two-year fellowship. Another was ambulatory care, that was with John Gums at the University of Florida. Again, it was a two-year fellowship and probably, my favorite thing was psychiatry.

Now, psychiatry was a one-year residency at the VA in Gainesville. I got along amazingly with the preceptor. I got to know him during my rotation. They basically, this was before, if you did a specialty residency, you didn’t have to apply for a PGY2. This was before the time of PGY1s and PGY2s. Pharm.Ds could either do either a general clinical residency, which was pretty much what a PGY1 is now, or a specialty residency, what a PGY2 is now. But you could go into it right after your Pharm.D degree.

I wasn’t prepared to make a two-year commitment, so I did the one-year residency in psychiatry, or psychiatric pharmacy practice. Now, of course, actually, it was probably 1994 became the specialty board certified psychiatric pharmacy and I was in the first group of people to do that and I’ve maintained it ever since. I’ve re-certified four times, the most recent being for 2022. Three times, I did it by exam. The last time, because I was so far out of practice and I really wanted to do it just to keep my specialty, because I was the founding president of the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacy, which this year will become known as the American Association of Pharmacy Practitioners, I think. AAPP.

[0:17:55] TU: Oh, cool. I didn’t know that transition was happening. Okay.

[0:17:57] GL: This year is the transition year. Anything that you see about them, it’ll say CPNP/AAPP.

[0:18:05] TU: Yeah. Okay.

[0:18:06] GL: Because of that and because of still being known with them and associated with them, I’ve gone to every meeting, I think, since they started in 1992 and I helped found that original meeting. I kept my board certification. This will definitely be my last one. That’s a long background, but that’s how I got into psych. When I first started, my residency preceptor asked me, “Okay, do you want to do a fellowship?” His name is Lindsay DeVane. He is the editor. He’s retired, but he’s the editor now of The Journal of Pharmacotherapy. He’s been the editor-in-chief for probably about five years, six years. He still has some practice with research at Medical University of South Carolina. He asked me that my first day in. I said, “I really want to practice as a clinical psychiatric pharmacist.”

After about three months with him, I realized that I wanted to do what he did, which was academic pharmacy, have a clinical practice, have a research practice, had an academic practice and teach. When I said I didn’t know yet, he said, “Well, you do need to decide by your third month, because if you want to do a fellowship, we need to start applying for grants now.” At three months, we did. But I said, “Lindsay, but I don’t want to do a two-year fellowship. I want to do a one-year fellowship.” He said, “That’s fine, if you’re willing to do fellowship work as a resident. It’s going to be a busy year, but you’re going to be a resident, but you’re going to be starting, laying the foundation for the fellowship, basically, by writing grants.” I said, “I’m fine with that.”

I ended up doing a residency in fellowship, which is a total two years post-doc at University of Florida and with the VA in Gainesville, Florida. Really, that was it. That’s what took off as my academic career. At that point, I’d been in Florida, I think a total of 11 years, between being in Gainesville, in the Navy. Well, more than that, as you count my Navy time, UF time. I was ready for a complete change. I applied for a number of positions, but ended up as my first academic position at Albany College of Pharmacy, which I think now is Albany College of the Health Sciences. I was there for seven years.

Then, I won’t go through my whole academic history, but my mentor left to go to MUSC and the department chair at the time, Larry Lopez, called me and asked if I had any interest in coming back to University of Florida. I was already an associate professor, so I’ve made that first academic step. Ultimately, I did go back to University of Florida as an associate professor. That’s my career from there.

[0:21:04] TU: That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing. Most recently, you were the founding dean at Larkin University down in Miami. Since you made that transition into retirement, I want to talk a little bit about that transition and some of the planning that you did leading up to that. I think for many pharmacists in the first, let’s just say, decade, or the career that I talked to, for good reasons, they’re feeling overwhelmed with over six figures of student loan debt. Average right now is about a USD 170,000. Obviously, we’re dealing with high inflation right now, a pretty crazy housing market, uncertainty and volatility with the with the stock markets.

All that to say, I think the idea of saving for retirement and getting to that point of, “I’ve made it,” and we could talk about what that means, can feel overwhelming. To some, it probably just feels out of touch. It’s so far away. It feels so big, so scary and, “Am I really going to get there and what planning do I need to do?” My question for you as we get into a little bit of your strategy of preparing and getting to the point of being able to be in a financial position to retire, at what point in your career did you start thinking, “I need to start planning and saving for retirement”? Was that something that you were doing all along? Was there a mentor, or a guide that you had? At what point were you beginning to think, “Hey, I’ve got to really be planning for the future”?

[0:22:28] GL: I think I was very fortunate in my first academic position, Albany College of Pharmacy, because people there had a mindset of preparing for retirement. It was actually the only place that I’ve ever worked at that – I mean, Albany College of Pharmacy was the fourth College of Pharmacy in the nation. They’ve been around since the 1800s. Therefore, I mean, they have a, for just being a College of Pharmacy, as opposed to a large university with many colleges, I think they are very, very well endowed, because they have hundreds of – well, not hundreds, but well over a hundred years of alumni. Now many of those alumni have passed away. But they’ve had alumni for many, many years.

One of my favorite things to do when I had a break was to walk through the administrative wing and they had pictures, like most colleges do, of their – somewhere near the dean’s office is the big picture of all the graduates in a composite picture. One of my favorite things to do was to go and look at the founding, well all the classes, but look how the styles changed, of coats and ties, and the number of women that came into –

[0:23:46] TU: Demographic.

[0:23:46] GL: Yeah, the demographics of the program. But they had pictures going back to the first class, which I don’t remember the exact year, but it was somewhere in the 1880s. Looking at what that class was like. It was maybe 18 students, all male for 30 years and then you see the first female. But because they had this large endowment, they were really able to have a great benefits package. Their benefits package for all employees, faculty, or staff, or anybody was that they gave you a 10%, not match, but they just gave you 10% of your salary every year into your retirement fund, which was TIAA-CREF, which is the majority of colleges, universities and I think hospitals, probably have TIAA-CREF as an option.

It was their only option. It’s been at least one, or the only option at most of the colleges I worked for. I think I worked for seven colleges, or pharmacy, or universities. They just put in 10% right off the bat. I’ve never heard of that. When I was at University of Florida, they had a 10% match, but of course, it was a match. If you put in 2%, they put in 2%. But they go up to 10. The fact that Albany right off the bat gave you 10%, the first year that I was there, I was concerned about student loans. My wife had student loans.

Actually, I take that back. She didn’t have student loans. She had a different profession before pharmacy, so she was able to pay for her pharmacy degree all the way through. It was really just me. Now, I ended with about close to USD 30,000 of student loans. You’re probably better at this than me, USD 30,000 in 1990 –

[0:25:44] TU: Just thinking that. Yeah, yeah.

[0:25:45] GL: Then for two years, I didn’t pay back for my residency and fellowship and interest accumulates. Interest at that time, most people probably don’t remember, but in the eighties, I know housing interests when as hot housing to buy a house. I bought a house when I moved to Gainesville in 1986. My mortgage interest was 12%. That was an owner financed, because they did a lot and they said, “If you go to the bank, it’ll probably be 14% or 15%.”

[0:26:19] TU: That’s right.

[0:26:20] GL: People right now that are faced with 5% –

[0:26:24] TU: Five, 6% looks good, right?

[0:26:26] GL: Five, six. I think last week, it actually dropped a little bit when the Fed raised three quarters of a point, rates dropped below five. People should jump on that. Because we’re probably never going to see two and a half, or 3% again.

[0:26:42] TU: Yeah. That’s something I talked about on a recent show. I graduated in 2008, as our listeners know. We’ve been spoiled for those that are in or since that time period, we’ve been spoiled with extremely low historical interest rates. I think we’ve been accustomed to this is just the way it is. 0 percent car financing, 3%, 2.8%, 30-year fixed rate mortgages on homes. Student loan interest rates, especially for those that need to refinance on the private side, really low. That’s not what it’s always been. I think, I’ve talked to my parents about this and other guests as well, but there certainly have been time periods of higher inflation and will we see those lower rates again or not? We’ll see in the future.

It’s interesting you mentioned how impactful that early contribution from Albany; them providing 10%. Even when you got to Florida, the 10% match. I mean, outside of academic institutions, those are unheard of today for many of our pharmacists, especially that work out in the private sector. They’re going to have to work a little bit harder on their own. You’re not going to see 8%, 10% matches and you’re certainly not going to see a whole lot of contributions being made without a match.

My question for you and I think one that probably a lot of listeners are struggling with in the moment is dealing with the current volatility, and especially for those that have not been through this. I go back to my experience. 2008, just graduated. I was doing residency at the time, making a whopping USD 31,000. I didn’t own a home. Outside of gas being expensive, I didn’t feel that recession. If anything, I was able to start my investing career, buying low and really saw the upside of that for almost 14 years, until we had the recent dip. Even the dip in the pandemic, back to March 2020, it was so short-lived, I’m not sure we saw the impact, like a 2008 recession or others before, where maybe we have people that have now been 10 to 15 years into their career, have never dealt with this kind of volatility. Maybe they’ve accrued three, four, five, USD 600,000. This is the first time they’re looking at saying, “Yeesh. I just lost 30% to 40% of my portfolio.”

This is the first test, I think, for many of like, “Am I really in it for the long-term? And making sure I don’t make any decisions in the short-term that are going to hurt me.” What advice would you have for folks that are – especially on that first half of their career that are experiencing this volatility, that are questioning their investment strategy and are maybe even wondering, is it worth it when there’s other competing expenses where I could be putting these dollars? You’ve lived through some of these cycles and obviously weathered them. Tell us your thoughts on that.

[0:29:26] GL: My first recommendation would be to never panic. So many people took money, or took their money that they had invested in especially the 2008, which was the biggest. 2007 leading up to that. So many people took their money and just put it into cash, or money market, which probably pays 1%. Or you can move it into annuity which pays 2% or 3%. But me and my wife, we looked at it as, this is an excellent opportunity to buy low, because we’re continuing to put in every paycheck, so we’re buying as low as possible.

Anybody that follows the stock market and if they don’t, then I encourage that everybody have a financial planner. As a department chair, I’ve been a department chair twice and a dean twice. In both of those positions, I saw myself not just as an employee mentor, but as a life mentor as much as I could be, because I went through having – I have one son, he’s 27 now. I went through having a child, or a baby while I was in academia, changing jobs, spouse changing jobs, all the sorts of things, buying houses, all the sorts of things that they’re going through, we’re going to go through. I encourage them to start putting money away as early as they can.

I have had, and here’s the part where I would never name names, but I have had faculty, many of them say to me, “I have been told by my financial planner, or advised to pay off my student loans first before I put money away.” I personally disagree with that, because you will get your student loans paid off long before you retire. But I don’t know, but compound an interest, if you put a USD 100 a month away at age, let’s say 25, at age 65 or 70, that USD 100, if you go by the general rule and the general rule is every seven years, your money doubles. That includes ups and downs in the markets, that every seven years. If you have a longer period of no downs and there’s definitely more ups than downs, that USD 100 – I mean, I don’t know how many sevens that is, but that USD 100 is probably several thousand.

If you’re doing that once a month, I mean, you’re talking about getting into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s not uncommon for people that do that, to retire with well over a million dollars. A lot of pharmacists are married to pharmacists. If they’re not married to pharmacists, they’re often married to other people doing very well in the health care, like nurses, physicians, nutritionists, any other health care practitioner that’s making 60,000 and up. These are people where both of them could be putting away.

The way I started when I had that 10%, I realized that it was 10% of not much and I didn’t know that pharmacy salaries – as a faculty member, I started at 48,000. I didn’t know that that would go to well over a 100,000. I looked at it as it’s 10% of not very much, but it’s USD 4,800 a month going in. The first year, we focused on buying a house. We really decided, okay, we’re not going to put anything away. I plan that every year, I’m probably going to get a raise. That’s another benefit of Albany College of Pharmacy. We had good raises. Many people that work for state universities, they might not get a raise like privates will get. Private universities will typically look at what is the consumer inflation index and the average, I mean, I realized this year is not a normal year, but the average is around 2%.

What they’ll do is most company, or most private universities will take that 2% and add 2% to that and they’ll say, “Our average raise this year is going to be 4%.” Depending on merit, it’s going to vary between the very worst person is going to get 2% and the highest might get 6%. At Albany, I typically ranged between 4% and 6% and 2 years in a row. I got the highest raise in the university. That’s great, but not normal. It wasn’t that way my entire career, but it was two great years.

My goal was always, whatever my raise was, if my raise was 4%, 2% I was going to enjoy in my salary and 2% I was going to put into the match. I did that every year, so that by the time I left Albany after seven years, I was matching that 10% that they were putting in. Again, that was 10% of a relatively no number, even though I was there seven years with some great pay raises. When I left there, I was making, I think, it was 67. Then I went to University of Florida as a associate professor in 1999 and started at 75.

Pharmacists coming out were making more than that. They were making about 80. It was not until I became vice chair for the department at University of Florida and the stipend that I got for being vice chair. At that point, about nine years in academia, vice chair for the department and I’m finally making as much as one of our graduates.

[0:35:09] TU: Yeah. I think there’s so much wisdom in what you shared of the habit that then has a compound effect. You mentioned your example of 4%-ish, maybe a little bit higher at Albany. Taking a portion of that and building the behavior of I’m going to save it and invest it. Because salaries go up if, you’ve built that behavior based on a percentage that not only is that number going to go up, but then the compound effect of that number is going to go up, even more over time. I think that’s a really good strategy.

I’ve been recording some of the lessons that you’re sharing here, and I’ve got four so far. Number one we talked about, don’t panic. We’re going to experience volatile periods in the market as we are right now. Number two is –

[0:35:49] GL: I guess, with don’t panic, try not to look every day if you’re invested.

[0:35:54] TU: Be informed, but not in it so much that you’re panicking.

[0:35:57] GL: Right. Because you’re not in it for day to day. You’re in this for 20, or 30 years from now. There will be ups and there will be downs, but no matter what, if you look at the market from the date they started recording, it goes like that.

[0:36:11] TU: Yup. That’s right.

[0:36:12] GL: It’s a mountain slope.

[0:36:14] TU: Number one, don’t panic. Number two is the value of having a good coach, a trusted advisor and planner. I think that relates to number one, because a good coach and a planner is going to talk you through some of the volatile time periods to make sure we’re looking long-term. Number three, you mentioned start as early as possible and you gave some good examples and numbers of what, it’s a USD 100 a month equal over time. Then number four, we just talked about this concept of save the raise, is what I call it. If we get raises over time, if we can build the discipline to put away a portion of that, that’s going to have a huge impact over time.

My last financial question before we transition and wrap up by talking a little bit about what you’re doing on the business side of retirement, is that saving for retirement is one thing. We talk a lot about building a nest egg. We talk a lot about how much might someone need. Is it one, or two, or three million dollars, but building a retirement paycheck and determining how you’re going to actually withdraw that money and the strategy for doing that is a completely different thing. We don’t talk as much about that, I think, in the financial services world. We talk about the accrual phase a lot, but we don’t talk as much about the withdrawal strategy. This is really where a lot can happen in terms of mistakes made, or opportunities, if we can optimize this phase. Can you can you share, especially for those listening that are getting ready, or see on the horizon that retirement phase, what your strategy has been thus far, or what you’re planning to do for withdrawing these various funds that you’ve accrued throughout your career as you begin to build that retirement paycheck?

[0:37:51] GL: I try to take out as little as possible. I’m very fortunate in that my wife is younger than me and she will probably work about five to six more years before retiring from J&J. She has a very healthy income, too. That allowed me to retire and really not have to touch any of my funds. However, I’ll try and make it for anybody that still has either a spouse retiring, or you both retired at the same time. Social Security, we have to mention that. Right now, they say, I think that there’s about 30 years left. This is just something I believe as a core in my heart that Social Security will not go away. I mean, it’s a promise –

[0:38:36] TU: I agree.

[0:38:37] GL: – that the government has made since what, FDR was president, when it started.

[0:38:42] TU: It would be catastrophic if it does.

[0:38:44] GL: I believe, it would lead to something like a civil war. Much, much worse than the January 6th insurrection. Because you’re affecting tens of millions of people, not a couple hundred thousand that are upset. Tens of millions of people. And that have been putting away. When Obama was president and they first started to talk about there being potentially an end, or a lifetime of Social Security that it has to come to an end. Well, if it has to come to an end, you have to stop taking from people. Social Security, and say, take this money and invest it on your own, but we can’t continue to take it and make money off of you and then say, it’s gone. It’s not. For those that don’t know, it’s seven and a half percent, I think, or 7.55% and your employer pays 7.55%.

[0:39:44] TU: That’s right.

[0:39:45] GL: If you’re self-employed, it’s double that, so you’re paying the entire 15% yourself. That’s a lot of money to take from somebody for 40, 50 years and then say, we’re not going to give you anything. Even the people that are billionaires, they took that money from them I think they owe them something in return. Now, I do believe that they can move to a sliding scale. People that are billionaires probably don’t need to get USD 2,000 a month. I’m very supportive of a sliding scale. But that sliding scale should not be the number that I’ve heard talked about, like 200, or USD 220,000, because two pharmacists could be making over USD 220,000 that are partners. Maybe not after they retire, but they might have more than that, a lot more than that in their retirement funds.

We all live, and I have this other – This is just the rule of Gary. Everybody lives to about a half a percent, or 1% beyond their means. If we didn’t, we would have no need for credit cards, lines of credit. We all tend to live at our means, but just a tiny bit over that that we’re always comfortable. We shouldn’t have to change that, because social security goes away. I don’t think that, again, that’s not a promise. That’s just my opinion. It’ll never go away. It may change, but I don’t think it’ll ever go away, that would lead to, I believe, something as big as a civil war, that catastrophic.

I’m one of the last few years. I’m a baby boomer, but on the last few years. I was born in 1960. I was eligible to start Social Security at ’62. Every year that you wait in not taking it, that goes up 8%. If I took it at ’63, it would be 8% more than when I was ’62. I’m not. If I wait till ’64, it’s another 8%. When we look at market volatility over time, we consider 8% per year over say, a 10 or 15-year of good, or average years. Six percent if you want to be conservative, 8% if you want to meet what the S&P has generally done over time and 10% if you want to say, “Well, I feel like I’m retiring, or the next 10 years should be pretty good.”

I have not started taking my Social Security, because there’s nothing in life that’s guaranteed, right, other than death and taxes. This is something that’s guaranteed. There are three things is that every year, you don’t take your Social Security. It goes up 8%. My goal is to not take it at least until my wife retires. If that’s in five years, I’ll be 67 and that would have gone up five times eight, 40%. Right now, my retirement check would look somewhere around, I think, USD, 2,200. I think it would be 3,000 or over at 67.

[0:42:55] TU: Let’s shift gears here and wrap up with the work that you are doing in your own business. You’re retired from pharmacy, still working though not as a pharmacist, but have decided to start your own company. Tell us about Captain G’s, what the business is all about and what you’re working on.

[0:43:12] GL: Great. I still want to mention that I’m still licensed. I don’t know why I’m still licensed as a pharmacist. It’s just something we work so long on and have for so long. I don’t know if it’s a safety net. I think most places would rather hire someone that has a lot of a career left than somebody like me. But if I had to do per diem, I certainly would. I always said that I’d work behind a counter before I would live under a bridge. But I wouldn’t be behind the counter. Like I said, I’d be out there helping patients and hope all the pharmacists that are listening to this do that, or counseling, or anything else that you would consider helping their quality of life.

I retired about a year and a half ago and I really never planned to do this. Well, actually, I had planned to do it. That was creating a charter service with my boat. We had a larger boat. We had a 45-foot boat when I retired, with a fly bridge, which is a pretty big boat. Three state rooms, two heads or bathrooms on it, a full galley, an outdoor kitchen and grill. I probably could have lived on that boat. We tried it. We actually, when we lived in Coconut Grove, which is a very popular area in Miami, we did Airbnb for one week a month –

[0:44:33] TU: Oh, cool.

[0:44:34] GL: – for our house and lived on the boat to see if we enjoyed living on a boat. Because that was always my goal, to try and get my wife to say, “Let’s not have a mortgage on the house and a boat. Let’s just get a big boat, big enough to live on.” It probably would have been a 60-foot boat. That experience though, she said, “I can’t live on a boat. I just can’t do it. Too small of a space. Not enough closet space, etc., and not a bathtub. My wife loves a bathtub, not a shower.” But we still owed a couple 100,000 on that boat when I wanted to retire. She said, “Look, we’ve got a lot of equity in this boat. Why don’t you sell it?”

It was right around the time that quarantine had ended and people wanted to get out and the boating market and the housing market, that’s when they both really started to skyrocket. Boats were selling literally in a day, just like houses. I hired a broker. We had literally three cash offers. We had three cash offers before COVID. Then the pandemic hit and it cooled down. The same people that had an offer on the boat when the quarantine ended came back and said, “We’ll buy it.” They tried to offer us a lower amount. I said, “No, we have two other cash offers for one day. No survey. We’ve already done all this with you, a marine survey. Take it as it is,” and they did.

Then, I ended up with about USD 250,000 in equity. My wife said, that was the original plan was take what you get in equity and just buy a boat outright. I did that. I looked around for a while and found an amazing boat that if anybody’s interested in a boat, buy a used one and typically, look at three years. Boats depreciate at 20% the first year like a car, 12% the second year and 8% the third year. After that, they plateau and appreciate about 2% to 3% a year.

Really, 40% of depreciation is in the first three years and it hasn’t been used that much. We were fortunate to find one that only had a 100 hours on the engine. Two state rooms in it, full galley. We went to one bathroom, but a separate shower. I had thought about chartering it and I didn’t want to put all those hours on it. I talked to a couple charter companies and they said, “You know, when we do charters, it’s really about the people being in the water. You’re not really taking them on a tour of Miami and the Keys. You’re not cruising at 30 knots, or 30 miles an hour, which uses a gallon pretty much every mile, you’re burning about a gallon, which is a lot of money.”

I mean, when we go to Bimini or the Keys, it costs about 60 gallons to get there. Well, marine fuel is less expensive, especially marine diesel, it’s still about USD 4 a gallon. It’s a lot of money to get to Bimini and back. That’s what I was thinking is that’s a lot of fuel, that’s a lot of hours. That means more maintenance I’m going to be paying on the boat, everything. In talking to a couple of charter companies, I realized that the ideal charter is four hours in length. It’s basically an hour of cruising around and you’re cruising relatively slow, eight to 10 knots, which burns maybe one gallon during that time period. One, maybe one and a half gallon. That was about USD 6 of fuel during that first hour. Showing them around. Then typically, they want to anchor and go out in the water and swim. We let them do that. They typically play in the water for two hours and then it’s about an hour to get back. It doesn’t put a lot of time. Each charter puts about two hours of engine time on my boat, but the amount of money that people pay for a charter for a boat of my size is great.

[0:48:27] TU: Makes sense. They don’t want to own it. They want to enjoy it.

[0:48:29] GL: They just want to enjoy it. My company is Captain G’s. Www.captain.gs, g for Gary, S for Captain G’s .net.

[0:48:43] TU: We’ll link to that in the show notes, so people can see that.

[0:48:45] GL: Okay. If you see anywhere on that page, I also do a second job and that’s because I’ve had a number of people call me and say, I just went up from a single engine to a double engine, or I’ve moved to a boat that has an air conditioner, or a generator, or I’ve went from gas to diesel, there’s just a lot of new things that I don’t know how to manage. I’ve owned everything, from an 18-foot to a 45-foot, all over 30 years. I started with an 18-foot bow rider right out of my fellowship and I’ve owned a boat ever since. I’m on my 11th boat. This will be my last boat. No sense in getting a bigger boat, because I like the number of people that I take out on the charter. Maximum is eight people and average is going to be typically, anywhere from two to six.

My first three charters, two were last week. Two were two weekends ago and one was this past weekend and we’re in low season. They said, I’ll probably get five to seven a month in low season. Then in November, we pick up into high season and they said, I’ll probably get around 11 to 15.

[0:49:51] TU: Wow. Wow.

[0:49:53] GL: Now, that’s a lot of work for me. I don’t want to do all that work. I want to enjoy the income that it brings. I like getting out on the water. My goal is to do about four charters a month. I get one so far. I was on a vacation to Asheville, so I have a backup, Captain Natasha. She’s relatively young, but extremely experienced and she captains boats up to 75 feet. She does – handling mine is like me playing with a tinker toy. She doesn’t even hire a mate when she does mine, when she charters 75-foot boats, she’ll have a mate with her too, to help getting the drinks, helping with the water toys, all that. I had my first one where I captained it, just this past Saturday for four hours.

Because we were coming back at night, I had my wife with me, because Miami can be pretty busy even at night. She just helped as a lookout and helped me dock back in. She served as the first mate. We bought a pair of walkie talkies, so we could seem very professional.

[0:50:59] TU: That’s cool.

[0:51:00] GL: She had it in her ear. It looked pretty cool. It was great. It was just a couple and we dropped them off at a restaurant when we were done. If it makes enough money to pay for my slip, slips are not expensive, or not cheap, especially in Miami. I have a type of slip where it’s called a full-service marina. You can get fuel there. They do minor repairs for free. Major repairs, they’ll bring somebody in, but I haven’t had any major, knock on wood. Minor things, they’ll do for free. If it’s anything that a charter customer did, like let’s say, they put a hole in a seat, then the charter – the company that I work with, or partner with, which is called theadvantaged.com. It’s www.theadvantaged.com. If you click anywhere on my website to do a charter, it’ll go directly to my boat on their website.

[0:52:01] TU: Got it.

[0:52:03] GL: The reason for that is, I don’t want to deal with the clientele. I don’t want to deal with people saying, “Hey, I want it for USD 200 less. I want this. I want that.” I want another company to do that, so theadvantaged does that. Do they make a fee? Yeah, they make 50% after the captain is paid, which is either me or Natasha, but we get the tip 100%, which is typically 20% of the full charter price and we each split 50% of it at the end. It’s very good.

I probably figure that I will need a service more often than once a year, maybe once every eight or nine months, especially once we get into season. A service costs about USD 4,000. I do expect that I’ll have additional expenses, but things that I was paying for already. My slip is 1,295 a month. That fuel, these are things that I’m paying for already, regular upkeep. All this can be written off now as an expense of the company. I hired a company called Zen Business, which is an ideal company for people that want to start small businesses and don’t want to do all the paperwork themselves.

They’ve handled my Florida S Corp, creating an S corporation. They’ve handled getting my EIN number, which is basically the social security number of a business for federal purposes and taxes. They’ve handled everything. Theadvantaged handles everything with the clients. They actually even take the money, I deal with nothing unless somebody hands me a cash tip. It’s been great. I mean, I like to get out on the water. Like I said, I don’t want to be out there every day of the month, or even every other day, because I want my time to go out with me and my wife and our friends also. We take friends out, probably once every other weekend. Again, I’ll do it about four times and Natasha can do the rest, or second backup.

[0:54:08] TU: I love that. I mean, you’re already building the system of the beginnings, at least of the business and having other people involved, doing what you want to enjoy, but not taking up so much time. I think that fits in so well to that fifth lesson we were talking about minimizing withdrawal, because obviously, there’s an opportunity there for additional income that can further allow that delay of social security and other type of withdrawal.

[0:54:32] GL: Exactly. We were, without me starting social security, I was having to take out about USD 20,000 twenty a year. I don’t think I’ll have to take out anything, which again, just let’s continue to build.

[0:54:44] TU: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

[0:54:47] GL: I only wish that I had additional money to put in during this low time.

[0:54:50] TU: I know.

[0:54:51] GL: I don’t. If it gets big enough, I will continue to put money in. Because my wife’s still working, she’s still putting in –

[0:54:59] TU: Contributing at the low.

[0:55:02] GL: Yeah, at the low amount, knowing that it’s going to grow.

[0:55:04] TU: Yeah. Well, this has been great. I really appreciate your time and sharing some of your journey here with our listeners and especially for those folks that are looking ahead and thinking about the journey over the course of their career, I think this will be really insightful. Thank you, Gary, for taking time to come on the show. I appreciate it.

[0:55:21] GL: Tim, if there’s one biggest thing that I can say, especially for those that have student loans, by all means, don’t forget your student loans. But take something, even if it’s a USD 100 a month, USD 50 a month, USD 10 a week, anything. Just start it. Make it as an auto withdrawal, so you don’t even notice it. Remember, when you take it out if your paycheck to put into retirement, you’re typically going to do it where you’re not going to pay taxes on that amount. If you take out a 100 a month, it’s only going to look like you’ve taken out USD 70 a month.

Now, there’s a whole other option that you can do where you do it after taxes and put it in as an IRA. That’s probably a whole another session for Tim to talk about. That wasn’t an option when I started my career. That only started about seven years ago. If it was, I would have done that, because I’m going to be taxed on everything that I take out. Whereas, if you do this relatively new option, yes you’re going to pay taxes now, but not when you need it in retirement.

[0:56:24] TU: That’s right. That’s right. Many folks now have access to a Roth. Not just the Roth IRA, but also a Roth 401k, or Roth 403b.

[0:56:31] GL: Right, right. If you do a whole show on that, please let me know. I’d love to listen in on it.

[0:56:36] TU: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much, Gary. I appreciate it.

[0:56:38] GL: Thank you, Tim. Thanks, listeners.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:56:41] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment, or any other advice. Information in the podcast 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 archive, 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 pharmacists, 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 297: Introducing The Pharmacy Innovators with Corrie Sanders of Huna Health

Posted on March 2, 2023March 16, 2023 by Caitlin Boyle

YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, introduces the new series, The Pharmacy Innovators, designed for pharmacists navigating the entrepreneurial journey, featuring founder stories and strategies to help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs. In this first episode, Tim interviews Corrie Sanders, PharmD, before handing over the lead to her for the remainder of the series.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Corrie Sanders joins us from Oahu, Hawaii as President of the Hawai’i Pharmacists Association and founder of Huna Health, Hawaii’s only pharmacogenomic consulting company. After five years of practicing in private and government settings, Corrie transitioned to solopreneurship and is passionate about sharing the intricacies of that journey with other healthcare professionals. Dr. Sanders enjoys educating pharmacists and students about consulting opportunities and how ‘thinking outside the box’ will be integral to the pharmacy profession in the future.

Episode Summary

This week, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, announces a brand new series of the YFP Podcast, The Pharmacy Innovators. This series, designed for pharmacists navigating the entrepreneurial journey will feature individual founder stories and strategies to help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs. Tim kicks things off by interviewing Corrie Sanders, PharmD. Corrie is a pharmacy entrepreneur with a passion for innovation in pharmacy. During their discussion, Corrie shares what excites her most about pharmacy entrepreneurship, the pharmacy journey that led her to this point, why she chose to walk away from a desirable position in pursuit of entrepreneurship, and how she prepared in advance to transition from a W-2 job to running her business, Huna Health. Tim and Corrie talk through the creation of Huna Health, how Corrie developed the idea based on solving problems in her market, and the services offered by the pharmacogenomic consulting service. Listeners will hear practical advice and resources that helped Corrie early in this journey, how her role as president of the Hawai’i Pharmacists Association played a part in helping her grow as a business owner, and how she works through “head trash” as a small business owner. Tim wraps up by sharing what listeners can expect from The Pharmacy Innovators series and hands the series over to Corrie for the next four episodes.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hi, guys. Tim Ulbrich here, and welcome to this special episode of the YFP podcast. Today marks the beginning of a journey that has been in the making for some time, and I’m thrilled to be kicking off a new series on this show, The Pharmacy Innovators.

Now, if you’ve been listening to this show for some time, you know that over the past couple of years, we’ve been featuring a handful of pharmacy entrepreneur stories of individuals that are blazing paths to monetize their clinical expertise, evolve our profession, and improve patient care. It’s an exciting time to be in a profession that is ripe for innovation and disruption, which means there are opportunities all around us. As we see more pharmacists embrace these opportunities and enter unchartered territory, we want to create a space to learn more about who these innovators are, what they’re working on, why they took the paths they’re taking, and what makes them tick. That’s exactly what we have planned for this new series, on the YFP podcast, The Pharmacy Innovators.

This series is really designed for pharmacists that are navigating the entrepreneurial journey, whether that be for individuals that don’t yet have an idea but are looking for inspiration, or those that have an idea and just getting started, or perhaps those that have been at it for a while and are looking to continue to improve, to grow and to scale. In this series, we’re going to feature individual founder stories and strategies that will help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs.

Today, I kick things off by interviewing Corrie Sanders, and I’m going to play my usual role of host and interview Corrie about her career and entrepreneurial journey. But here’s the twist. Here’s the exciting part. After today’s episode, she is going to take the mic for four more of The Pharmacy Innovator series podcasts throughout 2023. She’s been planning and scheming with some awesome guests and content to feature throughout the year.

Now, for those that don’t already know Corrie and the work she is doing with Huna Health, stay tuned. That’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s episode. But let me give you the short story of why I thought she was such a great fit to serve as host of this series throughout the year. Lots of reasons. But three that really stood out to me. Number one is she has a passion for pharmacy entrepreneurship and innovation. Both for those that are starting their own thing, but also for those that are looking to innovate and disrupt within their own organization.

Number two is she has made the jump from employee to entrepreneur and being towards the beginning of that journey she has a lot to share about how and why she made that transition and what she’s learning as she grows her business. Of course, while interviewing others, she’s going to bring that perspective, as one that is curious, that is getting started as an entrepreneur, which I think it’s going to be so helpful to others that are on their own journey.

And number three, she is contagious with her enthusiasm and energy. We need that in our profession at a time when there’s a lot of pessimism. We need that to be a realistic, enthusiastic, and energy, and I think Corrie brings just that. All right, let’s jump into my interview with Corrie Sanders as we kick off The Pharmacy Innovator series on the YFP podcast.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:03:02] TU: Corrie, welcome to the show.

[00:03:04] CS: I’m excited to be here, Tim. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:06] TU: Well, this is an exciting time, one for our profession, I think lots of disruption and innovation, and we’re seeing many pharmacists enter into some really cool ideas and intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship. We’ll talk about those throughout this series that we’re featuring in The Pharmacy Innovators. But also, an exciting time, as we’re going to feature your story, your career journey, your journey into pharmacy entrepreneurship on this new series, The Pharmacy Innovators, and then I’m going to pass the mic, as you’ll interview others throughout 2023. I think there are lots of exciting pharmacists, founders, stories, and ideas that are out there that we’re going to explore in much more detail.

My first question for you, Corrie, is what excites you most about diving more into pharmacy entrepreneurship? It’s a topic that I’ve since, as we’ve talked over the last six or so months, that you’re just as energized and enthusiastic as I am and what’s behind that?

[00:04:02] CS: I think we’re seeing pharmacists leverage their clinical skill set in a way that we haven’t seen before. And this is just varied across the country, whether it’s access to care or quality of care, and we’re seeing a lot of expansions and pharmacists’ scope of practice at the state level. So, I think the legislation is really setting the foundation to get pharmacists to be thinking outside the box of alternative revenue streams and traditional care settings.

[00:04:27] TU: Awesome. Awesome. We’re talking about what you’re doing with the work at Huna Health here in a little bit. But I want to start with your journey into the profession. Where did you go to pharmacy school and what ultimately led you into the profession of pharmacy?

[00:04:40] CS: Sure. So, I went to pharmacy school at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. I’m born and raised in Virginia, and I went into pharmacy because I love the clinical care setting and the impact that you can have directly on patient care. So really, just a nice hybrid of science and medicine, but still retaining a lot of the interpersonal relationship that you can have with your patients and other healthcare providers. It was just a really perfect combination for me to step into the pharmacy practice area.

[00:05:09] TU: So, from Virginia, graduated from VCU, you would then go on to do a PGY1 residency. Tell us more about that experience and then what led you to your first job after that.

[00:05:19] CS: Sure. And I joke all the time, I feel like I’m 30 years old, and I’m on my third pharmacy career already. But I did a general PGY1 at a healthcare system called Sentara, based out in Norfolk, Virginia, and I was really critically care focused there. But then, my husband was in the Navy for seven years, and his orders took us out to Hawaii. So, I made a complete 100 Navy pivot. I had to switch from a critical care focus to an ambulatory care setting, just based on the job opportunities that were out here in Hawaii. Then, after spending three years with the Department of Veterans Affairs, I’ve now transitioned into independent entrepreneurship and pharmacogenomics.

[00:06:00] TU: Corrie, by all accounts, outside looking in, the VA is a pretty good job in our profession, right? Great compensation, good benefits, expanded scope of practice for many folks. So, I think the question is, what led you to the point to say, “I’m willing to walk away from that. Maybe this isn’t, for me, maybe there’s something else that’s out there.”

[00:06:20] CS: Sure. I think that’s such an important question is really taking a look at yourself, and what makes you happy and what you get job satisfaction from, and I just wasn’t feeling that within the department that I was in. So, looking long term, and being able to grow in leadership positions, or being able to really practice towards the top of my license, despite having expanded clinical scope at the VA baseline, just the innovation and the growth for me wasn’t there.

On top of that, I didn’t like the person that I was becoming because of the work culture that I was practicing in. I just felt like I was carrying such an emotional and mental weight stepping outside of work and that was really taking a toll on me mentally, and I just wasn’t willing to sit in that space for the rest of my career. Then, ultimately thinking about, I learned so much about what work can be from my parents. I did not want my kids to think that this is what work looks like, is that their mom comes home, they’re tired every day, they’re complaining about their job, it’s not invigorating them in any way, shape, or form. And I just projecting a couple of years ahead, my husband and I all have kids, hopefully in the next few years, but that’s just a lesson that I wanted to teach my kids to is like, work can be amazing, and it’s not worth sacrificing your mental health to say in a position just because it’s a good position from the outside or it meets a certain paycheck metric.

[00:07:48] TU: Corrie, that’s really powerful. And I think many of our listeners are going to resonate with that of, maybe there’s something more, something else out there. I think, for many, that emotional side of what we often say is living a rich life, not just dollars and cents, but living a rich life in terms of the work that we’re doing, the contributions that we’re making, the relationships that we have is so important. But I think, what often is the struggle is translating that emotional desire with some of the Xs and Os to actually make a transition or make it happen.

I talk with pharmacists every single week that says, “Hey, Tim, I would love to do X, Y, and Z, or that are feeling some of the emotional pains that you brought up. But… I’ve got $200,000 in student loan debt. I don’t really feel like I have a good foundation investing. I’ve got a young family. It’s a busy phase of life. I’m not sure how I’m going to replace my income. What about health insurance?” All of these things that we have to think about when we’re starting our own business, and they’re all real, but they’re big barriers to overcome.

I know you and I have talked about this before, as we’re planning for this series that, “Hey, this is a topic we don’t talk enough about and transparently enough of how do we actually make and prepare for this financial transition from a W-2 that pays well and great benefits, to a path where you’re out on your own.” Tell us more about what that looked like for your own journey?

[00:09:13] CS: Sure. There are so many components of this question, right? So, at the core of it, it’s really you need to have a skill, and what skill are you confident that is going to translate outside of whatever practice setting you’re in, that you can monetize after you make that transition? It’s one thing to think about wanting to be in a different care setting and all the opportunities that exist and really, it can become overwhelming, if you really start tapping into the pharmacy entrepreneurship community. There are a lot of things that pharmacists are doing. But really what is that skill? And what skill are you passionate about? And that is really the core of being able to make that transition tangible.

For me, it was getting a certification in pharmacogenomics. I had heard about pharmacogenomics, because I also majored in nutrition and undergrad, and so I was familiar with nutrigenomics. So, that was just an amazing hybrid when I learned that you could apply that to the pharmacy practice setting. But one, really honing in on that skill, and then two, preparing financially and leveraging the finances and the opportunities that your current position provides.

For me, it was staying within the VA for X amount of years to retain the match on my 401(k). It was planning ahead and really leveraging some of the costs in my home life or in my personal life. My husband and I had spoken for almost — about a year, about what our savings should look like and what marks we wanted to meet, and how many months of savings we needed to have added up. You and I can dive into that a little bit deeper, too.

But I would say the two biggest takeaways are, one, leveraging that skill that you’re going to be able to utilize outside of your care setting. Then, two, really diving deep into those finances, with your significant other or your family or if it’s just you, and being honest with yourself in real about what’s going to make you feel comfortable. And that’s different for everyone, just depending on your risk tolerance.

[00:11:03] TU: Yes, I think risk tolerance is different for everyone. That’s a great, great point. I think leveraging that skill, and really having – nothing is known, right? When you’re starting entrepreneurship, but obviously doing some of your background, and your homework, you’re planning to understand what is your skill set and your ability to monetize it. What’s the potential market look like?

Something I heard from you, which is really important, is this concept of a runway. I think we often think about entrepreneurship as like someone jumping in the deep end. The vast majority of people that you talk with, I think share a story similar to yours, which is, I’ve been planning this for a while. Sure, there was a point, there was a decision point where you made a jump. And of course, there are those stories here or there where people just truly jumped in the deep end. I think often those are because of job loss or other things that might happen or life events.

But more often than not, there’s some strategic thought and planning and work that’s been done. I think about it more like an exit ramp than literally jumping off the diving board into the deep end. Financially, of course, that’s so important for many reasons. One of the things I share often, Corrie, with folks is partly from my own journey, and just talking with so many pharmacists is that if you aren’t able to approach your business with a perspective of having a strong personal financial foundation, your business is going to suffer. Because you’re going to get into short term thinking. If you’re stressed with, “Hey, I don’t know what to do with my student loans. I don’t have the right reserves.” You mentioned that. “I’m worried about X, Y, or Z.” I’m not suggesting you have to have it all figured out. But if we at least have thought through these, and we’ve considered some of the potential pain points, and we have a plan in place, that’s going to be better for the business as well as your sanity.

I think, the reserves, tell us a little bit more about that. Because that’s an important piece of how much is enough? What are we comfortable with? I mean, if we just be kind of direct for a moment. If a pharmacist, let’s say is making, I don’t know, $120,000, $130,000, you multiply that by 1.25, 1.3, when you factor in benefits, probably even more when you consider purchasing health insurance on your own. That’s a pretty big number that I think scares people of how am I going to replace that. And then, what happens if I can’t replace that, which is where the emergency fund would come into play? So, how did you and your husband think about the reserves that you are comfortable with in making the transition?

[00:13:21] CS: What you said is completely correct. You can’t just consider the financial benefit. You also need to consider some of these background finances that are being flown from your paycheck that you may or may not even think about anymore. So, really important to be honest with your contributions and your investments. Really, the salary for us after benefits came somewhere around $160,000 or $170,000.

From there, we really dove into three different areas. Our reserves, our investments, and then our loans. I’ll work my way backward from those. Student loans, I still have a significant loan burden, so I didn’t pay that off completely. I was on a really aggressive payment path. I was on a payment path to complete my loans in five years, and I had close to $150,000 in loans when I left pharmacy school. So, I’m less than $100,000, which is significant in a short amount of time, but I’m still pretty high up there.

[00:14:16] TU: Which makes sense, right? The pandemic and $0 payment.

[00:14:19] CS: Totally. Yes. So, one thing that we did with the loan forgiveness, or the loan forbearance with COVID pandemic, is that we put a lot of those student loan payments into either going into a house account, so we purchased the house last year, and really cushioning the savings or building up the savings for our house account. And then everything else because I’ve been talking about making this transition for my career for about a year, went into building up the savings and reserves for going into entrepreneurship and really making that career transition.

So, for us, I have just about eight months of reserves saved up to give myself some grace between jobs, which I have some grants now that I haven’t had to tip into the reserves yet, and we can talk about those grants a little bit later. But that was our plan, is that eight months of savings. And then another thing I think is really important is having a plan B. So, what is your exit strategy going to look like if this is not a successful move for you? I think you really need to have that conversation before you make the jump and before emotions get tied into making that decision. Otherwise, it can be really messy down the line, when you’re already emotionally invested, and that you’re dipping into things you shouldn’t be dipping into financially, or you’re looking to offset different assets when maybe your business plan just isn’t working, or you need to pivot.

Having those conversations, knowing what the plan B is, knowing if you’re married, who’s going to jump into a higher paying job or make a transition, if you are going to continue down this path to make it work. Just really having the emotional conversations upfront before your back is against the wall, I think is really important to do.

[00:15:58] TU: I think that piece, right there, is so important. Having those conversations before the issues come to be. So, you’ve already kind of thought about them in a less stressful environment. Then, what I’m hearing a theme of, is that there are a lot of conversations that are ongoing between you and your husband, which separate topics for another day. But the health of an open financial conversation and making sure that we’re working on this plan together and beating up both the challenges that may exist and obviously being excited about the opportunities of, “Hey, if we are very successful in business, what are the priorities? What do we want to work on? And how do we allocate those dollars accordingly? How much are we going to reinvest in the business? How much are we going to take out?” So important to think about some of those things in advance.

Corrie, tell us about Huna Health. What problem are you trying to solve? What are the services that you offer? I think, at the foundation, every business is really trying to solve a problem that is one, that people care enough, that they’re willing to invest and pay for it. So, what is that for Huna Health? What are you trying to solve?

[00:17:00] CS: Sure. I think, there are maybe two components that you can think about when you’re trying to solve a problem, and then what that really means to you. One, what is your why? And are you passionate about what you’re doing? Because that is going to make the entrepreneur transition really makes sense, even when you’re in these tough times, and having to make hard decisions. If your why is something that you’re passionate about, that will keep you going long term.

But the second thing is, know your market. So, I have spent three years in Hawaii. I know the pain points of this healthcare system. I know how pharmacogenomics can really serve as a solution to a lot of those problems. It all just kind of came together perfectly for me.

In Hawaii, we have a lot of barriers to care, and a lot of access to care issues. We’re in a huge physician shortage. We are not leveraging pharmacists to practice toward the top of their licenses, which is something that I’m working on with the state association. But it’s just this perfect storm of we’ve got a lot of access to care issues, and pharmacogenomics can help to bridge that gap by reducing overall costs of medication, reducing the amount of touchpoints that you need to go back and follow up with a physician, just really providing personalized care that will reduce the burden on an already overburdened healthcare system.

On top of that, we’ve got a really unique patient demographic here. We’ve got a lot of minority populations that statistically process medications a lot differently than the Caucasian population. So, it’s really just, again, knowing that market, but also having that passion for why this makes sense here in Hawaii, and being able to bridge that gap and use the pharmacists to be able to do it.

[00:18:40] TU: What I’m hearing there, Corrie, is that we know there’s significant demand for pharmacogenomics services across the board. But it sounds like in Hawaii, even more so, for the reasons that you mentioned. The diverse population, access to care with shortage of primary care physicians, underutilization, and the role of pharmacists. You and I’ve talked before offline that there’s a huge opportunity, one that you’re pursuing, as a president of the state association to really advance the scope of practice to what we’re seeing other states do across the country.

It feels like if I’m reading correctly, kind of the business opportunity really sits in the center of this perfect storm. The pain and the problem to me is evident. Tell me more about the service. What does that look like? Or what are you building it to look like? Is it a standalone service? Is it in partnership with other care providers? Tell us more about what that offering looks like.

[00:19:32] CS: Sure. It’s a little bit of both. In my ideal world, I’ve got two arms to the business. One, unfortunately, pharmacogenomic tests aren’t covered by insurance, and there’s got to be a lot more data in order for that to begin to happen. So, in my heart of hearts, I really want to be serving a population that I know can’t afford these tests. I’ve started pursuing different grants. I’ve got two grants right now, through different state entities, to be able to provide pharmacogenomic tests to underserved, really complex care populations that are more expensive to the state as they would see it.

Those grants, I’ve partnered with physicians and different healthcare settings, to act as a consultant pharmacist to come in, give the tests, interpret the tests, and then streamline patient care. The second arm of my business is direct to consumer for patients that have the funding to be able to pay for these tests independently outside of insurance, and just want a really high standard of care, and want to tap into personalized medicine in a way that insurance coverage doesn’t make a difference to them. It’s just that important. So, really going off of those two arms of serving the people that I know needing it most, or serving the people that I know need it most with the grant funding, but then also being able to tap into a community that wants it at the moment through direct to consumer.

[00:20:54] TU: This is such a great example. Let’s pause for a moment here for the listeners. What I’m doing is really dissecting kind of the thought process behind how the services have developed to where they are. Many people I talked with, that are trying to start thinking about starting a business, they want to focus on the service they’re offering first. What I’m getting to is that is typically not where we want to start. We want to start with what is the problem that needs to be solved. What’s the pain?

One of the things I always encourage people is like, go through your everyday experiences. Where are the inefficiencies? Where are the problems that need to be solved? Good or bad, when you think about healthcare and pharmacy, they’re all around us. They are all around us every day of problems that need to be solved.

So, what are those things that, number one, there’s pain? Number two, that really interests you, Corrie, you mentioned your why, something that’s going to really fuel your passion, keep you motivated, keep you going. And then we start to back into, okay, under that problem, what is the avatar? What does this person look like that might be struggling with this problem? And to be as specific as you possibly can be. This is where I think folks often struggle, Corrie is where they want to try to build something that, I don’t really want to narrow myself into this specific demographic. It’s too narrow, it’s too niche. There’s always room to expand. But there are way too many examples of businesses that start broad, and they’re trying to serve everyone. And by doing that, they’re not really serving anyone at the end of the day.

What is your ideal customer within that problem? Within that potential solution that you’re going to offer? Painting a very specific picture in terms of naming them, age, what are they doing? What’s their profession? What’s their income level? All those types of things. And then from there, you’re aligning the solution with the problem and the person. I think you have done this so well, and we’re going to dissect this further with other people that come on to this series, of we focus on the solution. I think that’s maybe a little bit hardwired, of who we are as pharmacists of like. “I have this great idea. I have this solution.” Is it even aligned with the right population addressing the right problem?

This is so key, because all of your marketing, your storytelling, how you position this, all of this is going to be speaking to the pain and the problem that someone has and how this solution is addressing this pain. I just want to pause there for a moment, because I think it’s a great example to walk through how you’re developing this, and kind of the system to think about along the way.

I want to shift gears and ask you a question. I know you’re early in the business, but one of the things I see people struggle with is this question of should I pay myself? Or should I invest back in the business? I think this is really challenging, especially for folks that are transitioning from a high-income profession, like pharmacy where they want to, as quickly as possible replace their income. That’s different from other areas where you hear the startup stories where, maybe somebody lost their job, or they were very young, making a small income. So, that jump to zero wasn’t as significant, right? There wasn’t as much pain.

I think this pressure is even greater with pharmacists where they’re like, “Ah, I want to pay myself. I want to pay myself.” But they’re feeling the tug of should I invest this back into the business? Whether that’s systems, people, or resources, to really give this the fuel and the life that it needs. How have you approached this balance and this question so far?

[00:24:19] CS: Tim, I think this is such an important question because you can really put yourself into a hard-financial position. Like I said if you’re not having these conversations, and you haven’t set these boundaries for yourself before you get into the business, I just think it becomes way more complicated to answer them once you’re already up and moving. So, something that I did was just a really deep comprehensive analysis of my baseline expenditures every month, my fixed costs, my variable costs, and knowing what I would need to pay myself to live and maintain a lifestyle that I’m comfortable living throughout this transition. And that definitely involves streamlining some things and making cuts where I could. But I pay myself that amount of money every month, and then the rest of it gets circulated either back into the business or toward my student loans.

Again, I just came in with that number in mind, and it’s so important, that’s going to look really different for everyone, depending on the chapter of life that you’re in. Do you have kids? Do you have a significant other that has loans that you’ve got to prioritize? But really, being honest and upfront with yourself, and that’s just how I do it. I pay myself the baseline that I need to continue to maintain the lifestyle that I want. And then the rest of it is circulated into other financial vehicles.

[00:25:32] TU: If I can connect the dots too, because of what you shared earlier, that eight-month reserves, setting up a good financial foundation, having other revenue streams, that help to diversify, allows you, I would think, to keep that number within range that it’s not suffocating your business. Whereas if you said, “Hey, because of those other things not being in place, I have to have this income to be able to do all these things.”

I think that planning, as you’ve alluded to, a few times now is so important, and you kind of mentioned this. But we don’t objectively evaluate our business. That’s just human behavior. When you build something that you create and you’re passionate about, a lot of the objectivity goes out the window. It becomes very emotional, right? These are why you hear the stories sometimes of founders sharing what they’re doing, what they’re working on, and the money, they’re investing into it, not making money, not being profitable. You’re like, “How in the world are you continuing to run a business?” It becomes very subjective and emotional over time.

I think, having accountability, talking this through with a partner or preplanning, maybe having a coach involved, whatever be the case, is so helpful, because yes, that passion is going to serve you when you’re building the business and the mission. But it also can be blinders sometimes, as we’re not able to see clearly some of the challenges that are in front of us.

Corrie, let me ask you about resources that have been really instrumental to you early in this journey and going through the transition. So, whether it’s paid or unpaid things I’m thinking about, whether it’s programs that support pharmacy entrepreneurs. I know, you talked before we hit record on some of the work that you’re doing, an accelerator program, whether it’s coaching services, books, podcasts. What have been a few of the resources, whether paid or unpaid, that had been most instrumental in your journey of making this transition?

[00:27:21] CS: Sure. I think I’ve got two that come immediately to mind. One, I’ve found it very impactful to be surrounded by pharmacists that are also making this career transition. I am a part of one of the online academies that’s offered from another pharmacist to really just surround myself with other professionals, specifically in the pharmacy care setting, to be able to just provide a community of support and understand the transitions and the intricacies of pharmacy and have those conversations that are maybe a little more specific has been really, really great for me.

The second resource that I’ve tapped into is the Small Business Development Center here in Hawaii, and I would recommend that anyone that’s making an entrepreneurial transition do that. Because the small business community in your state is aware of your state specific laws. They’re aware of the needs of your state. They’re aware of the local resources that they can point you to. So, it’s one thing to have this pharmacy group and have a lot of people that you can maybe comrodorize with about what’s so specific to the profession and maybe bounce ideas off of them. But, I think, the most instrumental piece has been the Small Business Development Center locally in Hawaii.

Something that’s tapped me into is, I’m now going through a business accelerator program or a business incubator program that’s funded locally by the state. But it’s essentially a really intense one-month workgroup. They tell you to dedicate somewhere between 30 and 40 hours in a week. But basically, we go through every single aspect of business that you don’t touch in pharmacy school in a traditional care setting unless you had traditional training with an MBA or some kind of other entrepreneurship experience in your past. But we go through everything, branding, marketing, advertising, strategizing, scaling, and being able to not only have those resources provided to me and have conversations with local leaders. It’s just been an amazing, amazing growth and connection platform that’s local to the state.

[00:29:24] TU: What I love about that experience accelerator program is you’re in it while you’re building something. It’s the best time to learn. I mean, I’ll knock on MBAs for a moment. But I think often those courses are taken in the context of maybe a future idea or you’re already working with an organization more geared toward folks that are in a management role. When you are in the thick of trying to start and build a business and you’re learning, that’s power. That’s where I think the magic really happens. As you mentioned, Small Business Development Centers are located all across the country. I believe they’re partially or fully funded by the SBA. We’ll link to the SBDC in the show notes. I’ve had some experience with them in the past. A great resource, as you mentioned, to really help you with some of the foundations, to have a point of contact, basics around business plans, starting an organization, the early steps of the business, connecting you with other entrepreneurs, resources, illegal resources, et cetera in the area. I think they do a fantastic job and it’s free, which is a huge benefit, something that other resources do as well.

[00:30:25] CS: I have found that the small business community is so supportive of one another, and just really interested in helping each other out and pointing each other in the right direction. And it’s kind of like this camaraderie that you’ve got that maybe you don’t fit into a traditional work mold that everyone just likes to focus on, and really pull each other out of the weeds and support each other and be there.

I’ve also really found a lot of opportunity, just in the last year, just speaking into existence that, “Hey, I am a small business owner when I introduce myself in groups now.” I’m like, “Oh, my name is Corrie. I work as a pharmacist and I transitioned from a traditional role, I now own my own consulting company.” That’s how I introduce myself in various settings. But you would be so surprised, I’m not even doing and like a salesy way. I don’t want anyone’s business. But how many people approached me with, especially when they’re in health care? What are you doing? How are you doing that? What does that mean? What does your business look like? I found such a unique group, within the small business community itself. It’s been really refreshing.

[00:31:28] TU: Yes, let me introduce you to so and so, or have you thought about this? It’s an incredibly collaborative group and I think, especially when it’s authentic, and you’re there to learn, you’re there to contribute to the network as well. Obviously, there’s value to be derived from that also. Corrie, what role has your presidency of the Ohio – not the Ohio, of Hawaii —

[00:31:51] CS: We should leave that in there.

[00:31:53] TU: We are. We are going to leave that in there. The President of the Hawaii Pharmacists Association. How has that helped you grow as a business owner as well see the opportunity that’s out there?

[00:32:04] CS: Yes, that has been truly instrumental in having a successful transition. Like I said, my husband and I were really planning for financially about a year, but I knew that I was going to leave my job somewhere around that three-year mark with the VA. So, I started tapping into my resources within the state association, almost immediately after making the decision that I would be making a transition.

A lot of people that I work with, that are directors of pharmacy, or really impactful in the state just saying, “Hey, I’m going to make a career transition. This is what I’m looking to do.” And get them thinking about what opportunities they can provide for you has been amazing. That’s actually how I got pulled into two other grants that I have right now, is just having those conversations really early on with some people that were influential in the state association.

Hawaii is also really unique. I mean, our state association, it’s very small. Our state is very small. So, I can make a pretty big difference on a pretty big scale just because of how small the state is. But tapping into your state association is an amazing community, an amazing resource. They’re up to speed on the law. They can normally tell you where there are other weaknesses in areas where maybe they’re getting different things pointed to them from pharmacists in the state.

So, I’ve loved working with the state association. I’m obviously also biased because I’m the president. But that is another really huge way to impact pharmacy practice, that I don’t think is taught well in pharmacy schools, in general, is provider status. We’ve been hearing about it since we were in pharmacy school at the national level. But really, where you make a difference is looking across the map at the state level because that’s where your local legislators are able to cater different statutes based off of the needs specifically of your state.

One, it’s just the connections. But two, if you really want to make a difference fast, changes made at the state level. And so, being familiar with what the opportunities are. And then again, like you said, being able to change legislation to make that happen, it’s something that I don’t think we talk about enough.

[00:34:10] TU: Yes. I’m seeing the power of networking being involved, obviously, across the state with not only the Small Business Development Center here, you’re talking about the Hawaii Pharmacists Association. You mentioned you’re part of that pharmacist’s network of a community of individuals and other entrepreneurs. So, great touchpoints and connection points to learn from other people to contribute and to be at the forefront of what’s happening, obviously, in the profession and the opportunity that’s out there.

Corrie, I want to ask you about head trash, okay? And credit to my coach, my coach who talks a lot about head trash and the stories that we tell ourselves, and often it’s not objective when we can really shine a light on what it really is. But it has such an impact on what we do or don’t do in terms of the actions that we take. As you look at this transition, you’ve made this transition for from employee to entrepreneur, what head trash, if any, have you had to get over, that you’re working through, that you really see as either was a barrier or is a barrier to you growing your business?

[00:35:16] CS: I’m laughing because it’s so easy to get derailed in your own mind with what you’re doing. So, you could be doing something as simple as like filling out a form that you’ve never filled out before and you get frustrated, and then you’re like, “Why am I going into entrepreneurship?” I don’t know what I’m doing. It becomes really easy to derail yourself mentally. I think that’s a great question and it’s very real.

But you have to remember, most people that are really successful entrepreneurs, own one skill. They know one thing. They are not trained in all of these other aspects of the business. So, you are not doing anything that is out of the ordinary. And just having that perspective of so many business owners that are really successful, had no idea what they were doing when they started. They just knew they had a really good idea and they had a really powerful connection to what they were doing.

So, I think it’s just being aware of the head trash is probably step one, because it’s going to creep into your head at some point. You’re going to start second guessing yourself. Just being able to hone back in on your why, and what you’re doing, and who you’re doing it for, is something that’s really been powerful to me. And then, I will also say, having a support system is really instrumental. And whether that’s your spouse, or tapping into that pharmacy community, or tapping into the small business community, it’ll really help you get through the weeds and the head trash pretty quickly. You can talk yourself out of it mentally and you can write some things down and focus on your why. But when you’ve got another physical person that you can really have those conversations with, that just becomes a little more real. So, that’s helped me too.

[00:36:48] TU: It’s fascinating, I think how fragile this can be early on, right? You mentioned the example of, “Hey, I’m filling out a form and I get frustrated. And all of a sudden, my mind goes to like, second guessing. I am I cut out for this? Am I going to fail?” Like, whoa, like we’re filling out a form. What just happened?

[00:37:05] CS: It escalates really quickly.

[00:37:06] TU: It does. I think, with more time and even stepping into some of those “failures”, and realizing like, “Hey, it all worked out. I’m willing to put myself out there and kind of learn from that, grow from that, build a team.” I think some of that gets mitigated. I don’t think it ever goes away. But I think it is a fragile period where that community, that support, resources you mentioned is so helpful, especially early on in the journey.

[00:37:29] CS: Something else, Tim, I’ve also done, is I’ve started writing things down. I was never really into journaling. But when I left my job, I just had so many pent-up emotions, I just started journaling. But I’ve also started journaling some of the wins that I’ve had just with my career and in my personal life in general and being able to flip through some of those wins when you’re having a bad day or you have a loss because you’re probably going to have a million losses, that’s just inevitable. But being able to reflect back on some of those wins too, in a tangible way, has been really helpful.

[00:37:59] TU: Corrie, I want to wrap up by hearing from you, as you’re going to take the host seat of this series that we’ve got planned out through 2023, and I expect, beyond that as well. As you think about this series, who it’s for, the focus of it. What can people expect as they tune into The Pharmacy Innovator series throughout the year? What are you hoping to accomplish?

[00:38:25] CS: Yes, I think there are so many amazing resources out there for pharmacists that are looking to make a transition. We know it’s possible. We know that there are different care settings or areas or specialties or ways that you can monetize your knowledge. We know it’s possible. But what I really want to make real is having some of the conversations that will make those transitions seem tangible. I just think that the YFP community is a great place to answer and ask some of these harder questions that have to deal with finances, which no matter how you put it, you have to talk about finances when you’re going to make a career transition. I mean, you can have amazing ideas. But I know some of these academies and some of these support groups, they don’t want you to talk about finances. And I just think that’s totally unfair to people because you just can’t make a transition without having those hard conversations.

So, I think that this is a really great community because it’s built around finances and really diving into some of those questions in a way that’s not taboo or intrusive. But then, also, just hearing different perspectives from pharmacists that have been really successful, or maybe not even pharmacists, but just have made successful career transitions. And really, some of those hard-hitting questions and the planning process and making it all just seem more transparent and possible and hopefully, give some hope to some of the listeners that are looking to make those transitions and providing them with contexts to do it in a successful way.

[00:39:51] TU: I love that, Corrie. I think you and I both share the enthusiasm for – when there’s a period of disruption, you mentioned kind of a crossroad earlier in the show. There are two ways of looking at that. There’s kind of a gloom and doom of, “Hey, some of these traditional roles are being disrupted. Maybe perhaps some contraction is happening.” Or the other way is, “Hey, this is an opportunity that through that disruption, it means we’re ripe for innovation, for new ideas.” That is scary. That is big. That is, “Hey, what does this mean? And what does the role of pharmacists look like going forward?” I think it means it’s probably a lot more diversified and broader than we think about it today, or at least how I thought about going through pharmacy school as a student.

But I think that’s exciting. One of the purposes that we’re hoping to accomplish is to feature other stories, not necessary – so if someone can say, “Hey, I just heard from Corrie. I’m going to go do exactly what she did.” But rather, “Hey, that’s an interesting way. I haven’t thought about how pharmacists might leverage their training and their clinical background and expertise to be able to go solve this problem or that problem.” I think, our hope is some of that inspiration and motivation through hearing these stories. And also, to connect these folks together to the concept of community. We’re going to have a lot better outcome if we can all be helping and supporting one another.

This has been a great start. I hope the listeners will stay tuned to hear from Corrie throughout the rest of the year. Thank you, Corrie, so much for coming on to share your journey.

[00:41:17] CS: I feel the exact same way. I’m so excited to be able to bring some of these stories to light, and like you said, to just be able to inspire and motivate pharmacists to really step into different areas where maybe we hadn’t thought about stepping before, and really embracing the innovation and the future of the profession.

[00:41:32] TU: Awesome. Thank you so much, Corrie.

[00:41:33] CS: Thanks, Tim.

[OUTRO]

[00:41:35] 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 in 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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Month: March 2023

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